by C. Gockel
“I won’t be bored while you’re eating anymore,” she whispered to Markus. He did like to take his time, and he took his time often.
“I’m afraid we don’t have another copy,” Professor Berger declared.
She jumped at his voice, and her lips pinched.
“I can order it for you,” he said.
“Thank you. I would appreciate it.” She held up the book she’d just discovered. “In the meantime, I’ll take this one—”
Berger’s eyes dropped to the book and narrowed.
“For my husband, the captain, of course,” Alexis lied smoothly.
“How did that wander out of our ornithology section, I wonder,” he muttered.
Alexis did not laugh at the fact that he presumed the book was about birds. Nor did she correct him. Men didn’t want to know when you caught them making a mistake. Instead, she gave him a practiced, bland smile.
Behind her, from the main sitting area, a young man said, “Brian, the woman you called a juicy xerfruit was Captain Darmadi’s wife!”
Alexis’s face flushed. She was approaching twenty-seven, and after her most recent delivery she had nearly seven kilos to lose still, though the sling hid it well. Her pelvic muscles had been damaged. With too much jostling, she’d wet herself, though that was hidden by post-maternity undergarments. She should be grateful they were attracted to her, but the attention just made her uncomfortable. She shifted on her feet.
“It’s been nice knowing you, man,” said another too-loud young man.
Her cheeks burned hotter. It was highly unlikely that Alaric would acknowledge the comment if he heard—or even care.
“This is why women are not allowed here,” Berger hissed in a way that suggested the boys’ unruliness was her fault.
She gave him the practiced, bland smile again.
Turning on his heel, he said, “Let’s go this way. We can avoid them,” and proceeded to lead her deeper into the shelves. They hadn’t gone four paces when Alexis spied ancient trains on the cover of a book. The title, An Illustrated Guide to Steam and Diesel Trains of Old Earth, caught her attention. Her breath caught and she stopped. Pulling it from the shelf, she exclaimed, “My five- and three-year-old would love this!”
“Mmmm…” said Berger. “I suppose they’d enjoy the pictures.”
Flipping through the pages, Alexis noted the captions beneath the sharp color illustrations and grainy black and white photos. She murmured absently, “The older one can handle this reading level.” Both her boys were quite clever, and though she was careful not to tell them so, she was immensely and irrationally proud of them for it.
Berger chuckled. “Well, I guess with their father I shouldn’t be surprised.”
Alexis’s smile dissolved. Of course, their mother’s intelligence and care wouldn’t be considered relevant. No one cares about a girl’s cleverness, her mother had assured her.
“I’ll take this one, too,” she said, trying to fill her mind with thoughts of nothing.
A few minutes later, after giving Berger instructions on where to send her book and making sure it would be addressed to her so it would be a “surprise,” she was out in the New Prime sunshine. Summer was on its way, but it wasn’t too hot yet. Markus was still asleep, her other two boys were still at school, and her husband was off world. Her time was hers. Walking down the street, she was enjoying the day when a group of ladies from church came out of a shop not three meters in front of her and stopped to look at something on a light pole. Not in the mood to make polite conversation, she almost ducked into a shop, but one of them caught her eye, smiled, and waved.
Raising her chin and smiling, Alexis marched into battle. And then she saw what they were looking at. It was a poster depicting weere males in the uniform of the Luddeccean Guard. Emblazoned across the top were the words, For Family. For Honor. For God. Join the Weere Guard! At the bottom was an address for a recruiting center.
Lip curling in distaste, one of the older women in the group said, “My maid’s son has joined, and she has become so uppity of late.”
Claire, the woman who had waved to Alexis, said, “I know, my gardener enlisted and now I have to find a new one. Such a pain.” She rolled her eyes toward Alexis and asked, “Alexis, does your husband think the Weere Guard is really necessary?”
All eyes in the group shot to her. There were murmurs of, “Alexis!” and, “Oh, is that Little Markus? I heard he is deaf, such a shame!”
