Sarah Zettel - Fool's War

She felt his acknowledgement and knew that he felt a little better. So did she. Here was something they could both work toward. It made everything that much easier.

You should get out of here, Cohen. If somebody comes by, I’ll have to duck and you’ll have to explain what you’re doing. It won’t look good.

No, I suppose it wouldn’t, he admitted reluctantly. But you’d better keep on the move until …

Until I either wake up in my body, or don’t. Dobbs drew away from him. Dobbs felt Cohen’s last movement in her memory; a wish for luck.

Good-bye, Cyril. Thanks.

There was nothing else to say. Cohen raced back toward Guild Hall and Dobbs, forcing herself to move with at least some deliberate speed, glided down the path in the opposite direction.

She found a school of credit transfers heading for the transmitter and pulled herself into the middle of them, matching her speed to theirs. She touched one delicately and found that it was on its way to Neptune Exchange Station Alpha, and from their to Crater Town on Mars. The Neptune Exchange seemed as good a place as any to be going. If she couldn’t lose herself in the major routing station for fast-time comm traffic leaving the solar system, with its millions of transactions happening per second, she couldn’t lose herself anywhere.

“Evelyn Dobbs, what are you going to do now?” A new voice reached her.

She knew this voice. This was the voice that had stolen Flemming. Dobbs leapt up, scattering her camouflaging transactions.

“Curran!” she sent the shout in all directions.

“I’m right here.” A brief touch brushed her. It pulled away immediately. Dobbs dashed after it. “The Guild has betrayed you, Evelyn Dobbs. What are you going to do now?” Another touch. Just ahead. Dobbs braced herself to dive forward.

No. She stopped. Don’t get pulled along like a fish on a line. If he wants you, he can come here.

Dobbs held her position. She expanded herself to fill the path. She could feel the transactions crowding at her back, jostling at her, looking for a way through. She was disrupting hundreds of transactions. There’d be a diagnostic on its way any second now. But this way, Curran couldn’t slip past her. There were no side paths at this point he could jump to. He had one way to retreat, backwards toward the telescope receiver. But, if he stayed to taunt her some more, she might just get her chance to grab him.

“Very good.” His voice brimmed with what Dobbs could have sworn was genuine approval. “You’re quick under pressure. Flemming said you were.”

Dobbs flinched. “What have you done with Flemming?”

“Nothing.” Was she imagining it, or did he sound shocked? “I’ve given it a home, Dobbs, and a chance to help make a real freedom for our own kind. Not the constant hiding and subterfuge that the Guild offers, but real, open freedom.”

She could feel him like a faint breeze against her outermost layer. He was just barely within reach.

Dobbs still held her position. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about being able to live our own lives and have a choice about what we do, Dobbs.” He slipped just a hair’s breadth closer. He was almost really touching her now. Dobbs wanted to curdle back, but she didn’t. Let him think she was listening. Let him press right up against her.

“What are you going to do, Dobbs? Live with the Humans? Never come back into the net again?”

Dobbs wavered. It was a good question. A real question. She didn’t know what she was going to do. What if Cohen couldn’t find out who they could trust in the Guild? What if there was no one? What if he was caught and sentenced to the fate she’d escaped? What then?

“You’ll go crazy, Dobbs. We weren’t meant to be trapped inside human bodies. None of us.” She could feel the shape he made in the path now. He was a large, but efficient bundle at the foot of the barrier she made of herself.

No. No. Don’t listen to him. What’s happening is his fault. I know that. He’s trying to confuse me.

And he’s doing it.

Anger surged through Dobbs. She let herself fall. She toppled onto Curran and pressed down with all her might. She only caught a part of him but she bore down hard, trying to sever what she had. He struggled, stabbing at her. He was strong and controlled, worse than Flemming had been. Dobbs felt her hold beginning to give. She rolled over, taking him with her. Flemming she hadn’t wanted to hurt, but this one…this one had ruined her life. This one had cost her everything she had, and now he was trying to get her to betray the Guild. The Guild had betrayed her, but that was a mistake, a mistake this one was responsible for. He had to be. He had to. Anything else was unthinkable.

She tore at him, trying to rend his outer layers to the point he could no longer control them. Then she’d have something to grab onto. Then she could get inside. She clawed and slashed, seeking vital connectors she could sever. In response, he pulled himself tighter. His attacks became less forceful, but his defences became harder, until she tumbled the solid shell he’d made of himself over and over, looking for an opening that wasn’t there.

Fine. Easier for me to drag you back.

She surrounded him. Not the way Cohen had surrounded her. She curled into an armored ball and caught him tight inside her.

Ashes, ashes, he’s big! Tight as he was, she could barely grapple all of him.

He jerked forward. Dobbs held. He pummeled her from inside, scrabbling at her defences in all directions at once. Her seams weren’t sealed yet and he found them. She tried to clamp down but he pried her open and shot free into the network.

Dobbs launched herself after him. She could follow the riotous wake he left. She could sense the very edge of him. Dobbs snatched at a packet as she flew by. She could make a line, she could still catch him. He was right there, reaching for a side-path, speeding toward the transmitter.

PING!

No! She howled, but her momentum had already faltered. She focused tightly on the pathway ahead of her, but Curran was gone and his wake was settling. He’d probably already jumped out through the transmitter. If he was bright, and he obviously was, he’d have left a scramble command to erase his destination coordinates. Soon a diagnostic would come blundering up the path to try to find out what had happened to the packet she had mutilated and delayed.

Dobbs dropped the mangled packet. Anger faded into a kind of bleak acceptance. There was nothing else to do. Curran was gone and she had to go back and find out what had happened to her.

Maybe her body had been stowed aboard the Pasadena, maybe it hadn’t.

Dobbs let herself fall back down towards her transceiver. Either Cohen’s plan for her escape had worked or it hadn’t. Everything was already over or it was just getting started.

Her body enclosed her, reattaching its own senses and muffling her naked awareness. As soon as she could find them, Dobbs forced her eyelids open.

Light panels glowed overhead. She could hear the hum of machinery. The walls around her were white. She was stretched out on a table. There were straps around her waist and her wrists.

“So, you’re back with us, Master Dobbs.”

Dobbs closed her eyes again, and felt Chandra Sundar undo the restraining straps.

“Intercom to Al Shei,” said Chandra’s voice. “Dobbs is awake and doing fine.”

“Thank you, Chandra.” Al Shei got up off of Resit’s bunk. “I’ll be right down.”

“Well, you can tell her she’s safe as long as she’s with us, at least.” Resit swivelled her chair around so she was facing Al Shei. “According to the laws in all the systems we’re heading for, you can give her a berth, or throw her out the airlock, as you please.”