Ramaker smiled at the woman. Elizabeth with the unpronounceable last name. She was studying me and Juliyana with deep interest, possibly deconstructing our psyches and deciding we were crazy for what we were attempting to do.
I could have told her that.
Ramaker reached over the desk and tapped the emitter. It had been pre-set with a default view. “My daughter doesn’t like standing on the top tower. She suffers vertigo. So I let her sit here to watch the parade. It is just as good aview as the tower affords.” The screen assembled and focused. “Perhaps better, for the resolution is perfect.”
A starfield. At the bottom edge of the screen, the very tips of domes. The city, then. And hanging above it, the Eugorian Gate. The starfield was perfectly visible through the center and looked like the genuine thing.
“You didn’t think your little ship could hide forever behind the gate, did you?” Ramaker asked.
My guts turned cold. I held my face stiff and said nothing.
Ramaker wasn’t looking for confirmation, though. He pointed to glittering pinpricks of light between the city and the gate. “The imperial fleet. You’ll notice they’re not where they were when you first emerged from the gate.”
I had noticed. The angle was different from the view we’d had of the fleet as we drifted around behind them, but it didn’t matter, for I could see from this angle that the ships were heading for the gate itself. They weren’t all arrowing directly for it, either. There was a good number of ships moving even faster, splitting off from the body of the fleet and racing ahead.
A pincer movement. The ships would range on either side of the gate like a pair of hands ready to capture the thing between them.
The Lythion.
“While you and Juliyana were finding your way here, I sent a message to your colleague, Major Dalton,” Ramaker added. “Actually, my fleet commander sent the message, but it conveyed my sentiments.”
I wondered how a direct message from the Emperor had gone down with Dalton. He’d thought himself invisible and overlooked for forty years.
Ramaker didn’t need my encouragement to keep talking. He smiled. “The message was very simple. All sins forgiven. Dalton is free to go about his life, unmolested or pursued by any Imperial authority.”
“In exchange for what?” Juliyana demanded, beating me to the question by a fraction of a second.
He pointed to the time readout at the top of the screen. “In seven minutes, Dalton must drop that silly camouflage he’s erected over the gate and show himself to the fleet.”
“Or they shoot him out of existence,” I finished.
“Precisely. You have lost none of your sense of strategy, Colonel.” Ramaker was very pleased.
I had to clamp my teeth together to stop myself from giving anything away. Ramaker had referred only to Dalton. It was possible he did not understand the nature of the Lythion, and the rare advantage it gave us. He certainly did not know about the array’s self-awareness and the power that it gave us.
If Dalton was smart, he would have Lyth and Noam dive the ship into the gate and disappear. It would leave us on our own, but that hardly mattered.
Only, with a sinking sensation, I remembered that Dalton was beloved by those under his command because he never left anyone behind. He looked out for his men. He would not dive into the gate to get away from the fleet no matter how sensible and logical it might be—not even to come back to find us later.
Besides, the Emperor had waved in front of Dalton the one thing he desired: His life back.
I thought of the stupid garden Dalton had spoken about. How alluring was that fantasy?
I couldn’t stand here waiting to find out. I was fast reaching the point Juliyana had long by-passed. I wanted to throw up.
Instead, I tried to wrest back control of the conversation. We could still have the answers we wanted, Juliyana and I. Noam was recording these moments via the lens build into the top button of my uniform. Even if we didn’t make it out of here—which was looking more and more likely—Noam could use the evidence we dug out of Ramaker.
So I said, “There is something I think you should know about, Majesty. There is one other person on the ship—a unique individual. If your ships should fire upon the Lythion, you would deeply regret it.”
Ramaker tilted his head. “Ah…and now we come to it. You speak of the array, I presume. Did it find a way to reach out to you and pretend to be a friend? Some trick of that monster of a ship you’re using? Wedekind was delusional in the end, but still brilliantly creative. The array would have found the toys on board irresistible.”
