Марта Уэллс - Network Effect

I used my own scan, making sure there was no movement or active weapons inside, and stepped in.

The shuttle wasn’t a model I had been in before, but the configuration was similar to a standard transport shuttle. It was small, sized for ten humans at most, no cabins, a toilet facility that folded out from the bulkhead (ugh). The individual seats were in a spiral in the main compartment, so they would have to be cycled around to release each passenger for disembarking. It was obviously meant for short trips between ships or from ship-to-station. The cockpit had a seat for a human pilot next to the currently absent bot pilot’s interface console. The upholstery showed signs of ordinary wear and tear. The single passenger compartment was generally clean but there were scuff marks on the panels and padding. There was only a .01 percent chance it had been constructed as a trap by an alien intelligence. (It was a theory, okay.)

On our private feed connection, Amena said, Is it empty? Is there anything strange in it? Can I come closer?

You can come to the hatch, but not inside . I started searching for physical evidence. I would need to check all the storage compartments, anywhere there might be a hidden space that could conceal something. The drive housing still had the factory seal from its last maintenance check, so it probably hadn’t been infected with illegal alien remnant technology. I’d have to break the seal and do a visual inspection anyway, just to be certain. I also needed to pull the logs, but I’d have to do it via a display surface. Even with an inert operating system, I didn’t want to take any chances.

Amena came up to the hatch and leaned inside to look around. “If you need me to do anything, I can do it.”

I pinged her feed to acknowledge.

She watched me search for seven minutes and forty seconds, then said, “Can I ask you a question?”

I never know how to answer this. Should I go with my first impulse, which is always “no” or just give in to the inevitable? I said, “Is it contract-relevant?”

Big, adolescent human sigh noise. “I just want to understand something.”

I gave in to the inevitable. “Yes.”

She hesitated. “Right, umm. So my second mom really didn’t ask you to break up me and Marne?”

I had answered that question already, back when it happened. I could get mad at her asking it again, but granted, I do lie a lot. “I wasn’t lying to you. She doesn’t know anything about it unless you told her.”

I finished the search of the cabin and pinged ART. It generated a display surface with a disabled feed interface so it couldn’t transmit anything that might be in the shuttle’s systems to ART, me, or anything else.

Amena still had questions. “Then why did you do it? You didn’t—you don’t—care about me. You didn’t really even know me then.”

Why does ART like adolescent humans? This was exhausting. “I have files on all the members of Dr. Mensah’s family and their associates. I alerted on Marne because I ran threat assessments on all humans and augmented humans attempting to approach or form new relationships with Dr. Mensah or her family or associates after the GrayCris incident. Marne registered as a threat to you.”

Amena thought about that while I made a connection between the console and the sequestered display surface. Then I started to run the shuttle’s raw log files on the display, filtering out anything that wasn’t text. I was recording the information visually, and then I could convert it back to data fields and search it more quickly. That way we’d get the log information without any underlying code that might be hidden in it. (There are visual elements that could cause me problems, but I could screen for those and granted, the chances that the log file might be protected against a SecUnit doing a visual download were running under 5 percent.) (I know, I’m paranoid, but that’s how I’ve avoided being rendered for spare parts all this time.) Amena said slowly, “I guess if he wasn’t… He would have wanted to explain himself, instead of running off and refusing to speak to me again.”

As far as my threat assessment was concerned, running off and never seeing her again was an excellent result. I was pretty sure Amena wouldn’t want to hear that, though.

She continued, “I thought he was nice. I’m not… I know at the time I said I knew what I was doing, but I’m actually not very good at meeting new people.”

I knew from threat assessments on Ratthi’s associates that he had a lot of relationships with all genders of humans and augmented humans and he and they all seemed very happy about it. Amena should ask him for advice. I didn’t think she wanted to hear that, either.

Then Amena said, “Do you love my second mother? Thiago thinks so.”

I should have known this was going to turn into an interrogation. I said, “Not the way he thinks.”

Her face went all dubious. “I don’t think you know what he thinks.”

He doesn’t know what I think, either, so there. I was distracted converting a dumpload of raw log info from a visual image back into searchable data and if I got the fields wrong it was going to be a giant mess. I probably should have just stopped talking, but I didn’t want to hurt Amena’s feelings. I said, “Your second mother is…” Client wasn’t the right word, not anymore. “My teammate.” I could see I had to clarify. It was really hard finding the right words. “Before your second mother, I had never been an actual member of a team before. Just an…”

Amena finished, “An appliance for a team.”

That was it. “Yes.”

“I see. Thank you for letting me ask you questions.”

ART must be recovering because it had to butt in with, Tell her you care about her. Use those words, don’t tell her you’ll eviscerate anything that tries to hurt her.

ART, fuck off .

The thing ART has in common with human adolescents is that it doesn’t like to hear the word “no,” either. It persisted, Tell her. It’s true. Just say it. Human adolescents need to hear it from their caretakers.

I’m not a caretaker, I told ART. I finished the log conversion and checked my drone view of Amena. She was leaning in the hatchway, her head propped on the seal buffer. (That isn’t a good place to put your head, just FYI.) From her expression, she was either falling asleep or deep in thought. Or possibly both. I said, “You need to sleep.”

She yawned. “Okay, third mom.”

Arada finally ordered the others to take a rest period, though it took her a while to really understand that ART and I would still be active and there was no reason for the humans to take shifts. (I finally had to tell her that I had a list of things I needed to get done and it would go much faster if they would all stay in one place and shut up for a while and sleeping was the most efficient use of that time.)

Overse had finished repairing the repair drone and sent it off to begin the rebuilds of ART’s other drones. She was sleeping on a couch in the lounge next to the galley with Ratthi, who had finished the biohazard cleanup. There was snoring.

Arada was sleeping in one of the station chairs on the control deck. (They’re very comfortable, so it’s not as bad as it sounds.)

The medical scans had finished and Thiago walked Eletra back to her bunkroom. He hadn’t gotten much more out of her than Amena had, though his questions were more subtle. With his prompting, Eletra had gone over her augment clock and was now severely confused. It showed their transport had been in this system for forty-three corporation standard days. She was certain that was wrong. It was more support for the theory that Eletra had undergone some kind of memory manipulation. The initial scan analysis showed no genetic manipulation, no hidden devices or non-human biologicals.