Sarah Zettel - Fool's War

Dobbs bowed. “‘Let a fool be serviceable according to his folly,’” she quoted. “I am also, by the way, checking in.”

“I thought you might be.” He crossed the Pasadena ’s threshold and waved for her to follow him. “Might as well formalize at least one of you.”

“Thanks.” Dobbs climbed aboard the ship that would be her home for the next eight months.

She had studied the plans when she had received the contract. The Pasadena followed the standard layout for packet ships. It was two bulbs held together by a long drop shaft. The larger bulb held the bridge, the berths, the kitchen, the shielded data hold and much of the life support. The smaller bulb held the engines and the reactors. The fuel and air tanks were strung on the drop shaft like rings on a pole.

Like the station modules, the shaft meant every deck was a hoop. Schyler led her around the curving corridor. This deck, which was probably the data-hold, was stark, with only labels and green memory panels to break up the white, ceramic walls.

Schyler took her into a briefing room. An oval table surrounded by enough chairs for Pasadena ’s entire sixteen member crew took up most of the space. The wide wall at the far end was one solid memory board. Schyler settled into the nearest chair and used his pen to activate the table space in front of him. He wrote his authorization across the main screen and added CREW CHECK INafter it. The table absorbed the text and lit up two palm readers next to the active space.

“I’ll need your pen,” said Schyler.

Dobbs handed it over and he slipped it into the socket in the side of the table. Dobbs, familiar with the standard, Lennox-approved check-in procedure, pressed both hands against the palm readers that lit up in front of her. The table copied the contract from her pen. Then, it confirmed that the fingerprints that activated the pen were the same as those pressed against the reader and printed ACCEPTin front of Schyler. It did not speak, though, which surprised her.

Schyler saw her eyebrows arch. “Owner prejudice,” he said. “Neither Al Shei or Tully particularly likes the machinery to talk back.”

“Must frustrate the AI.” Dobbs lifted her hands off the reader and stuffed them in her pants pockets. “They don’t like being mute.”

Schyler shook his head. “There’s only two AIs on board this ship, and neither one of them lives in the hull. There’s Resit’s boxed law firm, and the Sundars’ medical advisory.”

Dobbs raised her eyebrows as far as they’d go and waggled them. “Al Shei doesn’t like machines that think either?”

“No, she just doesn’t like it when they try to think too much.” Schyler extracted her pen. “Partly it has to do with being such a mechanical engineer. Partly it has to do with flying with Lipinski for ten years.”

“That’s right.” Dobbs re-pocketed her pen. “He was at Kerensk, wasn’t he?”

Schyler nodded and Dobbs sighed. Most settlements and stations depended on artificial intelligence to run the power and production facilities that made life away from Earth possible. Twenty-five years ago on the Kerensk colony, one over-programmed AI bolted from its central processor and got into the colony network.

Panicked officials shut the computer networks down to try to cage it. Never mind the factories, the utilities, the farms. Just find that thing before it gets into the water distribution system and the climate control. Before it starts to make demands. Before it starts acting too human.

Electricity and communications went down and stayed that way. Before three days were out, people froze in the harsh cold. They began to starve. They drank tainted water. They died of illnesses the few working doctors couldn’t diagnose on sight.

When the colony did try to power up again, they found their software systems shredded to ribbons. It could have easily been human carelessness, but the blame was laid on the AI.

“Fifteen thousand, three hundred and eighteen dead,” said Dobbs to the table top. Not one of the worst AI break-outs, just one of the more recent.

Schyler’s brow wrinkled. “You too?”

Dobbs hooked one finger around her Guild necklace. “I was born there.” She’d been totally incapable of reason when the disaster happened, but she still carried it with her. The ideas of the screams, the desperation, the hundreds of useless, pointless deaths. All of it caused by one rogue AI, by a creature that found itself suddenly alive and didn’t know what to do about it. She could understand Lipinski’s fears, and why he would be infuriated by Yerusha, who actually wanted to try to reproduce such a phenomena, even under controlled circumstances. He knew about violence that could ignite between frightened, ignorant, wildly different beings. He possibly knew that, even better than she did, and from the look she’d seen on his face, he was less than willing to forgive the stranger for wanting to stay alive.

Schyler clucked in wordless sympathy and changed the subject. “You’re all set.” He got to his feet. “Your clearances will be listed on your cabin boards when you get settled in. You can bring in thirty-five pounds of personal effects. Sorry about that, we’re trying to run a little light this trip. Do you want to see where you’ll be?”

“Thanks.” She let her necklace go and put a smile back on her face. “I’d actually — ”

The left-hand wall beeped, cutting off her sentence. “Tully to Pasadena ,” said a man’s tired voice.

“Schyler, here.” Schyler tilted his head up.

“Can you let me in?” Dobbs tracked his voice to the intercom patch below the left-hand memory board. “There’s some stuff I still need to get out.”

Schyler leaned both hands against the table. “I’m not on my own in here, Tully.”

“Thirty seconds, that’s all I need. Just left some stuff in my cabin.”

Schyler pressed down harder. With the light gravity, Dobbs thought he might actually lift himself off his feet. “You’re checked out, Tully. I can bring what’s left… ”

“Come on, Tom. Thirty seconds.”

Schyler leaned back and let his hands drop down to his sides. “I’ll be right out. ‘Bye.”

He turned to Dobbs with a worried look. “I’m going to have to give you the tour later… ”

Dobbs waved her hand dismissively. “I’m a Master Fool, I’ll find my way around.” She spun on her toes and marched straight into the wall. “Ow.” She clutched her nose and staggered backwards. “Eventually,” she said, rubbing the offended appendage.

Schyler gave her a grin that might have become real if she’d had a few more minutes to work on him.

Dobbs let Schyler escort her out the door. She stepped out of the bay and didn’t give Marcus Tully, who was fidgeting by the elevator doors a second glance as she got into the lift and picked her floor.

As the lift began to sink, Dobbs remembered that when she had left the cafe, she had intended to try to find out what was really going on with the co-owners of this ship.

That, she fingered her necklace, may take longer than I thought.

“Port Oberon to Pasadena , prepare for transfer to docking trolley.”

Yerusha looked out the window above her station boards and watched the trolley slide into place underneath Pasadena . The camera displays on either side of the window showed the flat-bed cart reaching out its waldos and grabbing ahold of the Pasadena ’s side just before the docking clamps retracted into the skin of the station.

Yerusha had been glad to see that Pasadena sported a real window. Cameras were fine, and virtual reality was very useful, but she never felt quite comfortable flying without a direct look at what was actually between her ship and where she was going.