Forgotten Worlds

by D. Nolan Clark

  Ginger chewed on her lip. “I suppose we’re just supposed to stay in our place. Not ask any questions.”

  “To hell with that,” Bury said. “We need to find out what’s going on. We could try to talk to Maggs again. He knows more than he told me.”

  “He’s under constant guard,” Ginger pointed out. “No way they’d let us just talk to him.”

  “Then we need to go digging, work this out on our own.”

  “What, like two kid detectives in a damned video?” Ginger rubbed at her eyes with the balls of her thumbs. “Bury, you’re already one bad move away from being kicked out an airlock with no suit. Can you please try not to get us in trouble, just for a little while? If the commander catches you spying on him—you’ve seen how paranoid he is. He won’t put up with it. Not for a second.”

  Bury grunted in frustration and he pounded on the wall with one fist. In the absence of gravity, he went sprawling against the other wall. “Damn it. Damn it, Ginger. Damn it!”

  “I think,” she said, once he’d stopped raging, “we need to take a different approach to this.”

  “Just play nice, you mean.”

  “No,” she told him. “No. Well. Not exactly.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  This is beyond unacceptable. This is cruel and unusual treatment! The General Regulations forbid this kind of torture! Damn you, are you even listening?”

  No one enjoys a whiner, Maggsy.

  His father’s voice in his head only stoked the flames of Maggs’s fury. The old paterfamilias could be a righteous pain when he wished it, and this was clearly one of those occasions.

  You’ve earned this berth. You’ll simply have to lie in it, my boy.

  “A man can go mad like this!” Maggs said. He shoved off one wall and smacked into the other with his shoulder, hard enough to feel the bones shift in their sockets. He knew perfectly well that he could throw himself at these walls for a thousand years and make little more than a sweat stain on the padding, but he was quite at the end of his tether, and that tether was fraying fast.

  “Even back in the barbarous days of your youth, Lanoe, they did not treat prisoners like this. The Ceres Accords established fair treatment of prisoners of war. Do you even hear what I’m saying? Are you out there laughing at me?”

  Surely not, his father said. That would be unbecoming conduct for even an enlisted fellow.

  Maggs pushed himself down into one corner of the cell, a corner exactly like all the others, and cradled his head in his hands. He cried out in mental distraction and kicked at the wall, bracing himself so he didn’t go flying off again in some random direction. “I am dying in here! I am quite literally dying!”

  He opened one eye and peeked out through the cage of his fingers. The door of the cell had still not opened.

  Damn.

  It wasn’t working.

  He had been quite certain that his performance should have been enough to get some reaction, at least. Perhaps he was going to have to rethink this strategy.

  If acting like he was going mad wasn’t going to get him what he wanted, he would have to think of some other method of gaining attention. He supposed a hunger strike had some merits. Though he’d always rather been fond of his grub. Anyway, he was going to need his strength when he did get out of the cell.

  Self-harm in general seemed ghastly. Beneath him. Well. There must be another way.

  The problem, of course, was that Lanoe—that cursed man—knew him too well. He knew that Maggs’s greatest strength had always been his wit and his charm. Maggs had not been permitted to speak with anyone, not since the idiot Hellion had stumbled on him, what felt like days ago. Ever since then Maggs had been under guard twenty-four hours a day—and those guards were not permitted to speak to him at all.

  Had he just had someone to talk to, anyone, he could have found a way in. He could have flattered, cajoled, insinuated. Straight up begged, though the idea turned his stomach. He could have talked his way out of the cell by now. Instead, Lanoe had left him to rot. With no one to talk to but the voice in his head, the voice of his dear departed, definitely dead dad.

  How do you think I like it, then?

  “Oh, shut up, Father. You have no idea what it’s like, being confined with no hope of release, no possibility of parole—”

  Haven’t I? I’ve been stuck in your head since you were a child.

  Maggs laughed, despite himself.

