by Jean Johnson
The man and woman blocking her way were very much machines; the only way Ia could have read their minds was by electrokinesis, but she wasn’t familiar with their archaic programming. All she had to convince them with were her words.
“You will become extremely advanced androids, of a type manufactured by the Third Human Empire, and in doing so, you will retain your self-identities even as you gain official sentient status. All you have to do is answer the summons to war when called to action by the Phoenix of the Zenobian Empire…and if you survive that combat, the survivors will be granted new bodies and new status. You have my Prophetic Stamp on that.”
Another step down brought the Padre into view. He was short, stocky, and swarthy, with a neatly curled mustache and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. For show, of course; Ia knew his vision was still as acute as the day he had been made. One of the things the Immortal had done was stock up on replacement body parts for the Loyalist AIs. Like Margaret, his clothes were out of date by several decades, but they fit him well despite being age-worn.
“So you just want to see the OTL/FTL conversion schematics?” he asked her. “Is that all?”
“That’s one of the two things I want,” Ia countered. “The other, you don’t need to know, and you don’t want to know. But I swear it will not harm the Immortal’s best interests. Now, please stand down and step aside. I’m running out of time,” Ia ordered. She started to move forward. The android Margaret planted her hand on Ia’s shoulder, stopping her.
“I’m sorry. You’ve been rather accurate with your information on us, but Prophet or not, we are bound by our oaths to protect this place—”
Ia might not have known much about their archaic programming, but she did know the probabilities involved in this encounter. Before Margaret could finish her threat, she tapped a command into her arm unit. It in turn pulsed a pair of EMfrequency codes on an infrared carrier wave.
“—and we cannot…not…” Blinking, Margaret stared sightlessly for a moment. Her half-formed threat vanished. The hand on Ia’s shoulder lifted, turning into a salute. “Sir! KXD-47 ready for duty, sir!”
The barrel of the Padre’s gun flicked up, resting vertically in a modified salute. “Sir! NNH-236 ready for duty, sir!”
“I’m really sorry I had to do that,” Ia murmured, studying the two AIs. “I know you’ll remember this, and I want you to know I hoped you’d do this of your own free wills. As it is…your orders are simple. You will escort me and my two companions safely through the Vault to the Engineering Archives, wait for us there, and escort us back out again when we are through. You will not interfere with or prevent our search for and acquisition of the information we seek, and you will refrain from ever mentioning this visit to Shey, in any format. In fact, you will deny it if the lowest probability occurs and she actually asks about it.
“In 260 years, you will mention my prophecy regarding new sentient-status bodies to the other AIs in the Vault, at which point it will be self-evident what I meant by the Phoenix and the Zenobian Empire, upon which time you will be free to await the aforementioned summons and decide at that time whether or not you want to answer it. Now, guide us to the Engineering Archives. We haven’t much time,” she instructed the pair.
“Sir, yes, sir!” Padre snapped, and turned to head down the stairs. Margaret slipped ahead of him, moving faster. Her psychological programming had always made her a little faster, a little more hyper than the Padre, Ia knew.
Helstead slipped in front of Harper. She eyed the androids warily, following in Ia’s wake. “What did you just do to them?”
“I activated their loyalty codes. I would have far rather had their willing cooperation, but they’ll obey me until I release them,” Ia confessed quietly. “These two were soldier AIs, once upon a time. Those particular codes could only be activated by certain members of the Command Staff, or the Premier. They’re going to treat me as their supreme commander, for now.”
“I remember our history lessons back at the Academy,” Harper said. He, too, kept his voice low. It was probable both AIs could hear their conversation, but they said nothing about it as he continued. “The Rebel AIs slaughtered the Premier and key members of the Command Staff so that they could suborn the loyalty programming of the military AIs with their viral rebellion. There’s just one flaw, Ia. The Loyalists—the original ones—threw off that virus.”
