by John Scalzi
“Who was that?”
“A fellow name Drusin Wolfe.”
“What did she do?”
“Before you left, did you upload the most recent news stories from Hubfall?”
“We did.”
“Then you can look it up.”
A day later, after lunch, Chief Engineer Gibhaan was waiting for Kiva as she came out of the head. “That’s fucking creepy,” she said to him.
“Is there somewhere we can talk privately?” Gibhaan asked.
“Not after you were lurking while I was taking a shit, no.”
“Look, I’m serious.”
“So am I,” Kiva said, then took him to her broom closet anyway.
“You’ve caused a lot of unrest on this ship,” Gibhaan said.
“That’s the last fucking thing I want to do,” Kiva said, emphatically. “You understand that, right? I have no intention of upsetting your captain. He literally has the power of life and death over me.” Kiva paused. “And the rest of you, too, I suppose.”
“No one’s saying you said anything,” Gibhaan assured her. “And no one’s talking to Robinette about it in any event.”
“Good.”
“But people are pretty upset that the captain wasn’t straight with them about this job.”
Kiva gave him a look. “You’re fucking smugglers.”
“That’s not the point. The point is you take care of your own. And it looks like we’re not being taken care of.”
“That’s not a lie,” Kiva said. “Right down to this ship. I’m vaguely surprised it’s still flying. No offense.”
“None taken. I’ve had a few words with the captain about the condition of the Our Love.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Kiva said. “But I was an owner’s representative on a House of Lagos Fiver not too long ago. I can tell you that if a captain let one of our ships get down to this level of neglect, I’d probably show him the outside of an airlock.”
“It’s a thought,” Gibhaan said.
“Not in this case, of course,” Kiva continued. “I’m sure Captain Robinette plans to upgrade the ship as soon as he gets the second installment of his payment for dragging me around two different systems.”
Gibhaan snorted. “If he gets that payment.”
“You said it, not me,” Kiva said, then looked thoughtful. “So how much would it take to upgrade the Our Love? I mean, not to go crazy or anything. Just to make it not an actual fucking death trap.”
“Are you serious?”
“Indulge my curiosity.”
“Bare bones, three million marks,” Gibhaan said. “That’s just getting us out of ‘flying can’ territory.”
“And for the works?”
“I could outfit this ship stem to stern for ten million marks.”
“That’s all?”
“You don’t crew a smuggler without knowing how to stretch a mark, Lady Kiva.”
“That’s nothing,” Kiva said, and immediately held her hand up. “I don’t mean any disrespect by that. I just mean, shit. I could raise that much myself, pretty much the minute we got back to Hub.”
“Could you, now.”
“I’ve done well enough for myself in the last couple of years. It’s a small-enough investment. Of course, what I would actually probably do is unfreeze one of Nadashe Nohamapetan’s accounts and use one of those. Technically, those accounts aren’t supposed to exist. No one could legitimately complain if one of them found its way to being used for something other than giving that fuck knuckle a pot of marks to wallow around in. I mean, theoretically.”
“Of course, theoretically,” Gibhaan said. “We’re just talking here.”
“I’m glad we understand each other,” Kiva said. “I don’t want any trouble with Captain Robinette. Absolutely no trouble at all.”
“Of course,” Gibhaan said, and left.
That night Kiva was called upon by Jeanie and Roulf. “Compliments of an admirer,” Jeanie said, and then she and Roulf attempted to smolder in her doorway. Kiva thanked them, rather regretfully sent them away, and then rubbed out a couple before falling asleep to fitful dreams.
The next day Chuckle, or perhaps it was Fuckle, honestly she couldn’t remember which was which, told her that Captain Robinette wanted to see her. Kiva headed to his office, ignoring the stares as she went.
“What did I tell you about disrupting ship discipline?” Robinette said, without preamble, as she entered his office.
“What?” Kiva said. “I’ve been watching bad history and reading even worse novels. I didn’t even talk to any of your crew for nearly an entire fucking week.”
