by Ginger Booth
Was I out? Or had she been babbling everything she knew, all this time? Was there an asker? She lolled her head to the right, then lifted her eyes to the one person focused on her directly. The matronly-shaped woman wore compound eyes like a housefly. Ick, ick, ick! The captain rolled her head back to center and sought to keep her gaze blank.
“So you actually die?” bug-eyes pressed.
In horror, Sass observed as her mouth led its own life. “Oh, yes. If the heart stops, you’re dead. No blood to the brain, lose consciousness, and tissue begins to die. But the nanites get busy and fix me up. I often shed skin in sheets. But not my hair.”
“Fascinating. And how do the nanites coordinate?”
“No one’s ever found a controller,” Sass’s mouth continued. “They sure tried. When Mahina Actual caught on, they kept us as lab rats for months. It was awful.”
“Mahina Actual?”
“The dome that rules my moon, Mahina. Assholes.” Sass implored herself to find a way to take control of what she was saying. But whatever truth serum they’d inflicted on her worked a treat. “The first terraforming crew sent to Mahina. They built themselves a dome to hide from the radiation, and you know, like, breathe. Huddling like sickly rats when Vitality arrived with the quarter million of us, a century too soon. Half of them dying of cancers. They had nanites, but theirs were only good for cleaning toxins. They hadn’t mastered how to repair cell damage. You bet they wanted to dissect us. But they could never reconstruct how that nanite cocktail worked. Or find the controllers.”
“We, you said,” her interrogator redirected. “How many of you were rendered immortal?”
“Not immortal,” Sass said. There, she’d intended that answer, or at least agreed with it. That was reassuring. Maybe her little beasties were finally clearing the truth serum from her system. “Twenty of us got the injection,” it was fewer, “but only a half dozen survived the initial conversion to android. We didn’t know at the time we’d become AIs instead of people. We figured that out only a couple decades ago.”
Damn it, she hadn’t meant to add that. “But they’re dead now. Same shot, different results. We each reacted differently, varied in our ability to heal.” Better, Sass intended that warning.
“They’re dead now,” the interrogator mused. “Yet you said ‘we’ figured out we’d turned into AIs. Who else?”
“Clay.” Dammit! “Clay helped me figure it out. He’s a better detective than I am. Back on Earth –” No, dammit, saying he was an FBI type on Earth would be to admit he was as old as she was! “– I was just a tent city cop. Investigating murders, drug rings, petty stuff. On Mahina, Clay was my boss. Later.” She licked her lips. “He was good at solving, um, white collar crimes. Graft, corruption, money laundering, rich folk sins. He’s good with a spreadsheet and databases, Clay.”
She’d admitted how old she was on a whim, as a potent distraction from what other secrets her people harbored. The main facts she absolutely must not reveal were the location of the Aloha system, and that they’d mastered instantaneous warp. The ravening hordes of Earth could easily belch out troops and refugees to steal all that the fragile colonies had accomplished, the work of a century of blood, sweat, and tears.
But Ben was the one with the new warp gateway. Her ship, Thrive, carried only the bad old warp. Losing a decade or more to a one-way trip wasn’t nearly as tempting. She should know. She’d done it twice. Though Thrive did carry one prize beyond price, the faster-than-light ansible, capable of instantaneous communication with any of its peers. The silvery video quality sucked, and its narrow data bandwidth was a misery. And they didn’t know how it worked –
Dammit, Sass, she implored herself, don’t focus on what you don’t want to say! Mahina sucks, yes, and you don’t want to go there.
Bug-eyes wasn’t done with Clay, however. “Clay, your first mate, was your boss?”
“We were Marshals. Solved conflicts between settler communities, and between them and the urbs, Mahina Actual. Clay was our lead Marshal.”
“Even though you were older, and more experienced.”
Yeah, why was that? Because he’s a master schmooze. And he’s the elder. “The urbs liked him better.” Because he was cultured, like them, instead of tent city scum like Sass and the other cops. And he liked them better, too, far more comfortable playing chess with the urbs than guzzling beer with the great unwashed. Because he was educated on Earth, dammit, a master’s degree and everything. “He’s very smart and dresses pretty.”
“But now you’re his boss.”
