Memento Mori

by W. R. Gingell

  “There’s something else you can do,” said Tuan. He could feel his biological processes slowing; even his voice sounded thicker. “Take my place at the Cerberus Facility. You can make the history that I can’t.”

  “I like it here,” his double said, unfalteringly putting the magnetic screwdriver back exactly where it had been on the glass-topped dolly. He was still moving with graceful leisureliness, drawing out the time.

  “There is no here,” Tuan said. “Just a shifting reality. This craft can’t give you the stability or the resources you need, and these people can’t give you the help you need.”

  “Oi!” said Kez, passing by and clouting him beside the ear with casual violence. “Flamin’ cheek!”

  “It isn’t about having the best resources,” the other Tuan said. “It’s about how you use the ones you have.”

  “Dunno wot you two are talkin’ about,” grumbled Kez, and went away somewhere out of sight but not quite out of hearing.

  Tuan’s double, in a lower voice, said again, “I like it here. I want to stay.”

  “They won’t let you?”

  “No. They say,” Tuan’s double sent a cautious look in Kez’s direction, “that there are things I have to do. Even Kez—”

  “You talkin’ ’bout me?”

  “Yes,” said the double. “Go away. It’s not polite.”

  “Cheek!” Kez said, but she must have gone away, because the blurry semi-circle didn’t have such a buzz to it any more.

  “I’m going to try and stay anyway,” Tuan’s double said. There was a mulishness to his chin that was very familiar: Tuan had seen that on their father, too, though he’d never seen it on himself. Perhaps there was something this organic Tuan had that he didn’t have, if it came to that. Tuan himself had ruthlessness, but was that to be compared with the mulishness that was driving organic Tuan? Tuan had an idea that he would have liked to see what this Tuan could make of himself.

  “I can’t say I’m sorry,” he said to his other self. “I’m sorry about that, though. That I can’t be sorry, I mean.”

  “I know,” said his double. “And you won’t understand, but I’m sorry, too.”

  “Does that mean you’re not going to dismantle me?”

  “No,” said the other Tuan. “But that’s one of the things I feel sorry about. You think being sorry means weakness. It doesn’t. Sometimes you’re sorry but something has to be done anyway.”

  “Then what are you sorry about?”

  “I’m sorry you can’t feel sorry,” said the organic Tuan. “But I’m glad you can be sorry you can’t apologise. I’m going to turn you off now. Do you want to say anything before I do?”

  “Yes,” said Tuan. “This organic camouflage; you were able to complete it because you were with these people?”

  His double nodded. “That, and other things.”

  “How long have you been with them?”

  “Two weeks,” said the other Tuan. “I would have done more, but there were interruptions.”

  “Then stay with them,” said Tuan. “I became like you, so you should become like me. Whatever means necessary.”

  “I’ll stay,” the other Tuan said, and there was that determinedness to his pointed chin again. “And if they send me away, I’ll come back.”

  “Whatever means necessary?”

  “No,” said the organic Tuan. “But I’ll keep coming back until they can’t do anything but keep me. I’ll be a thread in the Core that keeps tangling, tangling, until nothing can unknot it.”

  “Good,” said Tuan, because now he understood that his double’s mulish chin was his version of whatever means necessary. There was something that felt like pain in the centre of his chest, but that was ridiculous because he couldn’t feel anything below the neck. “I think I may be malfunctioning. You can turn me off now.”

  “You’re not malfunctioning,” said the other Tuan. “It’s the end of your life cycle; the biotech part of you is trying to urge the metal components to live on by simulating feelings of regret and sadness. They’re not the real thing, but they’re as close as you’ll ever feel.”

  “I see,” Tuan said. The simulated feelings seemed to choke him in a way that his enforced stillness didn’t. “Is it a necessary rite of passage?”

  “I don’t know,” said the other Tuan. “You’re the first of your kind. The last, too, if I have anything to say about it. Would you like to feel?”

