by Alex Oliver
He touched every human/Louse interface with his mind one by one, getting glimpses of work in the infirmary, in store-rooms that were slowly filling with food and clothing, in requisition forms for furniture, more electronics, and comms messages reassuring incomers that they would be welcomed here. Already the newcomers had begun networking their ships together into a data-nexus that kept him out with firewalls. He set a part of the planet to deciphering them just because he could. He'd saved their lives so he figured that entitled him to know their secrets.
All dull stuff that left a strange metallic taste in his mouth after he had grown used to the sucked pebble feel of the pontoth interface. He moved on to the pried out bricks of processors with lower hopes. He ound fiction, and drafts of letters home, and then…
And then human emotion – direct and startling and almost incomprehensible to him for a moment with its alien rhythms and its jagged peaks. Two people's emotions, both of them reflecting back his shock. A slippery sensation as one mind raced to figure it out, and the other recoiled, like a guy who's just let a snake out of a box and is getting some distance in preparation to attack.
“It's okay,” he tried to say, frustrated when the crude interface didn't allow for words. What was the emotion that went with reassurance? He tried picturing himself soothing a nervous animal, but couldn't remember if he'd ever done that in real life. Shit. It was easier to get the brick to unravel a couple of tendrils of pontoth along the interface wires and fine-tune them.
A brief burst of a stinging sensation on his head – someone's head – and one of the two presences was gone. The other came into sharper focus, curious, and sad? And no longer surprised.
“Bryant.” Nakano Nori's mind latched onto his with a grasp that felt comfortable within the first two seconds. It was as if the boy had been doing this all his life – sharing minds while maintaining his own boundaries. Bryant had always thought of the guy as a kind of second rate version of himself, but Bryant had only just figured out where he'd put his own body. He had almost lost himself altogether. He had wasted weeks of thinking time on drifting on alien tides.
Nori's mind-touch, by contrast, was disciplined, eager and so well trained, Bryant would have kissed him on the mouth if they'd been in the same room.
“Yeah,” he agreed, revisiting his assumptions about the boy, recognizing that he had discovered a professional. “It's me.”
Already, Nori had backtracked along the connections Bryant had made, had discovered the data-net of the colony and dipped beneath it to taste the intricate branching out of the pathways of the Destroyer. His mind slipped down them like a gleaming snake, the sadness steaming off him until it was gone and only euphoria took its place. “And who else?” He demanded, his mind glittering with delight. “Who else?”
“The Destroyer,” Bryant said and then kicked himself for being a jerk. “It prefers 'Preserver' or 'Guardian'. It's the AI the Lice built to manage the planet.”
“There's more, though.” Slippery and silver, Nori's interest was everywhere, never letting itself get attenuated, but never missing a connection. “Little minds.”
“I think they're animals,” Bryant said, feeling dull and stupid and yet relieved to let an expert take a look. “It keeps tabs on the animals, trying to make sure the ecosystem stays in balance.
“There's ghosts too.” His pictured silver snake was nosing through recent data-dumps that Bryant had dismissed as static and therefore uninteresting. “Dead people?”
“When the pontoth disassembles people,” Bryant explained this as if he hadn't been told it himself only half an hour ago, “the AI keeps records of them on a cellular level so they can be remade if necessary. All data stored in the brain is recorded in a kind of attached file so it can all be reassembled on command. So yeah, I guess--”
“We've got all the memories from everyone who's ever died here.”
“Everyone who's ever died from pontoth attack,” Bryant corrected. “That includes anyone anywhere in the galaxy. It's all… interconnected, as I'm sure you're aware.”
Nori nosed back, like a weightless silver dragon. He already seemed like he belonged here, like he was already optimized for having a whole planet in his brain. A flash of Nori's self-perception passed between them, showed him pacing, excitedly, grinning, grinning like a half moon at one of Aurora's lieutenants, who stood with his gun drawn in the corner of Bryant's lab, looking disgruntled and suspicious.