“Only because I bought the ship, Thrive. He hated that name. Said you were supposed to name a ship with a noun, not a verb.” She sniffed a laugh. “But he had lots of money.” Because of the miracle of compound interest over a long, long life, dammit. “And the ship costs a lot. So now he owns nearly half of it. But I’m still the captain.”
“Why did he have more money than you?”
“I drank it and I screwed up and they jailed me for twenty years on a farm. Stuff like that.”
“They made you a marshal after serving a twenty-year sentence?”
No, of course not. It took all the determination she had, but Sass managed to reply with her own agenda. “May I have a drink of water?” Not that it would help. Clay was her marshal boss before her twenty-year sentence, which ended over twenty years ago. By now, she could count on one hand the friends still alive from before she got sentenced to the farm.
She sipped her water slowly from the provided straw to make it last.
“How many immortals like you are alive today?” bug-eyes pressed.
Sass sipped harder until she was sure her mouth would obey. “I’m the last.”
“You’re lying. That shouldn’t be possible.”
Sass stiffened.
“There is at least one other,” bug-eyes reasoned. “Is that other on your ship?”
“No.” He was inside this dome.
“Is that other Clay?”
“No.”
“Yes!” the interrogator barked in triumph. “Clay received the same injection you did! Mahina sent both of its Earth-born to spy on us! Because the two of you know the most about us!”
“You leave Clay out of this, you bug-eyed freak!” Sass’s eyes blazed into the woman’s grotesque orbs. “You want to know something, you ask me! You hear me?”
A tiny throb in her regenerating elbow, a sensation Sass mentally dubbed a ping, announced that the joint was restored to service. Elbows were useful. She struggled up to support herself on it. Bug-eyes stepped back warily. Another white-draped toady – literally toad-like from his flat triangular nose up – hastened to adjust an IV drip. Sass ripped the needle out of her arm and yanked the tube from his grasp.
“We’re done here! No more questions!” Sass demanded, not caring that she contradicted herself. She struggled to a seat. The heavy pound of footfalls suggested guards would burst in momentarily. And with one hand, one elbow, and no functional feet, she could do precisely what about that? She considered the IV tube’s utility as a weapon. It might drip a few milliliters of saline and happy juice into a single opponent. Which would solve nothing on an armed guard.
Though it might prove useful on Bug-Eyes. Sass pivoted on her butt and dropped her stub feet overboard on her gurney.
“Tell me about you,” she crooned, cocking her head. “Don’t worry. A guard shot the doctor in Killingfield. I wouldn’t murder any of you!” She gazed around the alarmed assemblage of medic monstrosities with a winning smile. “Just tired of lying down. So you must see very well through those…eyes.”
“My augments do provide excellent vision,” the inquisitor admitted nervously. “I see so much more than I did as a child. So multi-dimensional. That IV…”
“Should have kept me immobile?” Sass guessed. “Yes, my nanites are a bit tricky with drugs.” She waved this concern away with a riff of her only four fingers – yet. “What else do your augments do?”
The
guards arrived, bursting through a sliding-panel door into the cramped room with weapons drawn. Sass waved sunnily. Bug-Eyes turned and gestured for them to leave, all was fine. Fool.
“Our augments,” the medic patted the metal band that encased the back half of her head and neck, “provide constant communication, and instantaneous access through the data wave. Our ‘nets,’ I think you called them? Strange term.”
“Fascinating. Can you see through other cameras connected to the wave?”
She shrugged. “Cameras, augmented eyes, anywhere in the world. With a thought.” Disarmingly, she pointed to a bit of unused wall and a little girl appeared, sleeping peacefully in a cot in a large dormitory. She couldn’t have been older than four. “My daughter.”
The medic was clever, Sass had to give her that. Would the madwoman from the stars murder the mom of a cute preschooler? But she never intended to kill mama bug anyway. “She’s adorable. What’s her name? Oh, where are my manners! What’s your name?”
“Veela,” the woman breathed, unconsciously drawing closer again. “My daughter is Tanila. I have a play session with her scheduled the day after tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it.”
One of the other medics mentioned, “The Ambassador’s aide is on the way with the other one.”