Alexis stiffened and she silently vowed, Markus, you will defy every expectation, I promise you.
“But he is beautiful,” said Amanda, one of the few of the women Alexis actually liked.
“Well?” Claire pushed. “Is it really necessary, Alexis?”
Claire was nearly as tall as Alexis and whip slender, as Alexis had once been. She was married to the cousin of Alaric’s second in command, Commander Ran. How much did she know about Alaric’s mission in System 33? Did she know the “Luddeccean weere” his ship had rescued was Alaric’s own weere-whore?
“My husband says they are necessary,” Alexis said, keeping her voice emotionless.
“Well, I guess he would,” said Claire.
Amanda inhaled sharply.
Someone tittered.
Oh, yes, Claire knew. They all knew. Alexis lifted her chin. On the street, a bus emblazoned with the emblem for the Luddeccean Guard drove by. It was loaded with human recruits. The whole planet—not just weere—was mobilizing for war. The boys whistled and hollered at the women as they drove by, and the women tittered more. Alexis kept her gaze on a point just above Claire’s eyebrows.
Holly Nilsson, a woman in her fifties married to Rear Admiral Nilsson, stepped from the back of the group, drawing everyone’s attention. Holly was short, neither thick nor thin, with neat gray hair, timeless attire, and remarkably well-preserved features. Casting a glare at Claire, she said, “I’m sure what Claire meant to say is that Captain Darmadi would know.”
All tittering stopped. A few eyes suddenly looked at the pavement. Alexis marveled at how with a few words the older woman had put all the younger women in line. She marveled at Holly’s poise. Alexis faked confidence—Holly’s seemed real. But then, she’d seen Holly in the presence of her husband. They seemed genuinely happy in each other’s company. And Alexis had seen her in the presence of her children. They seemed to like her. With such love to go home to, how could Holly not be confident? This group of women were just a fleeting gaggle in comparison.
Holly’s eyes met Alexis’s and she said more gently, “My husband says our new enemy is everything we are told.”
Alexis remembered Alaric sitting at the table in his uncle’s home, an unnoticed cup of steaming coffee in front of him, head in his hands just after he’d returned from the battle in System 33. “So,” his uncle had asked him, “is the Darkness just another story concocted to keep us in line, or is it as bad as they say?”
Alexis hadn’t been shocked by the first part of the question. Her mother had long declared the Luddeccean religion’s commandments against machines and technology to be “a way to keep the dumb rabble under control with fear.” Alexis had wondered if the new enemy was just another useful diversion.
The day was hot and sunny but remembering Alaric’s answer chilled her to the bone. Alaric was unfaithful…but he wasn’t frivolous in other ways. As a commander of men, he was everything he was rumored to be. Alexis found his words whispering from her lips like a frigid breeze she couldn’t control. “My husband says the Dark is much worse than anything and everything we’ve ever been told.”
3
Into the Dark
Uncharted Space
6T9 watched Volka’s ears as she listened to Lishi’s questions—full forward, curious.
As Volka answered, her ears curled back submissively—or, he supposed, respectfully. “I’m not entirely sure if my Luddeccean toothpaste was made of sodium hydrogen carbonate, sir.”
6T9 marveled at how calm Volka could be
as they headed back to the World Sphere. It was one of many worlds Sundancer had shown them that had been destroyed by the Dark. The Dark had been to the Sphere, was likely still there in the frozen lakes of the inside-out-world. When James had asked for help delivering the away team to the Sphere, Volka hadn’t hesitated a millisecond. 6T9 wished she didn’t have to be here, for her death could be final, and enslavement by the Dark would be worse than final. His jaw ground.
“It’s more commonly called bicarbonate of soda,” Lishi said.
“I’m still not sure, but the tube did say it had fluoride in it,” Volka replied.
