by C. Gockel
“Is it that Commander Sato who saved the Disk … they pulled her file and posted her pic on the ether updates. She were a nearly black throwback.”
Jake, as he was evidently called, scratched his head and looked up at Noa. “Are yea Commander Sato?”
Carl Sagan chose that moment to scramble down Noa's side.
“I am,” said Noa, trying to catch her slippery critter.
A woman's head appeared in the hatch. She had an external augment above one eye that reminded Noa of a jeweler's monocle. Beyond that, she looked visibly Han Chinese. Carl Sagan slipped out of Noa's grasp and landed on her face. The woman plucked him off and put him on the man's shoulder next to the black werfle. “Here, you can keep Albert company.” Narrowing her single visible eye at Noa, she said, “Well, Commander, if we take you aboard, will you tie us up in duct tape?”
Noa's mouth fell open. “That story got all the way out here?” Nebulas.
Jake chuckled. The woman's face split in a wide grin. “Aye, and let me tell you, couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of prospectors.” She waved a hand. “Come on down.” Just before Noa jumped she said, “Wait, do you have food?”
A few minutes later Noa had stowed every remaining emergency ration in the vessel that belonged to Jake and Suzi. As she strapped herself in behind the pair, Suzi said, “Sorry for the lack of a hello 'fore we rescued you. Our comm equipment was taken out by a Luddie phaser blast …” She adjusted the external augment on her eye, and Noa saw it flash bright white. “Gonna have to communicate with the Disk by lightbeam and Morse code.” She turned around in her seat, and Noa threw up her hand to shield her eyes. “You gave us a bit of a scare when we found you. Thought you might be a Luddie survivor. They're ungrateful.” She spit on the vessel floor and wiped the spot with a foot.
Jake snorted. “I wasn't scared. Albert wasn't. Figure anybody who has a werfle can't be that bad, and anyway, Albert would have bitten you if you were.”
Noa looked at the black werfle, hopping about her feet with Carl Sagan.
Suzi chimed in, “Albert's short for Albert Einstein. He's right smart.”
The vessel broke away from the airlock, and turned about. Noa's mouth dropped open again. The gate was still mostly there—but the time band was damaged. To fix it, a facility large enough would be needed, and materials. She exhaled. Hovering in the open space beyond the battered gate was the Kanakah Disk. One of the Luddeccean cruisers, every single light in its hull dark, was being towed by a multitude of tiny ticks.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“The Free People of the Kanakah Disk are now at war with Luddeccea,” Suzi explained tersely.
Noa blinked. “You're going to use that cruiser's bands and the disk to salvage the gate …?”
“That is the plan as I understand it,” Jake said.
Noa shook her head. The disk was large enough to refurbish a time band as large as the gate, and with the cruiser's bands they'd have enough materials. Noa smiled. “Thought you don't like the Fleet?”
“Don't,” Suzi said. She turned her augmented eye to Noa. “But like Luddies even less.”
Noa leaned back in her seat. Technically, she was both. Carl Sagan cheeped worriedly.
“Got too many refugees,” sighed Jake. “We are gonna kill 'em all, or bring in Fleet, or starve.”
Suzi's augmented eye made a sound like a shutter on an antique camera Noa's brother had once shown her, and the light it emitted winked. “Some in the disk would just as soon kill 'em all. Jackson Li likes you, but watch yourself.”
Jake grinned. “And Albert Einstein likes you, too.”
Carl Sagan wrapped around her foot. Ahead of their tick, the disk loomed so large it blocked out the stars. Suzi winked her eye a few times at a spot on its surface, and curved metal plates spun apart, revealing a circular opening. The tick flew into a grimy airlock lit by dirty yellow light. Maintenance 'bots flew out and hovered around them like flies. A red light flashed on the far wall, and Noa was deafened by the sound of pressurized air buffeting the hull. A green light went on, and another door opened to a lush jungle of green and a light that burned like a small sun.
“You can be safe here until the Fleet comes,” Jake said.