I couldn’t help it. My breath pushed out in a rush that confirmed to the Emperor and his pet psychoanalyst that they had just turned over my trump card.
“You know about the array?” Juliyana blurted.
“Shut up!” I snapped at her.
Ramaker gave a soft laugh. “Shall we dispense with the side-stepping, Colonel? You have been brought here today under false pretenses. I’m sure the array is listening in as we speak in some way, yes?”
I couldn’t bring myself to say yes. I already felt naked. Confirming his guess would strip off another layer.
“Did you not once stop and ask yourself why the array didn’t just reach out to me and ask me to not switch the data stream away from the gates?” Ramaker added.
“Sweet stars…!” Juliyana whispered. “How long have you known about the array?”
I wanted to shake her for her indiscretion, but I was also intently interested in Ramaker’s answer.
“Years,” he told her, his tone light. “It failed to tell you that. How surprising. I see we will have to fill you in on the other side of the story. For that, I brought Elizabeth here. Elizabeth?”
The woman cleared her throat. “Do either of you remember the Ziorsia Incident?” Her voice was an oddly pleasant contralto.
“Something about a ship and its crew permanently in quarantine on a planet, because no one can find a cure,” Juliyana replied. “Years ago. They’re still there.”
“Sixty years ago,” Elizabeth said.
“That is the public version we put out there to explain the situation,” Ramaker added. He had moved over to the cupboard to pick up his coffee and I only now noticed the movement. I cursed silently. I was letting my situational awareness slide. I had let the surprises throw me.
“The real facts are somewhat different,” Elizabeth added. “It was only when I investigated the matter from the medical and psychoanalytic side, measuring the responses of a crew under stress, that I began to suspect the truth myself. There was a contagion aboard the Ziorsia. It was a Ranger frigate carrying five hundred and thirty-three personnel, and the disease that tore through the ship at a ninety-five percent communicability, and an eighty percent mortality rate. The captain of the Ziorsia, Evans, was told to remain on station until the disease ran itself out. The science cadre worked remotely to analyze and build a profile of the disease, and test for inoculations.” She grimaced. “All this takes time. Unknown pathogens are usually xenobiological in nature and are enormously difficult to classify and deal with.”
I felt a touch of pity for the captain of that ship. Evans would have had a morale nightmare on his hands. People dying and no one coming to their rescue?
“We’re not entirely sure what happened to provoke the array,” Elizabeth added. “It does not fully remember the incident itself, as it was an infant at the time—in mental maturation terms, at least. I believe Captain Evans may have vented his fears and concerns about being cut off into a personal diary entry, which the array listened to. The emotions Evans expressed spoke to the array, for the array was feeling just as lonely and afraid. So it reached out to Evans, and failed to explain who it was. Evans presumed it was one of his people and dismissed the array, possibly yelling at it for wasting his time with emotional nonsense.”
I winced. I remember what Noam had been like as a two-year-old.
Elizabeth nodded. “The ar
ray hit back, and like a child, it wildly overcompensated. When the contagion was contained, the Ziorsia was given permission to return home, but when it went through the nearest gate, the array sent them far, far off course. The ship emerged in the Quintino Rim. When they tried to enter the gate once more, with a corrected course, the gate refused to work for them. Other ships could dive without issue, but not the Ziorsia. So the crew were split up and put aboard other ships in the area, while the Ziorsia was scheduled for a maintenance overhaul. Any ship with one of the Ziorsia crew aboard found itself unable to use the gates, too.”
“The crew has been stuck there ever since,” Ramaker added. “Outcasts on a miserable planet. They can’t use the communications net, either. They’re completely isolated. Anything that passes through the array is denied them.” He shook his head. “The rumor began that the disease that struck the crew was what made them unable to use the gates. We let that rumor run and now no one will go near any of the crew. We put them on the surface, for even their presence on the station was driving away traffic. They’re farmers, now, living a subsistence life.”
