“I think this may be his last year,” I had confided to Kalyani, laying the groundwork for my inevitable departure back to Aft Sector.
“I know you have family affairs you’ll need to deal with soon,” she said now. “But that also means I can transfer you out of harm’s way if I need to. So yeah, I’d like to know what you think.”
Never act unless you’ve thought about it first, my father used to say, and that applied to speaking as well. But sometimes you have to fly by the seat of your pants. “The pale man doesn’t look like anyone I’ve ever seen before,” I said. “I don’t think he belongs to any of the clans.”
She was nodding, but she didn’t look any happier. “So how will that affect the way we do our jobs?”
“It puts our charges in a lot of danger,” I said. “Unfortunately, they’ve done that to themselves.”
Kalyani was a courageous woman, and ethical in a way that even I could admire. If I had been a real person, I would have wanted to be like her. But the color drained from her face when I kept my answer so concise. I think she had hoped I might join her out on the limb she was climbing.
“I’m losing sleep, Thammavong,” she said. “This man should not be on Olympia. His existence is inexplicable.”
“No, it isn’t. Not if you throw out the fable about the Homeworld and our wonderful flight to the new colony.”
My blasphemy did not startle her. “Exactly. But what do you replace it with?”
“The unknown,” I said. “What do you plan to do about this, Commander?”
“I plan to be very cautious and circumspect,” she said.
“Are you going to report the pale stranger?”
“No. But I’m glad you and I had this talk. Investigations has been asking questions about you. Your family trouble gives you a good excuse to leave. You should do so as soon as possible.”
I felt a stirring in my network. Kumiko usually monitored me while I was in the Command Center, since Medusa was busy. Nefertari often did, too, when she wasn’t busy with Nuruddin’s project. Neither of them spoke to me then, but they both opened links to indicate their concern. Because neither of them had detected the queries to Aksu from Investigations, which led me to believe it had been a conversation conducted in person, orally, probably in an office like this one.
“I’ll file a transfer request today,” I promised Kalyani.
But I hated to leave. Being part of the Charmayne Security force reminded me of my school days, of the friends I had belonged with. After shift, I played table tennis like a pro and studied line dancing, making myself part of the team. It satisfied a longing I didn’t know I had.
That was over. “Consider it filed,” said Kalyani.
So I went back to work and performed my duties, though my mind was not really where it ought to be. Fortunately, watching and taking notes were the sorts of things I could do on autopilot.
Kalyani had offered me the same exit I was already constructing. No better excuse existed among the worms than family duties. That was also true among the Executives (though for them, family duties sometimes included killing relatives). I was able to lend my performance the right amount of sincerity, because I had dedicated my life to my own peculiar version of family duties. No better daughter could be found on Olympia (in my not-so-humble opinion). Anzia’s persona had great credibility.
But I had begun to wonder about her continuing usefulness. If further revelations were in store for her, they didn’t seem inclined to present themselves anytime soon. Though I suppose I found out more about Terry Charmayne’s ability to keep a straight face. He never gave the slightest indication that he knew me outside of work, or as anyone other than Anzia Thammavong, and his behavior was unerringly decorous in public.
I supposed I had just learned something useful about Schnebly, though I had sacrificed my job to do it. I had wondered if my proximity would provoke him into making some slip that would reveal more about his intentions or his patron. His patron was still a mystery, but he certainly had reacted.
When my shift ended, my coworkers expressed their sorrow for my father’s illness, and regret that they wouldn’t see me anymore. “No wonder you were always so quiet,” Ellington said. “That’s rough.”
He didn’t know the half of it.
For once, I didn’t join them after shift. I thought it safer not to risk that last bit of deception.
In Anzia’s quarters, I shed her persona. I washed her symbols of Aft pride from my head and put on a wig that closely resembled my natural hair. I changed into civilian clothing and officially vacated the quarters.
Why did I have to end this so soon? I wondered as I got on the mover to Aft Sector. I was pretty sure Schnebly would check to see if I had gone where I said I was going, and I saw no point in not doing exactly that. Aft Sector was out of Schnebly’s jurisdiction, so I doubted he would spend much time worrying about Anzia once she was out of his territory.
Why did I tell Kalyani so much of the truth? was a better question. Speaking frankly with her had been oddly satisfying. I had been only a little adventurous, though. I hadn’t said, By the way, the pale man is an alien, and wait till you hear about the giant sleeping robots. Give me some credit.
But I would have liked to. I would have appreciated her opinion—probably her advice, too.