  Not that my condition is without its compensations. Of the more vicarious variety, but then, a disembodied voice takes what pleasures it may.

  Maggs couldn’t stop laughing. He laughed himself hoarse. He laughed until he was choking on guffaws.

  Eventually the effort tired him out enough that he fell silent, curled around himself, just breathing heavily.

  How much of his feigned insanity, he suddenly wondered, had been, in point of fact, feigned? How much was the confinement actually affecting him?

  “That’s it, then,” he said. “I’m mad now. I’ve quite literally gone mad.”

  You were always a bit off balance. Though before it was in a rather more delightful way.

  “I’m mad. I’m …”

  Aha.

  Yes.

  Maggs comported himself, bit by bit, into a state approaching dignity. Smoothed his hair back. Wiped the flecks of spittle from his chin. Took a long, deep breath and faced the door of his cell.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said. “That little tantrum was uncalled for, I know. But I do believe I have a point,” he said. Lanoe would be recording this. Logging his behavior, he was sure of it—if only to play back the video later for private amusement.

  “Naval General Regulation 1.16.5, paragraph 7, in regard to the treatment of prisoners requires that they be provided adequate and speedy medical attention, as required. That happens to include mental health and hygiene care. I am hereby requesting, as is my right as an officer, that you provide therapeutic assistance to help with my mental state.”

  He forced himself not to grin. Oh, this was good. After a moment he nodded at the door, as if he had received some kind of acknowledgment. He had not, but so be it.

  “Thank you,” he added. And then he folded himself back into a ball and prepared to wait. And wait. And wait.

  Time, of course, is experienced by prisoners as a sort of elastic thing, stretched out as thin and pale as taffy. Hours creep by on stumbling feet. Days exist only as far as one has the ability to make tally marks on a wall (and Maggs lacked even the ability to do this). The waiting was excruciating, as it was meant to be.

  Eventually, though, he got his response. A light came on over the cell’s hatch and a voice ordered him to move back, away from the opening.

  Maggs tried not to look too eager.

  The hatch slid open and even just the sudden breeze, the feel of air sweeping into the cell that had not yet passed through his own lungs, was intoxicating. He waited to see who they would send in—who would be his new target, his new mark. He couldn’t even see a marine guard outside, though. Odd, but—

  A drone in the shape of a robotic dog floated into the cell, maneuvering on tiny ducted propellers where a real dog might have legs. The face of the drone, from snout to ears, was the dull gray plastic of a display emitter.

  The hatch slammed shut behind the thing.

  “Hello,” the dog said, in a carefully gender-balanced voice. “I hear you’re not feeling well. I am this vessel’s Morale Reinforcement drone, and I’m here to help.”

  It took all that Maggs had not to grab the thing out of the air and smash its damned head against the floor until it snapped off.

  “I don’t know what Lieutenant Maggs did to you that would earn this sort of treatment,” Candless said. “I do hope I never do the same.”

  Lanoe grinned. “Unlikely. He’s a confidence trickster, through and through. Always looking to take somebody else’s money, and he doesn’t care who gets hurt.”

  Candless was flying the cruiser at
that moment, and couldn’t look up. She’d had to hear about the prisoner’s demand the old-fashioned way—by listening to Lanoe crow about how he’d handled it. She imagined she would have done things differently, but then, she wasn’t in command of this mission. Her opinion had not been solicited.

  “He tried to convince a bunch of religious types he was a Sector Warden, once. That he could defend their planet if they just turned over everything they had.”

  “This was Niraya?” she asked.

  “Sure. Then he tried to pull the same scam, again, on a bunch of Centrocor engineers. People desperate enough to believe anybody who offered them some hope.”

  “Clearly he is not to be trusted.”

  Lanoe snorted. “No.”

  “Then, if I may be permitted to ask, why keep him here? Why not just drop him on Tuonela like everyone else? Surely that would have been safer.”