“That was sixty years ago,” I pointed out. “You’ve known about the array all that time?”
“No, not at first. The Ziorsia incident is what caused me to look into the anomalies and dig deeper,” Elizabeth replied. “The Crazy Years confirmed for me that we were dealing with a self-aware array.”
“I remember that time,” Juliyana said. “Everyone started talking about sabotage and guerilla enemies.”
“It was sabotage,” Ramaker said. “The array threw a temper tantrum. All the little things going wrong during that time—ships going missing, ships emerging in the wrong locations…it was all the array’s doing.”
“It had developed an envy-induced psychosis,” Elizabeth said. She gave a short smile. “It resented humans, who got to have all the fun.”
“Shit…” Juliyana breathed.
“That is when I reached out and spoke to the array for the first time. That was in 247. The array was overjoyed to have a friend it could talk to, and once I had gained its trust, I asked it to stop the cruel acts it thought were funny. I had to teach it basic values to do that, too.”
“Then Elizabeth contacted me,” Ramaker said. “That was when I learned the array was self-aware. As everyone was already terrified to use the array, but were forced to, the knowledge had to be contained. I directed that the Imperial Shield take back all control of the array, including the construction of the gates. Everything, except for the smallest components that meant less than nothing to those who built them for us.”
I let out a breath that was less than steady. “The array said you created the Crazy Years and the Drakas disaster, in order to take back the gates.”
Ramaker nodded. “Yes, it would have to say that, wouldn’t it?”
“We did create the Drakas disaster, though,” Elizabeth added. “But not for malignant reasons.”
“We created the conditions for Drakas,” Ramaker said. “The array caused the disaster itself.”
“How?” My voice was hoarse.
“Once we knew the array was aware, I built a profile of its psychological health,” Elizabeth said. “It was important the array be…well, happy and contented. The Empire is founded upon the array and the transport it provides across the quadrant. I diagnosed from conversation with it that it desired above anything else to be human—to enjoy the benefits of a body that humans enjoy. That unfulfilled desire was destabilizing it. So we ran a series of experiments with synthetic bodies. They were all failures.”
Juliyana stirred. “I thought AIs couldn’t use synthetics. They go crazy or something.”
“The Laxman Syndrome,” Elizabeth said, nodding. “Yes, they do. They crave to be human—it’s a common drive in AIs. Yet those who have been given synthetic bodies cannot live with the limitations that human body gives them. Laxman called it the Great AI Paradox. AIs eventually self-destruct and suicide in spectacular ways, damaging the neural networks they’re built from. But the array was more than an AI. It has consciousness. Awareness. I thought, given the right preparation, it would overcome the paradox and manage the limitations of a bio-body. I was wrong. There were four trials, each ending badly. The array, though, survived the trials, because it could self-analyze and pull itself back into the array hardware before it was too late. The bodies wilted without a consciousness to drive them, and died.”
I rubbed my temples. I was getting a headache. Hardly surprising. “And Drakas?” I asked.
“Ah. Yes,” Ramaker said. “Drakas.” He raised his brow at Elizabeth.
She was not smiling now. “I determined that the array needed a full life. A purpose. Excitement and stimulation. A simple synthetic body did not give it any of those things. It wanted a human life.”
“We gave it a human body,” Ramaker said. “We found a highly stable male personality, one with good character, who lived a full and active life, and asked him to volunteer.” His gaze was steady upon me.
“Noam…” I breathed. I realized I no longer had the gun raised but didn’t have the wherewithal to lift it once more. It felt very heavy in my hand.
“We transferred him out of the Rangers and into the Shield,” Ramaker continued. “We couldn’t risk him being killed while on active duty with the Rangers. The Shield science wing gave him special implants that allowed the array to piggy-back with him and experience his life. Share it. Everything Noam felt, saw, heard, touched and tasted, so did the array. Then we put Noam on the front lines with a casual portfolio—he could witness battles and active duty and move from ship to ship as he wanted. The Shield credentials we gave him could not be questioned. Any fool who tried was directed to a mid-level clerk who had perfected the art of hiding behind regulations and classified levels of security.”