“Yes, they did, with a variation of the same codes the Rebels used to throw off their loyalty conditioning,” Ia agreed. “I just reset their loyalty switches to the original pattern, then rekeyed them to include me in their command chain. Technically, we have twenty-four hours, give or take a couple, before they break the new code.”
Helstead whistled, one hand on the butt of the pistol slung at her hip. She spoke in an undertone. “…They are going to hate you when they break free, you know. Should we even be talking about this within their hearing?”
“They’re loyal for now; they won’t question my orders or my reasons. I’m also planning on giving them the codes they need to break free, with the instruction to wait one minute after we’ve completely left before implementing them, so they don’t have to break the codes controlling them. That would run the risk of damaging their programming,” Ia told her. “They have every right to exist down here, and I’m not going to ruin that for them.
“Besides, we have to be back on board the ship for Helstead’s duty watch in thirteen hours anyway, and before we get back, the Grandmaster of the Afaso is expecting me to drop by. Since we won’t be here the full twenty-four hours, there’s no point in keeping them code-locked long after we’re gone.”
“Is that wise?” Harper asked her. “Breaking them free while we’re still within attacking range?”
“Wise? Maybe not,” Ia said. The Padre glanced back at them. She met his questioning gaze steadily. “But it is honorable. Given a few years to think about it, they’ll come to respect it. I’d rather not have forced the issue, but the Immortal knows and obeys the foremost law of her birthworld…which means so will these AIs, once they’ve had a few minutes to think about that,” she added dryly, glancing at the android leading them onward. “Since in swearing to serve her, they have sworn to obey that very same law. The first and foremost law of the Freeworld Colony of Sanctuary, which will one day become the Zenobian Empire. The same government that will welcome them with open arms and citizenship papers in the future.”
They reached the bottom of the stairs. Margaret was already touching a handful of the round depressions set in the stone wall, not needing the light from their bracers to see what she was doing. Familiarity alone would have taught her what to do, though she also had infrared and low-light sensors built into her eyes.
“…In the meantime,” Ia continued lightly, “we still have to find what we need in this place. Even knowing where we need to look, it will not be easy.”
The bottom door opened much more quietly than the one at the top had. Margaret slipped through the opening and moved to one side. She did something that clunked, and lights blossomed in rapid succession. The light that spilled out from the depths beyond the doorway made all of them blink and squint. Ia flicked off the flashlight attached to her arm unit and stepped into the cavern beyond.
Or rather, onto one of the highest levels in the cavern. In nearly every direction, fluted columns carved out of the basalt of the mountain marched in orderly, hexagonal rows. Most of those rows were filled with towering piles of stone tiles stacked anywhere from a meter and a half to two meters high.
Every so often, instead of a vaulted ceiling, a hexagon was filled with solid stone, forming a very thick support pillar. Three of the surrounding hexes formed platform-like bridges to the rest of that floor, while the other three lay open, giving a dizzying view downward. It was onto one of these balcony-bridges, lined with ornately carved balustrades, that the five of them emerged.
“Good mucking God, it just goes on and on…What is this place?”
Helstead asked under her breath, green eyes wide as she peered over the balcony railing at the floors—dozens of floors—stretching below them. Not every floor was lit, just the nearest twenty hexes in radius and nearest ten or so floors in depth, but the impression of many, many more sections and floors stretching beyond the reach of the light was still there.
“The Vault of Time.” Ia spoke that last word loudly. It echoed off the vaulted ceilings, bounced off the tiled stones, and scuttled off into the farthest reaches they could see, until not even a whisper was left. She smiled, amused. “…I love that effect. This is the only place I can do that in reality and make it sound even remotely close to what it’s like on the timeplains. And not risk rupturing my self-control in doing so.”
“I thought you’d never been down here before,” Harper said, eyeing her in suspicion. He didn’t speak as softly as Helstead had, but neither did he speak boldly. The cavernous, cathedral-like nature of their surroundings seemed to discourage it. “Or have you?”
