by Tom Holt
She looked at him. “You don’t believe me.”
“Running logic analysis,” he said. “No, I don’t think I do. Sorry.”
The hole in the end of the gun barrel was staring at her like an eye. “Think about it,” she said. “I told you about the transmission. I told you where to find it. I could’ve just kept quiet and not mentioned it. Also, if I’m hell bent on blowing up the Ostar homeworld, why am I also sending myself coded messages?”
“Ah,” said Mark Twain, “I’ve got a theory about that.”
“Have you really.”
“Oh yes. I think you genuinely did wipe your memory with aposiderium, presumably so that as and when Homeworld sent someone to find out why you haven’t exploded yet, if they were to catch you and try and download your brain, there’d be nothing there for them to see. But the coded messages are the ship talking to you. My guess is, it’s telling you what to do, getting ready to launch the bomb.”
She stared at him, opened her mouth, shut it again, made a vague sort of gesture with her hands and, finally, a little choking noise. He just went on looking at her. “Well?” he said.
“I don’t know, do I? Even if your stupid theory’s right, I don’t know.”
He frowned; she had a point. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Whether you’re aware of it right now this minute or not, you set all this up intending to blow up Homeworld. There’s a word for that.”
She nodded eagerly. “Yes,” she said, “bomb. It’s no different from what you were all set to do when you first walked in through my door.”
“Of course it’s different,” he snapped. “I was going to blow up the right planet.”
There was a silence. Both of them were thinking about what he’d just said.
“Define ‘right’,” Lucy murmured.
“The planet I’m supposed to blow up,” Mark Twain replied, and he said it like a small child making an excuse. “Anyway, you’re in no position to get all self-righteous with me. All that stuff you came out with about the Accords and not blowing things up, and all the time—”
“Yes, but I didn’t know,” she yelled. “It happens to be what I believe, all right? And yes, maybe that’s what I believe after I doctored my own brain, but so what? This is the real me talking. I do not want to blow up Homeworld, all right?”
The gun stayed where it was. “Maybe,” he said grudgingly. “But there’s a very good chance you’re not the only one of you in there. If the voice in your sleep’s been giving you subliminal messages, if I stop pointing this weapon at you, for all I know you’ll press that button right now.”
But she shook her head. “Don’t think so,” she said. “Like, if I blow us both up, I’ll be just as dead as if you shoot me. Just believe me, can’t you? I’m not going to blow up anything.”
“I don’t know that,” Mark Twain said. “And neither do you. Look,” he went on, almost pleading with her, “you may be perfectly sincere, in your own mind. But I can’t take the chance that you won’t press the button the second I put this thing down. You may not want to, but a subliminal encode wouldn’t leave you any choice. Not even if you were a real Dirter rather than a computer program.”
Lucy sighed. Suddenly she felt tired. “All right,” she said. “Fine. So what’re you going to do?”
Mark Twain lowered the gun just a little; not enough to take it off aim, but sufficient to take the strain off his shoulder and elbow. “I ought to shoot you,” he said. “Just to be safe.”
She laughed. “What if it’s all rigged to go off if I die? It’s what I’d do. Which means,” she added with a smile, “it could well be what I’ve done. You’d feel ever such a fool if that happened —though not,” she added kindly, “for very long.”
“Yes, well, I’m not going to,” Mark Twain said with a hint of embarrassment. “Not unless you make me. I now have ethical issues with taking life in cold blood, thanks to you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Yes, but you don’t, apparently,” Mark Twain shouted. “You’re plotting to blow up the Ostar homeworld, in direct contravention of the D’ppggyt Accords. Remember them? ‘Thou shalt not blow up anything without a damn good reason’?”
“Couldn’t agree more,” Lucy said. “I’m right behind that, 110 per cent.”
Mark Twain sighed. “This is all a bit much for me,” he said. “I’m a fairly straightforward kind of entity really. I was designed to gather information and transmit it to my command computer, not tackle complex moral issues.”
“Tough,” Lucy said. “Complex moral issues go with the organic brain and the monkey-suit; you can’t have one without the other. You might spare a thought for me,” she added. “I’ve got complex moral issues like you wouldn’t believe. I mean, it’s all right for you, at least you know what you’re doing. You’ve got your orders, you’re a good little soldier, and if you’ve got a problem all you’ve got to do is send an e-mail to your ship and it’ll tell you what to do. It’s all nice and clear for you, isn’t it? You’re fighting for truth, justice and the Ostar way—”
“Cultural ref—”
“Doing your bit,” she went on, ignoring him, “for mothership and apple pie. Now I’ve just found out, in the last few hours, that I’m not human, that I’m not organic, and that I’ve got a bomb pointed at my planet of origin and ready to fire. Also, as far as I’m aware I’m a sincere pacifist, supporter of the D’ppggyt Accords, and utterly opposed to violence in any form.”
“You threw a cardigan at me,” Mark Twain pointed out.
“Only a little one.”
“And you keep a projectile weapon in your desk to shoot autograph hunters.”
“Oh, it’s not loaded.”
