by Zack Jordan
Waking in an autonomous pressure suit is a disconcerting experience even in the best of circumstances. The gravity is low. Your feet are off the floor. You are supported by straps in non-ideal places, which means half your limbs have fallen asleep. You also cannot see the actual walls of the suit, thanks to its holo projector. As far as your groggy mind can tell, you just woke up bodiless, floating a good meter and a half off the floor.
But Sarya is thankful for the straps—at least she is once she has finished flailing. They have her by the wrists, and they save her from shredding the spray bandage that covers her fingers. She examines those fingers with all the concentration available to someone who is fairly sure she was drugged to sleep. Not that she’s complaining. And the fingers look okay. They hurt, but they move. And she’s not dead, how about that? That’s not something you can take for granted, is it? Lately, anyway. She is warm and alive and she has all her limbs and—
Can we go through all this later, says her body with a pointed biofeedback signal, because it has physical needs too.
All right then, first things first. “I—” she says out loud, and stops. Her own voice has startled her, raspy and deeper than she’s ever heard it. She swallows through the burn in the back of her throat. “I need to go to my room,” she says. When the suit doesn’t respond immediately, she touches the inner wall with one bandaged hand. She doesn’t know which Eleven she’ll get. Will it be the cheerful advertiser of features, the blithe reader of its own brochure? Or will it be the Eleven who has now saved her life twice over?
“Does your intelligence reside in a biological waste–producing shell?” booms Eleven. “Are you weary of halting missions midway because of the pressing needs of nature? The AivvTech UAE provides a full waste management suite, from water recycling to—”
“Eleven,” she says. “Don’t be gross.”
“This sub-legal intelligence does not—”
“You fooled Hood,” she says. “But you can’t fool me. You saved me. Twice. I know you’re more than just a—” She stops, searching for a word.
[A moron?] appears, superimposed on the purple ice outside.
She feels her chapped face form the tiniest beginning of a smile. There’s the intelligence she was looking for. “Well, I wasn’t going to say exactly that, but—”
[And it’s three times.]
She thinks back. Oh, right, it is three times. “Fine,” she says. “You saved me three times. And maybe after somebody saves you a bunch of times you don’t really want to…you know. Inside them.”
[I’m sure you’ll know the sanitation station in your room soon enough.]
“Yeah…but it really is a moron. It’s not even a one-point—” She stops.
[1.75?] says Eleven.
“Okay let me start over. I don’t want to treat you like a sanitation station. I want to treat you like a—”
[Like a…?]
Sarya pauses, again looking for a word, but her thoughts are interrupted by a body that reminds her that this is not the time or the place. “Look, we can take this apart later,” she says. “But for now, I really need to go.”
No words appear for a long moment, made longer by Sarya’s current biological condition. Then, finally:
[Thank you.]
The straps lower her to the floor and retract into the walls. Sarya stumbles as the suit’s gravity ramps up to match the ship outside. Has she really been at reduced weight for that long? She leans on the wall and massages a leg with one hand. “Okay,” she says after a moment. “Ready.”
A series of heavy thunks vibrate through her boots, and the suit cracks in half with a blast of freezing air. Sarya swears. Her survival instincts are apparently back and in full gear, because now there is a war between needs going on. Staying here is looking better and better. “Actually—”
And for the second time in less than a day, she’s shoved down the suit’s ramp. She stumbles in the high gravity and barely keeps her feet all the way down. She clamps her arms around herself, pressing heating coils into her sides, and turns to see the suit already folding closed. “Very funny!” she calls, teeth already chattering.
“Thank you for choosing this AivvTech Universal Autonomous Environment!” says the suit. “If you have feedback, please don’t hesitate to share!”
Sarya does have feedback, and she sends it in the form of an obscene Widow gesture.
BACK AT YOU, says Eleven in brilliant yellow, perfectly replicating the sign with its small utility arms.
The ice tunnels are the worst part until the ladder, and the ladder is the worst part until the top of the ladder. It takes her three tries to hit the switch at the top—hanging from bandaged hands, shivering violently and wondering if this is the end—and when the hatch cranks open and she pulls herself out into the warmth of the upper ship, she would swear she’s almost dead again. But when the hatch grinds closed below her she is left hanging in warm air, in light that is not blue, in a space that’s actually meant to keep people like her alive. She notes that her Network unit is no longer hanging here—but as her body reminds her, that’s not number one on the priority list right now. A few more pulls, and here she is at the living level. Then it’s just steps to her room and the sweet relief of her sanitation station. Which would all be great…except for one thing.
Which is her room?
She stares at six identical hatches, three on each side of the corridor. Okay, no problem, no problem. She turned left to get to the ladder before, so it’s one of these three on the right. She passed at least one hatch on the way—oh, right, here are the talon marks all around this one on the end—so it’s definitely one of the other two. Once again, life has become far more complicated without a Network unit. She tries the first, leaning in to give the hatch a clear view of her registration, and then takes a startled step backward when it slides open. It’s not the sudden movement that shocks her; rather, it’s the fact that someone is standing there.
