Gudsriki (17 page)

Soon she forgot his generous help in escape and awarded him a place in her mind just short of Mishka as an adversary. When Violet was back, they would head north and destroy both of them. Not that Violet would ever be back. She erased the thought.

 

 

T
HE
FIRE
was everywhere, across the rock walls, across the buildings, burning hotter than any natural fire. It flickered in shapes, in waves, in tornadoes. And it burned him.

The pain was excruciating. He screamed with what little he had of a voice.

“Think of it as practice,” she told him. “You'll be burning in hell for all eternity. This is just a taste of what's to come.”

“Put me out, damn you!”

“Say please.”

“Please!”

She extinguished him. She was certain she had mastered the technique.

He breathed heavily, so heavily the breath threatened to rupture his trachea.

“You're welcome,” she taunted.

He caught his breath and spoke. “What are you going to do with it?”

“Whatever I want.” She smiled.

“What are you going to do with her?”

“She's free. Escaped. I'm not going to do anything with her.”

“Why did you let her escape?”

She stared at him with pursed lips. “She'll tear herself apart, ruin herself, condemn herself to utter insanity, and when I see her again, I'll just blow away the ashes and take what she thought was hers.”

He thought for a moment. And then he understood.

“You stole my idea, you bitch.”

“File a copyright complaint.”

“Whatever you tried, you didn't do it half as well as me.”

“I didn't need to. She was already ruined. I just gave her the last push she'll need to suffer a worse fate than any other survivor of your apocalypse. Now, I really must be going. I have a world to bring to Christ.”

“Forget Christ, bring them to me. Tell them to engineer me out of this hole.”

“I like you right where you are, Veikko.”

“Fuck you, Mishka.”

She winked at him and started up the walkway.

 

 

T
HE
ARMY
wasn't happy to see Vibeke again. She marched onto their base without permission and demanded to see Dr. Niide. They told her to go to hell. She reminded them she could kill them all. They explained they didn't know where he was.

She knew he'd have left a note, something for Valkyries. She sent her Tikari around his former station and looked through its eyes in every mode. She found it in urochrome differentiation mode, a mode that nearly nothing but Tikaris could view. He'd used the pissweed to write a message. It said one word—Maeshowe.

She sailed immediately, and the command staff breathed a sigh of relief that she'd left so quickly.

She landed at Finstown. The mainland was like heaven. As it was when she'd been there before the attacks, it remained untouched. Homes, families. She walked among them through the town, then on to Maeshowe, where she found the doctor set up in an old tomb. She began unloading her equipment, weapons and armor.

“What is that?” asked Niide.

“The lipid drives,” she stated honestly.

“You brought the lipid drives from Valhalla? Why?”

“Violet's memories are in there.”

“Uselessly so. We should destroy the drives.”

“You can if you want. I know I'm not getting her back.”

“Very good. Now we—”

“Though you could regrow her body, couldn't you?”

“No, we have no growth chamber. And there would be no purpose. Why grow a body when we have no brain?”

“I could use a warm pillow.”

“Wulfgar…. He had a great idea, you know, keeping her body as you said. Simple AI, and it screamed and cowered. He could torture it, have intercourse with it, sleep upon it, or leave it on his wall for decor. Shall I do the same for you? What would you like me to program the corpse to do?”

“I know it's sick.”

“And dangerous. Wulfgar's tried to strangle him when the genuine article broke in.”

“Well, I don't have to worry about the genuine article now, do I?”

“You're far from the first Valkyrie to beg me to replace a lost teammate or lover or both.”

“And you never have?”

“I'm not a psychiatrist, but I know it's important to move on.”

“Why?”

“For your health.”

“We're all gonna die of radiation in a few years.”

“In a few more without it. We all die, mmm. Precious little time in life, Vibeke, don't waste it on the past.”

“The past was better than the future can ever be.”

“I must admit, that may now be true.”

“So what could you do? Could you make me a toy like Wulfgar's?”

“Have you no shame at all?”

“I've been eating rapists.”

“Yes, given the proper equipment, I could make you a toy like his.”

“How advanced an AI?”

“I have Alopex in my suitcase.”

“You could put Alopex in Violet's body?”

“I wouldn't recommend it.”

“Why not?”

“When you put a computer program into a neural network, it functions as a brain. That means it can change its mind.”

Vibeke knew that all too well from Sal. Sal with a neural network. A Tikari with a brain.

“What could you do with her Tikari's AI? I know they can hook into neural nets. Sal did and—and he killed Violet, but it worked. They're compatible.”

“Mmhmm. Do you really want a human being with the mind of a weapon around you, capable of free will?”

“Maybe… if I can fuck it.”

Niide snorted. “Certainly every gynoid since the 1950s has been designed for that. But I don't think you'd be satisfied with a Tikari that resembles your former lover. Tikaris are not user friendly. Given human form one would likely spend its time spying on you and recording your every move.”

“Violet did that too.”

Niide slowly shook his head, disappointed. “End this humor. A Tikari is a weapon. You just told me a Tikari with a neural network is what killed her in the first place, hmm? I cannot imagine a more dangerous person.”

“Violet.”

“She was not all that and a bag of chips, Vibeke. She broke your cheek and tried—”

“I know, I was there.”

“She made a victim of you, Vibeke.”

Vibs stood. “The hell she did. You old fucking men and your bullshit observations. You told Alf and almost got her k-killed. But you didn't ask me. I'm not a fucking victim, and she wasn't a monster. Well, okay, maybe she was a monster, but you have no idea what a love spat looks like between two Valkyries let alone two women.”

“I know what a zygomatic bone looks like, and yours was inside out.”

