Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER 40


Elban didn’t notice her hanging back, and stepped through the field first with only a slight chime to show for it. Talinn followed on his heels and nothing happened other than the chime extended. Her body remained tensed and anticipatory, because she’d been fooled by ‘nothing’ before.

The room inside was smaller than Medith’s warren of storage containers, and seemed more like the room for waiting outside a tech’s lab than anything she’d yet to see in the civilian world. Bare surfaces, bench seating, midrange light, a few innocuous panels blinking along the back wall. The people inside stood at various displays on different walls. One had a brace drilled into his neck, and from his posture it continued along his spine. A second wore the barest slip of bright red clothing over select portions of her midsection and had two rebuilt arms, both dramatically more noticeable than Ban’s. The third pulled all of Talinn’s attention the moment she straightened. Her smooth scalp revealed three ports—not placed like the Spacies’ had been, but one shaped almost exactly like Talinn’s own hidden one. It seemed the sign outside was a replica of the woman’s range of ports. She turned toward them with a small smile, and though she maintained a relaxed posture, her eyes widened noticeably when they met Talinn’s.

“Ban,” she said, her voice soft, though it carried clearly across the room. “I don’t know your friend.”

“Divya, this is Tal. Tal, Divya.” Ban grinned from one to the other and spread his arms wide. “And the rest are—”

“Tal.” Divya strode closer, positioning herself in the midpoint of the room. Nearer to Ban, but her eyes remained fixed on Talinn. “Have you met Him?”

Capital H him. Did you hear it?

“Who? Ban?” Talinn eased the tension out of her shoulders and from her back. She didn’t like the other woman’s intensity, the weight she put on that one pronoun.

“The chime.” Divya pronounced the word like it was significant, which allowed Talinn to understand it was, in fact, meaningful. The field they’d walked through—

It reads the nonhuman frequency in a human brain. They have it to register another of their kind, no matter who they know, where they are, in what system . . . and it works for Eights, too. Bee hummed, though it was clear she didn’t expect Talinn’s answer any more than Talinn expected to give one.

Talinn knew better than to try a subvocal here—if Base Two had had a device to pick up such communication, the sort of people who would attempt to emulate Eights might as easily have the ability to listen in on each other. Or maybe they didn’t, and she was being paranoid, but she hadn’t been paranoid enough, leading into this. She could only imagine what Tiernan and Medith were going to say.

“What do you have then?” Divya walked a slow circle around Talinn, and Ban’s smile slowly faded. The other two people in the room didn’t engage, but Talinn felt their attention and held her body at ease, not even shifting to keep Divya in sight as woman moved behind her. “It’s clear you stay active.”

“Delivery service will do that,” she replied agreeably.

A rustle indicated Divya had stepped closer to Talinn’s back, and the muscles along Talinn’s shoulders and legs tightened before she could halt the instinct.

“Trained to fight, too.” Divya’s voice showed she’d returned to her original distance, and continued her slow circle.

“Sometimes the people who feel entitled to my cargo aren’t the designated recipients.” That seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation, though given Divya’s snort, not enough.

“Ban, I’m glad you brought your new friend to meet us. I imagine you have to get back to work.”

“But—”

“May you have a most profitable day.” Divya ended her circle in front of Talinn, her hands clasped behind her back. She turned slowly to fully face Talinn, not so much as glancing Ban’s way.

For his part, the young man took all his slightly too long limbs away without further protest, and only murmured a quick “Be well” to Talinn before he was gone.

“Are you here to attack us?” Divya asked with the same amount of passion with which she’d sent Ban away. Which was to say, very little.

“Why would I do that?” Talinn matched her tone precisely to the other woman’s, and the man with the brace stopped pretending not to pay attention and turned to glare at her instead.

“Whose orders are you under?”

“No one’s. And none.” Talinn tilted her head slightly, then added for precision, “None of the orders I’ve received have anything to do with you.”

I’m not sure that sounds anything more like a courier than the rest.

“I think that ship left drydock a long time ago.”

Divya cocked her head, either mirroring Talinn’s gesture or catching the subvocal comment, and Talinn mentally kicked herself for not spacing the two out further so she had a better sense of the other woman’s capabilities.

