Against Impassable Barriers

by Kate MacLeod

  “Taking me straight to the library, I see,” Emilie said.

  “Not at all,” Frank insisted. “Unless that is what you wish to see first. I am at your disposal. Name your destination, and I shall show it to you. Ask your question, and I shall do my very best to answer you.”

  “You’re splitting us up?” Scout asked.

  “Unless you object? Mr. Tajaki thought this would be more efficient,” Rona said.

  Scout noticed that only two people were waiting. Had they known Geeta wouldn’t come, or just guessed?

  “I don’t see your dogs,” Rona said, looking around Scout in case she had missed them.

  “No, they stayed with Geeta,” Scout said, but her eyes were on Emilie, silently asking, Should we let them split us up?

  Emilie gave the smallest of nods before turning to Frank. “I would actually like to see the bridge first,” she said.

  “Certainly. Right this way,” Frank said, making a sweeping gesture with his hands.

  “And you?” Rona asked Scout.

  “I’m not sure what I should see,” Scout admitted. “Emilie is the one who knows how to evaluate stuff.”

  “I have a standard tour I give to visiting dignitaries. Shall we start with that?” Rona offered.

  “Sure,” Scout said.

  “Feel free to interrupt me at any time. I’m here to serve you,” Rona said. “Mr. Tajaki is dealing with a business matter at the moment, but he will signal me when he is ready to receive you.”

  “Okay,” Scout said. She felt very out of place all of a sudden. It was probably the phrase “visiting dignitaries” that had done it.

  Rona smiled again and gestured for Scout to accompany her down a different hallway than Frank had taken Emilie.

  “The wood and gaslights are nice,” Scout said as they walked side by side down the long corridor.

  “Aren’t they? It’s one of my favorite looks as well. But Mr. Tajaki creates new decorative programs every so often, so the look of the ship changes at his whim. But they are all lovely,” she was quick to add. “Mr. Tajaki has excellent taste.”

  “Do you have a park here like they do on the other ship?” Scout asked.

  “Indeed we do,” Rona said. “A bit smaller, but then so is the ship.” She paused to exchange nods with a couple passing the other way. They also wore all royal blue; the woman wore a long skirt and the man’s arms were bare but he had a hood up over his head.

  This variety of all-royal-blue outfits was making her nervous. It was eerily like the people in the black not-uniforms who had kidnapped and tortured Liam and later instigated the violence that had killed so many of Emilie and the Malini sisters’ friends.

  Not to mention the woman in black who had pushed Seeta out into space.

  “Is something the matter?” Rona asked.

  “Why all the blue?” Scout asked.

  “Oh, that’s just the current thing,” Rona said with a dismissive wave. “Like the wood and lights, that changes when Mr. Tajaki grows tired of it.”

  “And everyone just goes along?” Scout asked.

  “I don’t understand,” Rona said with a little frown.

  “You don’t get to pick what you wear?”

  “Of course we do,” Rona said. “Well, the tunic and leggings are required when I’m on duty, but when I’m off duty, I can wear what I like.”

  “But it will be all the same shade of blue,” Scout said.

  “When that’s what Mr. Tajaki has chosen,” Rona said. “All of our clothing is provided for us by the Tajaki trade dynasty. It’s the very finest in the galaxy. You’ll always be at a comfortable temperature, it adjusts to fit you even if you indulge a bit and your size changes, and it compensates for people with sensitivities to scratchy or rough fabrics. It’s fantastic.”

  “But when he wants it to be blue, he programs it all to be blue,” Scout said.

  “He changes it up before we’re all sick of it,” Rona said. “I’m hoping for red next. I look stunning in red.”

  “But he wore ivory when I met him,” Scout said. She cast her mind back to that very morning. She hadn’t really paid attention to his clothing at the time, but she was noticing things now. “He’s wearing gray today.”

  “But he’s Mr. Tajaki. He’s not an employee.”

