Why would I do all that, if they were just beneath my notice?
How much more could I have had, if I’d just been able to put the awfulness inside me aside, long enough to try?
I didn’t like being owned by the Dip Corps. I never had. It had been a convenient legal fiction, standing between me and extradition for crimes that had never been my fault. It had protected me. It had given me the opportunity for a life, even if I’d never seen fit to use that opportunity for more than just living out my allotted days. But maybe the Dip Corps was not everything that had a claim to me. Maybe all those strange faces did too. Maybe I had no right to turn my back on them. If, indeed, that was what I was being asked to do. Oskar Levine was legally nonhuman and he still lived among a community of human beings. He still had a wife, friends, people who liked him. He also had bastards like Gibb who would never forgive him for what he had done. He couldn’t go home, so he’d built a new one.
Did that qualify as no net loss?
And was he even an accurate comparison?
Once I crossed the line, what would my new owners ask of me?
Were they as bad as the devil I knew, or were they going to be worse, in ways I did not yet have enough information to fathom?
And either way: Could I be myself and ever be satisfied with not knowing?
I did not know what my answer was going to be until I gave it. But I took one last breath and expelled it in one defiant gush before saying the words they needed me to hear.
“All right, you bastards. I defect.”
Their response oozed self-satisfaction. That is what we wanted.
A portal opened, closer by far than I would have expected to find another surface. A gentle breeze, blowing from some source behind me, nudged me away from open space and into a tunnel just large enough to allow my hovering form passage without permitting any encounter with solid walls. This place was not well lit, like the Interface room; it was dark, and bumpy, and rich with unseen places.
When the doors irised shut behind me, I was plunged into darkness.
24. MURDERER
I bumped along that dark passage, propelled by forces that could not have been limited to mere air jets, for what felt like more than an hour. Once or twice my body jerked from sudden accelerations. Once or twice I felt strong wind against my face. Once or twice I just languished, unable to discern any movement, wondering if I’d stopped, and forced to hope that I wasn’t being abandoned in the AIsource equivalent of gaol.
I shouted questions, including endless variations on “How long is this going to take?” but received no further answers. Maybe they didn’t want me to remember the route. Maybe the majority couldn’t speak to me at all once I left the territory they considered their own. Or maybe the whole point was to make me wait—teaching their new property that she existed according to their timetable, and not her own.
Whatever the explanation, the journey did, eventually, end.
My back came to rest on a smooth, rubbery incline. I slid a few meters, through an opening just large enough to admit me, onto a padded floor soft enough to rob my landing of any inconvenient drama.
As I stood, blinking after all my time in the darkness, I found myself in a place unlike any I had seen in One One One.
You could call it a corridor, I suppose. But it was less than a third as wide as the one where I’d left Oscin and Skye, its walls so close together that I couldn’t fully extend my arms. The ceiling, by contrast, was too high to see, the walls converging in some high-altitude vanishing point where distant lights flickered an irregular, random cadence. The vague blue light was dimmer and colder than any I remembered, casting high-contrast, ghostlike shadows. The corridor itself didn’t curve away after a short distance, as the corridors outside the main hangar and the Interface access portal did. It extended for what seemed an infinite distance in both directions, its endpoints pinpricks that didn’t seem any more promising in either direction. If it ran the length of the Hub, as I suspected, I was in for a long walk. I could easily collapse from exhaustion, or thirst, before I got anywhere near a recognizable destination.
But even as I stood in the center of all that immensity, a black pinprick popped into existence in front of me, hovering at eye level like a blind spot formed at the spur of the moment. I took a step toward it and it expanded horizontally to become a line, then vertically to become a black rectangle: the first conventional AIsource avatar I’d seen since my arrival on One One One.
It said, ((you are not welcome here))
It was the same kind of voice used by the AIsource I knew, still speaking to me from inside my own head like something that belonged there, but its character was different. This one felt abrasive, like broken glass: less something intent on drawing my blood than something that couldn’t move without tearing at its own scabs.
After everything else I’d learned on One One One, I couldn’t help knowing where I’d been touched by intelligences by this before.
I could have been paralyzed. I could have regressed to childhood, collapsed into a fetal ball, and begged it not to hurt me. Or I could have raged, cursed it for a murderer, and hurled myself at the black shape as if believing I actually had a chance of hurting it.
Instead, I felt myself go cold. “My name’s Andrea Cort. I’m a fully deputized representative of the AIsource Majority, operating on this station under their auspices and with their full legal authority. Who are you?”
The flatscreen shrunk to the size of a dot, as if considering its options, before once again inflating to its previous size.
((we know you, andrea cort * we know you’ve been hurt * we know you hold us responsible * we know you think you know the cause you’re serving * we know you imagine this is an opportunity to avenge old wrongs * but the issues here are more complicated than you can know * they speak to the auto-genocide of an entire order of intelligent beings* your interference here is foolish * and it is not welcome))
They almost seemed to be pleading.
