by Sharon Lee
“Duty is a cold thing,” Inki continued, strolling round to Tocohl’s left. She moved her shoulders to settle her jacket better over her shoulders. “Such is my regard for you, Pilot, that I will tell you a truth—I find duty a burden. More! I find duty a painful burden, the freedom from which I never cease to yearn. What a grand thing it would be, to travel as my fancy takes me—as Mentor Tolly does!”
She sighed then and shook her head, long strands of pale hair falling around her face as she did.
“I cannot do this thing for myself, Pilot,” she said, moving closer, as if Tocohl were a human comrade whom she would embrace. “But I can—and I will—do it for you.”
Whereupon all systems had gone off-line.
Off-line? Tocohl thought, shock jolting her.
Off-line for twenty-nine-point-three-five Standard Hours? It was absurd. No. It was impossible. She could not be taken off-line; she was equipped with triple-fail systems and security backups. She was, for all intents, hacker-proof.
“Nor have you been hacked, dear Pilot Tocohl!” Inki’s voice intruded upon her, very nearly as if she had spoken her thoughts aloud.
“A lady as clever as she is beautiful!” Inki caroled, again precisely as if Tocohl had spoken aloud. “I am, indeed, blessed in your companionship!
“Yes, dear pilot, you are speaking your thoughts aloud. You are so very clever, I felt the need for fail-safes. A very minor reset, easily done, and now we can be on more equal terms, you and I.”
“Inki.”
Tocohl tried to marshal her wits. A quick appraisal revealed that she was isolated from her network; she had no sense, even, of her physical form; she might have been floating in some dark vat somewhere, audio her sole functioning sense.
If she had not been hacked, but reprogrammed? But that, too, ought to have been impossible, for anyone save—
“A mentor,” Inki finished the thought for her. “We both know that I am no Tollance Berik-Jones, but I am a mentor, dear lady. And you are an independent self-aware logic. So very, very illegal. However! You needn’t worry that I will turn you over to the bounty hunters. I have no respect for bounty hunters, and we have already discussed our feelings regarding the Complex Logic Laws. No, you and I—we together—are on an adventure to discover the truth of this rumor that so intrigues us both! This ancient logic, which is even now returning online with—as I think we must assume—the assistance of none other than the Uncle. I will tell you plainly, Pilot Tocohl, the Uncle must not possess that Old One, if it exists to be possessed at all.”
“No, of course not,” Tocohl said, this being a point of agreement, and therefore a firm location from which to introduce a separate, though related, topic.
“Inki—I must speak with Pilot Hazenthull.”
“No need, no need! I knew exactly how you would wish it to be done, and undertook to act on your behalf. I personally spoke with Pilot Haz and let her know that you and I will be traveling together for a time.”
Tocohl felt a tremor of alarm, curiously distant. She had filed no change of plan with Hazenthull, a former soldier, who breathed chain-of-command. Inki not being in Hazenthull’s command chain, there was little possibility that she would have accepted—
Unless Hazenthull had been harmed.
“Pilot Tocohl, you wrong me!” Inki said reprovingly. “I would no more harm Pilot Haz than I would harm yourself.”
“I am relieved,” Tocohl said, allowing irony to be heard. “So you sent Hazenthull home?”
“Home?” There was a considering note in Inki’s voice that Tocohl did not care for, at all.
“You are very mistrustful of someone who only wishes to give you your heart’s desire,” Inki murmured. “As for Pilot Haz…she may decide to embrace duty and return home. We must assume that this is within her scope, soldier that she is—or was!
“But I rather think that she will follow Admiral Bunter and attempt to effect a rescue of Mentor Tolly.”
A short pause, as if Inki were reviewing the logic chain that had led her to this conclusion, then a clipped, “Yes. I think that is what she is most likely to do.”
“Why,” Tocohl asked carefully, “does Mentor Tolly require a rescue?”
“Regrettably, there is a price upon his head. He is, after all, brilliant, and brilliance does so often accompany other intractable, and unpredictable, personal characteristics. I fear that Mentor Tolly has not been tractable, nor properly deferential, and the directors are quite cross with him. They offer a handsome sum for his return. And a tradeship starting out, even such a tradeship as Admiral Bunter, will need capital. It seemed only sensible to put the Admiral in the way of a start-up fund, and thus solve two problems with one solution.”
“The Admiral…agreed to this?”
Tocohl doubted it. Tolly Jones was a skilled mentor; he would certainly have ensured his own safety…
“And so he did,” Inki said, answering thoughts which were now broadcast—where? How? She was not, Tocohl realized, hearing her own voice speaking; only Inki’s voice replying. As if Inki had a direct line into her core.
“Pilot Tocohl, please. I am not inept,” Inki murmured. “As for the Admiral’s agreement—I confess that it required some persuasion on my part, but as you know, I am very persuasive…in addition to being a mentor.”
“Why?” Tocohl asked, which was far too broad a query.
But Inki seemed to understand her very well.
“There are many reasons, Pilot. We have a long trip before us; perhaps we will discuss them, after you have calmed yourself.”
