The A.I. War, Book One: The Big Boost (Tales of the Continuing Time) (23 page)

Trent was thrown from his chair, slammed up against the far wall. He lay motionless for a moment, then got a hand on the seat of the chair he’d been sitting in and pulled himself toward it.

Trent said softly, “Ow.”

Vance could see the holofield – it cleared abruptly and instead of the controls Trent had been watching, it showed the Chandler estate, drifting and now tumbling slowly around its long axis.

Trent strapped himself into the chair. “I may have miscalculated some of the ... bouncing … we’re about to take. Ah, here we go –”

THE HOUSE TUMBLED through space. A series of explosions rocked it – to the watching Peaceforcers it was just a light show, brilliant white explosions going off in regular pulses …

Later analysis showed that the explosions came in regular succession – in those moments of the tumble when the house was so oriented that the explosion imparted more Earthward velocity to the structure.

The tumble and the explosions continued – and then came an explosion much larger than anything before –

The house shattered and came apart.

THE SHOCK THIS time was even worse. The acceleration pressed Vance back into the impact field, in successive waves of force that passed through Vance and made it hard for him to draw a breath. He grew dizzy and found himself unable to communicate with his battle computer.

Trent, strapped into his seat, had it worse. It knocked the breath from him, left him curled into as much of a ball as the chair’s strapping would permit. He sat in the chair, sucking at the air, trying to get air into his lungs, for what seemed an eternity.

“That,” he gasped finally, “was the armory going.”

Vance was having trouble seeing. He shook his head as much as the impact field would allow. “This house did not have an armory.”

“Not until recently,” Trent agreed. “Not much of an armory, I grant you – just stuff that blows up in a more or less controllable way … Give me a few minutes, I’ll see what I can do about the tumbling. The house has attitude rockets, plus the navigation rockets that were used to move it about when it was originally built here. Oh.” The holo of the house had vanished, was again replace by the control grid –

“The house has broken into three pieces,” Trent said. “I … did not see that coming. Let’s see what we can do about this.” His hands moved through the holofield, touching lights here and there. After a while he closed his eyes, and sat quietly.

Most of twenty minutes passed in silence – Vance said nothing.

Finally Trent stirred again. “Well, that’s that. I’ve cured some of our tumble, but in the process we’ve picked up even more speed Earthward. I don’t think your Peaceforcers are going to be able to board us, tumbling the way we are at this speed. Oh well. I guess that can’t be helped. We’re heading for the atmosphere … and we’re going to burn up like a meteor when we hit it.”

25

… and this is another of the Things That Trent Did: Trent
did,
once, surf a house down out of orbit.

– Melissa du Bois, in
The Exodus Bible.

THE CONVERSATION THAT followed, Mohammed Vance remembered to the end of his days.

It was some while after Trent’s announcement before Vance said, “I modeled you, walking through the wall.”

“Modeled me a good bit, it seems. Poor Jason.”

“That bright room, the holoprojectors.”

“You can’t quite get that bastard to look right no matter what you do, can you?”

“Using the holoprojectors available at the time – if the lights are low enough that the image looks solid, the image glows. If the lights are bright enough that the image doesn’t glow, you can see the wall through it.”

“Yeah. That’s a tough one,” said Trent sympathetically. “And
your
eyes are even harder to fool than that, of course. You’d have seen the grain in even a modern holo.”

“Are you saying you really walked through that wall?”

“I’m not saying anything. You brought the subject up.”

“I read your interviews. The ones you gave in 2078.”

“Studied them, you mean.”

“Studied,” Vance agreed.

“Those were such a waste of time. I kept expecting that girl to ask me what my favorite color was.”

“She asked you everything else.”

Q. So I take it you consider yourself more one of the ‘live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse’ crowd?

A. I didn’t say that.

Q. But do you think that?

A. Nope. (Trent grins at her.) I’m the live fast and never die type.

“I think you’ve managed live fast. Never die is looking questionable at the moment.”

“I’m not dead yet, Vance. Neither are you.”

“When we hit the air, do you have plans for our final moments? Or do we just burn?”

“I’m still hoping to actually not die,” Trent informed him. “Don’t you want to see your wife again? Catch Melissa, execute her? Purge the PKF of people who have some semblance of a conscience, like Adrian Hilè? Pull Jason Lucas from space and scare the living hell out of him some more?” Trent studied him. “Let’s keep a good thought here.”

“Jason Lucas?”

“Didn’t you guys pick him up? I sent you a message telling you to, after I tossed him off the
Unity.
” Trent paused. “He wasn’t going very fast.”

“We were occupied,” said Vance, “chasing you. I don’t know if anyone did.”

“Oh.” Trent thought about it. “Well, I hope they did. If I start killing people I want it to be on purpose. And, of course, I’d probably start with you.”

“Oh?”