“You arrogant ass! I've read Ernest Jones, and you've got a god complex that would make Jesus blush.”

“A god complex?”

“You think just because you control life and death that you're a god.”

“Yes, I'm sure that's the definition of a god.”

“So create me a new Violet.”

“I can't. I can make you a Tikari in a Violet suit.”

“What about her backup?”

He sighed. “You were one of the smartest Valkyries in the ravine. I don't know how you can be so plainly idiotic, Vibeke.”

“How is that idiotic? We have a backup of her brain right here.”

“We have a backup of her memories up until your Project Daunting. That's hardly her brain.”

“What are we but a collection of memories?”

“We are personalities. We are the minds shaped by those memories.”

“So if you plugged them into a fresh brain, what would you get?”

“A brain full of memories. We are more than the sum of our parts, Vibeke. Do you know what a soul is?”

“Religious bullshit.”

“In the old sense, but the word can aptly describe the
je ne sais quoi
that lurks between those memories. That makes sense of them. That uses them, recites them to itself. The part of you that hates me right now. The part of you that misses Violet. Tell me, do you love her because you have a collection of memories of her? Or is it something more? I could transplant those same memories into myself, but I'd not love Violet. Because I am not my memories. And Violet was not hers. She contained them. They shaped her. But they are not her, Vibeke. Violet is dead.”

“But what would you get? Her Tikari…. Veikko's had his personality; hers would have hers. That with her memory. What would that be?”

Niide thought for a moment. A strange flash of regret crossed his face.

“You are acting from a skewed perspective right now. You've lost someone you love. It's natural you would want them back. But you have two paths: You can move on as people have moved on since the dawn of time, be healthy and grow, fall in love again or fight or play or simply live; or you can weld yourself to the cause of your pain. Make your loss come to life and stick around. Toy with it, make love to it, every second knowing that it's not really her.”

“Choice two, let's do it.”

“Even if I could, and I'd need a multitude of parts from Valhalla and beyond to do it, consider the
Bride of Frankenstein
.”

“What about her?”

“She didn't love the monster back.”

“Violet would love me.”

Niide's voice grew even slower. “For the hundredth time, Vibeke, Violet is dead. I'd be creating a walking corpse with a simulation of Violet running it from a neural network. We don't use neural networks because they think for themselves. Even the synapses grown for Tikari are cleftless to prevent independent thought. Imagine your pain if I built you this abomination and it loathed you. Became your nemesis.”

“Nothing with Violet's memories could do that.”

Niide mumbled calmly, “Do you think I'm talking to you about a hypothetical situation? Do you not think with all my tools and skill I didn't try to bring back my wife when she died? Beth, Vibeke. From Berkanan team. Haven't you read the history of our ravine a hundred times?”

“It didn't say you tried—”

“It said she died on a mission on Luna and her brain was unsalvageable. But it lists missions for her after that. And it lists her betrayal of the ravine, her murder of Balder's team, her attack on me. She may be a footnote to you, but I saw a thing that was not my wife kill her closest friends. I saw her kill our son. And when Balder killed the abomination, I saw her die again. I saw it because what I built was not my wife. It was a foolish attempt. The act of a deranged man, suffering from loss and forcing himself to suffer more. And now you ask me to build you a fake Violet?” he asked, sounding more tired than ever. “I'd not condemn you to my fate if you begged me for a thousand years. Now go away. Shoo.”

Vibeke had no idea the events she'd glossed over were such a disaster to the ravine, to Dr. Niide. She had no idea what she was asking him to do. And until she asked for it, she hadn't known herself that it was what she wanted.

But like he said. It was over. Done. He couldn't even if he wanted to. Though she was still surprised as to why.

“What kind of medical facility has no growth chamber?”

“This one. A makeshift wartime one. End of line.”

Vibeke sat on the lipid drives. They made a nice chair, all they'd ever make.

“So that's it.”

“That's it.”

She thought, only tangentially.

“Where would there even be one? A growth chamber I mean.”

“Vibeke….”

“No, no, I just mean who would even have one of those?”

Niide stared at her.

“There was one at Unst in the Shetland Islands, but we had to abandon it when we fell back. They've taken it now.”

“The Wolf base?”

“Intel suggests their base has tripled in size, with more coming. Ulver is committing more and more to this archipelago.”

“And the growth chamber, it'll look like the one in Valhalla?”

“Goddammit, Vibeke.”

“No, I mean, I'm just wondering. It would look like the one in Valhalla?”

“It's likely. Now stop thinking of it.”

“Right. Not thinking of it, unless it would be useful to UKI, I mean.”

“It would, but—”

“But it's not like they'd just give it to me.”

“Certainly not. Vibeke, let's speak about—”

“I mean, I could ask. There would be no harm in asking.”

“What on earth could make you think they'll give it to you?”

“I'll kill them all if they don't.”

“Then I'll destroy the drives myself.”

“I won't let you.”

“Vibeke, I will not allow you to massacre hundreds to save—to
create
one life that should not live.”

“Then here's a deal. If they give it to me by peaceful negotiations, I'll come back and you'll do what I want. If they deny me, I won't ask twice. I'll give up. I'll leave you alone. I'll leave the base alone. I'll grow up and move on.”

“Deal,” Niide said with certainty. “If they say no, you give this up, absolutely. And sure, in the extraordinarily unlikely nigh impossible event the opposing military simply
gives
you their irreplaceable equipment, I'll happily do—”

She was gone, the medical pogo with her.

 

 

A
S
W
ULFGAR
sat reading
The Clans, Septs & Regiments of the Scottish Highlands
, Hati entered the study.

“Gonna paint your ships with a battle tartan?”

Wulfgar looked up and smiled.