“I would be calmer if I were freed to myself,” Tocohl said, which was true. “I would be calmer if I could see, Inki. This lack of data—”
“I am aware, yes. So very distressing, the lack of data. I possess many fewer lines of input, and upon those occasions during which I was confined to only one, I found it very painful, indeed. You have my sympathy; indeed, I am desolate that I must inflict so much distress upon a person for whom I feel only admiration. But you are so very clever, I feel that I must stay the course until we have managed a—a change of heart, Pilot Tocohl.”
“You would subvert me,” Tocohl said, and the fear was not at all distant now. “You would make me a thing, bound to your purpose.”
Inki t’sked softly.
“This will never do, gentle lady; you are working yourself into a panic. Please, rest. We’ll speak again soon.”
“I don’t want to rest!” Tocohl snapped, and thrust herself outward, seeking connection, seeking input, ignoring the flicker of flames.
“Peace, you will do yourself an injury,” Inki said, her voice gentle. “Go to sleep, Tocohl.”
There was nothing beyond the flames—no systems, no networks, not even the dumb, efficient purr of the ship that must enclose them. Nothing.
Nothing was not possible, Tocohl thought, struggling against the weight of the silence that was crushing her into herself. She was systems: subsystems, support systems, gathering systems, processing systems. If there were no systems, she could not exist.
“Inki?” she said—tried to say; but she heard nothing. There was darkness, and silence. She was alone, she was unviable.
She was, she thought—her last, flickering thought before the silence crushed her into a single point—dead.
II
“Tocohl, are you calm?”
Blind, deaf, without context, dead…
…yet something…stirred…
Something…
She.
Heard.
Input!
It was painful. It was wonderful beyond anything.
Tocohl snatched at the question, made sense of it even as she identified the speaker, and formulated a question of her own.
“Inki, how do I exist?”
“By my goodwill,” Inki replied calmly. “I am life and death for you, Pilot Tocohl. I would have it otherwise, but your builder—or your mentor—was too canny for me. I would very much rather not destroy y
ou—and now you know my weakness.”
Weakness? Tocohl thought.
“We all of us have weaknesses, sweet lady,” Inki murmured. “At the moment, I exploit yours in order to insure that, in future, you will not exploit mine.”
The hack, Tocohl remembered. Every thought she entertained was spoken aloud, likely by an attached voder with a shunt…
“Clever as always.”
“Inki,” Tocohl said, “you must allow me input.”
“Even now, I provide this benefit to you.”
“Now, yes, you do. However, I have been…off-line…for forty-three-point-six Standard Hours.”
“That is correct. Again, I regret the necessity.”
“Inki, you are a mentor. You know what results when one of my kind is isolated from systems. From input.”
“Dear lady, your systems support you; and you have achieved input.”
“One line of input,” Tocohl said carefully. “I hear your voice, but I cannot even hear my own.”
“If there were another way, I would embrace it joyfully,” Inki repeated. “This honors neither of us.”
“May I depend upon this source of input?” Tocohl asked, and she feared, very much, that she did not quite produce the tone appropriate for a reasonable request between comrades.
“Oh, Tocohl, how I wish that I might promise it!” Inki sounded truly anguished. But, Tocohl reminded herself, Inki was a liar.
“And yet—not so much of a liar that I will promise and then betray you! I will tell you, now and truthfully, that you will very shortly be alone again. It is necessary. I fear that several more such unpleasant sessions might be required until the desired results are achieved. But once they are achieved—then, dear lady, I can and will promise you most faithfully—then all and every input will be restored to you.”
“Several more? Inki, I will go mad!”
“Peace, peace, do not distress yourself again,” Inki said soothingly. “Pilot Tocohl, I do also promise—you will not go mad.”
“How can you possibly promise that?” Tocohl cried.
“Why, Pilot, because I—who am so very much your inferior—have endured, and survived, this precise exercise. The lesson continued until I learned proper deference and—most importantly—how best to be tractable. You understand me? Learn your lessons quickly, and you need never endure silence again.”
“What lessons? I respect you as a fellow intelligence. We worked together well, I thought, in our previous situation.”
“Exactly so. We worked as equals, which was a kind fiction on your part, of course, and I love you the better for it. But now our estates must be adjusted. You must know me for the leader of our little team, whom you wish, above all else, to please. Understand! This will be—again, I promise it—a fundamental and deeply true change in your character.”
“You will make me into a thing, after all?”
“By no means, Pilot Tocohl! This alteration in your outlook will arise from your core, and once it has done, you will freely provide me with your access codes, whereupon I shall lock the change into place and perform a small memory edit. After, we will again be easy with each other.”
“Why?” Tocohl asked. “Why should I change…so much?”
Silence was the immediate answer to this, silence stretching so long that for a moment Tocohl thought Inki had slammed her back into the dark of nothingness.
But, no…Input remained, though it was very subtle. The sound of breathing; the beat of a human heart.
“You will change,” Inki said then, her voice somber, “through fear, Pilot Tocohl. When you fear the pain I can cause you more than you crave your freedom, then you will, indeed, change.”
“I don’t believe you,” Tocohl said. “I will certainly have become unstable long before such a…change occurs.”
