The Broken Third (Digitesque Book 4)

by Guerric Haché

  “Ada, how do you know all this?”

  Ada bit her lip and smirked. “I, er, ate the memories of one of the people who built it. What’s Umbra Ex Machina?”

  Baoji widened his eyes and turned back to the crowd with an uncomfortable glance; she noticed the three of them huddled slightly closer together now as Turou tried to explain. “A Haint artificial intelligence virus infected robots in the early colonial days, before the Union banned intelligent machines. It killed millions.”

  “A virus?”

  Elsa made a humming sound. “Imagine the technophage, but instead of living in our bodies it lived in our machines. It wasn’t just robots. It sabotaged medical databases, crippled electrical grids, crashed public transports. It spread misinformation designed to make people stop trusting anything they didn’t already think was true. It could easily have transmitted something to Earth.”

  Ada reached back and stroked the vertebrae that made up the core of her suit. An artificially intelligent weapon that could turn technology against its creators? Venshi had no memories of such things on Earth, at least not that Ada had gathered. But… Earth’s gods were not the most helpful machines in existence. Could the gods have been infected by this virus? It might explain their millenia of stagnant failure.

  “Can I study this Umbra thing? At this academy?”

  Turou nodded. “There’s been more research and speculation on Umbra Ex than you could read in a lifetime, honestly. There’s almost no direct proof it existed - mostly just consistent patterns of failure and disaster for a long time. Then it disappeared after we put limits on artificial intelligence.”

  Ada kept pace . “I can read faster than you think. So this APHEC place -”

  Baoji interrupted her as a roiling sound of chanting and shouting reached their ears. “If the protests haven’t driven my contacts underground.”

  Protest . She still wasn’t sure exactly what kind of complaining that was. “What are the protests?”

  Turou sighed. “We live under martial law. The military has a lot more power than you might expect from a democracy.”

  “If the military has all the weapons and ships, of course they’ll have more power.”

  Elsa shook her head. “He means political power. But there are rules to keep it in check. The Union Charter specifically prevents military activity outside Union systems; normally this helps avoid secret space stations out in the middle of nowhere, but it also means no military missions to Earth.”

  “Which is a rule they obviously violated.” Turou shot Elsa a glance. “They’re trying to pretend it didn’t count, but if they’re trying to go back again , well. If they break such foundational rules, they could break any rule.”

  Elsa rolled her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that. They wanted to kill me.”

  Just attempting to figure out what was going on - which, as far as she could tell, was all about posturing and complaining - almost made Ada’s head hurt. She groaned. “Too much complicated shit. What does this mean for us? Should I even care?”

  She bumped right into Baoji , who had come to a stop after turning a corner. Chanting rolled up the street from a crowd of thousands, marching and waving signs outside a large, dark grey building. Turou and Elsa stopped cold. Taller than most, Ada could see a line of soldiers in black uniforms surrounding the protesters. Guns drawn but not aimed, eyes fixed on the crowd.

  “What the hell is going on?” None of the protesters seemed armed. “The military has guns - why aren’t people running?”

  “They’re betting the soldiers won’t shoot.” Elsa was frowning. “But those are non-lethal weapons, so they will shoot if they feel threatened. This could go bad quick.”

  Suddenly the police were raising their weapons and shouting; Ada couldn’t see what provoked them.

  “A sign from the heavens that we should take another street.” Baoji pointed left. “The meeting is two blocks down.”

  They crossed the street, moving to the next block, following Baoji in silence. Tianzhou was not as polished as Daneer, but it also showed signs of chaos that Ada had not expected to find in the colonies. Brightly coloured paint splashed across walls and doors here and there, slogans and admonitions that Ada didn’t fully understand. Signs hung from buildings. Banners flew or dangled awkwardly from windows, others fixed more permanently to masts. It was almost homely.

  As they moved, they were passed by more and more strangers wearing odd makeup, patchily dyed hair, and strange visors with hatched textures and no purpose Ada could discern. Then they were in front of a creaky iron door set into an old, red-brick building. Baoji knocked on it as Ada’s eyes darted up and down the road, looking for trouble.

