PodPooch (Cladespace Book 4)

by Corey Ostman

  “How else was I supposed to answer? Anyway, I didn’t give him yours. Come on,” Jaya said. “It’ll be safer at the house for both of us.”

  “It’s not safe for you.”

  “Avo—”

  “I’m not coming.”

  Jaya regarded him, dread churning in her stomach. He’d decided, and there was conviction in that decision. It meant more than the expression of his grief: though he had the emotions of a child, he had the mental capacity of an adult. If he refused to come, it meant he felt that her consciousness could not be salvaged—otherwise he’d have insisted on being there.

  She closed her eyes, testing the darkness. She didn’t remember her death, the part after the pain ceased. But Avo did. If he wanted to spare himself grief, how could she refuse him? It wouldn’t change anything but his peace of mind.

  “You should find a place to hide,” she said.

  Avo rolled his bottom lip between his teeth and nodded.

  Jaya hugged him one last time, turned, and walked through the archway. The gravel road to the house meandered in wide arcs up the side of the hill. She knew she didn’t have to follow the road—she could cut across it in a straight line to the house—but she enjoyed following the curves, glimpsing different views of the home and the barn and the stables. Living a bit longer.

  She knew Avo was behind her, watching. But she couldn’t look back.

  The house, when she got to it, seemed deserted. Rocking chairs sat empty on the covered porch, curtains pulled back from empty rooms beyond.

  “Hello?” She walked around to a screen door.

  At her knock, a young woman peered out of the door, her thick black ponytail swishing behind her. Her eyes looked like they were used to smiling, though she wasn’t right now. Her skin was unweathered, as if it had never seen sun, and she was oddly tall for her small frame. Martian-born. I’ve met her before.

  “You’re Jaya, yes? I’m Anna. Anna Quon,” said the woman.

  “Hi, it’s—” Jaya began, but was cut off by a stomping noise indoors, followed by a crash and a curse. The screen door flew open and a man stumbled out, rubbing his knee.

  Recognition again, from the back of her mind. She knew this person before he stood up and raked back his unruly curls. It made her feel disoriented, especially when he grinned at her, too fondly for a stranger. Raj’s smile was for Grace, not her.

  Then another man stepped from the house. He was tall and a bit rickety, dressed in jeans and flannel like most of the cloisterfolk she’d seen. He had a craggy face, well-worn with creases from sun and laughter.

  Dad. The emotions from Grace were paralyzing. Jaya suddenly wanted to run back the way she’d come.

  “Welcome to the ranch,” Dad said, nodding. “I’m Dan Donner.”

  “I’m… I’m Jaya Behan.” She tripped over her own name. Her throat and vocal cords and tongue wanted to say something else, someone else.

  “You’re here!” Raj spilled down the stairs and hugged her, the momentum carrying her backward. Jaya hugged him back. She felt crushed with Grace’s happy thoughts.

  Raj released her and stepped back. “Look at your face,” he said. “It’s perfect! Avo told me about the procedure.” He motioned with his hand. “Could you turn your head a little to the right?”

  “Raj, behave!” Anna scolded. “Remember you’re talking to Jaya and not somebody else.”

  “Right,” Raj blinked, then looked around Jaya. “Where’s Avo?”

  “He’s waiting by the gate. He couldn’t…” Her hand went to the grafty on her temple.

  “Oh,” said Anna.

  “Couldn’t what?” said Raj at the same time.

  Dan Donner regarded her quietly from the top of the porch stairs. “I think you have something for us?” he said.

  What was it like to see your daughter surgically altered, addressing a mind inside of her that is keeping her from speech? Jaya reached behind her harness and unlatched the duffel with Tim inside. She tried to suppress her bitterness. She was resurrected too early, to bring the body of a dead AI to the man who might have been able to help her live. What could she do now but relinquish Grace? Should I bargain for my life? Would he listen?

  Ultimately, she said nothing. Raj took the duffel from her and sat on the lowest stair. He opened the bag and reached inside, pulling out Grace’s ptenda, then her phasewave.