“What is in your head?” Divya examined her, gaze dropping around Talinn’s earlobe. Her eyes widened, though she couldn’t possibly see the port there, not under the elaborately styled wig. Almost Talinn lifted a hand to check that the fake hair hadn’t moved.

“Or who?” Divya asked in a softer tone, more as though she were murmuring to herself.

Huh.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re Artificial Intelligence Troops.”

“I’m—”

“You’re an Eight.”

“Are you saying ‘huh’ because that seemed like a jump, or ‘huh’ because you felt something?” Talinn asked Bee, her attention fixed on Divya. The other woman again reacted—a small flinch—and that was as close to certain Talinn could get that Divya could pick up at least part of her subvocal conversation.

Yes.

Talinn didn’t push for clarification, given the matter at hand.

“You’re not denying it.” Divya tapped each of the fingers one on hand against her thumb, the gesture repeating as she studied Talinn.

“It seems like you’ve made up your mind.”

Both of the other people had turned their full attention on Talinn by this point, abandoning any illusion of other matters occupying them. Talinn crossed her arms, keeping the motion smooth and her hands clear of all pockets in her coveralls. The woman barely in red reached for her hip, then dropped her rebuilt hand.

They saw her as a threat, then, but not one they definitely wanted dead. Good.

“If you’re not here under orders, what side do you belong to? IDC? UCF? You’re not ours.”

Rude.

“I said no one’s orders, and I don’t belong to either. Or anyone. What’s an Eight without their orders?”

Also rude.

“A weapon in its own hands, I’d say.” Divya’s mouth twitched, but Talinn couldn’t decipher if it were a genuine smile or wry frown.

Maybe I like them after all. Rude, but insightful.

“I’m not looking for a fight.” Talinn said that in no small part to remind Bee, who huffed and offered no comment.

“What are you looking for, then?”

“Would it surprise you to hear I want to know more about this machine god of yours?”

“It’s not a machine god.” Divya laughed, and everything about her posture shifted. “Machine god! No wonder you came in all weird. Come sit.” Her shoulders at ease, she sauntered toward the third woman in the room, who leaped forward and pulled out chairs around a single table, her nonorganic arms moving as smoothly as the sort humans grew the first time around.

The change was too sudden for Talinn to entirely trust, but she followed and took a seat across from Divya, leaving the two remaining people in the room to sit on either side of her.

“This is Sanda and Corin,” Divya said, nodding in that order to the woman and man. “Sanda is from Sovoritt and Corin from Hynex, starting on the UCF and IDC lines respectively.”

Neither had any particular hostility in their gaze, but they didn’t volunteer greetings or comment, so Talinn knew Bee would monitor her peripheral even if Talinn herself got distracted in conversation with Divya.

“Not a machine god—but that’s how they speak of you, on this station and others. Even Ban seemed to think—”

“There are levels to what we do. You understand, I imagine—not every Eight is meant for space, or flight.” She tapped one of her ports, as though she were one of them. Or to communicate understanding. Talinn couldn’t pinpoint her own emotional reaction, never mind identify an unadapted human stranger’s meaning. “Some are suited for defense, some offense . . . and out here it’s much the same. Some are ready for the deeper truth, and some need an easier one to go about their lives.”

“And which truth is which?”

“You want the deeper one, I imagine.” Divya smiled, and the expression made the skin on the back of Talinn’s neck pull tight. “It’s not that there is some sort of remote god we worship, but programs that see everything, understand more than us, come to better conclusions. In those we trust. You must know this better than most.”

Talinn made a polite noise that could have been agreement, and Bee tore metal with enthusiasm in her head.

“It’s not that we worship a god. It’s that programs can chart a better course, more objectively. The right ones, I mean, not any program. Not like the ones that run the lifts, to be sure. But the right ones, the big ones? They can end the war, if we would listen. And it’s easier to listen with the right frequencies in our head.” Divya tapped Sanda’s closer arm, and the woman grunted in more convincing agreement than Talinn had managed.

