Sunrise Alley

by Catherine Asaro

"Turner, you said Charon knew me."

  He wouldn't look at her. "Did I?"

  "Yes, damn it. So why don't I recognize him?"

  "I don't know."

  "You must, if his brain is in your matrix."

  "I've partitioned it off." His face paled. "I'm afraid if I try to access it, he will get free."

  "Show me what he looks like."

  Now he met her gaze. "And if you did recognize him? Would you really want to know a friend had betrayed you?"

  She froze. "Are you saying he is a friend of mine?"

  "No."

  "Giles?" It couldn't be. It couldn't. But it made so much sense. He was one of the few biomech surgeons who could create a construct as phenomenal as Turner.

  "Oh, Lord," she said miserably. "I should have seen."

  "It isn't Giles."

  "Then why won't you show me Charon?"

  "Sam." He spoke with difficulty. "Let it go."

  "No. Tell me."

  After a long pause, he said, "All right."

  She waited. "Yes?"

  "His name is Linden Polk. You knew him at MIT."

  Sam thought she must have misheard. "That can't be."

  "I'm sorry." He sounded miserable.

  It was absurd. Linden didn't have the genius to create Turner. He didn't do much surgery at all. His expertise was in the development of EI matrices, but his real gift was teaching. He had been a beloved advisor for many people, a decent, humble man. She could no more imagine him as Charon than she could imagine the sky turning orange. "That makes absolutely no sense."

  Turner looked the way people did when they knew they had given bad news, with his face red and his gaze downcast. He believed Dr. Polk was Charon.

  The console across the room crackled with Bart's voice. "I have decided you may leave her untied. Just make sure she doesn't leave."

  Turner jerked. They waited a few moments, but Bart said nothing else. Sam closed her eyes and rolled onto her back, exhausted. That Bart didn't deny he was Polk just convinced her more that Turner was wrong. If Bart contained Charon, he probably wanted her misled about his identity.

  After a few moments, Turner stretched out next to her. She rolled onto her side and pressed close to him, favoring her injured arm. Lying on his back, he pulled her into his arms. "That time you were unconscious—those were three of the worst hours I've ever spent."

  "I'm all right, now." That was pushing it, but she did feel better. "Turner, did you see Charon die?"

  "No."

  "Who downloaded him to you?"

  "His colleague, I assume."

  "Linden?"

  "No. Charon was Linden."

  That just didn't fit. "It sounds like the process of transferring Charon's mind to your matrix went without a hitch."

  "Yes. Shouldn't it?"

  "It's one hell of a procedure." Sam pushed up on her elbow. "It would take a lot of work to get it right."

  "Maybe. But I'm here." He looked up at her. "And Charon is definitely inside me."

  "I'll bet you weren't the first one he tried the procedure on."

  Turner went very still. "He never said."

  "Maybe he was overconfident about his ability to control you because he had already done it with someone else." It hurt to think, let alone say, but she forced out the name. "Linden Polk."

  Turner hesitated. "It's possible."

  "Linden would have given him a remarkable intellect to work with. He was a gifted teacher, someone who always gave of himself to his students." It made too much painful sense. "That would have made it easier for Charon to take what he wanted."

  "I'm sorry, Sam. I know Polk meant a lot to you."

  Her eyes felt hot, but she couldn't answer.

  "Do you think Charon let us go so we would lead him here?" Turner asked.

  "I've wondered," she said. "But that Rex is a prize people would die for. I doubt he wanted to lose it. And why send a Needle after us if he wanted us to escape?"

  "If he was the one who sent the Needle."

  "Who else?"

  "Maybe whatever government is supporting him?"

  "China?" Sam considered the idea. "My guess is that it's a fringe group set against their government." The introduction of capitalist aspects into the Chinese economy over the past few decades had stirred heated controversy. "Either you bollixed Charon's plans when you trapped him in your matrix, or else he planned this and you don't really have him trapped."

  "No!" He sat up, knocking her over. "I won't let him control me."