Why would he be suspicious? That thought sent Bryant chasing through the rest of Nori's briefly unguarded thoughts. He'd always thought the guy would make as much money from Cygnus 5 as he could and then skip out on them, and a quick skim of his memories proved he'd tried to do just that in Snow City. It proved too that he hated Bryant – that he resented Bryant's ascension to power in the colony, and Bryant's arrogant assumption that he was better and cleverer just because he was good at nanotech.
He didn't want to work with Bryant. He didn't want to help Bryant solve this. He wanted to save humanity himself, while Bryant slept, so Nori would get the credit for once, so Bryant couldn't steal this from him too.
Well shit. Bryant had also forgotten the need to protect himself. He'd forgotten how much other humans and their ingratitude could hurt.
“Look, don't give me that attitude,” he picked up the conversation they hadn't been having, and all at once they were. “You were an untrustworthy little shit. And you've no idea what I've given up already to keep this place alive. I'm lying here with a fucking tube down my throat, cabled to the floor, never to eat or drink or have sex ever again for the sake of the human race. I think I had every right to be standoffish then and I think I deserve some fucking credit--”
“So you get all the glory and everything else. Do you know how much I'd kill for a whole planet to network with? It's my fucking dream, man, and you just get it handed to you. How come you get everything? You think I didn't see how you left the Frowards to get blown out of the sky? How you were going to run away all on your own and let the rest of us die?”
Bryant had forgotten that, to be honest. He didn't feel he was that guy anymore, but clearly while he'd been picking Nori's mind, Nori had been going through the unflattering things in his own. A burst of panic made his way through his distributed nervous system, as suddenly he found himself navigating an emotional white-water ride he hadn't realized he was on. He had to stop this, to go back to when they were colleagues, when they'd both assumed they'd be helping each other...
“Wait though. We can't let this get in the way of working together. You're really good at interfacing with this thing. If we worked together we could--”
“Or I could do it on my own.” Nori raised a hand to the back of his neck. The feeling of fingers closing around a wire, a screech of static, and he was gone.
Bryant had always thought charm was one of his better qualities, but shit, maybe not.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Lali meets the inmates
Lali had expected cells, but the prisoner quarters of Base Three Prime were barracks. After she and Morwen had showered, been sprayed with disinfectant and dressed in prison drab olive jumpsuits, they were assigned to a block of twenty beds.
They walked shoulder-to-shoulder up the narrow path between bunks to reach the empty last bunk-bed – screwed into the wall next to the doorless john, where a single rusted lavatory struggled to accommodate all twenty of them. The smell grew less strong as one approached the entrance, and was thickest around their bunks.
“Everyone gets that one when they arrive,” one of the girls from the next bunk along said, hanging off the top bed with a look of avid interest. New people, Lali thought. Probably the most entertainment they'd had for years. “You've gotta earn a space by the door.”
Morwen swung herself up onto the stained tan mattress of the top bunk, filling the room with the sound of springs creaking, not even looking at the eighteen sets of eyes that were looking at her. Science track engineer, right? She didn't know
what to do with people. But Lali had been in and out of barracks all her life, and she knew how this worked. They were being assessed – were they a danger? Were they a chance for a bit of fun? Were they weak? Were they prey?
“Luxury,” she said, smiling back. The kid who'd spoken had black sclera to her purple eyes, and tattoos over every part of her admittedly well-muscled body. At some point her ear-lobes must have been pierced and stretched over a large plug, but now they just dangled, looking deflated and vulnerable. “I remember a ground assault on Ceti Alpha Ajax. Mud to your knees. Had to sleep in the shit, not just next to it. Great for the complexion, though.”
“What's she doing?” This voice came from the furthest bed – the closest to the door. This plump woman with artificially red lips was obviously one of the highest ranked in the room. Lali got up so she could see, and found Morwen with her hand pressed to the wall, like she was communing by mind-touch with the space station.
She probably had her stolen data-disc in her right hand. She was probably sliding it carefully along the metal, hoping to locate a data wire in the wall. Lali debated trying to sell the room a made up bag of tricks, but figured that fortune favoured the brave, and there wasn't time for subtlety. “She's trying to save all your lives.”
