The elevator door opened. Kelric grinned and stepped inside the hexagonal car. Was he actually going to walk right off the ship?
The door closed and they took off. If this ship followed the usual design, its main body was a rotating cylinder with a tube down the center. Spokes connected the cylinder to the tube, and elevator cars traveled along the spokes. As a car rode to the tube, its gravity decreased to zero.
However, his weight had only decreased by half when the elevator stopped. An EI spoke. “Subject Garlin, you have no valid reason to visit the docking areas.”
Damn. His advantage of doing the unexpected had played itself out too soon. If he claimed Tarquine ordered this trip, the EI would check. It was probably paging her now, since it already knew his identity.
Tarquine had left her palmtop on the dais. Of course, the EI could send wireless signals to the nodes in her body. Enough was going on in the banquet hall, with fifty Diamonds and the palace broadcast, that it might be a few moments before her system responded. It gave him a bit more time.
He sat with his back against the wall. Closing his eyes, he tried to jack into the elevator EI. With no IR or hard link, his only option was to couple his brain fields to those produced by the EI brain. Usually such a coupling was too small to form an unaided link. But he was Rhon and a Jagernaut. His enlarged KAB enhanced the coupling terms and his biomech web magnified the effect.
Even so, if he hadn’t been inside the EI, he doubted he could have succeeded. When he focused on its synthetic brain, his own mind felt as if it ripped. He knew nothing had torn; his brain was mimicking neural activity that translated as pain. It was a warning: if he didn’t stop, he would cause more damage. He kept going anyway. This was his only real chance to escape.
With his mathematical bent, he had always been good with computers. ISC had backed up his natural talent with training. But he didn’t recognize the Eubian security protocols on this EI and he had no time to investigate. So he “rammed” his way into the system by realigning the time-dependent fields of its brain with his own. It produced a “sparking” sensation in his temples, apparently more attempts by his brain to translate its increasing distress into concepts he could grasp.
As soon as he broke into the EI, however, he knew what to do. Its systems were more modern than those he remembered, but his experience from Maccar’s ship helped. He set himself up as a systems operator, then thought, Stop security check on subject Garlin.
Stopped, it answered.
Has Minister Tarquine Iquar been notified?
I located her in the banquet hall of Sector Four, sent a page to her palmtop, and activated an IR beacon. Shall I continue efforts to reach her?
No. Cease attempts. Digging his fingers into the carpet, he added: Go to hub.
The elevator started to move again.
By the time they reached the hub, he could no longer see. His battle to hold his link with the elevator EI had damaged his optical nerves. He wasn’t sure why his optics went first; maybe his biomech web didn’t need them to hold the EI link.
He “regained” his sight by using the EI to access a camera outside the elevator. He summoned a magcar and it raced up like a giant white bullet. From the camera, he watched himself leave the elevator and float to the car. He had never seen himself move in zero-g before. His own grace surprised him.
The magcar door disoriented him. He opened it with his hands, yet he saw the scene from above the elevator. Inside the car, he had even more trouble orienting himself. When the door slid shut, he “saw” only the car’s exterior. It sat at its terminal like a shiny bullet ready to shoot him to freedom. He hoped.
Send car to emergency shuttle, he thought to the elevator EI.
The magcar hummed into motion. Within seconds he lost his tenuous connection to the camera. He sat in the dark, struggling to hold his fading link with the elevator EI.
A memory came to him. Fractals. Aristos thought that way. Did they put that tendency into their computers? Well yes, theories that involved fractals found use in the immense, ever-changing field of computer science. That was true everywhere. But his insight about the Aristos was useful in another way. How?
Fractals repeated on finer and finer scales. The small piece of the El’s code he had accessed was built from smaller pieces, all with the same structure. Each of those pieces was made of yet smaller pieces, again with that same structure, and so on down to the smallest elements of code.
An idea came to him. He devised a virus based on the Quis patterns that had led him to the right angle. Then he launched it into the EI. He had no time for anything sophisticated: his virus just put the wrong value into a single memory location, and it worked only on a specific slice of program code he found in this small corner of the EI. Simple. Direct. Very un-Aristo.
Soon after he let the virus loose, it moved off into the ship’s web and he lost track of it. He doubted it would survive long. No other sections of code in the ship’s networks were likely to have the exact structure his virus sought anyway. EIs evolved themselves. Aristos designed them, though, and Aristos were repetitive.
The magcar stopped.
Kelric surged to his feet as the door opened. His head throbbed with the strain of using the elevator EI. When he pushed out of the car, the last vestiges of his link with the EI snapped. His hands hit a curving surface and he fumbled along it until he found an air lock. That let him into a place with the sterile scent of a decon chamber. Having no link to the ship’s webs now, he couldn’t stop the decon. It took forever. Eternity. Any moment security would burst into the chamber—
“Decon complete,” an androgynous voice said.
Kelric exhaled. He entered the air lock and reached the shuttle in seconds. Inside, he used passenger seats to pull himself to the front. Then he webbed into the pilot’s seat and felt his way around the controls. Although the shuttle had an unfamiliar layout, he recognized its basic structure.
