Марта Уэллс - Network Effect

“We know.” Ratthi made a helpless gesture. “But we don’t have any other choice. Even if it would let us send a distress beacon through the wormhole to the nearest station, that station would be in Corporation Rim territory. And we’re in a so-called ‘lost’ system that has been claimed as salvage by a corporate, which makes us in violation of a lot of their laws, plus we’re in a transport that had alien remnant technology installed on its drive. Telling whoever responds to the call that the transport was modified against its will is not going to get us anywhere but buried under massive fines, and it might be even worse for Perihelion ’s crew and their university.”

He was right about all that but it was actually worse than he thought. “This is not like Preservation Alliance territory. You can only get a station responder when you’re inside a station’s defined area of influence, and they won’t forward distress beacons and they don’t send responders through wormholes. At most, they’ll pass the call to a local retrieval company, which would contact us and contract to rescue us. We’d have to pay them up front, and probably end up owing the station for passing the call along, though that depends on local regulations.”

Amena’s jaw dropped. “We’d have to pay someone to rescue us?”

Ratthi rubbed his face and muttered, “Oh, I hate the Corporation Rim.”

“Really? Me too,” I said. (Yes, that was sarcasm.)

And I had just thought of something that I should have noticed earlier.

Amena was clearly trying to work out all the possible repercussions. “And if corporates did show up, would you be okay? Because you’re a construct?”

“I’m fine,” I told her. It is amazing what the people on Preservation don’t know about how the Corporation Rim operates. “SecUnits are legal here. Your mother is my registered owner and you’re her designated representative.” And it was definitely Amena and not Thiago.

Amena looked appalled. “My mother doesn’t own you.”

“Yes, she does.” Dr. Bharadwaj had told me how Preservation-based humans don’t understand these concepts and I had believed her, mostly, but seeing it in action was always different.

Amena looked at Ratthi for help. He nodded grimly. “Arada, Overse, and I all have certified copies of the legal document stored in our interfaces, just in case. If we do fall into the hands of corporates, Amena, you must assert legal ownership of SecUnit.”

Amena waved her hands. “But that’s—Ugh!”

“I don’t like it, either,” I told her.

Ratthi said, “That aside, Perihelion says it will be some time before it can make repairs to its engine systems so we’re able to start the search, and we have preparations and plans to make.” He clapped his hands briskly. “So will you come out of the bathroom now?”

“Yes.” I pushed myself off the counter and pulled my jacket on over ART’s stupid T-shirt. “Because ART is lying.”

This time when the lights fluctuated, it wasn’t sarcastic.

I walked out into Medical. The view of the control area was still active, with Arada seated in a station chair and Thiago now standing next to her. They were cycling through engine status data on ART’s alien-remnant-augmented wormhole trip, occasionally making little horrified noises.

Overse was in Medical now, with the implant we had removed from Eletra on a sterile work surface. She was examining it using an imaging field. The magnified scans of the individual parts floated in it, rotating. Eletra was sitting up on a gurney near Overse, peering uncertainly at what she was doing with the implant.

Overse pulled out of her feed to look over at us inquiringly. “Is, uh, everyone ready to talk now?”

“Not exactly.” Ratthi sounded concerned, which was totally unfair.

I said, “Arada, this transport did not come to this system in answer to a distress call.”

Thiago turned around to watch me suspiciously. Arada pushed back her station chair. Someone had brought her some supplies from the emergency kit, because the burn on her cheek had been treated. “SecUnit, I think we have a working arrangement with Perihelion for now. Unless this is something that could endanger us, are you sure you want to… confront it just at the moment?”

I said, “I am absolutely sure.”

Ratthi threw his hands in the air and went over to sit next to Overse.

With a “let’s get this over with” expression, Overse asked, “SecUnit, how do you know there wasn’t a distress call?”

I said, “This is a teaching and research vessel. The student quarters and classroom compartments aren’t in use, and the lab module was inactive, and there was no cargo module attached. So what was it doing when it got this distress call?”

All the humans looked up at the ceiling.

ART said, And this is your idea of being helpful .

I said, “This is my idea of the opposite of being helpful. I am here against my will and you are going to regret that.”

Arada pressed both hands to her face. “Maybe you should go back in the bathroom and think about this a little more.”

“I’m done thinking,” I said.

ART said, That’s obvious .

I know, I walked into that one, which oddly enough, did not make me any less mad. I said, “You came here for a reason, and it wasn’t a distress call. What was it?”

On the side of the room to my right, this was going on:

(Eletra whispered to Overse and Ratthi, “Why are you letting your SecUnit… do this?”

Overse’s jaw tightened. She said, “It’s not our SecUnit, it’s—”

Ratthi squeezed her wrist and gave her what I recognized as a “don’t trust the corporates” look. He told Eletra, “It’s normally very responsible.”)

Thiago was eyeing me through the conference image, frowning. He said, “It is a good question.”

(Of course, none of the sensible humans are supporting me now, it has to be the one who never agrees with me when I’m not being an idiot.) I said to ART, “Why were you here? What do you really do? Deep space research, teaching humans, cargo hauling, none of those are reasons to be here, in the system where corporates were trying to salvage a dead colony.”

ART said, Everything that occurred before my crew was captured is irrelevant. It is none of your business .

I said, “You made it my business when you kidnapped me.”

You are not here against your will. Leave whenever you want. You know where the door is .

That sounded just as sarcastic and mean as you think it did. Also possibly really threatening to the humans. Arada and Ratthi were both waving at me, making gestures which I interpreted as urgent requests for me to shut up now. But I had gotten ART to lose its temper again and be threatening, and that was what I wanted. I folded my arms and said, “You’re upsetting Amena.”

I’d noted that ART’s tone when it spoke to Amena was completely different than it was to the other humans. I didn’t think it would hurt the others, but it wasn’t careful of their feelings the way it was of Amena’s. Whatever else ART was, the classroom space and bunkrooms said it was actually, on a regular basis, a teaching vessel. And before this when I was stupid and we were still friends it had talked about human adolescents in an indulgent way.

Amena took a breath, probably to object, based on her whole “despite being a relatively sheltered adolescent from the most naive human society in existence, I feel a need to pretend that none of this is bothering me” thing. I looked at her and tapped our private feed connection. Be honest .

She let the breath out. She prodded the deck with the toe of her shoe and admitted, reluctantly, “The gray people were terrifying. And being shot at, and… I’d really like to know what’s going on, not just a convenient story.”