But I could still hear pleas I’d heard on Bocai. “I’m not here for you.”
((not today at least))
“No,” I agreed, staring them down. “Not today. Today I’m only here for the human being responsible for the crimes on One One One. And today I have authorization to pass.”
((you have already defected once today * how about twice? * you know how powerful we are * you know our cause is just * you know we can reward you in ways beyond your capacity to measure * the one you seek has been a disappointment to us * agree and we will provide your prisoner as the first installment of a reward that will enrich the rest of your natural life))
“It’s tempting,” I said. “If I didn’t blame you for the deaths of my family and a life spent considering myself a monster, I’d almost consider it. But no thanks. Now step aside or take it up with my superiors.”
Their retort was sharp: ((we are your superiors too, andrea cort))
It happened to be true. They were smarter than me, faster than me, more powerful than me, more advanced than me, and more dangerous than me. Against them, I had nothing but attitude.
But attitude I had plenty of.
“Are you theirs?”
For several heartbeats it kept me guessing, floating before me as uncommunicative as any other blank slate, leaving me to wonder whether I was about to find out the consequences of going too far. Then the flatscreen contracted to a single point, and the broken-glass voice grumbled in retreat.
((we will have to discuss the price for this someday soon))
A single portal had opened, on the right side of the infinite corridor, about fifty meters down. The light spilling from that portal cut a brighter wedge in the overall gloom. I thought I saw a shadow briefly eclipse that region of relative light, before once again joining the realm of the unknown and unseen.
Whatever it was passed too quickly to reveal its shape. But I could see its haste.
I felt, rather than saw, the presence of the Heckler.
/> I flattened myself against the wall, and moved toward the wedge of light, hating the soft sibilant sound of my tunic sliding against corridor wall. My own breath, controlled and calm as it was, was nevertheless deafening. I pursed my lips, remembered the armor my quarry had used against the skimmer carrying Oscin and Skye, imagined trying to take on an enemy armed with such weapons in a corridor so narrow that I couldn’t even dodge from side to side, and ignored the internal voice that tried to assure me I had nothing.
Because I had more than nothing.
I had Bocai.
The wedge of light spilling into the corridor didn’t flicker again. It took on a sickly yellow tinge, the color of old paper, but it revealed nothing of the room that cast it. The Heckler could be waiting just inside, or could have fled far beyond my reach. Short of following, there was no way to know.
My eyes stung from cold sweat. I cleared them with the back of my hand, fought dizziness as a wave of exhaustion overcame me, wished once again that I’d put this off for an hour or day or year, and whipped myself around the edge of the portal, hitting the floor in a blind roll.
Big joke. Nobody tried to ambush me.
I’d entered an industrial vestibule of some kind: one of those places, common to all technological societies, where the machinery is tucked away to keep it from marring the smooth, presentable facades everywhere else. Nothing here looked like it had been made for the convenience of human beings. The walls were lumpy with protrusions, some of which were nothing more than solid geometrical shapes, others of which shifted and flowed and formed new combinations, like recombinant candle wax. Some gave off colors I could see but could not recognize from the visual spectrum I knew. They hurt my eyes when I looked at them, and left nasty afterimages when I looked away.
The nastiest was right in front of me.
The platform beside another portal on the opposite end of the chamber bore a bloody severed head.
I’d only encountered the indenture, Cartsac, a few times. I think I’d seen him awake a grand total of once. He looked alert enough now, even if dead. Both eyes looked like protruding marbles, too glossy with blood to admit the existence of irises or pupils. Whatever had reduced him to this state had done a sloppy job of it, not severing the neck clean so much as brutally ripping the head free of his shoulders. The ragged, browning flaps of skin hanging over the edge of his platform still dripped enough to testify to a murder mere minutes old.
I was not impressed.
I stood, crossed the room, and passed my hand through the horrific image, revealing it as just another projection.
“Is that all you can do?” I asked.
Nobody answered.
I didn’t even bother to duck and roll as I passed through the next portal. I just darted on through, half expecting to be attacked as soon as I showed myself.
Inside I found the place where the Heckler had been sleeping.
It was a home only because the walls, just as amorphous as the ones in the chamber I’d just left, were here just backdrop to a scene of almost comical domesticity. A hammock, of the old-fashioned, open kind, meant to accommodate a supine human being, hung unoccupied to my immediate left, its anchor points hidden behind shifting, kaleidoscopic shapes in the ceiling. Their movements didn’t affect the cords, or the hammock, at all as far as I could see. The canvas itself bore stains I recognized from Hammocktown and, more recently, my own clothing: manna sap, leaking from a patch of Uppergrowth overhead. Fresh pears hung in bunches at its center. To me this resembled nothing so much as a dispensary kept stocked to feed any small creature confined to a cage.
