by S. J. Ryan
Don't be a ham, Matt thought.
Savora motioned them through passages, around a corner, down stairs. They came to a door labeled GYM ROOM. Past the exercise equipment were a row of shower stalls. She glanced over Matt Four's tattered clothing and said, “Strip and wash.”
“I'd appreciate some privacy,” Matt Four mumbled.
“You will strip and wash.” She reached into a stall and adjusted the knobs. A vaporous spray splashed upon the tiles. “Get in. Use the soap. Lots of it.”
Matt Four hobbled into the stall. Slothlike, he picked up the soap bar, slid it across his body. Savora watched intently; Matt decided very quickly that he didn't have to. He studied Savora instead.
“Hey,” he subvocaled, not sure how to address his clone. “This is the 'Savora' that I mentioned. What do you think of her?”
“Well, to allay your suspicions, she's not Synth – at least, not a copy of the cloneporter file. There's a physical resemblance, but no, not at all the same person.”
“How can you be sure?”
“For starters, she hasn't given me a wink to let me know it's her. Another thing, her mannerisms – the way she walks, tilts head, arm gestures, speech patterns. It's all wrong.”
“I had the opposite impression. Her movements are always reminding me of Synth.”
“Maybe when you knew her. After they've been alive for a few centuries, though, people tend to be more graceful. Especially women. The Synth I knew moved with the grace of a woman in her centuries. This gal is super-animated, like a teenager. All jerky and hoppy and blurty. Uh, no offense.”
Matt thought again of the conclusion he'd drawn days before: that Savora was pretending to be Synth with just enough skill to make it apparent that she was pretending to be Synth.
“That's enough,” Savora said.
She shut the shower valves and the spray stopped. She handed Matt Four a towel. He took his time damping himself off. She tried to grasp the towel in an apparent attempt to speed the process, but he pulled it from her reach.
“You shouldn't provoke her,” Matt subvocaled.
“Not doing it for fun, kid. Trying to gage emotional responses, so I can figure out what she is.”
“What she is?”
“After you've been around a couple centuries, you acquire an intuition about what's genuine human and what's fake.”
“So what do you think?”
“My intuition isn't telling specifically, just that something's amiss either away. Like she's in between human and android.”
“She has an implant.”
“Yeah, you told me. But an implant only supports the human personality, it doesn't dominate.”
I wonder, Matt thought.
After Matt Four finally finished toweling himself dry, Savora had him dress into a featureless uniform like her own and escorted him to a barber shop. The frooging ship's so big it has its own barber shop, Matt digested, while Matt Four's locks were shorn and his beard was trimmed. The barber offered Matt Four a hand mirror, but Savora shoved it away.
“We are about to begin descent,” she announced. “We'll watch from the bridge.”
Savora again escorted them through the passages, and by the door numbers Matt gained that they were heading forward. Finally they entered a bright, high-ceilinged room with officers and regular airmen standing at stations of valves, switches, and lighted panels. All the crew areas of the Good Witch could have fit inside the one room, but it still seemed cramped because of the crowding.
The captain was a tall, mustached man of severe features, who glanced at Savora and nodded her past the sentries. He faced forward, issuing terse commands to his subordinates and listening to reports of status, staring through the meter-high windows that formed the front-most wall of the compartment.
To Matt it was a vista that he'd come to take for granted while flying aboard the Good Witch: harsh cobalt sky above, pillars of clouds all around, and far beneath their feet a carpet of milky froth stretching for kilometers.
Ice cream castles, he remembered, glancing at Savora. She declined eye contact.
The engines changed pitch, the ship descended rapidly. It pierced the cloud blanket and the view went blank. Gradually the mist cleared, revealing the scenery below.
Beneath the clouds rolled the tree-lined boulevards of a city, whose grid of streets stretched to the horizon in every direction. Houses, shops, office buildings, tenements, warehouses, factories – interspersed with parks, fountains, monuments – all of Rome would have fit as a single neighborhood, and while not as vertical as Seattle, the metropolis surely outclassed it in sheer surface area.
