CHAPTER 22
The moment they stepped out of the airlock into the station, Talinn knew they’d made a terrible mistake.
There were moving, breathing, heating-up-the-air bodies everywhere. More human shapes than she had ever seen in one place—maybe more than she’d met in the entirety of her life—crammed in every direction. No matter where she turned her head or flicked her gaze, there were hordes of them. Piled on top of each other. Moving and crowding and—
Focus on one thing at a time. Bee’s voice, though tinny and distant, gave her a solid place to focus.
Thing one: The airlock dumped them out to a short landing bridge that connected to a longer, wider walkway. Coated in people—no. One thing at a time. Thing two: There were layers and layers of these walkways, all funneling toward a central shaft where people went up and down to different layers. So many people, how were they to know which way to—
Thing three: Along each walkway were displays and projected screens. Much of the din seemed to come from those, as some of the nearer noise ebbed and rose in time with the flashing lights of the screens.
Thing seven or eight, she’d already lost track, the noise was so enormous it was muffled. (That’s me, I turned it down, I’ll turn it up little by little. Your heart rate is settling.)
Her heart rate was not settling, but she took deep breaths to encourage it to do so. No one was crowding her on the landing bridge, forcing her into the seething, writhing mass—
Thing ten?
Thing ten. She pressed her palms to her eyes, squeezed everything, then dropped her arms and straightened her shoulders. She was an Eight, bugs eat all the code, and no magnitude of population was going to give her more than a thirty-second pause.
Maybe forty-five, because her nose had apparently gone briefly numb, as overwhelmed as the rest of her, and now was telling her . . .
A lot of people smelled spicy. A little musky. Dusty, a bit. Or—she sneezed, three times in a row, and finally subvocalized, “No smell, please. Midline hearing.”
No sniffs, dull roar. Got it.
“Suppose it would be too much to dial off my nerves, huh?”
Absolutely too much. What if one of them has sharp edges, and you get cut? I can’t monitor each nerve and keep you sane until you calm down.
“Sure. Sure.” Before this moment, she had understood, as well as a hyperintelligent, specially trained, incomparably focused weapon of war could understand, that there were scads of people in the known galaxy. The colonies had grown for a very, very long time, and even ongoing war didn’t stop—and perhaps encouraged—populations from taking root across a variety of settlements.
It was enough to forget her discomfort in having Bee’s backup programming in a portable server, loaded with six other portable servers, that Jeena would move later in the day. Because knowing what a million was, and that it existed, was very different from seeing a million people crawling all over each other—
There aren’t a million in this portion of the station. Across the entire station there’s a total of two and a half million, so here you’ve got . . . maybe a hundred thousand. I’m including ones in the tubes, so that’s an estimate.
“The . . . tubes.”
The people who don’t go from walkway to central shaft, and don’t just circle endlessly on walkways, they go into those side tubes. Connect to other parts of the station.
“I don’t want to—” She had to leave the landing bridge. Eventually Caytil and Sammer would get over their own shock, and they’d need to move. “We’re here because it’s crowded.”
This station is notorious for terrible embarkation and debarking records. Monitoring has been broken for a decade. It’s more hive than haven.
“It’s perfect for us to disappear.”
The more people there are, the harder to see a person.
“I’m going to need to boil my skin after this,” Caytil murmured, and Talinn finished pulling herself together.
“We have to get to the Tura quadrant.” They all had the same information—they’d have to split up and make their own ways to the next point—but it steadied her to say it out loud. They were leaving in staggered groups—first Caytil, Sammer, and Talinn. Then Heka and Xenni. Then Arnod and Konti. “Get some noodles.”
“Bet they taste better than bunk food.”
“This air tastes better than bunk food.”
Talinn scraped her tongue against her teeth. Even without her sense of smell, the memory of old bars of food, stored in the tank’s bunk for slightly too long—and it was always slightly too long—with a faint hint of dust and reconstituted protein . . . Another brick in her foundation to steady herself. What was ahead could be as bad or worse as what was behind, but at least she’d get to try civilian noodles.
