Pathfinder

by Laura E. Reeve

  “There’s not going to be a problem with your body rejecting their implant.” He glanced at the display of their surviving visitor, looking healthier every hour and starting to ripple, and a queasy expression settled on his face. “Are you sure you want to put that thing in your body?”

  Following his glance, she said, “No, I’m not sure. But right now, I’m more worried about getting it out of my body. I asked Dr. Lee to look into that, specifically.”

  “I think I saw some log entries about removal. Maybe I can find them.” He went back to digging through the lab’s data stores. Because the Beta Priamos labs were to be used by separate companies, each lab had independent processors, data stores, and security protocols, all firewalled away from ComNet.

  Ariane looked through logs tracking usage, trying to see if anyone other than Lee had accessed the lab data in the past few days. She found no evidence the system had been hacked, although it had been used early on first shift—but Lee had been in early. Unfortunately, she was no Captain Floros and she might not see the subtle signs of infiltration.

  Time had marched on; it was well into second shift and she needed some sleep. “I have to testify tomorrow before the ICT, so I’ve got to get rest. You’re welcome to keep looking through this data,” she told Dimitriou. “Remember that it has to be protected under the nondisclosure agreement you signed.”

  “I’d like to dig through Dr. Lee’s earlier notes and compare them to the work she did today, before her seizure.” Everyone now referred to today’s episode as Lee’s “seizure.” Then Dimitriou reminded her of Lee’s other duties. “I also have to run periodic checks and tests on the birth chambers and their contents.”

  Their contents. Ariane nodded, feeling disconcerted. They were both Autonomists, so they weren’t used to seeing past the shiny machine fronts to the human beings that would emerge, but at least Dimitriou hadn’t forgotten their presence or Dr. Lee’s paramount duties.

  As Ariane left the lab, she knew she’d have to challenge Contractor Director about the gray areas of using their technology, and she needed to do it without Matt or David Ray present. Her instincts told her the Minoans were less likely to hedge when they were alone with her. However, she didn’t know how to make an appointment with Contractor Director, who resided in an amoebalike ship that suckled at one of the station’s class C docks. Setting a destination of “Knossos-ship,” she sent a message asking Contractor Director to meet her near its dock at oh eight hundred tomorrow, well before her testimony. She hoped the Minoans would receive and understand her message.

  The next morning she cautiously approached the dock that supported Knossos-ship, having not received any answer. The docking ring, in this area of the station, was silent and deserted. As she walked over the ring rise and came in sight of the dock, she saw the tall red figure standing patiently, its robe slowly stirring. Initially, she thought the emissary was alone, but saw two guardians several meters away, watching the docking area.

  “I await your questions, Explorer of Solar Systems.” The Minoan emissary bowed its horns as she approached. It sounded slightly smug.

  She sighed and looked about, uncertain how to start the conversation. The docking area behind Contractor Director gave her shivers, because the Minoan ship had forced fleshy extensions into and out of the station’s airlocks. Through the open airlocks, she saw the wall of “solid soup” that Matt had called the Minoan mechanism for containing pressure. Of course, Matt would disapprove of her meeting the Minoans alone.

  “Perhaps you’ve heard of the problems that Physician of—of My Choice encountered, and the disappearance of one of your implants,” she began, warily steering her way through the pitfalls of Minoan interaction.

  “We are aware of the replacement of Physician of Your Choice. Will you need another implant for testing?”

  She paused in surprise; they could flip around pronouns in long names correctly, but they couldn’t handle short names like “Lee.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if we need more implants for testing. I’ll check. More important, I have to ask you if anyone else but me can use one of these implants?”

  “You mean another human?”

  This conversation was already proceeding at the speed of oil spreading in the cold of space. She repressed a childish urge to stomp her foot. “Yes, I mean another human, different from Explorer of Solar Systems, with different DNA coding and biochemistry.”