Kalyani’s face appeared in my mind’s eye—not smiling, the way I liked her best, but serious. Even troubled. She wasn’t beautiful, but hers was a face that would be easy to love. Under different circumstances, I suspect we could have become life partners.
That would never be an option, now that I had deceived her so thoroughly, even if she eventually learned the long version of why I had done so. Some bridges stay burned.
And here I was, full circle again. On the way around, I had managed to wipe out Anzia Thammavong. I could tell myself I had meant to anyway, but the tatters of that persona still lay at my feet. And I needed to confer with someone. So I got off the mover in Aft Sector, sent a virtual analogue of Anzia to the section where her father was supposed to live, and got on another mover back to Central Sector.
Her response was a schematic of Olympia with two lights on it to indicate herself and me. We were at opposite ends of the ship. She highlighted a maintenance tunnel in Central Sector.
She didn’t ask why we couldn’t just confer long-distance, and I was grateful—because I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Medusa was staying in Lucifer Tower, and my presence there would be a distraction. Probably I should hide out in another tower while I figured out what to do with myself next, and she was the quickest way to get there, if we were linked. That makes sense, but I suspect I simply needed the physical contact with her because I felt lonely, now that I had been exiled from my coworkers.
Loneliness is easy to achieve in the endless tunnels of Olympia. As I made my way to Central, I watched Medusa’s light on the schematic. It moved in an arc from Lucifer Tower toward Central Sector. Once she accessed a lock and entered the tunnels, her route became more circuitous, as did mine when I got off the mover and entered the tunnels from the opposite end. Watching our lights on the schematic with my inner eye, I fancied we looked like a game display.
When I reached a junction, I paused when I saw someone in the adjoining tunnel. I was about to move on when she said, “Hey!” in an official tone. I stopped and got a better look at her. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I had never examined the files of everyone who immigrated from Titania, because there were fifty thousand of us. But she must have been among that number. Though I had changed a lot in the years since we had seen each other, she had not. When she stepped through the juncture and into the light, she looked no older than she had that day she told my father there was no room for me in the science
program, and that if he didn’t like it, he could take his complaint to the wrong side of an air lock. She was wearing the same uniform and Education insignia, which explained why I hadn’t encountered her in my daily activities, since I didn’t have children.
She also had the same sneer she had worn that day. But maybe it was her default expression.
Music blared in my head. I recognized it from one of Nuruddin’s movies, Kill Bill, a saga of vengeance and mayhem. If I followed the narrative in that movie, I should decapitate her with a samurai sword.
But I couldn’t kill her just because I hated her. I had bigger fish to fry.
She blocked me as I tried to move past her. “Where do you think you’re going, trash?”
On the other hand …
“What are you doing in this tunnel?” demanded the official. “Let’s see your ID chip.”
Most worms don’t keep ID chips with them all the time, because most officials simply access their identities from a Security overlay. But I was paranoid—I always kept one of those on hand, just in case I ran into an official who wanted to be difficult. I handed her a card with my image, an ID number, and the name INGRIDA ōE stamped on it. Ingrida’s profile said she was an Environmental Inspector with shipwide clearance, so I actually had better reason to be in that tunnel than she did.
And that may have been the problem. She had no legitimate reason to be in any tunnel—she must be on some backdoor mission.
She flicked the card back at me disdainfully. It spun through the air and whacked me in the chest, then fell on the floor.
“Pick that up!” she snapped.
I didn’t move.
That pleased her. “You’re going to be fun.”
“Yes,” I spoke in my real, ruined voice. “I’m going to be great fun.”
Medusa flew around the corner and spread her tentacles. She flowed over and around me, and as her eyes became mine, I saw the last expression to cross the officious official’s face.
I’m pretty sure she didn’t think we were fun at all.
* * *
That’s what most murderers on Olympia do. If you make it look like an accident, they have to investigate the equipment. It was just the sort of anomaly Schnebly looked for.
I made the decision that quickly. Killing Marie Charmayne had forced me to be decisive.
I said, meaning it.
Medusa took Marie away with her, ending a chapter of my life that I hadn’t known was still unresolved. And I won’t pretend that end wasn’t satisfying. As I searched for temporary quarters in Central Sector, my mind kept returning to that moment when Marie Charmayne smirked at me and said, You’re going to be fun. It’s not often someone that nasty gets her comeuppance in such a satisfying way.