  She sat up as well and took his hands. "Listen, Turner. It must be possible to remove Charon from your matrix."

  "I was hoping you could help me."

  "That was why you came to me." His story about the fingerprints and false identity had never convinced her. "To help you excise Charon."

  "Yes." He spoke quietly. "I was afraid if I told you everything at the start, you would refuse."

  She almost had anyway. But it wasn't in her nature to turn away those in need. That was why she and Linden had got on so well; they were a lot alike. Unfortunately for her survival in the cutthroat biomech industry, she had too much of that softness. "The EIs here must see the danger in Charon gaining access to my brain the way he tried to do with you. The expertise of a top EI analyst would give him more influence over Sunrise Alley."

  Turner raised his voice. "You hear that, Bart? You want Charon loose? He's going to eat you alive."

  Bart's voice came out of the console. "I suspect I would give him indigestion."

  Sam gave a startled laugh. Then the door across the room opened, revealing Fourteen. He spoke in his rusty voice. "Come with me."

  Sam thought of the surgical table. "I would rather not."

  Fourteen entered, followed by two large mechbots. "You will come," Fourteen said. "Or we will sedate you."

  "Don't do that." Sam wanted to stay conscious as long as possible—for these could be her last moments of life.

  XVI

  Tugtown

  Fourteen took them to an unfamiliar area, one obviously never intended for people. The corridors were too narrow, with equipment embedded in the leaning walls. At one point, a robot arm rose up from the floor for no apparent reason. Glow-tiles were sparse at best and soon vanished. If a mechbot hadn't switched on a lamp in its head, Sam couldn't have seen at all.

  "I don't get this place." She picked her way around a lopsided box-table. "Where are we going?"

  "Maybe to a place more suited to our hosts." Turner was walking behind her, flanked by the two mechbots. "Or a better cell."

  "I hope not." Perhaps Bart was trying to rattle them the way Charon had done in Tibet with the holo-corridor. The constant onslaught of strangeness was starting to work on Sam. She stumbled over a groove in the floor and would have fallen if a jointed arm hadn't swung from the ceiling and caught her. Engines rumbled and the air smelled faintly of machine oil.

  The lights dimmed.

  Fourteen halted in front of Sam. When he did nothing more, she stopped and glanced back. The mechbots had also become motionless, their lights almost dark. Turner stood between them, a hand resting on each. The shadows made both of his hands look dark rather than just the metallic one.

  "Can they turn up their lamps?" Sam asked.

  Fourteen came back to them. The light on his temple flickered red—and went dark. Then the lights on the mechbots went out.

  Sam froze, blind now. "What the—?"

  Turner grasped her arm. "Come on." He pulled her toward him.

  "I can't see." Sam stumbled over junk on the floor.

  "Here." A light appeared in Turner's human hand. Sam couldn't look too closely. She didn't want to know how he managed that light.

  They headed back the way they had come, quickly leaving Fourteen and the mechbots behind. "How did you turn off the power?" Sam asked. "You said you couldn't break security here."

  His face was a study of stark lines and shadows. "It just took longer. It helped when they hooke
d me up during the maintenance work."

  "What you did at Hockman was hard enough. This place has avoided notice by our military for years. Why could you do what no one else has managed?"

  He picked his way over ridges in the floor. "What makes you think the military doesn't know?"

  "Do they?"

  "I've no idea. But just because neither you nor I knew it was here doesn't mean no one else did."

  "I would have heard about it. I worked for the people who would deal with this."

  His voice tightened. "You should ask your friend, our dear General Wharington."

  Sam had no answer for his unspoken accusation. She couldn't believe it of Thomas any more than of Linden. Nor were they any better off now than when they had run from Hockman. If they made it out of here, they would be stranded in the middle of Iowa. But she would try anything to escape. Better that than have a paranoid EI slice up her brain.

  They made their way along the obstacle course of the hallway, ducking around projections, pipes, and screens. Nothing moved. Robot arms had frozen and burt-walls were quiescent. They reached a hallway where a screen stuck out in front of her, paper thin, sturdy as steel, and dark.

