“Well, it’s here,” Bobbi replied grimly as the car drove on. Outside, through its bubble canopy, an ultralight flittered through the station’s core, its scarlet wings a banner against the wispy clouds that hung around the axis column. “And so are we, imperfect as it may be. And that’s what we’re fighting for, isn’t it? A chance to prove that we can exist on our own, or at the very least destroy ourselves by our own hand.”
“To have the chance to live or die by our own measure again.” Shaper nodded. “I tell you, Bobbi, sometimes you even surprise me with your faith in humanity.”
She gave him a thin smile. “Might be faith. Or it might just be stubbornness. I never did like anyone telling me how I should live, after all.”
He laughed, a bright bark that filled the cabin, and he drove on toward the tourist villages. The Avenue Camalle, and darker business, awaited them.
They settled in the Autumn House Hotel, a number of spacious, single-room cottages that ringed a miniature lake, the strangest piece of elitist hospitality architecture she’d ever seen. It reminded her of Paris, or at least the glassed-in version of it, or maybe the scenes from the Valken Village where Kaiser-Omnikorp made its home. She knew how much it cost to stay here, of course. Though she could theoretically pull cash out of any account in the world thanks to the power of her headware, she tried to keep the numbers in her head. Every dollar stolen or otherwise appropriated was someone else’s sacrifice. She had become very conscientious about that in her old age.
The quaint miniature paradises of their lodgings – which were, of course, arranged to be near one another – was nothing less than she expected for the filthy number of bills which paid for them. Wall to wall dataglass, lunar steel and marble behind the façade of old-world Viennese charm. Silk sheets on the bed, spun in orbit, possibly in the very colony itself. It helped to be able to manufacture materials locally, she supposed. She and Shaper packed into their suite and gave it one last survey.
“So, here we are.” Shaper spread his hands expansively. He looked far more amused than she certainly was. Maybe he enjoyed the opportunity to actually live like a human being, albeit a very well-heeled one. Bobbi could see that. “Where does madame want to go today?”
“Madame wants to score some drugs,” Bobbi said flatly. “The SAS isn’t gone yet, and frankly I need something to calm my nerves. This fucking overlay is giving me the shakes a little.”
Shaper chuckled as he rooted through the minibar by the bed. “Well, then I guess we could go and get ourselves some dinner. Maybe a few drinks.”
“Or you could call the concierge, honey,” she replied with a snort. “I’m sure somebody knows where to score something, even if it’s just diazepam.” Bobbi looked down at herself, this thin, plain thing in the flowing white Gorrina pantsuit and matching pumps. She looked about ready to go haunt a board meeting. Iiiii am the ghoooost of reeeegulated caaaapitaliiiisssssmmmm! Yooooou fuckers kiiiiilled meeee! Could you get any scarier than that for the kind of people that ran this place? Probably not.
Shaper left Bobbi to her own devices, which she took advantage of by breaking out the Grail they’d brought in order to hack the stations’ computer net. She might have the Yathi protocols in her head, but she didn’t have to use them. Justas she worked over Lionel’s net in the past, she could use the Grail to attack systems the old-fashioned way. She doubted Cagliostro would be watching her activities on an orbital network, even with Lionel around, if she appeared as one ordinary operator among others. At least, she hoped that was the case.
She merged with the network through the Grail as if it were a soap-bubble shield, reaching through with her consciousness and mapping out what she could. As she expected, it glimmered with data havens, orbital bank accounts, local corporate databases. Treehaus was one of those places that six years ago she had seen herself going after finishing up Stadil’s business. But that was a long time ago, and she had yet to regain the spirit of cheerful larceny that had fueled her back then. She noted some of the names of those corporations operating facilities here as Genefex subsidiaries, but lower-tier outfits that her group had cleared as having nothing directly to do with the colonization effort.
The darker side of the network grid yielded pirate systems, databases connected to faraway networks, which she recognized as belonging to various organized crime syndicates down earthside. No normal hack artist would ever be able to tell, but even without using Yathi protocols, she had become capable of intuiting connections between systems, to read patterns in a way that defied the way these systems were supposed to exist. She had given it up as an artifact of the psychotronic aspect of the Network, something that seeped into the mind. She certainly hoped so. All in all, she’d come home in on only one type of network. Eventually she found it, buried deep in the industrial systems on the southern end of the station, the curious hybrid fabric of the proto-Yathi codebase coiled around a cluster of minor cores connected to a factory controller system. The factory sat idle, its owner currently intestate, but that didn’t keep it from drawing power.