The figure is her size, bipedal, all gleaming black synthetic surfaces. A face full of lenses examines her, and she can hear the high-pitched hum of tiny servos as they focus. Again she misses the overlays her Network unit provides, because she cannot for the life of her remember the name. This is a person and not a drone, she’s sure of that. An android. He, tier two-point-something…But name? Nothing.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I thought these were my quarters.”
“They are,” says the person. “I was just going through your things.”
“You were— I’m sorry, you were what?” She wasn’t aware she had things other than the utility suit on her carapace, but the phrase is still provoking.
“I’ve identified everything except for this awfulness,” he says, holding up one hand. Dangling from synthetic fingertips is a black eight-legged silk doll.
Sarya’s mouth is already open to give vent to further outrage, but she is stopped cold. She works her way through one silent word after another. “Where…did you get that?” she finally manages to say.
“It was in a bag,” he says, gesturing backward with a small jerk of his head. “On your floor.”
A bag! She remembers her mother strapping it to her before their flight. She does have things! What would her mother have packed? The goddess only knows, but now she has a second, extremely high priority. “Okay, so,” she says, “I really need to get in there right now, but I think after that we need to discuss, um, personal boundaries.” She moves aside for him to step out.
He doesn’t. “I should probably thank you,” he says.
“That’s very nice, but you can do that after—”
“But I don’t think I will.”
“Okay, whatever, but just—”
“Because I had everything well in hand. It had been decades since I’ve been incarcerated, you see, and I was beginning to get the itch. So just because your
actions resulted in my freedom, that doesn’t mean that—”
“Get out of the damn way!” Sarya roars, and she shoves him backward into the room. His surface is surprisingly cold, even through the bandages on her hands, and she charges through a cloud of ozone where he was standing. “Now,” she says, pointing at the door. “Out. We can talk all you want in one minute. Okay? Out.”
He does go out, perhaps more bewildered than actually cowed, and her two minutes in the sanitation station are perhaps the most glorious of her life—though it is weird, come to think of it, that it thanks her at the end. Does it actually enjoy this job? Or is it like Eleven, just projecting a cheerful shell while it lives a second life somewhere in its gleaming white case? Well, Eleven, you got what you wanted: she’s now considering the inner emotional lives of appliances.
When she opens the door again, relieved and sanitized—if somewhat discomfited, mentally speaking—the corridor is both darker and more muffled.
“—so if you ask me,” the android is saying, “it doesn’t really matter. Dead is dead.”
“It does matter, though,” says a new voice. It’s a thunderous voice, an earthquake of a voice. It’s coming from somewhere deep in the two hundred kilos of furred muscle that is currently blocking the light in the corridor. A mouthful of black teeth appears, each gleaming shape longer than Sarya’s fingers. “The suit says she killed Hood,” rumbles the fur. “And anybody who could kill that guy…well, I just got a real bad feeling, that’s all.”
She has already met this terrifying intelligence, thank the goddess. This is Mer, who carried her up that freezing ladder like a toy when she first got here. She remembers him going on about freedom and gratitude and…food? She really wasn’t in a good place to remember, emotionally speaking.
“Don’t tell me: it’s your instincts again,” says the android. “How could this thing kill Hood?” he asks, pointing a black finger her way without bothering to look at her. “You couldn’t kill Hood, from what I hear. Not for lack of trying.”
Mer makes a big movement then, a huge rippling of fur and muscle that travels down every one of his—what is that, four?—no, six limbs. Four arms, two legs. Her Network unit would probably tell her that’s a shrug, but without it the gesture is terrifying. He leans back, making it obvious that he is mostly chest. His enormous arms support his weight, while his legs appear to serve mainly as a kickstand. He flexes and scrapes talons against both walls. “I could have killed him, easy,” he says. He pauses, tapping a talon against the floor like a nervous tic. “I just…decided not to.”
The android folds his arms and looks at Mer without speaking.
“Anyway,” says Mer, still tapping. “The suit claims she’s Human, Roche.”
Roche, that’s it. Thank the goddess, now she can carry on a conversation because hey, shiny guy was not going to fly for long—and then the full impact of Mer’s statement thumps her in the chest and raises the hair on the back of her neck.
The suit claims she’s Human.
And now Mer’s face, which was mainly teeth, sprouts dozens of eyes. They blink in waves and patterns, looking in all directions, and then every one of them focuses on Sarya. She grew up with a Widow, which means she recognizes a hunter when one parks its massive bulk outside her quarters and pins her with its predator gaze. But this is something more. These eyes don’t match the rough and simple voice. They pierce her in ways she doesn’t understand. Where her mother used fear to hunt, these eyes employ something even deeper. They hypnotize her. They speak to her, tell her to come closer, to trust them…
“Its registration says Spaal,” says Roche, but his voice has become indistinct. It’s somewhere far away, in a much less important place. “Perhaps the suit is confused. That happens with low-tiers.”
The eyes blink in a wave from the center to the outside. Maybe it’s her imagination, or maybe they are gazing at her with a curiosity more intense than anything she’s ever seen. Tell me, they say without words. Tell me everything.
“Then how did she kill Hood?” asks Mer. He’s talking to Roche, but his eyes are on her. His voice is distant enough to be irrelevant, like the silent roars of the lightning on the planet below.