“See you down the way.” She shoved her hands in her pockets to keep from touching the carefully fastened hair on her head, and stepped further down the landing bridge.
“I think it’s up, actually?” Caytil hesitated behind her, then the vibration of her movement joined Talinn’s.
“Along the way, then,” Sammer called, with a noise almost a laugh, and then Talinn slid into the crush of people in the walkway and could do nothing but move forward.
It’s like those fungus clouds on Discar. You’re an eddy. You move with the crowd.
“How does anything get done? I’ll need to turn—”
The screens. I’m dialing up your hearing. Don’t jump or stumble.
“I don’t stumble.”
If you stumble here, all the medkits in the universe won’t help.
“Reassuring.” It wasn’t so bad, once she was in it. She could only truly see the ten people closest to her—unless she looked up, or over, or too much around. And they weren’t all crammed together, touching. Most people walked at least a hand’s length apart from each other, the walkway broader across than her tank.
The station was run by a supposedly independent coalition of merchant interests. Talinn hadn’t imagined the possibility existed of being independent, but money had to move freely somewhere for the UCF and IDC to continue to make more of it. The lack of control over who, exactly, was on the station at any given time was on purpose. Everyone paid their fees, so the trading companies got their cut, and not knowing who was there at any given time gave all the powers that be plausible deniability. Neutral ground was best at being neutral with anonymity.
She and Bee had worked out their station path while Pajeeran Fall made its slow maneuvering into the docking rings that surrounded the station. Sitting with the maps of the station had made the process misleadingly straightforward, but Talinn held the plan in the forefront of her thoughts like a talisman from a baby story. An antijinx. As long as she remembered it, she couldn’t possibly get lost—
“We’re not on the path we marked out, are we?” Her head swiveled as she stayed with the crowd, watching a turnoff from the walkway marked “Anvia WZ.” There had been no such thing, or even a naming convention like it, in the schematics they’d poured over.
Negative. But we’ll take the bulk of this curve, turn off into the first tube with a silver outline, and follow it to another hub. Then we can—
“This looks nothing like the schematics. How do you know?” Talinn’s stomach roiled, but she told it noodles would help, and pushed on.
How did I save us all from a defense array?
“Other Talinn gave you more than codes?”
I—no. It doesn’t feel like that? Bee made a flat noise. Fun fact, if someone attacks us here, these walkways shouldn’t be hard to collapse.
“That isn’t what I’d define as fun. Especially given I’m on these walkways.”
No, you’d jump to the support structure—there’s one every two minutes at this pace. The chaos would be excellent cover.
“How likely is it that we’ll be attacked here, you think?”
Unlikely. Sammer sticks out more than us.
“I imagine Lei has a plan to counter that.”
We all have many plans.
“Not me. Just the one.”
We can’t run off and join the Spacies.
“Says you.” Talinn stopped short as the crowd in front of her parted around a clump of humans arguing in the middle of the walkway. She stared for a moment, then realized she was about to become part of the roadblock and sidestepped. Before she could comment that there was relatively little cursing at the people in the way, part of the argument reached her lowered hearing.
“—machine-twisted piece of greasy waste—”
“—shove your end hole on the pointy end of a—”
“—too much tech in your head, you need a—”
“Tech in their head?” Her steps slowed, but her pace was already taking her around a curve, and the push was very much one way. “What was that about?”
Empty humans yelling about embedded screens in someone’s tiny brain?
“Or they use us for their insults.”
Not “us” because they don’t know any of us.
“You know what I mean.”
I think you’re jumping at nothing, this time. Bee hummed, then prodded before Talinn could reply. Take the next turn.
“I was paying attention, you know.”
I’m going to put your hearing back on, but I’ll do it little by little.
“I thought you didn’t think they were talking about us.”
We should stay aware.
“Of hundreds of thousands of people all at once.” Talinn ducked her chin as she worked her way across the moving people, falling in with a line peeling off toward a brighter corridor to the left.
Of the two hundred in your immediate area at any given time.
“Two hundred and sixteen, if you want to be precise.”
