Havelock stood up slowly to face her. He was only a few centimeters taller than she was. Al Shei wondered if all the Fools were bred for short stature.
“If you want your vengeance,” he told her. “All you have to do is say no. Then there will surely be a war for you and your children to wage against us.”
A thread of ice ran through Al Shei’s veins at his words. “Good morning, ‘Ster Havelock.”
“Good morning, ‘Dama Al Shei.” He left the room with the confident, graceful stride that had also belonged to Dobbs.
Al Shei turned away from the door and picked up Havelock’s untouched coffee cup. She stared at the dark liquid for a moment and then turned back to the doorway and hurled the cup against the wall.
Porcelain shattered and coffee splashed across the bright blue tiles. As she watched the brown tears trickle down the wall, answering tears began to roll down her own cheeks. Slowly, her knees crumbled underneath her and Al Shei collapsed against the floor, weeping for her broken heart.
Ruqaiyya and Grandmother came running, of course, to clean up the mess and help her to her room and calm the children.
When she quieted down, they left her alone with admonishments to get some sleep. Al Shei lay silently on the bed. This was not the room she’d shared with Asil. That room lay silent and unused. This was one of the guest quarters.
This was it then. She had broken a cup, sobbed, and stained a wall and the world was still what it was. Asil was still dead, the children were still wondering when their mother would be back with them, and her family was still expecting her to snap out of this sick, distant grieving.
“Al Shei?”
The voice was a woman’s, and familiar, but not family.
“Al Shei?”
Al Shei sat up and looked across at the intercom.
“Dobbs?”
“Yes. At least, mostly.” Dobbs sounded chagrined. The view screen flickered to life. There she sat against an indistinct background; brown hair, bright eyes, Guild necklace around her throat. “How are you?”
Al Shei found herself staring blankly at the intercom trying to decide how to answer that.
“Are you downstairs?” She asked finally.
“No. I’m…” she waved vaguely behind her. “Still in the net.”
“Oh.” What else could she say to that? “Mopping up in there?”
“No. The Guild took care of that. All of Curran’s talent are either back with us, or… gone. I’m here permanently. Keeping Earth’s network up and running changed me too much.” There was something unsaid behind the phrase, Al Shei felt sure of it. “There’s no way the Guild is going to be able to give me a new body.” She spread her hands. “I’ve been working for weeks on this simulation.”
“A new body?” Al Shei inched over to the edge of the bed.
“Yes. The old one’s dead.” The image on the screen flickered for a moment and then steadied. “I had to keep Curran from being able to haul me out of the net.”
Al Shei tugged at her tunic sleeve, uncertain what to think or feel about that.
“Don’t worry,” said Dobbs, and there was a ghost of her old mischief in her voice. “The Guild doesn’t know what to think about me either.” She paused. “I know Havelock was there. I was wondering if I was going to have you as a partner.”
“What?” Al Shei jerked her head up.
“I’m one of the Guild’s new ambassadors.” There was some small pride in the statement and a healthy measure of incredulity. “They’re trying to make use of the fact that I’m one of the few Fools on record as helping save Earth’s network.” Dobbs, or Dobbs’ image, shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea. I’m pretty much out of a job.” She looked towards Al Shei without focusing on her, and Al Shei realized the Fool might not be able to see her. Even if the camera were on and Dobbs were processing the signals, would it really be analogous to human sight, or would it be more like reading braille?
It was a strange idea, that Dobbs was trapped behind the screen, only able to hear her, if hearing was the right metaphor for what she was doing. She must be controlling the processors and the output signals but…
A laugh escaped Al Shei. Here she was having a conversation with a dead woman, or a live AI, and the Engineer in her was wondering how it all worked.
“What is it?” asked Dobbs leaning forward curiously.
Al Shei waved her hand, remembered that Dobbs couldn’t see and said, “Nothing, nothing. I’m just…” she rubbed her forehead. “Very tired, really. And I’d rather not talk about how I’m going to answer Havelock.” She looked away from Dobbs. “Thank you for asking, though. I…I’m sure you’re doing your best.”
“Yes.” Dobbs was silent for a long moment, and Al Shei thought perhaps she’d gotten the hint and left, but when she turned her face back, the Fool’s image was frozen on the screen.
“You are asking yourself why you should help the ones who murdered your husband, aren’t you?” The image jerked to life, almost like an after-thought and leaned closer towards her.
Too tired to lie, Al Shei said, “That is part of what I’m thinking, yes.”
“You could do it to keep us honest, perhaps,” Dobbs spread her hands on her knees. “Or to make sure we’re kept in our places. You could have Lipinski as a consultant.”
Al Shei looked at her sharply, forgetting for a moment that what she saw was an illusion. “Why are you so ready to help the ones who betrayed you, Dobbs?”
The image froze again, and the voice said slowly. “While I …we…were fighting in there, I almost died. I had to stretch myself to my limits to survive. A number of my friends gave their lives…no, not their lives…their consciousness, their independence, so that I could be strong enough to hold Curran’s followers back and keep the net together.” Dobbs’ image looked towards her again, with intensity shining in her unfocused eyes. “I wanted to die because of what this war cost my friends, but I couldn’t…Life wants to continue. So, we are all driven to continue. To move, think, do. Here is something I can do, something I think is worth doing.”
“All of this is fine for you, but why should I even care?” Al Shei retorted. Exhaustion and wearying grief won out over manners. She didn’t look at the screen. She looked at her sealed window and the palm trees and blue sky beyond it. “Why should I care if the whole Guild collapses in on itself and Human Beings destroy the survivors and we’re left alone in the universe again?”
“I don’t know why you should care,” said Dobbs. “But I know that you do. If you didn’t care, you would have run away from the Farther Kingdom. You’d have gotten yourself and your crew out of there and let the mess sort itself out. You would have let Lipinski destroy the AI aboard the Pasadena and washed your hands of the whole thing. You wouldn’t have contacted your family when I asked you to. You would have let them shred the network you knew we need to live in. But you know that we’re not all evil, that we’re like Human Beings. Some of us are good, some are bad, most are a mix of the two, and you weren’t going to take it on yourself to destroy us all.
“You care, Al Shei, you always have. If you try to stop caring, you’re going to die trying.”
Al Shei’s fingers knotted around the blanket. The faux silk was cool and slick against her skin. “Words, words, words,” she muttered.
Dobbs was leaning all the way forward now. It looked as if any moment her nose would press against the glass of the screen. “They’re all I have left, Al Shei. I’ve lost everything else.” There was a sorrow in her voice that Al Shei hadn’t heard before. Dobbs seemed to catch herself and made her image give a small smile. “I liked being Human. I liked it from the first day I had a body. I’m going to miss it, a lot.”