“Do you understand what you are saying, Iyal…”
“You’re lying.” Iyal said. “Now you’ve only got one minute.”
For a moment, Aria did nothing but rub her hands together and stare at their scarred backs. She murmured softly in her own language. Then, abruptly, she switched to Iyal’s. “I should’ve known,” she said, without a trace of accent or awkwardness. “You’re not like the Nobles in the Realm. You’ve got no expectations about what I can and can’t do. You’re not so easy to bluff.” She faced Iyal. “The Vitae. What is it they want from me? Did they say?”
“Yes. They say you’re their property. That you’re an artifact that was stolen from them and that they want you back.”
Aria sank into a rickety chair, wrinkling a short stack of polymer sheets that rested on the seat. “You do not like them.”
“No.” Iyal folded her arms. “But right now I’m trying to decide if I like you less. I’ve got security footage of you breaking into secured documents, Aria.”
Aria’s head jerked up. “You’ve got what?”
“Don’t try to go back to the country girl act, Aria Stone…”
“No! No! “Aria waved her hands violently. “I don’t understand. Security footage. What is that?”
Iyal stabbed a finger toward the boxy camera over the doorway. “Pictures from a camera like that one. Security surveillance. Yards of tape with your picture on it, pulling off ninety-nine different illegal maneuvers.”
Aria stared at the camera. Her mouth moved silently and her face went from white to green. For a moment, Iyal thought she was actually going to be sick. Then, Aria let out a cluster of syllables so bitter and explosive that Iyal couldn’t imagine them being anything but curses.
“No more time,” Iyal said. “Start talking.”
“All right.” Iyal didn’t have to strain to hear the new tone in her voice. This was not innocent trust. This was considered acceptance. “What do you want to know?”
A dozen different questions leapt to the front of Iyal’s mind: What are you? Why do the Vitae want you? How did you learn to read so fast?
At last, she said, “How did you manage to access the Diet transcripts?”
“I saw Zur-Allenden do it once.”
“Once?”
Aria nodded. “That is all I need. I was resetting one of the research tables and he was paying no attention to me.”
“So, you’ve got a photographic memory?”
Her lips moved, repeating the term, and her brow wrinkled. “Something like that, yes.”
“So you can read. The illiteracy was an act.”
“Sometimes, now. It wasn’t when I first came here.”
“Then how…”
Aria fumbled with a pocket on her tool belt and pulled out a pair of gloves; then she opened the leather pouch she carried with her and drew out an ice white sphere.
“This is one of my namestones.” She kept it cupped in her hand as Iyal leaned over it. “They give me the ability to remember everything I have ever seen, or ever heard. But they also let me have a base for those memories…” She frowned. “They correlate what is in my head so it makes sense to me. If I have a question, I hold the stones and they find the answer in my mind and give it to me. The more I have seen, the better the answers get.
“Before I came here, I was in a Vitae holding cell and a ship called the U-Kenai. I saw a great deal. I knew something about computers and I’d heard at least spatterings of your language. The stones were able to"—she frowned again—"create relationships for me so I was able to learn very fast.”
Iyal felt her mouth move as she tried to form the words “that’s impossible.” She couldn’t get the sounds out, because in the back of her mind she knew that was not a valid argument. Aria was impossible, yet there Aria sat, relatively calm and collected and holding a stone in her hand that was really…what?
Can’t be an AI, there’s no way for her to interface with it. Can’t be any kind of computer I know about. Artificial total recall? AND the ability to create contextual relationships? How? HOW?
Iyal stumped over to one of the old research tables and, with one sweep of her arm, dumped a pile of miscellaneous debris and dust onto the floor. She slammed her hand against the ON key and as soon as the screens and boards flickered to life she began activating the scanners.
“Aria, let me see that.” Iyal extended her hand and was not surprised to see it was shaking.
After a moment’s hesitation, Aria laid the stone against Iyal’s palm. It was heavy, smooth, and cool as polished crystal. She cupped her fingers carefully around it. Its surface did not warm up. It was as if it resisted her body’s heat.
Iyal set the stone gently into one of the table’s scanner pockets and closed the lid over it. Aria gripped the arms of the chair until her knuckles turned white. Iyal said nothing. Aria knew this would not hurt her precious stone, she must know that or she never would have let go of it.
The main screen lit up with the preliminary information. First there was a shell, primarily constructed of crystallized carbon, but there were several trace elements. It had a micro-level capillary construction. Capillaries? In a doped-up diamond? Inside, primarily liquid…then how had it not evaporated over time…proteins, ribonucleic acids, electrochemical traces, and a filament structure…
Iyal blinked up at Aria and down at the screen again. The stone was a hollow, porous, enriched diamond filled with a miniature nervous system and a whole stew of unidentified virus chains.
And I’d bet my marriage contract that each one of them has binders that match that host of extra receptors Aria’s carrying around inside her…but no…the scan only identifies ten variable strings and Aria has twenty-two unused receptors…
She’s not a tool then, she’s a system component. And this thing still can’t be an artificial intelligence, but it might just be a real one. Iyal wished there was a spare chair for her to collapse into.
“Where did this come from, Aria?”
Aria shrugged. “I was told that the Nameless Powers left them to my family in case they needed to send another servant to the Realm. This might be true, but I don’t know what it means.”
Iyal lifted the stone out of the scanner and turned it over in her fingers. This thing should be in the splicing room getting peeled apart a micron at a time. They should know exactly what was in there, how it was built, and what made it possible. Total, context specific, recall in a sphere the size of a small peach. Who’d need computers anymore? She could buy Kethran the leadership of the Quarter Galaxy with this thing and the woman it belonged with.
“You’ve been very calm about finding out you’re not what you thought you were.”
“I haven’t found out anything like that,” said Aria coolly. “The Teachers say I came into being when the Nameless spoke the word that is my name. My mother said I was split from the same word that made the stones. You say I came into being when somebody strung together some proteins in a laboratory. It doesn’t matter. I am still myself. My name is still mine. Only the Nameless can take that away.” She held out her hand. Iyal decided to take the hint and she handed Aria the stone.
“Are there…many people like you in the…Realm?”
“I don’t know.” Aria replaced the stone in the pouch and drew its strings tight. “I do know there aren’t many arias, stones, I mean, left.”
“How do you know that?”
Aria’s mouth quirked up into a tight smile. “About ten generations ago, the Teachers declared them sacred to the Nameless and stole them. The ones that exist are mainly in the Temple vaults. I heard one very highborn Teacher say he’d only ever seen one set. So there cannot be that many.”