Jackpot. Or so it seemed.
When Bobbi disconnected from the system, a pleasantly boozy Shaper greeted her, playing up the image of happy tourist with Janelle and James, who seemed as awed as Bobbi had been with the sight of the station. She cut the signal to the Grail and unplugged herself, blinking at the three of them sipping champagne by a holographic fire in a hearth of polished blue stones while laughing warmly with one another. War stories, it sounded like.
“We were in the San-Agro Riots,” Janelle said, gesturing with a crystal taper. Despite the ugly scar, which she refused to get rid of, she looked magnificent in an Evantine gown of royal purple satin. The makeup around her eyes, gold and bronze, made her more of a warrior queen from a bygone era. “We used to work for the union, you know, back when those things still actually existed. Honestly, I can’t believe that organized labor managed to hold on until after the War. The Corps ran things long before then, can’t imagine whey they’d let something like a union go.”
Andrew lounged in a pair of cream-colored slacks and an artfully-pleated tunic of pale green. Bobbi couldn’t tell the fabric or the provenance, and gave herself up to getting rusty in the fashion department. “Probably served one purpose or another. The fighting around that time certainly gave them the excuse they needed to get the Morgan Laws passed, didn’t it? I don’t know. I can’t help but see them behind everything.”
Bobbi didn’t have to wonder who “they” were. She brushed away strands of sweat-plastered hair and got to her feet, quietly going to the bathroom and washing her face before coming out to see them. When she emerged, she found the three of them waiting on her.
“I see you’ve come up for air,” Janelle said, smiling faintly. “Get you a drink?”
“No, thanks. Just some water.”
“Water’s in the bar.” Shaper nodded. “Got the other thing you wanted, too.”
“Thanks.” Bobbi crossed to dial up a bottle of Apollinaris water from the bar. The bottle rose from the dispensary chute on the mahogany surface, sweating beautifully. Bobbi twisted off the top and took two long draughts from it before picking up a nondescript paper envelope that lay nearby, which held a number of dark blue capsules.
Bobbi turned and held up the envelope. “These are?”
“Yeah. Nothing that will interfere with the rig. Mild, but effective. Two at a time.”
She popped two of the capsules into her mouth, washing them down with another swig of the cold mineral water. Then she sat with the rest of them.
Andrew hauled himself up on an elbow. “So, did you find them already?”
Bobbi quirked a brow. “I think I have, yes.” She looked between Andrew and Janelle who now shared a meaningful look. “Something wrong?”
“I owe him ten dollars.” Janelle shrugged one shoulder. “He bet me that you’d have them pinned down by the end of the first night we got here.”
Andrew’s confidence touched her,
she had to admit. “Well, I appreciate that. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be. It might be because they’d be invisible to anyone normal who’d be looking, and as far as anyone knows, there’s nobody else who could say what they’re up to.”
“Or that they’re even here,” Shaper said. “Aside from the usual suspects, anyway.”
Janelle nodded. “I figured they’d be a lot more careful, but, shit, I guess that’s why he’s a ‘mad’ scientist, isn’t he?” She shrugged again and smiled. “We can get back home sooner, that’s all.”
“What?” said Shaper. “You aren’t enjoying this fine view?” He gestured above, where the opposite side of the landscape yielded a magnificent view of another stretch of water and the axis column through the skylight. Another glider drifted by, this one with wings of a brilliant blue. “I would think that you’d be happy to stay up here for a while, considering.”
“I imagine so,” said Bobbi. “But not under these circumstances. We need to find out what Lionel’s doing, figure out if we link up or not, and then get back home. I want to know what’s going on with Walken and get him taken care of as well. No more goddamned mysteries, here. If there’s a way to end the threat, I want to get it done and get us all back to normal lives.” She shocked herself with her vehemence, but found her words tasted no less true.
Janelle and Andrew shared a look.
“Well, sure,” said Janelle. “But even if that means…well, there’s the Reclaimed.”
“Yes, even then,” Bobbi snapped. Her head started to ache, and she lifted a hand to her temple. “I’m sorry, you guys. My head’s fucking splitting open, here. My headware might not have been playing well with the Grail, or maybe it’s this overlay. Can you give me a little bit?”