6T9 also marveled at her patience and kindness while answering such detailed queries about minutiae for Lishi. When Sixty had met Volka, she’d been a product of her Luddeccean upbringing. She believed that sentient machines stole human minds and had enslaved every human in the Republic, as though machines could do that. AI were vastly outnumbered by humans. The only reason they’d been given equal legal protections was because some AI—the enormous time gates that ferried data and ships between the stars—were of strategic importance. He frowned. The Luddecceans had recently created faster-than-light ships. The Republic’s faster-than-light ships were in development. When the gates weren’t needed, would his kind still be tolerated? He shook his head. With the emergence of the Dark, an enemy that really did kill and enslave, how could AI not be seen as allies? Machines were immune to the Dark. One of the reasons 6T9 had suggested Lishi’s team lead it was to prove that AI could be indispensable in the fight.
Volka tilted her head at a question regarding the materials her toothbrush was made of. “I’m not sure of the bristles, but the handle was made from bornut wood, sir.”
6T9 caught on the word, “sir.” His circuits sparked. Volka wouldn’t care one way or another if machines were indispensable. She’d thought he was akin to a demon when she’d met him, but as she’d discovered he had feelings, it was as though a switch had flipped. She accepted him, and all machines—even vaguely insect-like ones like Lishi, and Bracelet who wasn’t even an AI—as beings worthy of personhood. She’d totally missed out on the subtle in-between position of machines being not evil but less than human.
“Please don’t call me ‘sir.’ Just Lishi will do,” Lishi protested. “Now about your sink—”
6T9’s chronometer chimed. They had seven minutes before they reached their destination. If he had a heart, he was sure it would be pounding. As it was, there was the prickle of static under his skin, and his Q-comm was unhelpfully calculating the odds that there might be an encounter with the Dark this trip.
James’s voice played in his mind. “Sixty, we better move the pod onto the bridge now.”
“Right,” he said. He placed his hand where the wall opened and said, “Open,” and visualized it in his mind. Nothing happened. He wasn’t an organic life-form. His desires were invisible to the ship.
“Carl, can you visualize this door and the one to the capsule’s compartment opening?” he asked.
“On it,” said the werfle. An iris opening appeared before 6T9, and across the hall, another compartment opened. In it was a power capsule—a generator half a meter high and currently half a meter long. With a thought, 6T9 activated its hover coils, lifted it into the air, and directed it down the hall to the bridge. There he commanded it to extend to its full length. When it reached its full three meters, docking stations appeared in its shell at regular intervals. He double checked the capsule’s logs. The latest scans showed the capsule’s internal fission sphere to be fully operational.
6T9 called aloud—for Volka—and over the ether for the ‘bots and drones. “Prepare for arrival.”
“It’s been so nice meeting you, Volka,” Lishi said, hovering out into the hallway.
Following him, Volka replied, “You too, Lishi. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you more about Luddeccean soap.”
Zipping past 6T9’s shoulder, Lishi connected to one of the docking stations on the capsule. “Electricity…sigh…Not as much variety as food,” he grumbled. “But it will keep me functional.”
Not all androids and ‘bots enjoyed food, but Sixty had met Lishi and his team when they’d all had human bodies and had been out eating and drinking. They were all interested in human history in one form or another, and they had assumed the bodies and habits of the beings that fascinated them. The night he’d met them, they’d been at a bar because Lishi had broken up with his human girlfriend, and humans went out drinking at bars with friends after a breakup. Not that the machines could get drunk in ‘bot or android form. Like many activities adopted from a foreign culture, the machines had taken up the superficial trappings but missed the deeper significance of the ritual. Also, 6T9 hadn’t been able to convince Lishi that night that post-breakup revenge sex was a very human tradition.
Behind him, another member of Lishi’s team said, “Beep, beep,” and Sixty pressed himself against the wall. A trio of AI zipped by in metal forms almost identical to Lishi’s. JackHAMR came last. He was nearly as tall as 6T9’s torso, boxy shaped, and had a large jackhammer appendage. Swiveling midair just before docking, he said, “Hey, Sixty, still find me sexy?”