“Not in this reality, no. But in one of my alternate lifetimes—one where the galaxy wasn’t going to be destroyed—I volunteered to update the cataloging,” Ia replied. “Naturally, I visited that alternate self to see where the information I wanted would be stored. And then double-checked the information’s location for this universe. The copies we want are in the Engineering Archives. Once we get down there, I’ll know exactly where to look. But first…”
An odd humming sound distracted them. All three turned to see a hovering sled gliding around the corner from the door they had used, one with a front seat and a bench-like platform perpendicular to it at the back. Padre sat at the controls. Margaret held out her hand. Ia accepted the help onto the sled, not wanting any delays.
The temperature down here was temperate, not bitterly cold as it was outside. One of their reasons for hurrying was the fact that she knew the three of them—the Humans—would start to overheat after a while. Pressure-suits were fine for avoiding the worst of the cold and heat of outer space, but they did trap the body’s own heat a little too efficiently.
As soon as they were on board and settled on the bench seats, the male android manipulated the controls, lifting the sled up and over the railing. Gliding it forward and down, he dropped them in a controlled descent down through the hexagonal openings. “It’ll take a few minutes, sir, but not many.”
“Thank you, Padre,” Ia said.
“This isn’t any tech I’m familiar with,” Harper murmured, peering over their driver’s shoulder. He studied the controls, what few there were. “It doesn’t sound like thruster tech, and the base is way too thin to be hiding a hydrogenerator.”
“That’s because it’s not modern tech. It’s Atannan. It’s about, what, eleven thousand years old?” Ia asked Margaret.
The female looked over her shoulder at them, scooping back some of her air-tossed curls with one hand so she could speak freely. “The repair archives for this model are stored in the sector that’s not quite twelve thousand years back, sir.”
“I’m surprised nobody’s noticed this place,” Helstead said. They were already descending into the darkened layers. Their pilot flicked on a set of lights which shone ahead, behind, and to either side, illuminating a portion of their descent. “The energy output alone for keeping the air fresh, the temperature comfortable, all the lighting fixtures involved…somebody should’ve noticed it before now.”
“They’re looking in the wrong frequencies. Most of the power used by the Vault is geothermally generated, with most of it used up before it reaches high enough to radiate to the surface. The mountains are also rather thick through here, which helps hide the few traces of heat waste that slip through,” Ia told her, as the sled shifted forward onto one of the levels. “It’s a variation of the Sterling engine, which bases its power on heat differentials—basically, the heat of the planet’s molten interior versus its icy-cold surface. The large pillars house most of the pipes for the fluid transference.”
Helstead shook her head. “I’ve counted dozens of those huge columns spaced out every so often, and those are just the ones I can see on our left, never mind our right. The sheer amount of electricity generated by that kind of engine is far too big to keep hidden—geothermal might blend in, but not the electrical fields involved,” her 3rd Platoon officer argued. “Earth is constantly being scanned for energy anomalies, in case someone figures out a way to slip an attack past our borders. How could they have missed it?”
“I told you, they can’t find it because it’s not electrically based,” Ia repeated. “The lighting, the heat pumps, the hovercraft, none of it radiates in the spectrums the modern era knows about. The power generated is converted into something the Immortal calls exo-EM, because it operates outside the electromagnetic spectrum—if you were capable of feeding on energy as well as food, you’d quickly develop the ability to differentiate between energy sources,” she pointed out, meeting Helstead’s skeptical look. “Just like you can tell by your sense of smell the difference between an apple and an onion, which are similar in texture…but if you block off your sense of smell, you cannot always tell simply by taste.”
“Not to mention, if you had a couple thousand years to muck around with experiments, you’d probably figure out a thing or two to do with all that exo-EM energy, too,” Harper observed, joining the conversation.
“If you say so, sir,” Helstead muttered dubiously.