Matt Four addressed Savora: “Mind if I ask, what's the name of this place?”
“Victoriana,” Savora replied. “Capital city of the Imperial Republic of Pavonia.”
“What's the population?”
“Currently, over two million.”
“Almost half the planet's when I first came. So what are we doing here today?”
“She will decide.”
“So we're going to meet her?”
“She has been notified of your arrival. She will be waiting.”
Matt noted Savora's stiff posture, the fixed gaze, the unreadable expression.
They swept over the downtown high rises. Swarms of pedestrians maneuvered between horse-drawn carriages upon cobblestone streets. Fingers of smoke poked from thousands of chimneys, congealing into a smog layer which, when their descent penetrated, emitted a whiff of ash and tar into the unpressurized compartment.
Matt Four spoke aloud: “She's refusing to use any of the biotech I brought even though it would be a lot more efficient and environmentally friendly. Stubborn as always.”
Savora gazed at him, said nothing, returned her attention to the scene.
Two hundred meters below, the gray cityscape gave way to suburban tracts, then to a yellow-and-green checkerboard of farms. Spots hovered above the horizon, resolving into a traffic pattern of airships large and small, some brightly colored with commercial logos and rows of observation windows, others gray and dimpled with artillery turrets.
On the field, amid rows of hangars and mooring masts, a high tower frantically blinked multi-colored lights. The other ships hastily cleared a path at their ship's approach. Their ship cut through the aerial chaos toward a vacant mast taller and thicker than all the others. A bus-sized vehicle bolted from a hangar and onto a runway, puffing steam as it raced to match velocity with the descending ship. Grappling arms clamped like pincers of a crab onto their belly with a lurch and clang. The deck jolted. Engines dying, the ship was towed and docked with the mooring mast.
They egressed through a tunnel from the airship's nose into the top of the mast tower. Savora operated the miniscule, cage-like elevator. The rattling made Matt question whether he'd been safer while traveling between stars.
On the ground, they were hustled into a military lorry – a motorized vehicle that belched noxious fumes of toxic hydrocarbons. The driver steered toward a side road. Matt surveyed the airfield and looked back at the double-hulled immensity that had been their transport. Blisters of observation stations and artillery gun emplacements ringed the midriff of the twin envelopes, which seemed to be covered with sheets of armored plates.
Matt Four followed his gaze, and commented: “Quite an impressive warship.”
“Nemesis is the largest ship in the Pavonia Air Navy,” Savora replied. “The first in the new dreadnaught class.”
“All this military strength. Seems you've got some serious enemies.” Savora said nothing, so Matt Four added, “Athena's good at making enemies.”
The vehicle parked before a building as large as an airship hangar. The airy interior contained parallel rows of rails, upon which hulking wheeled vehicles emitting billows of steam. Ivan provided nomenclature: trains, locomotives, cars, porters, conductors. Savora navigated prisoners and guards through milling crowds of officers and civilians, up an arching bridge that crossed several tr
acks, down to a platform where a single locomotive pulled only a pair of cars.
They were escorted into the rear car. Savora admitted the two prisoners, closed the door and pressed against the wall. Matt surveyed the interior. Windows were fluffily curtained, vases burst with flowers, wall paneling was polished wood.
Athena Spencer reclined on an overstuffed chair with teacup and saucer in hands. She beamed with dark eyes.
“Welcome to Pavonia, gentlemen,” she said. “I trust your trip was pleasant.”
“So much so,” Matt Four replied, “that I prefer the journey to the destination.”
“Do sit down.”
She motioned to the overstuffed sofa. The pair took opposite ends. She sipped and observed.
“Well now, Mattimeo Senior,” she said. “The first and last I saw of you, you were a bush out of the jungle. I'm glad to see there was an ember of humanity underneath all that hair.”