Jack in human form had been “pitch hitter” for Lishi’s revenge sex. Before Jack had gotten his Q-comm, his subsequent interest in archeology, and a human body, he’d been a demolition ‘bot on a road crew. Some of his original programming had carried through to his human form. It had been a good night.
“Always, Jack,” Sixty lied cheerfully.
The ‘bots who’d worn human forms not long ago laughed as they docked themselves to the capsule. They’d all voluntarily had their precious Q-comm chips plugged into these insect-like bodies when they’d agreed to go on this mission.
If these new bodies were destroyed, their Q-comms would be lost. The time gates would decide whether they would receive replacement Q-comms. The gates existed in non-human form—would they understand what a sacrifice it was for these AI to give theirs up? Sixty’s hands curled at his side. He’d make sure they did. Somehow.
Volka and James padded up beside 6T9. He was still streaming the scene outside the ship to Bracelet, and Volka was holding her wrist aloft. At sight of the scene outside, the faint whizzing chuckles of the AI stopped. In the holo display were the hulking shadows of ancient alien ships that presumably had once guarded the sphere. Looming beyond them was the sphere itself. Made of dull, dark metal pockmarked by a million years’ worth of asteroid and space debris impacts, it had exploded inward at one point, leaving a gaping maw. From the maw came the orange-red glow of the sphere’s artificial sun.
Lishi whispered, “It brings to my circuits Bosch’s painting of Hell.”
The ship glided into the maw, and although Sixty had told them what to expect, they gasped. On the inside of the sphere were the frozen remains of buildings, forests, lakes, and rivers. All were frosted over. But worse were the floating, distorted cadavers of the hominids that had inhabited the sphere. Their heads were crowned with what looked like delicate flowing feathers. Their faces were bluish, with dark stains beneath their frosted skin. Their expressions were frozen in terror.
The ‘bot exploratory team went silent. There were, in the giant internal world, perhaps millions of bodies. 6T9 swallowed. Presumably, millions more had been sucked out into the vacuum with the breach. These were probably those who’d been in buildings at the time of the rupture. Over millennia, their shelters had broken down and they’d drifted out. Their bodies all seemed to be on slow collision courses with the central sphere of molten material that had played the part of the world’s sun. Before his eyes, a body touched its surface and was sucked in in a brief burst of flame.
“Oh,” said Lishi.
Silence stretched too long, and then James, all business, said, “We should drop you off at one of the larger buildings. You can anchor the pod there and set up your base of operations.”
“I’ll picture the largest in my mind for Sundancer,” said Carl.
“Considering the pathogen probably persists here, they would die,” James said dryly.
After an awkward 6.3 seconds, Jack rumbled, “Let’s make sure Earth isn’t next.”
In the holo above Bracelet, a building with a helical shape came into view. 6T9 counted the outlines of twenty stories, each with its own wide balcony. The building’s shape would have provided each balcony with exposure to the central magma sphere. Had the balconies been gardens once? There were no remnants of vegetation, but the force of the rupture in the sphere and loss of gravity would have sucked away anything not anchored.
“That looks good,” Jack said. “You can drop us off there.”
James said to Volka, Carl, and 6T9, “Let’s get in one of the aft compartments so the bridge can be depressurized.”
6T9 hesitated, as did Volka.
“Godspeed to you all,” Volka said to the ‘bots.
“Godspeed” was as illogical as wishing someone luck. But 6T9 had come to realize that even though wishes didn’t rearrange the random factors of the universe, humans did appreciate the sentiment. “Good luck,” “Godspeed,” and the like were just ways of saying, “I hope you don’t die, and I can appreciate your company again.” Humans did die sometimes and were gone forever. His hand slid over the packet of his lover’s ashes in his coat, and then he froze. Some ‘bots didn’t understand the intent behind illogical wishes. His circuits dimmed, expecting a negative response from the AI team.