  The corridor ended in a balcony, and Rona waved Scout to join her at the railing. They were looking down into a large open space filled with trees and grass and fountains. It looked like it was the heart of the ship, the arching ceiling above simulating sunlight streaming down through gleaming windows to light the little world below.

  And everywhere were people dressed all in royal blue. Two women were wading in a little pond wearing skimpy outfits that seemed to be made entirely of strings, and even those strings were all blue.

  “Isn’t it lovely?” Rona said, tipping her face up towards the warmth of the artificial sunlight.

  “Yeah,” Scout said because she had to say something.

  The ship was beautiful, and the people inside it all seemed perfectly content, happy even. And yet the whole place was creeping Scout out.

  Did Bo have something over all of these people? Blackmail? Hypnotic control? Or were they just this genuinely happy to have their whole world depend on the aesthetic whims of their boss?

  19

  Rona took Scout around the entire ship, showing her the large cafeteria where the crew ate, the lounge at the prow where they could have drinks or snacks and look out at the stars, even her own snug little living quarters.

  And it was all lovely, so much more pleasant than the bare metal the Months favored or the rickety construction their black-market hangers-on preferred.

  And the people were all friendly, greeting Rona and giving Scout a smile and a nod. She absolutely didn’t fit in here, with her multicolored clothing and fading orange hair, and yet no one stared at her or even did a double take.

  At least, none of the grown-ups did. And most of the people they encountered were grown-ups. But from time to time they passed a youngster, more often a girl than a boy, and never younger than ten or older than maybe fourteen.

  And every last one of them looked Scout over like they were doing a threat assessment. And none of them smiled even when they greeted Rona.

  “You have families here?” Scout asked.

  “Something like that,” Rona said with a smile that was less genuine than her others. Scout wanted to follow up with a hundred questions—where were the babies and toddlers, where were the kids her age, did they have a school here, were they also considered employees since they too dressed all in royal blue—but Rona suddenly stopped mere steps from the doorway to the ship’s bridge and touched something behind her ear.

  “Mr. Tajaki is ready for you,” Rona said. “Did you want to finish the tour first? We only have the bridge left.”

  “No, I’m good,” Scout said. She wasn’t likely to see anything there that meant anything to her, and she suddenly longed to get this whole experience over with and get back to the chaotic colorfulness of the inhabitants of the Months’ ship.

  Rona led the way back down the corridor, away from the bridge and past her own quarters to a narrow, spiraling staircase. The lights were spaced farther apart here, casting some turns of the stairs in dramatic shadows. The stairs were so narrow that if someone below started to walk up, Rona and Scout would have to go back up to the last corridor to let them pass.

  But clearly, it was a private staircase, for Bo Tajaki’s personal use only. And it didn’t even need a door to close to make it off-limits to others. Scout was sure of it.

  The staircase ended, and Scout found herself emerging from between two bookcases onto a balcony overlooking an immense library. Below she could see row after row of freestanding bookcases, disappearing into the depths of shadow long before they reached whatever wall stood on the other side.

  The walls behind Scout were covered with bookcases as well, from the floor to the ceiling nearly five meters abov
e, every shelf stuffed with books of all sizes, colors, and bindings.

  “Is this real?” Scout asked.

  “Quite,” Rona said with a smile. “Books and artifacts both.”

  That word “artifacts” puzzled Scout at first, but then she noticed that between the bookcases behind her and the railing overlooking the library’s main floor before her was a series of glass boxes on pedestals. Some were square, others low and rectangular, but all contained a variety of objects resting inside the cases.

  Scout stepped up to the nearest and saw some sort of brass device. She had no idea what it did, but, given the number of arms and knobs and screws all over it, she was certain it must be complicated.

  And the box it rested in had no lid. She could reach in and touch it if she wanted to.

  “Mr. Tajaki’s office is this way,” Rona said, sweeping a hand towards the left side of the balcony where a narrow staircase that appeared to be made of delicately shaped brass descended to the main floor. There was another like it on the right side, both making a slow progression of long, shallow steps that seemed to encourage anyone walking down them to stop and examine each of the shelves on the way.