Now you’re showing off.
“Feeling a lot better.” She followed along the shifting tide as though she’d moved through a seething mass of breathing, writhing, unadapted people her whole life. “I guess you can get used to anything with the right mindset.”
You want smell back too, then?
“Almost anything. You rude creature, you.” Talinn shoved her hands in two of the deep pockets of her jacket. The garment was bulky, giving her body a different heft, with a plethora of inside pockets and all manner of gear tucked and sewn inside it. The material itself was light, meaning it didn’t stand out that she wore it amidst the heat of so many bodies without sweating.
“Not that anyone is looking at me too closely.”
We operate as though they are. At all times.
“I know, I know.”
With her ears closer to fully functional, she noticed more muttering around her. A susurrus of it, hard to trace to any one individual.
Comms?
“None of them are talking to . . . each other?”
Except the people yelling the loudest.
“Except them.” Talinn longed to reach out to Caytil or Sammer, but comms could be tracked, monitored, recorded, and later searched in a way they couldn’t risk. Unlike her connection with Bee, there was too much possibility of external interference or awareness.
Not that such a thing seemed to bother the hordes of people around her, all of whom seemed involved in their own conversations. Though the sheer volume made it unlikely their personal conversation would be tracked and followed up on, it still seemed utterly careless.
What would it be like to live such a life?
“Record them.”
What?
“Record them and store it. We’ll analyze once we have you docked up properly.”
I have more than enough power with your brain and my system to—
“We have to focus on the tasks at hand and you know it.”
I won’t be able to get both sides of conversations, not without worming into the network they’re using here—and even a rudimentary AI running the station would note my interference.
“I’m not convinced they would—clearly you learned more from Other Bee than you’re saying.” Talinn’s lips curled, and she wiped her expression before lifting her head and taking in the new area she’d turned off into. “Thank you for not arguing.”
I’m busy being proud of you.
“For figuring out the obvious?”
For the idea of recording the conversations around us. At the very least it will give us insight into what civilians talk about. Your being quiet as you walk probably isn’t as unusual as it looks in this particular crowd, but better to be prepared.
“And at best we’ll get a better view of what people think of the war. Clones. AIs. Compare it to what the Spacies told us. What other us are saying.”
See? Proud.
“You know that’s not distracting me from my other point.”
Bee didn’t answer, but Talinn hadn’t expected one. The turn-off conduit had a narrower walkway, and while there were objectively less people, it certainly felt busier.
The sides were lined with businesses—both doors with brilliant, clashing signage that led into offices, shops, and establishments, and stalls staggered between the entrances. The stalls were a riot of goods, gears, and goodness knew what else—some were all but empty, others spilling over, a few had lines, one had a youngish kid dozing over a pile of fabrics.
None of these look like anything helpful.
“No noodles either.” Talinn sighed, allowed her pace to slow to match those of the people around her. This seemed a more casual area, with browsing allowed and more interpersonal conversations, not single-sided comm-based ones.
She decided she wouldn’t stick out no matter what she’d been wearing, given the extreme range displayed now that she could focus more on individuals. From nearly naked to layered and strapped, intricately intense hair styles to shaved heads, piercings and endless stretches of smooth skin, flashing tattoos and bodies streaked in colors Talinn was fairly sure even genetic editing couldn’t create.
“See, could have left my head bare . . .” She scratched the back of her neck, trailing close to the edge of the wig, and Bee sheared metal at her.
And how would you hide your port?
“Nya had a dozen—”
Nya had one, and it’s pretty clear she never leaves the ship unless there’s an extreme emergency and she has an X in her head. The Spacies had three each, and they’re less likely to leave than her.
“Bee . . .” Talinn’s steps slowed, her eyes fixed on a sign ahead. “What do you suppose that’s for?”
It’s not noodles.
Three doors ahead, a strobing yellow-and-blue light chased itself around a sign without words, only a dark outline of three interlocked shapes. Each of the shapes looked like a stylized version of a port connection, though each was slightly different.
“But it can’t be for Eights, can it?”