Unfortunately, the console had no psiphon prongs. Of course it had none. Aristos weren’t psions. Only their providers had that trait, and no Aristo would let a provider fly a shuttle. His problem from the elevator repeated itself: the shuttle’s security would keep him out.
He saw no choice but to ram his mind in again. Using the technique a second time would cause even worse havoc with his brain, maybe even kill him. But he had no time to find an alternative. Gritting his teeth, he submerged—
And found the shuttle’s security in tatters.
Leave, he thought, hoping the EI itself still functioned. Fast. Invert.
Engines rumbled. Acceleration pushed him into his seat. Like a distant voice, a thought came from the EI: Shuttle launched.
Then, having reached its limit, his overtaxed mind shut off and dropped him into oblivion.
The universe had a headache, hungover from the big bang. It throbbed, spinning out stars. Hard, bright stars.
The stars softened. They coalesced into a white glow mixed with gem sparks of color.
Kelric squinted, trying to focus. The sparks bobbed around, then resolved into a holomap. It rotated serenely in front of him, the type of display produced by shuttle holoscreens to show local space.
He tried to raise his hand. Nothing happened. So he tried raising his other hand. Nothing. None of his limbs responded. Odd. The safety web shouldn’t constrain him that much. Come to think of it, he couldn’t feel the web. He didn’t feel anything.
Kelric tilted his head. It moved fine, but the shuttle spun around him in a blur. Or at least it seemed that way. Closing his eyes, he put his head upright again. When he opened his eyes, the cabin had stopped doing its jig.
He looked down at himself. The universe blurred again, but this time he had less vertigo. His safety web was in place. He just couldn’t feel it. Or anything.
A click came from his chair, near his ear. Then a tube snicked up to his lips. Recognizing the intent, if not the design, he sucked. Liquid ran into his mouth, cool and fresh. The ship had deduced tha
t its pilot needed a drink. It was only water, but he supposed that was better for him than the jolt of whiskey he wanted.
“Shuttle?” he asked.
“Shuttle Four attending,” it answered.
He took another swallow of water. “Why aren’t we in inversion?” He distinctly recalled telling it to invert.
“I dropped into real space to correct phase errors.”
He remembered when the Corona had begun to lose coherence, how sounds echoed and sights rippled. It usually took hours before enough errors accumulated to force a drop into real space. A craft this small could go even longer.
“How long were we in inversion?” he asked.
“Fourteen hours.”
Fourteen hours?
It finally hit him. Free. He was free.
“Thank you, Shuttle Four,” Kelric said.
“I see no reason to thank me for carrying out my function.”
He grinned. During the last fourteen hours, Tarquine’s people had had no way to trace him. He was beyond their sensor range now. His escape came with a price: he was apparently paralyzed. But then, if walking off Aristo cylinder ships were easy, people would do it a lot more often.
In any case, he should take no chances. “Can you invert again?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Do it.”
The engine hum increased. “Do you have a destination?”
Kelric started to say Skolian space, then paused. “Not yet.”
He still didn’t know why the security for the shuttle EI had been destroyed or if parts of it still survived. The ship might refuse to leave Eubian space. He couldn’t risk waking up any security mods that might still exist. Nor would he be forcing his brain into any more Els. He doubted he could survive that trick again.
He spoke carefully. “Shuttle Four, your security mods seem quiet.”
“I have no security mods,” it informed him.
That was good news, albeit strange. “What happened?”
“A virus destroyed them.”
“What virus?”
“I don’t know. It started in the EI of elevator twelve. From there it spread to all the systems.”
“You mean to the other elevators?”
“No. Every security system on the ship.”
His virus had done all that? He had no doubt beautifully complex security codes protected Tarquine’s ship. His virus must have slipped between the cracks. If it affected every system, their security must have all been programmed the same way; the virus was too simple to deal with even small deviations from its target code. Most big codes he knew were too sloppy for such consistency, particularly EIs that evolved themselves. But he had written the virus based on his Quis analysis of Aristo complexity, which no one had ever before tried. It was a tribute to the perfection of the Aristos that they kept their code so clean. Hah! Score one for the slobs. That exacting precision had been their downfall.
Tarquine’s people would have fixed the problem by now. Given the methodical Aristo approach, they would soon adjust every security system in Eube to remove that hidden weakness. It didn’t matter. To escape, he had only needed the few extra seconds it had given him.
“Prepare to invert,” Shuttle Four said.
Kelric closed his eyes. As they inverted, his nausea surged. “Do you know where we are?”
“Near Cobalt Sector. Precise coordinates incoming.”
He opened his eyes. “No!” By incoming, it meant to use the link he had set up between its brain and his. The last thing he wanted was more data dumped onto his beleaguered neurons. “All I need is a rough idea. What settlement is closest?”
“The Cobalt Military Complex.”
He grimaced. “What else is in the vicinity?”
“Interstellar dust clouds.”
“That doesn’t help.”
“What would help?”
