Sarah Zettel - Fool's War

It was a strange idea, that Dobbs was trapped behind the screen, only able to hear her, if hearing was the right metaphor for what she was doing. She must be controlling the processors and the output signals but…

A laugh escaped Al Shei. Here she was having a conversation with a dead woman, or a live AI, and the Engineer in her was wondering how it all worked.

“What is it?” asked Dobbs leaning forward curiously.

Al Shei waved her hand, remembered that Dobbs couldn’t see and said, “Nothing, nothing. I’m just…” she rubbed her forehead. “Very tired, really. And I’d rather not talk about how I’m going to answer Havelock.” She looked away from Dobbs. “Thank you for asking, though. I…I’m sure you’re doing your best.”

“Yes.” Dobbs was silent for a long moment, and Al Shei thought perhaps she’d gotten the hint and left, but when she turned her face back, the Fool’s image was frozen on the screen.

“You are asking yourself why you should help the ones who murdered your husband, aren’t you?” The image jerked to life, almost like an after-thought and leaned closer towards her.

Too tired to lie, Al Shei said, “That is part of what I’m thinking, yes.”

“You could do it to keep us honest, perhaps,” Dobbs spread her hands on her knees. “Or to make sure we’re kept in our places. You could have Lipinski as a consultant.”

Al Shei looked at her sharply, forgetting for a moment that what she saw was an illusion. “Why are you so ready to help the ones who betrayed you, Dobbs?”

The image froze again, and the voice said slowly. “While I …we…were fighting in there, I almost died. I had to stretch myself to my limits to survive. A number of my friends gave their lives…no, not their lives…their consciousness, their independence, so that I could be strong enough to hold Curran’s followers back and keep the net together.” Dobbs’ image looked towards her again, with intensity shining in her unfocused eyes. “I wanted to die because of what this war cost my friends, but I couldn’t…Life wants to continue. So, we are all driven to continue. To move, think, do. Here is something I can do, something I think is worth doing.”

“All of this is fine for you, but why should I even care?” Al Shei retorted. Exhaustion and wearying grief won out over manners. She didn’t look at the screen. She looked at her sealed window and the palm trees and blue sky beyond it. “Why should I care if the whole Guild collapses in on itself and Human Beings destroy the survivors and we’re left alone in the universe again?”

“I don’t know why you should care,” said Dobbs. “But I know that you do. If you didn’t care, you would have run away from the Farther Kingdom. You’d have gotten yourself and your crew out of there and let the mess sort itself out. You would have let Lipinski destroy the AI aboard the Pasadena and washed your hands of the whole thing. You wouldn’t have contacted your family when I asked you to. You would have let them shred the network you knew we need to live in. But you know that we’re not all evil, that we’re like Human Beings. Some of us are good, some are bad, most are a mix of the two, and you weren’t going to take it on yourself to destroy us all.

“You care, Al Shei, you always have. If you try to stop caring, you’re going to die trying.”

Al Shei’s fingers knotted around the blanket. The faux silk was cool and slick against her skin. “Words, words, words,” she muttered.

Dobbs was leaning all the way forward now. It looked as if any moment her nose would press against the glass of the screen. “They’re all I have left, Al Shei. I’ve lost everything else.” There was a sorrow in her voice that Al Shei hadn’t heard before. Dobbs seemed to catch herself and made her image give a small smile. “I liked being Human. I liked it from the first day I had a body. I’m going to miss it, a lot.”

Al Shei looked at her curiously. “Why can’t they give you a new one?”

She looked abashed. “I’m too big. There’s too many lives inside me. They’d have to cut them out to fit my core self back into Human patterns. I don’t want that. I…I feel like I’m a custodian now and I won’t give over that responsibility.”

Al Shei shook her head. “You’re a very strange creature.”

“Even stranger than I used to be,” Dobbs smiled again, deprecatingly this time. “When we play the fool, how the theater expands!” She swept her hand out and for that instant looked and sounded so much like her old self that Al Shei couldn’t keep from smiling.

Dobbs sobered quickly and her image flickered again. “Al Shei, it’s getting cramped in here. There’s a lot of activity on your lines. It’s squeezing me out. I think your sister is trying to get your uncle to come home…” she paused. “I’m going to put a call signature in your holding bin. You can use it to reach me, if you want to.” The image flickered again.

“Thank you,” said Al Shei, and although she meant it, she wasn’t sure how many things she was thanking Dobbs for. For being a good Fool, for being a good Human, perhaps. For trying her best.

The simulation of Dobbs’s face lit up with a genuine smile. “Anytime. I hope,” she added.

The screen went blank.

Al Shei smoothed out the blanket and stood up. She picked her pen up and activated the desk. After searching through three directories she managed to find the call signature for Guild Master Matthew Havelock, Fool’s Guild Hall Representative at Large.

She sent a request for contact down the line and switched on the camera over the intercom.

Havelock’s head and shoulders appeared on the view screen.

“We need to discuss salary, Guild Master,” she said. “And the ship you are going to build me.”

Sarah Zettel is the critically acclaimed author of more than twenty novels, spanning the full range of genre fiction. Her debut novel, Reclamation , won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Her second release, Fool’s War , was a 1997 New York Times Notable Book, and the American Library Association named Playing God one of the Best Books for Young Adults of 1999. Her novel Bitter Angels won the Philip K. Dick Award for best science fiction paperback in 2009. Her latest novel, Dust Girl , was named as one of the best young adult books of the year by both Kirkus Reviews and the American Library Association. Zettel lives in Michigan with her husband, her rapidly growing son, and her cat, Buffy the Vermin Slayer.

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