by J. Boyett
Anya leaned over and looked at the read-outs carefully. At first she couldn’t understand them at all. Then she started to think that maybe she got their drift.
There was a twinge in her belly. Entranced, she used her fingers to expand and deepen that particular data stream on the monitor.
Now, this might be interesting.
***
A blue-gray luminescent vista viewed from a god-like vantage, in the sense that the perceiving subject experienced the surroundings as part of itself ... except that it was also racing through the vista, flashing past its gravitational hillocks and highways of force. The subject had the sense that it had been here countless times before, even that it had always been here. And yet there was also the feeling that there was something special about this landscape, something different.
That difference was linked to a purpose that the perceiving subject seemed to be carrying with it out from some lost primordial moment (that primordial moment was the moment when the subject, as Willa, had carefully framed the intention in her mind before putting on the intuition bowl, but all such details were inaccessible now). It would not be correct to call that purpose “vague,” but if the subject had tried to articulate it, the whole enterprise would have fallen to shambles. This uncanny ability to maintain a precise but pre-linguistic hold on an intention was part of what made an intuiter.
***
“It worked!” shouted Madaku. “By the gods, it worked!” It was a good thing he’d ordered the AI not to transmit his voice to Ironheart, because he couldn’t have restrained the triumphant cry.
He gaped in stupid stunned joy at his monitor, trying to assimilate the incredible knowledge. His tendril had worked! He had invented something! Something new, that had never been uploaded into the Registry! He grinned stupidly up at Burran and Willa, and right away his grin froze and began to slip off his face.
Willa had kept talking to Anya right up till the bowl had activated—now she had the slack, drooling expression of someone linked to a hyperface. It wasn’t particularly pleasant to look at, but it wasn’t unexpected. It was the grimness of Burran’s face, though, that gave him pause.
The two men locked eyes. Even though Willa couldn’t hear them, an almost superstitious reserve kept them from voicing their doubts in front of her, as if it might discourage her in battle.... Just because the tendril had worked, giving Willa a path into Anya’s systems that Ironheart’s defenses wouldn’t immediately see and block, there was still no guarantee at all that Willa’s radical plan to enter Fehd’s mind and demolish it would come off. Of more immediate concern were the odds against Burran being able to use the entry forced by the tendril to disable Ironheart’s weapons, before Anya or her AI noticed the attempt and blasted them into oblivion.
Madaku returned his attention to the console, sober again. If he let a bunch of celebrating interfere with his concentration, they could all end up dead. His job was to keep monitoring and fend off any of Ironheart’s attempts to find and dislodge the tendril. He had to keep a space clear for Burran and Willa to work in.
Already it was taking longer than they’d hoped to disable weapons. It was hard to believe Anya hadn’t noticed their interference. As to why she wouldn’t be target-locking on them this very instant, Madaku couldn’t guess. He just hoped there was some good reason that so far escaped him.
***
Now the stream of obscure data was setting off a hysterically beeping alarm. Ironheart’s AI wasn’t sure what the intrusion was, exactly, but it did think Anya ought to be upset about it.
But rage eluded Anya, and she couldn’t have built up a good head of fear if she’d tried—she’d been too long accustomed to invulnerability. What she mostly felt was something that had grown almost as unfamiliar: excitement. She had thought she’d felt that when she was fighting with the mortals, as they’d captured her, but that had been only a shadow compared to this. She scrolled hastily through the data, and saw that it was true—this was a new thing, that they’d managed to do.
Not a very profound thing, maybe. Just an extremely clever string of code. But it had been thirty thousand years since anyone had managed to slip a hack this deep into her system. Bravo to them!
It was something to do with the brain—they were feeding data to it. But of what nature? Were they trying to command it to jump into hyperspace without her consent? She slapped a block between the brain and the hyperdrive, just in case. But a second look made her doubt that was the answer.
They weren’t feeding any commands to its sustainment apparatus, which might have suggested they were trying to overload its surrounding electrical field and physically destroy it. Instead they were sending some kind of data directly to the brain’s perceptory and symbolic apparatus. Feeding it an experience of some type.
Anya checked and double-checked the data, but could see no way it might be provoking a physical change any more dramatic than what occurred any time a brain had a new experience.
She tapped her fingernail against the console. Could they be trying to render the brain useless to her by driving it crazy? If so, she felt a little disappointed that they weren’t so formidable after all, disappointed to see such ingenuity in the service of such naïveté. There were plenty of ways for an AI or human operating via a cyborg interface to render someone insane. But the process of plugging Fehd’s brain into the hyperface had already driven it so crazy that one couldn’t really call it “Fehd” anymore. The cognitive structures Anya needed were on such a deep level, no one had ever been subtle enough to disable them, short of initiating physical brain death. And Anya’s equipment protected against that.
But she took a second look at the data. It was doing something else—she couldn’t say for sure what. That irrational excitement returned. She slapped out some commands, isolating the tendril to systems it had already invaded and forbidding it from progressing any further. Now the brain was completely isolated from the rest of the ship.
