by S. B. Divya
“What about Jady? They’re like you, right? But without your neurological disorders.”
Welga shook her head. “They’re a good soldier, but I had an approved spot on the station, and I have more information about the Machinehood. I don’t have access to the JIA’s documents anymore, but I’ve read them. I captured a dakini and talked to her. I know how to handle their operatives. Plus, I need to personally convince Josephine Lee to help me, and others like me. So what if I’m not in the best physical condition for combat? That may not matter if I can work this situation correctly. After the first wave of attacks on the funders, the operatives have been following the caliph’s playbook. They only fight in self-defense.”
“Welga, this isn’t a matter of how well you can fight,” Nithya said. Couldn’t Welga see the seriousness of her condition? Was she in denial? “You have withdrawal symptoms combined with motor control issues. You can’t ignore this like you would a cold or a sprain.”
“As long as I got zips, I’m good.”
Her sister-in-law folded her arms across her chest and stared down at Nithya. Willful denial, then. Welga wasn’t a stupid person. Luis always said she was more stubborn than him, in which case no amount of pleading would change her mind.
Nithya gazed at the others in the room. They’d confined themselves to this tiny flat, rationing food and water and power out of fear. Days of damage would result in months or even years of repair before the world restored itself. Welga’s reasoning made sense, but Nithya didn’t like to admit it. Desperation had changed their own lives, so why not the people on Eko-Yi? Maybe they would stop working with the Machinehood if they realized their actions had created the same kind of pain they suffered.
She put the knife down, moved the pot of kootu aside, and set down a cast-iron kadai for the okra. “How can you do it, Welga? How can you risk everything with such calm determination?”
Welga snorted. “I’m only calm on the outside.” Her tone shifted, becoming low and serious. “After Mama died, I got used to taking care of Luis and Papa. When I joined the service, I got used to the idea that I might have to lay down my life for other people—not just my family, but my country, our allies. Would I rather spend the rest of my life with Connor, shielding, cooking, watching Carma grow up? Of course! I’d rather the Machinehood never happened. But they’re here, and I might have an opportunity to stop them. If you tell me that I can do something to make sure the people I love are safe, that they’ll have the chance to live well because of my actions? That’s worth my life.”
“I admire your courage,” Nithya said with a tinge of envy. She had far too many responsibilities to take a risk like Welga’s. She’d never have a chance to change the world. “You should lie down, take rest while you can. Perhaps it will help.”
“The zips make it hard to stay still.”
Nithya’s breath constricted. “This situation is so horrible! If I had flow, if we had more coin, if we could get full disclosure from Synaxel… if, if, if! In this day and age, you shouldn’t have to suffer like this. We should have a solution for your problem by now, or at least a good understanding. Our parents fought to keep this kind of nonsense from happening. That we’re going through it all again… I can almost believe in what the Machinehood says. Maybe we do need a different way of life, a radical change.”
“Don’t,” Welga said. “I’ll go lie down. You stay calm and sensible. We might need a different way of life, but global upheaval isn’t the way to get it. Fanatics like revolution, and they don’t care who gets hurt along the way. You’re not that kind of person. Don’t let them turn you into one.”
* * *
They fed Carma and the baby first, then Welga, in spite of her protests, and everyone else ate last. Trying to cook for this many people by hand took up most of Nithya’s energy. She had help now, from Zeli and her family, to deal with hand-cleaning and laundering. Sometimes Zeli’s mother cooked, but many of the ingredients she needed weren’t available. With five adults and two children in their tiny flat, the work never ended. Now they had three more, though for how long, she didn’t know. At least the new recruit, Jady Ammanuel, had helped without being asked. Clearly they had been well brought up.
As everyone around her fell asleep, Nithya struggled to stay awake. Luis lay next to her on the floor, his breathing even.
“Are you sleeping?” she whispered.
“No,” he replied, equally softly.
They tiptoed around the prone figures and out to the balcony, sliding the door closed behind them. The night air still held the heat of the day, most of it radiating from the surrounding buildings and street. No moon lit the sky. With everyone conserving power and the stellas gone, their view was the darkest Nithya had ever seen. A thousand stars burned in the sky above.
Her heart pounded as she stood next to the man she loved. “I’m sorry I lied to you,” she said.
“And you’re not sorry about the… abortion.” He forced the word out like a barb stuck in his throat.
Nithya shook her head. She wouldn’t apologize for that, and with all the stress of the Machinehood, she knew she’d made the right decision.
Luis sighed. “Welga reminded me that love also means forgiveness.” He turned and cupped her face in his hands. “You are my wife. I took a vow in front of God, and I intend to honor it. Just promise me—no more lies, okay?”
“That I can do. I promise. Are you—does this mean you’re back? You’re staying?”
“Yes.”
He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, then pulled her against him. Nithya laid her head on his shoulder and held tight. She didn’t want him out of her sight until full network access was restored.
“What do you think about Welga’s plan?” he said, still holding her.
“If she were healthy, she might accomplish something. As it is, I worry that she won’t make it to the station alive.”
