Liaden Universe [19] - Alliance of Equals - eARC (4 page)

Padi followed the form demonstrated, bearing down until her muscles ached, refusing to allow herself to snap into a series of kicks, or to simply collapse crosslegged to the mat and have done.

“Very good,” Lina said, and smiled directly into Padi’s eyes. “Now, breathe in, and pivot from center, keeping your ball directly before your heart…”

CHAPTER FOUR

Tarigan

In Jump

They were in Jump, en route to Bieradine, and the pilot had given copilot Tolly Jones leave to grab a snack, and stretch his legs. There was ’mite in the galley, so he added hot water and stirred up a mugful. Unlike some spacers, it wasn’t his drink and/or food of preference, but it had its uses as a quick pick-me-up, which it happened he needed. The pilot was pushing them, just a little, nothing bone and blood couldn’t put up with, stipulating that bone and blood was what you’d call
in form
.

Which he wasn’t, quite.

He swallowed the ’mite as fast as he could, put the mug in the washer and exited the galley, turning left, to take a little walking tour of
Tarigan
.

She was a tidy ship, augmented in interesting ways, which Pilot Tocohl had already drilled him on. The pilot wouldn’t suffer one bit of damage if he did something stupid that breached the hull, but he’d be a dead man, and it was courteous of her to notice his disability in that regard and take steps first off to be sure he was safe on the ship.

His tour ended, as it had on his three other walkabouts, at the alcove that held the autodoc. He paused at the side of the single unit, palm flat against the opaque hood, and frowned at the status board.

Haz—his former partner, in Port Security, Hazenthull nor’Phelium—had taken a couple hits for him, which normally would’ve made as much difference to her as getting slugged with a marshmallow. She was that big, and that tough. Too bad for her that the particular sort of marshmallows she’d caught had come out of the gun of one of his late…directors, and they’d been poisoned. It was a particularly nasty poison the directors employed, which he knew from personal experience, but him and the pilot’d gotten Haz into the ’doc plenty quick. He’d expected her to be up and around by now.

The good news was that the ’doc had consistently reported that she was on the mend. In fact, the end-of-treatment display was finally lit up this time. He leaned close to have a look.

Fourteen hours ’til the hood came up. He patted the top of the ’doc softly, as if Haz might feel his hand and take some comfort from knowing he had her back.

Just like old times.

He patted the ’doc once more and left the alcove, heading for the bridge.

* * *

“How fares the Explorer?” the pilot asked from her station.

She was a sight for tired eyes, was Pilot Tocohl. Smooth and personable and specifically nonthreatening, the curve of her gleaming white chassis suggesting something feminine; the smallness of it hinting at vulnerability. She moved herself about the ship by floating a few inches above the deck plates—nothing so crass, or noisy, as wheels or skis. He hadn’t worked out if her motivating force was antigrav, magnetics, or a tightly focused and utterly silent air pad. It seemed rude to ask.

It was Tolly’s opinion, as an expert in the field, that there wasn’t the least need for Pilot Tocohl to sit station. Pilot Tocohl had direct access to all ship’s systems right there inside her pretty little head, or he was a three-nosed Andulsin frog.

“She’s got a healed-by date,” he said in answer in his pilot’s question. “Fourteen hours from now this bridge is gonna be full up with big, stubborn woman, who’ll be wanting to talk to her captain, stat.”

“I shall be very glad to see her, and in such condition,” Pilot Tocohl said composedly. “In the meantime, I wonder, Pilot, if you will answer some questions for me.”

“Do my best,” he said, like his stomach hadn’t kind of cramped up, hearing that. “Understand that I don’t know the answers to all the questions.”

“Oh, yes, I do understand that,” she said. “Before we begin, let me request that you not lie to me. If you do not wish to answer a question, simply refrain from doing so.”

“All right, Pilot,” he said, and slipped into his chair. “I’m curious myself, though. The—my contact, who approached me about this project…he has my credentials.”

“Indeed, your credentials are…impressive,” she said. “And you are undeniably resourceful. Our mutual contact was quite clear that you are a mentor of great talent. The most talented in your field, he said.”

“To be fair, the field isn’t that big, the Complex Logic Laws bein’ what they are.”