  “Let me take a look at that,” Dan said, tromping down the stairs to sit next to Raj. He took the gun and turned it over in his hands, a slight tremble in his fingers. “Gracie’s mark,” he said, rubbing the bottom of the barrel.

  “She did some work on it while we were on Mars,” Raj said.

  “I know,” said Dan. “I sent her the instructions.” He smiled as he flipped two switches just above the trigger guard. “Modified slug thrower. She did a good job.” His eyes welled with tears and he looked up at Jaya.

  “You did a good job, Gracie.”

  “M-mister Donner, umm, Dan… I understand what you’re going through, but I am Jaya Behan. I’m using Grace’s body, and sometimes we share emotions or memories, but who you’re talking to, this face that you see, is Jaya.”

  “We’ll get your brain back the way you were,” Dan said. “Raj ran simulations. It’ll be fine.”

  He wasn’t listening. She felt helpless, invisible. Dead. It didn’t matter that they were looking on an unfamiliar face—they believed in Grace, that Grace just below the surface, and Jaya was merely a layer of dust that needed to be blown away.

  Jaya remembered far back, when she’d first rescued Avo. Bit by bit she’d coaxed his past from him. His creator had wanted him to dress a certain way, to act a certain way, to be more like the flesh kids, to hide what the creator called his “glitches.” What was it like on a newborn consciousness, to tell it not to be itself? What was it like to be told how to act, how to think, how to speak? What was the point of granting a synth consciousness if that consciousness was to be ignored? Somehow Avo maintained his inner self, one that darted out when there was a chance for him to live a real life.

  Jaya was not an invisible person. She’d brought the dead AI here—someone they missed and mourned—yet they couldn’t bring themselves to think of her, of Jaya, as alive. But she was. She was! Even if she was only an incomplete memory in a grafty, she was alive.

  “Jaya,” Anna’s voice. “Let’s… why don’t we go inside?”

  Though Anna’s words were mild, the idea of going inside the house terrified Jaya—terrified her to the extent that Grace’s euphoria of being home completely disappeared. She knew that if she went into the ranch house, she would never return.

  She straightened her back and stared at Dan and Raj and Anna.

  “It won’t be as simple as switching off the gray grafty and restoring Grace,” she said, starting slowly and allowing strength to infuse her words as she continued. “We’ve shared things—experiences. And I have responsibilities. There’s a boy down by the gate. He needs me.”

  Anna raised her eyebrows, but nodded. Raj stared at the ground, his expression guilty. Donner’s lips firmed into a line.

  “Avonaco can stay with us,” Raj said, “and when he wants to return to Port Casper we’ll be sure to get him safely back. I know that Grace will make certain of that.”

  Grace, Jaya thought. That’s all Raj can think about.

  “Gr— Jaya, ma’am,” Dan said. “It’s time for you to release my daughter. Avonaco said you’d understand when the time came, when the journey was done, you’d give Grace back to us.”

  Had Avo really said that? Maybe earlier. Right after the surgery, before it was clear how much they’d melded. How much of her essential self was missing, reaching for Grace to fill the gaps? But for all that, and for all of the calm words she could muster for Avo, she didn’t want to die. She wanted to breathe and laugh and walk the prairie again with her AI son. She wanted to live.

  “Of course I want to return Grace to you—I will return Grace—but,” she choked
, “isn’t there some other way?”

  “Avonaco is resilient,” Raj said. “He understood what would happen.”

  “But don’t you see?” Jaya said. “That’s why he’s not standing here with me! He told me himself that he couldn’t stand losing me again. He may be smarter than all of us, but he has the same needs, the same feelings.”

  Raj stood up. “That’s right, Jaya. He’s smart. Smart enough to bargain. Smart enough to find what I needed and use it as leverage. To bring Tim to me in exchange for my research. To use an old grafty on my best friend, a grafty with corrupted data, even when I told him it wouldn’t work!” He shook his head. “Give her back, Jaya. I’ll do what I can with you, but give Grace back.”

  She hadn’t realized that Raj was mechflesh until his left hand—the one with the ptenda—telescoped toward her head. Instinct prevailed, laced with Grace’s training, and she dropped, tucked, and rolled to the left, away from the three, away from Grace’s life.

  She sprinted down the hill, ignoring the shouts.