  “No,” said Tuan, and for the first time in his life, there was a pricking of tears in the corners of his eyes. There was something about his organic double’s face that made those tears well until they threatened to spill. He closed his eyes and said, “Turn me off. Please.”

  Something warm and wet rolled down his left cheek, then stopped as time, and Tuan, and everything stopped…

  Notice of Assignment: Time Corp Ensigns Class A, Group 23

  TCC Umber

  Ensign Cray

  Ensign Li

  Ensign Korbyn

  Ensign Portman

  Ensign Perra

  Ensign Reuben

  TCS Slider

  Ensign Emile

  Ensign Greet

  TCC Heeler

  Ensign Stoddard

  Ensign Kallan

  Ensign Amos

  Nine Tenths

  “I BIN TAKIN’ NOTES,” said Kez.

  Marx was startled. “Good grief, can you write?”

  “Seems to me there’s a lot of stuff we’ve done that we ain’t done yet. If you know wot I mean.”

  “It’s been like that since we stole the Upsydaisy.”

  “I never stole it; you did. Stole me, too.”

  “All right; it’s been like that since I stole you and the Upsydaisy. What about it?”

  “Well,” said Kez, “now that we got a Core password, we can get ’round to doin’ ’em at the right time, right? Wot’s the use of havin’ a password if we ain’t gonna use it?”

  “We are going to use it,” Marx said. “We’re trying to find out what’s going on with the Newlands Box, and why we seem to be so concerned with it all the time.”

  “Ay?”

  “We’ve stolen it three times now,” pointed out Marx. “Actually, according to the Core, we’ve stolen it once; we still have to steal it twice. And I want to know why.”

  “’Ow we gonna find that out?”

  “Don’t know,” Marx said briefly. “What were you thinking?”

  “Well, I bin takin’ notes—”

  “—you said that, but I still don’t believe it—”

  “—an’ the one thing I reckon we should be doin’ first is tryin’ to get Golden Boy court-martialled.”

  “What?”

  “You remember!” protested Kez. “Said he was under arrest ’cos he didn’t fire on us and they thought he was colludin’ or summink.”

  “I remember,” said Marx. “I was just surprised that we’re thinking along the same lines today.”

  “You wanna mess wiv Golden Boy, too?”

  “Not especially, but I’ve been looking in the Core.”

  “And?”

  “And so has someone else. But whoever it is isn’t being as careful as I’m being, and if they trigger a Core purge with their big feet, we’ll get pushed out of the Core pretty flamin’ fast, too.”

  “Rude!” said Kez.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Yeah, but wot’s that got to do wiv Golden Boy?”

  “I think it’s someone on his sloop. They’ve been deviating from their course by just a few marks in their last few rotations of Time Corp Control. Not enough to be noticed unless you can see it on the console, but enough to bring her just out of reach of the Control proximity sensors.”

  “Think they’ve been meetin’ someone they don’t want Control to see?” Kez asked, her black eyes glittering with interest. “Wot’s Golden Boy up to, then?”

  “Don’t reckon it’s him,” Marx said. “I think it’s someone else. I think i
t’s something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “Don’t know. That’s what we’re going to find out, isn’t it? Reckon if we join up with the Slider a few marks before they start going out of proximity, we should get a good idea.”

  “What ’bout her?” asked Kez.

  Marx didn’t need the upward tilt of her chin to tell him she was talking about the Upsydaisy. He grinned. “That? I’ve got an idea about that, too.”

  “I don’t like bein’ this close to the fuel cells, Marx.”

  “That’s because you’re a short-sighted little mucker.”

  “If we get caught in their flamin’ discharge—”

  “We won’t,” said Marx. “Why do you think we stowed away in that Time Corp cruiser six RHUs ago? It wasn’t just for the scenery, you know.”

  “I don’t understand about that,” Kez complained. “All we did was play silly muckers wiv their exhaust.”

  “Work it out yourself. I’m not going to explain everything to you in triplicate.”

  “In wot?”

  “Didn’t you enjoy spraying the Slider with liquid exhaust?”

  “Yeah, but I still don’t see why we done it.”