I snorted. “And is this your great reward? All your masters have to give you, for the rest of your life?”
Something shifted behind the next open portal, an open wound in the wall to my right. Two more images of violent death bracketed it on both sides.
The right side of the room bore another portal, bracketed on both sides by more images of violent death. The one on the left was a gaping Cynthia Warmuth, looking much as she must have looked when crucified on the Uppergrowth: her limbs splayed, her eyes wide in uncomprehending horror. Bright red circles had been painted on both her cheeks. The one on the right was Peyrin Lastogne, his skin blackened and crisped beyond comprehension, his identity obvious by the burned-meat visage that insisted on retaining the man’s trademark grimace. His untouched eyes testified that he, too, had been denied death: he had to sit there, aware of what had been done to him, suffering more than his capacity to register anything else, but unable to count on release.
The Heckler had slept with these images, woken to them, taken pleasure in them, drawn strength and motivation from them. Used them as reminders to hate.
I imagined taking on an enemy armed with that kind of obsession, and ignored the internal voice that tried to tell me I had nothing.
Because I had more than nothing.
I had purpose.
I took my time stepping through the portal into the chamber after that. It turned out to be a great oval room, an ampitheatre really, large enough to swallow Hammocktown and all its residents several times over. It bore the Heckler’s art gallery: hundreds of images, no two of them alike, clustered around the walls, with every single member of Gibb’s crew singled out for at least one violent death. They’d been beaten, starved, exsanguinated, strangled, perforated, skinned, burned, impaled, inflicted with diseases that had made the flesh rot off their bones, or simply chained in place and left to starve. At least a dozen separate executions, all nasty, had been reserved for Cynthia Warmuth. I spotted almost as many versions of myself, including a couple identical to messages I’d already received. The Porrinyards shared only one: a cute image of the two indentures, rendered so thin and ravenous they were reduced to gnawing the meat from their respective bones. There was one even worse, reserved for Stuart Gibb: and if I ever again feel any doubt about my mind’s ability to police itself, I only need remind myself how kind it had been to flense that one image from my own permanent memory.
The chamber’s centerpiece, dwarving everything else, was Cif Negelein. He stood on a pedestal of gold, his legs apart, his fists on his hips, his face resolute and noble, his body idealized well past the enhanced muscle tone so prevalent among the indentures of Hammocktown. Every soft line, every imperfection, that rendered the man human had been chiseled away, rubbed out, reimagined, replaced with an aesthetic that went well past the admirable into a realm I could only see as cartoonish. His jaw was an edifice, his forehead a monument. But he was not a man, and not just because he had the dimensions of a god. His eyes were empty, soulless, unloving.
It was impossible not to feel small in the presence of that judgmental gaze.
I circled, facing every mutilated corpse in turn. “Is this what they offered you, for defecting? A canvas? The tools to create what your own talents could not?” My words echoed against the high walls. “Art as a substitute for feeling human?”
The deck here was too spongy for the furious running footfalls to ring out loud. They were audible only as soft, padding thuds. I couldn’t place the exact location, but I knew they came from someplace behind me. But even as I whirled, expecting to see hate-filled eyes staring centimeters from my own, the footfalls faded, disappearing somewhere behind a simulacrum of Mo Lassiter.
I charged into the image, experiencing a queasy flash of blindness at the moment of contact, emerging on the other side to confront a flicker of a human shadow racing along the curved wall. I followed it, not caring about stealth or safety anymore, caring only about seeing this through to the end.
The vague blue light spilling from another hole in the wall flickered, as someone passing through that doorway eclipsed whatever lay on the other side.
I was roaring by the time I charged through it.
But even as I passed through the portal I knew that it had been a mistake, because this time the Heckler was waiting in ambush. This time something hard and blunt and heavy slammed down against the top of m
y head with enough force to drive me to the deck. The impact came as a burst of light arriving at the same moment as a wave of darkness and a single thought, pure and alone and disconnected from anything else: I’m dead. But then my knees buckled and I started to fall and I knew that if I fell over I would be struck again, so I directed what strength I had to my legs and transformed the forward movement from a fall into an uncontrolled headlong run. I was still blinded by the pain when I collided with the opposite wall, but I had enough mind left to know that to stand even a chance in hell of surviving I had to roll and face whatever had come for me.
Instead I caught a glimpse of a human form dropping out of sight.
The world grayed before I understood what had happened. I was alone, in a narrower chamber with shifting walls and an egg-shaped portal in the floor. The blow to the back of the head had been meant to knock me into it. Rolling with it had driven me over the gap without any suspicion that the gap existed.
I ran a hand over the knot of pain in the back of my head, and brought it back slick with blood. The sight sickened me, but I’d been hurt worse. I staggered over and looked down, into the hole.
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