Fool's War

by Sarah Zettel

  “Wait here,” she told the AI as fast as she could force the thought out. She was already drifting away. “I need you to wait here for me. I need you to hold as still as possible. Mark off forty-eight hours from now. I’ll be back when that time’s up. All right?”

  “I will wait here. Marking. I will not take any paths. Please…hurry.”

  “I will. I swear it.” The transceiver opened for her and Dobbs slid into it like a frightened child into her mother’s arms.

  “Dobbs! Wake up! Dobbs!” Hands shook her.

  She gathered all her concentration together and forced her eyes to open. It took a minute for her to resolve the blob of light and shadow into Schyler’s face. He was bent over her, shaking her shoulders.

  Oh, hell, she thought bitterly.

  Schyler let her go and she dropped back onto the bed, barely feeling the fall. He stepped away to the very edge of her range of vision. She couldn’t turn her head to look at him.

  “I do not believe what I’m seeing,” he said softly. “You want to space out for recreation, that’s fine, but this…” he picked her hypo up off the floor and threw it into the drawer. “We need every hand right now and you’re getting stoned out of your fractured head! And what the hell is this? Some kind of wire turn on?” He pointed to something that could only be the cable.

  “Watch…” her tongue felt like wet wool. Hunger, thirst and the urgency in her bowels made her body one huge ache. She found her hands on the ends of her wrists. Her clumsy, groping fingers found the transceiver behind her ear and unplugged it. She knotted every muscle in her and pushed down. Slowly, slowly, she was able to sit up. “What’s happened?” She managed to drop the transceiver and cable into the open bedside drawer.

  “Obviously nothing you give a single goddamn about.” He ran both hands through his hair. “You’re lucky I’m the one who found you, Dobbs. If it’d been Al Shei she’d’ve thrown you out onto the port and left you to take your chances. Still might. We’ve got no room for drug-dead…”

  She blinked hard and focused on Schyler. Now she could see the heavy lines his face had settled into and the wild roundness his eyes had taken on. Something bad had happened. She hadn’t found the Live One quickly enough.

  Her head felt like it was packed with cotton. She used her hands to scoot forward on her bunk until she could see her feet touch the floor. She couldn’t feel them, or her knees either. She had no idea what would happen if she tried to stand up.

  “Al Shei.” She grasped at the name. “I need to talk to Al Shei.”

  “You need to figure out how you’re going to make a living after you’re booted out of your Guild,” growled Schyler. “Because believe me, you’re contract is over and you’re going to be hauled up in front of your bosses before this run is even half-finished.”

  “No.” She shook her head, relieved to find it would still move. “No. It’s not…” Training and a lifetime’s caution stopped her. She forced herself to go ahead. “There was a live AI aboard the Pasadena.” The memories of what had happened inside the net were crawling out of her subconscious, making her weakened body shake with their intensity.

  Schyler pulled himself up short. “How did you know?” he demanded.

  “I need to talk to Al Shei,” she said limply. Looking hard at her feet flat against the deck, she planted her hands on either side of herself and pushed. Her knees bent and her feet grew more distant. Pain told her where her knees were and she locked them into place.

  She knew with sick certainty that she would not be able to walk.

  “Please,” she whispered. She lifted her head and looked into Schyler’s tired, frightened face and knew herself to be the cause of what she saw there. “Please. I have to talk to Al Shei. Help me.” She tried to raise her arm to reach out to him, but it would not move.

  His expression shifted to a kind of disbelieving anger. “Fine. You want to talk to Al Shei. Fine. I’m sure as all hell she wants to talk to you.” He took her by the arm and shoulder and walked her to the hatch. She stumbled for the first few steps, before her legs remembered what they were supposed to do and managed to set a shambling pace of their own.

  Walking helped her. Her blood started to flow more easily and her body became more fully her own. Crewmembers she was still too dazed to identify stared at this staggering shell that was their Fool. Schyler growled at them and they scurried past. No one spoke. They all just stared with the same frightened, hollow-eyed stare.

  What happened to them? While I was chasing the Live One down, what were they doing?

