by C. Gockel
He pulled back. Volka’s lips were pursed. “I think you should give Noa her medicine.” Her voice was a little breathless. He wanted to stay, but although Noa’s need wasn’t dire at this second, she had entrusted him to pick it up for her. He thought of James’s retreating footsteps. And he should talk to James.
He nodded. Reluctantly releasing her hand, he made his way to Noa. It occurred to him that if Noa had given him permission to pick up her prescription, she wanted him to know.
When he entered the kitchen, Noa was hunched over a mug of coffee. Her eyes met his, and she shook her head. She lifted the cup, but then set it down, as though its mass was too great. She hadn’t been without her prescription that long. It was emotional, then. The weight of James leaving and perhaps the weight of her condition, too.
She looked up at him. “The Odessian Congress has already voted. They’re going to support us.”
He noted both the obvious meaning of her words and the underlying evasion. He handed her the package. “How long, Noa?”
James sat in the prairie; a stand of grasses towered behind him. It was very much like prairie-scape on the asteroid that still hadn’t recovered from 6T9’s change of programming. As if in echo of that train of thought, 6T9 came rounding the pebbled path, a few sheep and chickens bleating and clucking before him.
James geared up for the other android to open his mouth and say something—6T9 was ever mouthy, before the Q-comm and after—but 6T9 approached, broke the stalk off one of the grasses, and sat down without a word.
James had no native programming that pushed him to speak when silence stretched too long. He had native understanding that pauses in conversation longer than 1.5 seconds were uncomfortable to humans. He utilized that knowledge frequently by not speaking, letting the other person be uncomfortable. He found himself compelled to speak anyway. “I should have let you kill Darmadi.”
6T9 gazed out at the prairie. “No, you shouldn’t have.”
“Not for your sake. For the Republic.”
“What is the Republic?” 6T9 asked. “Her government or her people?”
Static flared beneath James’s skin. “They are one and the same.”
“No, they aren’t,” 6T9 replied. He scowled at his fingers. “The Republic wasn’t there in System 5.” James studied the reddish soil at his feet. Fleet’s forces in System 5 had been withdrawn to deal with an environmental disaster in System 3, that was when the Dark had attacked New Grande. Fleet’s withdrawal had seemed like an unlucky coincidence at the time. Now he wondered.
6T9 continued, “And the local government of System 5 didn’t call for a general evacuation despite our warnings. Millions of people died, but the local government of System 5 still remains.” He huffed. “Even the mayor of New Grande was able to take safety in a bunker.”
“He made a bad choice; he didn’t betray their people.”
“The mayor made a cowardly choice,” 6T9 countered. “He couldn’t even pretend to entertain the idea of turning over the Infected for fear of appearing weak.”
“One city in one system,” James retorted.
“The Republic could have persuaded him, but they were evidently too busy with plans to disband the Skimmer Fleet.”
“What is your point, 6T9?” James growled.
“I don’t think I care one way or another for ‘government,’” 6T9 said. He whirled the grass blade in his hand. “Perhaps it is my sex ‘bot programming, but I care for people, and when the government fails to defend them, I’m not sure I can care if the government is thwarted.”
“The Luddecceans will have access to a fusion bomb. They are a theo-fascist state—one that would have you slagged, nearly tortured and killed Volka, and will soon have the ability to lob fusion weapons at the Republic.”
“I don’t think so,” 6T9 said, focus again on some point in the distance. The planet was approximately the same diameter of Earth and Luddeccea; its sky was blue. It hadn’t been as hospitable to life as those planets and still wasn’t, but the weere had made it livable. Even beautiful.
6T9 twirled the grass in his hands. “It would be Mutual Assured Destruction and all that, Pax Americana; though I am not sure that it will be Pax Republica or Pax Luddeccea. The Luddecceans will use their fusion weapons against the Dark. I’m not sure the Republic has the will to. Our Senators are arguing in favor of the Dark’s feelings.” Sitting up straighter, he threw some grains from the grass out onto the semi-barren ground. “But that’s not really what you’re angry about, James. You’re angry about Noa’s mortality, and you’re angry that she is insisting you change your programming.”