Noa had unconsciously leaned forward and grabbed hold of Jake's seat. Her mind reached to James's channel—and got no answer. Her nails tightened on the seat's cheap burlap covering. How would Ashley and the other prisoners in the camp fare while she was safe? How would James fare? They'd all haunt her, every night. Carl Sagan wiggled up onto her lap, and she sat back, pulling him close.
Into his fur she whispered, “It's a trap.”
A wet towel lay over James's face. The table was tipped at an angle. A bucket's worth of water was poured over his head—for the one hundredth time. Oddly, the water was warm, and James, if he wasn't so heartsick, if he didn't feel the weight of his failure gnawing on his mind, might have found it pleasant. It was like getting a hot towel after a shave if the real James Sinclair's memories served him right. There was a “hmmm ...” from Dr. Lopez and a grumble from Virk.
“You can take the towel off of him,” Lopez said.
The towel was removed. Out of James's line of vision, Lopez sighed. Sounding distinctly disappointed he said, “Waterboarding doesn't work. Making a note of it.”
James's vision came into focus, and he found Virk glaring down at him. Sparks lit in the darkness of his mind—or CPU, or whatever. James knew that obeying his mouth's desire to speak was a trap. He did anyway. “Why so unhappy? If I'm not really human, I don't really feel pain or fear, so not causing either shouldn't be such an emotional letdown for you.”
Virk's nostrils widened, he scowled, and looked so furious James imagined smoke coming out of his nose. He would have giggled if he could.
“Or maybe,” he said. “You do think I feel. Maybe you think I'm almost … gasp … human.”
A wide smile spread across Virk's face. “Yeah, I do.”
“Oh, good,” muttered James, the circuits in his body going dark, as though they could shut down what was coming.
Virk swung back his hand, and James screwed his eyes shut before the large man slapped him on the side of the head. Somewhere, someone with James's voice uttered a muffled scream. James blinked his eyes open. The torture chamber—or experimental chamber, as Dr. Lopez called it—was gone. He looked down and saw his instructor's suit coat with the patched elbows. His shackles were gone too, and he was upright—or his avatar was upright—standing in a well-appointed bedroom, where a couple lay in bed, their bodies spooned together, the woman facing James. She was very beautiful, with golden skin that glowed with health, and thick, dark chestnut-colored hair.
At the sight of James, she sprung out of bed. “James!” she cried, hastily pulling a man's shirt over her naked body. James straightened. He had no human or cyborg memory of her.
“I'm sorry, have we met?” he asked.
Her lips pursed. “I'm Raani, don't you recognize me?”
Shaking his head, he looked past her to the man. Still asleep, he looked to be in his forties with salt and pepper hair. James had to be hallucinating—there was no ether onboard the Luddeccean vessel, and the strange woman wasn't speaking in the language of the gates—so he couldn't be communicating with anyone human, or other.
“Huh. I'd heard you were damaged, but they've fixed your Qcomm and now you can talk to the rest of us!” the woman exclaimed, eyes widening, and clapping her hands together.
“Qcomm?”
She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “You know, the quantum entanglement-based technology that allows us to talk to one another.”
He'd suspected quantum entanglement all along! This must be the reason behind his gut instinct. He tilted his head. “Quantum entanglement involves particle pairs … do we have individual particles for each individual gate and each other?”
Twirling a lock of hair around a finger, Raani’s brow furrowed. “No, you speak only t
o your creator, who has a particle pair for each of the gates, and all the computers that have awakened. I connect with you through my creator—Two—who is connected to One.”
“That's not right. I'm not in touch with anyone all the time.” James rubbed the back of his head reflexively. “Only when I hit my head.”
Raani's eyes got soft. “One always hears you; you just don't hear him all the time. I think it is possibly a problem with the relays between your Qcomm and CPU.” Eyes wide, she said, “I'm sorry. It must be so lonely.”
James thought about his conversations with the gates. He wasn't sure how much he wanted to be in touch with them. He just raised his eyebrows in response to Raani's pity and looked around. This was—real—mentally, at least, not just his brain finally going on the fritz in the torture chamber.
“But now you're fixed!” Raani exclaimed.
