by Mark New
I settled down with a mug of tea and checked my messages. To begin with, there was one each from Jason and Becky through regular channels. Jason congratulated me on rescuing the jet and wishing me a speedy recovery. He hoped that I would be able to resume duties very quickly. Becky’s message was more personal: she, too, said well done, but went on to hope that I was OK and that I should call if I needed anything. I had two encrypted messages as well. One from Sir Edward in response to my list of TAGs. He said he would get back to me but from what he knew so far it was ‘interesting’. He didn’t elaborate. The second one was a high burst encrypted transmission dated late last night. It simply said ‘I’m fine and still on it.’
‘Sir Bors says he’s fine.’ I said aloud to my conscience.
‘You’ve heard from him? Where is he and what is he doing?’
‘If he’s contacted me and not you, my Queen, then he no doubt has his reasons so I shall say no more.’ The fact that I didn’t actually have more than a vague idea of the answers to her questions didn’t seem worth mentioning. ‘But to more pressing business; what the hell happened?’ This was really the first chance I’d had to debrief with the Camelot crowd.
‘What do you remember?’ She was evidently letting the Sir Bors matter drop. Not for the first time, I hoped Red’s faith in me wasn’t misplaced.
‘I woke up with you and Sir Tristan shouting at me. You shouted at me until I put masks on everyone and pressed the emergency button and then I went to sleep. Oh, and there was something about an adrenaline rush.’
‘Succinct but broadly accurate.’
‘Would you care to fill in the blanks?’
‘I had other business after your meeting in Stockholm so the bot was vacant until I returned during the flight. When I got there I thought you were all asleep until I realised that I could hear an alarm through your auditory enhancements. I tried to wake you up but you weren’t stirring.’
‘I was playing with nymphs at the time.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Never mind, carry on.’
‘I don’t know anything about trans-orbital jets so I called for the aspect that does.’
‘Sir Tristan.’
‘Yes. He’s here so I’ll let him explain.’
‘Hello John, glad you’re better.’ Sir Tristan was speaking at a much lower volume than of late.
‘Thanks to someone shouting at me a lot. I appreciate it.’
‘You’re welcome. You may not be quite so thankful when I tell you how I abused the privilege of having a bot inside your head.’
‘Oh?’ I was partly fascinated to hear what he’d done while he was in there and partly a little apprehensive. I hoped he hadn’t caused permanent damage.
‘When I got there I recognised the depressurisation alarm. It was vital to act before you all died of hypoxia so I took over your implants.’
‘You did what? I didn’t even know that was possible.’ I was shocked. It was like he had turned me into his zombie - except that I had to admit to myself that it had saved all of our lives.
‘It was theoretically possible from the moment you allowed me to put a comms bot in your implants but I never intended to use it that way. Unlike my big sister, I don’t feel any need to manipulate people.’ Yeah, not directly, perhaps. ‘Unfortunately, the dire situation made it necessary. I’ll try not to do it again.’
It wasn’t the cast-iron guarantee that I would have hoped to receive but it would have to do and, I reminded myself yet again, he’d saved my life.
‘So what did you do with my zombie head?’
‘What an interesting concept!’ Guinevere broke in, ‘we could refer to you as our zombie aspect!’
‘Don’t go getting ideas,’ I warned her. ‘Bots can be ejected as well as accepted.’
‘You’re no fun,’ she told me.
‘Meanwhile, back at the plot,’ Sir Tristan said with a touch of impatience, ‘I used the implants to go Online from inside your head and interface with the jet’s command system from within the cabin.’
‘That’s smart hacking,’ I observed. I was no amateur at it myself but I wasn’t sure I could have cracked the interface code quickly enough in the circumstances.
‘The system showed that the flow control valve was closed leading to the depressurisation and the supplemental oxygen system was shut off.’
‘Someone was doubly keen that we should have an accident,’ I said slowly.
‘A belt-and-braces assassination attempt,’ Sir Tristan agreed, ‘which the air accident investigation will undoubtedly conclude was due to major software failure.’