  Schyler propelled her all the way to Al Shei’s cabin and used his Command override to cycle back the hatch. It must have been how he got into her cabin, she realized. Her head was beginning to clear and she felt like she could move on her own. But Schyler didn’t let her go. He walked her into Al Shei’s cabin and sat her down too roughly in the chair in front of the desk.

  “Intercom to Al Shei,” he said as soon as the hatch shut. “I’ve found the Fool. You need to get up here.”

  Silence. Then, “I don’t have time for this, Watch.”

  “This you have time for.”

  “All right, Watch. I’m on my way.”

  Schyler paced the room, fists jammed in his pockets, but in no way inclined to talk. Dobbs was glad. She needed every spare second to collect herself. She needed to think. But thinking was as hard as walking had been and Al Shei was going to be here any second and Dobbs had to tell her…Dobbs had to tell her…

  She had to tell her there was a rogue AI in her ship’s hold and that it had to stay there for the time being.

  That stark realization helped her brain shake off the last of the juice.

  Al Shei swept through the hatch. Her dark eyes looked at Dobbs and then looked at Schyler.

  “You found her,” Al Shei said flatly.

  “I found her,” said Schyler, “drugged and unconscious in her cabin.”

  Fire burned hard behind Al Shei’s wide eyes. “You found her where?” the question was for Schyler, but the fire was for Dobbs.

  Dobbs straightened her back as much as she could. “He found me drugged and unconscious in my cabin.” Her voice had cleared somewhat, but she still felt like she was talking with a throat full of sand. “I need to explain why.”

  Al Shei’s shock at her gall was evident. “No you don’t,” she said. “Schyler, she’s broken contract. Throw her off of here.” Al Shei turned on her heel.

  “She knows about the AI,” said Schyler.

  “I was looking for the AI,” Dobbs corrected him.

  Al Shei froze for a bare second before whipping around again. “You were what?”

  “There was a live AI loose on board the Pasadena,” she said, working hard on making each word distinct and unmistakably. “It, or at least the seed code for it, was planted here deliberately in the data packet from Amory Dane, or in whatever it was Tully smuggled aboard. It got out when the transfer was made down to New Medina hospital.” She took a deep breath and met Al Shei’s eyes. The engineer was distinctly unimpressed. So, you figured all that out for yourselves. Fine. With Lipinski around I should have realized you would. “And I was in the network looking for it.”

  Al Shei moved closer to Dobbs, peering into her eyes as if trying to find some traces of a drug trip in there.

  “That is impossible,” Al Shei said crisply. “They’ve tried direct neural hook-ups. The human brain can’t process the data. It burns out trying to make associations that aren’t there.”

  “I know.” Dobbs hand strayed to her Guild necklace. She forced it down again. “But the Fool’s Guild found a way around it.” She paused and picked her words carefully. “The stuff in the hypo Watch found is a cross between a general anesthetic and a synthetic variant of lysergic acid diethylamide.” Al Shei’s gaze strayed over to Schyler. Much of his anger has shifted into bewilderment. Dobbs supposed that was a little better. “It can get you extremely high and kill you extremely quickly if you don’t kn
ow what you’re doing. On the other hand, if you do know what you’re doing, it can get you around the sensory input problem and let your brain process network data.” She did not go into the hypno-training and micro-surgery that were also required. She did not say that even with that, you had to be born in the network in order to make sense out of it.

  “In effect, you can, with training, travel down any continuous network pathway without requiring a virtual reality interface.”

  Al Shei straightened up one inch at a time. “And why would the Fool’s Guild want to do this?”

  Dobbs swallowed and made her mouth move. It was hard. She’d never said even this much out loud before. “Looking for AIs that might go live is part of our job,” she said. “It’s one of the reasons the Guild was founded. We’re the reason why so few of them go live at all, and why none of them have ever gotten away.”

  She knew they were staring at her, in anger or disbelief or shock. She could feel the emotions beating against her skull, but she couldn’t make herself look them in the eye.

  “Why didn’t you tell us when you came on board?” demanded Schyler.

