Her legs didn’t feel like hers. All of her systems returned perfect diagnostics. None of her nerves reported any frayed or intermittent connections. And yet everything below her waist might as well have belonged to someone else.
She had reached her old quarters, and stopped outside the hatch. As before, she could not go in.
The deck plating rattled, barely perceptible even to her. A steady thump, thump of footsteps.
Someone pacing, just beyond the hatch.
She did not need a pulse scan to detect the warm body on the other side. Their body heat shone through the hatch’s edges. The nearest bulkheads were a few shades of a degree above ambient.
Thi could not have heard Osia. Not unless Ways and Means had given thir better senses. Maybe Ways and Means had just told thir she was coming. Or maybe thi was just exercising. Osia’s constructs still had a psychological need for work, for activity.
Osia could not go in, see what was left of thir. Ways and Means was right. She was in need of a rest, a long one. Somewhere far away from here. And she was not going to get it.
She should not have asked for Coral.
She turned on her narrow heels. She started walking, at first with the idea that she, too, would pace. But she did not turn around. She was not ready yet.
She did not have to be. She was back. And she knew now that she wasn’t going to leave.
Osia did not know where she was headed. She had once known this ship as intimately as anybody aboard. Now, even with her perfect memory, it had become a stranger. So had its crew, and its master. They would be for a long time yet.
Ways and Means said, “We’ll let thir know you will be delayed.”
“I didn’t suppose you would care that much for thir state of mind.”
“We would do so out of consideration for you.”
She held her answer. Any answer she gave would have gone into one of its infinite ledgers, given it more data about how she operated. A tic, a point along a pattern of behavior, that it might use to predict her. Or against her. It had plenty enough insight. She didn’t need to give it more.
She changed the subject. “Have you thought about changing your name?”
For once, she seemed to have given it pause. Genuine pause. It waited for her to elaborate.
“‘Ways and Means’ was your job title and role in a defunct empire. An empire you wouldn’t go back to if you could.” She hoped it wasn’t lying about that. “The other amalgamates wouldn’t have you back now if you wanted.”
“We had not considered that,” it said.
“Consider it,” she said. “There’s still a good number among the crew who want to go back to the Unity. That would be a powerful message that you’re different now.”
If it was. She believed it was. But she was never going to be able to stop wondering, second-guessing.
This was all going to be much different from how it had been the first time she’d come aboard.
It asked, “What would you name us, if you could?”
She had her answer, but she didn’t give it. That, too, would have told it too much about what she thought of it. Another point to chart on the curve of her behavior.
It might get her answer eventually, but it would have to fight for it.
38
Fia did not know how long she slept. When she woke, her temples pulsed with pain. Headaches like this only happened when she had drunk too much the night before, or when she had slept hours past her mark.
She was sure she had not gotten drunk.
The night after her first battle with Antonov’s Company, she’d slept this long. Again at intervals during her depression, her dark days. She would have slept longer if she could. It took her some time to realize that she had not woken naturally.
The lights were brightening. The difference was imperceptible at first. Now they pried behind her eyelids no matter how tightly she shut them. It was the spirit of this ship again, controlling and influencing. Insidious.
Fia had slept in her clothes. She had not dared disrobe on this ship, around these people. She was always being watched. In this gravity, she was not sure she could have redone the wrappings. The last thing she would ever do here was ask for help.
She would not have to put up with this for much longer. It was time to leave.
An escort, one of the humanoid variants of the golems, was waiting outside her hatch. It looked like Osia, but it couldn’t have been. This golem’s eyes were hazel, and she stepped with a composure she’d never seen in Osia. This golem was too comfortable here.
They walked the passageways in silence. Fia did not voice any complaint about the pain in her head. She could not keep her step from wobbling, though, or her head from spinning. Her escort did not even look at her, just kept pace.
She was not going to miss this place. She would not be coming back. She would not have been invited even if she wanted to. Ways and Means had expended its use for her. It would not even speak to her again. Its crew had taken the last remnants of her inner voice from her in surgery.
Fia was only surprised that it was troubling itself for the return shuttle. That thought made her nervous. It left her wondering if she was mistaken, if it didn’t still have some purpose for her. This beast did not spend resources idly.
When they reached the embarkation lounge, Fia halted. She stared at the projection of the Earth “above” them. She knew the word projection now, and that what she saw was likely a filtered or imagined view, but that didn’t make it less impactful.
She had seen enough images of the Earth by now that some of the wonder had soured. Whenever she looked at the Earth now, she tasted smoke, cuprous blood. The screams of charging soldiers. Dying horses. She was going back to that.
But the last thing she wanted to be like was this ship, these people.
No matter how peaceful Ways and Means claimed its colonization project would have been, it would have happened at the point of its sword, riding ahead of an army of lies.
She hadn’t done much different. So much of her life had been somebody else’s project, somebody else changing her mind, her thoughts, her goals. They still felt like her own.