‘Remind you of anything?’ asked Guinevere, pointedly.
‘The Ambrosia Promise’s modus operandi,’ I said promptly.
‘Yes. You seem to have annoyed her enough to want to kill you.’ Guinevere almost sounded impressed.
‘I didn’t think we’d got far enough in the investigation even to pose a threat to her.’
‘Maybe you should reconsider your assessment,’ Sir Tristan said drily. ‘It’s not my field, though. Anyway, I reversed the damage since she’d caused it without breaking anything so the cabin was slowly repressurising and the masks were now able to dispense oxygen. The only remaining difficulty was that you were all unable to help yourselves and you’d be dead before the cabin air was breathable again.’
‘Which was when I used the implants to jolt you into an adrenaline rush and wake you up,’ Guinevere took up the story. ‘I assumed that the upgrades had caused your previous imbalance and delivered more of the same and - as we now know that we can inject items directly into your memory - I also tried to instil a feeling of great excitement. Fortunately it worked to the point that we could shout at you and make you hear us.’
I wasn’t sure I wanted to search my memory to see what she’d added. Presumably it worked in the same way as the file on Avalon Red’s origins had unfurled itself to me as an existing memory. If I was lucky the only effect had been the vivid dream. There was another issue, too. ‘You said “more of the same”,’ I said suspiciously. ‘You mean I have more upgrades?’
‘Nothing you’ll mind having,’ sniggered Sir Tristan.
‘We’ll deal with that another time,’ Guinevere said firmly, ‘for now, we’d like to convene another meeting in Camelot. We need to know why The Ambrosia Promise has taken a sudden dislike to you.’
‘We’re thinking that we may have stumbled over something of more significance than we thought,’ I hazarded.
‘Yes, it’s a possibility,’ Guinevere agreed.
‘Or maybe she’s developed an irrational hatred of pilots,’ Sir Tristan added facetiously.
Guinevere ignored him. ‘If you’re not busy at the moment?’
I looked around the room and down at my now empty mug. The wind had come up and there was the sound of rain crashing into the front window. I doubted that any of my relatives would be visiting anytime soon, even the keen mackerel fishermen amongst them.
‘Let me put the kettle on again,’ I said, ‘and I’ll see if I can find a window in my schedule.’
◆◆◆
I was relieved to see that the niche from my dream wasn’t in the Round Table chamber and there was no jazz band. I was less pleased that there were no nymphs either but I suppose you have to take the rough with the smooth. I walked in with Guinevere to find all the others who were attending already in place. There was a gap where Sir Bors had been last time but the remainder of the seats were filled when I took my place in the Siege Perilous. Guinevere stood behind me.
‘You know,’ I said conversationally, ‘it strikes me as odd that a bunch of chivalrous knights can’t find a seat for a lady.’
Merlin looked at Guinevere. ‘I don’t expect he’d mind,’ he said. Guinevere walked around behind him and sat in the seat reserved for Sir Bors. She shot me a beaming smile over the table. I returned it with a faux bow from my seat. Merlin waved a hand and something resonated in my implants. It took a s
econd for my brain to process the information before I understood that he had sealed the room. I checked the door by which we had come in and saw the complex shape of the data stream that effectively sealed it. It took another couple of seconds before it seeped into my conscious mind that I had never before been able to see that kind of complexity. I saw exactly how the seal had been accomplished using software to bind the tech and I thought that maybe, just maybe, if really pushed, I could have reproduced it. It would be a seal that was almost as secure as a TAG. I could only assume that the ability to see it and the knowledge of how it was done was a result of the further upgrade. When I turned back to the table I noticed Sir Lancelot watching me with a smirk on his face. I shrugged.
‘When you’re finished playing with your new toys,’ Merlin said mildly. There were assorted chuckles around the table. I grinned. He waved vaguely at Guinevere who accepted her cue.