“So do I. We bought her more zips as we went through the city today. Some of the street vendors are cycling their WAIs and poaching power and network to produce pills. The zips seem to make her better.”
“It’s a false sense of improvement. The more she takes them, the worse she gets. It’s like a drug addiction now, but the damage from this might be permanent. I don’t have the equipment or the expertise to know.” She gave him a squeeze. “I don’t mean to frighten you. Remember how you felt after the Jackson explosion? Or Marrakech? Welga has survived terrible things. Let’s hope she lives through this, too.”
She couldn’t help a sense of optimism at having Luis back, even if their marriage couldn’t recover its former trust. Unlike other fights, this one felt like it would leave permanent scars. If you’d agreed in the first place, if you hadn’t been so dogmatic… but he couldn’t change that any more than she. If he could overcome the hurdle of living by her side, she could return the favor.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. A stray breeze blew across them, and a night bird cried out from a rooftop garden across the street.
“Should we go in?” Nithya asked.
“Not yet. I want a few more minutes alone with you.”
Surrounded by her husband’s arms and the scent of night-blooming jasmine, Nithya let herself relax.
WELGA
25. To live in harmony with all intelligences, we must relinquish our ideas of personhood. Just as we abstracted this concept to include corporations and environmental bodies, so now we must include artificial intelligences.
—The Machinehood Manifesto, March 20, 2095
As Welga faced the entry into a foam-lined crate, she reminded herself why she was doing this. For Connor, for Papa, for Carma and Luis and Nithya—for Por Qué, and the blood of Briella Jackson and all the others who had died at the hands of the Machinehood. She needed to squeeze herself into that cargo container and let herself be flung off the Earth.
She squinted up at the clear blue sky, a rarity in Chennai. She wished she could have seen Connor once more, told Papa good-bye.
Would her body hold up through the launch? Would she have the strength to do what she needed to find and stop the Machinehood? She couldn’t admit her concerns to anyone else. As Jack Travis had taught her, she put all those thoughts in an imaginary box and buried them.
Fear has to take a back seat to confidence I will be here again. I’ll succeed in this Death can kiss my fine ass.
She locked the helmet onto her suit and scrunched herself into the box. The club didn’t have time to secure passenger seats and install them, so the foam padding inside was her only protection. She gave a thumbs-up to Luis, who peered in. He tapped on his head. No radio communications today. She opened the helmet’s visor.
“If you reach behind you, through the foam, you’ll find a harness,” he instructed. “Strap in and stay that way until you feel the second stage fall off. You’ll be floating before that, but stay buckled in or you might get hurt during the separation.”
“Got it,” Welga said, looking her brother in the eyes with all the confidence she could gather.
“One more thing,” he said, then stared at his feet in silence.
“Luis, if you’re going to say something about god, so help me I will—”
“I love you.”
Tears tickled her eyes. “I love you too, little brother.”
Luis gave her the world’s shittiest salute and sealed her in. She closed the helmet and strapped herself against the foam cushioning. In seconds, sweat drenched every centimeter of her body from her scalp to her toes. Space suits. She could not live like this. She powered the suit on and activated the fan. It would recycle her evaporated sweat into drinking water, but she had only two spare battery packs to power it. She couldn’t afford to expend them on cooling more than necessary. The suit, like everything in her gear pack, was built for emergencies, not a substitute for a passenger launch.
The crate lifted and swayed like an amusement park ride, making Welga glad for the restraints. Light leaked through the cracks in the wooden slats. She couldn’t help yelling when they dropped her with a thud. Christ, had they forgotten that this one had a human in it? They pulled, slid, wiggled, and bumped her until darkness blanketed the box on all sides.
Silence. Stillness. She could almost hear her heartbeat.
She hadn’t imagined this was how she’d take her first trip to outer space.
Engines rumbled to life. The jets blew first, shooting her upward with a sensation similar to a sub-orb.
Then a roar penetrated into her bones, and the engines thrust her backward. Her teeth rattled. The force crushed the air from her lungs. She couldn’t lift her wrist to check the clock on the suit’s exterior. Hell, she couldn’t move any part of her body. A giant hand pressed her into the foam until it hugged her like a dear friend.
She fell forward against the straps, her stomach dropping—no, floating! Her sense of direction went haywire, then the second stage kicked in and pressed her back again. When that ended, the absolute stillness stunned her. She floated with a perfect neutral buoyancy that transcended her best scuba dive. Her teeth felt like shaken ice cubes, but her mind soared.
Welga unclipped.
She curled into a ball and laughed as she tried to float in the center of the crate without touching the walls. If only Connor were at her side to share in the experience. She hadn’t seen him since leaving for Chennai, and unlike every other mission, she couldn’t count on him being safe and sound. I hope you’re well, cardo. Someday, we’ll do this together.
* * *
Welga hated the wrist clock. Unlike Por Qué, this machine told her the time whether she wanted the information or not. After the first five hours, boredom gnawed at her sanity. Watching a bunch of blue digits and waiting for them to increment didn’t help.
