Serpent's Gift
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I'll just have to keep at it until the program works perfectly, she thought, then sighed again as she fine-tuned Heathertoo's ¦ logic capabilities. That's a big order, she mused, dismayed at the enormity of the task she'd set herself, feeling her determination and confidence waver. You're just tired, she assured herself. You've been at this too long.
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And she was grumpy, too. She'd really wanted to go with Hing and Serge up to StarBridge Station to see the Night Storm come in, and maybe get introduced to those hotshots Serge was so excited about meeting. She'd been tempted to take Serge and Hing up on their invitation, but she'd finally declined, knowing this would be one of her best opportunities to work on Heathertoo in undisturbed privacy--and safety. She wondered whether Hing had believed her when she'd said she was going to study.
Got to get this done while Hing's gone, the girl reminded herself. Who knows when I'll get another chance?
She keyed in another succession of commands, but that only made the expression on Heathertoo's face positively dopey. "Dammit!" she snarled, thumping her fist beside the keyboard.
Suddenly the computer blinked off, then on, as if the violence of her reaction had loosened something. The girl gasped, blinked herself, and stared. Her computer, like every other one on StarBridge, was tied into the main AI. It just didn't blink off! But it had. For just a half second. Heather felt uneasy, thinking about backward toilets and environmental systems--things she was fond of like gravity and air--all linked into the same computer. And was it her imagination, or did Heathertoo now look kind of dazed?
Got to be something wrong with this terminal, she told herself, trying to believe it. A hardware problem.
Then Heathertoo spoke. "The guidance beam setting is all wrong!" the image said clearly, with more emotion than Heather had ever been able to successfully program into her. "Guidance beam error--error, error--too soon--
too fast! Evacuate Docks Five and Six! Emergency override on that guidance beam!" The image was flushed, the eyes wide with terror. For a moment her image crawled, as though another's features were struggling to surface, then Heathertoo's countenance steadied, was normal again.
What the hell. .. ? Heather stared at the image, but her creation's expression was calm, almost vapid--as usual. "Heathertoo, what's the matter? What's happening?"
The woman's image blinked calmly. "Nothing's the matter. Nothing's happening. What's happening with you?"
Heather nearly went into a rage at the stupid machine. Docks Five and Six...
she thought, we only have two docks down here at the Academy. So that message had to be referring to the station. Could there have been some kind of bleedover or swapout that had cross-routed messages from the station?
Exiting the Heathertoo program, Heather set to work and soon
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tapped into the Academy's Traffic Control console. The security at: the school was pretty good, but she was only eavesdropping, which wasn't hard to do.
The moment she made the connection, Heather could see and hear the school's traffic controller, a woman with a long, thin face and curly brown hair, plus a young black man who, from what she picked up, had been hastily drafted from Janet Rodriguez's staff to assist her. She watched and listened as the two of them worked frantically, contacting ships in metaspace, rerouting them if possible, instructing them to assume a long orbit if they were too close to change course, and moving all those now waiting to dock over to the space on the other side of the station, where they were instructed to wait.
"How long?" one of the frustrated captains demanded. Heather could faintly hear his voice as it came over the controller's screen, but he was too far away for her to pick up his transmission directly. "We can't just hang by our toes until further notice! What the hell is wrong over at the station?"
"We don't know what's wrong," the Head Controller said calmly and firmly. A patch on her uniform identified her as T. Phillips. "And until we do know, no one is to dock at the station. There's something wrong with the docking guidance beams. We can't risk allowing you--or anyone--to dock."
There was a garbled communication from another vessel; this one must have been even farther away, because Heather couldn't make it out. She had no way to enhance external communications.
"Yes, we've confirmed that the guidance beam brought a ship in too fast,"
Phillips said. "That's what all this is about, why the Academy is handling docking and traffic control communications while the station deals with the emergency. StarBridge Station has lost pressure in several areas, and sustained damage, we don't know how much yet."
Damage? thought Heather. Lost pressure? Shit, this sounds serious!
Yet a third ship demanded to know how long it would be before they could dock. "It shouldn't be too long," Phillips said, trying to project reassurance.
"We've got everyone available working on the problem. We're going to bring up the old manual routing system."
Squawks of protest resounded from her listeners. "I can't help it if your pilot is out of practice," she said, a touch of exasperation emerging. "I repeat, all dockings will be manual until further
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notice, but there will be no dockings until the emergency with the Night Storm collision is dealt with."
Heather froze in her seat. The Night Storm. The ship Hing and Serge had gone to meet. Was that the one that had crashed?
"No"--Phillips shook her head--"we don't know the extent of the damage. All we know is that the ship was pulled in too fast, and crashed into the dock. All reports indicate that the Night Storm exploded during the crash. That station lost pressure in several of the docks, and in adjoining areas. The observation deck, for example--complete decompression there. We have no confirmed casualty count, but at least one person on the observation deck was killed. We have no idea what the total body count will be."
