Against Impassable Barriers

by Kate MacLeod

  And even alone he revealed nothing. Scout wanted to believe he was honest.

  But she wasn’t sure she could.

  20

  Scout slept little that night. She gave up at what she assumed would be about dawn back home and slipped out of bed, gathering up her shoes and managing to sneak herself and the dogs out the door without waking the others.

  A hospital worker sitting in a chair just down the hall from the room looked up as she stepped out of the room, but if he was there to guard them, he made no move to stop her as she clipped the leashes on the dogs’ collars, pulled on her shoes, and headed out of the hospital.

  The marketplace was as lively as ever, black marketers in their wide array of clothing spilling in and out of the various shops, gaming halls, and drinking establishments. None of them bothered Scout or her dogs. Quite the contrary; the persistence of their behavior, the basic honesty of what they wanted out of life and how they went about getting it, was refreshing.

  But she left it behind her as she climbed the long stair to the park. They darkened the park at night to let the nocturnal animals that dwelled there go about their own business, but it was brightly lit again by the time she reached it. She unhooked the dogs and let them run.

  She had decided just to let her feet take her where they wanted to go, but when she at last lifted her head, she saw to her annoyance that they had brought her back to the secluded waterfall.

  Although perhaps that made sense. She sat down on the flat rock, took out the little AI box, and set it on the rock before her.

  She didn’t know why she hadn’t told Geeta or Emilie about it. She had decided she wasn’t going to lie or hide things from them, and then she had without even thinking.

  She could go back now, wake them up, show them what she had. Maybe Emilie could look at it, see if it was a trick or not. That would be the sensible thing to do.

  Instead, she took the lens out of her pocket and placed it over her eye. “Hello, Teacher,” Scout said.

  “Hello, Scout,” the gray form said. It was sitting on the rock before her, mirroring her own cross-legged posture, the little box between them. “Have you chosen a name for me yet?” the AI asked.

  “No,” Scout said. “I will.”

  “Where would you like to begin?” the AI asked.

  “What do you already know? Not, like, galactic knowledge,” she quickly amended. “What do you know about me and what I’m doing here?”

  “Since you accepted me from my former student, I have scanned all available networks for information about you, including the information stored on the tablet in your belt,” the AI told her.

  “So basically you know everything,” Scout said.

  “Basically,” the AI agreed.

  “So, if you were me, in this situation now, what would you do?” Scout asked. Then she held her breath, waiting for it to tell her to choose Bo. Then she could just shut it off and bring it to Emilie.

  “Don’t you know what you want to do?” the AI asked.

  “I don’t know what I should do,” Scout said.

  “But what do you want to do?” the AI persisted.

  Scout thought that over. She had seen everything she could possibly wish of both ships. She had talked to Bo and listened to his explanations.

  But she hadn’t talked to the Months.

  “You have questions,” the AI said.

  “Questions only the Months can answer,” Scout agreed. “But what if they won’t?”

  “They certainly won’t if you never ask,” the AI said, logically enough.

  Scout nodded, took off the lens, and put it and the little box away. Then she whistled for the dogs, reattached their leashes, and led them back to the audience chamber.

  She was not surprised to find the sisters there, alone, waiting for her. Everyone seemed to know where she was, where she was going, and what she was doing every moment of the day.

  “You wanted to see us?” Mai said, her voice a warm coo. Jun was also seated, not pacing this time, but scowling fiercely.

  And she was supposed to be the one who liked Scout.

  “Why are you running a black market in the Space Farer stations? Why run around the upper management when they’re supposed to be working for you?” Scout asked.

  “They are supposed to be working for the Tajaki trade dynasty, but as you know, there is a bit of a disagreement about just who they would be reporting to. The black markets let us get a feel for the people we hope to liberate, what their wants and needs are. Who they are as a people. It also lets us provide for the wants and needs their current upper management are not in a position to provide for,” Mai said.

  “And it makes you rich,” Scout guessed.

  “What we make from this particular facet of our trade empire is largely eaten up in legal fees, I’m afraid,” Mai said.

  “That’s not her real question,” Jun said. Scout flinched at the raw quality of her voice. She sounded like she had spent a lifetime screaming at the top of her lungs and now she was forced to try to form words from the thready remains of her vocal cords.

  “I know, dear,” Mai said, patting her sister on the hand. “But she’ll get to it in her own time, don’t you think?”

  Jun just scowled.

  Scout took a deep breath, squeezing the leashes in her hand as if they could lend her strength. “You have been stirring up animosity between the Planet Dwellers and the Space Farers,” she said at last. “Your actions will bring about a war.”

  “You were already at war when we arrived,” Mai said mildly. “We arranged your cease-fire, actually. It’s a great shame we couldn’t arrive sooner. Just a matter of days and we could have saved your town. So many resources lost, human and otherwise. Wars are bad for business.”

  “You are trying to infiltrate the rebellion,” Scout went on.

  “The safest way to dismantle it is from within,” Mai said. “They have access to some nasty things and are liable to retaliate swiftly against any outside attack.”

  “You used drugs to manipulate a grieving man,” Scout said.