  Trouble didn’t come, and a slot in the door opened. Baoji exchanged a few barks with an unfamiliar voice on the other side, in a language Ada didn’t understand, and soon the panel slid shut and the door swung open. On the other side stood a few humans with tan-gold faces and jet-black hair, staring at Ada in particular. They asked something of Turou, he responded in the same tongue, and then the humans started moving down the hall.

  “Everything looks good.” Baoji pointed at Ada. “Get that box out - we’ll just hand it over and that will be that. There’s already a skimmer ready for you.”

  Ada cocked her head. “Should I take the helmet off?”

  Baoji nodded, and shot Turou a look. “He would kill me if I tried to slip this past him. Let’s be straightforward.”

  “How do we know there isn’t a bounty on her head worth more than whatever’s in that box?” Elsa moved noticeably towards Ada in the corridor, and it struck Ada that she looked tense.

  He grinned with all his teeth. “The sense I got from contacts is that she’s radioactive. Too dangerous to try bagging. Nobody wants to risk it.”

  A few words went over her head, but Ada grinned at the sentiment that came through. “So smugglers are the smart ones.”

  They strode into a large room, oddly lit, with several screens and associated machinery settled on tall desks. The humans and mirrans standing at the desks were nondescript, but Ada quickly noticed they were all armed with small guns strapped to their hips, and several glanced intently at the newcomers before returning their gaze to the screens. She couldn’t tell what they were doing - colourful shapes that vaguely looked like people or creatures moved about on their screens. Were they watching video from somewhere?

  An older man - or maybe he was middle-aged, by colonial standards - kept his gaze on them, though, and smiled. He did something to the device on his ear and stepped away from his screen, and the moment he did so five other people also shifted, suddenly looking away from their screens and carefully watching him as he approached Baoji.

  Then he glanced at Ada, froze, and then slowly turned on his heel to let out a deep, creaky laugh. Freakishly, most of the room immediately grinned and laughed along with him, in a way that struck Ada as deeply insincere.

  “Ada Liu?” The man turned to her, then to Baoji. “Baoji, my son, you brought me Ada Liu? I’m not sure if you’re trying to kill me or make me rich.”

  Baoji’s ears flicked. “I’m actually transporting her somewhere else, sir.” He shot Ada a look. “Ada, this is Master Ngoc. Give him the box.”

  She hesitated slightly, but this Ngoc continued smiling, leaning against a tall table in the middle of the room. She hefted the box, then, and brought it over, though for the moment Ngoc seemed more interested in her than the box. “You really are tall, Miss Liu.”

  “My name is Ada, not Miss.” She left the box on the table and stepped back, glancing at the guards who were clearly only pretending to pay attention to their screens.

  “Do my people make you nervous? Or are you trying to decide whose parts to use if we shoot you?”

  She laughed at that, making sure to show some teeth as she did. “If anybody here shoots, I’ll start with yours.”

  The room went deathly quiet as all the guards in the room stared at her, trading uncertain gla
nces. Ngoc raised an eyebrow for a moment, then laughed with her. “Brave. Reckless. What should I expect from a savage, I suppose?”

  Savage?

  She had come out here to the Union fully prepared to be called a savage, but at every turn the Union proved it was just a muddled, bickering cesspool of backwards idiots. She was no savage here - she was heir to something far greater than anyone in the Union could hope to aspire to. The nerve of him calling her a savage -

  Ada opened her mouth to cut him off, but Elsa grabbed her wrist and shook her head. She wasn’t wrong, and neither was Ngoc - Ada was reckless, and it got her into trouble. The kind of trouble she might not get into if she were a bit more forgiving; a bit more like Isavel. She bit her tongue and kept quiet.

  Ngoc shook his head and glanced at Turou. “In over your head, aren’t you, Mister Chiu? Good people, though, at Guwenhua. You do good work.” Then he glanced at Elsa. “How are you enjoying your promotion, Lieutenant Carrera?”

