Dragons in the Stars

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  "I know. I know. I told him I might never get to fly that way again, anyway. But he wants to come along. In theory it ought to be possible, right? It's just a technical question, isn't it?"

  "Well—I don't know, really." Ar's eyebrows flexed, dusty silver against his bluish forehead.

  "It must be. Okay, so you don't believe in the dragons. I suppose you'll say that Ed isn't real, either." Jael looked down at her clenched hands. She could hardly blame him. Certainly she had given him enough impossible things to believe already.

  Stroking the ridge of his head, Ar answered, "I wouldn't say that exactly. Ed is a cyber-parrot, yes, so in one respect he is an artifact. But if he's based upon a real parrot, and if his personality has been allowed to evolve naturally, then I would have to say that he is real. Even if he doesn't exist outside of the psychetronic environment."

  Jael felt an impulse to ask how, then, he would distinguish Ed from the dragons he thought unreal, but she thought better of it. Time enough to argue about that later. Instead, she asked, "If I can get clearance, and we rig together, will you help me try to get a copy of Ed onto our ship?"

  Ar stared at her for a long time. His eyes seemed to flicker, as though very fine lines of fire were dancing upon the violet wool in their clear depths. Then his face broke into a broad, cracked zigzag. "You have made yourself," he said, "a deal."

  Chapter 19: Cyber-Rescue

  GETTING CLEARANCE from the police took just one visit with Commander Gordache. The police were no longer interested in restricting her movements, and Gordache encouraged her to find work so that she would not have to continue drawing housing credit from the spaceport administration. It seemed likely that her claim for flight pay against the Mogurn estate would be held up in the legal process for weeks or months.

  With Ar, she went to the rigger offices and applied for the posted two-crew position. They were hardly the only riggers looking for work, but the situation was far less grim than it had been on Gaston's Landing. As it happened, most of the present competition was vying either for larger ships or solos. However, since she and Ar had never crewed together, they were required to take a simulator test to demonstrate compatibility. They did that in the afternoon, in the basement of the rigger hall.

  They were installed in linked rigger-stations, where they rehearsed all normal checkout procedures for flight. Computer-generated Flux simulations were fed into the sensory net, along with randomly selected flight problems. It was strongly reminiscent of her training simulations, and Jael felt in the groove almost from the beginning. She and Ar developed a quick rapport, trading images back and forth as they zipped through the synthetic landscapes. With surprising ease, she put her fears aside, closing off those areas that she wished to keep private, and testing only the imaging powers that she needed in the net with Ar. But then, of course it was easy: she knew it was only a test. That was both the beauty and the weakness of tests of this sort; they were useful enough as a gross measure of competence, but they could not really show how a team would function in the actual tricks and twists of the Flux. Only starflight itself would reveal that.

  With their partnership rating in hand, they were left to await word on the position itself, which could easily take days. That gave them time to think about other matters—among them, Ed.

  Rescuing the parrot was not going to be easy. She knew, even as she planned to do it, that her desire was not entirely rational. But the parrot had somehow found a place in her heart—quite unexpectedly—a place of warmth that in a strange way reminded her of Highwing. Could a cyber-parrot give the same kind of friendship as a person—or a dragon? She supposed he would be closer to a pet. But she didn't care; she just knew she didn't want to lose Ed, not now, not without giving it her best try to rescue him.

  Unfortunately, she could not locate the young man who had helped her last night, and the people who worked in the back rooms today either couldn't or wouldn't tell her exactly when the Environment Alpha system would be removed, or even whether the rainforest element would be left intact until then. She did learn that the data grains were all imported from off planet and allowed to grow and mature in place. The Ed that she knew was a unique denizen of this particular artificial intelligence "data garden." If she couldn't save him before he was removed, there was virtually no hope of recovering him. There also seemed little hope of her obtaining a data readout of his personality in any straightforward manner. Her spirits were low as she reported back to Ar.

  Ar told her that he had an idea or two. The rest of the afternoon, while Jael worried, Ar did some asking around the spaceport. That evening he met her in the dining hall. "I might have a method," he reported. "It's not foolproof. But it's the only thing I could come up with." With a surreptitious glance each way, he held up a small black case. He opened it carefully. Cushioned on red velvet was a pair of thin cerametallic disks, each about a centimeter in diameter. "These could be Ed's ticket out," he murmured.

  Jael peered at them curiously. "What are they?"

  "System probes. They have data grains sufficient to hold Ed's identity matrix, plus the AI growth medium, plus at least some of the ambient data that convey the rainforest environment." Ar's voice was a husky whisper. He seemed actually to be enjoying this. "You'll wear these on your temples when you go into the environment. They'll take control of the input/output circuits in the helmet. Once you're in the environment, they'll send probing commands back into the AI system itself." His voice dropped lower. "They're actually security-breaking probes, which makes them . . . well . . . don't ask me where I got them, okay?" He hiccupped and continued, "I don't expect that this system was designed with extensive security, so the penetrating AI modules in here should be able to get in and set up the readout without too much trouble. I hope so, anyway."