  Jaya!

  Come back!

  Grace! Grace!

  Not Grace. She ran down the hill, scrambling over dry grass and gravel, straight to the ranch gate. Her vision shimmered under hot tears. She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes.

  “Avo!” she yelled, “you’ve got to come back with me. Make them understand!”

  But Avo was not at the gate. He was gone.

  Chapter 22

  Raj lifted the duffel from the ground and gave it to Anna.

  “Here,” he said, “lock Tim in the lab. I’m going after Grace.” He gave her a kiss and headed downslope.

  “After Grace and Jaya!” she called after him.

  Right, he thought, Grace and Jaya. He hadn’t handled their introduction well. It was just that Jaya seemed like Grace with a different face—basically a mask—and a gray grafty that could be easily switched off, easily excised. He’d seen Jaya’s arrival as the first step in a surgical procedure, not a social event.

  Avonaco. He’d known what had to happen: that’s why he stayed away. He’d already told Avonaco that Jaya was unsalvageable with current tech. But Jaya didn’t know this—she hadn’t been arguing for years about it, as Avonaco had. All Jaya knew was that she was alive, and she wanted to stay that way. Of course she had run. So would I, thought Raj.

  “Jaya!” he shouted. “Please wait!”

  But he wasn’t catching up. If anything, she was accelerating. He recognized Grace in the powerful run, long legs pumping, pulling away.

  Am I chasing after Grace, or am I chasing away Jaya?

  He stumbled to a stop as she leaped over a barbed wire fence and raced up a hill. Raj hunched over, taking deep gulps of air. By the time he’d lifted up his head, she was out of sight. Raj sighed, looking at the vast expanse of grassland, the immensity of Donner Ranch.

  It would have been easy to track her in Bod Town, he thought. The blurp networks, the constant telemetry and feedback of ptendas bouncing against ptendas, made tracking citizens in big cities easy. But in cloister?

  Raj straightened up and walked to the fence, eyeing its three levels of nasty barbs. He couldn’t duck under it, and leaping over it was out of the question. He saw the broader, higher posts of an access gate farther down the road. Too far. Should’ve brought a horse.

  There was one relief: Jaya had taken off due south. She could run until she dropped from exhaustion, but she still wouldn’t be outside Donner Ranch, which moved the aposti from a certainty to a mere possibility. Better for all of them.

  Raj walked back to the house. Anna was standing outside, alone.

  “Tim downstairs?” Raj asked, as Anna snaked an arm around his torso and leaned her head against his.

  “Yes. But Raj—”

  “I need a horse.”

  “Isn’t there something that we can do for Jaya?”

  “It isn’t possible right now, Anna. Not with what I have. I don’t have a brain map for Jaya the way I did for Tim.”

  She hugged him tighter. “Dan went for horses.”

  He nodded, still looking toward the south. Wind made the grass shimmer as clouds overhead painted moving, mottled textures on the prairie. Cattle mooed and grunted in the distance as the natural landscape played out before him. It didn’t match the turbulent thoughts in his mind.

  Soon Dan rounded the house on his tall bay gelding. He smirked when he saw Raj.

  “Daft to try’n beat Grace in a run,” he said.

  “Where’s my horse?”

  Dan raised his eyebrows. “You really want to go off on your own horse? You usually end up hugging them rather than riding.”

  “I could go,” said Anna.

  Dan shook his head. “Leave it to me. I know my ranch. Stick here, in case she circles back.”

  Raj sighed, but it was partially in relief. He stepped back. “She went south.”

  “Of course she did.”

  “What do you mean, of course?”

  “You should know, Raj. You know where Gracie goes. It’s where you treated your first patient. Well, the one you injured first and then treated.”

  “Where?” said Anna.

  “You think she’s at the box canyon?” Raj said.

  “The other one said they share things,” said Dan. “Since she’s never been to the ranch, the default is Gracie, right?”

  “Maybe,” said Raj.

  “Likely,” said Anna. “The stats back it up, anyway. Only one in a thousand used grafties results in the dead personality completely ascendant.”

  “And it depends on how powerful the grafty is,” said Raj. “Jaya had a good grafty, but by no means a peak performance model.”