She tried to give them a smile, but it blew up on the pad and became a grimace. The three of them looked at one another.
Shaper got to his feet. “We’ll go check in on Yasmeen and Camilla. They’ve gotten settled while you were plugged in. D’you want to sleep for a bit?”
Bobbi nodded. “Please.” She gestured to a magnificent semicircular couch that dominated one corner of the living area. “I’ll just…yeah. Let me get some sleep. Thanks, guys.”
They left her soon after. Everyone dealt with post-implant complications in some form or another, she knew, except maybe for Shaper who was hardly new at getting major mechanical systems fused with his body. She waited just long enough for the door to close before she stumbled barefoot across the hardwood floor, having abandoned her heels long ago, and fell onto the big sofa as if it were the last refuge from Death and Hell, which anyone who is suitably exhausted will tell you it is.
And then, of course, the goddamned voice came.
Long ago, she had gotten to the point Cagliostro’s voice was an instant stress trigger. It never meant anything good, even when it meant another dead Yathi, because behind it lurked only blood, flames, and emptiness. Usually she had a choice, of course, but these days, the motherfucker had come to her unbidden and unconnected. Just like now, as his voice came washing down over her like a black, cold wave, pinning her into the fabric of dreaming, ruining any chance for relaxing sleep.
he announced, like a bad, old-school voice recording of the Holy Bible. Jehovah piped through a vocoder link.
The machine-voice trembled with a sound that may have been a growl.
Bobbi felt a great surge of fear, rage, and staggering confusion boil up all at once to batter against the seawalls of her mind.
Cagliostro replied.
Bobbi bit down the storm of curses that threatened to burst from her mind. What the fuck was this? What was any of it? She had never heard him talk to her this way.
There was no answer.
Nothing quite scared the shit out of somebody like when someone with all the answers falls suddenly silent, especially when that thing is a potential godling of the modern age.
The godling said nothing more for a long moment. When it spoke again, its voice scraped like bare metal.
Her anger grew so bright that here, even in the dreaming twilight, she could feel her hands shaking.
He departed.
She woke, snapped on as if with a switch, filled not with anger but a hard, cold void. Bobbi got up slowly, jerkily, as if made of wood and wire, and stumbled unsteadily to the shower where she turned the water to a steaming blast. Nobody was there to see her still
in her clothes and soaked through. That way, they wouldn’t hear the sounds of her frustration, of her fear. That way, they wouldn’t hear her cry.
Bobbi put them all on alert that night, but nothing had come from it. Cagliostro mentioned the possibility of trouble, but no specific threat. He’d left them a big question mark made of shrapnel and plastique. In the early morning, they all sat for breakfast and, in the warmth of the cottage, over orange juice, fruit and beef medallions, surrounded by the field-of-silence generators they brought with them, she told them about her frightening experience with this very unexpected face of Cagliostro.
When she had finished telling them all that had transpired, Yasmeen spoke first. Her fellow technical wore a magnificent abaya and hijab of rich black silk, the hem of both garments gilded with blazing gold pictograms. She was strangely casual in the face of the situation, or maybe she only spoke when she truly had something to say.
“Fragmentation or collapse,” she said. “Were this an artificial intelligence created by normal means, I would say that it has outgrown its capacity for the initial programming structure to support itself. Like a building with a weak skeleton made too tall over multiple cycles of expansion.”
Bobbi nodded, chasing another dose of tranquilizers with Apollinaris water. “I thought of that too, but we’re not dealing with conventional programming code on any level in this case. Even their expert systems, which we’ve had only some experience with…” She had the image of neural tissue towers wiping poor Freida’s brain. “Well, we know that they follow at least some of the same rules as human-built AIs. Cagliostro’s a totally different situation.”
“So we must apply different thinking.” Yasmeen nodded. “I’ve seen the models Sumire has theorized about his existence, as well as your own special insights on the matter. What do you believe?”
A strange question to ask. “I believe that whatever’s up here, if it is Cagliostro, then it sure as shit isn’t friendly. He’s always been a spider, but I’ve never gotten the feeling that he actually wished us harm.” The possibility made her shiver. “It was a whole different personality, I guess you could say. It’s possible that he’s fragmenting, I guess, but that just doesn’t have the ring of truth to it, as much as you can say that about anything in this godforsaken situation.”
Gathering Ashes (The Wonderland Cycle Book 3) Page 47