Sunrise Alley

by Catherine Asaro

  "I don't know anyone who has actually met him." He spoke carefully. "You say you have someone there who knows him?"

  Sam froze as the implication hit her. Charon was so well hidden that even someone as tuned in to the meshes as Giles didn't know his identity for certain. She might have access to one of the few people who could identify this black market king—in her house.

  "Ah, hell," Sam said.

  Giles spoke in an urgent voice, a stark contrast to his usual mellow style. "Sam, if this man is what he claims, you're in this too deep to go it alone."

  "I'll call my NIA contact." In the past decade, the National Information Agency had taken over investigations associated with the world mesh, absorbing entire bureaus of the NSA. Like the CIA, it was run by a civilian appointee, and had almost equal footing with the CIA in the National Security Council. Although it had ties with the Army and Navy, it primarily coordinated its efforts through the Air Force, with headquarters at Andrews Air Force base and the Pentagon. The sprawling agency had become larger and more shadowy than its precursors.

  "Get out of wherever you are," Giles said. "Take this guy to the NIA. Fast."

  Sam grimaced. "You realize I moved to this lovely place to relieve my stress."

  "Sorry, Sam." With care, he added, "Is he there?"

  "Who?" Sam knew he meant Turner, but she didn't want to give anything away. If Giles didn't know how Turner looked or sounded, he couldn't identify him.

  Giles didn't push. "Just be careful."

  "I will." She drew in a deep breath. "I better go."

  "Good luck."

  "Thanks."

  After she cut the link, she swiveled her chair to face Turner, who was still by the curtains.

  "Sunrise Alley." Sam wasn't a happy camper. "You neglected to mention that."

  "I'd never heard any of it before." He looked like a deer caught in the headlights of a hover car. "No matter what you call him, he's a monster."

  She rubbed her arms. Turner might as well have put a holosign over her head pointing her out to anyone chasing him. But it made no difference. Given how she felt about the ethics of biomech development, she could no more turn her back on this than she could stop her heartbeat. She had retreated here to lick her wounds, but it seemed she couldn't be a hermit even when she tried.

  "We need sanctuary," she said. They had to move fast.

  His posture was so taut, he looked as if he could snap. "With the military?"

  "That's right. Actually, to an agency that works with the Air Force." She pulled her wallet out of her pocket and checked to make sure she had her clever-card. "We should travel light. No luggage."

  He seemed too stunned to react. He had a quality she had seen in other EIs, a hesitancy, as if his mind was incomplete, unable to absorb input fast enough to respond in a timely manner. His evolving codes were at risk now, not yet developed enough to cope with erratic changes. For a normal EI, how she dealt with it now would be vital in the formation of its personality. But Turner already had a personality; the question was how stable it would remain.

  She felt as if she were walking through jagged glass shards. "Turner—how long has it been since you died?"

  He spoke self-consciously. "About two weeks."

  No wonder he seemed bewildered. He was only two weeks old, even if he did essentially have Turner Pascal's brain. She wanted to offer comfort, but she didn't know what to say to someone who suddenly found himself alive as a forma rather than a man.

  "We'll drive to San Francisco," she said.

  "You are sure it's safe?"

  "No guarantees exist. But this is my best bet." She put confidence into her voice. "We'll fly out of here."

  He smiled tentatively. "That would be good."

  "You bet."

  Sam just hoped they didn't crash and burn.

  III

  Spy Car

  The road rolled out, dark except for cones of light from the headlamps on Sam's car. She had left her silver Mercedes at the house; this beaut was the car she rarely used, a sleek shadow. She had loaded it with a copy of Madrigal, her EI. Although she kept her hands on the wheel, Madrigal was driving. Digital ink on the dash displayed dials, gauges, and screens in a green, gray, and blue motif called Forest and Lake. The car's holographic exterior could mimic any design Sam coded. Now they sped through the night, black and muted. Invisible.