  Scout looked at the spines of the books as she followed Rona down to the main level. Some she could read easily enough, some had a sprinkling of unfamiliar words, but most were quite beyond her. She could sound out letters that made words she had never heard.

  And still, others were written in sigils or swoops or sticklike characters that bore no resemblance to the letters she had learned in school as a child.

  Scout was so caught up in trying to decipher those strange letters that she stopped walking altogether, realizing only after Rona had disappeared from sight that she had lost her guide.

  She ran to the bottom of the stairs and pulled up short. But then she should scarcely be surprised to find Emilie in this place. The decorative touches of soft light and warm wood tones were nothing like anything she would ever associate with loud-and-proud Emilie, but whatever the trappings, the room contained troves of data. And Emilie was always where the data was.

  “Hey,” Scout said. Emilie had been scanning row after row of books along the shelf that ran just under the balcony. She looked up at Scout and seemed to take a second to recognize her.

  “Hey,” she said back.

  “Find anything useful?” Scout asked.

  “Too much,” Emilie said as if it pained her.

  “There you are,” Rona said, her long ponytail swinging as she jogged back to find her lost charge. “Mr. Tajaki awaits.”

  “Okay. You coming?” Scout asked Emilie.

  “No, but come get me before you go,” Emilie said.

  Rona smiled again, then led the way down the center of the library, glancing back from time to time to make sure Scout was still with her. The aisle they followed cut down the middle of each row of shelves and Scout looked back and forth, trying to see down each end of each row, to drink it all in. But it was all too much.

  Had Bo read them all? Or Frank? Could anyone’s mind contain all these words and charts and pictures and numbers? All this data?

  When she reached the very last row of books, Rona drew to a halt so suddenly Scout had to stumble back to keep from colliding with her.

  “Mr. Tajaki?” Rona said softly.

  Scout rose up on tiptoe to see over Rona’s shoulder. Bo was alone behind an immense desk, a desk of wood polished so brightly it seemed to contain its own light. Bo looked up from a tablet in his hands and looked impassively at Rona. Then he noticed Scout behind her and summoned a smile of welcome, tucking the tablet away in a drawer as he rose to extend a hand to her.

  Rona stepped to one side to let Scout pass, and Scout came forward to take Bo’s hand. Rona bowed and left without a word.

  “Tell me, Scout, how do you find my library?”

  Scout didn’t answer right away. At first, she found it odd that he didn’t ask instead how she found his ship. Did he think she wasn’t capable of assessing the quality of a ship?

  But then again, she wasn’t. So why should he pretend otherwise?

  And yet, she wasn’t qualified to say anything intelligent about a library either.

  “Come, Scout,” he said, gesturing for her to sit across from him as he smoothed the back of his tunic before taking his own seat. “Are we not friends? Don’t you know by now that I’m not here to judge you? I know what opportunities life has denied you, but six years is not so great a time as all that. It can be made up. And for someone as clever as you, it won’t take even half the time.”

  Scout wasn’t quite sure what he was saying to her. “Are you talking about sending me back to school?”

  “Not exactly,” he said. “There are other ways.” He bent to open the bottom drawer of his desk but paused to look over at her. “May I be permitted one last gift? I know how you feel about them.”

  “What is it?” Scout asked.

  “It is a mere trifle by galactic central standards, but I think you will get far more out of it than the average galactic central teen.”

  Scout chewed her lip. He hadn’t exactly answered her question.

  “You can certainly refuse to even see it. I won’t be offended. Or if, after you see it, you don’t want it or think you shouldn’t take it from me, I’ll understand. I admit I’m offering it to you for selfish reasons.”

  “To make me pick your side,” Scout said.

  “I’ve never wanted to coerce you into a choice at all,” Bo said. She searched his tone for signs of pretend offense, but he was speaking to her quite plainly. “My only hope is that you will see who I am and who my people are and judge us by our merits. My gift is selfish, I admit, because I think with it you will be better able to judge the truth of things.”