What she should do now, she knew, was destroy the Canary, or at least batter it so badly that it would have to cease transmitting. But she couldn’t control her wondering wild irrationality, her feverish curiosity to learn the answer to this new riddle. Or better to say she refused to control it. It had been so long since she’d had a genuine mystery. Not knowing about the new extent of the Registry when she’d awoken didn’t count—that was simply a new variation on an old order, a gap she could easily fill. But here was something that was working in a new way. Shutting it down before she figured it out would be a waste.
She felt that she wanted to be physically closer to the brain as they manipulated it, as if knowledge of their schemes might leak out its folds. As she raced down the corridor, she told herself that, besides, she couldn’t destroy the Canary yet—if whatever they were doing worked, she might wind up needing one of those brains they had aboard, as a replacement.
***
Those gray twilight hillocks; those shadowy suspended orbs.... The thing that may as well still be called “Willa” forced itself in close to them, staving off the panic such proximity ignited. (Down here, below the level of memory and personal identity, Willa couldn’t articulate to herself that the reason she usually steered clear of these forms was that they represented bodies of massive gravity—but that now, in this case, they were the manifestations of the deep cognitive structures of Fehd’s brain, and could do her no physical harm. But even if she couldn’t articulate it, she somehow managed to know it. That was the talent of an intuiter.)
Even if these structures had no physical manifestations anywhere, they still mimicked the behavior of physical objects ... simply because the human brain is wired to experience reality in terms of a physical environment. As if she were zipping through real, physical space, Willa used the “gravity” of a nearby orb to slingshot herself around and, with her amplified momentum and a silent war cry, she launched herself straight at the next orb, planning to ram it, to effect the maximum havoc possible among these structures whose nat
ure she could not, at the moment, remember.
***
Madaku worked hard to maintain the self-control needed not to ask Burran how it was going. The security specialist needed all his concentration, to make sure his hack was secure before he started bossing around her weapons—if she noticed them interfering in that department before their control was finalized, she’d surely kill them.
The other question: What kind of progress was Willa making? It was impossible to gauge. They could see on their tablets that she was doing something, but they had no way to translate the data into anything they could comprehend. The theory was that Willa would be able to navigate Fehd’s symbol logic the same way she could the hyperscape. Well and good, but Madaku had never been able to generate anything but the fuzziest mental picture of the hyperscape. Add to that the idea that she planned to somehow interact with the symbol logic, not passively the way one did with the hyperscape, orienting oneself around landmarks and such, but actively, so as to bring the whole deep architecture of the mind crashing down. Madaku had never even heard of any other pilot even talking about such a thing, even as a metaphor.
They had no choice but to trust in Willa’s intuition.
Of course, Madaku’s big hope was that Burran would take control of Ironheart’s weapons, deactivate them, the Canary would blow the ship up, and Fehd’s brain would be a moot point.
And it looked like it was the moment of truth for that ploy. “Here goes,” Burran said, his finger over a button. Realizing what he was about to do, Madaku had to refrain from begging him to wait a moment longer, to be extra sure he was sure.
***
Anya stood in what she’d long called the Brain Chamber, arms jutted out straight to support herself on the railing as she loomed over the brain in its crystal case. What had that railing originally been intended to restrict access to? It had probably been centuries since Anya had remembered exactly, the information had not been important enough to keep it fresh by accessing it regularly.
She did remember how she’d come here to this system. She had climbed down from the desolate heights of her boredom (it was a more bone-deep and savage feeling than that, but “boredom” was the closest descriptor in mortal tongues), only long enough to jettison the last brain, voluntarily crippling herself with the grand disdain of one who need never fear death or harm, who could afford to sleep in the vacuum a million years if need be, if only something would come later and awaken her to a world that had changed.
There had been no problem with the engines, with the hyperdrive. That foolish mortal Madaku had not been able to figure out why Ironheart would not run, because she would run. It had never occurred to the simpleton to imagine such duplicity on Anya’s part, though.
It was insanely irrational not to cut off the Canary’s interference immediately, not to destroy the ship completely now that she knew the danger it posed. And even if she didn’t do that, it was stupid not to restrict her attention to the data stream, which would give her at least a chance of deciphering what was going on, unlike staring at this disembodied lump of flesh. But now that something interesting was happening, she felt a visceral longing to be near the event in all its sensual reality.
“Dost thou dream even stranger dreams now, pricked on by friend Willa?” The brain’s lack of connection to any sense organs posed no impediment to her speaking to it—since time out of mind she’d had the habit of talking to her possessions, both animate and inanimate, as well as herself. “Hath that clever creature divined some way to send thee a message? And, what would be greater marvel still, hath she healed thee enough that thou may hear and understand? O, that I might at long last solve the riddle of how to consume a mind, consume it truly, that I might harvest fresh dreams to dream!”
Another beeping alarm interrupted her tirade. She grabbed her tablet to see what it warned of this time. It was not that she did not feel worry, or anger—in fact, she felt fury, at being thwarted and trifled with. But underneath all that, the curiosity remained, and the desire to see how this trick would resolve. The desire was no less powerful for being momentarily silent.