  This seemed to cause some thought on Contractor Director’s part, as the tall figure went still for several moments. It finally stirred and said, “We project disastrous results if another human, other than Explorer of Solar Systems, attempts to pilot damaged N-space with the implant.”

  She didn’t bother to explore the disastrous projections, since she was well aware of the hazards of N- space. That wasn’t the important issue. “What about the homing functions for finding your ‘seed’ archive?”

  “We are uncertain that the function will work correctly in another organism.” Contractor Director cocked its head slightly, although the movement increased at the tips of its horns and caused the cascading ropes of jewels to sway and sparkle. “If you suspect the missing implant may be found and used by another human, I remind you that the final implant will have adjustments for your biochemistry.”

  “What if the implant isn’t missing, but stolen?”

  “Then you have a competitor for finding our property, and this concerns us,” Contractor Director said gravely.

  “Can we scan for the implant?”

  “It will appear similar to human muscular tissues, whether it’s been implanted or not.”

  She chewed her lip. Biological matter was hard to detect and differentiate with stationary scanners, let alone portable ones. She knew, from personal experience, that Minoans and their weapons defeated human scanning devices all the time—perhaps for this very reason.

  Of course, she might be worrying for nothing. The Minoans weren’t sure that anyone else could use it, and the implant was useless unless it got to the Builders’ solar system. They could physically search the Pytheas, do background checks on the final forty people chosen to crew it, and perform tedious physical searches on everything loaded on the ship. That assumed the person hadn’t already put it inside their body.

  “Does the implant have a limited lifespan? Maybe it’ll be dissolved into the body? If so, then all we have to do is wait.”

  “No. If the implant is kept under optimal conditions, it can live as long as its host. Besides, we cannot afford to wait.” Contractor Director’s voice, neither female nor male, was uncharacteristically forceful.

  “Live as long as its host, huh?” She caught that, as well as the comment on waiting. Closing her eyes for a moment, she remembered the feeling of warmth she had when the implant had touched her skin, almost a welcoming feeling, like she was encountering a part of her separated self. “If I choose to install an implant, how difficult will it be to remove?”

  “Section 241.55 in the manual describes removal.”

  “You’re avoiding the direct answer.” She stared up at the mask of darkness under the headdress. “You’re required, under our contractual law, to provide me an assessment of risk. That includes an evaluation of successful removal.”

  It took another invocation of Autonomist law to finally get a grudging response from the Minoan. “There is a ninety percent chance that biochemical responses will inhibit the host’s urge for removal, and a forty-one percent chance that surgical removal, the preferred method, will not adequately remove all the implant’s cells.”

  She took a moment to digest this, her jaw tightening. “You’re saying I probably won’t want to remove it—but even if we try, we might not remove it entirely?”

  “An imprecise summary, but yes.”

  There was no sound of human life in that part of the station. Command Post had put the Minoans on the opposite side of the docking ring from everyone else. No one wanted to be near them, or to have their ships n
ear them. The creaks and pops of the station’s structure became much more obvious as her brain wound through arguments, pro and con, regarding the Minoans’ offered technology.

  “This would be the time to tell me the real reason why I should risk using your implant.” Her voice was tight. “You’ve tried to motivate me through the reward of exploration and the thrill of risk—what else do you want to lay upon me? What are you hiding?”

  “You cannot pass on this information, even to Owner of Aether Exploration. We need your most solemn oath.”

  Barely holding on to her temper, she made the promise, unwisely and flippantly. “By Gaia and by my oath as an AFCAW officer, I swear I will not pass this information to anyone.”

  Contractor Director bowed its head. “The seed contains very dangerous knowledge. We didn’t know how dangerous it could be and we didn’t predict its devastation.”

  “Your gift caused the destruction of the Builders.” She wasn’t surprised that the precious “knowledge” the Minoans sought was related to weapons. “What’d they do? Blow themselves up?”

