Ironheart

by J. Boyett

  Where had Anya’s suspension coffin come from? It was that rarest of finds: something new. Madaku hadn’t really wrapped his mind around it, but he had a feeling it might wind up being something truly momentous, merely because of that newness.

  For now, though, he was worried about those hyperspace couplings. He couldn’t think of what else could be wrong. While he was procrastinating about bringing the possible problem to her attention, she was off on another Civics-lesson tangent: “So tell me. When the Registry captures these people, these occasional murderers, what does it do with them? Make them an example? Publicly torture them and distribute the vids?”

  “No—gods, no, of course not. The Registry enforcers feed them lotos and incarcerate them in one of the Wells of Melancholy.”

  Anya gave a little laugh. Madaku didn’t see what was so funny.

  Putting the tablet aside, he said, “I suppose the Registry didn’t do that, when you last went to sleep?”

  “Oh, no. The last I remember, the Galactic Registry was just that: a registry, where one uploaded news, facts, art, any data at all. It had pretensions to become the common ground of the galaxy but wasn’t really there yet. Now, I see, it is. It was a gigantic server stored in hyperspace, whose realspace port was near Sagittarius.”

  “It still is. Well, the core is, anyway.” He felt hushed before the notion that she dated from a time before the Registry was really the Registry. His gaze flickered around the old-fashioned bridge, its layout an echo from another culture. He said, “You ... you’re very old, aren’t you?”

  She looked straight at him with those eyes. He wasn’t sure if he shuddered with his body, or if it was only in his mind. She gave him a faint, strange smile, one he would never be able to read, and said, “Oh, yes. I am very old.”

  Madaku swallowed. “How many times have you been in suspended animation?”

  “Many times have I slept. I would not be able to count them all.”

  “Have you ever been out for as long as you were this last time? I mean, it seems like you were asleep for six thousand years.”

  “It is not the first time, no.”

  Madaku looked off into space, excited and frightened by the magnitude of it. “What was it like, back then? Back when you were awake?”

  “The last time I was awake? Ah, the galaxy was a wild place then. The Registry was but a glorified newsfeed, and did no policing. A ship like Ironheart, if she wished, could destroy whole planets, then go on her way unhindered, or with a very good chance of being unhindered.”

  Madaku remembered how minutes ago, he had told Anya that what kept the number of murders down was that the bulk of people had an aversion to living out their days alone in an uninhabited wasteland. Now it occurred to him that, when her engines gave out, that may have been exactly what she was doing.

  She went on: “Aye, it seems I did underestimate the Registry, even after having seen the wondrous violence it could wreak.”

  “Beg pardon? What’s less violent than the Registry? It’s been the foundation of peace for millennia.”

  “Yes, and I know upon what violent ground such peace is built. Think you the Registry grew strong so as to contain the Hygiene? Say rather the Registry follows the Hygiene as a rose grows from a seed, or rather that it fed on it as a maggot battens upon a corpse. There was the Registry even before the Hygiene, you know. But it was weak, a mere commodity serving the pleasure of unruly masters. It must have taken the Hygiene to make those masters long for the peace it offered. Ah, many are the worlds upon which I have caroused, that are naught but cinders now!”

  “Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying that you remember from before the Hygienes?”

  She tilted her head and pierced her dark eyes all the way through him, as if his stupidity had not quite yet ceased to amuse and exasperate her. “Do you not know already that I have been asleep six thousand years? And did I not just say this was not the first time I have slept so long?”

  “I ... yes, I guess it makes sense, it’s just ... before the Hygienes ... before the Registry....”

  Madaku saw her take note of his sudden, mysterious fear and smile.

  She nodded at the tablet he had set aside and changed the subject. “Tell me about my ship.”

  Madaku cleared his throat. “Yes, well.” He picked up the tablet and looked at the readouts. “Lots of the realspace readings are puzzling, to be honest.” Anya’s face remained impassive at this; it was impossible to tell if his words surprised her, or not. He went on: “I have a hard time seeing what’s gone wrong with the thrusters, and why whatever it is hasn’t interfered with workings in the rest of the ship.... I’m worried there may be a problem with the hyperspace couplings.”