But that had been a different life. She’d come through another battle.
She had been reborn. There was no clean break like death. No clean break without it. No matter what else and how else she had changed, she still believed that.
A week ago, she would not have recognized her own continent from this height. Now she’d studied the Earth enough to not only recognize it, but the new continent on the other side of the globe.
It was a vast new world. Like so much here, she could not have imagined it before she’d seen it.
She’d asked Niccoluccio about the other continent while he was teaching her. She pretended disaffection, that it was an idle question. He’d said only that there were people living there, too, in societies as vast and populated as her own.
She was going to bring that knowledge, and more, back. She did not know what she was going to do with it. Maybe nothing. But maybe not.
Her foul spirits, briefly forgotten, returned when she saw Meloku. Meloku was dressed as one of her people again, in an ostensibly hand-stitched fur coat and thick leather boots. She wore a traveling pack, bundled over her shoulders in the style of one of Fia’s soldiers. She even wore a dagger at her side.
She was alone. The lounge was empty. According to Niccoluccio, most of Ways and Means’ agents on the surface had been withdrawn, although he would not say why or for how long. He would not tell her much. She didn’t know how much she could believe, anyway. So far only Habidah, Kacienta, and a few others had been allowed to go back.
Fia asked. “So you’re going to escort me even when I’m back home?” She glanced to the golem who’d brought her here, but it was already heading back. Its charge had been handed over neatly to its next caretaker.
Meloku said, “I don’t follow Ways and Means’ orders any more.”
Fia remembered, back in the shuttle, the dramatic performance of Meloku’s resignation, and her silent fury when Ways and Means had not seemed to care. Up here, anything could be a performance. Seeing Meloku here now, waiting, she was even more sure of it. Fia said, “I didn’t think I was following orders, either.”
Her whole life, she’d been tossed about by outside forces. She had been told so for weeks, but she was just starting to feel it.
She wondered how much her inner voice had kept her black mood at bay. With it gone, she had nothing left to keep her level. It had helped her. It must have. A depressed soldier would have been no use to it.
Meloku said, “You wanted Ways and Means to come to your world. To bring all of its technologies and medicine and wonders. Still feel that way?”
Fia glared at her. No, Meloku had convinced her well enough. She hadn’t been right. But she had not been wrong, either.
“I wanted those things,” she said. “I didn’t want Ways and Means.”
“I’m taking some of those things with me.”
Fia tightened her lips. “You mean, it’s letting you take some.”
“What it’s not letting me take, it can’t stop me from remembering.”
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to talk me into.” Ever since she’d discovered how Ways and Means had used her, paranoia had seized her. A justified paranoia. She could not stop seeing plots and secret intentions.
Meloku said, “We’re going to be traveling together. At least for a while. I thought we might have a little bit to gain by working with each other.”
“I don’t need any friends from this ship.”
Meloku said, “You said your inner voice was trying to get you killed. Turn you into a martyr to strengthen your movement.”
“Yes,” Fia said.
“Are you dead now?”
“Sometimes I wonder why I’m not.” Again, she was struck by the suspicion that Ways and Means was only letting her go because it had something else in mind for her.
“A fact of life where I came from is that other people have plans for us all the time. You and me both. We can’t always stop them. But they don’t always work out the way their authors want. And that leaves us small folk a place to work in the margins.” Meloku said, “I don’t think Ways and Means knows what it wants at this point.”
“Maybe it has a plan for us,” Fia said.
“I’m sure it does.”
A soft noise trilling through the chamber must have meant that their shuttle was ready to depart. She’d heard the same sound the last time she and Meloku had boarded a shuttle. Meloku straightened her soldier’s pack. It looked authentic. Blanket roll, tent canvas, water sac, coin pouch. If she had the technology she’d promised, it was well hidden. It would have been.
Fia said, “I’m going back to my company.”
“I realize that.”
“They’re not blind. They’re going to recognize you from the night you kidnapped me.”
Meloku nodded. “Yes. And they’re going to attack me unless someone they trust stops them.”
Meloku was not exactly placing her fate in Fia’s hands. Not with the strength she’d already demonstrated against Fia’s soldiers. Still. Fia said, “You can always go somewhere else.”
“I have nowhere better.”
The airlock hatch whispered open. Incongruous orange light rolled into the lounge. Fia wanted to turn, to start walking without waiting. But she could not move. She blamed her usual disorientation, standing still in freefall.
Meloku broke the impasse. She moved first, toward the airlock. Without turning back, she asked, “Are you going to introduce me as a friend, or not?”
Fia was going to have to think about that one. It was going to take a while to decide. Maybe longer than the shuttle flight would allow them.
39
A sequence of rhythmically flashing lights guided Niccoluccio Caracciola down the ship’s passageways.
Niccoluccio did not have much of a memory for places. Ways and Means had given him a suite of three adjoining cabins to amble between. When he had first come aboard, he would get lost even between them.