  Cliffs plunged down to the turbulent sea on the right, where waves crashed against the rocky shoreline, their crests capped by shimmers of light from the gibbous moon. Hills rose on the left, dark humps against a sky rich with stars. Even in the day, few people traveled this lonely road; now, after midnight, theirs was the only vehicle.

  Turner sat slumped in the passenger's seat, staring out at the night. He seemed lost. Vulnerable. Sam had spent the past hour in frustrating attempts to find out more about him. Either he had lost part of his verbal abilities in becoming an EI or else he was being deliberately taciturn. She suspected a combination of the two. She had time to draw him out, though; it would take hours to reach San Francisco even if the car drove itself straight through the night.

  She decided to try again. "I was wondering."

  Turner glanced at her. "Yes?"

  "What does Charon look like?"

  "Like a devil," he said darkly.

  "What does a devil look like?"

  "Evil."

  "Evil how?"

  He stared out at the road.

  She tried another tack. "Do you know what Charon planned to do with you?"

  "He wanted a slave."

  "For what?"

  "He planned to change me." He turned to her, his face pale. "He wanted to test out different forma bodies on me, to find out if others were more efficient than the human form. And he was going to manipulate my EI, see what he could make me do."

  What Turner described went against every principle Sam valued. "He needs a crash course in ethics."

  "He was convinced people were plotting against him and he had to protect himself."

  It sounded more like everyone else needed protection from Charon. Sam gazed out the windshield, thinking, and her reflection gazed back, a woman with shaggy blond curls and bangs, her eyes too large for her urchin's face. She looked like a waif, not an EI architect.

  Turner suddenly said, "You're helping me relearn speech."

  She smiled. "Well, that is my job."

  "Talking to you provides data for my speech mods." He winced. "But I still sound like a damn EI."

  Sam couldn't deny it. He was almost indistinguishable from a man, but nothing could change the fact that his mind derived from a matrix of evolving neural networks. "An incredible EI," she said, wishing she had something more to offer him.

  "I'm not a machine."

  "You're right." She didn't know what to call him.

  He laid his head against the seat and closed his eyes. "Charon had me doing tests. Physical, to see how I worked; mental, to study my mind. Every now and then he turned me off while he worked."

  "Turned you off?"

  "With drugs."

  "Drugs knock out a person. Machines turn off."

  "I'll remember. But, Sam, either way, he took away my ability to think."

  The dash flickered with a new holicon, or holographic icon, which glowed near to the wheel. It showed a red light like the domes that appeared on old-fashioned police cars. A warning.

  Sam flicked the holicon, and it morphed into a small screen on the dash with gold letters on a black background: Car approaching from behind. The words moved down and an image formed above them showing an unmarked black car—long, sleek, and deadly—hugging the curves of the road. Information replaced the message: the car was half a mile behind, running an unusually quiet engine, one undetectable from this distance by an unaugmented human ear.

  "Madrigal," Sam said.

  "Hello." The voice came out of a comm below the screen.

  "What can you tell me about the car behind us?"

  "
Analysis of its speed and accelerations suggests it is following this car and hiding its presence."

  "But we know it's there."

  "It has good shroud programs." Smugly Madrigal added, "Mine are better."

  Sam's lips quirked upward. "And modest."

  Madrigal spoke with dignity. "Software has no modesty or lack thereof."

  "Yes, well, you simulate its lack very well." Sam nudged up their speed. "What do you have on that car? Make, type, age, schematics?"

  "It is a Hover-Shadow 14."

  "A spy car." Similar to her own, in fact. She had purchased this one when someone started tailing her during the hearings at BioII. Probably it had been nothing, only her overly sensitized concern. But she had bought the Shadow anyway. She could afford its exorbitant price, after all. That was what made the BioII investigation so charged: millions, even billions were at stake. She had thrown down the gauntlet, claiming that in the pursuit of those billions, they cut corners to the point of endangering human life. It had made her enemies, but she couldn't have stayed silent and kept her self-respect.

  "It could be unconnected to us," Madrigal said. "Hover-Shadows are sold to security forces that protect VIPs."