  Ada glanced at them, wondering if they knew this man - but from their expressions that seemed impossible. Turou was openly boggling, and Elsa was tight-lipped, shooting Ada a glance that could mean any number of things.

  Ngoc shrugged, then turned his eyes to the box. “Well, this is my payment, isn’t it Baoji?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ngoc pried open the box and reached inside - but whatever it was, he didn’t bring it into sight, apparently content to put it back down after briefly touching and examining it. “Oh, Baoji. Always such a good man. This model number is easily worth two thousand more than you promised.”

  Baoji did look pleased with himself. “A token of friendship, sir.”

  “Yes, to friendship.” He closed the box and gestured to one of his people, who came and quickly squirreled the box away. Then he beckoned someone else over. A dark-clad, pale-skinned and pale-haired human stepped away from his screen, clasping his hands together and bowing at the shoulder.

  “Jura, please fly these fine young folks to Guwenhua. A thousand credits for you if they contact me unharmed afterwards on the right channel.”

  The man nodded curtly and stepped towards a door at the back of the room, clasping his hands in front of himself patiently. Ngoc turned back to Baoji and the two stepped forward to shake hands, after which Baoji bowed at the shoulder. “Please don’t let me keep you here any longer. Always a pleasure doing business.” There was something in Ngoc’s tone that Ada didn’t like, but Baoji agreed amicably.

  “Many thanks, sir.”

  Elsa and Turou started gingerly walking through the room and the staring guards, but Ngoc briefly gestured to Ada as they passed. “And you, Ada Liu.” He nodded towards Elsa. “Don’t be too merciful on those wearing the badge your lady friend used to wear. Kick a few teeth in if they try to stop you. You’ll be doing many honest businessmen across the twelve a favour.”

  Ada saw Elsa gripping her hands tightly behind her back, but she didn’t respond. Ada simply nodded. “I’ve punched teeth in, Ngoc. I’d hate to think what might happen if I kicked one of you in the face.”

  Ngoc laughed and waved them away, turning his back to them and returning to his screen as his guards continued watching them. She reached the door, and was about to leave when Baoji spoke up.

  “This is where we part ways.” He glanced at Turou. “I doubt APHEC is going to like this, but that’s your part to play. I’ll be in touch soon.”

  Turou made a brave face, and the two shook hands awkwardly; then Baoji returned to the room, and Elsa yanked Ada down the hall.

  Ngoc’s man Jura took the lead, and they followed him out to the roof. It looked beat-up and dirty on the outside, but on the inside the skimmer was remarkably clean, textured, and comfortable. The pilot said nothing at all, and they were soon in the air again. Elsa looked supremely uncomfortable, constantly fiddling with the weapons she kept concealed in her pants and jacket as though they were under threat. Ada reached out to grab her fidgeting wrist, made eye contact, and with her other hand briefly flickered some black code.

  Elsa got the picture, let out a long breath, and seemed to relax a bit. Turou moved a device into Ada’s field of vision, and the flat screen seemed to display something like a map, with a straight line traced from a beige blotch near a river marked Tianzhou and a small red dot marked Guwenhua. Apparently they weren’t going to speak in the presence of someone they didn’t trust. Fair enough.

  The skimmer swirled around the map, represented by a little blue arrow, and after a few minutes it lined right up with the line across the map, cruising towards the monastery at a steadily increasing speed. It was a long, quiet flight.

  With spare time and no immediate danger, Ada found herself playing through the apparent connections she had found so far. Umbra Ex Machina was a Haint virus that devastated intelligent machines across the Union, so it could be related to the odd sluggishness and stagnance of Earth’s own relics and machines and gods. It could also be related to the Shade entity that helped Venshi’s ilk forge the technophage. And even if it wasn’t, there was clearly a history and tradition of people in the Union who espoused the same views as Venshi, the same desire to force humans live as much like wild animals as possible, the same desire to unmake everything that had been made.

  She had the nagging sense she was forgetting relevant she had learned on Earth, but nothing in Venshi’s memories told her anything more beyond that laboratory’s name. So she had learned a little bit, at least - she could approach the problem of why the ancients destroyed themselves with a little more understanding and context, and she had options for learning even more about it.