Roche presents a theory and Mer rebuts it. Mer submits an alternative and Roche rejects it. Sarya hears nothing more than a gentle buzz in her ears. She is caught by the eyes, and there is nothing she can do about it.
And then she becomes aware of an expectant silence, as if she’s been asked a question. She knows what it is. So what are you? Or something like that. She doesn’t remember which one said it, which is odd because their voices are so different, but it doesn’t seem to matter so much. She pulls herself up as if she’s been underwater, but her mind responds slowly in the gaze of the eyes. Still, she forms her lie easily. She has lived her entire life under a false low-tier identity, and the phrases and signs come without effort. She can say, with awkward halts in exactly the right places, phrases like please forgive your friend the Spaal and pardon, my tier is low.
“I’m…” She takes a breath. “I’m Human.”
And then she claps both hands over her mouth.
The dozens of eyes snap closed instantly, as if they are satisfied. Only a solitary pair remain open on Mer’s face, down by the teeth. Unlike the rest, these host a simple, almost bestial expression.
Sarya is breathing hard through her fingers. Her eyes dart between these two witnesses, who are staring at her with expressions she cannot interpret. What the hell did she just claim? Did she really, in the presence of these strangers, say what she thinks she said?
“So you assert,” says Roche, his voice now clear and present in the absence of the eyes, “in spite of the evidence of an extremely unimpressive Network registration, that you are actually a member of an extinct, highly dangerous species.” He tilts his head with the click of multiple lenses.
“I thought a fake registration was impossible,” says Mer. Without the eyes, he is a completely different intelligence. If she met him now, she would assume him to be one of those simple barely legal intelligences you see every day on the lower levels of a mining station. It’s almost like he’s two people in one.
“Illegal, yes,” corrects Roche in a thoughtful murmur. “But I’ve never heard of anything that is impossible.”
Sarya’s heart rate is returning to normal. This isn’t nearly the reception her mother warned her about. No one is trying to hurl her out an airlock yet, for example—though the fact that this seems like a victory may mean that her standards are lower than they should be. And anyway…she can still hear it in her head. I’m Human. A warm and delicious shiver rolls down her spine. So that’s what it feels like. “Well,” she says, feeling as if she is getting her blades back under her, “believe what you want.”
“Then why are you registered as something else?” asks Mer.
Sarya shrugs, Widow-style, with fingertips in lieu of blades. “My mother did that,” she said. “I don’t know how.”
“Was your mother also…?” Even Roche seems unwilling to say the word. Human.
“My mother was a Widow,” says Sarya.
The effect on the other two is exactly what she’d hoped. Now that the eyes are off her, she feels like she can direct the conversation where she wants it. The two glance at each other, probably communicating on some private Network channel. Mer’s fur bristles, making him look even larger, and several talons scrape against the metal of the floor.
“A Widow,” Roche says. “A Human, raised by a Widow.”
“Maybe she did kill Hood,” muses Mer.
“Um,” says Sarya, raising a hand. A question she had been considering in Eleven has returned to the front of her mind. “Speaking of Hood. Didn’t he have a—”
And then Mer’s head falls off.
Sarya shrieks a Widow obscenity and leaps backward into her quarters. The
head comes after her, sprouting its own set of arms and legs and looking like a twenty-kilo eye-covered version of the furry behemoth currently crouched in the corridor. She has just decided that she is going to go down swinging when she is stopped by a full-throated roar.
“Watch it!” says Mer, fur and talons fully extended, his voice now shaking her room. “Do not hurt her.”
Sarya stares at the small bundle of fur and eyes in front of her. So many eyes, all opening and closing and staring right back at her. “What…the hell,” she whispers.
“Oh, did I not introduce you two?” says Mer, leaning farther into her quarters, fur flattening. “This is Sandy,” he says, gesturing. “My, uh, girl.”
“Your…what?”
“My daughter,” he says. “Adopted. She doesn’t talk, not out loud. Or hear. Crazy smart, though.”
Sarya stares at the little bundle of eyes, feeling equal parts shocked and vindicated. She knew something was up. That whole time, there were three intelligences talking to her, two with voice and one with gaze. “Um,” she says to the little furball. “Nice to…meet you?”
Sandy turns to her father, and a wave of blinks travels over her face.
“She says you’re Human,” says Mer. “Good enough for me.”
“How would she know?” demands Roche.
“You’re really not going to trust a tier three?”
“Speaking of falsified registrations—”
“Wait, you doubt her registration but not the Human’s?”
“All I’m saying is, registrations can be falsified. We have proof right in front of us.”
“Oh, so now it’s proof, is it? I thought you were more cynical than that.”
“I am, when it suits my purposes.”
But Sarya is not listening. A tier three. There’s no way. That’s higher than her teacher back on Watertower, higher than Ellie who ran an entire orbital station. That’s at least a dozen times her own intelligence—her own optimistic absolute-best-case estimate, not the pitiful one-point-eight on her registration. This little thing? But if that’s true…how do you talk to her? How does one start a conversation with a tier three? Particularly one who can’t hear? If only she had some kind of communication device—