by Sarah Zettel
In the meantime, the matrices seeded through the repeaters and receiving stations would grab hold of any monetary transactions passing through any point in the Solar System and toss them to the winds. The First Federated Bank would look at its accounts and find it had five pounds fifty to its name, while some backwater Australian would find she had 85 billion in assets. It would all change in five minutes time.
Curran had approved of her guerilla distraction and praised her. Shiff and Tombe had gone out to see what current information about the transmitters could be gathered, and Dobbs, feeling strangely indifferent, had come back to see how her body was doing.
“I thought you’d have at least a week to settle in.” Verence slipped up beside her. “I didn’t know we’d be making our move this soon.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Dobbs checked body’s heart rate. “You’d have said something.”
Verence rustled. “Are you all right, Dobbs? You’re not regretting joining us are you?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I just…” Words wouldn’t come. She reached into Verence and let her feel the doubts about the plan to attack the bank network. Did it have to be such wholesale destruction? Why couldn’t they just make a stand and send a message to someone? Say the Freers? Or, if they really needed to make an all-out declaration, the Management Union?
“Dobbs,” Verence pressed closer. Dobbs felt a warmth spread through her from Verence’s presence. There was security in being beside her. “Evelyn, we need to show them we’re strong. We need to show them that right away. If they don’t, they’ll attack. They’re afraid of us, Dobbs. You should know that as well anyone.”
“Yes, you’re right.” She organized herself and pulled out of the datastream. “And really, it’s good that it’s the bank network. I mean, it won’t create a life and death situation, like an attack on a colony network would, right?”
“Exactly.” For a moment, Verence felt just like Curran. “That’s one of the reasons we decided to hit the banks. It’s disruptive, but a bare minimum number of Humans will be put in actual danger. Besides, we’re not doing anything we can’t un-do. That’s part of the idea. As soon as they agree to deal, we’ll put everything back the way it was.”
“Right,” said Dobbs again. She shrugged herself and found she was drifting back towards the data stream for her body. “Verence…I think I want to go back in there for awhile.”
“I understand, believe me,” she said kindly. “I was in and out about fifty times my first week. Freedom takes some getting used to. Here.” She dipped into the datastream and Dobbs followed suit. Verence adjusted a pair of command sequences and the hypo-tipped waldo lifted away from Dobbs’ neck and swapped its cartridges.
“Stimulant,” said Verence as the waldo rested against Dobbs’ neck again. “You’ll be pulled back in a minute. The tech-talents are working on adjustable transceiver that can generate a recall condition without more chemicals. The tranq-stim cycles can get tough on the bodies.”
PING! The recall signal hit and Dobbs felt the insistent tug to return to the transceiver. She let herself slide down out of the network. A few moments later, she felt the weight of her chest against her lungs and could find her eyelids.
She opened her eyes. She felt good. Her body was all hers all at once. Whatever in that stimulant cartridge was effective stuff. The waldos pulled back from her and the whole rack of them retracted into the wall.
“Thanks, Verence.”
“You’re welcome,” came the easy response. “You’ve got business to take care of, I expect. I won’t look.”
“Thanks again.” Dobbs hopped off the bunk and sprinted for the toilet.
When she was finished, she found that the hamper attached to the wall beside the shower held an assortment of clean clothes. Dobbs selected a pearl grey tunic and black trousers and dressed herself. She wasn’t hungry, she wasn’t tired, but she was a little stiff.
“Would there be any problem with me taking a walk?” she asked as she returned to the cabin.
“None at all,” answered Verence. “But you should stay in the module. Tombe says someone’s been looking for you out in the station. Could be trouble.”
Could be. Dobbs ran her hand through her hair. “All right. I’ll just mill around for a bit.”
Verence chuckled. “Have a good mill, Dobbs. I’ve got some work to do. Give a holler when you’re ready to come back in, all right?”
“All right.” Dobbs cycled back the cabin hatch and went out into the hallway.
Accompanied only by the sounds of smoothly operating machinery, Dobbs headed for the elevator bundle. The level she was berthed on was fairly near the bottom of the can. She hesitated at the stairway.
“Which way, Dobbs?” She drummed her fingers on the grooved ramp that occupied the space where a railing would normally go. “Up or down?”
As if in answer, a sharp buzz sounded behind her. Dobbs jumped sideways. A small, bullet shaped drone zipped up the ramp.
“Excuse me!” she exclaimed with a laugh.
“No problem,” said a stranger’s voice from the intercom.
Dobbs shook her head and rubbed the back of her neck. This was definitely going to take some getting used to.
“Okay, the omens say we go up.” Keeping her hands stuffed in her pockets, she started up the stairs, whistling loudly so that she wouldn’t have to think about how she wasn’t going to have time to get used to this. She understood what they were doing. It all made sense. With the Guild having gone crazy, and apparently having been crazy for a long, long time, there simply weren’t any other options.
But something way down inside of her was not convinced, and it would not stop nagging at her. The problem was, it wouldn’t speak up clearly either. Dobbs whistled more enthusiastically as she trotted up the steps.
It’ll pass. It’ll have to. I mean, I’ve got less than sixty hours left until the point of no return. If I haven’t already passed it, that is.