  “What sort of problem?”

  “One of the couplings may be starting to decay. All the realspace portions of the ship seem to have held up well, but there might be some erosion of the hyperface.”

  Anya’s mouth formed a grim shape. “When last I was awake, it was impossible to reattach a hyperdrive that had slipped its mooring. Is that yet true?”

  “Yeah, afraid so. It’s a math thing, it doesn’t change. Even if it’s just one coupling and all the others are still holding, once the coupling gives out, the piece of the hyperdrive it connects to in hyperspace will spontaneously morph and distort, and pass out of our reach.”

  “Then we must repair the coupling before it slips.”

  “Understand that I’ll need Willa even to confirm that the problem exists. If it does, we can more or less fix it. But it’ll never be possible to completely confirm that there’s been no distortion in the hyperdrive. Normally, with this kind of damage and decay, it’s safer to scrap the ship and get a new one.”

  “We must repair the coupling. Ironheart must fly. She must fly forever.” She said this with great intensity, almost menacingly, as if it were she herself they were talking about.

  “Well,” said Madaku, returning to his tablet. He almost pointed out that nothing lasts forever, but something made him think better of it. “Like I said, even confirming the problem will need some hyperface work, and that means Willa. We’ll need to get her over here, familiarize her with the equipment.”

  “Ah.” Anya leaned back, all smiles now that Willa had been mentioned. “That shall be very fine.”

  “Meanwhile I’ll keep running tests to see if I can come up with any other reason the realspace thrusters might have failed.”

  Anya nodded, as if she were bored now with the discussion. She stood. “You shall continue to work,” she said. “I have items I wish to tend to.” And she strode out of the bridge, shutting the door behind her.

  Madaku breathed a sigh of relief to have her gone, even as he wondered about those “items.” He returned his attention to the engineering problems. What he hadn’t mentioned to Anya was that Fehd (and, unofficially but very possibly, Burran) would have to give Willa permission to come work on a craft other than the one she was contracted for. Not to mention that Ironheart would need an intuiter to get to the nearest repair community, and the Canary couldn’t spare theirs.

  Again he wondered: Why had the Ironheart’s intuiter killed herself, all those thousands of years ago?

  Six

  Anya told Madaku that she preferred to remain on Ironheart for a day or two, and that she would send a message when she wished to return. He wondered why she wanted to stay aboard the ship (tending to those mysterious items of hers?), and he bristled at her assumption that he would drop his work and come fetch her whenever she called. But it would give the crew of the Canary a chance to discuss the situation without Anya there. So he nodded and did as she said.

  Back aboard the Canary he called a meeting in the Discussion Room. He had been right that Fehd would rub his chin and hem and haw at the suggestion that Willa be sent over to work with Ironheart’s hyperface to repair its coupling, pro bono. But he’d been wrong that Burran would oppose it, and it was soon plain why. As Fehd was just beginning to talk about how it reall
y wouldn’t be fair of Anya to expect such a valuable, vital service in exchange for nothing at all, Burran watched Willa with amused anticipation. Sure enough, she interrupted Fehd as he was saying, “Well, now, let’s think about this,” and made it plain that she found the idea of withholding such a service indecent and immoral, and possibly contra Registry guidelines. Fehd quickly backpedaled, protesting that he had never intended not to let her go over.

  After the meeting adjourned Madaku stayed in the room to work on something on his tablet, and Willa hung back too.

  “You’ve got a secret,” she said, once they were alone.

  Madaku began to stammer; then closed his mouth and, under her kind gaze, waited till he’d calmed down before speaking again. “It’s disarming, how easily you see through me.”

  “I just look, that’s all,” she said. Madaku thought he caught a vague hint in her voice of a desire to correct him, to point out that it wasn’t just him she watched, that there was nothing particularly special or personal about the attention she paid him. “Tell me what you’re up to.”