  A ghost of a smile formed involuntarily on Dobbs’ lips. “Because, under normal circumstances we don’t tell anybody. Do you think any of the assorted boards, or councils or senates want people to know how easy it is for those things to go crashing through the nets? You can believe the Banks don’t want it out…” she stopped realizing she’d made a tactical error.

  “You mean my family knows about …what you do?” grated Al Shei.

  “Some of them for sure,” said Dobbs. “Probably not many. Nobody wants the actual potential for destruction known, believe me. The media doesn’t know the half of it.” She swallowed again. Her mouth was dry and her throat itched for a drink, but she couldn’t afford to worry about that now. Al Shei and Schyler were only just starting to believe her. “Usually we spot the restless ones before they get this far. This one…” She ran her hand through her hair and made herself look exhausted. It took less acting skill than she liked to think about. “This one we had no way to keep an eye on.”

  “But…” Schyler extracted one hand from his pocket and waved towards Dobbs. “Fools?”

  Dobbs shrugged. “Totally harmless makes good cover.” For a multitude of sins. “And like I said, nobody wants it known how often, or how easily, this can happen.”

  Al Shei had both arms folded. Her brows were knitted below the line of her veil. Her eyes were still stormy and Dobbs knew she must be frowning deeply.

  “I have this feeling,” Al Shei said quietly, “that there is more you want to tell me.”

  Dobbs hooked her index finger around her Guild necklace. She tried to think of a good way to say what she had to, but nothing came. “I am the only Fool at the Farther Kingdom. Since the AI was in the planetary network, I had to go after it.”

  Al Shei’s frown deepened. “What are you getting at?”

  Dobbs swallowed hard to try to open her throat all the way. “I had to have a safe, uncorrupted storage space to bring the AI back to. It’s in the Pasadena’s data hold.”

  There was a moment of stunned stillness. Then, a look of sheer horror appeared on Schyler’s face. Al Shei spread her arms wide and stared for a moment at the ceiling as if hoping for an answer from Allah. When none came, she lowered her gaze to the Fool. Dobbs looked her straight in her burning eyes and wanted to crawl backwards on the bed.

  “Are you out of your mind!” Al Shei roared. “Do you know what that thing can do to my ship!”

  Better than you do, thought Dobbs with tired exasperation, but she didn’t say that. “Al Shei, in the outside nets, the AI acted like any living thing that finds itself in a strange environment. It panicked. I went after it and calmed it down. Now, my job is to keep it that way. It’ll hold still, for it’s own safety. A Guild ship will meet us at The Vicarage and transfer it to their own hold and take it back to Guild Hall. The Fool’s Guild will pay for the storage space,” she added, feeling her voice fall flat as she did. She was going to have to tell Guild Master Havelock Al Shei knew what their “packet” consisted of. He was not going to be pleased.

  Al Shei bowed her head into her hand. “Our Lord, fill us full of patience and make our feet firm,” she murmured. “You think you could pay me to put my people in this kind of danger?” She raised her head. “What kind of insanity is this? You say you went after that thing? Why didn’t you go kill it!”

  Dobbs licked her lips and flickered her eyes from Al Shei to Schyler. Schyler had backed up against the wall. His face was bewildered, as if he were trying hard to fit what he was hearing into his view of reality, and failing miserably.

  “Usually, if we can’t calm an AI down, that’s an option. But it isn’t this time.” She laid her hands on her knees, palms up as if she were about to start pleading. “Try to understand, every sapient AI that has come into existence has been a complete accident. They’re the result of sloppy architecture, self-replicating code and long years in poorly regulated neural networks. This one, though, it might have been a deliberate creation. Somebody out there might be able to make independent, sapient AIs, and we do not know who it is.” She pulled all her reserves together and stood up. Everything depended on being able to convince these two to help. Everything. “I must get this AI, intact, to the Guild. We must question it, work with it, find out where it came from and what it was meant to do.”