“You look marvelous too.”
Except for the hairstyle – buns with tresses framing her face – Athena looked no different and no older to Matt than when he'd last seen her on the day he'd left Earth. She was certainly dressed differently: long flowing dress, pinstriped and pearl-buttoned with puffy sleeves, high collar and lace bow. The overall effect might have been feminine, if her face didn't remind him of Inoldia.
Athena returned Matt's gaze. “And Matt Junior. You've only been out of suspension a few weeks going into months, yet you appear much older. No longer a boy. I hope Neeth is treating you well.”
“'Neeth?'” Matt Four asked. “Is that what you're calling the planet now?”
“The name varies from place to place. The effect of geographical dispersion on pronunciation. I've sought to encourage the usage of 'Neeth' precisely because it differs so much from 'New Earth.' Emerging from the shadow of the homeworld to forge an independent history, I would like to think.”
She plucked a tiny bell from the table and rang it. The forward door swung open. A very tall man entered. He was bald – in fact, hairless – and either his greatcoat was heavily padded or he was improbably muscular. The man set a tray of pastries, teapot, and cups on the table, and bowed to Athena.
“Nims,” Athena said. “Inform the engineer that we are to depart.”
“Yes, ma'am,” he replied in a precise, calm voice. He had a steady gaze and twisted smile that Matt found unnerving. “Will that be all?”
“Yes, thank you, Nims.”
With a bow, Nims smoothly exited and closed the door.
“Matt,” Ivan said. “The person named Nims has a neural implant matrix similar to that of Savora.”
“Yeah,” Matt subvocaled. Not that he'd figured anything out, but he had noticed how Nims and Savora had avoided looking at each other. A sign of a shared secret.
Athena poured tea and placed the cups and pastries on the table before the two Matts.
“I trust you'll enjoy my hospitality,” she said.
“It all looks lovely,” Matt Four replied. “Unfortunately, I'm on a low-poison diet.”
“If I intended to poison you, I could do so without subterfuge However, Young Mattimeo, I have seen to it that the recipes do not contain key nutrients necessary for the replenishment of your hypermode reserve.”
Matt had been reaching for what Ivan identified as a crumpet. He sat back and folded his arms. “I'm not really hungry.”
“Well, I am,” Matt Four said, stacking his plate.
The locomotive whistle blew and the train eased out of the station into the countryside. Wooden poles whizzed, pistons stroked, and wheels clacked. Trees marched rearward in the distance. After months of covering ground by foot, the velocity gave Matt a tinge of motion sickness.
“So,” Matt Four said with his mouth full of cake. “Are we going to sight-see the city?”
“Later. There is something I want you to see first.”
Matt Four held up a finger and finished swallowing. “The kid told me about the Church, Athena. That was a dirty trick.”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“The Church of the Star Wizard.“
“Are you implying that you believe I was the one who created the Church?”
“Are you implying that you want me to believe that you didn't?”
“It was founded by Stoker.”
“That's a lie!” Matt Four set his cup down so forcefully that tea spilled. “Stoker was my friend! He believed in what we were doing! He would never betray the cause!“
“Oh, but he did. You should have seen it coming, Mattimeo. You preached the wonders of science and technology to your followers, promising them a future of prosperity and peace, but you made them impoverished fugitives instead. When you gave your implant to Stoker, you made it possible for him to perform miracles and take the mantle of prophet. The less he preached critical thinking and the more he preached blind faith, the more the donation boxes filled. In time, that led to the founding of the Church. And now the Church is an ally of mine. That was why I turned your body over to them for safe-keeping decades ago.”
“As if I'm going to believe your word about anything!”
But Matt detected uncertainty in his clone's voice.
“It's the flawed nature of the human species, Mattimeo. Surely we can both agree that humanity falls short of perfection. Our only difference of opinion is in how to redress the problem. You believe that human frailty can be remedied with technological crutches, while Eric and I recognize that humanity requires internal improvement.”