That the pilot was herself a violation of the Complex Logic Laws went without saying. His being hired as copilot was to cover for her. She was a prototype, so the script went, some kind of a cybermech pilot, sophisticated, but stopping short of illegal. Which was why she sat station. He was along for the ride, to observe, to make notes, and to abort her if something went wrong.

However, his contract had two sections to it, and the second part engaged his services in evaluating and, if possible, socializing, a newly realized AI, who had come to Tolly under unspecified, but difficult, circumstances, unmentored.

He didn’t have anything against sitting copilot, but he might not have taken the contract just to give Pilot Tocohl cover, seeing that his own blanket had lately developed a considerable number of holes. The second part of the contract, though…that had grabbed his attention and it hadn’t let go.

Never mind that the Complex Logic Laws made Pilot Tocohl and all her kind out to be rogue devices, bent on destroying human life. If encountered, according to the CLL, an AI was to be confined, deactivated, or destroyed; nobody was to take it into their heads to
build
one for any reason whatsoever, under pain of death.

It hadn’t always been that way. Truth said, it wasn’t that way, even now. AIs got born…not as a frequent thing, but often enough that mentors were needed. They worked the underside, but not one mentor Tolly’d ever met or heard of had minded that.

Pilot Tocohl turned toward him, the flat screen at the apex of her slender core column showing the shadow of a face, smiling a shadow smile.

“The field may be small, but that does not negate the fact of your mastery, Tolly. Our contact praised you in the highest terms. I have no questions there.”

Tolly took a breath.

“Where do you have questions, then?” he asked her, but he already knew.

There was a small pause, as if Pilot Tocohl needed a moment to gather her thoughts. Tolly sighed gently.

“A sigh, Pilot Tolly?”

“I was thinking I’d like to meet the mentor who had the teaching of you. I could learn a thing or two.” He paused, and added, just to be clear, “No disrespect, Pilot.”

“Certainly not. If you think such a meeting would be of use, I will ask my mentor if he will see you, when this mission is done.”

“I’d like that, thanks.”

“You are very welcome. And now, I fear, my questions.

“What are you, Tollance Berik-Jones?”

That was asked well enough that he was persuaded she already knew. No point in lying, then, or in remaining silent. “I’m a manufactured human, Pilot. The
human
’s so I don’t offend the Complex Logic Laws.”

“There are also laws against manufacturing humans, I believe.”

“A lot harder to prove ‘manufactured.’”

“I see.”

There came another pause, as if the pilot were considering his answer.

“Are you the Uncle’s?”

He blinked. Hadn’t seen that one coming.

“No, Pilot,” he said, not surprised that she knew the Uncle—and that she expected the same of him. People on the underside knew their neighbors, that was all.

“This vulnerability of yours, which you have been working to…limit. How much danger does it bring to our ship, and our mission?”

Well, that
was
the question, wasn’t it?

“Pilot—I don’t know. The pool of available directors is pretty small.” He allowed himself a moment of grim humor. “Smaller, now, thanks to Haz. Even if they mean to have me, no matter what, it’s going to take time for word to get back to the school; time to send another team out; and then they have to find us. I’m not saying it’s impossible that they will…”

“I understand,” she said, after his words ran out. If she’d been human, Tolly had the notion she’d’ve sighed right then.

“This vulnerability—what is its nature? An implant? A construction? Something biologic?”

He shook his head. “Pilot, I don’t know.” He hesitated, then decided it wouldn’t do any harm to tell her. “I figured to steal the specs, back when I was young and really stupid. I can tell you that the directors keep them locked up tight. And that they’re stinting of praise when one of the students shows initiative and has a go at the locks.”

“I see. Describe to me, please, the effects of control.”

“My will is overridden; my…self is submerged. I am compelled to do such things as the operator deems necessary. When I have completed a mission, I am allowed to return to…what I believe to be myself.” His felt his lips quirk. “This may be a flaw in the system.”

“Perhaps so. One would assume that there was a reason for it, however.”

“Yes’m. Could I ask you a favor, copilot to pilot?”

“Yes.”

“If it seems to you that I’ve fallen…victim to my vulnerability, will you please kill me?”