At the nine-hour mark, she almost forced her way out of the crate to look outside. Only the knowledge that the craft had no windows—it wasn’t designed for passengers—kept her contained. She counted the pockets on her suit. She timed how slowly she could trickle out urine when she had to relieve her bladder. She pretended to talk to Connor. To Por Qué. She had imaginary arguments with Nithya about her condition. She rehearsed all the possible responses she could think of when Eko-Yi let her out. If the station had received the feeds from the dakini she’d captured—and why wouldn’t it?—its WAIs would recognize and identify her.
“I’m unarmed,” seemed like the best opener. If her welcomers had weapons, “Please don’t shoot,” would make a good follow-up.
She had three avenues for her identity. The personal angle: she’d come to talk to Josephine Lee/Ao Tara about Synaxel because she was sick. The lottery application approach: she was a potential resident, and she wanted to ensure the station’s well-being. The double agent: she had worked for US intelligence, but she’d swallowed the Machinehood’s pills and wanted to help their cause. Which one she chose would depend on how the station residents approached her.
She reread Josephine Lee’s journal entries and resignation letter. She played out each of her options until she lost track of the branches. With little information about Ao Tara, her family, or anyone else on the station, Welga’s imagination had no constraints. Too many possibilities made for an exercise in fiction, not strategy.
She spoke out loud for a while to have some sensory input, but her throat grew raw, and wasting water to talk to herself was stupid. She found creative ways to arrange her body so that she could almost stretch her legs from time to time. With the general stellas down, she had no chance to research and prepare for life in space. Circulation seemed like it would be a problem. Someone had probably invented pills for that, but she wouldn’t know until she arrived at Eko-Yi.
The suit had a pill dispenser that even the minimal version of Por Qué could control. It kept her zip dosing on a schedule so she didn’t run out, but she was tempted to override it. Her seizures had added a vomit feature. She wondered if the microgravity caused it, or if her body had progressed to a new stage of disorder. She grew desensitized to the smell after the first four hours. The suit’s air filters couldn’t handle it. The seizures left her exhausted and drowsy. Sleep helped to pass the long, dull hours, too.
* * *
Welga’s spacecraft had a WAI, emphasis on Weak, but it was good enough to handle docking with the station. Luis had warned her to expect some gentle speed changes toward the end. Nothing strong enough to require straps.
So what the hell had just flung her into a wall of the crate?
Stupid zero-gravity environment made it impossible to intuit what had happened. Welga floated in the middle of the crate and tried not to hold her breath. She activated Por Qué, then told her agent to connect to the craft’s WAI.
“Por Qué, what is our vehicle’s status?”
“Speed has slowed due to an external factor. Present velocity is one point three kilometers per second.”
“What external factor?” Welga couldn’t keep irritation from her tone. The real Por Qué would’ve anticipated the question and answered it.
“Unknown.”
Welga growled. “I need more information!”
“Would you like to connect to the local network?”
If she’d been in gravity, she might have fallen over with surprise. What local network? Was she close enough to reach Eko-Yi’s comms?
“Yes, connect to the local network. What’s our distance to Eko-Yi Station?”
“Approximately thirty-five hundred kilometers. Unable to connect to the local network without authorization. Call request incoming. Unknown source. Do you accept?”
Welga attached her helmet, powered up the suit, and then accepted the call.
A face appeared in her visual: pale skin, light blue eyes, square jaw, and full lips, with a makeup job to die for. Rounded cheeks indicated youth. Light brown hair formed a halo warped by the wide angle of their camera lens.
“I am a dakini of Eko-Yi. I’ve come to inspect your vehicle. If you make any hostile moves, I will deploy my weapons.”
>
More than one dakini from there—that added to the theory that the station had created them. Welga wasn’t sure if they all used female pronouns. She kept the neutral in her head out of politeness.
They hadn’t shot the craft on sight, so she tried the sympathy angle.
“My name is Olga Ramírez, and I’m dying. I seek asylum and medical attention.”
“We know who you are, Officer Ramírez. We have your application. We last saw you with our sister, Khandro, and you looked well. Has something happened since then?”
Okay, let’s play truthball. “I’m no longer a government officer or a shield agent. I quit. I have a possibly fatal synaptic condition, something related to my use of zips, and I have information that says one of your station’s residents might be able to help me.”
“Do you have proof of your disease?”
“Some of my medical data is public. You have my genetic records. I can’t prove my unemployment, but this spacecraft has no weapons. Neither do I. The cargo contains essential materials for your station. The rocket club that launched this vehicle called your people and arranged the delivery.”
The dakini nodded. “Yes. I have that information.”
They ended the call abruptly. Welga missed their face within seconds of her visual going blank. Human or dakini, that was the first intelligent conversation she’d had since launching. Get me the hell out of here! But they had to get to the station first. How had the dakini slowed her down? And how long would it take to bring her in? Welga had rationed her zips to last the expected time of the voyage plus six hours. Either she convinced them to help her or they’d kill her before her time ran out.
“Incoming call request,” Por Qué said.
“Accept!”
No visual came through this time. “I will escort you to the station.”