Listen.
“—should shut it down. Bring the split nuts right in here. I know! Or what if the IDC or UCF has a problem with it? Bad enough the warships dock here, can’t have—” The tall woman, speaking rapidly on her comm, stalked out of range before Talinn could catch the rest, but more than one person had something to say, seemingly about the shop.
“Passing it right now. Still here.” An older man grunted and shook his head, then made single syllable noises in response to whatever the person on the other end of his conversation was saying.
“I’m going in!” This a younger man, walking with three other people of similar age. His hair was close cut, his clothing formfitting and luridly colored, and his motions jittery. His friends were similarly attired, though two with far more forgiving pants, and the young woman with them laughed.
“Go on then, Sim. I wanna see if they’ll port you right up.”
“Nah, it’s tattoos, not real ports. Only the military—”
“My people been talking about it for weeks, nah. I’m sick of the rumors, and with you, Sim. Let’s go in.” The tallest of the group grabbed the first speaker’s arms and they charged toward the door.
Which flashed, blue and yellow, and didn’t open for them.
“Maybe it is for Eights.” Talinn scratched along her jawline and drifted off the main walk, pretending interest in a stall draped with gorgeous fabric and staffed by a woman whose attention was more on her sewing than potential customers. Sigmun’s careful stitches surfaced in her mind and she rubbed the back of her neck, snatched her hand back from the tickle of hairs, and swallowed back a groan. “Maybe that’s why the backup path you had ran us this way.”
I suppose we have to go somewhere when we retire. Bee didn’t sound convinced, but then Talinn wasn’t either. Private citizens or no, a retired Eight would still have an absurd amount of proprietary tech—given they were proprietary tech—that neither the IDC nor UCF would want to fall into anyone else’s labs. Retirement was meant to be cushy and sweet, but in limited locations, like the heart of one’s service territory. Not a neutral station overflowing with both curious and judgmental humans.
“Probably just a front, not a real place.” The girl laughed again, tossing long hair that shimmered with some sort of product. Talinn touched her own scalp, still surprised to feel strands instead of skin, and wondered in the briefest of passing if sparkles would help. “Or getting interest before they open another club or something.”
“It’s not an entertainment level though.” Sim frowned up at the flashing sign. “This is public goods.”
“You know the levels aren’t as neat as they used to be. My grand complains about it all the time.” The tallest boy didn’t sound any more convinced than Bee or Talinn, but he drifted back toward the girl. “Could be anything.”
“Maybe it’s for recruitment.” Sim reached out a hand toward the door, short of touching it. The light didn’t brighten, but Talinn tensed all the same.
“They don’t recruit AIs, gummer. They grow them.” The girl stepped toward Sim, then crossed her arms and shifted her weight to stick out a hip. “C’mon, I’m hungry.”
Sim turned back toward her, clearly torn, and Talinn busied herself examining a vibrant purple scarf that shimmered much like the girl’s hair. Maybe she could tie it around her wig and her neck, add another layer of protection between her port and the world.
With what exchange?
Which pulled Talinn back to the moment at hand. It didn’t matter what was behind that door, because either it wouldn’t open for her, and she’d stick out for trying, or it would, and she’d stick out worse. Either way, she had a limited amount of funds—Spacies were no more equipped with easy-to-spend civilian money than Eights were, and anything that could be traced could be a problem. She had a limited amount of physical credits, and while Jeena was sure she could finagle more money out of the station’s system given time, that posed risks they hadn’t yet decided were worth it.
“Other us could have shared more information. Or untraceable accounts.”
I don’t think other us wants us able to be independent of them any more than the UCF does.
Talinn had to admit that was true—and fair, because if she were trying to wrangle herself, or someone very like her, keeping them in a tight collar wasn’t a bad idea.
Didn’t make it chafe any less.
The young people had descended into the sort of elbowing and shoving that allowed for quite a bit of groping and giggling, and Talinn drifted off from the stall without a single interaction with its occupant. Maybe the outside world wasn’t so bad.