“Then tell me how the crew somehow seems to have a rather detailed knowledge about who is employing me and how much I’m being paid.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. I don’t know how much you’re being paid. You never told me how much it was in actual marks, although apparently it’s not enough to repair this ship.”
“Don’t let appearance deceive you, Lady Kiva. This ship is sound.”
“I sure hope you’re right,” Kiva said. “It doesn’t seem like the crew holds that same opinion.”
“Someone said that to you?”
“No one talks to me,” Kiva said. “But I can hear people talk.”
“And just what else have you heard?”
“That your chief purser is skimming,” Kiva said. “Maybe that’s why your crew think you’re holding back on their wages and bonuses.” She paused, thoughtful. “Maybe that’s also how they know your business. Your purser would know who you’re working with and for how much, wouldn’t she? That makes more sense than me telling people things I manifestly don’t know.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Robinette said.
“Captain,” Kiva said, exasperated. “You promised that if I crossed you, you would toss me out into the fucking Flow. As hard as it may be for you to believe, I actually do wish to live. I have reasons to live, up to and including the fact there’s someone I very much want to see again. And that, by the way, is a fucking new one for me. So think whatever you want to think, do whatever you want to do, as you obviously fucking will. But understand that I have no plans to cross you or make trouble on this ship. I just want to get back to my girl. Sir.”
Robinette glowered for a minute. “Go back to your bunk. You’re in there for the duration.”
“Oh boy,” Kiva said. “I can’t wait for the chemical toilet experience.”
“Enough,” Robinette said. “It was a mistake to let you out. And if things get any worse, you go out an airlock anyway. So hope things don’t get worse. Now get out.”
On the way back to her broom closet Doc Bradshaw stopped Kiva and Chuckle (or Fuckle, whatever) and spoke to Kiva’s escort. “Gibhaan needs you in engineering,” she said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, he doesn’t tell me shit. But as I was passing engineering he told me to get you. Not just you, you’re not special. But you, too.” Bradshaw took Kiva’s arm. “I’ll take her. Go on.”
Chuckle and/or Fuckle looked like he was going to say something, but didn’t and then wandered off toward engineering.
“He’s really that obtuse,” Kiva marveled.
“Oh yes he is,” Bradshaw said. They started walking. “How was your discussion with the captain?”
“He seems agitated,” Kiva said. “Apparently someone is talking about his finances.”
“Any idea who?”
“Signs point to the purser. Of course, that’s just a rumor.”
“Got it,” Bradshaw said. “I understand you knew Nadashe Nohamapetan personally.”
“I did,” Kiva said.
“What did you think of her?”
“She’s a raging jar of crotch sweat.”
“Seems accurate.” Bradshaw delivered Kiva to her broom closet, which Kiva remembered had been Bradshaw’s broom closet.
“Listen,” Kiva said. “Sorry I took your room. I didn
’t have a say in it. They just stuffed me in here. And now I’m going to be stuck in here permanently. With a chemical toilet.”
“It’s all right,” Bradshaw said. “Although I recommend you pee sparingly.”
The threatened chemical toilet and protein bars arrived shortly thereafter, and Kiva’s tablet was taken. For two days Kiva stared up at her broom closet walls and thought about pretty much nothing.
On the third day the shouting began, followed by general alarms, followed by the occasional sound of gunfire.
About halfway through the third day there was pounding on Kiva’s door.
“Yes?”
“Lady Kiva,” a voice said—one she recognized as belonging to First Officer Nomiek. “Rumor has it you may be looking to upgrade your quarters.”
“Now that you mention it, that would be fine,” Kiva said.
“I believe that you may have quoted a price you would be willing to pay for that upgrade to Chief Engineer Gibhaan.”
“I might have,” Kiva allowed. “Does that upgrade include the ability to request a new itinerary?”
“Lady Kiva, for that upgrade price, you may have just about whatever you like.”
