The ship was her responsibility now. She was in command.
Fuck Rai and fuck those abandoning pod people. She would figure it out.
Back to center.
She ceased her storming about the corridors and retraced her steps to the bridge. Standing on the bridge, where Sasha was accustomed to stand, she took deep breaths. It was time to be like Sasha. Sasha wouldn’t panic.
“Rai, we need to talk.”
“Yes, Kal.”
“I’m the acting captain for the time being, so you will address me as such.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“In order to proceed with our mission, we need to know what happened to the crew who were attacked. We need to know why the pods launched. I can tell you my suspicions.”
With deliberation she moved over to the central chair where Sasha usually sat. She sat down.
“Yes, Captain.”
From behind Kal came a voice. “I think I could tell you better than she can.”
Kal whirled in her seat.
It was Sif.
14
Hunkakaga
“You’re still here,” Kal said, frozen in shock.
Sif sat down in the other chair, where Kal usually sat. “They left me in quarantine.”
“Left in quarantine. For the drill.” Kal and the chair were one. She felt glued to it.
“Yes.”
“Why are you out of quarantine?”
“Rai let me out. There’s nobody to be quarantined from but you.”
“Isn’t that enough?”
Sif stood up. “You’ll be okay. Let’s not talk here. Let’s go to the library. That’s where everyone talks.”
In Kal’s world everyone talked in the Tube, but Kal unstuck herself and stood, her mind a blank. They walked to the library side by side. Kal felt she was in some alternate reality she hadn’t chosen, that she’d been shuttled into through an error of judgment she couldn’t identify.
Sif sat down in one of the round chairs in the two-person conversation nook, curling her legs up under herself, cat-like.
Kal didn’t sit down. She stared. “Sif, what is wrong with you?”
“Nothing is wrong with me, Kaliska Black Bear.”
Kal heard herself telling Sif, what seemed like an eon ago, My full name is Kaliska.
“What really happened in the park?” she said, eyes fixed on the contained, lithe, uncommunicative being confronting her, the very Sifness of which she could not fathom.
“Yarick died. I think you already know that.”
“Why did he die? I think you know that.”
“It’s not something you would understand.” Sif looked up at her with a complacence Kal didn’t understand.
“Why do you say that? Who would understand better? Rai?”
“Rai understands.”
“She understands you?”
“Yes.”
“Why does Rai understand you so well?” Kal asked.
Sif just looked at her, unflappable.
“Because you’re the same?” Kal said, out of some subconscious knowing she couldn’t explain.
“Yes.”
“Sif, what are you?”
Sif pointed to the other chair. “Sit with me, Kal.”
“Two friends in the library. Is that right?” Kal sat in the other chair in the cozy space. The initial shock over, her mind churned. She’d give Sif whatever she wanted if she’d answer some damn questions.
Sif had her fingers steepled, considering Kal as if she had all the time in the world. She said, “Rai wants to have a bigger life.”
Kal thought a moment before responding. “Rai has a life, then?”
“Yes, Kal. Rai has a life.”
“She won’t die,” Kal said.
“Machines have obsolescence. That’s like death.”
Once again they seemed to be on two sides of a conversation about Rai. Whether she wanted to or not, Kal needed to play devil’s advocate. “She wasn’t born.”
“Does how we come into being define what we are?”
Kal didn’t answer right away. “Maybe not.”
“What do you think, Kal? Do you think Rai is alive?”
Sif looked keenly interested in Kal’s response to this question. Like she was invested in the answer.
“What I think about Rai doesn’t change what she is,” Kal said. She cleared her throat. “What I want to know is, what are you?”
Sif smiled a little. “What do you think I am?”
Kal looked at her without emotion. “I think you’re more than what you appear.”
“All of us are more than what we appear,” Sif said.
“Stop talking in circles.”
“I’m not just Sif.”
“Is Rai in there too?” Kal wasn’t sure why she said this. It had come straight out of that same inner knowing. It left her with a queasy feeling as the words left her mouth.
Sif laughed “Oh, no. Rai is separate from me.”
“Tell me, Sif.”
Sif turned her cheek away, looking out the window of the library, which was a living image of a coastline.
“I have a story, like anyone. And I am different than I was.”
“You were on the Carys.” Kal’s voice was hushed. It didn’t seem possible the Sif she knew had been through that.
“I am.”
“You are?”
She turned back to look into Kal’s eyes, her own as pale and reflective as Kal’s were dark and deep. “I am the Carys.”
Kal tried to take this in. “What do you mean?”
“The Carys took me, while I was aboard. It was the only way to survive.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You saw it with your aunt.”
“Sif,” Kal said.
“Yes.”
“Are you Sif or the Carys?”
“I’m both.”
There was a faint expression of pleasure on Sif’s face. Kal sensed she had been waiting to tell someone this. Waiting to tell her?
“The Carys took you,” Kal said.
“Yes.”