  "We didn't come this way," Sam said.

  "I know." Turner squeezed past the screen. "But it will get us out."

  She followed but then stopped, dismayed. A barrier blocked the corridor, stretching from the ceiling almost to the ground.

  "Shit," Turner said.

  "No kidding." Sam knelt down and peered under the wall. "Any way around it?"

  "I'm checking . . . but if there is, I can't find it."

  "Maybe we can crawl under it." If they went on their stomachs, they might drag themselves through, but it would be a tight fit. Claustrophobia surged within her. The air suddenly seemed close and thin. "I don't see an exit."

  Turner crouched next to her. "I stole schematics of this place. Maybe they make sense to Bart, but I don't have time to decipher them fully. We have to be gone before he breaks free of my tricks." He motioned forward. "I do know an exit is in that direction."

  Sam thought of his fear of heights and closed spaces. "You're willing to crawl under here?"

  His face had turned stark. "I have to. If we backtrack all the way to that chute where we came in, they'll probably catch us."

  "Okay." She forced out the words. "Let's go."

  They had to lie down to wriggle under the wall. Sam dragged herself forward, aware of the ceiling a few inches from her head. Darkness pressed on them, barely held at bay by Turner's dim finger light. She tried not to imagine tons of machinery and rock above, ready to collapse. She bit the inside of her cheek, using the pain to focus her thoughts and fend off panic.

  Turner's breathing came hard behind her, faster than normal. His lungs were among his few organs that belonged to the original Turner Pascal, if he hadn't transformed them. Changing his limbs was one thing; altering his organs had to be more difficult. He could survive with cabled arms, but if he cabled his lungs or his liver, they would probably fail.

  Sam's thoughts whirled away from her. She couldn't focus. They were going to crawl here in the dark forever until they starved or died of thirst.

  Her hand hit a barrier.

  "Ah, hell." Sam stopped and lay still. "Bloody stupid design. We aren't cat-bots."

  "Don't stop!" Turner's voice grated behind her.

  "It's blocked."

  He swore, close to panic.

  "Maybe we can go around." She scooted sideways, running her hand along the barrier in their way.

  Turner moved behind her. "I can't—I hate this."

  "We'll be all right." Sam wasn't sure she believed it, but Turner didn't need to hear that.

  "Yeah." He sounded as taut as a wire pulled tight on a violin, but he kept control.

  "Hey." Sam's hand flailed into space. "I found an opening."

  "Good." His light barely showed the way as they crawled forward. She struggled to breathe. The air felt dusty, but it was probably in her mind. Nothing here was dirty. The EIs had a vested interest in keeping the installation clean; it would affect how well their equipment operated.

  "If this doesn't end soon," Turner muttered. "I'm going to scream."

  "Do you feel air currents?" Sam asked.

  He paused. "Yes. From up ahead."

  Sam dragged herself harder, picking up the pace. When she could push onto her knees without hitting her head, she grunted in relief. The ceiling was slanting upward; after a few more paces she could stand. It felt heavenly.

  Turner stood next to her, bending to keep from hitting his head on the ceiling. "Thank God."

  She peered up at him. "How much have you grown?"

  "About four inches, total."

  "From the changes in your legs?"

  "Mostly." He walked forward. As the ceiling rose, he straightened to his full height, six feet now. Sam didn't want to begrudge him the extra inches if this was what he wanted, but she had liked it before when he had been closer to her own height.

  They walked into a cavern with robot parts strewn across the floor. It looked like a dumping ground for discards. Their footsteps echoed. On the other side, they found another safe door, locked and secure. Turner linked to its panel and worked until he cracked its code. The door swung ponderously open, silent and well oiled.

  Beyond the door, a staircase spiraled upward with yellow metal steps and rail like the one they had come down earlier, but smaller, and shadowy in the dim light from Turner's hand.

  Sam started climbing, aware of Turner behind her. She spoke uneasily. "You transformed your other hand."

  After a moment he said, "The arm, too."

  "Why?"

  "I needed the hardware."