“I might not even
have
to kill anyone else, afterward. You’d be an example to the whole universe of the limits of my damn patience.”

“Not an enlightened attitude. You’ve spoken about
ahimsa
before.”

“Those stupid interviews.
Ahimsa
is the doctrine of infinite love,” said Trent. “I don’t know if I’m a good enough man to live it. Reverend Andy keeps telling people I’m a bodhisattva, but he likes me and he’s prejudiced. I have – moments, where I think I’m awake – but they pass. A real bodhisattva, I think, would live in that place.” Trent shrugged. “Anyway, the problem with
ahimsa
is this – it only works on people. People can look at each other and see other people like themselves. But some people
aren’t
people. They don’t live in their forebrains, they
live
in that little reptile core we all have.

“A human being,” said Trent, “won’t kill you if you don’t threaten him. Dragons will. If you try to practice non-violence with a dragon, the dragon will eat you, while marveling at your foolishness.” He shrugged. “It’s what dragons do. You can’t hold it against them.”

Trent added, “I suspect you might be a dragon, Vance. I’ve never been sure.”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t explain myself to you.”

“Or to yourself? ‘The latest Gospel in this world is, Know thy work and do it. “Know Thyself”: long enough has that poor “self” of thine tormented thee; thou will never get to “know” it, I believe! Think it not thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou are an unknowable individual; know what thou canst work at; and work at it, like a Hercules! That will be thy better plan.’ ” Trent paused. “Thomas Carlyle. They were a canny bunch, those old Scots. That bit’s reminded me of you every time I think of it.”

“You’re well educated, given your background.”

“You mean someone killing all the people who were taking care of me when I was eleven? That background?” Trent demanded. He shook his head. “It’s just the inskin. Makes me look smarter than I am – makes most Players look smarter than they are. Data to hand isn’t the same thing as knowledge internalized – that’s why apparently intelligent Players do such boneheaded things every now and then. I guess you haven’t met many Players.”

“Not socially. I’ve put a number in front of firing squads.”

Trent laughed. “You have no social graces, Vance.”

THEY TALKED ON and off for several hours, waiting for the PKF to board the remains of the house, or for the house to start getting hot. At one point Vance said, “There are things I like about you.”

“Everybody likes me,” Trent said. “I knew you did too.”

“The thing I most like about you is that you are not a Muslim. For generations Muslim ideologs misread the Koran, misinterpreted the Prophet’s words. They were weak, in those days, as you and yours are today, and the weapons they used were the weapons your allies use today – the bomb, the sniper, the hostage. But after the Unification those who were weak grew strong, those who were strong grew weak.”

“We might be weak,” said Trent. “But we took your death star away from you.”

“ ‘We?’ Forgive me, but though I insulted you with mention of your allies, this is not the case.
You
have the
Unity
. You who are, as best I can see, about to die.”

“With you,” Trent reminded him. “But in any event Monitor has the
Unity
, if anyone does – and Keith Daniels. I left him aboard.”

Vance closed his eyes. Trent could almost see him thinking back through the psychometrics Daniels had been given over the years, wondering who’d been turned, and who’d been merely incompetent to pierce Daniels’ Reb-installed conditioning.

WHAT WAS LEFT of the house, in its multiple pieces, had reached the upper edges of Earth’s atmosphere. The exposed edges of structures began to glow with the heat of their passage.

VANCE OPENED HIS eyes and looked at Trent and said almost the last thing Trent had expected to hear from him:

“I saw Andrew Strawberry play once. The Paris Chiefs beat the Saigon Rams thirty to three. Strawberry stood there in the pocket, all two hundred and fifteen centimeters of him, and threw for over three hundred yards. He just threw it over the heads of the defenders. It was a grand sight.”

“American football,” said Trent. “A fan of the air game. I guess I’m not surprised by that. You’re the sort who’d throw long. During the TriCentennial, when the West Coast rebelled, the entire senior PKF establishment as well as the Secretary General, all of them wanted to proceed cautiously. Not you. You had troops in the air the same day.” He shook his head. “It’s probably a good thing that Elite aren’t allowed to play pro football.”

“There is no regulation against it,” said Vance. “A retired Elite could play if he chose to. I doubt one would, though. Elite do not retire young – only a few have ever retired.” He studied Trent. “Basketball, of course.”

Trent nodded. “Sure. Practically the only real sport played in the Fringe. Everything else cost too much – too much gear, too much organization, too much land.

“It’s getting hot, isn’t it? I’m using what’s left of the attitude and nav rockets to keep the house moving – we’re skipping across the atmosphere like a rock across a pond. It’s a good thing we’re so deep in the house’s interior … No, don’t thank me, we’re still going to die, just a little more slowly....

“I was a
huge
Knicks fan. And then the gutless corporate sons of bitches who owned the franchise picked up and moved it to Sao Paolo after the TriCentennial.” Trent made a sound of disgust. “Cowards. One tiny little rebellion.”