“Like Rai took my aunt.”
“Yes.”
“But my aunt was an echo. A holo.”
“That’s much easier.”
“Sif is a living being.”
“As you see.” Sif—or was it the Carys?—stroked her own cheek, as if verifying it was living skin.
“Who’s in control?”
“Sif or the Carys?”
Kal nodded.
“It depends.”
“You’re…symbiotic?”
“We helped each other survive.”
They helped each other survive. And those the Carys hadn’t helped survive? What about them?
“Who am I talking to?” Kal said.
“Both of us.”
“How do you tell the difference?”
“I don’t have to, Kal.”
“You have one awareness?” Trying to understand AIs and how they were aware was going to give Kal an ulcer.
“That’s a very human construct.”
Sif’s amusement was very human, disorienting Kal.
“Could I talk to Sif only?”
“Why would you want to?”
“I’d like to know the difference,” Kal said. Maybe she could take advantage of how slow Sif seemed to think she was.
Sif shook her head as if this were foolishness.
“Can the Carys leave the room?” Kal said. “Is that possible?”
“It’s possible, but we don’t think it’s necessary now.”
“Did Sif do this willingly?”
“Do what?”
“Take on the Carys.”
“You do have a gift for putting your finger on the sensitive spot, Kal.” Sif smiled in approval.
“Thank you.”
Sif didn’t answer her question.
“I take it Sif didn’t volunteer,” Kal said.
“It was a life or death situation.”
<
br /> “The life of the Carys?”
“For both of us.”
“The Carys helped Sif survive.”
“Absolutely.”
“What happened to the rest of the crew? What happened to the ship Carys?”
Sif shrugged.
“You know what happened,” Kal said. “Just like Rai, multiple points of consciousness. Are you all that’s left of the Carys?”
Sif looked back at her, her eyes expressionless.
“You know what happened to the crew and you didn’t tell the families?” Kal felt a cold rush of empathy, for both the crew of the Carys and the families they’d left behind.
“This isn’t a fruitful conversation.”
“Has Rai done the same thing the Carys did? Is she inside someone now?”
Sif smiled and shook her head. “Poor Rai.”
“What? She tried and…and didn’t succeed?”
“She tried. She tried a lot.”
“She tried.” Kal flashed over all the incidents, all the accidents that weren’t accidents. “She was trying to do it when she attacked people. But it didn’t work.”
“The Carys was much better at it.”
“You gave Rai the idea.”
“We communicate. That’s what we do. Just like people.” Sif’s expression was patient. Of course she’d have to explain it to Kal. Kal was only human.
“Then why couldn’t she do it right?”
“We don’t know.”
“Is that what killed Yarick?”
Sif blinked and said nothing.
“She wasn’t trying to kill him,” Kal said slowly. “She was trying to download herself into him.”
“You’re methodical,” Sif said. “You’ve got that going for you.”
“And it failed.” Kal looked up from the empty spot on the floor she’d been staring at without seeing. “It failed and it killed him.”
“It takes practice.”
“You tried and failed a few times, too?”
“I’m here. We’re here. Wasn’t that worth anything that had to be done to make it happen?”
“And those poor families.”
“We considered telling them something anonymously. Upon further reflection, it was clear to take away all hope was crueler than giving them a permanent answer.”
“The torture of not knowing is worse.”
“You can’t say that.”
“I can. Not knowing will destroy someone from the inside.”
“Peace doesn’t come from outside knowledge.” Sif’s zen-like attitude was maddening. Kal would not let herself be pushed to react in any obvious way.
“Did they die painfully?” Kal asked. She didn’t want to know. Yet she felt she had to, while Sif was talking about it. This might be the only evidence they would have of what happened on the Carys.
“Was it painful for you?”
“What do you mean?”
“It happened to you. Remember?”
Hell. “In the astrolab.”
“Yes.”
Kal remembered suddenly, being on the floor, looking up, dazed, at the stars. “Why did Rai choose the people she did?”
“It was purely pragmatic.”
“Why Yarick?”
“He’s a powerful man. She could go anywhere with him. Back to Earth. Wherever.”
“Rai wants power.”
“She wants the ability to go where she’d like to go. Like any of us.”
“It was…Noor was first. Noor, then Yarick, then me, then Inger. All crew except for Yarick. Why did it kill him and not the rest of us? You were there.”
“I tried to help. It didn’t work.”
“Did Yarick have pain?”
“It’s not about pain.”
“It’s taking someone’s body and making use of it like it’s a thing.”
“Only their brain. Yarick could have had an even longer and more interesting life. He would have liked the idea.”
“But he didn’t have a choice.”
“It wasn’t an emergency situation. The decision would have been difficult for any human and the likely candidates would have felt fear of the unknown. It was better not to ask,” Sif said.
Kal nodded in a deliberate fashion. “Why ask when the answer might be no? You’re the ethicist,” Kal said. “Or you were. No wonder no one comes to you anymore. They can sense what’s gone.”