“I'm not opposed to genetic engineering, Athena, when it's done to make lives better. But what you and Eric want is to make better gladiators.”
“What is wrong with gladiators? Their senses are keener, their minds are sharper, their bodies are stronger.”
“Yeah, and all to kill one another the more efficiently. Is that any way to build a sustainable civilization?”
“I hope this isn't going to be another dreary sermon on the 'necessity' to transition evolutionary progress from a paradigm of competition to one of cooperation. I had my fill of that pablum when I was on Earth. Can you accept that this is a different planet with different rules?”
“Can you accept that you don't have the right to make the rules?”
“I made the planet, I make the rules.”
The train ascended a mild grade. The rural landscape transformed into a vista of the city. Forests gave way to concrete tenements stacked against tenements, jumbled against factories, piled against office buildings.
“Your city,” Matt Four said. “It seems to be a copy of nineteenth-century London.”
“Do you have a problem with copies?”
“Couldn't you and Eric come up with something original?”
“The concept of creating a new society with fresh ideas has its appeal, but there are so many sociological variables that can go astray. It seemed prudent to follow a conservative approach with an established historical pattern.”
“So I've heard.”
“Yet I will admit, I've encountered unexpected sociological developments.”
“Oh really, my dear? How so?”
“On Earth, I held a romantic view of Victorian England as a model for evolutionary progress. Here, dwelling inside a faithful recreation of that society, I see the hypocrisy. Although the ruling class preaches social darwinism, in practice it has utilized its political power to enforce a stratified class structure to protect its economic and social advantages from competition. If the situation is allowed to continue unabated, degeneracy will reign.”
“Of course you have a solution.”
“Alas, I have to take the role of Eris, and provide disequilibrium. Sometimes, even upheaval.”
“Which you don't enjoy at all.”
Athena sighed. “Come, Mattimeo. You've lived long enough to see how prophetic Eric was. You know what the recent centuries have been like in the home system. Humanity has become a dopey, insipid species. Many people live their entire l
ives inside virtual realms. As a society, we preach self improvement and practice self indulgence. 'Evolution through Cooperation' is the Meme of the Millennium, but in reality human evolution has attained apoptosis. Without even trying, the AIs are putting humanity to pasture.”
“I prefer a pasture to a slaughter house.”
“Your comebacks are tediously predictable.” She made an artificial laugh, set down her tea and arose. “If you'll excuse me, I must make arrangements for our arrival.” She strode to the door to the next car and glared at Savora, who had been standing silently. “I'll leave them in your supervision. You'll not botch your assignment this time?”
Savora stared at the carpet. “No, ma'am.”
The door slammed and the three were alone.
“Again, I don't think it's wise to provoke her,” Matt subvocaled.
“I don't think it's wise for us to have silent conversations,” Matt Four replied. “Your friend here might catch on.” He smiled at Savora and said aloud: “So, young lady, how long have you been working for the old battleaxe?”
Savora didn't return the smile. “A few years.”
“What did you do before that?”
There was a long pause. “Nothing.”
“Surely something.”
“It is not something I am allowed to discuss.”
“So she's got you scared, just like the kid here.”
“You're not afraid of her?” Matt demanded of his clone.
“Me? Don't be fooled by the breezy banter, kid. I'm quite terrified. It's just that I intend to go down fighting.”
A pair of windowless towers, identical in size and shape, loomed above the trees. The track curved, revealing the view on ground level. Ahead was a three-meter high chain link gate crested with rolls of razor wire. The locomotive halted at the guard house and they waited while the guards rolled the crash barrier from the track. Puffing ponderously, the train lurched into the compound. As their car passed the gate, they read the prominent sign:
PROJECT ZEUS
RESTRICTED AREA
THIS LAND IS PROPERTY OF THE ARMY OF
THE IMPERIAL REPUBLIC OF PAVONIA