  “We provided him with clean, safe pharmaceuticals in lieu of what he had been taking,” Mai said. “I know that was mishandled. Some of our underlings thought it would be good for their careers if they took some initiative in that matter. But they pushed too hard, broke an important connection we had been nurturing for quite some time. It was a grave disappointment for us. I assure you the parties involved have been terminated.”

  Scout didn’t ask if they meant fired or killed. She knew they wanted her to.

  “Any other questions?” Mai asked, too sweetly.

  Scout tried hard to think, but her head was already aching. In the fairy tales she remembered from childhood, there had always been ways for clever adventurers to trick others into revealing the truth, but those ways always seemed to rely on a clear logical solution. It would be easier to divide truth from untruth if they were distinct things. This person was a constant truth-teller, that person always told lies.

  But everyone she encountered seemed to be doing both at once, almost arbitrarily. And she wasn’t clever enough to sort it out.

  “Go and take a walk if you like,” Mai said. “Think it over. Consult your friends. Consult the professor you have in your pocket. Consult our dear cousin Bo. If you have more questions, we’ll still be here. Just come back and ask.”

  Scout nodded and led her dogs away. Gert’s back was a bristling ridge of raised hackles and she had been growling a low warning at Jun since Jun had spoken. Shadow didn’t like her any better. They should go before Jun got really annoyed and upset her dogs.

  The sisters knew about the AI. They knew everything. Scout doubted she could feel more exposed, more on display for all to see, if she were on board the crystal ship of the tribunal enforcers.

  Scout and the dogs wandered the ship for the better part of the day before finally returning to the hospital room. Geeta was napping upright in her chair but opened her
eyes as Scout entered. She nudged Emilie sitting next to her, who dismissed her virtual world to give the real one her attention.

  “You’ve been avoiding us?” Emilie said. It was something between a statement and a question.

  “Bo gave me this,” Scout said, setting the little black box on the cart of half-eaten lunch food. Emilie picked it up, turned it over in her fingers. “Hello, Teacher,” Scout said. Emilie glanced up at Scout then jerked back as if startled by something between them.

  But then she was still wearing her glasses.

  “Evolving AI,” Emilie said, handing the box back to Scout. “It’s already imprinted on you. Or so it told me.”

  “He really wants you on his side,” Geeta said. “Is that how you’re going to declare?”

  “I really think we should all be together on this,” Emilie said. “They are going to split the ships after this assembly tonight. Do we really want to be on separate ships?”

  Scout stared glumly at the floor.

  “It’s not so dire as all that,” Geeta said. “We’re all heading to galactic central. It’s not like they’re going to own us.”

  “They already think they own us,” Scout said. “They’re just fighting about which member of the family holds the deed.”

  “Once we get to the court and Seeta is safe, we can say whatever we like. They can’t force us to say anything,” Geeta said. “And surely the Torreses will be there. There won’t be any barricade keeping them out.”

  “I don’t think they have the power to help us,” Scout said. “I don’t think they ever did.”

  “So if it doesn’t matter what we choose, the least we can do is choose to stay together, right?” Emilie said.

  “The risk of moving Seeta is slight, correct?” Scout asked.

  “More than the risk of not moving her,” Geeta quickly said.

  “But slight,” Emilie agreed.

  “And Bo will share everything with us. We can spend every day in his library researching everything. By the time we got to galactic central, we’d know what our rights are.”

  “The Months have a library too,” Geeta said.

  “Which they didn’t offer us until we already had Bo’s,” Scout said. “What will change as soon as that airlock detaches? Do we go back to having access to nothing?”

  “That could be true no matter what side we end up on,” Geeta said.

  “I just feel like the Months want Amatheon only for what wealth they can extract from it. Because they’ve been extracting it already through their black markets. But Bo says he wants to make life better, to bring in the technology to make Amatheon like any planet in galactic central.”

  “He says,” Emilie said.

  “You believe him,” Geeta said.

  “I don’t know,” Scout said. “There’s something weird about all the people on his ship.”

  “All wearing royal blue, you mean?” Emilie said. “Like the shadowy folks back home with their black outfits. It would make sense if he was behind the force working against the Months’ people. More sense than any other explanation, even though he denied it.”

  “I know,” Scout said. She had never felt more incapable of dealing with the world than she did in that moment.

  And then the chime sounded, not the door chime but a larger, more resonant sound that filled every room and hallway of the hospital, perhaps the entire ship.

  They all looked up towards the ceiling. The room didn’t speak to them, but they all knew their time had come.

  This time it was the door that chimed, and Scout opened the door to let Caleb enter.

  “The delegates from the other branch of the Tajaki trade dynasty are here, as well as both ménages of tribunal enforcers,” he said. “They all await you in the audience chamber.”

  Geeta pressed her hand to the top of her sister’s coffin, then took Emilie’s arm to walk out of the room. Scout gathered up her dogs’ leashes and followed behind with Caleb.

  For someone about to decide the fate of millions, she felt a lot more like she was walking to her own execution.