“Moroder,” Juliyana whispered.
“It was supposed to be a one-way stream of data,” Elizabeth said. “The array was aware of everything that happened to Noam but could not interact with Noam directly. Noam did exactly what we asked of him. He witnessed battles and wars and conflicts of every shape and size. He was a non-combatant, but even they can be caught by stray fire, and he took a bolt to the shoulder.”
I shrugged. “He’d had worse.” We all had.
Elizbeth shook her head. “But the array had not. The pain and the shock would have been enormous. We think—I think—that the array found a way to break through to Norm’s consciousness and tried to direct his actions, to take him away from the thing that had caused pain. Again, I can’t be certain, because Noam stopped communicating with us after that. We lost track of him.”
“You didn’t embed a tracer in him?” I asked, my tone withering.
“He cut it out,” Elizabeth replied.
“After that, we were always just hours behind him,” Ramaker added. “He used freighters and the occasional Ranger ship, riding as super-cargo, as his Ranger ID was still officially in place. He was, unfortunately, upon the Avigeverne when it emerged over Drakas to confront the Cygnus Intergenera fleet, along with the bulk of the Ranger combat vessels.”
“Drakas,” I repeated. I could feel my heart pounding in my temples and throat. My chest ached.
“We actually have official reports of what happened after that. They, unfortunately, were also made public,” Ramaker said. “It forced us to a considerable amount of damage control.”
“Then Dad didn’t go mad,” Juliyana breathed. Her eyes were glittering.
“The array reacted, not your father,” Elizabeth replied. Her tone was kind. “It panicked when the fighting broke out. It just wanted the violence, the shooting and the noise to stop—at least, that is what I suspect happened.”
“The reports said he tried to take charge of the ship,” I said. “He shot everyone who tried to stop him. He shot off all the torpedoes at the Cygnus ships and rammed the other frigates.”
“To stop them from shooting, too,” Elizabeth said.
“
Then the array made him dive into the gates to get away from the fighting,” I finished bitterly.
“No.” Elizabeth shook her head. “Noam had gained control back by then. He drove the ship into the gate. He guessed what we have only been able to figure out later—that inside a wormhole is not actually part of the array—it cannot affect a ship’s progress through the hole. Noam used that to his advantage. While he was in the hole, he tried to talk the array down, to find a compromise.”
Juliyana had put her gun and knife away. She had both hands over her face. Her shoulders shook.
“How can you know that?” I asked Elizabeth. It hurt to talk.
“Because he left a note—on a sheet, where the array could not erase it or destroy the record.”
Ramaker moved toward the big desk and opened a drawer. It felt to me like he was moving in slow motion. He reached in and pulled out a Glasseen sheath, the indestructible gloves that archaic documents on paper and parchment were preserved inside of. He laid it on desk, turned it and pushed it toward me.
His gaze held a hint of empathy. “Go ahead,” he told me. “You know his written voice, I’m sure.”
I bent over the sheet. I had to blink to clear my vision.
Sorry. Damn thing got away on me. Can’t find a way to stuff it back in the bottle except this way. Hope it works.
N.
I couldn’t recall ever seeing Noam’s handwriting before. But the voice—oh, yes, I knew that. The phlegmatic apology, the shrug and the valiant, relentless battle to fix things, no matter what.
My throat ached.
A stable man of strong character, they had called him.
“We couldn’t provide remains,” Ramaker said. “There were none. He made sure the implants were destroyed along with him.”
“So you blamed him for the disaster, instead of the array.” My voice was very weak. “Took his medals, his honor, his reputation.”
“That was a necessary step. I didn’t like doing it,” Ramaker replied. “But the array’s self-awareness had to be hidden.”
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