  Scout all but squirmed in her seat. Clearly, he wasn’t just going to tell her what he had. She didn’t trust her voice to speak so she just gave a nod, a very quick one lest she change her mind before she had seen what he had.

  Bo reached back down into the drawer and then set a little box on the desk in front of her. It looked like the access box he had given Emilie, shiny black but otherwise featureless. But this was smaller, no larger than the palm of her hand.

  “What does it do?” Scout asked.

  “You have a lens, correct?” Bo asked.

  “One,” Scout said.

  “Put it on, then say, ‘Hello, Teacher.’”

  Scout pulled out the single, scratched lens she had taken from Gertrude Bauer. The other lens had been smashed when the marshal had fallen fatally wounded to the ground, but one had been enough for Scout to access Gertrude’s tools.

  Scout set the lens over her eye and felt that familiar suction as it adhered to her face. The lens compensated for the low light of the room around her, showing everything in far finer detail than her own eyes could see. In the corner it told her the ambient temperature and what looked like coordinates for where she was in space.

  “Hello, Teacher,” Scout said.

  “Hello, student,” said a voice. She couldn’t tell if the voice was male or female, young or old. It seemed to be everything at once. Then she saw a faint outline, a human shape without features like a gray cloud, leaning back against the edge of the desk. “How shall I call you?”

  “Um, Scout,” Scout said, assuming that was what the gray thing was asking her. This was several degrees stranger than the computer on Liam’s ship.

  “Pleased to meet you, Scout,” the form said, its voice still wavering between a thousand different tones. “I am a LaSalle Corporation evolving AI, educator class.”

  “Okay,” Scout said, looking past the gray figure to Bo watching from his chair beyond.

  “I am here to service all your educational needs,” the form went on. “Do you wish to give me a name?”

  “Not just yet,” Scout said, then took the lens from her eye to look at Bo without the gray shape between them. “What is this?”

  “It was my personal tutor fr
om the age of ten until I finished my academic career,” Bo said. “I reset the profile. It will assume an appearance based on your preferences as you interact with it. Giving it a name is the largest step.”

  “But what does it do?” Scout asked.

  “Spend some time with it every day,” Bo said. “It will assess what you know, where you lack knowledge, and the best approach to start moving you forward. It will find what interests you and help you pursue those interests. It will ascertain by what methods you learn the best and the fastest. With this AI, you will surpass other students your age within a year, I guarantee it.”

  “But I make my decision tomorrow night,” Scout said.

  “My gift is not conditional. The AI is yours, whatever you choose,” Bo told her. “I do hope you will confer with your teacher. It can give you the rudiments of the laws involved in the case, the history, whatever you feel you need to know to make your decision.”

  Scout didn’t say out loud, “If I can trust it.”

  “You’ll be as informed as your friend Emilie if you wish to be,” Bo added. Scout didn’t like how it sounded like he was trying to pit her against her friends, and yet his tone held no mischief or malice. She was just being paranoid. Besides, surely he wanted to get all three of them on his side, not just Scout.

  “Thank you,” Scout said, taking the little box from the desk and putting it in her belt pouch.

  “You will use it?” Bo asked.

  “Yes,” Scout said. “Yes, I will.”

  “Excellent,” Bo said with a satisfied smile. “I’m afraid I have some other matters that need dealing with. That’s the trouble with running a galaxy-spanning business.”

  “Of course,” Scout said, backing away.

  “And I won’t be able to call on you tomorrow. Give my regret to your dogs. But I shall see you tomorrow night at the assembly.”

  “Yes,” Scout said, not sure what else she could say.

  Bo took the tablet out of its drawer and set it on top of his desk, scanning and reading, frowning and jabbing at the screen, then reading some more. If he noticed Scout still lingering in the shadows of the last row of bookcases, he said nothing.