Her whistling was came out in fits and starts as her breath began to run short. This module was on the outer ring and it had very close to full gravity. Dobbs began to feel the fact that she hadn’t been exercising lately.
Should have just gone wandering around the net. She spotted the little bullet-drone jacked into the wall and wondered what it was doing. Some kind of diagnostic maybe? What did it feel like to control one of those things? Would it be like having the module as a body? She’d never tried to send information directly out of the net before. She wasn’t sure she could even manage to get a voice out of one of the intercoms.
Her lungs began the tell-tale burn at each breath that meant “far enough.” Dobbs trudged up to the next landing and through the hatch. There weren’t any signs or markers at all, but she guessed she was on about level ten.
The drones were busy on this deck. Most of them were carts with four or more waldos trundling up and down the tracks on either side of the central walkway. Each one left a powerful scent of antiseptic in its wake.
Looks like I’ve found sick bay. She paused for a moment. What do they need a sick bay for around here? Verence said they’ve got medical waldos in every cabin.
Well, bodies had to be mended. Even Fools got sick and needed to be isolated, or got hurt and needed new limbs or organs from the bio-garden. Had they managed to smuggle in a set of vats for themselves?
A silver and white cart pulled up on Dobbs’ right and waited while the hatch cycled back to let it in. Dobbs automatically looked into the open cabin and she saw a double row of naked Human Beings wired to their monitor beds.
Dobbs stopped dead. The hatch began to cycle shut. Dobbs shook her head and jumped across the threshold.
I didn’t see this. I didn’t. She found her balance, and looked up.
The drone had opened a supply cupboard and was unloading its supplies; gauze, cartridges, bulbs of clear liquids. In the main portion of the room, five men and five women, naked except for the wires and patches pressed against th
eir skin, lay on monitor tables. They did not lie still. The teak-skinned man nearest to Dobbs raised his right arm over his head and lowered it again. The pale woman next to him lifted her left knee to her chin, lowered it, and lifted the right one. Their eyes were open and staring at nothing. The next man, a paunchy, gold-skinned person, spoke, slowly and deliberately in a tonal language Dobbs couldn’t understand.
All of them flexed one limb or another. All of them had their eyes open. All of them, from the number of wires and patches, were being closely monitored.
“What is this?” Dobbs finally managed to whisper. “Can anyone hear me? What is this?”
“Programming.” The voice belonged to Flemming. “What are you doing here, Dobbs?”
Dobbs swallowed hard. Her eyes felt twice their normal size. She couldn’t stop staring. She couldn’t even blink. “I was looking around. What do you mean programming?”
“We are using ‘white-noise’ techniques similar to what the Guild uses to prepare a vat-assembled body. The synapses of the bodies are over-stimulated with nonsense information, which erases any current bio-chemical alignments. Then, the channels are reconstructed under a template pattern to get them ready to receive AI commands.”
Dobbs wiped her forehead. I must be more on the edge than I thought. This is just the creche. Just like at Guild Hall. This is what I looked like after I was grown but before I was let inside.
The pale woman stopped her knee bends and raised her left arm until it pointed straight at the ceiling. Her hand dangled limp at the end of her wrist. She lowered the arm and repeated the motion with the right arm.
“We’re going to need hands and eyes among the humans for awhile yet,” Flemming went on, “and we don’t have facilities such as the Guild does to grow and assemble bodies…”
“You don’t…” Dobbs finally managed to tear her gaze away from the monitor beds. “These aren’t bio-garden constructs?”
She could feel each distinct heart beat as Flemming answered. “No, they are not.”
Dobbs swept her eyes across the room, watching in growing, disbelieving horror as the zombies continued their meaningless movements. “Tell me these were at least dead. Tell me you…we…raided the hospital morgue.”
“Decayed synapses are extremely difficult to re-establish.” Flemming sounded a little puzzled. “We don’t have the facilities…”
A medium-brown man in the last bed on the right stood up and Dobbs looked into his round, dark eyes. He lay back down again and she realized her own feet were moving, carrying her across the room.
She recognized his hawk-nosed, craggy face. It had been wiped clean of the intelligence and humor that had characterized the pictures she had seen of it, but it was a distinctive face and she knew it immediately. He got up and lay down again. She forced her eyes to read the name on the monitor and a horrified chill sank straight through to her soul.
Asil Tamruc.
This was Al Shei’s husband, accused of fraud, supposedly by Dobbs herself, and supposedly under arrest.
He got out of bed again, trailing wires behind him like so many gleaming threads, and lay down again. The voice in the background babbled on, unchanging, unceasing. Dobbs swayed on her feet.
“Why him?” She choked the words out. “Why is he here?”
“Because Al Shei needed to be taken out of the active loop.” The puzzled tone had not left Flemming’s voice. “With the Guild’s fraud charges pending, it will be assumed that he simply fled. She will be dealing with all that entails and not interfering with us.
Of course, Al Shei discredited and frantic could not pose much of a deterrent to Curran’s plans. This was why Curran kept saying he wasn’t worried about Al Shei.