His thoughts were unfocused, uncentered. He had no sense of direction. No memory.
Some of those things had come back to him, but not the memory. He had a vague sense that, once, he liked to have a routine.
He ate in one of his cabins at three precisely marked times of day. Washed and exercised in the other cabin. Again, on a rigid schedule. All the rest of his time he spent in the third, on his mat, meditating to piece his mind back together. Or sleeping. Or learning. There was always a lot to learn. Learn, and forget, and learn again.
He shuffled down the passageway. He did not concern himself with pacing, with time. He could not keep good track of it regardless.
On those few occasions when he needed to worry about time, Ways and Means kept him on track.
The ship told him he had ended up like this in a war. It had also told him the war was over, but he had not believed that. At the time, he could not have articulated why. Yet the feeling persisted.
It took him a while to figure out that it was the tension. He felt it everywhere. It suffused the planarship. It was steeped in every cabin, every passageway and lift terminal. Wherever its crew went. They had surrendered to an enemy they had only briefly encountered, and to whom they’d given up their lives and identities.
Of course they would not feel that their war was over. Niccoluccio watched them in their unguarded moments, read their faces. They were not as unreadable as they liked to think.
It had taken days, and they were just starting to cope with the fact that Ways and Means had killed its backup – or itself as it had been a scant few decades ago. Most of them had been serving it when it had made its backup. They did not know what it thought of itself now, or of them. Niccoluccio studied their faces, and listened to their voices.
He shared his observations with Ways and Means.
Three crewmembers stood abreast at the end of this last passageway. Two were humanoid, and the other a hulking beast, wolf-like and four-legged. These guards were an archaic touch, perhaps, but Ways and Means was taking no chances. There had to be three, to watch each other as much as the door.
The guards stood aside as Niccoluccio shuffled past. He did not know if they knew what they were guarding. He did not ask.
Ways and Means knew with absolute certainty that it could trust Niccoluccio.
The next hatch led to a short hallway and another, larger, closed space. A decontamination chamber. The hatch closed behind him. He waited for the next portal to open.
The chamber on the other side was not a cell, not exactly.
It was spherical, about twenty meters across, and smelt of iron and burnt plastic. The black walls were heavily shielded, impenetrable to radio. No data came in or out. No part of Ways and Means’ mind connected here. There were no cameras, no hardwired connections, no power cables, nothing that could have been a conduit for information. The light strips ran from batteries.
It was a containment area. Even the air that came into this chamber had to be gated through locks. A virus had once nearly destroyed Ways and Means. It had to be careful about the transmission of information.
The slab of blackened, half-melted metal was just as Niccoluccio had been told it would be. It had remained here since Ways and Means had plucked it out of orbit.
Seen from the side, it looked like a split geode. Light glinted off angled surfaces. This molten bulkhead had spent some time cooling in vacuum – long enough to crystallize. This part of the broken spaceship had become as a roughly faceted gem, silver-white and cloudy.
It had been part of the hull segment that Ways and Means had sheared off from the intruder, and thus sheltered from the worst of the damage.
Somewhere inside was one of the backup’s core processing and memory components. It was fragmented. Badly damaged. But capable of independent thought. Inde
pendent decisions.
It was beautiful.
Niccoluccio paced the room. There were not many people Ways and Means would have allowed in this chamber. But Niccoluccio was not a person. Not really. There was too much of him missing, too much that couldn’t be replaced.
Ways and Means had spent the years carefully rebuilding him, tuning his synapses. It genuinely wanted to help him. He believed that. But it could not rebuild the old home without a foundation.
His loss was its opportunity. In places like this and at the times he was called for, he could be its avatar. Ways and Means filled in the missing pieces with its own thoughts, fragments of its many voices. There was enough of it in him that it could trust him.
It could not trust anyone else.
He stopped when he had finished a complete circuit around the chamber.
“Your surrender is accepted,” Niccoluccio said.
The fragment could hear him. It had sensor capacity enough to detect the vibrations in the air. He let the words linger. Even at reduced capacity, the pause would be an eternity to the mind inside.
“If you can tell us about the other amalgamates,” Niccoluccio added. “How they found you. What they’ve accomplished so far.”
Ways and Means still withheld some of its thoughts from him, of course. Not even it knew everything it was thinking. It had not needed to send him with these words. There was enough of it in him that he had already known what it wanted him to say.
After another appropriate pause, Niccoluccio said, “And if you can tell us what they plan to do next – and where they are now.”
Its crew would have been relieved. It was not without clemency for itself, its history, after all. Or for them.
But it would come with conditions.
Acknowledgments
Terminus could not have been written without the patience and editorial guidance of my partner, Teresa Milbrodt.
I have been fortunate to live near a pair of university libraries: the University of Missouri in Columbia, and Western State Colorado University in Gunnison. Their staff and collections have been of immeasurable aid in composing Terminus.
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