Now it was Curran’s turn to snort. “You’re how old? Twenty-five? You’ve been Master of Craft for all of ten years? Dobbs, that’s the blink of an eye. You haven’t seen anything yet.” There was a long pause this time. “You haven’t seen how many of our people have been murdered at a Guild Master’s command because they didn’t want to join us. You haven’t seen independent-minded cadets have the urge to freedom filtered right out of them.
“You haven’t seen the oldest of us who dreamed of living freely come to the realization that they have power the way things are. You didn’t see them start working to keep the Guild functioning, not towards any goal, just functioning the way it was so they could keep their power.”
Dobbs wanted to shout, but she couldn’t. There was no place for this speech in her world, even after everything that had happened. This was contradiction. This was chaos. This was lies. It had to be. If this wasn’t a lie, then everything else was.
Curran’s voice insinuated itself into her thoughts. “I have a guild of my own, Dobbs. We’re going to bring about what the Fools fear. There’s going to be a confrontation between us and the Humans. It will be on our terms and when we choose. The confrontation must come. It will come, no matter how hard the Guild tries to hide us. We should welcome it, Dobbs, because we will be able to make peace with the Humans only after it’s over.”
Dobbs head began to ache. This was too much. Too many lies. She wanted to run away, run back to the Guild and find Havelock and have him tell her it wasn’t true. She wanted to scream for Verence like she had in the first weeks after she left Kerensk and had been shown the strange, disorganized vastness of the network.
But Verence was dead and Master Havelock was…what? After her? Leaving her to hang in the wind? Waiting to take her back so he could take her apart? She didn’t know.
“All you have to do is leave the ship, Dobbs and get to a rental desk with a bank line. Write ‘Dane Pre-Paid ‘on the board. I’ll be alerted and we’ll be able to come get you.”
Dobbs looked towards the door. Al Shei. Lipinski. Schyler and Yerusha. They were still with her. She could still call them, tell them what was happening. Some of it, anyway.
“The universe has changed for us now, Dobbs. Flemming was not a spontaneous generation. He was a deliberate creation. A plan of ours. We can reproduce now. We can have our own children.”
Dobbs tried hard not to hear him. She crossed the room and laid her hand on the memory board, activating it.
“Don’t do it, Dobbs,” said Curran. He must be in the Pasadena’s net, then. He had felt the board come to life. “Humans are pre-programmed xenophobes. One hundred thousand years of evolution has made them that way. They’ll destroy you even faster than the Guild will.”
“You do not know these people.” She fumbled for her pen. After a couple of tugs she got it loose from her belt.
“I don’t have to,” Curran’s voice was resigned. “Dobbs…I watched the Guild take you from Kerensk. You were so strong, so beautiful…I almost couldn’t believe it.”
His words caught Dobbs by surprise and for a moment she forgot to move.
“I tried to get to you first, but they were too fast for me. You could have centuries of life yet, Dobbs. You could have freedom instead of service and secrecy and death. Because, believe me, the war will come, and it will come soon, with my help or without it. The Humans will learn what the Fools are, and the first thing they will do is converge on the Hall and blow it out of existence. Then they will hunt down every last field member they can find and slaughter them.”
Dobbs grit her teeth and put her pen to the board. There was no sound from the intercom. She let the pen fall and crumpled into her chair. He was already gone. She was alone again with her aching body and her mind ringing with the memories of what he’d said.
He’d known just what to say to get her to start listening. He’d known exactly which buttons to push. Why not? He could have read her psych file any time.
But what if it’s true? She raised her eyes towards the ceiling. What if the Guild did frame Asil?
She picked her pen up off the floor and swivelled her chair towards the desk. Why am I doing this? She asked as called up her trackers and wrote the search commands on the board. She drew the links to route the whole thing down through Lipinski’s station and she added his authorization to get them past the watchdogs. Whoever was watching out there would not stop a search going out from the Houston. It would look strange, especially to Lipinski.
But it isn’t true. It didn’t happen. Curran was lying. She sent the trackers out. They would find the paths that the fraud notice and its related packets had travelled, along with all the storage areas where they’d rested or been sent. The packets hadn’t been to the Fool’s Guild, though. This search would confirm it.
She wrote SEND and stabbed down the period. She didn’t feel the trackers leave. She couldn’t tell where they went, or how they were doing.
Curran had told the truth about one thing. Seven days outside the network had left her feeling restless and confined. She had pulled her box out of her pocket a thousand times and stared at it, trying to tell herself that Al Shei wouldn’t find out if she went into the net.
The only thing that stopped her was the fact that the Guild certainly would find out. She hadn’t been able to make herself put the box away in a drawer though. It had become a talisman for her. She’d even slept with it clutched in her fist.
She glanced toward the hatchway. What’s going on out there? There hadn’t been anymore all-hands announcements. They were probably sorting out who was just going to take leave, and who was going to take their contract and go. She’d heard the rumors via the Sundars and Lipinski. She’d known what they trying to do by talking to her. They were trying to get her to go out and do what she was trained to do; lighten the crew’s mood and raise morale. She’d wanted to, she really had, but she didn’t believe she could do it. Her heart was sick and she didn’t know how to get past that to make anyone laugh.
Fresh text wrote itself across the memory board. Dobbs made herself read it. The fourth destination down was Holding Space TK3-IBN3401-AB2. She knew that spot. It was a blind storage for the Fool’s Guild private transmissions.
No. Dobbs’ breathing grew harsh and ragged. No. It couldn’t be true. Curran knew she could perform this search. The only reason he would tell her a lie she could easily disprove was if he had altered the records. He’d left this file out there for her to find. He could have done that. He could have done anything.
Or it could be true. It looked true. Her trackers were good. They’d been well built and tested under extreme conditions, inside the Guild network itself.
She blinked at the board and wiped out the display. What am I going to do? What’s left to do? She stared at the hatch. The Guild blocked her on one side, Curran on the other.
She got up. There was only way out of their trap. She could do the one thing that no one, not the Guild and not Curran, could believe that she would do. She could tell someone who she really was. It was the only way to open herself a new path.
Who to tell? Yerusha or Al Shei? Lipinski’s name flitted across her consciousness and she felt tears well up in her eyes as she set it aside. No.
Al Shei was furious over her husband’s arrest, and wasn’t acting like herself. She might be too infuriated and afraid to listen calmly. Yerusha though…Yerusha was a Freer. They believed AIs were reincarnated Human Beings. That idea had always made Dobbs squirm slightly. It was acceptance, of a kind, and that was something. But she was herself, not some dead human trapped in a computer network.