Kiva smiled at that. “Then, yes,” she said. “Please upgrade me.”
There was the sound of her door being unlocked. It opened, and Nomiek was on the other side of the doorway, sidearm out but finger not anywhere near the trigger.
Kiva recognized it. “Isn’t that Captain Robinette’s?”
“It was,” Nomiek said.
“He told me that it was keyed to his fingerprint.”
Nomiek smiled. “He’s too cheap for that, ma’am.”
Captain Robinette himself was in his office, surrounded by members of his former crew, who had bound him to his seat and kept weapons trained on him. He did not look pleased to see Lady Kiva when she came through the door.
“This is your doing, I suppose,” he said to her.
“Actually, it’s your doing,” Kiva said. “Although I admit to informing your crew of that fact. They took it from there.”
“You understand that this was just business for me.”
“It’s funny to me that when people fuck up, they think ‘it was just business’ is in any way a defense,” Kiva said. “I understand it was ‘just business,’ Captain Robinette. It was a bad business for you. First you were foolish enough to do business with Nadashe Nohamapetan. And then you decided to cross me. And I take this business really fucking personally.”
Robinette nodded. “What now?”
Kiva smiled. “Well, Captain Robinette. This ship has three airlocks. You get to pick.”
Chapter 19
Grayland entered the Memory Room. “I’m here,” she said.
Jiyi materialized in front of her.
“Oh, come on,” Grayland said.
Jiyi smiled—that was new—and dissipated, possibly for the last time. Then Rachela I was there instead.
“Sorry,” Rachela said. “I thought it might be easier.”
“Easier than knowing your thousand-year-old ancestress has been alive this whole time pretending to be a computer? Yes, I can see that.”
“I’m not alive,” Rachela said. “My physical body has been dead for nearly all of those thousand years you mention.”
“You know what I mean,” Grayland said, testily.
“Yes, I do,” Rachela agreed.
“Why?” Grayland spread her hands in supplication. “I just don’t understand. What was the point to all of this? Why would you choose this?”
“Why did your friend Tomas Chenevert choose to be a spaceship?” Rachela said.
“He didn’t. It was what was available to him at the time, as I understand it.”
Rachela nodded. “As it was with me. This technology—the technology to store and sustain a human consciousness—predates the Interdependency. It was something that was posited in the time of the Free Systems, and probably shared with or came from the other human empires. It was discovered through archeological examination of computer systems. No one in the Free Systems had ever built it—it was too complex and expensive.”
Rachela shrugged. “But then I became emperox, and I just rolled the expense in with all the other very expensive things I was doing as we founded the Interdependency. It worked, but it wasn’t exactly mobile. So I’ve been here.”
“Hiding.”
“If you like. I saw it more as the realization that there was no room for an entire tranche of immortals—that would be the ultimate in class warfare, wouldn’t it?—and the realization that even if this sort of immortality could mean I was the emperox forever, I didn’t want the job. By the end of my reign I was really very tired of it. Aren’t you? You’ve been emperox only a very short time, but I know how it weighs on you.”
“It does, sometimes.”
“Imagine doing it for a hundred years. Two hundred. A thousand.” Rachela swatted the air dismissively. “No, thank you. At the same time, I was passionately interested in how my little project would turn out.”
“Immortality?”
“No, the Interdependency,” Rachela said. “It was an audacious experiment. I was curious how it would continue past my natural life, and while I didn’t want to be ruler, I wanted, in some way, to be able to guide and advise.” She motioned to the Memory Room. “And here we are. I created Jiyi to be a comfortable and nonjudgmental interface—you have to remember my immediate successors were my children and grandchildren, so you can imagine having your ancestress there would be unsettling—and after that it made sense to keep Jiyi as the face of the Memory Room. There were years and even decades where I, Rachela, was never requested.”
“Did that bother you?”