James almost shut down—might have completely, if 6T9 hadn’t slapped him on the shoulder so hard that his self-preservation features kicked in. He tossed the other android’s hand to the side.
“How do you know?” James asked.
“She authorized me to pick up her prescription this morning while I was at the pharmacy.”
All of James’s circuits lit in relief. Noa had left too quickly to gather her belongings, and she needed that nano-pharma formulation to keep her body from rejecting her cybernetics. It wasn’t a formula that could be easily had; it had to be custom made. Her body had built up resistance to all the common inhibitors, and it would build up resistance to this inhibitor, too. At the rate she was progressing, she’d only live another four years, five at most.
His processors whirred. “It takes a week to get that formula mixed in the In Systems.” How had this remote system done it in days?
“It sounds like System 11 is bending over backwards to keep us happy.” 6T9 tossed more seeds. “They are going to fight, not retreat, by the way, just in case you hadn’t checked the ether.”
James’s circuits darkened. He might lose Noa in months, instead of years.
“You know,” 6T9 said. “Eliza was told she had only a year left to live for the last four decades of her life.”
James spat back, “Even four decades more wouldn’t be enough.”
6T9 squinted into the distance. “No, it won’t be.”
James’s Q-comm sparked, and static crawled on the back of his neck. He couldn’t say that 6T9 didn’t know what he was talking about. 6T9 had more experience in this area than he did. James was used to being the older one, the more experienced one, but in this, he wasn’t.
6T9 continued, “I think your programming has already changed without your noticing. You’ve picked up a death wish—”
“I have not—”
“Rusty bolts,” 6T9 said. “It may go against your core self-preservation features, but it’s there. You’re afraid of Noa dying and want to get yourself blown to bits before that happens. Once you’re confined to only your server, you’ll be able to detach yourself from her. Maybe. I don’t know how much of your personality is in your local systems, and how much is remote, but even Bracelet’s personality evolved with the experiences on Volka’s wrist.”
“Am I so simple?” James asked.
“No, you’re not simple at all,” 6T9 continued. “You’ve also befriended another human, and I’m going to guess, based on things you’ve said in the past, that goes against your core programming.” His hand fluttered to his side, to the spot where he used to keep Eliza’s ashes.
A glitch made a muscle in James’s jaw jump. It wasn’t precisely against his core programming to have other close relationships with humans, but it wasn’t integral to his programming, either. Unlike 6T9, he wasn’t programmed to love or have affection for any human or android except Noa. He had coded loyalty to the android race and coded loyalty to her, and that was all he’d needed. His loyalty and love for Noa kept him loyal to the human race. Still, he protested. “I have other human friends.”
“Mm …” 6T9 said, “but I’ve never seen you joke with Young the way you did with Darmadi.”
“Young is a colleague, and that relationship is necessarily different.”
“And Darmadi is the ‘enemy,’ but he lives convenientl
y far away and is difficult to reach, so the relationship feels … or logically computes … as safe, as not a threat to your core programming. And yet, the connection is beneficial. It’s a connection to this world; your own systems have recognized your death wish and are trying to subvert it.”
“Your Q-comm is offline. I had to befriend Darmadi. It was necessary for my mission,” James replied. And then the captain had betrayed him, which showed the value of human friendship.
“Noa’s right. He didn’t betray the spirit of your friendship. He betrayed a government that claims to be the ally of his people, and yet hides necessary technology and intelligence from them.”
James almost protested, but 6T9 cut him off. “Were you going to share the photon transporter with them? Exactly how you awakened the sleeping drones?”
Static crawled along James’s spine.
“Of course not,” 6T9 said, sounding tired. “You should. Take it to Darmadi, save the galaxy, visit your friend, just don’t drag me with you because I still want to kill him.” His shoulders hunched. “The Luddecceans might be theo-fascists, but they are our allies against the Dark. They’re predictable in that at least.”
