As a group, Maud’s parents had always preferred the more traditional tracks, especially the doleful ones. Ballads, mostly—even dirges. Today the mix was peppy, up-tempo. A transparent strategy for cajoling a grumpy adult child into a better mood?
The production line created a steady rhythm of clang, bang, thump throughout the facility. Harvest and packaging teams worked at capacity, trying to supply meds for the stressed refugees thronging Garnet Station as Lodestone on Titan and Sapphire Station on Europa were evacuated.
“Lucky cannabis is still a foundation med and not luxury product,” Nata observed. “If the Kinze cornered that market, too…”
Maud could easily imagine the scale of the social upheaval if that happened. Beer and wine shortages were acute, and the first human in the queue for real cheese was fourteen months behind a long roster of Kinze names. The mellowing effect of pot was barely keeping the lid on.
“Price of progress, ah?” Nata added. “Don’t look so worried, sapling. We’ll get into the Exemplars yet.”
She nodded, halfheartedly. “Or maybe we bankrupted the planet for nothing.”
If the Bootstrap Project got shut down, Frankie’s survival odds might increase.
Maud had barely registered the traitorous thought when her implant tightened again, pulsing briefly … and this time with recognizable Morse patterns.
B U T T sig—and it died.
@ButtSignal. That would be Frankie’s chum Hung, probably, widecasting on the pilot’s channel. Of course that’s what would come through first. Maud sighed and, obedient test subject that she was, sent a contact record to the quantum-comms project. There was a tightness near her spine now, a sense of crunchiness, like broken scab.
Losing Bootstrap would mean humankind and their AI offspring would be forced to submit to some kind of protectorate, to accept indenture. The offworlders would sell them the #supertechs, adding the cost to the existing planetary debt, and then the Solakinder would spend eight or ten centuries buying their way out of servitude, like so many other races before them.
Nata picked a drooping seedling out of the flat. “Alas, little sprig. The odds, as old fannish saying goes, they are not being in your favor.”
“Plenty of that going around.” Maud rearranged the grow blocks, freeing up a corner, and chose a new seedling comparable in size and health to fill in the gap.
Nata kicked her, under the workstation. Caught her eye, kicked her again. Gestural moji, asking what was wrong.
What wasn’t wrong?
“Who did we think we were? Inventing wormholes and the quantum comms and FTL ships all at the same time … it was audacious.”
“Your Franks would say you like audacious.”
If she was going to reconnect with the @Visionaries, Maud needed to voice a few doubts. Let Upton hope she might buy into their agenda, over time.
“Don’t talk to me about Franks, Nata.”
Complicated play of emotions across their face. Before Maud’s parent could tell her all the things she already knew—that Frankie wasn’t actively looking for ways to kill herself just for kicks, that she was doing the best she could, that big risks were warranted when set against the prospect of lost sovereignty, that her love was so pure—the tingles in Maud’s back flared, shooting a sense of pins and needles all the way up to her shoulder blades and down to the backs of her knees.
As she jumped—half-involuntarily—off her stool, Maud got an urgent ping from the Ferals. And a voice message, from Jermaine: “Maud. We need you.”
Maud requested a break from her shift. She was, suddenly, dry-mouthed with fear.
Nata handed off their workstation, pulling a tab of gum out of their worldlies—gum with a precious microdose of nicotine. They walked to the window, staring out at Mars.
“Strange to be back,” they said.
“You liked Europa.”
“I had a good crew.”
The floor manager pinged, acknowledging their break.
Maud sat cross-legged on the floor, letting herself glaze. The courtyard of the Feral5 e-state formed around her, a Timbuktu-style garden filled with palm trees and Mediterranean mosaics.
Jermaine and Ember were all but clinging to each other. Frankie had that set, sick look that wouldn’t go until she’d found a fight or, maybe, some newly inventive way to risk life and limb. Babs was nowhere to be seen. Still off sleuthing on Ember’s behalf?
Crane’s feathers had pixelated edges, as if his attention were in a thousand other places and he couldn’t be bothered to refresh his own toon.