  Embarrassed, he shrugged and said, “It’s just this silly side project,” but then he went ahead and told her. He hadn’t stopped being intrigued by Anya’s alien code; the Registry offered no direct guide to hacking it. Being able to take apart and rework her code had already presented a challenge by itself; and now that she’d mocked him for the ease with which he or anyone else could be destroyed by someone willing to live in isolation from Galactic society, he felt more encouraged than ever to figure the stuff out. Spurred on by that and the influence of Burran’s mania for security, he’d started trying to design a transparent tendril, a line of code he could potentially slip into Anya’s system, that would allow the Canary to observe and possibly even influence Ironheart’s operations. Basically a cheat, a way to make the invasive code invisible to the rest of the system even without being able to decipher Ironheart’s mutation principles and mutate fast enough to create code antibodies to protect itself from the ship’s defenses.

  Before he’d managed to explain very far, the seriousness of Willa’s gaze unnerved him. Assuming it was due to her disapproval of his ethics, he hastened to reassure her: “It’s only an intellectual exercise. Something to limber up my programming muscles. Nothing’s going to come of it.”

  “No, I think it’s a good thing,” said Willa. That surprised him. “Let me know when you’ve cracked it. I’ll tell the other guys what you’re up to....”

  “No, please don’t. You don’t understand, I’m not actually going to get anywhere, it’s only a sort of game. It would take a true genius to quickly master code this different from the Canary’s. The details are too technical for me to really get into, but I’ve never even heard of anyone doing anything comparable.”

  “Madaku, if it would take a true genius to do this, then you’ll just have to be a true genius.” She reached up and squeezed his upper arm. The combination of her touch and hearing her say his name left him breathless. Did she know what she was doing to him? “I won’t tell the guys, if that’s what you prefer. But keep working at it, and let me know when you get somewhere. I have a feeling about Anya; I don’t know, I think having a way in to her system might wind up being useful.”

  “Okay.” Until now the tendril had been just a pastime. Now, though he still didn’t believe he could succeed, he knew that it was going to become his main focus nevertheless.

  ***

  Willa sent a message to Anya, saying she could come work on the coupling. Anya messaged back that Willa was most welcome and appreciated. Willa headed over on the shuttle within an hour after the meeting aboard the Canary.

  There wasn’t anything seriously wrong with the hyperspace coupling that Willa could find. Madaku was right that the realspace components showed signs of great wear, to a worrisome degree; but that was nothing Willa could handle from the hyperspace angle. Once she came out of the intuition bowl and finished crying, she told Anya that Madaku was just going to have to come back and take a closer look.

  Meanwhile, she noted that Anya’s hyperface was weird. It almost seemed like an auxiliary, smaller-scale hyperface—it gave access to the hyperdrive itself, sufficient for repairs and whatnot, but once plunged within it Willa’s mind’s eye could find no piloting portal. The bowl gave access to the engine, but not to the wider universe—that hyperface must be elsewhere. Willa wondered why it was set up that way. But instead of asking outright, she decided it might be interesting to see what Anya did, and did not, volunteer.

  Anya insisted on having Willa stay over for a candlelight dinner. Willa messaged the Canary beforehand to let them know she was sleeping over; but first she messaged Burran privately, to let him know. He wasn’t crazy about her staying. He insisted she at least leave the communicator on during dinner, but she gently refused. “That’s rude,” she said.

  “Just don’t tell her you’ve got it on.”

  “I don’t know, baby. I get the feeling she would just be able to tell.”

  It would be wrong to say that Willa trusted her, but she didn’t suspect Anya of wishing her harm. Anya and Willa were getting along quite well, in general.

  But she knew Burran was right to worry. There was a reason people were trained in security, and a reason captains hired them for it. And she could sense that there was “something about” Anya.

  She enjoyed the dinner, though she was a bit bemused by it. She’d never been to a candlelight dinner before, nor even heard of such a thing, though she knew that prehistoric people must have eaten and done most everything else by the light of raw fire.