  But the other half her mission was a failure so far. The Union was not a bastion of culture and imagination and science; she would learn no ancient powers from them. They were a bickering, squabbling throng of humans and mirrans living in fear of each other and of an enemy hundreds of years silent. They would not be able to help her rebuild.

  At best she could learn from their failures, but that had its limits; she might just have to go back. Once she had done her best to make sure Elsa, Turou, and Baoji were no longer hunted for her own actions, of course. If she could get them safe, somehow, she could go back.

  Back to Isavel, if she could find her.

  She rested her hand on the locator stone, rolling it around between her fingers. What would happen if she did? She had left despite Isavel telling her she didn’t need to. And to her credit, Isavel may have been right. It wasn’t clear she would really find solutions out here.

  So what would Isavel say if Ada showed up outside her tent again? And why was she still thinking about this, here, light-years away?

  Ada had always been good at forgetting people who were gone, but Isavel seemed determined not to be forgotten. She had followed Ada out here, haunting the dark corners of her mind. If Ada went back to her… Either her hold over Ada would be broken, or it would grow into something real and tangible.

  It shouldn’t be if, then. It should be when.

  Occasionally, light rain pattered against the window, smeared horizontally as the skimmer flew. It was a few hours before they finally slowed to circle something, and the indicator on Turou’s map showed them at their destination. To Ada’s surprise, it was still dawn, the sun hanging low on the horizon.

  That seemed like a safe question to voice. “Does the sun ever rise properly?”

  Turou nodded. “Days are very long on Chang’e. There are basically four days - we call them wakes. Morning, noon, evening, and midnight; we sleep between all those. It won’t be lighter out until we start to get tired and want to sleep, and then we’ll wake up and it’ll be bright out.”

  “I fucking hate that, by the way.” Elsa was still on edge, her left knee bouncing up and down. “Second time on Chang’e, and I did not enjoy it last time.”

  Ada raised an eyebrow at her. “Do you like any world that isn’t Tlaloc?”

  Elsa smirked and said nothing.

  The skimmer began to descend,
and Ada looked down to see this Guwenhua sprawled out below them. Long and fairly narrow buildings poked through patches of forest, separated by stone courtyards and dense gardens. Red, tiled roofs curved upwards and outwards from the corners of most buildings, which were rarely more than two or three floors tall. It seemed more like a small city than a single temple or the Institute, and might well house as many people as Glass Peaks.

  “This is your home?” She looked to Turou, and he nodded, his chest puffing out with a bit of pride as the skimmer settled onto the ground.

  “Yes, this is it. Museum, cultural center, school, monastery, and more. Guwenhua is the heart of our efforts to preserve one of Earth’s most ancient and enduring cultures.”

  Ada stepped out of the skimmer, the other two following. Two humans in loose buttoned shirts were cautiously crossing the grass-speckled stone courtyard to meet them, wielding spindly dome-shaped things to ward off the light rain. Even as Turou walked towards them with open arms, the skimmer rose up into the air again and zipped away, leaving them with no means of escape.

  Escape. Why was that the first thing on Ada’s mind?

  As she looked around she realized that at eye level, it actually did remind her in some strange way of the Institute. It had to be the architecture - the courtyards and flat buildings and cultivated trees, the isolated feeling, the loose clothing. She couldn’t help but feel a twinge of nervousness at being reminded, so far away, of the last place she wanted to be.

  Then, with a deflated grin, she realized being at the Institute would at least put her a lot closer to Isavel.

  Chapter 12

  After a brief, linguistically incomprehensible conversation with these greeters, Turou led Ada and Elsa away into Guwenhua. The familiarity was unnerving. The walls and buildings were free of the banners and writing and ornamentation that cluttered other colonial cities. Much of Guwenhua was simple stone, wood, and clay, interspersed with blocks of bright paint or lacquer. It was quiet . Ada wasn’t sure if these echoes of the Institute felt comfortable or oppressive, but it was definitely strange.