  Marx pointed out their viewscreen at the charred and blobby section of Time Corp hull that was currently their only visible portion of the Slider. “Then just enjoy looking at your hard work.”

  “Yeah? An’ wot if they sees us on their console?”

  “Told you,” said Marx, grinning. “Work it out yourself.” Kez was always so quick off the mark that it was nice to pull the wool over her eyes every so often. They had ‘accidentally’ sprayed the TCS Slider with liquid exhaust from a passing cruiser because it had seemed likely that the Slider, in orbit around Time Corp Control, wouldn’t stop to clean it up until they completed their orbit and were in proximity to a cleaning station. Much easier, much tidier, and nobody wanted to do a hull walk when a team of overalled muckers at Control could clean it off twice as quickly and twice as easily, anyway.

  And the Upsydaisy, shifting in both time and space, if everything was switched off at just the right moment, and if it was put in just the right place, would never be noticed. It was against regulations, of course, but it was almost certain that Mikkel would turn off the sensors for that part of the Slider’s hull. Nobody wanted the wail of proximity sensors going off endlessly for what amounted to a bit of slag bubbling away on the hull. So long as the Upsydaisy didn’t kick her Pauli Driver or Chronomatrix into gear, there was no reason he and Kez should be noticed at all. And with the amount of potentially explosive waste near those fuel cells, there was no way Mikkel would be stupid enough to leave the affected ones operative. A nice, convenient way in.

  Marx ran his eye over the Upsydaisy’s console one last time, and asked Kez, “Where’s that aerator of yours?”

  “It’s mine!” instantly said Kez. “You ain’t puttin’ it in your flamin’ big hooter!”

  “I need to take a walk into the fuel cells.”

  Kez stared at him in undisguised wonder. “You finally done it. You’ve gorn potty!”

  “What, you want to go into the fuel cells?”

  “Nope. Why d’you?”

  “I’ve got another idea,” said Marx. “Just you wait and see, you unimaginative little mucker! Give me that aerator.”

  Kez grumbled, but she eventually produced the aerator from somewhere about her person. Marx wasn’t sure where she’d been keeping it: he knew she had pockets hidden somewhere about her person, but from the bulky woollen jumper to the thin flowered skirt and armoured leggings, there was no sign of an actual pocket. It made Marx wonder what else she was keeping hidden there, but he didn’t like to ask because she might just tell him, and he wasn’t sure she wasn’t keeping a pet or two.

  “I’ll be in the fuel cells if you want me,” he said, and left the cockpit in search of one of their rather battered Outer suits.

  Unusually enough, the Outer suits were exactly where they were meant to be. They were thin and light, like Kez’s armoured leggings; and, like Kez’s leggings, would protect from most things that could injure both inside and outside of a space-going craft. They didn’t have any other form of life support than the decompression tech and a very effective visor, but the aerator provided everything else needed, and if you were trying to do an emergency walk an Outer suit was good for as long as your breath was. Or, in this case, your aerator.

  Marx suited up and attached the aerator in the Upsydaisy’s exit chamber. Once the pressure was equalized, he would be able to climb onto the Upsydaisy’s hull—just nicely in reach of the fuel cells. With the amount of liquid exhaust that had hit the Slider so near to the cells, Mikkel would have detached the ones closest to those affected from the system, as well as those actually affected. That was good, because Marx wanted to reroute a few fuel cells as well, and it was less likely they’d be noticed with another reroute already entered in the system.