Hearing this, the child struggled for breath. It couldn't have been Hing. Or Serge! I'd know if either one of them died! I'd know! But would she? The station was so far away. It was one thing to hear Hing's cry for help from the Lamont Cliffs, but all the way from the station? That was way too far!
Besides, if Hing and Serge had been sucked out into space would they even have the time to feel panic, or anything, before their bodies literally exploded from the inside out?
Heather bit her lip hard, trying to pull herself together. Don't assume the worst, she thought. They might not've been at the gate yet. They're probably fine.
But another part of her mind whispered, brutally, Just like your mother and father, kiddo. Anyone who gets close to you has the worst luck, don't they?
Your mother, dead. Your father... insane, and despite your brave hopes that someday he might get better, you know he never will. Never, never. . .
Shuddering, she clenched the edge of her terminal desk, clenching her teeth to stop herself from whimpering like a damned baby.
Stop that! her survivor-self ordered brutally. You're acting like an idiot. What do you care what happens to them? Ten minutes ago you were thinking that they'd corrupted you with their namby-pure attitudes and oh-so-moral crap, and now you're sniveling like a major asshole. You've got to look out for yourself, sweetcheeks, because you can bet all of "Helen Benson's" bankroll that if Serge and Hing knew what you were doing, they'd turn you in in a second and your ass would be out of here. Think they'd ever give you a second thought once you were gone?
The concentrated burst of anger calmed her down, made her think more cl early.
Phillips was still talking, setting up tentative timetables for 186
docking at Docks Eleven through Twenty, on the other side of the station, the uninjured side. "And by the way," she said, we've just received a communication from StarBridge Station's ¦ chief. Just prior to, or during the crash, which occurred at 13:24 station time, did anyone notice anything funny glitching u p your computer?"
All of the ships must have replied in the negative, because she continued,
She must have pressed a control, because a window suddenly showed to her right, taking up about a quarter of the image. It was filled with ship and vessel coordinates and schedules, plus docking times. Heather watched as the playback suddenly blinked, as the computer hiccuped .. . and then data vanished and was replaced with--
--Heathertoo.
The image was exactly as the girl had seen her, wearing that terrified expression, then it tried to melt and meld into some underlying image but never quite made it. The image spoke: "The guidance beam setting is all wrong! Guidance beam error-- error, error--too soon--too fast! Evacuate Docks Five and Six! Emergency override on that guidance beam!"
Then the window blinked again, and the normal shipping and docking data returned to the playback.
"Ever see anything like that?" Phillips asked, then cocked her head as she listened. "No, me neither. Totally illegal swapout or something. No, I've never seen her before, and from what the head of Security said, no one else has, either. She's certainly not one of the controllers, though one of the controllers remembers saying part of that as soon as she realized what was happening with Night Storm. But that part about 'error, error' sounds like it was the computer talking. Doesn't make a damned bit of sense."
Phillips paused for a moment, listened, then said, "It's got to be connected with the crash, it can't just be random garbage.' The communication was local, we know that much--and it won't take long to track it down and identify whoever that was. The Security Chief is saying it has to be sabotage, so that redhead's going to have a lot of explaining to do, whoever she is."
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Heather gasped and, unable to take any more, switched off the terminal. She felt the room spin around her, heard her blood roaring in her ears. I'm gonna faint, she thought dispassionately as her palms went clammy and her eyelids fluttered.
You don't have time to faint! her survivor-self barked. Put your head down, asshole! Immediately, Heather dropped her head between her knees, gulping air desperately. Her eyes watered, and her stomach heaved. She forced herself to slow down her breathing, easy .. . easy. Cautiously, she raised her head, saw that everything was stable again. She swallowed hard.
They'd seen Heathertoo. They'd be looking for her. With really sophisticated search programs, tracer programs. And when they found "Helen Benson,"
they'd trace her to Heathertoo--and then to Heathertoo's creator. This was no longer just a case of computer tampering. People were dead.
She kept hearing Rob's warnings about messing with the computers, the environmental systems, how everything was tied in together.
That's impossible! I only messed around with the school's AI. I never tapped into anything at the station except those financial programs! Nothing I did could've affected the guidance beams. . .
You called the station while you were inside the AI, a brutal voice inside her warned. You stayed inside, pushing and prodding, moving things, making sure Heathertoo did what you wanted. How would you know what else you might have affected? You never paid any attention to anything else!
Heather shuddered convulsively. Computers were so weird the way they consolidated data, the way systems handled programs. And the AI was the weirdest part of the computer. It was organic. Made its own rules. Wrote its own programs. It thought, not quite like a human thought, but it thought. Fast.
Really fast. And this one had Mizari origins, so it'd be less humanlike than a human-originated AI. She'd been bouncing around in there, pulling strings, making sure Heathertoo the puppet danced just right. Oh, shit. Oh, shitshitshit!