James tilted his head, studying the other ‘bot. 6T9 was nonchalant about Luddeccea acquiring quantum teleportation enabled fusion. Perhaps he did not know how close the Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine had almost come to failing? Or maybe he didn’t know how states arrayed against threats from without tended to be vulnerable to threats from within.
6T9’s eyes went vacant, and then he sat up with a start. “Gate 1, Gate 11, and some local engineers have devised a casing for a Q-comm free-floating particle. They are asking if maybe Sundancer could put Bracelet’s Q-comm particle into the new casing, since she did pluck it out of vacuum.” Standing, he began walking back to the house. “I have to tell Volka.”
James rose and followed him. This was potentially a momentous development, but he was still concerned. “6T9?” James asked. “Do you really think that Luddecceans are predictable?”
10
Unpredictable Agents
Luddeccea : New Prime
Alexis awoke to a boom of thunder that shook Silas’s house, but no rain. Tensely waiting for one of her children to wake, she put her hand down on Alaric’s side of the bed. It was cold.
It had been four weeks since the defection of Dr. Zeller. Three weeks since the doctor and Alaric had left Luddeccea for S8O1, commonly known as Gabriel’s Star, the first planet in their solar system. There was a secure base there where Dr. Zeller was helping the Luddecceans hone their fusion teleportation weapons. The Luddecceans had already begun attempting to build them based on scans they’d performed of Republic weapons while the Galacticans had been aboard the Merkabah in System 33. Dr. Zeller—Emelia—had confided in Alexis that she was surprised by their progress, although she had found several flaws in their designs.
Alaric was there getting to know his latest commission, the Uriel, the first Luddeccean fighter-carrier with a Net-Drive.
Her hand balled into a fist. All of these things were dangerous to know. Was she pleased to know them? Shaking her head, she rolled over and tried to go to sleep. Lightning flashed, and seconds later, thunder boomed, rain pounded down, and from Lucas’s room came a cry. “Mommy! Dark!”
She was out of her bed in seconds, down the hall, and at his doorway, heart pounding, but when she peered in, he’d already gone back to sleep. A chill ran down her spine. It was before sunrise and darker than normal with the storm. That was all. The Dark wasn’t on Luddeccea. She swallowed and wished that Solomon was here, but he was with her husband aboard the Uriel. Silas’s home had a member of the Weere Guard on duty at all hours, and besides that, she had her maid Merta and Silas had his assistant Joel. If the Dark were here, they’d know. She glanced at the clock softly ticking on the wall. Of course, Merta and Joel wouldn’t be here this early in the morning.
She took a deep breath. It would be better to go back to sleep, but she knew it would be impossible. Outside, the drum of rain on the roof increased in volume.
Two hours later, after getting dressed and ready for her day, she was sitting at her desk, finishing up a letter to Emelia. The rain had diminished to a light drizzle, but darker storm clouds still loomed. She looked at the time and scowled. It was a half hour past when her maid Merta was supposed to arrive. She blinked. It was the rainy season … when weere went into heat. Was it her season? If it was, she did not want the woman coming in; it would distract Joel, and that would inconvenience Silas. Merta said she always knew beforehand and would give Alexis warning … Alexis thumped her pen on the desk. Merta was still late, which, to be fair, was not generally a fault Merta had. Then again, a change in personality and habits was a hallmark of the season, along with a lack of decision-making ability and restraint. For all Merta’s assurances that she would give warning, maybe hormones were addling her judgment.