“Is Ember being taken? We had four more days—”
“Maud,” Frankie said. “It’s Babs.”
“Oh, no,” Maud said. “Has she—Did she do something? Did she hurt someone?”
Crane’s other code child, Happ, had killed someone, long before. And Babs loved Ember so madly …
“What?” Frankie shook her head. “No, she’s been … as far as we can tell, she’s been…”
“Been what?”
“Killed,” EmberJerm said, in identical tones of grief.
“Babs?” It was word salad. Nonsense. “Babs. Killed. What?”
“Murdered,” Ember said. His lip wobbled; he looked like a toddler.
If Maud’s flesh hadn’t already been sitting, she would have staggered. At a loss for words, she signed, How?
“Unknown.” Crane tipped a wing at a shareboard, and a series of messages came up. “All we have is this.”
Shot of a mathematics classroom, timestamped ten years before.
Capture of Sonika Singer, or a copy, ripping her own virtual skin off.
A text: I’ve solved the portal tech theft!
“What are they?” Maud demanded. The base of her spine was buzzing again.
“Messages embedded in reboot requests,” said Crane. “Clues about who did this, or how it was done.”
“Or why.” Jermaine rubbed his lower jaw, sure tell that on the surface, he was in tears. “What do we do? Do we hold a funeral? Can we … can we delay Ember’s surrender?”
“Funeral?” Ember’s voice was raw, no logic to be had. “Babs isn’t gone!”
“There’s a tab of her, on Sneezy,” Frankie agreed. She had her fists half-raised, like she was holding in an urge to push back, or punch someone. “A plus-one. If we can retrieve…”
“It won’t be the same,” Maud said. “Babs1 took on station manager functions; they’re sure to have absorbed some of Belvedere’s personality by now. Especially since they’ve been alone out there—”
“It’ll have backups, won’t it?” Jerm said. “Will it?”
“How do we keep her attacker from hashing a new instance?” Crane demanded.
“We bloody catch them,” Frankie said. “Duh.”
Maud’s thoughts settled out of their whirl. Crane was Babs’s codefather. He was the primary grieving party.
“What do you want to do, Crane?” she asked. “What will help? How do we cope?”
The toon of the great blue heron straightened up, smoothing the frowsy edges of its wingtips and uniform. “I … may have a thought.”
The metaphor around the pack changed slightly. A fountain disappeared, and in its place the verdant courtyard grew a new door. Beyond it, they saw a bedroom, sepia-tinted and a little old-fashioned.
A hospital room, Maud realized.
Linking hands, the human toons tiptoed to the door. Crane led the way inside, to the foot of a wicker hospital bed. Babs was curled on it, asleep, tortoiseshell fur luminous against a pillowcase the color of sandstone.
Maud guessed: “As long as that other tab’s out there, then the spin on this is … that she’s just sick?”
Crane nodded.
“Sick, not dead,” Frankie said, voice husky. “Good.”
Jermaine sent Crane moji: hugs, and then flowers. Crane expanded the latter into a vase of peach roses and set them on a bedside table. The tens of thousands of people following a shiny new hashtag, #AImurd
er, began sending strokes, virtual gifts, moji.
Jermaine set visiting hours for Babs’s friends. Ember selected a family portrait—the pack sitting around a table in Babs’s favorite speakeasy, cosplaying vintage and laughing over poker chips and virtual shots of whiskey. He set it beside the vase.
Maud felt a rising swell of hopelessness. “She said, in one of those messages, that she’d solved the tech theft.”
“Nice motive for murder, if she exonerated Ember,” Frankie said.
Ember scratched his head. “The instance on Sneezy might be able to reconstruct her train of thought.”
“That doesn’t help you, Ember,” Maud said. “You’ve got four days.”
“Someone did this to shut her up,” Frankie said. “We can apply for extra time.”
“Like that’ll work,” Jerm said.
Frankie nudged a chair at Crane—who rejected it by way of stretching to his full height. “This room is just right. A paw we can hold, and a solemn promise to find whoever did this.”