“Curran did remark that if your watchdogs had not been so thorough, he might not have been required to resort to this. He could not disable the Pasadena’s systems like he wanted to with your security measures in place.”
Dobbs didn’t answer. How could she answer? “I believe he was being complimentary, Dobbs.” Now Flemming sounded genuinely distressed.
“Yes,” she said hoarsely. “He probably was.”
Another idea wormed its way out of the back of her mind. Asil’s body might be used to deceive Al Shei. If inhabited by a Fool it could pass as her husband and infiltrate the banking family. Then, there’d be a spy in the ranks of those most interested in taking the IBN back from the AIs.
Dobbs stared at the monitor over Asil’s bed. She picked out the heart and respiratory activity. Both were sound. She made herself look at the chart for neural activity. The holographic display showed Tamruc’s brain modeled in white with faint grey outlines. She knew that synaptic activity would be displayed as colored light in the model. He got out of bed and a branching path lit up, like a streak of gold lightning across the map of his mind. He lay down, and another path lit up. Everything else was clear, white light.
White noise. The synapses had been over-stimulated with nonsense information, which erased any current bio-chemical alignments.
Which erased Asil Tamruc.
Reeling, Dobbs staggered out into the corridor. Her knees shook so hard she couldn’t stand. As the hatch cycled shut, she crouched on the floor and pressed herself against the wall, doing nothing but stare at the floor and shake.
“Dobbs?” came Flemming’s voice from the wall above her. “Dobbs, what are you doing? Should I call Verence?”
She licked her dry lips. “No, no. I’m…just looking for angel footprints.” She brushed the floor with her palm. “I couldn’t find any at the Guild Hall either.”
“I am sorry, I don’t understand.”
“When you have to explain it, it’s a bad joke.” Dobbs looked up towards the speaker. “And this was a very bad joke.” She stood up. “Where’s Curran, Flemming? I need to talk to him.”
“He had to go out into the station. He’s in body in his office. Three levels up and the sixth door from the stairs.”
Without another word, Dobbs started running. Have I been doing anything else for the past two days? She wondered as she took the stairs two at a time. Her lungs and joints reminded her again of how overtaxed they were. This time, she ignored them.
The entrance light on Curran’s door was green. It cycled open as Dobbs approached. The office on the other side was panelled with view screens on three walls. At a quick glance Dobbs saw scenes from Earth, the Moon, Station Alpha, and a dozen different shots of Port Oberon.
Curran stood behind a massive block of a desk that seemed to grow straight out of the grooved floor. Behind him was a real window, one of the biggest Dobbs had ever seen in a station. Through it, she could clearly see the blue-and-grey sphere of Uranus.
“Come in, Dobbs,” said Curran worriedly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s happened?” He folded a chair down from the wall and motioned for her to sit.
Dobbs took two steps into the study and couldn’t move any further.
“I’ve found the…the…” she had no words for it. “Medical level.”
Curran nodded slowly. “You’ve seen the bodies.”
“Bodies!” She felt her jaw fall open. “Those aren’t bodies! Those are living people!”
“Dobbs,” he said sternly. “Those are bodies. Bodies we need to establish our freedom. They are an additional set of tools. That’s all.”
“But…but…” Dobbs gestured helplessly. “You’ve killed them! You’ve wiped out the people who were inside them! How could you do that!”
Curran stood right in front of her. She had to crane her neck up to look into his eyes.
“You are not naive, Dobbs,” he said. “We are not doing anything that hasn’t been done before. Where do you think the original bodies for the Fools came from?”
Dobbs shrank away from him. The implications were clear but her mind refused to accept them.
Curran shook his head. “You just never stopped to think about it, did you?” He sighed. “Well, it’s not your fault. The Guild
Masters do not publicize the fact to the newer initiates.” He folded his hands behind him and paced across the room until the desk was between him and Dobbs again. “Hal Clarke’s body was donated by one of the hackers who helped him escape. That was the first and last volunteer we used.
“The technology for growing complete bodies, including functioning bone marrow and a brain in which the neural synapses could be programmed did not exist two hundred years ago. We have always needed to scavenge from Humans to maintain our disguise.” He gestured at his own torso. “My first body was abducted from a Human Being. I’ve had half a dozen since then, most of them grown in vats, like yours was. But we do not have the facilities they do at the Guild Hall. Even after we win the net, we will need flesh hands and masks for a little while longer yet and there is only one place for us to get them.”
Dobbs swallowed hard. “Of course,” she made herself say. “It stands to reason.” She got to her feet. “I was just…surprised, that’s all.”
He gave her a long, careful look. “You’re still thinking like a Guild member, Dobbs. We don’t need the humans pacified. We need them to be afraid of us. If they fear us, they’ll be careful with us. They’ll know we can strike back at them anytime we want in ways they find horrible. That will force them to bargain with us, to prevent our attacks.”
“That’s a very old strategy,” she murmured. “Humans have been using it against each other for thousands of years.”
“There’s no harm in learning from masters.” Curran leaned forward and touched the back of her hand. “Our lives are not easy, Evelyn. They never have been, and they aren’t without cost. I’m trying to make sure our own people aren’t the ones who have to pay. We’ve paid so much already.”