Her face came fully visible for an instant, before the pilot angled the screen downward and tipped slightly forward in a bow.

“Yes,” she said. “I will.”

It soothed him to hear her say it, which was maybe stupid. Still, he figured her good for the promise; whoever’d designed Pilot Tocohl had been uncommon clever;
she
wouldn’t be caught in any whistling glamor.

It came to him then that he had two solid allies, standing at his back, given what Haz had already done for him and that thing the pilot promised. Two allies; people he could depend on, without question.

He couldn’t remember, in all his life, having so much as one ally, and he hoped, his eyes pricking a little as he looked to his screens—he very much hoped that he would stand just as firm, for them.

“One question more, Pilot Tolly.”

He drew a breath, and turned back to face her.

“Yes’m?”

“I wonder if you have heard a…rumor, let us say. Presently, I hold it no higher than that—a rumor of a very old AI recently wakened. The Uncle may be in it—there’s that rumor, also—but surely he would be, so it’s no surprise, there.”

An ancient AI waking—
reawaking
, it would be. And if it were reawakening, then it had likely fallen asleep due to lack of needed repairs…

The Uncle was well placed to repair such a thing…

Tolly laughed, and shook his head, looking up at the pilot with an apologetic grin.

“I haven’t heard any such rumor, myself, but I’ve been out of the loops, this last while.” He felt his grin widen.

“Sure would be interesting, if true,” he said, and saw an answering grin in the shadows of the pilot’s face.

“It would be,” she said. “Wouldn’t it?”

—•—

A chime sounded.

Shan raised his head, blinking out of an abstraction of First Thoughts. It occurred to him, somewhat distantly, that this was not the first time the chime had sounded.

Or the third.

A quick series of taps saved his document, and cleared the screen. He spun his chair about, and reached for his glass—which was empty.

“Come!”

The door opened and Lina Faaldom stepped through, tiny and definite, brown hair just slightly disheveled, as if she had only now come back inside from a turn in the garden.

He considered her; most especially, he considered the flavor of her emotions: determination wedded to a certain wariness. Determination—certainly, he knew Lina to be a determined woman, a Healer of rare skill; devoted to helping those who were perhaps less determined to achieve and maintain Balance.

Wariness, though…that was not at all like Lina. Oh, she was hardly a fool, and certainly he had seen her frightened a time or two in their long friendship. Caution, he might expect, but wariness…?

“I have disturbed your work,” she said, pausing a mere three paces into the room. “Forgive me, old friend. Tell me when I will be convenient, and I will return at that hour.”

“In fact, your arrival is a happy circumstance, and not only because I’m always pleased to see you,” he said. “I fear that I may have been overthinking something. It will do me good to step away from it and entertain another problem for a time.”

He tipped his head and gave her a half-smile.

“You
do have
a problem for me, don’t you, Lina?”

He expected a laugh; she produced a slightly harried smile.

“I fear so,” she said, drifting forward again, and slipping into the chair.

No, this was not much like Lina. Shan considered her again as she settled herself: determination, wariness, puzzlement.

Well.

“Would you care for wine?” he asked. “I am about to pour for myself, as my stupid glass has come empty. I can’t think how it might have happened.”

That earned a slightly less harried smile, and a small inclination of the head.

“Wine would be pleasant, thank you.”

Lina drank red. He rose and filled two glasses, placing hers on the desk near her hand before he once again took his own chair.

He raised his glass. She raised hers. They drank.

The wine was pleasant, though spiced with increased dismay. He thought he understood that she was unsure of the best way to broach her topic.

“Best to leap in with both feet,” he murmured.

Lina moved her shoulders, neither a shrug nor a shiver. “It seems I must, since I have no facts to lay before you, merely feeling.”

“We are Healers; emotion is the primary tool of our trade.”

Lina sighed, and sipped her wine again. Shan allowed a breath of calm to waft between them, which took only the tiniest of liberties with their long friendship. Unless Lina chose to see it differently, of course.

She smiled slightly.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

She put her glass aside with a tiny click, and raised her eyes to his.

“As we had arranged, Padi came to class and danced
daibri’at
today. I will say immediately that I have had students who were more eager to embrace the art.”

“Was she disrespectful?”

Lina shook her head.