  “So why didn’t we see Gracie?” asked Dan.

  Raj and Anna looked at each other.

  “It may have fluxed under stress,” said Anna.

  “Being with Avonaco might have stirred up Jaya,” said Raj at the same time.

  “Didn’t you run sims for this?” said Dan, exasperated. “Can it flux back? Wouldn’t running around the ranch bring back Grace’s memories?”

  “Speaking of memories,” Anna prodded Raj in the ribs. “What did Dan mean by ‘patient’?”

  “Grace let me target practice with her rifle. I missed so badly that I shattered the target’s frame. Grace caught a piece of shrapnel.”

  “And you did a fine job removing it,” Dan added.

  Raj smiled and shook his head. “I can’t believe you let us play together after that.”

  “I trust my Gracie’s judgment. Besides, your talent wasn’t in rifling,” said Dan. “It’s in fixing folks.”

  At that, he heeled his big bay horse into action and cantered down the hill. His unspoken words hung thick in the air behind him.

  “I’ll fix Grace, Dan,” said Raj.

  Chapter 23

  Jaya’s shins burned as she ran downhill, grass transitioning to tufts, and then to gravel. The sharp grit worked its way down the shafts of her boots, stinging her feet, but still she ran. Up a shallow escarpment and then over a barbed wire fence. Clean over. Jaya tried to think about it, to choose where she’d go, but she tripped up each time, ankles complaining, doubling over or sideways. When she let her mind wander, her legs seemed to know where to travel. It was Grace who ran, and she didn’t need supervision.

  After dashing up and down yellow-brown hills, running as if she’d catch the sky, Jaya crested one last summit. Ahead and to her right was a narrow canyon, looking like a giant talon had dipped down and gouged the earth. It stretched far to the west, slowly broadening. A familiar place. To Grace? No, to Jaya! She demanded the memory be hers.

  But it was Grace’s legs who took her to the canyon edge. Jaya collapsed against a smooth boulder, panting as her sweat mixed with the grit on its surface. The rock was warmer than light from the sun, which was hustling down west.

  She rolled onto her back, arching her body across the stone. The clouds above moved slowly, rounded and orange—m
ammatus from a far-off storm. Her thoughts of escape quieted. She angled her head to look down the canyon, its depths hidden in shadow.

  Why am I here?

  The question wasn’t specific to the canyon. It was also about her awakening in Port Casper, about the sight of Avo with his hopeful, determined face.

  Avo. I shouldn’t have left Avo.

  “Avo!” she yelled, the hushed canyon’s echo returning moments later. But he wasn’t here, of course. He’d probably gone back to the village. She wished he were here now, wished she’d persuaded him to come with her to the house. But if she had, would she have had the courage to run?

  Courage. She closed her eyes and listened to the wind whip through the canyon. She’d told Avo it would be their last adventure. At the time, she’d felt confident in the beginning and end of that arc. They would travel the prairie and talk again; they’d do something good for another AI. A last run before her inevitable end. Instead, she had fled like a child caught with a trinket.

  Jaya raised her arm and looked at it. It was not the sun-darkened, weathered arm she knew. The limb was too long. Too muscular. A scar along the elbow was missing. This wasn’t her body.

  And it wasn’t her mind. Even now, when she thought back to her childhood, following signposts she remembered of cold lakes and the black outlines of conifers against the morning sun, they were tattered. Mixed with fragments of bull rides and stalagmites, rifles and barbed wire and the smell of bacon.

  I’m dead.

  I’m dead. I died two years ago.

  An eagle’s shriek startled her. She searched for the bird, but it was already far down the canyon. It glided on a thermal wave, buoyant and free.

  Jaya sat up, letting her legs drape across the smooth arc of the boulder. The eagle veered to the south, leaving the canyon behind. She must leave this place behind, too.

  As she stood and stretched, she began to be aware of a distant sound. It had a familiar rhythm, but it didn’t come from the wind on the grasses or the deep throat of the canyon. It was a horse, somewhere to the north of her, back from where she’d come. It shifted left to right, moved up and down, slowly growing as it followed the rolling prairie.