She dismissed the thought as fast as it occurred to her—the last thing she needed was another jinx—but it was far too late.
One of the young people had jostled another into the door, and the light of it flared bright—so bright Bee did something to her eyesight to protect it—and then went out.
Talinn’s shoulders hitched, prepared for the alarms, but there was no noise. The crowd stilled, something like an indrawn breath, and then the girl started to scream.
Three of the youths were left standing—the screaming girl, the tall boy who joined her, and the third mostly silent one, visibly shaking. The first one that had approached the door had crumpled to the ground. Unmarked, but unmoving.
Well, this isn’t going to make things any easier for us.
“What happened?” The previously silent woman in the stall jumped forward and grabbed Talinn’s arm. “Did you see?”
Instinctively, her arm tensed, shoulder joint twisting. Weight shifted to her other side, and her other arm snapped up. Talinn froze before she completed the maneuver, and put her hand to her mouth instead, as though she were shocked by the scene and the sudden touch. Not as though she were about to break away and throw a ridged hand into the other woman’s throat in order to crush her windpipe and incapacitate her. Nothing of the sort.
Very smooth.
“I didn’t, I—”
Is he unconscious or dead? Everyone is yelling, no one is going to check.
“Should we see if he’s—”
“No!” The woman shook Talinn’s arm, then dropped her hand, shaking her head rapidly. “They infected him!”
“They?” She tilted her head toward the door and the growing scene. “Who are they?”
“Machine people. They are moving into all the stations, tempting the young people.”
Rude.
“Machine people? Like . . . like the ones that fight for . . .” Bugs in a string, she didn’t know how to talk to civilians. Surely unadapted people knew about the AITs, but did they casually refer to IDC and UCF, or one, or neither?
“What?” The woman glanced sidelong at her, then shook her head in dismissal. “No. They grow those ones, like plants. These are trying to get new blood to feed their machine god.” She made a noise low in her throat and turned her face sharply to the side as though she were going to spit. She didn’t—in the infinitely recycled spaces of a station, that had to be frowned on—but the sentiment communicated clearly.
“Machine god?” Talinn’s ability to rapidly analyze information stuttered to sludge with this level of unconnected information.
“Where are you from?” She didn’t wait for an answer, her gaze fixed on the cluster of people ahead of them. “They say the war would be over, if we just let the machines run it. The more people can be like programs, the better the galaxy will be.”
“How under the skies would that work?”
The body of young Sim twitched, and the crowd of people moved back like they were interconnected. Talinn stepped forward, then checked herself and waited to hear the woman’s answer.
“Your guess is as good as any. They only share with their own. But they infect . . .” She gestured, her hands lifting and sketching out a vague human shape. “That boy will never be the same again. You’ll see.”
I think the door just shocked him. Bee hummed, and Talinn craned her neck to get a better view—easier now with the people leaving a wider space around Sim. I can’t see how it would have infected him with anything.
“A program like Other Bee sent to you? Or that voice sent to Cece?” Talinn rubbed the side of her neck as she subvocalized, though it seemed highly unlikely anyone here would have something that could pick up her conversation with Bee.
You’re giving this seller woman too much credit. Sounds like weird human stories to me, nothing based in actual reality.
Sim twitched again, then groaned and pushed himself up. Most of the people stepped back again, but his friends hovered. The tall one leaned down and extended a hand, though he stopped short of touching the other boy.
Shocked. Alive. Probably as weird and normal as he was before. Also we should go.
“I’ll be sure to stay out of the way of machine people,” she said aloud, and the woman made another noise—this one more approving—and inclined her head. Talinn eased away, giving the gathered humans as much of a wide berth as she could manage without bumping into the other side of stalls, and kept her head down and shoulders hunched.
People still called questions, but they didn’t seem aimed at her, and she increased her pace and took the turns Bee recommended, until the noise and traffic around her normalized.
“Civilian life is . . .”
We don’t have enough information to finish that sentence. Or not finish it definitively—I can put six different words in there and they’d all fit.
“None of those words would be entirely positive, would they?”
They absolutely would not.