Sass wasn’t sure what to make of that. She forced herself to hold Veela’s disgusting eye. “They’re such fun to play with at four. Could I trouble you for another sip of water?” She glanced to her useless feet, and the cup out of reach.
“Of course.” Bug-eyes reached for the cup. Because even bug-eyed monster women engaged in medical interrogation, still wanted to believe they were nice people.
And when the cup got in hand’s reach, Sass stabbed her hand with the drug needle. “Oh, I’m so sorry! I forgot I was holding that. Did I hurt you?”
“Yes, that hurt.” Veela stared unbelieving at the welling drop of blood between thumb and forefinger. “You did that on purpose.”
That was potent truth serum! “How do I get out of here alive, Veela?” Sass asked.
“We are forbidden to harm you. The way out is the same way you came in. Take a left at the first corridor, through the glass doors –”
One of the other medics dragged her away by the elbow and shoved her outside.
That was OK. Sass remembered the glass doors and the parking lot, and the rental-stand arrangement of small fliers. Not that she’d use them until she found Clay.
But then Clay arrived, with a fish-guy in fancy duds, and Fidget draped on his shoulder. And his brow looked like thunder. Ah! That’s what the medic meant about the Ambassador’s aide! “Collier? You don’t speak for me. Ever!”
“If we could –” Fish-Boy attempted.
“Shut up!” Sass barked at him. “They pumped me up with truth serum! I wasn’t conscious at first. Clay, I have no idea what I blabbed to them while I was out!”
“You get us into the stupidest predicaments!” he yelled at her.
At the raised voices, a guard ducked his head in, only his blaster squeezing into the cramped examination room between the two newcomers. Clay relieved him of that. These people really couldn’t fight worth a damn. “Thank you. The problem with you, Collier, is that you have no class at all!”
Another guard stuck his blaster in. Clay tossed the first to Sass and used a karate chop to the guy’s wrist, his other hand catching the gun. Which he immediately trained on the fish man. “I need a wheelchair for the idiot.”
“The idiot!” Sass shot at a tray of hypodermics in aggravation. One of the medic flock had been reaching for that. Syringes, vials, and metal tray scattered, the white-clad medics frantically blocking the flying projectiles with their arms. “I get no respect from you, Rocha!”
“You get what you deserve! Moron. This is Melkor. He’s important.”
“How do you do?” Melkor flicked a bulbous eye down at Clay’s gun in his chest, as though to dismiss its unseemliness. “An honor to meet you, captain. The wheelchair will arrive shortly. To bear you to a comfortable apartment for the night.”
Clay explained, “They’re pawning us off on some other outfit as soon as you’ve got feet again. We rest for the night.”
“I don’t think so,” Sass shared. “I think it’s time to go.”
27
Earth’s primary goal was to kill people, while the colonies desperately sought to save lives. Their technology advances radically diverged.
Sass narrowed her eyes as Clay looked appraisingly to Melkor, the Ambassador’s aide – the fish dude. “We can exit, Clay!” she insisted. “To the ship!”
“Been there, done that,” Clay noted. “You got your feet shot off, and landed in another med bay.” He tilted the business end of his gun to the ceiling. “This isn’t necessary, is it?”
“Not if your goal is to meet with the leaders of my world,” Melkor agreed in a silky voice. “And speak to them about your business on Earth. That has been arranged.” He looked to Sass. “Were you harmed here?”
“I was drugged! Forced against my will to tell tales I didn’t want to tell!” She swallowed.
Veela cautiously peeked in the door, keeping the wall between herself and the dangerous primitives. She spoke to Melkor. “We didn’t harm her. Merely watched her heal. She went berserk after she let slip that the other one was also born on Earth. The sedatives and talkatives stopped working.”
Melkor nodded, but kept his eyes on Sass. “Veela has no need to speak to me aloud. I asked her to repeat what she told me so you could hear, to build trust. Do you disagree with her assessment?”
Sass’s face warmed and she grimaced. “No, not exactly. But I don’t want to be interrogated!”
“But perhaps you’re hungry.” Melkor spoke slowly, as though to a misbehaving child. He indicated Veela should speak again.
“Her metabolic drain is amazing. She may be suffering a brain sugar crash. We gave her IV feeding tubes, but she pulled them out.”