‘Everyone is up to date on the attempt on your life,’ she said for my benefit, ‘and the purpose of this meeting is to try to establish what we know and what we may have missed.’
‘On the assumption that what we may have missed is sufficiently threatening to Ambrosia that she turned nasty,’ I added.
‘Thoughts?’ she invited, including everyone in her gesture.
‘You found a message to you from Ambrosia in the defunct forum,’ I mused, ‘which meant that she entertained the possibility that you - or I - would end up there at some point.’
‘Which suggests that it was part of her plan and thus not the trigger for the attack,’ Arthur finished the thought.
‘I didn’t pick up a lot of information from the visit other than the forum business,’ said Guinevere, addressing me directly, ‘but is it possible I’ve missed something you didn’t?’
I thought about it carefully, trying to replay the conversation with Drezler in my head. I found that it was surprisingly easy to do. ‘Has my memory improved?’ I asked nobody in particular.
‘Probably,’ Sir Tristan answered. ‘The memory function is enhanced by the new upgrades. I needed to put it in so that Guinevere could jolt you into an adrenaline rush by inserting false memories directly into your brain.’
‘Which I have since removed,’ Guinevere said hastily.
‘I should hope so, too.’ I was a little uneasy at the thought that I still didn’t know how she had provoked the rush that led to my awakening.
‘If you think of memory as a library,’ Sir Tristan continued, ‘which is generally a very bad analogy but works in context, what’s happened to you is that the implants are the equivalent of a new hugely efficient librarian brought in to replace a doddery old one near to retirement.’
‘You mean the implants are doing the work?’ I was very uncomfortable with the idea that my conscious processing was being done by an external device. External to my organic brain, that is. The bloody things were still inside me, after all.
‘They’re enhancing it but you’re still doing the thinking,’ Merlin put in. ‘Could we get back to the point now?’
‘Yes but after one further comment on the subject,’ Guinevere told him. He sighed but she continued, leaning her elbows on the table and using one hand to point at my head. ‘Despite the fact that some of your brain functions are being reinforced by tech devices, I imagine that you would still argue that you’re sentient?’
‘Of course,’ I said without thinking. Then the implication dawned. ‘Oh.’
‘And what percentage of your cortical work needs to be done by tech before you no longer consider yourself sentient?’ She sat back in her seat, satisfied.
‘Point taken,’ I acknowledged. Even if she told me that all of my thinking was done by the tech, I would still be me to me. But given my own argument, how could I then argue that Avalon Red wasn’t sentient?
‘Moving on,’ Merlin ordered, ‘is there anything you picked up from Stockholm that I may have missed?’ I was still bewildered at the range of pronouns used by the aspects, apparently without structure. Merlin hadn’t had a link to the comms bot while I was in Sweden but seemed to consider that if one aspect knew, all knew. Yet there had been times when one of them specifically told me that the others may not be up to date on something. The passing of knowledge between them seemed to be wholly fluid. But he was right about what we should be concentrating on finding.
‘Nothing springs to my newly-minted mind,’ I said.
‘Then we should consider the possibility that it was coincidental,’ Arthur put in. ‘Were you poking your nose into The Ambrosia Promise’s business elsewhere at the same time?’
‘I hope so,’ I told him, ‘or I’m rubbish at my job.’ I tried to establish the sequence of events and picked up the flaw in Arthur’s argument. ‘On the other hand, if she isn’t able to monitor what I’m up to, what does it matter?’ There was a brief silence before Merlin looked up.
‘So we’re really asking what might you have done that The Ambrosia Promise could have discovered and decided to take action to prevent?’
‘I’ve only used encrypted messages for important things,’ I was thinking aloud now, ‘so is it possible she’s able to decrypt them?’