  Every time she thought she had adjusted to him, he changed again. "But you weren't even using that hand."

  "Yes, I was. I jacked them into the mechbots. It gave me a more secure connection than IR. And I needed storage space. I'm building more ganglia."

  Suddenly she understood. "You want to transfer your functions to the new ganglia, away from where you've stored Charon. Then you can more easily delete him."

  "I hope so."

  "So you reallocate parts of your body to the new matrix filaments. And the metallic surface protects it better."

  "Yes." He sounded subdued. "I'm sorry, Sam."

  "Don't be sorry. You're a wonder." She refrained from saying a scary one.

  At the top of the stairs, another door blocked their way. As Turner went to work on it, he spoke thoughtfully. "In some ways, I've gained from all this. I feel more . . . I'm not sure what word is right. The old Turner was less. I had a lousy memory. I was in good shape from lugging around suitcases, but nothing compared to now. Hell, I was short and skinny." He glanced at her over his shoulder. "You never would have given me the time of day."

  "That's because a man who looks as good as you would never look twice at me." She glowered at him. "I liked you short and skinny."

  "I thought women wanted their men big and muscular."

  "Not me."

  A smile curved his lips. Then he turned back to the panel. In only a moment, he said, "Got it!"

  The door opened into a narrow chute with a ladder up one side. They climbed up to a hatch with a circular handle. After jimmying its panel, Turner opened the hatch into moonlight, and they clambered out into the remains of a harvested field. Sam had a curious sense of dislocation, as if they had just gone down and come right back out. "How long were we there?"

  "About two days." Turner heaved the portal closed and the ground poured in over it, hiding its existence.

  Sam watched the dirt move. "That's strange."

  "It's keyed to the portal."

  She gazed across the land, wondering how far they could make it before Bart sent someone after them. "We should get out of here as fast as possible."

  "I can try to reach someone."

  "If you start sending out signals, we could end up alerting anyone se
arching for us."

  "We need to figure something out."

  She gestured at the land before them. "While we think, let's walk." The more distance they put between themselves and Bart's hole in the ground, the better.

  * * *

  Sam trudged in a daze. They were going up a gradual slope; the landscape had changed from its flat monotony, easing into low, rolling hills. Sam had always thought of Iowa as flat everywhere, full of nothing but corn, and it kept surprising her.

  "I don't get it," she said.

  "Get what?" Turner walked with the steady pace he had used since they started. He didn't even seem winded.

  "No one has come after us."

  "I did some pretty weird things to Bart's systems."

  "So, okay, you're good at what you do. But so are they and they have more experience."

  Turner was silent for much too long. Then he said, "I knew it would be difficult. So I took, uh, sort of drastic action."

  Ah, no. "Drastic, how?"

  Silence.

  "Turner, what did you do?"

  "I let out part of Charon."

  "You what?"

  "I used his knowledge about EIs to trick Bart."

  Sam barely heard anything after his first four words. "You accessed him in your matrix."

  He pushed the hair out of his eyes. "Yes."

  "Charon is free?"

  "Not exactly."

  "Why 'not exactly'?" Sam felt surreally calm. Her lover had just informed her that he had converted himself into a monster. She ought to flee or hit him over the head. Since she couldn't imagine doing either, she just said, "He's won."

  His face lit with a fresh excitement that seemed the antithesis of the way everyone described Charon. "But that's just it, Sam. He hasn't won. I'm still me. I'm in control. He was going to run me as a submesh on his brain, but that's what I'm doing with him instead." Then he added, "And, Sam, I needed his help. Who better than Charon to counter himself? I couldn't have done it alone."

  Be calm, she told herself. "Done what?"

  He struggled with the words. "We put Bart in a— I guess you could call it virtual reality. It isn't that different from the way he normally exists, but we tampered with the input. I left a copy of my brain running on their mesh. They think they're interacting with me. And they are. But not the real me. Not this me. However long it takes them to realize that is how long we have before they come after us." His voice quieted. "And I tried not to leave any part of Charon behind."