  It wasn’t foolproof, thought Marx, edging carefully across the Upsydaisy’s hull; but it was a decent chance, and chance had so far seemed to favour him and Kez. He wouldn’t count on that, but he would use it. And if things went the way he was planning on them going, Mikkel would be too busy to notice something as potentially unimportant as the rerouting of a couple fuel cells. If things went well, Mikkel would be chasing problems both inside and outside…

  The venting chutes for the waste-speckled fuel cells were significantly cooler than usual by the time Marx made the leap between hull and hull. They were still warm to the touch through his Outer suit, but nothing burned and nothing bubbled, and there was only the faintest smell of singeing from his boots when he climbed into the Slider’s interior proper. There was a small, token lock on the grating that allowed access from the chute into the interior; Marx broke it easily. It was an old-fashioned thing that wasn’t usually necessary—the fuel cells were ordinarily heated to the point that an ordinary human would be vaporised before he got within a few metres of the chutes, and cooked long before that. Marx didn’t bother to try and finesse it, or to hide his entrance. By the time anyone discovered how he’d gained entrance it wouldn’t matter anyway.

  The slight smell of singeing followed Marx into the first decompression chamber, more noticeable when he took Kez’s aerator out of his nose. From either here or the next circle, he should be able to access a convenient console; and, in turn, access the fuel cell network. When the first chamber opened, Marx trod carefully across the metal gangway between fuel cells, his eyes wary, but there was no one else in sight. When the first spray of waste hit the Slider’s hull, this particular area would have been evacuated until the cells were re-routed. Mikkel didn’t strike Marx as being the sort to put his men and women in danger, but caution died hard.

  There was no one past the second decompression antechamber, either. Marx, looking around, grinned. There was a console close by the door. Very convenient. He flicked the maxi-plex screen cover to wake the console and entered six zeros when it asked for employee confirmation. There was always somebody on board a Time Corp sloop who thought six zeros was an appropriately strong password. The Slider was no different; Marx found himself in the system grids without any trouble. It was the standard setup, everything filed under headings and subheadings, and he only made two miss-steps on his way to the fuel grid page. There they were, in use cells highlighted in green and out of use cells highlighted in blue. All he needed to do now was reroute these particular blue-lighted fuel cells to the weapons. Ten of them should be enough; that would be just enough to make a nice, big bang. Marx drew a connecting pattern through the fuel cells with one finger and applied that pattern to the system.

  An error message blinked at him through the maxi-plex. Rerouting of cells could cause damage to the vessel in unexpected circumstances, it said. Fortunately for Marx, Six Zeros was someone high enough up the food chain to have privileges and veto power in the Slider’s system. When he stabbed the continue button on the screen, it simply thr
ew up another message box that said, Cells rerouted.

  If only, thought Marx rather grimly, if only he could be sure the rest of their expedition would be as easy. He doubted it. Now he would need to hack into a Core console somewhere much higher in the Slider, and the thing he regretted most at this moment was the fact that he couldn’t remember the name he was supposed to find in the system. It wasn’t so long ago that he and Kez had stolen the Core password from Mikkel; Marx had formed his plan with the idea that it would be easier to hide from Time Corp if they knew when and where the Time Corp were expecting them to be. It hadn’t occurred to him that they would figure so prominently in the Core, or so pervasively. Now it wasn’t so much a matter of concealment as it was a matter of connivance: do what they would—could—had—done, and do it so that no one caught them while they were doing it. The Core made one thing very clear—Kez and Marx would never be free from the attention of the Time Corp. That being the case, Marx wanted to know why. Unfortunately, between running, hiding, stealing the occasional ship, and stealing the odd Core Password, there never seemed to be time to find out.

  And he never seemed to know quite the right thing at quite the right time, despite that Core Password. If only he’d paid a bit more attention to the Core when he was in there the first time! It hadn’t seemed important at the time—in fact, Marx almost hadn’t bothered to do more than check the Core password worked. It was a lingering sense of sympathy or fellow feeling—or perhaps even a feeling of responsibility—that had made him do more than simply access the Core from the Slider last time. It was their fault that Mikkel was facing a court martial, after all. He hadn’t fired on them when ordered to do so, and someone had suggested collusion. It had only taken a few moments of poking about the Core to pick up a pattern of someone pushing the Slider out of orbit gently every circuit; Marx had simply made it a little bit more noticeable so that someone in at Control would see it, too. It hadn’t occurred to him to remember the name of the person responsible at the time. A shame, that; but then, how was he supposed to know that he and Kez would do so many things out of order?