  Sam raised her eyebrows. "And they just happen to be following us in the middle of the night on a desolate highway hundreds of miles from civilization."

  "The probability of that is small," Madrigal admitted.

  Sam thought for a moment. Spy cars could hide from many tracking systems. Their holographic surfaces made them invisible by displaying whatever was behind the car relative to the probe. The coating and rounded angles of the car's design, derived from stealth technology, made it difficult to detect by radar. The car sent out a locator signal, in case thieves stole it, but she had deactivated the supposedly tamper-proof system. They were running "dark" now in every way.

  Even so, an advanced enough system could compensate for the shroud, just as Madrigal detected their pursuer. On the display, Sam could see details of the car following them even from half a mile away. That pushed Madrigal's bandwidth, though; if their pursuer fell any farther behind, the image would degrade. Sam wondered why they followed at the limit of Madrigal's ability. Perhaps the driver thought he was out of range. It would support Madrigal's assertion that his onboard systems were less advanced than hers. Given that Sam had designed the EI and its associated systems herself, using procedures she was in the process of patenting, it wouldn't surprise her if Madrigal could outdo their trackers.

  "What weapons does it have?" Sam asked.

  "I can't detect them through its shroud," Madrigal said. "However, they are probably similar to the systems incorporated in this car. And they are gaining on us."

  "Speed up!"

  "Increasing to seventy miles an hour."

  Sam knew the Shadow could easily go many times that speed. "Can't you give me more?"

  "Yes. However, on this road, I can't guarantee we won't slide out over the cliff."

  Sam peered out the window. The road wound in hairpin curves, following contours of the mountain. Although a metal railing separated them from the drop-off at their right, it probably wouldn't hold if they plowed into it at this speed. Although the car had some amphibious ability, they might just bounce down the cliff and smash on the rocks below.

  As they careened into another curve, Turner grabbed the door handle, his body tensing until his shirt pulled tight across his shoulders. He made no sound, just stared at the road.

  Damn. She was supposed to rescue Turner, not kill him in a car accident. "Madrigal, do the cloud."

  "Done." A hissing came from the back of the car.

  "What was that?" Turner asked.

  "A fog of microscopic bomblets with picotech brains. It will bombard the car following us." Sam glanced at him. "I designed it myself."

  He seemed disconcerted. "When you get the fierce look, you could be some wild eldritch warrior queen."

  Sam blinked at the image. She saw herself as a tech-nerd. She would be a warrior woman, though, if it took that to protect him and get them out of here. "I'm hoping the bomblets can stop them."

  Madrigal spoke. "They may not. Their car is continuing through the cloud."

  Sam studied the image. Stats scrolled under it about the vehicle pursuing them. Their pursuer was barreling through the haze of bomblets, but the data was degrading as the other car fell farther behind. "Mad, can you give me a better picture?"

  "Working," Mad said. The contrast increased. It didn't improve the resolution much, but it did reveal a cloud of fireflies dancing around the car.

  "What's with the bugs?" Sam asked.

  "Our pursuer released a swarm of bee-bots to neutralize your bomblets. They are also attacking this car."

  "A bee what?" Turner asked. If he was simulating fear, he was doing one hell of a good job. No EI she had ever worked with was this convincing. She would bet her many academic degrees that Turner genuinely felt scared to death.

  "They're little robots with rudimentary AI brains," Sam said. "They can counter minor threats." Like her bomblets. "I could release some, too, to counter the ones from the other car, but I don't have many and they only operate for a few minutes." Unlike the others, hers weren't armed.

  Hope sparked in his voice. "Can you send back more bomblets until the other car uses up its bees?"

  Sam wished she could. "I don't have any more."

  Mad spoke. "Shall I activate the artillery?"

  "Do it." Sam couldn't bear to see Turner so afraid.

  "Done." A rumbling came from the rear of the car.

  Turner clenched the edge of the seat. "You're going to shoot them?"

