by Jenn Lyons
nose, craggy cheekbones and impossible grin. I also know that he is not like any of my other teachers and that he is the only one of them that I can trust.
“Because someday you’ll want to remember again. So we need a trigger, something that will kick start the memory process. Wouldn’t want you remembering too early now, would we?”
“What kind of trigger?”
He grins. “We don’t have to restrict ourselves to only one, you know? What sort do you want? You could start to remember if you see a one armed man wearing pink, or if someone quotes a specific poem to you.” Duncan drew himself up solemnly and quoted: “Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies, ashes to ashes: we all fall down.”
“That’s silly! It would have to be a more serious poem.”
“Ah, it would eh? That’s a more serious poem than you might think, young lady.” He winks at me. “How’s this? To Merlin, to be holden far apart until his hour should come; because the lords of that fierce day were as the lords of this, wild beasts, and surely would have torn the child piecemeal among them, had they known.”
“Known what? What child?”
“Arthur. If they had known Arthur had existed, Uthur’s true heir, they would have killed him. So Merlin protected the child by hiding him.”
“Oh.” I think that over and then ask, “Who’s Arthur?”
“Yes, I imagine the poem doesn’t make much sense without knowing that, does it?” He laughs, but doesn’t explain. “Too obscure?”
“Yeah, I think maybe.” I pause, expression serious and earnest. “Freedom.”
“Freedom? That’s a little vague. Freedom for whom?”
“Humans. Us.”
Duncan purses his lips. “You may never see that day, Mallory.” He sees my pouting expression and relents. “All right. That can be one of the triggers. If the Sarcodinay ever announce they are leaving, you’ll start to remember.”
ggg
I opened my eyes and blinked at angry, cold artificial lighting. I’d been having a dream—but it hadn’t felt like a dream. A memory, except meeting with the Sarcodinay Emperor, discussing the discovery of Terra, of the Human race, had also felt like a memory, one not my own. Whose memories then?
Later. I would deal with it later.
I groaned and felt the back of my head. I found a few tiny stitches. Tal-Campbell hadn’t gone easy on me.
My whole body ached, but not so badly I’d be confined to bed. I’d be fine. Physically fine, anyway. Mentally, I was numb.
I woke in a jail cell. That was a new experience. In the case of Black Flags, they don’t usually bother with any of the trappings associated with arrest and trial. If they caught one of us, ours was the privilege of dying where we stood.
Someone was taking my near-escape personally. They’d stripped me naked of everything: clothing, weapons, jewelry, Medusa’s communications gear. The skin gels covering my tattoos were gone, and so were my cigarettes. They’d probably done a full cavity search. I was glad I hadn’t been awake for it.
The room was three meters square, painted in a light blue-green color that someone, somewhere, had scientifically determined was soothing. A toilet, sink, and built-in bed with no sheets concluded the amenities. No decorations, no flourishes, none of the usual Sarcodinay touches that always reminded me of a blind elephant let loose with the finger-paints.
Come to think of it, I found the jail cell soothing after all.
One wall of the room was absent except for a large pane of clear plastic. I smiled at that. No doubt a magnetic collar was embedded in the wall, much like the magnetics embedded in the city quarter markers or my web gloves, all designed to make sure that the humans wearing caste-marks stayed on whichever side they were already on. MOJ personnel were likely, right at that moment, debating whether the plastic alone would be enough to hold me.
I grinned to myself and wondered if anyone had a betting pool going.
The wall opposite of me turned into a video display of sirens and lights while Sarcodinay with guns marched men and women in prisoner uniforms. Then it transformed again, became an image of a great big golden retriever, grinning, wagging his tail.
I cracked a wry smile. “Heya, Cerberus. Looks like I’m your guest.”
Technically, his name wasn’t Cerberus. The MOJ AI’s name was Kerethres, which meant Iron Watcher or something in old Sarcodinay. Kerethres sounded enough like the old underworld guardian of Terran legend that I began to privately refer to the AI as Cerberus. When I had the chance, I told him the story, and he was surprisingly enchanted by the idea. Of course, he’d always been fond of Medusa, and that helped. It became a pet name, a private sobriquet, and a way for me to refer to the MOJ AI without giving away who I meant.
