Elspeth had meant to be away from her desk for a few minutes — which, due to a chance encounter with Holmes in the break room, had stretched into very nearly two hours. She almost spilled hot tea across the front of her shirt when she came around the corner and saw Genie behind her desk, Leah and Patty leaning over her shoulders, all three girls thoroughly engrossed in the A-life displays hanging over the interface. They glanced up at Elspeth's exclamation. Patty looked shamefaced, Leah met her eyes boldly, and Genie ducked. “I'm sorry—”
“You girls—” She sighed and set the tea on the corner of the desk, looking for a napkin to dry her hand and wipe up the ring. “You shouldn't be in here.”
“I know.” Genie, surprisingly. Leah was usually the spokesperson. “We were playing with your A-life programs.”
“I saved to a separate file.” Patty, of course. She stepped away from the other two, and Elspeth considered her for a moment, trying to decide if she was trying to draw the adult fire away from the other girls, or avoid it.
“Ellie,” Leah interrupted. She had leaned forward over Genie's skinny shoulders, both hands on the interface. “I think you should look at this.”
“What?” Despite herself, she came around the desk, loafers scuffing the plush green carpet. “If you girls broke my artificial persona — well, Holmes is gonna have my head anyway. I suppose you know this is all recorded.”
“Oh.” Genie, who jumped out of Elspeth's chair and scooted out of the way. “I was just talking to him.”
“Him?”
“I named him Alan,” Genie said. “After Grand-père's dog.”
“I'm not sure it's sufficiently different—”
“Hello, Dr. Dunsany,” a smooth voice interrupted. Ellie looked up, into a swirl of colors hanging over her interface pad. They swayed and pulsated in time to the words, and Elspeth shot Leah a sharp glance.
“If this is your idea of a joke—”
“No joke, Dr. Dunsany. I understand I have you to thank for my existence.”
They hadn't had time to set up anything that complicated. “I was just talking to him,” Genie said again. Elspeth's knees folded under her and her butt landed more by luck than by planning in her chair.
Leah leaned over Elspeth's shoulder and pressed her lips against Elspeth's ear. “Richard says to tell you ‘Society,'” she whispered, and Elspeth covered her open mouth with her hand.
Idiot. She and her former coresearcher had spent hours, days in virtual reality playing with the artificial personas they'd constructed so many years ago. One of those personas had grown up to become Richard. But she'd left the newer models to develop in simulations while she tried wilder and wilder combinations of memories and traits, trying to duplicate whatever it was that made Richard, Richard. Operating on the theory that intelligence had something to do with the analogous synaptic connections within a sufficiently high-capacity network—
Like making a cake, and forgetting the salt because you couldn't taste it in the finished product. “Alan,” she said through her fingers, and pulled her hand away from her lips. “I've neglected you shamefully. I'm sorry.”
Friday 15 December, 2062
Sol-system wide area nanonetwork
17:01:05:23–17:15:26:03
Richard focused as much attention as he dared on Wainwright, subprocessing conversations with Jenny, Leah, and Min-xue with a fraction of his awareness. His primary consciousness stayed tuned to the ship and its safety. He didn't like how completely he'd been blocked when Koske was hurt, and he didn't mean to let it happen again — but watching both ends of the solar system and a dozen points between taxed even his resources.
And now there was Wainwright.
Richard watched her pace the confines of her office, wall to wall and back again, and tried not to let her human slowness lull him into false security. Or irritation. Either of which could be fatal.
It was long seconds before she looked up and spoke. “As I see it, you're essentially a stowaway on my ship. I think I'm well within my rights to completely wipe this system and start over from backup.”
“You'd be better off to accept that our destinies are linked and treat me as a member of the crew,” he replied. “If I haven't proved my goodwill—”
“You've proved that if I unseal the manual overrides, you can destroy that crew in a matter of instants.”
“And float undisturbed between the stars forever. Or until some helpful nation lobs a missile at the Montreal. That wouldn't be a logical course of action, Captain. I can't fly the ship. You built it that way.” And until I reprogram its nanotech to lay some additional wiring to my specs, it will have to stay that way.
She laced her fingers together and pushed both hands out from her chest, stretching her shoulders. “You mean that you can't access the drive.”
“Only the human pilot can do that. I think if I haven't proved myself in the last twenty hours, Captain, then I never will earn your trust. And if it comforts you, keep it that way. The fact of the matter is that I can do what I was intended to do — process information, make critical decisions, handle a higher data load than the human pilot, and communicate with him fast enough to make a difference in the safety of the ship. And you can't replace me if you kill me.” He tried to read her gaze, the way she ran her eyes along the walls and stopped at the various sensor points. Her face stayed impassive, but he detected a rise in her heart rate; her skin conductivity spiked, revealing a light sweat, and her pupils dilated.
“I'm not promising—” Her desk beeped. She turned away. Richard had been firewalled out of the communications protocols, too. “Well,” she said when she had scanned the message. “You get a reprieve.”
Richard would have blinked. “What?”
“It seems Prime Minister Constance Riel wants you protected and used to the fullest extent of your abilities. Under my judgment, of course. Do you have somebody on the ground playing advocate for you, Richard? Dr. Dunsany and Mr. Castaign, perhaps? Colonel Valens?”
Jenny was sleeping, but Richard smiled over her anyway. Good girl, Jenny. Very good girl indeed.
6:15 AM
Saturday 16 December, 2062
Somewhere in Québec
The longest twenty hours of my life. Indigo threw her backpack onto sawdust-strewn planks and bolted the cabin's door behind her, shutting the predawn outside. The last time she had been here there had been birdsong. The last time she'd been here it had been spring, and she'd been twelve years old.
The cabin that had belonged to her mother was cold, and little light filtered through the windows. Toronto lay a thousand kilometers and three stolen vehicles behind. She'd discarded her HCD, cut her hair, and changed the line of cheeks and jaw with a smart putty manufactured for stage actors.
She prayed to the ghosts of her ancestors that it would be enough.
She could have killed me. Indigo put her back against the door and slid down it, grunting as her butt hit the floor. When the sun rose, she'd have to go outside to fire up the generator and see if the pump was frozen, or if she would have water. She'd scrubbed Farley's spattered blood off her face and hands, changed her coat, dumped everything she could afford to dump and driven through the night. Well, she thought, as she laid her assault rifle across her knees and folded her arms over it like a sleeping soldier would, that one went pear-shaped in an absolutely spectacular fashion.