“I’ve asked the Starmind for their evaluation of the known data,” Cox said. “It can take a week to get an answer from them on a simple question, sometimes, but they’ve promised me at least a preliminary answer by 12:00 Greenwich, about…” He winked briefly; his own watch was inside his eyelid. “… twelve hours from now. You’ll have slept off the hypno by then. Meet me here at noon and you’ll hear anything I do.”
As far as Jay was concerned, he woke up with a click, totally refreshed and restored and in a comfortable bunk, one second later. He never managed to remember anything of leaving the command center, let alone the hypnointerrogation process itself. It did not trouble him, then or ever; he simply slid out of his sleepsack, confirmed that he had time to keep his appointment, stuck his head out the door and had the Marine stationed there cause breakfast to be fetched.
He did find himself wondering, as he ate, whether any alterations might have been made in his memories or motivations while he slept. But he reasoned, correctly, that the ability to form the question was a reassuring clue, and dismissed the matter. His generation had been the first in a century to grow up trusting its government. Instead he tried to imagine how possession of holy people gave anyone leverage over the Starmind and/or the UN. No rational answer suggested itself.
He reached the command center early, and was admitted by the Marines guarding it; Rand and Duncan arrived shortly thereafter. At noon exactly Admiral Cox jaunted in, looking exhausted. It was obvious he had not slept. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “I hope this won’t prove to be—”
“BILL.”
The voice came from everywhere. Jay found it hauntingly familiar, but couldn’t pin it down. Then he grasped what it had said, and was suddenly dizzy, a most unfamiliar sensation for a zero-gee dancer.
Cox was a common name. But this was Admiral William Cox. The William Cox—former commander of the Siegfried! Jay had assumed he was dead. He was used to the company of vips and uips—but he had been drinking coffee and chatting with a legend: the first human being to have set eyes on a Firefly…
“Yes, Charlie, I’m here,” Admiral Cox said quietly.
Jay gasped aloud in shock. This could be no other than Charlie Armstead himself. Shara Drummond’s video man, the man who had personally taped the Stardance; co-founder of the first zero-gee dance company in history; the second Stardancer who ever lived and the spiritual father of Jay’s artform. He felt his dizziness turn to nausea.
But he felt infinitely worse when he heard Armstead say, “I’M SORRY OLD FRIEND. I HAVE VERY SAD NEWS…”
23
Somewhere North of the Ecliptic
26 February 2065
Eva woke hard, feeling every one of her hundred and sixteen years, tasting each one somewhere on her tongue. Her first coherent thought was that Jeeves must have been nipping at the cooking sherry. He had mutated into a Chinese gorilla and put on a white p-suit. But he still had that quality of shimmering self-effacement. “Good morning, gracious Lady,” he said, and bowed. Even the bow was different.
“The hell it is,” she replied—and realized they were conversing in Cantonese, a language she had not spoken in forty years. “Speak English.”
“This one regrets that he cannot, Lady.” There was something wrong with his p-suit speaker; it gave his voice too much treble.
She took several deep breaths, and felt the mists begin to recede. That wasn’t Jeeves—or any AI. It was a human being… sort of… and too dumb to be a servant. And why was he in a p-suit when there was plenty of air in here? Something was badly wrong.
She played back memory. The last thing she could recall was asking Fat Humphrey what he wanted from Room Service. She looked around. This was not part of Fat’s suite—or anywhere in the Shimizu. It looked more like a construction barracks, unpainted metal and visible joins. She and this Cantonese thug were alone here. There didn’t appear to be even any potential furniture—not so much as a sleepsack. No wonder her neck ached so badly: she had been nodding in time with her breathing for… God knew how long. Hours, at least. Her chest hurt too. In fact, her everything hurt.
Well, some phrases she knew in over a dozen languages. “Where am I? Where are my friends?”
“Lady, this one is too ignorant to be questioned. His instructions are to offer you nourishment, and then convey you to his master.”
“Who is your master? You can’t be that ignorant.”
“That is not for this one to say, gracious Lady.”
She decided asking him his name would be a waste of time. A tagline from an ancient comedy series flitted through her mind: He’s from Barcelona, you know. “Skip the nourishment. Can you show me to the washroom?”
That turned out to be something he could handle, thank God. It was down a short corridor from what she was getting through her head was her cell. The Cantonese minder never took his eyes from her, and though he wore no visible weapons something about his bearing said he didn’t really need any. She understood now that he wore a p-suit so that he could use sleepy gas on her if he felt he needed to.
As soon as the door sealed behind her, she tried to empty her mind of everything but the question, Reb, are you alive? Are you here?
Nothing came back. She thought she might have detected something like a carrier wave, a power hum, but there was no signal. And it might have been wishful thinking. Reb had only been tutoring her in this empathic sensitivity stuff for a couple of months, and her progress had been frustratingly slow. She tried “tuning in on” Meiya and then Humphrey, but was unsurprised to achieve no better results. She was on her own.
Well, she had a century and more of practice.
Bladder empty and face washed, she looked about the horrid little cubical for a useful weapon. The facecloth seemed to exhaust the possibilities. She gave up and left. Her self-effacing jailer was a discreet distance down the passageway, and quite alert.
“All right, Marmaduke: take me to your leader.” She spoke in English, but he seemed to take her meaning. He led the way—but jaunted backwards, so that his eyes rarely left her.
She memorized the route, and kept her eyes open along the way. This pressure felt bigger than a ship, somehow. Indefinable subconscious clues told her it was something more like the Shimizu or Top Step: a massive habitat. More like Top Step in the old days: thrown together, rough carpentry, baldly functional. She also got the impression he was taking her by the back way. They passed few people, and once when they did, he and the others had bristled at each other like challenging cats in passing. She filed the observation away.
The room he led her to reminded her a little of her own suite in the Shimizu. Spartan simplicity—but expensive simplicity. She grew a chair and shaped it to suit her. “You may leave me,” she said.
He grimaced. “This one regrets that he cannot, Lady. But he will cease to intrude.” With that, he… became a piece of furniture. It was like a robot powering down; suddenly he wasn’t there anymore, except in potential. She tried to catch him breathing, but to her wry amusement she found she could not keep her eyes on him for more than a few seconds; they slid off. She gave up, studied the right arm of her chair, and ordered strong black tea.
She was intrigued to notice that it appeared to arrive under its own power, herded not by microbots but by invisible nanobots. Rough carpentry, yes… but state of the art technology.