  They met in the dining room. Anya had given her directions from the quarters she’d assigned Willa for the night. When Willa arrived at the dining room, Anya was already there, and gestured to the place set for her at the ornate table, which looked like it was made from real wood and metals, and which was not huge but was a bit big for only two people. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the room were black, and it was dim because it really was lit only by candles. There were a fair bit of candles, though: five on the table, set in some sort of silver metal thing seemingly designed just to hold candles; and then more, set in doublets and triplets in sockets along the wall.

  Once they were seated a squat and silent robo-butler came out and served them the soup course. The robo-butler was so old-fashioned and ancient, Willa wasn’t sure whether it looked more like a toy or an antique. Either way, she was so delighted she nearly clapped her hands. Anya noticed how Willa was trying to follow along with her in choosing the silverware, and explained to her which was the soup spoon and gave her a quick run-down of the rules for all the rest of the cutlery. When Anya was done explaining Willa laughed and told her she’d probably have to go through the whole spiel again.

  Anya smiled and said she didn’t mind.

  Conversation was slow at first, and restricted to Anya asking rather stiff questions about the other members of the Canary’s crew. Her speech patterns had become more contemporary under Willa’s tutelage, though she did sometimes lapse back into her old pronoun usage, and she retained that stately rhythm. Willa, distracted by one of the burning wax-sticks’ flickering, said, “Why are we eating by candlelight, by the way?”

  “Ah. Well. I felt a celebration was appropriate. A celebration of how handily you confirmed Ironheart’s hyperdrive capacity. And, I hope, a celebration of the beginning of what shall prove to be a true friendship.”

  The answer struck Willa as a non sequitur, at first. Then she started to get it. “You mean the candles themselves are celebratory?”

  Anya stared at her blankly, then burst into laughter. “Ah, all things do change, at long last! The notion of a ‘candlelight dinner’ as being special and set-apart was current for so long, I suppose I ceased even to think about it.” Then she frowned, and when she spoke again it seemed she was talking to herself: “At least, I think the last time I was awake, people still did that. The last few times.”

  Willa waited, watc
hing Anya disappear within herself. Then she asked, softly, “Anya, how old are you?”

  Anya returned to her, and the present, with a smile. “Old. Very old. Older than you think!”

  As a joke, Willa said, “Do you yourself even know, anymore?”

  This time, the smile Anya gave in reply was so strange, Willa couldn’t read it.

  She returned to the candles: “Can you explain to me the ritual significance of these candles?”

  “Oh, it’s only a very vague one. Simply an extravagance. A way of showing a person that she, or he, is worthy of some trouble. And I suppose that once, at the dawn of the electrical age, it must have been a means of hearkening back to an earlier, statelier time.”

  Willa laughed. “At the dawn of the electrical age! My, this custom stretches back all the way to our pre-human ancestors!”

  Anya was still smiling, but she continued as if Willa hadn’t spoken. “People like to ritually invoke earlier times, because they always believe the world was more civilized and less violent just a few generations go, or else more adventurous and romantic. But the differences are rarely so dramatic as all that.”

  The remark struck Willa as funny, because she’d grown up with the understanding that the Registry had long since done away with that old legendary large-scale violence, and that it was the galaxy of today which was the civilized one. She gazed at the candles on the tabletop until they imprinted negative blobs on her retinas, then turned to look at the more distant ones mounted on the walls. “They’re very pretty.”

  “Ah. You’ve never seen a candle?”

  “Never in real life. Only in history vids, fantasy vids.”

  “They’re made of wax. Synthetic wax. There was a time when I insisted on having candles whose wax was made from real animal fat, but I’ve long since stopped caring.”

  Willa thought it was bizarre that Anya should specify that the wax was synthetic, as if it might have occurred to Willa it would be anything else. Something in her soul stirred in surprised horror at the idea of slaughtering a genuine living animal just to extract fat from it, when it would be vastly easier to get the fat from a protein matrix.