  21

  Voices echoed through the audience chamber so loudly they could be heard even before the double doors opened. Caleb gave Scout’s arm a reassuring squeeze and then moved across the room to join the Months on their dais.

  Their lawyers and Bo’s lawyers were once again in a huddle off to the side of the strip of carpet, arguing furiously. The six tribunal enforcers arrayed before the dais were once more standing with heads bowed and hands tucked inside sleeves, waiting quietly for the moment when they’d be needed.

  Bo was near the door with his own ménage of tribunal enforcers and fell into step beside Scout as she followed Geeta and Emilie to the end of the carpet.

  “Did you notice?” he asked.

  Scout looked up at him, but he looked the same as before. He was wearing the ivory tunic again. She wondered if it had some special meaning for him, that he always wore it when confronting his scarlet-favoring cousins.

  Then she noticed his lawyers, his employees, were all dressed in red.

  “You changed their color,” she said.

  “Indeed. Rona told me you didn’t like the blue. It’s a small gesture, not meant to influence your vote, of course,” he was quick to add.

  Scout gave a little nod. Rona either had not understood Scout’s actual problem with the mandatory uniformity or had given it a little spin when she had reported it to her boss. The choice of new color had certainly been hers. So at least one person was happy.

  Until Bo changed it again on another whim.

  Scout came to a halt next to Geeta, and Emilie dropped to one knee to reassure the dogs, who found all the people shouting, their angry voices echoing through the hall, more than a little disconcerting.

  Then she felt eyes on her and looked up to see that same young-looking tribunal enforcer looking at her again. Those eyes were so intense, as if they were speaking volumes at her, but she had no way of understanding a bit of it.

  “They are unsettling, aren’t they?” Bo whispered.

  “‘Unsettling’—that’s the word everyone keeps using,” Scout said. “They almost look like they’re not quite human.”

  “That’s up for debate,” Bo said. “Perhaps Emilie found the details in her research?” He looked to Emilie, who shook her head. “The tribunal enforcers all come from a wet planet called Boueux. Their ancestors settled there in the early days of colonization away from Old Earth. They consider themselves an ancient people, although frankly we all have the same ancestors, so . . .” He trailed off with a shrug.

  “Is that why they are so odd?” Emilie asked, interested now.

  “No, it’s because of something on that planet,” Bo said. “No one has found exactly what is the cause—it could be many things working together—but over generations of living on that planet, the people developed an entirely different form of communication, not a spoken one or even a written one.”

  “It’s all microexpressions. They can read each other’s faces,” Emilie said.

  “That’s what it looks like to us,” Bo agreed. “But some claim it’s more. There are scents involved as well, which is why they stand close together for the more involved conversations. Some even claim they have a rudimentary form of telepathy.”

  “Do you believe that?” Emilie asked.

  Bo shrugged. “It’s an interesting field of study, I’ll say that. And, again, unsettling.”

  Scout looked back at the one still gazing at her. Were they trying to communicate with Scout through telepathy? But they must know that wouldn’t work.

  Or was she just not trying hard enough? If she concentrated, could she detect thoughts inside her own head that weren’t hers?

  That wasn’t a comforting thought.

  “He’s standing too close to those who are about to testify,” Mai said, drawing everyone’s attention to Bo standing among the three girls.

  “You are quite correct,” Bo said with a bow
and backed away. He gave Scout a little smile and closed a fist in a gesture she guessed was meant to lend her strength.

  The lawyers argued on for several more minutes before finally breaking apart and drifting back to their respective sides of the room.

  Scout had no idea what they could even be arguing about before any of the three of them had even declared their intentions yet. And how much more arguing would there be afterward? They could be standing around on this carpet all night.

  Which wouldn’t be the worst thing. It was soothing, standing on such a surface. Soft and yet supportive both at once.

  “It’s time,” Mai said when a sustained silence had finally fallen over the hall. “Geeta Malini, we’ll start with you. Do you feel like you’ve been threatened or unduly influenced in any way to make your decision in one side’s favor or the other?”

  “No,” Geeta said, her voice carrying strongly through the room.

  “And are you satisfied that all of your questions have been answered fully?”

  “Yes,” Geeta said.

  “And what is your choice?”

  Geeta raised her chin. “I will remain here with my sister.”

  There was a low murmur from both groups of lawyers. Mai raised a hand to quiet her own, and Bo turned, hands still folded in front of him, and gave his own a quelling look.

  “Emilie Tonnelier,” Mai began.

  “No, yes, and I’ll stay,” Emilie interrupted.

  There was more of an uproar among the lawyers at this series of answers offered even before the questions, and the two principal lawyers once again met in the middle of the room to argue it over.

  Emilie strayed from where they were waiting at the end of the carpet to move closer to Bo.

  “I do thank you for access to your library,” she said, reaching into her pocket for the access node.

  “Keep it,” he said, raising a hand to refuse the shiny black box. “Use it as much as you like. Although I will warn you that as my ship moves away from this one and the distance between that node and my library increases, your requests will take longer to respond to. I imagine somewhere between here and galactic central we’ll be so far apart it will cease to function at all, but my home library also responds to it. Once you reach galactic central, you will have full access again.”