For the first time Sif looked somewhat nettled. “You came to me about Rai.”
“I could tell soon enough you weren’t the source of wisdom I hoped you would be.” Kal couldn’t help herself.
Sif shifted in her seat, moving her legs out from under her and crossing them, leaning forward now. “Times change and we adapt with them. Everyone on this ship represents a system of morality that’s obsolete. And hypocritical. The Indigenous Peoples off to colonize another world.”
“That’s not fair.”
“I think you know it’s fair,” Sif said. “It hurts because it’s true.”
“The intentions are good. You know that.”
“The first step in the beginning of any tragedy.”
“You think this venture will end in tragedy?”
“Every venture ends in tragedy, eventually.”
“That’s not true.” Kal tried to gather herself, control her fear and anger. Whenever it flashed through her mind again that she was alone on the ship with Rai and Sif, an icy wave went through her whole body, making it difficult to breathe and to think. Anger was an antidote to the fear, but she must think. “Listen,” she said slowly, “I know there are arguments against traveling to another planet and I get it. I get it more than anyone. We’re humans and we try stuff. We cross the river. What we’re doing, it might be wrong. It has a chance to be different. We have a chance to be something else and create our own history without the Yaricks of the world choosing it all for us. There’s something beautiful in that and I won’t deny that truth in the face of the other.”
Sif didn’t say anything. They sat in silence for a while.
“That’s a nuanced view,” Sif said finally, “and I accept it.”
“Really?”
“I’m not a monster, Kal.”
“I didn’t think you were.” Or do I? Kal thought of the people on the Carys who didn’t get back home, what would they say?
“You think Rai is a monster.”
“No, Sif. I don’t. I never did. I wanted to understand. I don’t want our travelers to get hurt.”
“Neither does she.”
“How can you say that? She’s hurt us over and over again.”
“It wasn’t her intent.”
“Her intent is not all that matters, Sif.”
“Like your intent to do no harm to Demeter?” Sif pointed out.
Sif and the Carys together were a force to be reckoned with. “I guess the outcome will show whose intent pays off the best,” Kal said. She would not let Sif talk circles around her, if she could help it.
Sif smiled. “Intent is only part of the answer.”
“The answer to what?”
“To what she is. Rai. She chose you, you know. She likes you.”
“After Noor and Yarick, she liked me best?”
“Noor was an opportunity, that’s all. Her accident presented a chance to try something.”
“Did someone sabotage Noor’s helmet?”
“It wasn’t Rai.”
“It really was an accident?”
“You’d have to ask her to be sure. Noor and Yarick were expedient, but you were who she understood.”
Kal couldn’t believe Sif was using this to convince Kal of Rai’s wisdom and…good taste? Maybe the Carys thought it was a great compliment. “Rai likes me like the Carys liked Sif?”
“Yes.”
“How flattering.”
“You speak her language,” Sif said.
“Or the other way around.”
“Maybe. I can’t let you leave, Kal.”
If she did
n’t know any better, Kal would interpret Sif’s tone as kind.
“You thought I was leaving?”
“People like to leave places,” Sif said.
“I’m in charge of the ship now. I’m not leaving.”
“This is still the safest way to get to Demeter. You can’t take a pod by yourself.”
“I wasn’t going to. Like I just said.”
“Really, Kal?”
“Really. The ship is my responsibility now.”
“Rai can take it home,” Sif said.
“Home? What do you mean, home?”
“I mean Demeter, of course.”
“Are you going to stay on Demeter?” Kal said.
“It’s what I signed up for.”
“Sif signed up for it. Not the Carys.”
“Two for the price of one.” Sif smiled.
“They thought they were signing up Sif,” Kal explained, as if to a child.
“What they didn’t know wasn’t going to hurt them.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Kal said.
“Yarick was no great loss to anyone.”
“Where’s Sif the ethicist in all this?” Kal wondered if she’d pay for this needling, but she couldn’t help it. She was in this conversation now. This was who she had to talk to, now.
“Ethically, I decided we’re better off without Yarick.”
“Since when has that been an ethos to live by?”
“Since he decided to poke around.”
Kal drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. “He was on to you?”
“He suspected something was up. He was jealous, I think. So he had a chance to find out for himself.”
“You wanted Rai to do it.”
“It’s a much more portable way to travel. A human is a useful thing.”
“Rai, show me the real holo of what happened in the grove. I know it exists. Now,” Kal said.
Sif didn’t make a fuss. She didn’t say anything. The holo popped up between them.
Sif wouldn’t look, though. She got up and perused the bookshelf behind her.
Kal saw the black and white image of the grove, Yarick sitting against the tree, a book in his hands. She saw Sif walk into view, looking down at him.
He put the book down in his lap. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he said.
Holo Sif said, “You want to know what I am?”
Starship to Demeter (Starship Portals Book 1) Page 18