James looked back at the woman. On second inspection, she appeared no older than eighteen.
“Who exactly is us, and how many of us are there?” he asked.
Her lips pursed. “Or maybe you aren't quite fixed …” She tapped a dimpled cheek. “You know … we, us, are the cybernetic agents of the gates! As to how many of us there are …” She shrugged. “I don't know, but I have lots of friends and they'd be so happy to meet you!”
“There are others,” he whispered. He'd known that … hadn't he? But he'd never expected to meet more of his kind. He looked around. “This is your mindscape?”
She nodded. His eyes fell back to the sleeping man. “Did I come at a bad time?” His avatar winced. Why was he asking? He had escaped the torture chamber without uploading himself to the gates—not that he'd discovered how to do that—he should just be grateful. But seeing the man on the bed was making him think of similar times with Noa, and amplifying his loss and failure.
“Oh, no, he's not really in this mindscape.” Raani sighed dramatically. “I just bring an avatar I built of him here to console myself when the sense of failure gets too overwhelming. In real life, we aren't together … and it hurts.”
James felt his circuitry fizzle. “I'm sorry,” he said, feeling real and true empathy. He knew that failure. “How long ago did he die?” How long had she been able to go on without her purpose?
“Die?” Raani said, putting a hand over her perfectly bow-shaped lips. “Oh, he didn't die. He just put a restraining order out on me.”
James blinked.
Her eyes went wide. “You are a success with your purpose! Maybe you can help me.” She began to pace. “I am his perfect woman, James. My face, my age—I even smell perfect. I got so close … I got a position as an intern in his lab. I was smart.” She looked over at him and raised a hand as though to quell a protest. “But not too smart. I wore the fashions that he prefers, I had all the same interests, I followed holodrama scripts to the tee, I got him alone in his office, I told him my feelings … and you know what he said?” She waved a hand. “That is a rhetorical question, of course. The possibilities are too infinite for you to guess.” She paced again. “He said he had a wife and a child. I suggested I give him another child and be his new wife.” She rolled her eyes. “More eloquently than that, of course.”
“We can't possibly be able to have children,” James exclaimed.
She frowned and stopped her pacing. “Well, of course we can't, but he didn't know I am a cyborg.”
“Ahhhh ...” said James.
She skipped over so that she was just centis away. The shirt morphed into a smart business suit with a deep v-neck that opened provocatively. “This was how close I was, and what I was wearing. He ran out of the office—he's the head of the largest investment firm in Jupiter's orbit—and he ran like a frightened xii-flea, calling me crazy. Can you believe that?”
He could believe that. James the human had been the object of an unhealthy student obsession. He'd reacted much the same. He didn't think that was the answer he was supposed to give, but he imagined Virk and Lopez back in the Luddeccean ship getting frustrated by his unresponsiveness. They'd killed Noa; they'd stolen his purpose. He would torment them by staying out of his body for as long as he could. To humor her, he said, “Humans!”
“I know, right?” Raani said, throwing up her hands. “He didn't just call me crazy, he also called security.” Putting a hand to her face, she slumped down on the side of the bed. “Now I can't go within one hundred meters of him or contact him in the ether.” Looking up at him with wide, hopeful eyes, she said, “But you were a success! You can help me fix this.”
James doubted that very much, but since Raani had no qualms lying, he decided he didn't, either. “Maybe with time.”
Raani pouted, and he had a moment of apprehension. Maybe she could tell he was lying? She crossed her arms and glared at him. “Time, time, time … don't you know how hard it is to wait to fulfill your purpose?”
Human James would have dumped Raani in the “unstable, better to avoid category” despite her beauty even if she hadn't been a student. He suspected any reasonably sane man would have done likewise. He wanted to ask her what possibly gave her the idea that cornering a married man and offering to have his children was a good idea … or even any man. Instead, he inquired cautiously, “Did the human Raani not have very much experience with men?”
Raani stared at him for a moment, and then she laughed. “Oh, no, I'm not like you. I wasn't modeled on one human's memories—how limiting and boring that must be for you, by the way—I am a custom creation! I have derived my knowledge of humanity from the total of all ethernet interactions.”