***
“Fuck!” shouted Burran, and slammed his fist into the console. Despair and rage tore at his voice.
Madaku couldn’t swallow past the stone in his throat. He didn’t need to ask what was wrong—he could see from the feed on his tablet that Ironheart’s AI had caught the tendril-branch that was infiltrating the weapons systems, as well as the one directed at Fehd’s brain. Burran hadn’t been able to disable the weapons before the computer noticed his interference.
Now that Anya saw them tinkering in the weapons, they were fucked. It was inconceivable that she would not blast them out of existence. Madaku expected to be dead in seconds.
Still, he entered commands as fast as he could, coming to Burran’s aid and doing everything possible to gum up the works in Ironheart’s weapons, even if Burran couldn’t take them over. He concentrated his efforts on sabotaging her shielding, despite the fact that if she were actively fighting back—which she just had to be—there would be no hope. Meanwhile Burran launched an attack from the Canary. It had to be useless—Anya simply had to have activated her defenses the instant she’d noticed their meddling, and Ironheart’s defenses could bat away any attack launched by the Canary. But what else could they do?
***
Anya stared at the code scrolling down her tablet’s monitor. It really was some amazing stuff. That was a clever little mortal, that Madaku. Even if he was also a simpleton.
She had been accustomed for so long to invulnerable immortality, it took her a few precious moments to recognize the danger. Perhaps not danger to herself—then again, while it might be true that she could spin shipless through the void of space a million years without dying, that didn’t mean it would be pleasant. But the danger to Ironheart was real. She reminded herself that Ironheart was not invulnerable the way she was.
Hurriedly, she issued commands to the AI.
***
“Firing!” said Burran. There was no reason for him to announce the fact, Madaku could see it perfectly well on his tablet. It was just Burran’s training.
Madaku stared at his readouts as the Canary’s laser sheared off one of Ironheart’s four blasters. He couldn’t believe it. Literally, he couldn’t—he double-checked the data. Why hadn’t Anya had time to defend herself? There must have been some aspect to this confrontation that escaped him.
“Firing again,” said Burran, calmly.
***
Anya threw back her head and howled. It was not merely rage that spurred her, but pain, the kind of nerve-searing she’d felt a few times when limbs had been shorn off and she’d had to wait for them to grow back. More than once her head had been severed, and she’d had to wait long minutes for her body to agonizingly regenerate and push itself out through the tube of her neck.
But unlike her body, her Ironheart could not simply grow back what was lopped off and stolen from her.
She screamed again. “Crush and kill!” she cried, as she prepared to fire on the Canary. There was a confusing moment as she tried to understand why her targeting systems weren’t locked on. Then she remembered she’d turned them off because she’d been playing with the idea of using the Canary to practice her aim.
Wait. Why had her energy defense shield fallen?
Another beam of fire reached out to her from the Canary and sheared off a second blaster.
***
“Second hit,” murmured Burran. The more impossible their luck got, the calmer and quieter he became. As if he didn’t want the universe to notice all the rules they were breaking.
“I can’t believe it,” babbled Madaku. “How could she have allowed us to get so far?!” Burran didn’t bother trying to answer.
At that moment Willa gasped; she shoved the intuition bowl up and away from her head and spilled out of the pilot’s chair, gulping in air and hiccupping out sobs. Even that, Burran didn’t allow to distract him.<
br />
“Firing,” he murmured, not taking his frowning eyes off his screen.
***
The Canary’s laser sliced off a third blaster.
Anya felt as if cold air were bathing the interior of her chest cavity. Not literally—that had happened before, when some mortal had wounded her; it had hurt. But this sensation was a kind of pain, too. On the whole, a worse kind.
She recognized the feeling, though she couldn’t recall any specific time she’d felt it, any incident that would have evoked it. Maybe it was only by instinct that she recognized it: defeat.
No, not defeat: not yet. Ironheart had one last blaster. If only she could coax it to fire, a direct hit would destroy her upstart tormentors.
Lines of transmission between her and the ship’s weapons, targeting, and thruster had been scrambled. But she had always been very smart, if not always sane, and she’d had time to gain much expertise. She wrestled with the besieged systems, struggling to regain just enough control for a single shot.
***
Madaku tried to keep his eyes on his tablet, but couldn’t stop them from straying toward Willa. Though still in tears, she seemed to be recovering more quickly than usual. Perhaps she was rising to the urgency of the situation.
“The brain,” she gasped. “Destroyed.”
“You’re sure?” demanded Madaku.
Willa nodded, trying to stifle her sobs and regain her breath. “She can keep the blood pumping and the flesh alive as long as she likes. But that’s all there is. No more neural net—just random electricity in a hunk of meat.”
“Firing,” said Burran.
The same moment he spoke, the ship was rocked by an explosion.
“Her last blaster’s online!” shrieked Madaku.
***
Anya couldn’t get the targeting guide back up. She’d winged her enemy by simply eyeballing them. Her long, long-dormant sense of self-preservation was starting to kick back in, and she decided to go ahead and get out; she could worry later about vengeance, if she wanted.