“Promise,” Ember echoed. Maud and Jermaine signed agreement.
Crane said, “The execution will have been carried out by a sapp.”
“We have to get Babs1 off Sneezy,” Frankie said.
“A mere question of reaching across eleven light-years,” Crane said.
“First step is going back to Lodestone.” Frankie’s eyes sought Maud’s over the simulated body of their packmate. “All of us. We petition the Kinze for a trip out to Sneezy for humanitarian…”
There was no way Frankie would throw herself on the Kinze’s mercy.
“And what? Give up Ember, as agreed?” Jerm said. “Even though Babs said she had the answer?”
There was a false note in his voice. Had they been hatching a plan? Without her? Again?
“Maud?”
Of course they had.
“I have research and other obligations here,” she said.
“I’ll just bet you do,” Frankie said.
“Excuse me?”
“They’re picking us off! We should stay together.”
“If you wanted to build togetherness, you shouldn’t have exiled me to the cannabis fields.”
“She’s right, Franks,” Jermaine began.
“Dividing our energies is just stupid—”
“You go off on solo jaunts all the time,” Maud interrupted. “Blasting out to the Dumpster on a wing and a prayer. Breaking FTL speed records. All of us waiting to find out if you’ve gone splat—”
“If I had gone splat, it would’ve been because of sabotage!”
“How is that even relevant?”
Frankie had her hand on her back, as if it ached. Hoping she’d see the point—and, for once, she did.
Maud covered her face, as though she was hiding feels. She took a deep breath and let her attention settle in her sacrum. The spot around the injection felt warm and itchy, like a minor scratch throbbing in time with her pulse …
No, it was Morse. Letters spelling Don’t split up!
Her heart slammed.
She tried to figure out how to send pulses back … and failed. Instead, she locked eyes with Frankie and said aloud, “The answer’s here, Franks. Not eleven light-years from home—”
“Babs may’ve found something that cleared Ember!”
“She might have cleared him here. Using transcripts here.”
Another round of pulses. Gotta stick together!
“I’m not going anywhere,” Maud said. “Stay, Frankie. Look for answers here.”
“Rubbish. Bloody sit still and let them keep picking us off one by one? Noping that.”
Jerm put a hand out. “She didn’t say sit—”
“Or maybe that’s the point. Fry Babs, steal Ember, then what? Take out Jermaine, Maud, and run back to Daddy?”
Here it was. Maud had always known, deep down, that if she told anyone who Upton was—really was—she would lose everything. “What?”
“That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? Give up Ember and buddy up to—”
“Shut up!” It came out a shout. “You think you have all the answers, but you don’t, Frankie, you don’t!”
“What am I missing here?” Jerm said.
Another text from the implant. Tell him. Tell on Upton. Make it public!
“Fuck you very much, Hedgehog.” If she burned Upton publicly, she’d have to go off to Lodestone with Frankie and the others. There’d be no chance of the @Visionaries taking her back into the fold. “And your ultimatum, too.”
EmberJerm at least deserve to know!
“Frances, Maud,” Crane interrupted. “This family runs on consensus.”
“Then it doesn’t bloody well run, does it?”
“What’s going on?” Ember said. “Are you guys … secret texting? Hey, is the implant working?”
Maud let out a long breath. “Frankie’s noping my plan to stay put and work the problem,” she said. “It’s not sexy because it’s not dangerous.”
“Your plan is rubbish. It smacks of selling us out—”
“Don’t you even dare,” Maud said. Fury was bringing white to the edges of her vision; she could smell burnt plastic.
Jerm and Ember were mojing, as one, a frantic mix of calm-down signs.
Ember managed to get out a shocked “Maud would never!”
“Wouldn’t she?”
Maud pulled herself together, laying one hand on Babs, stroking her hair. She took a capture of the AI’s toon in repose, the relaxed cat face and 1930s pajamas. “If you don’t know, there’s nothing to discuss.”
Don’t split up! It came through the implant again, spikes of sensation, sharp as needle-pricks themselves. They threw her all the way to the Surface, all the way back to the farm.