“Oh Jesus,” the red-lipped woman rolled her eyes, striding close enough to Lali so she could read the O'Donnell stitched on her suit. “I was told to expect some sort of nonsense from you two. Don't start.”
She took a cigarette and a lighter from her pocket, cocked a hip and lit up, blowing the smoke into Lali's face in a calculated display that made Lali wish she still had a flower crown to wear. She couldn't bear a fucking clichéd display like this. It was embarrassing.
“You're the boss, then. Right?”
“That's right.” O'Donnell smiled, teeth sharp in her pillowy face, but a tiny flicker of indecision in her cornflower blue eyes. Behind her, from the top bunk of the the top set, Lali caught the hard, examining eye of a tiny woman with shiny gray hair. The brains to go with O'Donnell's muscle?
“Then you need to know this station's being eaten away by rogue nano even as we speak. We've got to get off here, and if the screws don't evacuate us right now, we've got to find a way to do it ourselves.”
“You know what I think?” O'Donnell took a deep drag of the contraband cigarette, to emphasize that she had the power to flout regulations without punishment, unlike Lali. “I think you need to learn that you can't come in here and start telling us what to do. Mouth shut, head down, unless I say otherwise.”
Lali watched the vaguely menacing wave of the woman's hand and lost patience. Fuck that. It was going to come to a fight anyway, so why not have it now? She grabbed the gesturing arm by the elbow, digging her left thumb into the pressure point there. O'Donnell's layer of fat cushioned the pain a little, but couldn't prevent the arm from automatically bending, and Lali's right hand closed hard on her fingers, twisting and pressing down until she could stub out the cigarette on O'Donnell's shoulder.
There was a fluttering around the beds, but no one rushed to O'Donnell's rescue. As the woman gasped, then choked on a mouthful of smoke and agony, Lali continued to press her backwards, bending her almost double over her own heels. Then she kicked out the back of her knees and let her fall.
O’Donnell hit the ground with her shoulders first, holding her head up to protect it, even as her eyes streamed from lingering pain and shock. Now was the point where if Lali allowed it, she would recover from her surprise and come back fighting.
But Lali didn't allow it. She put her knees on O'Donnell's arms and sat her full weight on the woman's chest, getting her hands around the carotid arteries on either side of her throat, where a firm pressure would cut off the blood to her head and knock her out.
“I'm not messing around,” she looked up again, into the almost hag-like face of the nondescript woman on top of the highest status bed. “I don't give a rat's arse for your prison hierarchy. This shit is already on the station and it's going to kill us all. You going to run to the screws, or are you going to help me do something about it?”
There was a pause, while eighteen women held their breath, and Morwen made a small declaratory 'ah' that told Lali her comms were on line, or would be soon. Then the lady in the top bunk gave a little laugh, and creakily began to make her way down the rungs of the non-regulation ladder soldered into the side of her bed. A hijabi woman with very dark skin, and a prayer tattooed between her brows leaped up to help the elder climb down.
“Well, you are certainly a breath of fresh air.” When she was down, the room's queen turned out to be its granny – a stooped, elderly lady, with a star of David on a boot-lace around her neck, and a slightly threadbare grayish wig over browner stubble. Her name-tag read Liebniz. E.
“Ma'am.” Lali's mother hadn't brought her up to be a hardass to the elderly, and she recognized something in the woman's shrewd, amused gaze that would have made her feel like a child if she'd let it. “I don't mean to throw my weight around, but Morwen here can give you proof if you'll let her work.”
“What is that she's got?” Liebniz asked, peering up at Morwen's stooped form, Morwen’s palms curved around the tiny screen. “Perhaps you'd better let O’Donnell up, there dear. There's no need for these dramatics.”