Sass’s stomach chose that moment to gurgle loudly. Yes, she wanted food. She could eat a cow. And all those fidgety little bones in her wrist itched like crazy. She rubbed her stump against her pants leg. Which never worked.
“Sass, stop that.” Clay knew damned well how it felt, and hated it when she gouged herself with fingernails. “I think we should accept Melkor’s kind offer. Ready to play nice?” He shifted the mink on his shoulder and met her eye.
Fidget looked done in, limp with eyes closed. She cast her eyes down and nodded. “No more interrogation, please.”
“Of course,” Melkor agreed. “Ah, the wheelchair has arrived. Clay, perhaps you would…?”
And Clay handed over his blaster in exchange for the wheelchair. He relieved Sass of her gun and gave her an exhausted mink to hold in exchange. Then he lifted her into the chair and kissed her on the head.
The captain was mortified.
As the sliding panel closed on their luxurious new digs, Clay lay a finger to his lips to remind Sass that walls had ears.
But alas, these walls had no power outlets. She whispered in the ear of her listless mink, “You need recharging, don’t you?” She struggled to shift the furry little muzzle up to her ear for a response, but Clay relieved her of the critter.
“Darren says the wall paint generates power,” he claimed, with Fidget’s whiskers in his ear. He cast around with his eyes, then wandered the room, to tap on some metallic artwork. But from the thuds, the metal was merely paint.
“I wish I had my toolbelt,” Sass mourned.
Clay brightened. “They promised mine could come along. Just not on me. Yours, too, and our breathing gear.”
“Oh, good! I want my toothbrush.” Her lover twisted a lip in revulsion. Granted, she used the one in her toolbelt to clean balky screws and such. “Or some toothbrush.”
“Good thing I packed the toiletries.”
He gave up on the nice furniture and draped Fidget on an upholstered chair back touching a glowing wall. He turned her li
ttle whiskers to touch the wall, but if anything, the poor thing seemed to deflate further. He stroked her gently.
A courteous knock at the door preceded a dinner trolley. Sass’s eyebrows rose at the archaic stainless steel domes over half a dozen platters, plus wine in a matching chiller. A liveried woman of beautiful features bowed slightly, then set the apartment’s small but beautiful wooden table. She wore small devices seemingly attached to her temples, but otherwise sported a perfect human appearance.
Sass’s lips pursed. Too perfect. The blond waiter was a match for Clay in the conspicuous good looks department. She suspected the woman was chosen to offer desserts of choice to other visiting dignitaries. But then she lifted the first cover off a chilled salad of tiny shrimp and avocados, and greens she’d forgotten over the years. Why had she never thought to ask Eli to produce radicchio seeds? Fennel and tender asparagus spears?
Clay rolled her to the table and shifted her cutlery setting to her good hand. Then he took a moment to drape Fidget in reach, where the table abutted the wall for lack of space. The waiter paused a beat at this peculiar behavior, but smiled ever blandly. She served Sass generously from the salad, and offered a twist of fresh-ground pepper from a glass flute. Sass nodded entranced. She’d never known peppercorns came in multiple colors. Clay did, the privileged swine, and eagerly indicated she should hit him up twice.
Sass wrinkled her nose with a smile. “Thank you, I think we can serve ourselves from here.”
“I haven’t poured the wine yet,” the waiter demurred. She set three goblets on the table, not two. “Attaché Melkor plans to join you.”
Sass held her hand over her wine glass, fun as it might be to pass out. Her stomach grumbled shockingly loud, and she dug into her food. The first bite of lettuce looked far better than it tasted, alas. “More pepper, please?”
She almost wished sometimes she’d never taken up gardening. Having killed time for years perfecting her hydroponic feeding regimens, ordinary hothouse produce tended to be a disappointment. Then she bit into an asparagus spear. Now this she hadn’t tasted since she left Earth. She closed her eyes in bliss. But her stomach demanded richer fuel. The waiter, as though listening directly to her gut gurgle, populated her bread plate and smeared butter on it for the one-handed. The captain forgave her looks instantly. No sooner did the server let go than she grabbed the cut roll and stuffed half in her mouth to chew.