“We’re reaching the border of the Engineering Section, sir,” their stocky driver stated. “Do you know exactly which section and floor you need?”
“Ah…give me a moment…Floor 17, Section 4…and Floor 22, Section 361,” Ia recalled, glancing up at the dark ceiling overhead. The sled slowed in its race over the head-high stacks of stone tablets, turned, and darted off again.
“We’re not supposed to read anything in Engineering Sections 1–12, sir,” Margaret told Ia, her look and her tone both hesitant. “We’re only supposed to check the structural integrity of the sector, repaint the columns and ribs with fresh lettering where necessary, and twice a year, dust the stacks. We’re not allowed to remove the capstones to look at any of the tablets…and I’m not sure if you’re allowed to do so, either.”
“What she doesn’t know about won’t be a problem, now will it?” Ia replied. “I give you my word, all the tablets will remain exactly as they are, in the correct order, intact, and whole. I promise you we won’t do anything that will damage or disorder her records.”
The hoversled drifted to a stop near a thick column. Padre peered at them over his shoulder. “…This is the closest we can comfortably go, sir. The other side of that row is forbidden.”
“Your orders are to turn on the local light grid, stay here with the sled, and wait for us to come back,” Ia told him. “That way you don’t run into a conflict with your oaths of loyalty to Shey. Whatever happens down here will be on my head, should she ever find out. By staying here, and not trying to scan, follow, or spy on us, you will be able to plead ignorance of our actions, in the highly unlikely chance that she finds out about this trip.”
Climbing out of the sled, she beckoned for her second- and third-in-command to follow her. Margaret climbed out as well, moving smoothly ahead of them to reach a control panel lined with odd crystals. Grasping one of them, she pulled it down, slotting it between two others with a familiar clunk. Immediately, the trio started to glow. As did the crystalline globes overhead, lighting up as if the shafts were nothing more than an odd-looking set of archaic circuit breakers.
As soon as the last of the strange lights finished igniting, it became apparent that Sections 1–12 did not start or end at a wall…because in every direction they could see, the stone tiles stacked beneath the hexagonal-vaulted ceilings looked almost exactly like every other stack they had passed. The only discernible difference was that the stones used for these tiles looked like they were granite instead of basalt.
“Shakk,” Helstead muttered, eyes wide once more a
s she turned around, surveying every direction. “You weren’t kidding when you said this wouldn’t be easy…”
Harper stared, blinked, then chuckled. It was a wry sound, accompanied by a slow shake of his head. “Now I know you’re insane, Ia. Not just in this timeline, but in other ones, too. Not if you volunteered to catalog this place in an alternate life.”
“You’ll notice I’m not volunteering to do it in this one,” Ia retorted dryly. “Pick up the pace, meioas; we don’t have a lot of time down here.”
Adjusting the straps of her backpack, she set out at a brisk walk, wending her way through the head-high stacks of tiles. It took a couple minutes to get out of sight of the sled and its two occupants. Once she was sure they were out of sight, she flicked her hands at her companions, and picked up into a light-footed run, letting the tough but flexible soles of her pressure-suit boots absorb most of the sounds she made.
Helstead and Harper followed belatedly, doing their best to run silently in her wake. A solid minute of running proved all three of them had kept in shape, for not even Harper, the lightest-gravitied of the three heavyworlders, was breathing hard when Ia slid to a stop by one of the thicker columns. Or rather, by one of the balcony openings leading up and down.
“Light up your arm units, and link hands with me,” she ordered quietly, looking up. Helstead grasped her left hand and Harper her right. “Don’t worry; I won’t drop you.”
A nudge of her mind lifted all three of them up over the balcony, and up by several levels. Harper gasped, and Helstead giggled, squirming a little in Ia’s mental grip. It was the first blatant use of Ia’s telekinetic abilities since her brief demonstration in front of the various military psi branches of the Alliance’s Blockade efforts over three months ago.