They looked at each other. Then, slowly and deliberately, Mark Twain put the gun down. “You might have told me earlier,” he said. “Before I made all those threats.”
“Sorry,” Lucy said, “it sort of slipped my mind.”
He looked at her. “Well?” he said. “Are you going to launch the bomb?”
“Doesn’t look like it,” she replied. “I think I’d have done it by now.”
She sagged, as if she was made of chocolate and someone had left her on a radiator. “It’s all a bit of a mess, isn’t it?” she said.
Mark Twain leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “That stuff you said,” he said, “about me being a good little soldier. Actually, I sort of wish it was true, it’d be so much easier. But it’s not, not any more. I don’t want to blow up anything. Especially me,” he added. “Well, us, actually.”
“Nor me.” She looked round the room. “Which means we’ve got a bit of a problem, really. I mean, what if you’re right and there’s another computer somewhere sending me messages and telling me what to do?”
Mark Twain was frowning. “A good question,” he said quietly, “would be why?”
She didn’t appear to have heard him. “In which case,” she went on, “any minute now I could get a signal, just press this button here, why don’t you, and—” She shivered all over. “And we don’t even know which button it is. There must be thousands of them in here.”
Mark Twain stood up. “We can disarm the launch function,” he said. “I can find that, no trouble. We’re both R’wfft-class, so the layout ought to be the same.”
“That’s true,” she said. “What do we— No, I know this. We want the wave collimator module, which is inside the—”
“Propulsion generator control manifold, which is part of the central functions array, which is located directly above the HST assembly. Look for a big white box with wires coming out the back.”
They looked round.
Mark Twain shook himself like a dog. “Not to worry,” he said, “I can scan for the manifold’s lambda-wave signature, and we can trace it back from there.” He slid behind a workstation and started calling up screens. “Ah,” he said, as the monitor filled with numbers, “this looks promising. Now, if I can just access the subsidiary internal
sensor bar—”
“That’s last year’s quarterly sales figures,” Lucy pointed out. “And maybe you should be a bit careful about what you touch. The button, remember.”
Mark Twain lifted his fingers off the keyboard as though the keys were red-hot. “Maybe you’d better do it,” he said. “You know your way round this system, after all.”
“Yes, but what if I get the command? I’m not pressing anything unless I know precisely where it’s been.”
Mark Twain nodded slowly. “Is there a plug we could pull out of a wall or something?”
“It’s got twenty-five back-up power sources,” Lucy said sadly. “I run the whole of PavNet from here, remember? Can’t afford a power outage.”
“All right.” Mark Twain stood up, taking great care not to brush against any keys accidentally. “How’d it be if we both left this room and locked the door, and you give me the key?”
“No key. Access codes. Still,” she went on, “I can’t press any buttons if I’m not here, can I?”
“Oh, I’m sure you’d have a way of triggering the firing sequence remotely. Probably a—”
“Let’s get out of here,” Lucy said. “Let’s go and eat.”
Mark Twain was shocked. “We can’t just forget about it and wander off,” he said. “For one thing, my ship’ll be launching a new probe any moment now. What if—?”
“I’m hungry,” Lucy said firmly. “Let’s eat.”
40
Portland, Oregon
“People keep staring at us,” the girl hissed through her teeth. “I don’t like it.”
“Ignore them,” her brother said firmly.
“It’s because I’m a female, isn’t it? I’m doing something wrong, like something a female wouldn’t do, and they’re noticing.”
People were staring. Some of them laughed. One or two tried to engage them in conversation, but they walked away quickly. “Don’t ask me,” her brother replied. “Just don’t encourage them, that’s all.”
“Encourage them—”
Her brother shrugged. “We’re nearly there. Just put up with it, OK?”
They walked past a group of young men sitting on a low wall.
For some reason, they all started whistling the same tune. The girl had had enough. She scowled at them and shrieked, “Stop it!”
The young men laughed. One of them got up and blocked her path. “What’re you gonna do about it, princess?” he asked. “Like, you gonna cut me down with your lightsaber?” This was apparently a joke, and a good one too, because the other young men laughed a lot.
“Ignore them,” her brother hissed through his teeth. That turned out to be a joke too.
“Why don’t you use your special mind powers?” one of them suggested — the funniest joke yet, judging by their reaction. It prompted the rest of them to get off the wall and close in.
“I think they want us to fight them,” the girl said.
Her brother shrugged. He was, after all, Ostar, and they were just humans. “Fine,” he said, and pulled the metal torch thing off his belt. He wasn’t familiar with its use — there hadn’t been anything in the database, according to which humans used a primitive form of projectile weapon — but if the effect it had had on the ship’s computer was anything to go by, it was a tolerably efficient close-combat side-arm, not all that different from an Ostar b’rrnft. He thumbed the contact, and a beam of brilliant red light snapped out from the handle.
“Ready,” he said, but the young men had all run away. He turned off the beam, shrugged and put the torch back on his belt. “Probably some form of human mating display,” he said. “Come on, let’s get off the street.”
There was definitely something wrong. The waiter who showed them to their table at Simon’s Seafood Circus couldn’t help sniggering, though he tried his best not to. The other diners were nudging each other and whispering.