Sighing, Alexis rose from her chair and headed to the back door where she’d first discovered Solomon. The drive looped around the back of the house, and Merta always came from that direction. She stepped out onto the back stoop and found Alaric’s cousin Sebastian and another man on guard there. The house’s awning had been too small to provide protection from the elements for the Guardsmen, and a neat, if not architecturally coordinated, shelter had been erected for them. It had a tin roof that made the light rain sound like a downpour. She didn’t know how her boys slept through it—even Markus—she swore the shelter rattled against the house. Sebastian stood a few steps away at the edge of the awning, a radio near his lips, his brow furrowed in concern, his gaze on the guest house just across the lawn. The Guardsmen permanently stationed outside Silas’s house used the guesthouse as their base of operations.
“Ma’am?” said the other Guardsman.
Crossing her arms, Alexis said, “My maid is late.” She sounded snippy even to herself.
He snorted. “Weere. The Weere Guard relief for our weere, Okhota, never showed up last night. Okhota is pulling a double shift.”
Alexis huffed in disgust. The season, obviously. She turned around, about to head back inside.
A voice buzzed over the radio. She caught the name “Okhota” and “fever” and “hospital.”
A weight settling in her stomach, Alexis stopped and looked back.
Speaking into the radio, Sebastian said, “Yes, sir, understood, sir.”
The garage door of the guest house opened, and a green utility vehicle emerged. A Guardsman shouted, “Wait,” and jogged out into the rain and affixed a white flag with a red cross to the antenna.
“Was that your weere?” Alexis asked Sebastian.
Sebastian looked worriedly at his companion.
The man Alexis had been talking to said, “Weere are weak.” He shrugged and conceded, “Which isn’t their fault, what with their genetic mutations and all. But it’s not unusual for them to get sicker than us. It’s not anything to worry about.”
Sebastian scowled and looked out into the rain.
“It’s another reason not to get attached to them,” the first man said. “You hicks never learn that.”
Shaking his head at this, Sebastian caught Alexis’s eye. “Oh, sorry, ma’am. Yes, that was our weere. He’s real sick. Came on sudden—”
“He worked a double shift!” the other man protested.
Sebastian argued, “That’s no reason to collapse with a 40C fever.”
His partner exclaimed, “I’m telling you, they don’t have a constitution like ours.”
“Merta didn’t show up, either,” Alexis said.
“It’s the rain,” the first Guardsman said. “Or pardon me for being blunt, ma’am, but them weere bitches are comin’ and goin’ into season, and their tongues are all lolling halfway to their knees right now.”
Raising the radio, Sebastian said, “Mr. Darmadi’s assistant, he normally shows up about this time. I’m going to see if they can see him from the gate.”
“Thank you, Sebastian,” Alexis said. Her hands fluttered to her pocket. It was empty. “Tell them to keep a lookout for Merta, too.”
Already speaking into the radio, he nodded in acknowledgement. Alexis went back into the house. She knew she was being overly cautious—paranoid even—but she suddenly wanted her pistol. She was just rising from the safe in her bedroom where she kept it when she heard a car on the drive. She went to the window, hoping to see Merta or Joel or any weere to replace the man who’d taken ill. Instead, she saw a Luddeccean Guard van pulling up the drive. A man got out and looked up at the house. Her lips parted in shock. It was Captain Ran. He wore Dress Greens and yet no chauffeur had opened the door for him. He paused and waved a hand, as though he were speaking to someone within the car. Last she heard, he’d been sent to investigate the Dark infected team that had kidnapped her. That was after he’d been investigating Alaric.
Her nostrils flared. Was he here to deliver some unspoken test to determine Alaric’s loyalty again?
Lightning flashed, illuminating the world in stark contrast. The sky seemed darker than just a few minutes ago. At that thought, thunder boomed. If Ran noticed, he showed no sign. Squaring his shoulders, he walked toward the front door.
By the time Alexis opened the door for Captain Ran, it was pouring again. Like the rear of the house, the awning at the front hadn’t had enough protection for the complement of Guardsmen that protected it, and another neat shelter with a tin roof had been erected. The rain pounded on it so loudly it made her ears physically ache. Beyond the shelter and her guards, a man with a rifle had emerged from the van. His eyes swept over her Guard at the front and to the guest house.