“We smuggled a fleet data-disc in,” Lali admitted, hoping the woman wasn't going to just turn it over to the authorities and get them punished. But her intuition was that the room was skeptical but interested, willing to be persuaded or at least amused. New prisoners were usually more docile than this, alone and intimidated. “Morwen, can we patch them into the news? They're not going to take it from us.”
Morwen handed the disc down. “I'm going to need it back though,” she said, rubbing her reddened eyes.
“Hold it further away,” Leibniz insisted, as Lali struggled with the basic mental controls of the thing – it was supposed to sense her commands from her electrical field or something, but she'd never got the hang of controlling either the machines or her own mind to that degree. Still, she did manage 'on' after a moment, and held it still in her palm so Leibniz, O'Donnell and the hijabi Ekibe could watch.
“And you brought this 'pontoth' here?” O'Donnell asked, when the recording was over and Lali had handed the device back for Morwen to continue working her magic with. “Well thanks.”
“Keene brought it here. Believe me, we didn't choose to come. But now we're here, we have to do something fast. If there are no ships coming in and out of here, we're no use to its spread. As soon as it realizes that, it'll switch itself on and we'll be dust. You see what happened to InfiniTech Utopia? That'll be us. Are there engines on this station? Lifeboats? I presume the screws don't live here. How do they get on and off?”
“What a lot of questions,” Leibniz said, lowering herself to the mattress of the nearest bed. “I'm really going to have to have a think about this.”
“There isn't time for a long think!” Lali snapped, only for O'Donnell and Ekibe to shove her back a step. “I've told you. The walls are probably dissolving already.”
“You think you're the only one who's ever arrived here filled with the rage to get out?” O'Donnell mocked. “Liebniz's been working on escape longer than you've been alive. We don't just sit here and do needlework, you know!”
“Needlework?” Lali repeated, bemused.
“Needlework,” O'Donnell agreed. She twisted her lip into a sneer “'and other sundry feminine pursuits suitable for the reform of fallen women'. You'll be paying for your stay here by embroidering bath sheets--”
“And 'sundries',” the tattooed woman spoke up, managing to give 'sundries' the kind of flair a hellfire preacher would use on 'abominations'.”
“That fucking door is the strongest thing on this station,” Ekibe said, indicating the sliding steel shutter of their dormitory. “And it only opens if they want you out, for work or food or sundries.”
“Speaking of which!” a blonde girl, wh
o had been standing with her ear to the door shouted out, prompting everyone to break and make for their beds. A moment later, Lali heard the approaching feet, and then a shudder through the walls, just like…
“Is that a ship docking?”
Morwen shook her head. “There's no scheduled visits being displayed on the official timetable.”
“Well then,” said Leibniz, primly. “You don't know everything, do you. I have time to do my thinking, and you have time to earn your keep. Ekibe. Immi. Your turn.”
“No!” said a blonde girl, whose name badge read Immi. C. She pointed at Morwen. “What about her?”
“She can stay with me and use her marvelous little device to help me with my thinking. Don't be crude, Immi. She can take your turn next. Places, everyone.”
They drew up by their beds as if for inspection, Morwen hiding the disc in the waistband of her briefs, Lali folding her shiv into her cuff. The shit smell stirred again as the door was slowly cranked open and four guards with stun sticks filed through, a trustee at their head.
The trustee was young, whip-thin, clever-eyed, and she didn't bother looking at anything in the room other than Leibniz. “That's the Eagle, granny,” she said. “Back from their heroic service at the front. I'll have three as usual.”
“Step forward then, girls.” Leibniz glared at Lali as if to say she would only permit insubordination to go so far. Lali exchanged a mystified look with Morwen, and shuffled forward, and the trustee stopped her with an unlit stun stick beneath the jaw.
“This is one of the new ones?”
“That's right, Iris. Break them in sooner rather than later, that's what I say.”
Iris frowned and tipped the baton to force Lali to look in her eye. Iris was a beanpole of a girl, taller than Lali by a foot.
“She doesn't look very safe.”
Safe? Safe enough to do needlework? Lali resisted the urge to tug on her sleeve and give away the location of her shiv.