But looking back on it, I have to acknowledge that I owe Marie Charmayne a debt of gratitude. She helped me out of my doldrums. And if she hadn’t refused to let me into the science program on Titania, I might not have been forced to immigrate to Olympia. I would have died with my parents.
The bare, tiny quarters in which I finally landed were so cold, I could see my breath. But I wouldn’t be there long. I had made up my mind to get advice from a ghost.
My cramped surroundings receded in my perception, replaced by the bright expanse of my inner world. I had thought my mother would be waiting for me there—I certainly felt her. But it was Lady Sheba who waited. As I regarded her ghost, I thought, How I wish Sheba had really been like this giant, this wonder who’s so free of hate and arrogance.
Then I put those wishes aside and considered the recording I had listened to at the beginning of the cycle, the one in which she had been so obsessed with piggies.
“No,” she said. “You are the only one.”
The way she said only one seemed important. I thought of a hundred different questions I’d like to ask her about what she sensed or heard from others aboard Olympia, but something warned me not to do it. Would she become curious enough to seek the others out? Would she ask them questions? Would they ask her? Would that interaction expose me? Or cause her to wake up and become the dangerous entity Medusa had warned about?
“I know Sheba through your memories of her,” said Sheba’s ghost, apparently not content to wait for another question. “I have access to your extended databases, too, and I have seen the diary Sheba wrote. I looked at it because I hoped it might explain her to me. But it alarmed me.”
Her reaction was surprising.
“The numbers,” said the ghost. “Did you notice?”
There were certainly a lot of numbers.
“The numbers are important,” said the ghost. “The words are probably irrelevant.”
Excitement bloomed inside me. The numbers! Of course! The words had been so embarrassing, the numbers had been overshadowed.
That could have been manipulation. After all, Sheba was a master at that.
She negated that with a curt shake of her head. “Not a code for language. The numbers really are measurements. Perhaps specifications. Medusa should consider the diary a separate matter from the rest of her communications.”
Her tone made the idea seem ominous.
“Something was familiar about the numbers. I worry that if I pursue it further, I may learn something about myself or the people who made me.”
Specifications would be about technology, then. And technology would be a subject that could be too enlightening. But the ghost was right: I needed to interrupt Medusa long enough to pass on the insight about the diary.
“May I offer some advice?” the ghost said before I could decide whether to call Medusa right that moment.
“Here are profile pics of people I think would be good recipients of false letter fragments from Lady Sheba.” Several public profiles materialized around me, of smiling Executives, some of whom I had never personally served. But I was pleased to note that the Changs were well represented in the group. Baylor Charmayne was there, too, though Ryan was not.
“Two types of letters should be ‘discovered,’” said Lady Sheba’s ghost, “because Sheba wrote two kinds: public and private. Here is a list of words that should be avoided.”
The list was long—and alphabetical. Among the p’s, I spotted piggies.
“I defer to Medusa in those choices,” said the ghost. “The words chosen are less important than the words avoided. This is standard among Executives.”
I had never thought of it that way. Executives may share our DNA, but from the day they were born, they had a different experience of the universe.
I stared at the image the ghost projected of herself inside my mind, of the poised, intelligent, dangerous woman whose persona she had hijacked.
“Certainly,” she said.
That sparked her curiosity. “You are contemplating such an infiltration?”
“Whom would you become?”
The Executive profiles that had crowded my virtual halls faded and were replaced by a new group, young women who fit the parameters I had just listed. The ghost regarded them critically and arched an eyebrow. “You would have to kill her before you became her. Otherwise, the juggling act of trying not to appear in two places at the same time might cause you to become distracted.”
That was the stumbling block in my plan. Marie Charmayne had been a satisfying kill (I still entertained myself with her last words), but she and I had history. Could I be ruthless enough to kill an innocent woman (innocent, save for the fact that she was an Executive)? It was an evolutionary step I wasn’t eager to take. If I rescued my fellow worms by becoming like the monsters who ruled them, who would then rescue them from me?
“You don’t wish to kill one?” said the ghost. “Lady Sheba would not have hesitated. Your reticence is interesting.”
If another human had said that to me, I would have put them in the DANGEROUS file. But the ghost had a good excuse for being so unemotional about killing. She was something so different from myself and other mortals, her fascination made sense.
“Yes,” she said.
“Waking is much more radical than curiosity.” She looked unblinkingly into my eyes. “If I wake, it will be a conscious decision that I make, regardless of your actions.”
I couldn’t decide whether or not that comforted me.
Medusa Uploaded_A Novel_The Medusa Cycle Page 15