She suddenly felt very small, very helpless, very young. Shivering, she whispered to the machine, "I didn't mean to, honest!" As though apologizing to it would do any good. "I just wanted some money of my own, so I'd be safe! I didn't mean to hurt anyone! I'd never do that on purpose!" But that didn't matter now. People were dead. Maybe Hing and Serge were dead--
and it was her fault. Heather moaned aloud.
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Don't forget that StarBridge Station Security was now looking for Heathertoo.
They'd probably start by checking personnel records, which would take them a while and get them nowhere. But they'd also have programmers, systems analysts, good ones, and they'd be tracing the mystery image through the computer.
A sob of sheer panic caught in Heather's throat, making her gulp, but no tears came. That's right, she never cried, and she wouldn't let herself now--
though it might have been a relief. No, she had to get busy, she had no time to snivel.
Resolutely, Heather swallowed the lump in her throat, feeling her survivor-self surge to the fore, letting it think for her, guide her. It was her survivor-self that had kept her sane and functioning during all the bad times--when her mother had died and, soon after, when her father, instead of comforting her, had dissolved into shrieking, gibbering insanity. Her survivor-self had kept Uncle Fred from killing her, helped her in all those foster homes. Her survivor-self had gotten her off Earth, into space, where Uncle Fred and Aunt Natalie could never touch her again.
Resolutely, she listened to her inner voice, then reached for her computerpen, at the same time turning her terminal back on. You can stil do something no one else can do, it told her. You can go in there and wipe it all out, all the evidence, all the traces. Destroy Heathertoo. Wipe the record of the call to the broker. Dissolve that money-making program back into random electrical impulses. Get rid of the money.
She balked at that last. Destroy the money? Her hard-earned money? No!
She couldn't. That money meant freedom. Escape.
You've got to. There's no way you could sneak off this rock now, so your only defense is to play the innocent eleven-year-old. That means scrapping everything that can tie Heathertoo to you. Everything! Now get moving!
The child sucked in a lungful of air, struggling to clear her mind. She wouldn't think about Hing. Wouldn't think about Serge. Wouldn't think about them as victims of explosive decompression, frozen hunks of red meat and organs, floating forever in space...
She'd only think about what she had to do. How she had to wipe out all traces of her tampering.
Just this last time, she told herself. After this, never again. Wipe the slate clean. Start over. They'll never know. And I swear, if I get out of this, I'll never, EVER do this again.
She closed her eyes and pushed, then it was as though her mind 189
were falling, plunging into the computer. She submerged herself in its mechanical order, experiencing the incredible complexity that was at the same time inhumanly simple, for it had no emotions, no feelings to influence its judgment.
Nanoseconds later she was traveling the grids, the pathways of the programs, the data, heading deep into the innards, toward the organic component of the AI. But even as she sank further into the mind that was not a mind, she heard her survivor-self chuckle at her naive promise of future honesty.
Sure, the survivor purred sarcastically, you'll never do this again. Sure.
A mental echo of her own laughter, twisted and perverted until it sounded inhuman, evil, followed her like a ghost into the darkness.
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CHAPTER 11
Guardian Angels and Ministers of Grace
Rob rubbed his face tiredly as the familiar dialogue washed over him; he was only half paying attention to it. Stretched out on his couch, he wore shapeless old gray sweatpants and a sleeveless red tee-tank. The "Johns Hopkins" emblazoned across its front was so faded it was nearly indistinguishable. On the stylish coffee table in front of him rested half a piece of fudge-marble cheesecake and half a mug of tepid coffee.
He stare
d at the food, then desultorily took another bite, washing it down with the cooling brew. He glanced up at the wall holo showing his favorite old film.
Little early in the season for this one, isn't it, Gable? he asked himself. Not even near Christmas.
On the screen, Clarence, the rotund little angel, was drying the clothes he'd been buried in, in the small caretaker's shack on the bridge. Nearby, a bitter, disillusioned George Bailey fumed because he'd had to risk his life to save the angel from drowning in the icy winter river. What George had really wanted to do was kill himself--- not save anyone else. This rescue was a major inconvenience.
Rob watched Jimmy Stewart handle the role of George Bailey with an uncanny verisimilitude. And wondered why he was watching this film now, tonight, for perhaps the two hundredth time.
Heal thyself, doctor, he thought. Couldn't be because you ended up in your dad's--and mom's--business, just because you were expected to, is it?
Couldn't be because you ended up running
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StarBridge because it was what was expected of you, hmmm? The less glamorous job, but the oh, so important one?
StarBridge Academy as metaphor for the Bailey Building and Loan
Company, how about that one, boys and girls? He scowled at the
cheesecake and shoved it away. Oh, he had the blues bad today!
Now George was experiencing Pottersville, the alternate- universe Bedford Falls--the town as it would have been had he never been born, the fulfillment of his depressed wish as he stood hopeless on the bridge. It was a sick town, full of greed, anarchy, corruption. An analogy for all the things good people have to fight--and lose to--on a daily basis. Boy, Capra knew how to pull the strings, didn't he?
Rob had seen pictures of Capra in his later life. It'd shocked him how much the filmmaker had come to look just like Clarence.