  Sam gave him a guilty look. "Cross your fingers it doesn't come to that."

  "Why would you have a car like this?" he asked.

  "Someone was following me at BioII last year." Sam didn't like to remember. "One time I thought someone broke into my penthouse. They didn't take anything, but just that someone got past all my security scared me."

  "Did you report it to the police?"

  "Yes. But I had no proof. I just found a few things misplaced in my bedroom. And it didn't feel right." She shivered. "Maybe I imagined it. I don't know."

  Madrigal spoke. "We've increased our distance from them. However, they are attacking with more bots."

  It disquieted Sam that they had disarmed her bomblets so fast. "Shoot, Mad—the guns, not the mini-cannons."

  "Done." The jack-hammer of machinegun fire burst out the back of the car. Almost immediately, an answering burst came from behind them.

  "Holy shit," Turner muttered.

  "Hostile vehicle has returned fire," Madrigal said.

  "Are you all right?" Sam asked.

  "A few dents," the EI said. "Otherwise, I'm still singing."

  "Good." Sam felt a fierce satisfaction. Teach them to threaten her prince in distress, or whatever one called the male equivalent of the proverbial damsel. "Spread some oil on the road." They had the advantage of being ahead of the other car; she could release pernicious substances but their pursuers would have a harder time sending similar forward to bedevil them.

  "Oil released," Madrigal said. "Hostile vehicle compensating." The car careened around another turn, and Sam grabbed the door handle, hanging on.

  "We've gained more distance on them," Madrigal said. Turner's face had gone white, his body rigid.

  "Sorry," Sam told him.

  "Hey." He gulped. "No—no problem."

  "Hostile vehicle has cleared the oil," Madrigal said.

  Another burst of gunfire came from behind them—and Sam's car swerved.

  "Mad!" Sam hung on to the door while they skidded across the road. She had to let the EI deal with this; human reactions weren't fast enough to handle the situation at such high speeds. Her body protested against the rapid changes in acceleration as Mad compensated for the swerve.

  "Course corrected," Madrigal said. "They're still firing."

  "Use the cannons," Sam said
. "Blast the bastards."

  A muffled boom came from behind them as mini-cannons on the car fired at their pursuers.

  "Got one of their wheels," Madrigal said smugly.

  Sam clung to the door as they lurched around another curve. "Did it stop them?"

  "No. But it slowed them down. I don't think they can catch us now."

  "Good," Turner whispered, scrunched against the door.

  "Are you all right?" Sam asked.

  "I think so." He tore his gaze away from the screen that displayed the now indistinct car behind them. "Will we make it?" A line showed between his eyebrows that hadn't been there earlier. Given enough time, his face would develop character and lose the alabaster perfection that made him seem more sculpted than human.

  "We'll make it," she said, hiding her doubts. "The wheels on these cars are protected, but they're weak spots compared to the rest."

  "That's right," Madrigal said. "Put out one of those babies and you can speed away."

  A ghost of a smile played about Turner's lips. "Madrigal sounds like you."

  "She programmed me," the car said.

  Sam snorted. "You've been programming yourself for months. It's my bane." In truth, she was proud of the EI's development, even if it did have quirks, like calling her Samantha.

  "Charon sent that car," Turner said.

  "I thought you deactivated the tracking signals in your body."

  He spoke uneasily. "Maybe I was wrong."

  "But why would it take him three days to find you?"

  "Maybe because I woke up?"

  "You sleep?"

  He spoke with reluctance. "I hope you won't think this makes me sound inhuman—but during my 'wake' time, I respond to stimuli that helps my programming evolve. I need sleep to integrate the changes."

  What he described didn't actually seem that much different from what humans needed. "Like what happens when we dream."

  His posture eased. "I never thought of it like that."

  "Why would that help Charon find you?"

  "I don't know. It's just the main difference I can think of between now and before."

  Sam considered it. "Well, you were at sea before. You were on the yacht. Maybe something in its systems protected you. Or maybe Charon wanted you to find me."