  “I suspected the crew of this ship of maybe being spies for the polys. Suspicions are one thing. Maggs, though—he used to work as a Naval liaison for Centrocor. If I turned him loose he would have gone straight to his old masters and told them everything. I couldn’t take that chance.”

  “Lucky, then,” Candless said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Lucky that your only choice, to keep him locked up, matches so nicely with your desire to punish him.”

  She wasn’t entirely sure how he would take that. Lanoe had a pretty even temper, but he rarely enjoyed being called out on his own pretenses.

  He was smart enough, though—sometimes—to know he needed to be checked. “You think I’m doing the wrong thing,” he said, and she could hear the frown in his voice.

  “A lesson I attempt to impart to every class I teach is that one should try, always, to be honest with one’s self,” she told him.

  “Sure,” he said. A word that, coming from Lanoe, could mean a great number of contradictory things.

  “Enough. I’ve been in the Navy too long to question my superiors’ orders,” she said, because she knew better than to push him any further. “We have something else to discuss anyway.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. Where we’re headed. If you will please consider this map you gave me.” She waved one hand and brought up the wormspace chart, the incredible, impossible chart that seemed to hint that the galaxy was a much bigger place than she’d thought. “It’s very detailed, but not very well annotated. We’re here, right now.” She tapped the air and a blue dot appeared on the map. “This,” she said, and conjured up a tiny yellow rectangle—a possible destination about two days away—“is a wormhole that leads to Avernus.”

  “You have some reason to want to go to Avernus?” Lanoe asked.

  “I’ve heard it’s lovely, in its way. I have been told its cities are charming, and the inhabitants carve the local coral into intriguing shapes,” she said. “However, the reason I bring it up is that past that point—there’s nothing. Tell me, have you ever seen one of the ancient maps they made of Earth’s oceans, back when they didn’t even know how many continents there were? They used to write ‘terra incognita’ in the empty spaces. Unknown lands.”

  “Here be dragons,” Lanoe said.

  Candless nodded, though she kept her eyes on the wormhole ahead of them. “Well, that’s where we’re headed. If we keep going on our present course, if we don’t turn off at Avernus—we’ll be leaving human space altogether. We’ll be going farther than anyone has before. An exciting prospect, for some,” she said, her tone suggesting she was referring to deviants and the mentally unsound. “A rather fearful one, for the rest of us.”

  “Understood,” he said. As if she’d just given him a telemetry update. Some important but emotionless bit of data. “Our stores are in good shape? Everybody onboard is healthy, doing their job?”

  She resisted the urge to sigh. She knew exactly where this was going. Still, she’d had to ask. “We have food, air, consumables for months. The marines are bored, I’m told, which might lead to problems. Shore leave probably isn’t the answer, though. Lieutenant Ehta has them running through gunnery drills, learning how this ship fights.”

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary, but it’s good to keep them occupied.”

  “Yes. So we’re not going to Avernus, are we?”

  “No.”

  “Understood,” she said. With only a trace of mockery in her voice.

  “I want to talk to a human being.”

  “I’m easy to talk to,” the drone said. “I won’t judge you, whatever you tell me. I just want to be your friend.”

  Adorable, Maggs’s father said, inside his head. Who’s a good boy, then? Who’s a good boy?

  “If you think it would help, I can also dispense medication for the treatment of over three hundred known psychiatric complaints. Are you feeling depressed? Suicidal? You can tell me.”

  “I want to talk to a human being,” Maggs said, for the fortieth time. He ran one hand along the line of his jaw, feeling the uncouth stubble growing there. He considered asking for some razor paper, or perhaps a chemical depilatory if that was too much. Instead, he stared at the robot dog and said, “I wish to speak to a human being.”