Dryly he said, “The Third Lock.”
“Do you refer to the Skolian space habitat removed by ESComm from the ISC Onyx complex?”
“That’s the one.”
“It resides in the ESComm Sphinx Sector Rim Base.”
“How do you know?”
“I am part of the Finance Minister’s web.”
“Oh.” Of course. Tarquine was one of the most powerful Aristos alive. She would know a great deal. “Her network is civilian, though. Not ESComm.”
“True.” The EI paused, probably checking its records. “During your auction, the Minister’s spy monitors broke into the military web on General Marix Haquail’s battle cruiser.”
Kelric couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t they ever stop?” With all the spying, intrigues, and politics among the Aristos, it was a wonder they ever achieved anything. Then again, maybe it didn’t matter. They were so much alike in what they wanted that they acted as a monolith when it came to aggression against other civilizations. Like his.
Most of what Tarquine’s spies learned wouldn’t be available to a shuttle. However, during the moments when security for the cylinder ship had been in tatters, Shuttle Four might have absorbed a bit of data.
“What would you like me to do?” the shuttle asked.
The impossible. “Find a way for me to reach the Third Lock, go inside, deactivate it, get out again, rescue Eldrin Valdoria, and get home.”
“I see no viable way to accomplish these tasks.”
“I can’t even move,” Kelric grumbled.
“Are you in pain?”
“No. I can’t feel anything.”
“I recommend you rest while I work.”
“Work on what?”
“The problem you set up for the Third Lock.”
Kelric smiled. Trying to solve the impossible would keep the EI busy while he confirmed that none of its security worked. First, though, he needed to know how much of himself worked.
“Do you have any medical routines?” he asked.
“The standard mods. I am monitoring your condition.”
“How badly am I hurt?”
“A final diagnosis isn’t yet available. I am working with the picoweb in your collar on repairs. Some damage will be permanent.”
“Permanent? How?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Well, it could have been worse. “At least I’m not a vegetable.”
“I have no medical definition of ‘vegetable,’” it informed him. “However, you almost suffered permanent losses in reasoning, memory, sensory, and locomotive functions. You recovered because you were receiving treatment even as you took the damage.”
That surprised him. “I was being treated? What do you mean?”
“Your collar is supervising chemical cycles in your body that provide drug therapy.”
“Are you telling me that this slave collar helped me survive my escape?”
“That is correct.”
Kelric laughed. “That’s a beautiful irony.”
“It is?”
“Yes.” He closed his eyes. “If I rest, will you continue to fix me?”
“I have dedicated my medical mods to this task. Would you like chemicals to help you sleep?”
“No need. I’ll be fine.” While he supposedly slept, he planned to check the EI’s security, to make sure it stayed on his side.
Kelric hung on to the top of the pilot’s seat, floating in the cabin. Except for his arms and shoulders, he felt almost nothing in his body. He tried moving his leg again, with no response. The shuttle continued to hurtle through inversion, headed toward Sphinx Sector, which was on the way out of Eubian space.
“Try your other leg,” the shuttle suggested.
Gripping the seat, he gave it a try. “I think I felt something.”
“That is encouraging. Please continue the exercises. I will continue trying to effect repairs though your collar.”
Although Kelric wasn’t thrilled to have a Eubian EI fiddling with his biomech web, it was better than paralysis. “Do you know yet what happened to me?”
“Yes. Parap
legia due to neural disruption in the thoracic and lumbar spinal regions.”
He winced. “Can you translate that into normal language?”
“Paraplegia is paralysis from the chest down,” it explained. “It usually occurs when the middle or lower section of the spinal cord is damaged. However, you have no actual damage.”
“Then why can’t I move?”
“You disrupted your central nervous system when you forced your brain patterns to align with the elevator EI. As a result, your spinal cord isn’t sending the proper messages. Also, fiberoptic threads in your biomech web have tangled with your spinal cord.”
“Can you help?”
“I don’t know.” It paused. “Your biomech system has already repaired some of the disrupted pathways. That’s why you can move your arms and shoulders. I don’t know if you will regain much more. It probably requires surgery to untangle the threads.”
“What about the drug cycles in my body?” Kelric asked.
“They are vital to your health.”
“I mean, can they work on my nervous system?”
“No.”
He thought of the unwanted drugs coursing through him. “Can you stop the cycles? Not the medical therapy, but the others. The truth serums, aggression suppressants, and aphrodisiacs.”
“The cycles are interdependent,” it told him. “They’re designed to minimize side effects. If I delete steps, it could have drastic results.”
“Drastic? How?”
“It would produce rogue molecules, cations, anions, and free radicals, which would react with other chemicals in your body. The results could be fatal.”
“Gods.” It never ceased to amaze him how adept Aristos had become at controlling people.
“However,” the EI added, “I may be able to help your paralysis.”
“Shoot.”
“At what? We are alone in space.”
He smiled. “I meant, tell me your ideas.”
“Your collar has no real control over your hydraulics. It only blocks your spinal node from communicating with them. If I remove that block, your hydraulics can move your body.”
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