Charles Stross - Saturn's Children

“We’re in her palace,” says the munchkin. “Don’t ask me where that is, I just work here.” Then he turns to head for the exit.

“Not so fast.” I plant the palm of one hand on his head. “I’m checked in at the Nerrivik Paris. Tell someone to check me out and bring my bags here. Failing that, scan the contents and copy them to a printer here. Yes?”

“In your dreams, manikin.” He glares at me, buzzes irritably, and zips away. I shake my head, bemused. He’s so like Bill and Ben — and whatever happened to them anyway, after we split at Marsport? Jeeves didn’t know —

I shudder, then I remember that it doesn’t matter anymore.

LATER ON, LYING alone in my icy bed, I dream again that I am Juliette. It’s the first such flashback I’ve had since arriving on Callisto — in fact, my first since Mars — and I’m very afraid, and very alone, in this dream, because I’m lying in bed. And I shouldn’t be. I should be in microgravity with the Jeeves in the CEV, discussing my next assignment. Hand me your soul chip, he said. And I did, though not without reservations, and the next thing I know—

Huh?

I’m lying down, yes. And it’s very dark. Try opening your eyes, idiot, I tell myself. Nothing happens, and I begin to panic. I try to raise a hand—

“Juliette? Stop trying to move. Lie still; you’ll hurt yourself.”

The voice is familiar. Ferdinand Dix, one of Jeeves’s chop-shop artists. I must be undergoing maintenance. I try to relax, but I’m still worried. How did I get here?

“Okay, that was just some early proprioception disturbing her — attitude monitor telling her she’s lying down, or something. Everything checks out. I’m bringing her up now.” Ferd is talking to someone else, which is odd—

My vision begins to brighten and fill in from the edges, as if my eyes are only just coming online. Huh? My skin: I feel cold. I twitch a fingertip and feel something soft and yielding beneath it.

“Welcome back, Juliette.” Two figures lean over me, head to head from either side — Jeeves and Ferd. “How do you feel?” The Jeeves looks distinctly uneasy, as if he’s seen a ghost. I decide to try to bluff, although the freezing certainty in my guts tells me that I’ve blown it.

“I feel fine, boss. What happened? Last thing I remember—” I’m lifting an arm, trying to sit up, when I realize I’m actually lying to him. I feel like shit. Gravity here is light, but I’m really weak. In fact, all my upgrades are off-line. What the fuck? I’m back to the very basics I was fabbed with! I might as well be naked. “What’s going on?”

Jeeves clears his throat. “Believe it or not, you died.”

“What?” I bring up my right hand and stare at it. Yes, it’s my hand — or close enough I can’t see anything wrong with it. “I don’t understand.”

“Sit up.”

I’m beginning to do so when I realize what I’m sitting up from . I’m lying in a me-shaped hole in a foam pad on a table in Ferd’s examination room, and there’s an open shipping capsule to one side, battered and filthy. My vision blurs. “Shit!”

I stare at my hand in horror. My hand, pristine, utterly uncustomized, even virginal. The horror deepens. I swallow. Does Jeeves realize what he’s done? (Yes, of course he does. But he did it anyway…) “Who was she?” I demand. “Who was she going to be?”

“No one,” says Jeeves, with a note of world-weary cynicism. “Here.” He tosses two small blue plastic chips at me. I nearly fumble the catch, then stare. They’re blanking plates for soul-chip sockets. “She was uninitialized. Dysfunctional, actually — she came to light in a job lot of obsolete models that were being recycled for spare parts. Old warehouse stock or refurbished factory spares. One has a permanent autobid for spares of certain models that come up for auction. It took this good fellow here nearly twenty days to work out what was wrong with your new body and get it ready to install you from that chip you gave us.”

I still feel sick, but for an entirely different reason: terror. I remember my last first awakening, still thinking I was Rhea, before the unsmiling taskmaster told me otherwise. Glancing sideways I see Jeeves looking at me with an expression of profound distaste. As well he might, but for us to arrive at this pass, certain things must have happened… “Did she try to defect?” I ask harshly.

Jeeves nods. “One is unaware of her current disposition, but it may be inferred that she was not unsuccessful.” He glances at Ferdinand. “You. Leave us. Now.”

“Oh.” Shit. Without warning, bleak depression crashes down on me. I’m never going to see him again, I realize. She , the selfish cow, my earlier self — she’s gotten to him. Of course. Skipping out one jump ahead of Jeeves, she’ll be home and dry by now. And she’s left me to face the music. “What did Daks tell you?”

“Daks?” Jeeves simulates surprise very realistically.

I glare at him. “Do you think I’m stupid ? What have you done with him?”

“This isn’t about, ah, Pete. If you’ll calm down, stand up, and accompany one into the office, we can discuss it.” Jeeves is, as usual, oleaginous and syrupy. Only a tiny spark burning in the back of his eyes tells me how much trouble I’m in. What if he knows about the other stuff? Part of me gibbers, even as I try to thrust it back into the closet it jumped out of. What if — I ignore it.

Ferd hands me a yukata as I stand up, and I pull it around myself as Jeeves slowly ambles toward the door, then pauses while I catch up. I’m weak and underspecified but my mind’s working full-time, of course — as it should be, because loading a soul chip into an uninitialized brain for the first time doesn’t have any of the disorienting slow-downs and inefficiencies of transferring memories between a soul chip and a brain that already hosts a personality. Although I’m going to find out I’m missing a lot of stuff if he didn’t start with an initialization dump from Rhea — what I’ve got is whatever I remembered when I — no, she — wore this chip.

Item : I was thinking about how to get back to Pete when Jeeves asked me for the chip. Item : He must have suspected something then, too. Item : This body, virgin, unawakened… even if he’s telling the truth and it was recovered from a scrapyard full of abandoned corpses, its arrival at just the right time is extremely disturbing. Item : Jeeves has no reason to trust me except that another bitch with my name and memories has already gone over the wall and done what I was just beginning to think of half an hour ago. I just hope he doesn’t know about—

“By the way, you will obey all instructions and refrain from resistance, ” Jeeves says off handedly. I stop — or rather, I try to. My feet won’t let me. Oh shit.

“What’s going on?” I ask, putting the right amount of tremor into my voice.

“You know exactly what’s going on.” He opens the office door and goes inside. “Come in and sit down in the visitor’s chair. It’s time we had a little chat.”

I can’t help doing as I’m told. Shit, this isn’t just about the object of desire; is it? Jeeves shuffles around to his side of the desk and sits down. There’s a solid thunk from the door frame as the security system engages. Shit. Shitshitshit … Sheer terror begins to gnaw away at me. “Who are you?” I ask, and this time I’m not faking the quaver.

“I’m the Internal Security Jeeves. I take care of problems.” He isn’t smiling.