  “I’m easy to talk to—”

  “You aren’t listening, you synthetic piece of …” Maggs said, his blood boiling. He grimaced and tried to recall himself. A fellow of his station was far above being annoyed by a drone spouting an automated conversation tree. “And yes, I’m quite aware that getting angry with a drone is a symptom of—”

  He stopped, because a white dot had appeared on the drone’s face. A single point of light that grew as he watched, pixel by pixel.

  The drone’s display was capable of playing therapeutically approved videos, and of generating a human face—no doubt one computed to be kindly and understanding out to the sixth decimal place—should he request it. It should not, under any circumstances, have activated without some input from him.

  As he watched the white dot grow and begin to take shape, he began to realize that the drone was exceeding its standard programming. Most likely, he thought, because it had been hacked. The shape that it displayed, rather crudely, was a simple hexagon.

  An icon everyone knew. The corporate logo of Centrocor.

  “Are you feeling out of control? If you think you might become violent,” the drone said, “I can provide a mood stabilizer. If you’re hearing or seeing things, I have medication for that as well. Or maybe you’d just like to talk?”

  The hexagon rotated, quite slowly. Then it broke apart into line segments that came back together as blocky characters that spelled out a simple message.

  HELLO LT MAGGS

  PLEASE DO NOT REPLY

  ALOUD

  What’s this, then? his father asked. Oh ho, someone’s been naughty.

  “I, uh, I want to speak to a human being,” Maggs said. Though to his own ears he sounded rather uncertain, this time.

  I CAN FREE YOU

  I JUST NEED YOUR

  HELP

  Quite, Maggs thought.

  Oh, quite, his father said. Never anything for free in this world, eh?

  The message on the robot dog’s face blinked out. A moment later it was replaced with a simple virtual keyboard.

  Maggs licked his lips.

  You can’t possibly consider this, his father said. Aren’t you in enough trouble as it stands, Maggsy?

  “You, robot dog,” Maggs said. The drone moved closer to him. He reached for the keyboard. Hesitated, his fingers flexing. “What was that you said about hearing voices?”

  He didn’t listen to the answer. He was too busy typing.

  How, exactly, he wrote, may I be of service?

  “Have you come to relieve me?” Candless asked, when Lanoe returned less than an hour later. Her back hurt, and her hands were sore from hovering over virtual controls for six hours straight. It would be very good to just go somewhere and lie down for a while. She was tired enough to permit herself an honest compl
aint. “I will confess, these shifts are taxing.”

  “I’ve got some good news, there,” Lanoe said. “We can actually add a pilot to the flight rotation. Less time in the big chair for everyone.”

  “One of the people you brought up from Tuonela?” Candless asked. She’d looked over the service and personnel records for all of them—that was just part of her job as XO, to know who was onboard and how best they could be used. She couldn’t remember seeing anyone with pilot training on the list. Just marines and neddies. “You do have a way of surprising one.”

  “Not from Tuonela, no. Listen,” Lanoe said. “This is going to raise some questions.”

  “Sadly I know better than to expect any answers.”

  Lanoe didn’t laugh. She could sense that he was genuinely worried about her reaction to what happened next.

  He wasn’t the type to dither, though, and he didn’t do so now. Instead he tapped at his wrist display and a moment later the bridge’s hatch opened and someone pushed inside.

  She couldn’t turn her head to look—flying a cruiser through a wormhole required constant attention. “Who is it?” she asked. “Who’s there?”

  “We met in the brig,” Tannis Valk said.

  The AI. The one that was supposed to be destroyed.

  Candless was old enough to remember the Century War. Though she had just been a child when the Universal Suffrage ravaged Earth, she remembered the terror of those days, when a machine with the mind of a god had ruled the skies and it took everything humanity had to bring it down. She had very good reason to fear an artificial intelligence. Even one that looked mostly human and acted as genial as Valk.

  “Lanoe—what have you done?” she asked, her voice soft with fear. He was supposed to have destroyed the Valk AI. He was supposed to have obeyed one of the strictest laws on the books. He was supposed to have done the right thing.