‘No,’ said Sir Lancelot, bluntly. I was surprised by the fact that I could understand him. ‘Breaking encryption is only marginally less difficult than breaking a TAG and we’re sure she can’t do that. If you’re using standard encryption protocol for everything important and not just messages to me,’ he looked at me for confirmation and I nodded, ‘then she would have to break it in realtime and the message would report to you that it was decrypted en route.’ That was true; I was using a heavy duty military grade of encryption which, as it was using the enhanced implants, was probably even better than it was previously. Any other message I’d sent didn’t contain any useful information as per the system agreed with the Argonaut team. I was still looking at Sir Lancelot, though, amazed that he was speaking clearly. Guinevere had read my expression.
‘He isn’t speaking more slowly,’ she was being tactful, I could tell. ‘You’re thinking more quickly.’ I checked the time stamp via my implants and was astounded to note that only a couple of minutes had gone by since I arrived. I would have guessed at least fifteen. ‘And you’ll get better with practice,’ she smirked. I could feel my jaw drop in my comfortable chair in the cottage but I made sure my avatar looked a little more composed.
‘What about Sir Bors?’ Merlin asked. ‘Could he be getting close to something that The Ambrosia Promise doesn’t want us to know?’
‘He could,’ I couldn’t see the motivation, though, ‘but wouldn’t that make him a target and not me?’
‘It would be a stretch to think that she considered you to be the brains behind what I’m doing.’ Merlin agreed, looking at me in anticipation so I made a point of failing to react.
‘What about the TAGs?’ Guinevere put in. ‘Didn’t you say that you would make an independent inquiry?’
I didn’t think that Sir Edward would have drawn attention to himself when he was poking around. Actually, his brief report would indicate that he had done no more than begin his investigation so I couldn’t see how that would have poked the monster in the eye. I wasn’t sure that I wanted Avalon Red to know about my other sources in any great detail so my response was circumspect. It’s second nature to intelligence officers to compartmentalise your life but it makes it bloody complicated sometimes. All I said was: ‘I’m confident that my contact is sufficiently discreet not to have attracted your sister’s attention.’
‘Very carefully put,’ noted Arthur. ‘Let’s hope that’s true.’
‘So, if it was nothing in Stockholm and nothing to do with your other activities in the investigation, why else would The Ambrosia Promise want you dead?’ Merlin asked. There was silence. I took a quick look at the huge volume of data streams swirling around in the chamber and pondered that this level of activity represented an alien lifeform in deep thought. With the processing power available here, what were the limits
of what Avalon Red could do or be? I found it really funny that it turned out to be me who answered the question. Teacher’s pet, that’s me.
‘Unless...’ I said slowly and all eyes turned to me.
‘Unless?’ prompted Guinevere.
‘We know that Ambrosia is working with some deluded humans, don’t we?’
‘Yes, so?’
‘What if it wasn’t her who wants me dead but one of her human associates. Either as a result of what I’m doing now or as some sort of token of faith for their alliance?’
‘Interesting idea,’ Merlin thought. ‘She may be working with undesirables who have crossed paths with you before.’
‘Do you have a lot of enemies?’ Sir Lancelot enquired casually.
‘Quite a lot, I expect,’ I admitted. ‘I’ve taken out a few terrorist cells and I was involved in the South African war and that’s just for starters.’
‘A regular hero,’ Lancelot snickered.
‘Shall we adopt that as our working theory?’ Arthur suggested. There were nods around the Round Table.
‘Very well,’ Merlin wound it up. ‘We’ll assume that Colonel Harvard is a marked man so all aspects are to adopt a protective protocol. Anyone who encounters any indication of a planned further attempt on his life is to report it to all others around this table immediately. Agreed?’ More nods, especially from me. ‘Then we’re done here. Thank you.’
As the meeting broke up and the door seal was released, I stood up and checked my messages. I looked sharply at Merlin who was just about to walk past me. He stopped.
‘I’ve got an encrypted message from Peter,’ I told him. ‘Which he acknowledges breaks the protocol we agreed at Argonaut but he points out that isn’t practical to meet in person when we’re continents apart. He says that they have received further instructions regarding the ransom - he calls it “the merchandise” so he’s being a little bit circumspect - and his “patron” intends to send it. He thought I should know.’