“A little at first. I do still have an ego, although as you know I pretended I didn’t. But the longer I was here the more I realized that no matter what face was presented, it was me they were talking to.”
“So … the other emperoxs—” Grayland thought immediately of her father, Attavio VI.
Rachela shook her head. “They’re not here. Their memories and emotions are here, but not them. When you spoke to your father, or any other emperox, you were speaking to me. Or perhaps, they spoke through me.”
“The other emperoxs could have been here, though. Like you are.”
“The technology was there, yes. But it seemed a bad idea to me. You have seen, here in the Memory Room, some of the emperoxs who ruled the Interdependency. A good number of them are better off dead. And for the rest of them, I don’t know that they could accept the terms. Living forever in a box is not a good life for most people.”
“So how do you keep from going mad?” Grayland asked.
“I’m not awake all the time. When you’re not here, I’m not here, except in the most abstract sense. Jiyi handles all day-to-day routines and catches me up when I’m awake. It’s not just a face. It’s a real, if limited, entity. It’s the one collecting all those secrets, not me directly, for example.”
“But you know all the secrets.”
“Yes, I do. We found this secret—the secret of a machine consciousness—entirely by luck. I didn’t want to lose any more information.”
“But you never shared it. Until me. And I had to drag it from you. You lied to me about knowing it. And then you had Jiyi offer it up to me. But it was you all along.”
“I have a complex and possibly not satisfying answer for that,” Rachela said.
“I can’t wait to hear it.”
“The answer I gave you was the answer I would have given you if I was alive. When I was alive, I didn’t know about the Rupture, or the Free Systems, or the Tripartition Treaty, all the things you asked me. I learned about them later, after I was dead, and Jiyi uncovered them or they were uncovered by others.”
“But you just said this technology”—Grayland motioned at the Memory Room—“was Free Systems technology.”
“I said it came from that time. When we found it, we knew almost no
thing about the civilization that created it. I didn’t know when I was alive, so I didn’t tell you. I let Jiyi do it instead.”
“So you’re telling me that what you told me was true … from a certain point of view.”
“That’s correct.”
“Oh my God,” Grayland said. “You are utterly impossible.”
“I think of it as working through rules that meant that you—or any emperox who came here for advice and counsel—would receive the most authentic experience possible.”
“Nothing about this is authentic!” Grayland exploded. “Nothing about you is authentic. If you were authentic, you would be dead, not this … zombie skulking in a room in the imperial palace!”
“Then you wouldn’t know everything you know,” Rachela said. “About the past. About all the secrets and plans the nobles have, and have against you. Authentic or not, I’ve been a very useful tool for you. And if your complaint against me is that I lied to you, and withheld certain things from you, then you should welcome me to your club. You did the same, very recently, to Marce.”
“I thought I had good reasons for that.”
“I’m aware of that. Just like I believed I had good reasons for doing what I did, the way I did it.”
Grayland sighed and took a seat on the long featureless bench that was the Memory Room’s only bit of furniture. Rachela waited, as she would.
“I don’t think I like you,” Grayland said, after a long while.
“I can understand that,” Rachela said.
“I don’t think I like you,” Grayland repeated. “I don’t appreciate how you lied to me and to every other emperox. And I don’t know if I can trust you. But the fact is, I need you.”
Rachela smiled at this, faintly. “My dear granddaughter,” she said. “I accept that you don’t like me or trust me. I understand why you feel that way right now. But I ask you to understand that the deception was not meant to hurt you, or to deceive you, or any other emperox. It was to give you a way to be comfortable with me so that I could help you. Guide you. Offer you advice.”
“Influence me,” Grayland said.
“There’s some of that,” Rachela admitted. “The Interdependency is my legacy, and I’ve had a vested interest in it surviving. Over the years the emperoxs would come here to commune with their favorite ancestors, who were all me underneath. In the guise of offering egoless advice I gave them guidance that was a combination of what I knew, what the other emperoxs knew, and what I knew from all the secrets I had discovered over the years.