Curled over on herself, next to a stack of cannabis seedlings, Maud wiped tears and sweat from her face. Something was trickling down her backside, within her primer—the implant must be seeping.
Nata squatted down beside her. “All right, love?”
“Nothing’s right,” she said, and as the words came out, Croat-Nippon pop blasted out around them, four-part harmonic joy, and she began to laugh, more than a little hysterically.
CHAPTER 24
SOUTHAM, RIO REGION
OFFBOOK @VISIONARY STAGING AREA
Champ Chevalier spent ten days out of the real world, being prosocial and innocuous in VR, recording archival material for Project Hopscotch about what it was like to pseudoEMbody a saucer, adding tags and memories to the footage of his augmentation surgery.
He supervised bots tasked to thankless ecosystem-rehab shifts: flying over carbon sinks, assessing the health of reforested tree stands, doing spot checks on coffee shipments headed offworld. @GlobalSec’s black-market division thought that someone might be trying to find a way to steal roasted beans. The luxuries shortage had gotten bad enough, thanks to the sapp strike and the commodities debt to the Kinze, that people were starting to try to find ways to circumvent rationing.
Whatever people might trade in exchange for stolen beans, and how they would brew and drink them without having it show up on their cameras and carbon and calorie counters, Champ didn’t know.
He worked on his e-state and personal archives, doing a general refresh. Spring cleaning in a virtual house. He kept meeting in sim with lawyers, trying to debunk Frankie’s accusations.
He couldn’t be proven guilty, not absolutely, but he couldn’t be proven innocent, either. He supposed the stink of suspicion would dog him until the @Visionaries actually succeeded in taking over. Then they could rewrite the baseline historical record.
After ten days, he sank deeper, loading himself fully into a consciousness vault, opting for dreamless, Rip Van Winkle succor. When his sidekick finally triggered a wake-up sequence within his pod, he woke to the clean, husked-out feeling that came of hibernation—liquid diet and lots of physical rest. Resistance devices within the pod had loosened his fascia. Medical nanotech had exfoliated and moisturized
his skin, sampled his blood, and adjusted his nutrient load.
As the pod cracked, he felt humid air, lushly warm. The light was tallow and gold.
Had he been shipped? Where to?
As this disquieting thought gelled, he realized all his Sensorium links were down. His visual icons were offline, leaving him staring at his own body, supine within the pod. For the merest of breaths, Champ wondered if he was out in deep space once more, cut off from Earth and its infosphere. But he possessed a good sense of gravity; he could feel the differences between Earth, the Moon, and Mars. This was home.
He pushed the lid of the pod so that it was fully open. Someone was waiting.
Champ felt a shock as he recognized the @Visionary elder enforcer—Misfortune Wilson herself.
“I—” He spoke because he realized his jaw was hanging, and to cover the awkwardness of being all but nude in front of … what did one call her? A celebrity fugitive? A legend? “I didn’t know—”
“Didn’t know I was still alive, or didn’t think I existed at all?”
It was the voice that had ordered him to go into deep sleep in the first place. The one who’d threatened to have him minced.
Misfortune Wilson had been the hoarder who got away, back in Upton’s day. She’d failed to turn up when all those @Interpol cops descended upon Manhattan to rescue mealy-mouthed Maud Sento and the rest of the kids from the @Visionaries’ New York sanctum. The fact that nobody’d found the fugitives had been the strongest evidence anyone could muster that at least some of the hoarder network had escaped.
Glenn Upton and those like him had been caught, tried, and rehabilitated. Misfortune had simply been gone. It had been over a decade before people stopped reporting false sightings. Frankie and her old rock-star gramps had chased rumors of her for years. But when Gramps had died, Frankie …
Champ realized how stupid they’d all been, to think that after years of obsessing about the @ChamberofHorrors with her adopted grandpa, someone with as pernicious a case of the stubborns as Mer Frances Barnes would just give up. The @Visionaries had embedded themselves into the Bootstrap Project, and she had followed them there, slick as paint on a fence.
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