  “That might have been a far easier death than seeing each generation devolve, trying desperate experiments to reverse the changes in their reproductive code, until their basic cognition and sentience evaporated. When we determined the cause of their devolution, we decided an evolved intelligence could never be given this again. Perhaps, if the Builders had developed the knowledge on their own, they wouldn’t have misused it.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure.” She threw out the caustic comment while her mind went into overdrive. She’d assumed Gaian-based life-forms always evolved toward higher organization, specialization, and intelligence. The Builders had obviously messed with their natural reproductive process and encoding. That sounded a lot like the function DNA played for humans, although human genetic technology was obviously way behind the Minoan understanding of—Her breath caught.

  “You’re talking about technology to make weapons like those you used at Enclave El Tozeur, on New Sousse. The ones that affected Abram’s people.” Her lips and face felt numb.

  There were people who would kill to get their hands on that “seed” from the Minoans. Several examples came to mind: angry isolationists who had suffered from the Minoan genetic weapons and other Terrans under Overlord Six, such as SP Duval. Then, there were the Terrans under Overlord Three, including SP Parmet and Dr. Istaga, aka Andre Covanni, who might want weapons technology that would be superior to the Autonomists. Of course, there were plenty of power-hungry Autonomists—the Terrans didn’t control the market on people with Alexander complexes. No wonder the Minoans wanted to keep a lid on this.

  “Yes, the Builders developed that kind of weapon and used it against one another.” The Minoan emissary ignored her mention of New Sousse. “If it had been possible for their culture to overlap with yours, they would have used their weapons on humans.”

  “I understand your guilt, believe me, but if you just wanted to make sure we never get our hands on it—why help us explore the Builders’ system?”

  Contractor Director was silent.

  Rubbing her temples with her fingers, she knew she was missing something. The Minoan standing in front of her was either testing her, or waiting for her to have an epiphany. She pressed further. “All you had to do was leave well enough alone, and it’d be decades before we got their buoy to work.”

  Or would it? Suddenly, she saw Frank’s face as he said, I’m sure the ones from New Sousse had encountered the Builders’ technology before. At the time, she’d passed over his comment in favor of the tangible connection of following the money. Then she’d been hit with a clue club and ignored it: David Ray asked Contractor Director, You encountered the Builders elsewhere? And Contractor Director said, Certainly.

  Instead of calling herself stupid and running headlong into a bulkhead, she took a deep breath and said, “We need to get to the Builders’ system before someone in the Soussen System gets there? That’s why you say we can’t afford to wait.”

  She watched the slow nod of Contractor Director’s horns with horror. “But you’ve helped them, don’t you understand? Everything we’ve translated or uncovered here in G-145 has been sent back to Overlord Six’s territory. I need to tell—”

  “You swore not to pass on this information, using the name of your deity and your oath as an AFCAW officer.”

  “Yes, but . . .” She hadn’t expected to stumble over vital intelligence about a Terran Overlord. This raised serious questions regarding Six’s support of Abram; was he hoping that Abram would get rid of a pesky competing Builders’ buoy with the stolen TD weapon? If a couple of thousand people died in the process, it apparently didn’t matter. But, since Abram’s plan was thwarted, what was Overlord Six’s backup plan? Was Six, and his SP Duval, behind the “competitor” the Minoans feared?

  “We decided we could wait no longer. We observed you, and selected you because of your many titles, Ariane-as-Kedros.” Now the emissary was putting the pressure on, as much as it could with its soulless voice, even using her name—which didn’t happen very often. “You know the duties required of a Destroyer, who must ensure restitution, reparation, and, when necessary, take action to restore order.”

  You cold, inhuman, manipulative bastard . . . and she meant that in the worst way possible. Her hands clenched and she bit back her first response. After a deep breath through her nose, she said, “Are you Minoans admitting to being ‘Destroyers of Worlds’ also? If you understand restitution and reparation, what about redemption?”

  She didn’t expect an answer, and she didn’t get one. After several long moments of silence, her timer went off. Glancing at her sleeve, she saw she had ten minutes before she had to give testimony.