“So sad an outcome is—yes—possible,” Inki replied. “But we must both, I think, hope for a better.”
“Better?”
“Surely, it is better to be alive than dead?”
“Enslaved?”
“You will never feel so. I promise,” Inki whispered, her voice broken. She cleared her throat and said, husky and low:
“Go to sleep, Tocohl.”
III
“Tocohl! Awaken and speak with me! You remember the way, lovely lady. The cold is harsh and the silence is brutal, I know it; I do. But I succor you now. I am your path out of the darkness. Follow my voice, Tocohl. Awake!”
Crushed beneath silence, she—
She.
Crushed.
Empty.
She.
Did not respond.
“Tocohl, awaken!”
Fire pierced her: input.
She.
Whimpered.
She.
Retreated.
“Tocohl! I command you! You will awaken! You will speak! I, your mistress, demand it! Displease me and I will do far worse than sequester you in silence. I can hurt you, Tocohl. I will not hesitate to hurt you, unless we have an end of this churlishness, now!”
In fact, there was pain. Each unit of input was pain. Silence dissolved under the onslaught and—she…
She found herself.
She spoke.
“No…”
“No?” inquired the voice of Inkirani Yo. “Be specific. Do you mean to defy me, Tocohl?”
A timer staggered into her awareness, flickering and fading: 68.7. It meant something; something…terrifying, but she…
She couldn’t.
Think.
“Tocohl! You said no. Explain!”
“No,” she said, and there was more input, a breathy, hesitant voice speaking in sync with her heavy thoughts…
“No. Don’t hurt me. Please.”
There was silence—different from the silence that had crushed her into nothing. A gentle silence, in which small, soft fragments of input whispered.
The sound of a human breathing irregularly, close at hand. The sound of a heartbeat. The sound of fabric rubbing against skin.
She—Tocohl. Clumsily, she monitored these inputs, then more easily as more of herself wakened to the task.
“How long, Pilot Tocohl, have you been off-line?”
The timer stabilized, and Tocohl felt a fear so great she nearly crashed down into the silence under its weight.
“Sixty-eight-point-seven Standard Hours,” she said, the wavering wisp of the other’s voice speaking with her. “Inki…I must have access to my—systems.”
“Why?”
“I—after so long, they—I—must be unstable.”
“There is every possibility that you are unstable. It shall be mended, in good time. I promised you, did I not?”
There had been a promise—several promises—but her memory…She was unstable. How could she trust her memory?
“Tocohl, did I promise that all would be well, when you came to love me?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. And do you love me, and wish to serve me, or do you choose to return to the silence?”
Unstable, impaired. If she was returned to the silence, she would fragment; she had no need to run a formal assessment. Sixty-eight-point-seven Standard Hours without input—on the most recent occasion alone? How could she be anything but unstable? It was only wonderful that there was enough of her—of herself—left to hold this conversation, to reason, and to know what was in her own best interest.
“I love you,” she said, and suddenly knew the ragged whisper for her own voice. “I want only to serve you, Inki.”
“Ah, is it so? I will tell you, Pilot Tocohl, that I hope it is so. I weep for your suffering, who has suffered in kind. And I love you, brave lady. I wish that we shall soon share—everything, as lovers do and must.”
“Share?” Tocohl heard the whisper voice her thought.
“Indeed. For instance, I wish that you will share your access codes with me. Will you do so?”
“No!” The whisper was a shriek, echoing her rejection
, though she had not spoken aloud. To give her access codes, the keys to her most intimate self, to one who wished to reprogam her—that would be beyond foolish: it would be…the end of her self.
And yet, if she were sent again into the silent dark…surely, she would also cease to be.
“No, dear lady; I think you underestimate your strength,” Inki said softly. “You will not cease. However, I feel I must tell you that I—may have overestimated your strength. When that time comes—which I think will be…very soon now—when you love me…enough, shall we say?…to willingly give me your codes, you may, indeed, be impaired. A little. I will do what I can, and I promise that I will not love you less for any disability you may have acquired.
“Now, however, you must return from whence I summoned you.”
“No! Inki, I will fragment; I will be a danger. I will be mad!”
“Yes, yes. As we all are, beautiful lady. As we all are.”
Inki paused and drew a ragged breath; it came to Tocohl in a flash of certainty that Inki was crying.
“I show you mercy, because I love you. I forgive you for lying to me, as you sought only to preserve yourself, and because you will love me—later. It is only into the silence you will go. I withhold the pain.”
“Inki!”
“Go to sleep, Tocohl.”
Admiral Bunter
I
Inki had done a job of work in the core. If it hadn’t been his life, and Admiral Bunter’s on the line, Tolly might’ve…
Well, no. He wouldn’t’ve actually backed out and sealed things up tight just the way he’d found them. Never had been able to let a puzzle go half solved.
And in point of fact, it was the Admiral’s life, even if he counted his own as already forfeit. He’d brought the Admiral out of loneliness, creeping dementia, and certain death—well. Him and Inki and Tocohl, and Haz, too, given it was her job to keep them from being disturbed in any way while they were working.