  For a long time, Al Shei did nothing but stare. Dobbs did not let her eyes drop. She barely let herself blink. She let Al Shei drink her fill of her face and her expressions. Finally, the Engineer let out a long, shuddering sigh and looked away. She tugged at her tunic sleeve and still didn’t say anything. Dobbs ignored the sag that crept into her shoulders and let herself hope.

  It was Schyler who said it. “You’re going to let her do it, aren’t you?”

  Al Shei looked over at him. “What else am I going to do? She’s right. What if someone can create these things deliberately?” She shook her head.

  “If this weren’t so outrageous I’d swear she was lying,” Schyler seemed to have forgotten Dobbs was in the room. He bent over Al Shei and spread his hands wide. “I wish she was lying. You’re going to kill us, Al Shei. This might be true, but it’s still ridiculous, and dangerous beyond belief. Look what that thing did to us without even trying! What do you think it’s going to do now that it’s had the taste of a whole network! You think it’s going to come along quietly and go where it’s told?”

  Dobbs hung her head. “I’ll be riding with you, don’t forget, Watch. If I don’t keep it calm, it will take me out too.”

  Al Shei just looked at Schyler for a long time, then she turned to Dobbs. “Can you keep an eye on it outside the network?”

  Dobbs nodded. “I can build some watch dogs that’ll sound the alarm if anything tries to get out of the hold.”

  “All right,” Al Shei smoothed her tunic down. “Get on it.” She stood. “While you’re at it, I’ll try to find some way to tell Lipinski what’s going on.”

  Dobbs heart sank. Lipinski. She’d forgotten. He was not going to forgive her for this. Not this.

  She nodded. “I need access to the data hold,” she said, trying to put a brisk tone into her voice. “This isn’t the kind of thing I can do from my desk”

  A muscle in Al Shei’s temple twitched. “All right. Let’s go.”

  Al Shei moved to the hatch. Schyler opened his mouth. She just held up her hand. “No,” she said. “We’re doing this. Get back to the bridge. I need you on watch. We’ve got to get to the jump point, and out the other side.” She added something soft in Arabic. After a moment, Dobbs translated it out to, “Please, my son.”

  Schyler closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he was calm. He walked out the airlock ahead of them and straight to the stairway.

  Dobbs hurried after Al Shei as fast as she could. The drug induced disassociation had almost worn off, but the exhaustion had not. She l
onged to fall into her bed. Her midriff muscles ached from controlling her bladder.

  Al Shei was waiting for her at the stair hatchway. She didn’t say a word when Dobbs caught up with her, she just started down the stairs, leaving Dobbs to follow in silence.

  Her contract was already broken, Dobbs realized as she watched Al Shei’s stiff back. There was no way she could go back to what she had been for these people, at least for the senior crew. The illusion was well and truly shattered and she’d never be able to get even one of them to suspend disbelief for her again. Her insides wrung themselves at that cold reality. She had liked this contract, this ship, and this woman who wouldn’t turn around to say one word to her. She had liked playing the Fool here and she’d done a linear good job for them, because she was counting them friends.

  What can I count you as now?

  Al Shei led her around the bend of the corridor and paused in front of the comm center hatch. She turned around.

  “I am asking you, by whatever you hold sacred to tell me this.” For the first time, Dobbs saw doubt in her eyes. “Can you do this thing safely?”

  “I hold my office sacred,” said Dobbs. “And my life, and I swear by both of them. I will only keep the AI intact as long as I know for certain it will keep itself under control.”

  Al Shei nodded slowly. “Do what you can, or what you have to, but I’m telling you right now, Evelyn Dobbs, my ultimate responsibility is the safety of the people I’ve hired on. If I find out you’ve put them in danger, I’m going to toss you out of here for violation of contract, and at this point I’m not sure I’ll be sorry to do it.” She hesitated. “You’ve been good help on this run, Dobbs. I’m hoping you can continue to be, because if this isn’t resolved quickly Allah alone will be able to see how far the splinters will fly.”

  Al Shei cycled the hatch back.

  Lipinski sat hunched over the comm center’s main boards.

  “That was too quick…” he started, then he looked up and saw who it was.