  Jael cleared her throat. "We're going to hijack him right out of the system?"

  Ar smiled in his peculiar way. "We're saving his life, yes? Anyway, his existence in the system will continue, until they pull his plug—but we'll have him, too, and we should be able to load him into a nodule that you can connect with the rigger-net systems."

  Jael nodded hesitantly. She hadn't expected quite such a clandestine operation.

  "Are you ready to give it a try, then?"

  Her breath eased out in a sigh. They rose and walked to the rigger lounge.

  Both Environment Alpha I/Os were occupied. Jael shot Ar an uneasy glance. He shrugged and gestured to the nearby seats. They would have to wait. Jael tried to relax, staring alternately at the ceiling and at her fingernails. Don't worry, she thought. Ed's still there; he's safe. But she might as well have been trying to hold back an avalanche. What if they pull the rainforest again before I get in there? What if they already pulled it? What if they turn off the whole system? By the time one of the riggers in the Environment Alpha seats stirred and lilted the I/O helmet from her head, Jael's nerves were a wreck. She tried not to stare as the other rigger rubbed her eyes and readjusted to the outer reality. Finally, an eternity later, the woman rose and vacated the seat.

  Jael hurried to take her place. Ar caught her arm as she was about to set the helmet on her head. He held out the open case containing the probe disks. Right. Don't forget your tools. She sat quietly while Ar fitted one disk to each of her temples, then checked, as she lowered the helmet, to ensure that its probes rested on the disks. She took a deep breath, aware of the lingering smell of the woman who had just worn the helmet. She felt like a criminal. Remember, she thought, you're trying to save his life.

  "Go on," Ar murmured in her ear.

  She squeezed the trigger.

  * * *

  The rainforest, blessedly, was still in the system. But Ed was nowhere to be found. The forest was damp and misty, and strangely quiet. The light seemed odd, grey and flat somehow. Apparently it was early in the morning in this place, this world.

  She wondered if the AI things in the probes were already in the system, recording. She didn't want them to fill u
p on the wrong things. Leave room for Ed, she thought hopefully. If I can find him.

  **Scanning and recording ambient data. Please state when primary data matrix has appeared.**

  The instructions appeared in her mind, rather like a voice in the net. Good, she could deal with that. It has not yet appeared. Searching for it now, she answered.

  Did Ed have some way of knowing when she had entered his world? she wondered. She could only hope so. She walked toward a break in the underbrush. It seemed to be the beginning of a path. There was a patch of dense mist hugging the ground in the break, but she didn't think much of it as she stepped through—until something grabbed at her ankle, and a spike of pain shot up her leg. "Ow!" she cried, jumping back, rubbing her ankle. She glared down at the little bank of fog and kicked at it.

  A small bush ran out of the fog, screeching nastily. It swiped at her leg again with a thorny branch, but she jumped clear and watched warily as it retreated across the open ground. Before it had gone far, it plopped down with an indignant whuff. "Fine. Now stay out of my way," Jael snapped. The plant gave no response, but a moment later, began issuing fog from its thorns. Within seconds, it was completely hidden by a new bank of vapor.

  Jael curled her lip at it. Suddenly it occurred to her that the thing was probably being recorded. Great, she thought. All I need is something like that popping out in the net. If you can understand me, she thought to the system probes, don't keep that plant!

  **Deleted.**

  Relieved, she stepped onto the path from which the plant had emerged. More wisps of mist rose from the branches, curling about her face. Fearful of meeting more hostile life, she moved with extra care. What was going on here? she wondered. Why was it so foggy, anyway? She walked for some time, encountering only mist-shrouded trees and occasional scuttling creatures—heard, but not seen. "Ed?" she sang softly. "Are you here?" As the minutes passed, she began to worry that something might have happened to him. Was it possible that a part of the environment had been removed, and Ed with it? She searched the mist with growing anxiety.

  A branch brushed her neck, startling her, and something red fluttered with a shriek in her face. "Gah!" she cried, jumping, as it flew up out of sight.

  "Yawk!" cried the red thing, fluttering down again.

  "Ed!" she shouted, hope and fear pounding in her heart.

  A patch of mist cleared. Ed was flapping his wings on a perch less than an arm's length in front of her face. The path, hidden by the fog, had taken a sharp left turn. She had nearly walked into a thicket of branches. "Jayl!" Ed squawked, hopping up and down on one of the branches.

  "Ed—thank God! I was beginning to think you were gone."

  "Nope. Ed here. Right here." His wings folded closed.

  "Didn't you hear me calling?"

  "Yawp! Woke Ed. Early—it's early!"

  "Early! Is that where you were—asleep?" The parrot nodded and let his eyelids fall shut for a moment; then they sprang open again. She laughed. "Well, good. Don't move. Don't go anywhere. There's something we have to do." Ed cocked his head and at once began to pace nervously side to side on the branch. "I mean it," she said. "Don't move at all."