“During which you conspired with the Secretary General.” He paused, but Trent didn’t comment. “You saved the backbone of the InfoNet during the rebellion, kept it from destruction. This is – one of things I detest the least about you – your willingness to behave reasonably
...
to not do things that are counterproductive.”

“How long would I live if I released your hand?”

“Five seconds. Less. Understand, you are the most dangerous person I have ever met,” said Vance. “The world adores you, and you frighten me. Not even so much as yourself; you are only a man. But you possess a reputation, and there is an aura about you
...
Trent the Uncatchable. The untouchable. The thief and the liar and the pacifist, the man who walked through a wall –”

“I’m not a pacifist,” said Trent. “I just don’t think you should kill people if you can possibly avoid it. Killing is wrong. It’s always wrong. Even when it’s less wrong than something else, it’s always, always wrong. The dragon brain enjoys it and wants to wallow in it, wants to enjoy that pain and fear –” Trent shook his head. “I felt complimented every time you raised the bounty on me. It hurt my feelings, back in ’76, when you put a larger bounty on Sedon … but I do understand why you did it.
There
was a man who was pure dragon all the way through.”

It was hot enough in the small room that Trent was sweating hard within his suit. He couldn’t imagine how hot and uncomfortable Vance must be, trapped in the impact field with the smell of the blood wafting up to him.

“Sedon was less dangerous than you are.”

“Maybe so. He’s dead and I’m still here, giving you grief.” Trent turned back to the controls. “Let’s see how you and I are doing. The people who raised me are dead, Sedon is dead, Adrian Hilè is dead – let’s find out if you and I are going to join them, shall we?”

“Do you ever wish,” Mohammed Vance asked, “that you’d made different decisions?”

“Sometimes,” Trent agreed. “Sometimes I do.” He touched two controls within the holofield, studied the results, touched two more. He couldn’t keep the grin off his face. “But then there are moments like this – that make up for it.”

The rest of the house came apart around them.

THE ROOM JOLTED once, jolted again so hard Vance thought they were about to die, and then a blinding light fell upon them –

Vance said, “
What
–”

It was just sunlight, but after hours in the darkness, it hit their dark-adapted eyes like a flare. Trent turned to look at Vance, shielding his own eyes with one hand. “Isn’t that
pretty
. Look at the blue sky, Vance. Do you know how
long
it’s been since I’ve seen a damned blue sky?”

In the sunlight Vance saw the room clearly for the first time. The dark curved areas beyond Trent were a viewport, with blue sky now visible beyond. Instruments and gear were arrayed about them – they were in the pilot’s cabin of some sort of vehicle.

“It’s a jumpjet,” Trent said. “Capable of landing on quite a small piece of land.” He was grinning hugely. “Let’s go do that, shall we?”

Vance had not noticed the slowly growing gravity, until abruptly it lessened, and he had the sense that they were dropping. Trent’s hands moved across the controls. “The rest of the house has come apart around us. Radar’s not going to be able to pick us out of the general debris, spysats might find us after they analyze the video for a while, but that won’t happen soon.” Vance became aware of the sound of the sky being split apart, a distant howl, as the ship they were in descended into deeper pressure.

Twelve minutes later they were on the ground.

“I’M SORRY YOU were here,” Trent said, rising from the pilot’s seat. “You guys were supposed to think I’d died when the house came apart. Even Credit I’d have sold you on it, too, if I hadn’t had to drag you down here with me.”

In the wall behind Trent, a hatch opened – beyond it Vance could see two shades of blue, lighter and darker.

Trent smiled at Vance, shrugged, opened the door wider and stepped out of the hatch – for an instant as the door opened bright sunlight burst through and into the cabin –

“Goodbye, Mohammed,” Trent said, and then the hatch swung shut and Vance heard the bolts catch.

He could only move his fist slightly, but he was far enough back from the control panel that it gave him the ability to cover two thirds of the panel. He splayed his right hand as widely as he could, stretching the covering Trent had bound it with – felt the material stretch. He caught the cloth between his knuckles, clenched his fist tightly, was rewarded with the first small tear – splayed his hand again and felt a finger poke out into the air.

Seconds later he had most of the hand through the bag and started firing. He played his fist laser across the control panel, took a deep breath when the smell of scorched plastic first wafted to him, and kept firing. Flames flickered across the panel, blue and green, and then the melting plastic caught and burned fiercely. Vance wondered if he was going to die of smoke inhalation –

– and then the impact field died.

Vance leaped forward, palmed the doorpad for the hatch. Nothing happened, and the heat from the fire was causing his uniform to smolder. He kicked, once, twice, with his robot leg, and the door buckled, sunlight streaming in around the cracked edges. The influx of air caused the fire to leap higher, and Vance got his hands on the door’s edge and tore it out of its frame, leaping from the burning ship into –