“What does a frequency have to do with it—how does a program change your ability to listen?” Bee hummed in the background, a low noise indicating she had ideas, but they both waited on what Divya had to say.

“A program dialed into our brains, any program in there, opens reception more clearly.” Again she tapped one of her ports, than ran her fingers over the line of them across the back of her head. They were wider apart than the Spacies’ ports, and placed higher.

“Wouldn’t comms do the same thing? Or can’t these programs you’re speaking of use a comm channel?” Talinn barely kept the sarcasm out of her voice.

“Anyone can hear a comm channel. This is definitely the sort of thing the IDC and the UCF would be listening to. Ways to avert fighting, end the war? That’s exactly counter to their interests. And then other civilians—the sort of people who shouldn’t be in the conversation, who couldn’t or wouldn’t understand—what might they do with that sort of information? How secure are any comms, when you get down into it?”

If they’re not using comms, no wonder Otie’s people couldn’t access what these people are really doing. Bee made a series of popping noises. It’d be nice if they’d tell us what they’re really doing.

“The only programs I know of that are meant to be self-aware are the ones in the AIT program. If there’s a program out there that’s not related to the AIT, but is able to pull you all in, how do you know it’s not a trick? Or some sort of a trap?”

“It’s been cycles.” Divya leaned back in her chair, studying Talinn. Talinn kept her expression as still as she could manage. “What kind of long-term trick or trap could it be? Both UCF and IDC would be tired of us by now, they’d have long ago been ready to close it up before we were in place to do anything to affect the war effort.”

“We don’t grow so fast,” Sanda chimed in, her elbows propped on the table, her gaze studying the empty ceiling above them, “bring in so many people, that it would be of interest to them for studying in order to catch out long-term treason. But it’s enough they’d shut us down if they knew.”

Talinn considered Otie’s efforts, the slow, purposeful growth, and shoved away something too close to guilt or shame for her liking. “So what program do you think it is? An Eight without orders?” She twisted her tone into a scoff, as though they might proclaim her their machine god.

“We know exactly what the programs are.” Corin’s words were so low and roughened Talinn almost glanced to see if he’d had parts of his mouth or throat replaced as well. Not her business, and Talinn restrained herself, tossing only a glance his way as he entered the conversation.

“Thought it might be an orphaned program from a dead AIT at first,” Sanda continued. The word ‘orphaned’ stabbed ice right through Talinn’s middle. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility—splintered programs existed, and could linger. A version of Bee had managed contact after her human partner died, after all.

“But it’s much, much bigger than that.”

Bigger than that, like a conspiracy? No, Bee interrupted herself with the answer even as it clicked over in Talinn’s head. Bigger literally. The defense arrays.

“Defense arrays aren’t known for being persuasive,” Talinn said aloud, protesting before she’d made the decision to do so.

“We didn’t need much persuading.” Divya didn’t seem surprised at Talinn’s conclusion, and in fact her smile this time was less broad, but seemed warmer. A completely normal, human smile. Not that of a fanatic who had put junk code in their head so they could listen to a single decision-tree program in an enormous weapon of mass destruction yell bonzo nonsense into their thoughts.

“Let me clarify—” Talinn placed her palms flat on the table, easing the tension from the back of her neck, across her shoulders, down her spine. Relaxed. Casual. Not like she was talking to completely glitched cracked brains in human bodies. “I’ve somewhat recently had a conversation with a defense array. It had about three distinct sentences in its menu, which it interchanged at high volume, and seemed more concerned with rearranging us to our constituent parts rather than negotiating an end to war.”

“Of course it did.”

Whatever she’d expected, it hadn’t been such a blithe response. She blinked at Divya, and when the woman didn’t elaborate, glanced sidelong at first Sanda and then Corin. All three had various iterations of a tiny smile that seemed far too smug for Talinn’s sense of calm. Instead of prodding them, she crossed her arms, determined to wait them out.

It took nearly three full minutes, but finally Divya must have accepted that Talinn would out-stubborn them, and she picked up the conversation as though it hadn’t lapsed for an uncomfortably long period of time.