“Octopus,” the male said.
The waiter looked at him. “Excuse me?”
“We want an octopus,” the male repeated. “This is a seafood restaurant, right?”
“Sure,” the waiter said. “We do octopus. Um, would you like to order drinks now, or—?”
“Just the octopus,” the female said. “As it comes.”
“Sorry, I don’t—”
“Not cooked,” the male explained. “Just dead on a plate will do fine.”
The waiter went away, occasionally turning his head to look back at them and bumping into things. The female made a soft growling noise. “How did we end up here, anyway?” she said. “This is a really weird place.”
Her brother shrugged. “Random selection,” he replied. “I was in too much of a hurry to get out of there to fuss about choosing a destination. I thought the whole ship was about to blow.” He looked at his sister and grinned. “We did it,” he said. “I never thought we’d do it, but we did.”
His sister shook her head. “Did you get a look at that auto-repair system?” she said. “I didn’t know they had them on the R’wfft-class, not as sophisticated as that, anyhow. We should’ve torn out the central processor. No way it could’ve repaired that.”
“Yes, well.” Her brother scowled. “We had to leave before we finished the job, didn’t we? On account of the whole thing looking like it was about to go up.”
“On account of you firing that laser beam—”
“Which you gave me. I asked for a damn flashlight.”
They glowered at each other for a moment, then agreed an unspoken truce. “Did you manage to liberate enough bits to fix the communications beacon?”
Her brother nodded. “I think so. We’ll find out as soon as the octopus comes.”
Her sister lowered her voice. “Dad’s not going to be happy.”
“He’ll understand.”
It was such a monstrously unlikely prediction that his sister didn’t bother contradicting it. “With any luck,” she said, “he’ll be so pissed off with us he’ll order us home. I can’t wait to get off this lousy miserable planet. I can’t wait to get out of this body.”
Her brother looked at her. The time, he realised, had come. She had to be told.
“Actually,” he said.
He explained; about how the instabilities had been augmented beyond acceptable tolerances by their use of the teleport system, horribly exacerbated by their being sucked into the matter-transmutation grid and changed into the bodies they were currently wearing. Any attempt to reverse the procedure, he pointed out, would almost certainly be fatal. Like it or not, they were both human now. For the duration.
She took it well, he thought. She didn’t scream or jump up yelling. She didn’t attack him. She didn’t even smash anything, not so much as a breadstick. She just sat there, like a dead thing.
“It’s not so bad,” he heard himself say, though why he should say something so crass he couldn’t begin to imagine. “We could still go home—”
“As humans.” The first words she’d spoken.
“Well, yes, as humans. But that’d be OK.”
“We’d be pets.”
“People will make allowances,” her brother said soothingly. “So long as we stay indoors and don’t talk to anyone we don’t know—”
“Pets,” his sister growled at him. “We’ll have to wear collars with our names on them. And those cute little jackets, when it’s cold. And have our food on the floor, in bowls with our names on them.”
“It could be worse,” her brother said. “We could’ve been killed up there.”
“Dad’ll have to take us for walks in the park, throw sticks for us. Think about it, will you? The rest of our lives, trapped in the house, not allowed on the furniture.” She shook her head, and the coils of hair that covered her ears bounced up and down. “No way. I’d rather stay here.”
They looked at each other.
“Would you?” her brother said.
There was a long silence, during which the waiter appeared, with a dead octopus on a plate. He put it down o
n the table between them and fled.
“I don’t know,” the female said after a while.
“We’d be stuck in these bodies,” her brother pointed out. “And you’re right, there’s definitely something weird about them. Did you notice the way that human was staring at us?”
“I don’t care,” his sister replied. “I’m not going home like this. You can if you want. I’m not going to spend the rest of my natural life sleeping in a basket.”
“You wouldn’t have to,” her brother said. “They’ll make arrangements, we’ll be—”
“And I’m female.” She said it a bit too loudly. For a couple of seconds, she had the undivided attention of her fellow-diners. “You know what that means. If we went home. Walks in the park. Male humans. No, no way. I’m not putting myself through that. I’m staying.” She looked around desperately, as if hoping a door would open and she could go back through it into the past. “They must have deserts here, or jungles, places where people don’t live. We could go there. It wouldn’t be much of a life, but it’d be better than—”
“Let’s go,” her brother said. “They’re all looking at us.”
He snatched the octopus off the plate, put it down the front of his robe and pulled the belt tight. “Have you got any money?”
“What? No.”
“Nor me. All right, count of three, we’ll make a run for the door.”
They ran for it. Nobody tried to stop them. The waiter even opened the door for them.
When they were sure they weren’t being pursued, they slowed to a walk. The streets were quieter now, but there were still people about. Whatever it was about them that was attracting attention, it hadn’t worn off yet.
“We need to get back to Novosibirsk,” the male said, as a middle-aged woman pointed at him and shrieked with laughter. “All our gear’s there, everything we need for calling home.”
“So?” his sister replied. “They do have transport facilities on this stinking planet.”