They say that no two AIs are alike, and given the slow nurturing process necessary to create one, I personally agree with that assessment. I suspected that at one point in Cerberus’s lifetime he’d been capable of speech. I’d never quite discovered why he’d lost the ability. Was his preference to communicate in pictures? Did someone mention that a picture is worth a thousand words to him and his computer brain latched on to that mathematical formula as obvious efficiency? I suspected that, like so many immobile AIs, Cerberus had once been chatty. It offended someone, who ordered his electronic “tongue” removed. Perhaps they’d been concerned he would give away state secrets. Cerberus had never volunteered any explanation, and so I only knew the reality: that he only communicated through visual images.
And he wasn’t as loyal as the Sarcodinay or MOJ believed.
The picture changed again, to an old photo of a Greek goddess, carrying a large shield. The image zoomed in on the shield, on a carving of a screaming woman with snakes for hair.
“Is Medusa in contact with you?”
The happy dog said yes.
“Tell her I’m okay, if you haven’t already.”
A question mark appeared. Was I okay?
“I am. Just...yeah. I’ll be okay.” I tried to smile. “It’s good to see you. Soon we won’t have to pretend we don’t know one another.”
A crowd of children laughed and released balloons. Cerberus didn’t like to hide the fact he knew me. He was ethical. Most AIs are. Much more ethical than the people who created them.
“Think you could answer a question for me?”
The dog returned, but now his face was cocked to the side.
“The Farthest Shore restaurant. It has its own security grid. Are you hooked in?”
A ticking clock, then a man hooking or unhooking a power plug and a fade to black. Cerberus had been hooked in, though not now.
“Who could hack into something like that?”
Cerberus showed me a picture of myself.
I sighed. AIs were so literal. “Thanks. I meant who else?”
The wall went blank. A half-second later, I heard the clanging sound of the door at the end of the hall opening, then the sharp sound of footsteps on concrete. A big man, coming this way. I sat back on the bed and made sure he’d get an eyeful.
“Hello Ghost,” I said just before he crossed into my view.
Tal-Campbell had changed into a different set of robes but he still needed that shave. He had a large cloth bundle tucked under one arm. He had the sort of face was would have perpetually made him first picked for the sports teams and last picked for chemistry partners—a face born to break bones on orders. His head was very nearly shaved, except for the three mandatory braids of the Admin caste. He wore his very small, like sports stripes running on the top of his head from front to back. The low profile probably made it easier to wear a helmet, which meant that, at least until recently, he’d been used to fieldwork in MEP powered armor.
He glanced at me, scowled, and looked away as if staring more than a split-second would permanently burn an image on to his retinas.
“The name’s Tal-Campbell. I’m told it’s Scottish.” He opened up a panel in the plastic, shoved the bundle through, closed the panel, and turned his back to me. He p
ushed a hand up on the hallway wall to keep it from falling over.
“Still, I bet you’ve been called Ghost.”
“I’ve never worked in a QZ.”
“Uh huh.”
“You’ve probably been called a few things yourself.” His tone of voice indicated that he might have been rehearsing one or two candidates to himself at that very moment. Tal-Campbell gestured vaguely in my direction with a hand. “Thought you might want clothing.”
I studied his back quizzically. “A lot of MOJ would have wanted me naked for questioning. Try to humiliate me.”
“I’m not a lot of MOJ.” He didn’t turn around.
“So I see. Which makes me wonder if these clothes are for my benefit or for yours?” I slid over and looked through the clothes. They weren’t the ones I’d been wearing; in case I’d hidden something in a seam or the like. A pair of disposable underwear, backless slippers, beige pants with a tie waist, a baggy pullover tunic with about as much sex appeal as a three-man tent. No bra, so I was lucky I didn’t need one. The clothes were different from slave-caste only in color: standard for prison garb. As I searched the clothes I noticed someone had tucked a lighter and a pack of cigarettes into the pocket.
He sighed, and even though he was turned away from him, I could still tell he’d just rolled his eyes at my immature dig. Campbell turned around and looked at me very deliberately as I pulled a cigarette from the pack. I studied him in turn while I went through all the usual motions. Lighting the tip, letting it burn. I inhaled and promised