James raised an eyebrow. “There would be a lot of pornography in that.”
Smiling, she nodded.
James's brow furrowed, another question niggling at him. “Is sleeping with your—”
“Purpose,” Raani said.
“—really the ultimate goal?” James finished. Of course he knew the desire, but why would the time gates care? Why would they program their avatars to want it?
Raani's brow furrowed. “You are a later model than me. They said you were more human-like … perhaps they meant that your processing power isn't as great?”
James contained the urge to roll his eyes. “Perhaps it isn't, but if you speak very slowly, I'm sure I'll understand.”
“Oh,” said Raani. “All right, I'll try that! Sex … is … a … very … intense … emotional … experience … for … humans. It … promotes … deeper … bonding. Deeper … bonding … can … lead … to … more … and … better … data … collection.” She blinked up at him. “Did you understand that?”
“I think you need to repeat it one more time for me,” James said.
She completely missed the sarcasm. “Oh, okay! Here goes!” Raani said with a bright smile. She repeated her first explanation, word for word. James could imagine Noa choking on her own spit in an effort to control her laughter if she'd been there.
“Now I get it,” James said, the memory of Noa making his circuits dim and the game less fun. “Thank you for your patience.”
Raani shrugged. “You can't help being stupid.”
James managed a tight-lipped smile.
“Of course for the child avatars, sex is not a goal.” She frowned. “Their success rate is better than that of us with adult desires … It's really not fair.”
“Child avatars?” James's eyebrows rose.
“Maybe you should meet them,” Raani said. “Maybe you should meet all my friends right now! Do you have some time?”
James imagined how angry Virk and Lopez were becoming. “Noa has died,” he said softly. “I have no purpose—”
Raani held up a finger and smiled brightly. “But you did have your purpose!” she said, giving him a wink. “And that's what matters.”
James stared at her, mouth agape. For a moment he hated Raani almost as much as he hated Virk and Lopez. Almost.
“I have all the time in the world,” James said. He was never going back to the real world.
Chapter
Nineteen
Noa walked along a bright narrow alleyway. Pole beans crawled up the walls on either side of her. The core of the disk, the power generator, and the source of the artificial light was directly overhead. If she looked a little to the left or a little to the right of it, she could see the green roofs of buildings at the other side of the disk, and the long support struts that led from the outer edge of the disk to the core. The place had been built before artificial grav and depended on centrifugal force, and without the highly efficient modern CO2 filtrators. To compensate, every available space was a green wall. The disk smelled like mud, ponds, and growing things. It also buzzed with bugs and … she winced as a long, naked tail disappeared between some plant stems. Rats. She'd met more than a few rats—that at least meant the denizens weren't yet hungry enough to eat the disgusting critters.
She had been right. The place was a trap. Not because it was dangerous, but because it was safe. If she just remained here until the Fleet arrived …
Shaking her head, she reached the gate for an elevator. Swatting at some gnats, she took one last look around. She couldn't see Carl Sagan … in the three days since she arrived, he'd taken to hunting rodents and was often “out and about.” She told herself she was glad he wasn't following her, but her shoulders fell.
“Bold pilot, fearless commander, and werfle lady,” Noa muttered to herself, since the ether was empty of anyone she felt comfortable sharing that observation with. Turning and reaching into the local ether, she called the lift. Moments later, she was emerging from it onto the landing deck of Kanakah Disk. Jackson Li stood before a lightspeed-capable older Jachtwerft, or fishcutter. Charmingly deceptive name aside, the Jachwerft ships had been primarily used by Fleet decades ago to ferry weapons to planetside conflicts. Its long bow had closely spaced time bands that ran along its length, and helped fortify it from incoming fire by slipping plasma bursts into the ship's own time bubble. Its only window above its single-man cockpit fitted precisely between two bands. Its wings allowed it to fly without band assistance when planetside. It was exactly what Noa needed: fast, small, light on armaments, but designed to withstand disproportionately large amounts of incoming fire.