  "Urkk." The parrot became still. He blinked once.

  "Great. Stay right there." This is it. This is Ed, she thought to the system probe. Primary data matrix. Can you find all of him, or do we have to do anything?

  **Probing now. Recording. Please do nothing.**

  She nodded again, almost imperceptibly. "Ed, this has to do with your coming with me when I leave. Do you still want to come?"

  "Awwrrrk. Yes! Yes!"

  "Good. Then please stay very still. Don't talk."

  The parrot obeyed so completely that he looked dead. His eyes grew wide and dark, and remained unblinking. He appeared to have fallen into a trance. Jael waited. She wasn't sure what she expected, perhaps that he would simply sit there while his memory was drained, or copied. But she wasn't prepared for what happened next.

  Ed's eyes seemed to grow larger. His dark pupils appeared to expand in his head, at first looking a little odd, then grotesque, as they grew out of proportion to the rest of him. Soon his pupils threatened to swallow his entire head in darkness. The final expansion happened very quickly, a great circle of blackness ballooning out to absorb not just Ed, but the entire forest. Jael was uncertain whether the darkness had actually expanded, or her own viewpoint had zoomed into the pupil of Ed's eye.

  In the darkness, she began to glimpse images of a brightly colored, fluttering parrot winging through a forest; of the same bird, smaller, pecking its way out of a shell; of it eating seeds and berries in the wild, and flocking with others of its kind. And more confusingly and fuzzily, images of being enveloped in a net, and captured; of being confined and wired at the head; of being drained off, poured off, and let loose in another and altogether different place, which at first seemed to have little reality or substance. But eventually that world became clearer and more solid, until it resembled the original. It was a world of curious inhabitants, where people appeared and disappeared, where the bird could speak articulately, where it could learn, where it could converse and get to know these people called riggers. A world where, in time, it met someone named Ar and someone named Jayl.

  The images became a blur, past and present merging. Eventually Jael could see nothing but a grey fog. Then the fog cleared, and she was staring at Ed, seated on his branch. The bird cocked his head, one way and then another, looking puzzled. "R-r-r-k-k-k," Ed sputtered.

  "You okay?" Jael asked.

  "Ukk." Ed stretched his wings. "What—awwk—happened?"

  "I'm not sure," Jael admitted. Did you get him? Were those his memories?

  **Ed's primary memories and physical characteristics have been merged into our system. We require additional time to collect further ambient environmental data, plus redefining adjustments on Ed.**

  Jael looked around cautiously. What do you want me to do?

  She felt an odd whirring sensation that seemed to surround her hearing and vision, before she heard,

  **Insufficient capacity for all aspects of the environment. Explore elements of this environment that you would most like recorded, taking Ed with you, if possible, for contextual fit.**

  Jael blinked, absorbing the instruction. She looked at Ed. "Well, Ed . . . what happened, I think, is that you're now living two lives. One of them is in my head."

  "Hawwwww-k-k-k?" He peered at her.

  "Yes. Well, it's a little hard to explain, really. But a part of you is living with me now . . . and it will go with me when I leave. Along with a memory of this place." She gulped, wondering if Ed could possibly understand what she was saying.

  Ed hopped closer. "I come with you? K-k-k-k?"

  "In a manner of speaking, yes. You've been split. You'll be here. But you'll also be with me."

  "Rawwwkk! Not want stay! Want go! Want go! Not split!" Ed fluttered his wings in distress.

  "But, Ed—"

  "No no no no no!" Ed hopped furiously, tossing his head. "Want go with you! Only!" He cawed raucously, then peered into her eyes. "Jayl take? Not leave here? Pleez, Jayl? Pleeez?"

  Jael's breath came with great difficulty. She should have thought of this before. Ed wasn't going to be happy just being told that a part of him was with Jael. But she hadn't planned on actually removing him from the system. She didn't even know if it was possible. Is it? she asked the probe. Can you take him, and not leave a copy behind?

  **Do you wish total transfer and removal?**

  She hesitated. Yes, I think so, she thought nervously.

  **Wait.**

  She waited. Ed looked at her nervously. He seemed to loom closer. His eyes expanded again, his dark pupil swallowing the entire vision. And then it turned transparent, and the forest was visible again. But Ed wasn't. The branch upon which he had been perched was empty now. There was no evidence that Ed had even existed. "Ed?" she asked cautiously.

  "Y-k-k-k," she heard. But
the sound was from inside her mind. Looking around, she still saw no sign of the bird.

  "Ed, where are you?"

  "Gokk. Don't know. Here with you. Somewhere. Think. Awwrk."

  Jael nodded to herself. She had done it now. There was no turning back. She took a deep breath and began walking along the path again. Probe, no more removal. Copy only. "Okay, Ed—I want you to watch what's happening if you can. Tell me if you see anything you want to take along with you. This will be your last chance."

  Feeling more like a thief than a liberator, she moved through the forest, noting the most beautiful elements and tucking the images silently into her invisible pack.