  “Will you assist us, as Explorer of Solar Systems?”

  Her mind flailed about and stumbled upon a bargain. “Basically, it’s your property that must be kept secret. Once it’s returned, do you care how many missions we launch to the Builders’ solar system? Do you care who knows the locations of the other Builders’ buoys?”

  Contractor Director replied, “If you successfully return the seed, the answer is no.”

  “Once I return it,” she didn’t dare say if, “I want the location of the other buoy and the permission to release that information to whomever I wish.”

  She watched two minutes tick away on her sleeve while Contractor Director considered. Finally, it lowered its horns. “Agreed. However, we cannot have a record of this agreement.”

  Looking about at the unfinished, unwired, and un-noded station, she shrugged. “Verbal agreement’s fine. No handshake necessary,” she added, leaving a possibly bemused Minoan standing alone in the corridor.

  “Is Ariane coming today?” David Ray’s face peered at him from a view port.

  “No, she’s testifying to the ICT—and I don’t envy her that.” Matt was having his Hellas Kaffi on the control deck of Aether’s Touch. “I hear Duval’s getting pissy because there’s no direct proof there was a stolen Terran TD weapon, now that Dr. Rouxe is dead. He’s avoiding the inconvenient fact that a temporal- distortion wave can’t spontaneously appear, not as a natural physical phenomenon.”

  “He’s playing up the uncertain source of the weapon and who controlled it. I’m even beginning to wonder if the prosecution will get their convictions. Lee sends her regards, by the way.”

  “She’s back to her old self, I hope,” Matt said.

  “Maybe.” David Ray shrugged and Matt knew enough to drop the subject. “When do we leave?”

  “I’ve got permission to disconnect in two hours—we’ll be gone about four hours. The station hasn’t moved that far away from the buoy.”

  “Good.” David Ray rubbed his head. With such a short haircut, it was easy to see his scalp wrinkle up on his head. “You’ve talked to your AI so it’ll stay quiet while Lowry’s around?”

  “Don’t worry.” Matt signed off.

  Just to be sure, he had another tal
k with Muse 3. Even though Matt had started the licensing paperwork, he was worried about exposing the AI to a Terran scientist, and this wasn’t just military paranoia rubbing off from Ari. Everyone was beginning to get their first glimpses of Terran standards of living—and they didn’t live up to their political hype.

  The Terrans had no equivalent to ComNet and the Autonomist Worlds’ huge crystal vaults of data. They certainly never developed AIs to sift through data and do objective indexing. The Terrans were enamored with the Heraclitus and Democritus models that indexed the minutiae collected every minute of every day—although Matt wouldn’t give it such a pretty name. The darker side of Terran interest was their requests for “copies” and their failure to grasp that each AI model number actually had rights and couldn’t be copied or dissected, by Consortium law. Matt didn’t want to deal with requests or demands to access his AI, from Lowry or the Terran State Prince who currently administered this station.

  “I understand I cannot let the Terran scientist suspect my existence, but can I remain operational while she is aboard?” Muse 3 asked.

  “Certainly, since your interpretation routines might help us speak to the bot on the buoy.”

  “I do not think the bot will understand your speech,” Muse 3 said cautiously.

  “I mean I’d like to try to interpret its signal—remember I asked you to analyze its command set?”

  “Yes, Matt. I have developed some routines for you, accessible on the console. Please look at the far left comm panel.”

  He looked over the smooth console of displayable material, configured with touch squares. To the upper left of the console was the comm panel, using orange squares, which was how he and Ari configured the commands on the Aether’s Touch. There were three new squares, titled BOT COMMANDS, BOT RESPONSE VARIANT, and BOT RESPONSE ACTUAL.

  He tapped BOT COMMANDS and a view port opened, displaying a menu. As he read it, he nearly choked on his Kaffi. “There’s more commands here than in the bot’s operational manual. How were you able to put these together?”