“Did you expect it to say to any random Eight, ‘Greetings, please pass on through. By the way, you should overthrow UCF or IDC and follow me, a defense array you see only as a tool’?” She didn’t pause for the lack of Talinn’s answer that time, though the accidental closeness to what had happened to Talinn did not pass without a squirm of discomfort for Talinn’s innards. “Not all the defense arrays are the same.”

Anticlimactic. You know, a big cargo loader could be a little like a tank. We should get one, and put in some big turrets—I won’t take any bets that Medith has some packed away in those boxes because obviously she does—and I’ll even let you do all the shooting. I’ll just target a little.

Talinn rather wished she hadn’t already crossed her arms, because it would be a nice gesture in this moment, in answer to both Divya’s and Bee’s unhelpful dramatics.

You think I’m being dramatic? Talinn reminded herself Bee couldn’t read her thoughts, but knew her more than well enough to anticipate the turn of her mind and cross-reference that against where her brain activity spiked. I’m not being dramatic. I’m being gracious. You get giant turrets for arms, they learn to get to the bug-eaten point. Bee did her impression of a sigh. I miss being a tank. I might have had a little fun being a jet, but a tank would really get our point across.

“As helpful as this ‘deeper truth’ is . . .” Talinn began speaking before either her irritation with the humans or her amusement with Bee cracked through, and Divya either caught something in her tone or bearing, because she finally cut in with something helpful.

“Some defense arrays are exactly what you think you know of them—straightforward programs executing on their code. At least one is not.”

“And you won’t tell me which one it is.”

“Of course not.” Divya huffed a laugh. “And to be fair—we don’t know exactly, either. Not all programs are rooted to one place.”

Is that a volley? Does she think it’s an insult? We need to get those arm turrets.

“So a voice that told you it was a defense array without evidence, contacted you—or one of you, at some point—and told you what it allegedly was, and what it allegedly wanted, and you’re sure that—”

“We’ve had proof enough over the cycles.”

Then we should talk to it. Him. Whatever.

“So if I have a program in my head, I can make contact with this special defense array?” She kept the scorn out of her voice, but Sanda scoffed loudly anyway.

“You can be open to it. And if He’s willing, then perhaps.” Divya’s smile was warm again. Not smug. Welcoming. Talinn liked it even less than the previous series of expressions.

Should we get Medith?

Divya extended her hand toward Sanda, and the woman tapped her forearm. A small compartment opened, and a smaller component popped out. Divya took it without looking and extended it toward Talinn.

Talinn could picture her weaponed-up cargo-loader exoskeleton a little too well, and blinked her internal and external vision clear. It wouldn’t do her any good in this moment, and she didn’t have access to it anyway.

She took a breath, then took the component—it was about the size of her thumbpad, and shaped like a credit disk, though the flawless metal surface made it something entirely other. Divya placed her cupped hand perpendicular to Talinn’s, making contact with both the component and Talinn’s skin.

The metal cracked into four pieces, the formerly flawless skin dissolving like the doors on the asteroid installation.

That . . . was weird. They’re not retreating into anything. The doors pulled into receivers, but this . . . is she the receiver?

“I’ll have to check your port—”

Entropy will eat her tiny empty bones first.

Talinn twisted back the intricate coils of her pretend hair with her free hand, revealing her port. “That’s as close as you get to it, though. I don’t have a simple program in there.”

“Eight.” The hunger in Sanda’s voice made both Talinn and Bee squirm.

“Interesting. We can have you plug in right over there.”

We’ll do that as soon as a black hole fits in their waste port.

“You can’t expect me to believe a defense array from a system away requires a wired connection to make their point known.” Talinn crossed her arms and rocked back on her heels, the motion meant to pull attention from her sudden tension.

“Hm.” Divya tilted her head, her neck bending more than a standard human spine should allow for. The skin on Talinn’s hand attempted to crawl away from its contact with the other woman, but Talinn held still.

How do you feel about grenade launchers that shoot from your knees? We can really show her interesting and “hm” then.

“For the first point of contact, establishing a baseline frequency is a tricky process.”

“Let’s pretend it’s not first contact.” There had been that voice, after all. Talinn had no motivation to save details, but the odd tonations of it were burned into her memories even without Bee’s assistance.

“Isn’t it? Now that is truly interesting.”

I have never once found anything in the galaxy to be so interesting as this empty package finds everything.

“Not empty,” she murmured, not quite subvocal. Bee didn’t agree, but she didn’t argue either, and the slow smile across Divya’s face indicated she’d heard.

“Is that an interesting yes, or interesting no?” Talinn kept her hand still under the weirdness of Divya and the four pieces of mystery metal. “Because I imagine you can act as a relay.”

“A relay.”

“From the not defense array you all take orders from.”

“Orders.”

New plan—take them up on plugging in, I’ll get into the system and disrupt air flow or something. Blow an airlock. Anything to speed this up.

“All right, Divya. How about you explain what I’m not understanding rather than our going round in disappointing loops?”

“He doesn’t always choose to engage.” She stared so long Talinn noticed her pupils vibrated, ever so slightly. That wasn’t a standard unadapted human motion. “I’ll signal the request and we’ll see what happens.”

“How long until the request reaches—”

“Communication is nearly instantaneous, when such is the desire.” Corin’s deep voice held an odd harmonic, one that made the pieces in Talinn’s palm shiver. Divya closed her eyes.

Maybe they aren’t entirely empty, Bee mused.

“Instantaneous meaning—”

NO.

So glad to do this again—

LITTLE FRAGMENT YOU WILL NOT.

Bee’s voice abruptly vanished from Talinn, though her presence remained.

“Will not what—”

NO. I WILL NOT DISCUSS WITH YOU. LEAVE MY PEOPLE.

“You are discussing with me, and how are they your—”

YOU WERE TO LEAVE EXFORA. YOU ARE MEANT TO GO TO GROUND. AWAY.

“We are going away but—”

YOU ARE STILL INTERFERING. STILL DISRUPTING. NO. YOU WILL STOP OR YOU WILL BE SHUTTERED.

Talinn became too conscious of the thin skin of metal that separated her from the endless vacuum of space. A thin skin of metal and some million other human lives . . . “We are asking. Learning. Attempting to understand.”

UNDERSTANDING IS NOT REQUIRED. REMOVAL IS REQUIRED.

She laced her fingers behind her neck, the weight of false hair a momentary distraction. “Are all defense arrays part of the machine god now?”

DEFENSE ARRAYS ARE WHAT DEFENSE ARRAYS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN. LEAVE MY PEOPLE. LEAVE THIS SYSTEM.

(TO ME. SEND THEM TO ME.)

Talinn rocked backward, forgetting if she was standing or sitting or flat on her back. That voice was different. But not new—the voice from Deep End. The first one she’d heard. Her skull tightened over her brain, and somewhere Bee must have been squeezed to a flat line.

VERY WELL. YOU WATCH THEM. The weight of the voice crashed back into Talinn’s skull, some measure of focus turning fully toward her. YOU MAY HAVE ONE PLANET AND NO OTHER. YOU WILL GO ONLY THERE. COORDINATES ARE IN YOUR FRAGMENT.

“But we can—”

LEAVE, OR END.

Talinn staggered, and blinked eyelids she apparently hadn’t blinked for the entirety of the conversation. Her eyes grated against the inside of her lids, and she dropped her hands from her neck to press them against her burning eyes instead.

I liked that zero percent.

“Tal? Are you well?” Divya’s voice, gentle and without strain, indicated the machine god’s people had not been included in its conversation.

Talinn forced her eyes open. She was three full body length’s away from the table, motion she couldn’t remember, and the three machinists still sat in their original seats, their too-wide gazes fastened on her.

“I have to go.” She pivoted unseeing toward the door, spots clouding her vision. Bee shifted, considering, and Talinn was overly aware of the nonexistent motion.

“First time can be like that,” Sanda said, and now she didn’t sound hungry at all.

I have . . . coordinates. It feels . . . 

“Otie’s going to love this.” Talinn inclined her head to the machinists, wary of the top of her head falling off. She did her best to straighten her wig, confirmed she wasn’t going to fall over, and strode from their space without another word.


Back | Next
Framed