Марта Уэллс: Network Effect

Amena clapped a hand over her mouth, startled, then recognized me. She said, “What the hell? What are you doing here?”

Potential Target gasped, “What—Who—?”

Amena was furious. “That’s my second mother’s… friend,” she said through gritted teeth. “And her security… person.”

“What?” He was confused, then the word “security” penetrated. He stepped away from her. “Uh… I guess… You’d better go.”

Amena looked at him, and then glared at me, then turned and stamped out the door and down the steps to the path. I followed her, and he backed away as I passed him. Yeah, you better.

On the dirt path, lit by the low floating guide-lights, I caught up with her. (Not so much intentionally, but my legs were longer and she was putting more energy into stamping her feet than gaining distance.)

She said, “How did you know where I was? What were you doing, hiding under the porch?”

She thought I wouldn’t get the domestic animal reference. I said, “Wow, that was rude. Especially considering that I’m your second mother’s”—I made ironic quote marks—“‘friend.’ Is that how you talk to your bot-servants?”

My drone cam showed her expression turn startled and then a combination of sulky and guilty. “No. I don’t have bot-servants! I didn’t know—I never heard you talk.”

“You didn’t ask.” Had I not been talking? I had been talking to the kids on the feed, and to Mensah. Maybe with the rest of the family it had been easier to pretend to be a robot again. I added, “No one else approached that house. He lied about meeting other humans there.”

She stamped along in silence for twelve point five seconds. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m not some kind of idiot, and I don’t fuck around. If he’d done anything I didn’t like, I was going to leave. And if he wouldn’t let me leave, I have the feed, I can call for help whenever I want.” She was scornful, and way overconfident. “I wasn’t going to let him hurt me.”

I said, “If I thought he was going to hurt you, I’d be disposing of his body. I don’t fuck around, either.”

She stopped and stared up at me. I stopped but kept my gaze on the path ahead. I said, “Mensah is a planetary leader of a minor political entity that has managed to get the angry attention of major corporates. Her situation has changed. Your situation has changed. You need to grow up and deal with it.”

She took a breath to say something, stopped, then shook her head. “He wasn’t a corporate spy. He was just someone…”

“Someone you don’t know who showed up out of nowhere at a massive public festival attended by half the continent and whatever offworld humans happen to be wandering through.” I knew he wasn’t a corporate spy (see above, disposing of bodies) but she sure didn’t.

She was quiet for sixteen seconds. “Are you going to tell my parents about this?”

Is that what she was worried about? I was insulted and exasperated. “I don’t know. I guess you’ll find out.”

She stamped away.

So, in retrospect, I could see that hadn’t gone so well.

Our vehicle rumbled through the dark, up the low hill to the camp house, which was a pop-up two-story structure with broad covered balconies off both levels. It had been placed near a couple of large trees with frilly leaves that curved over the roof. It had been built by Mensah’s grandfather, while her grandmothers and other assorted family members had been working on the original planetary survey and terraforming. The colonists who hadn’t been living in orbit on their ship had all stayed in temporary structures at that point, that were moved seasonally to avoid destructive weather patterns in the parts of the planet that had been habitable at that time.

There were other pop-ups, large and small, planted all over the hills around us, the nearest twenty-seven meters away. Lights were on inside the house and one light floated above the beacon spot for the vehicles. I would have worried about the lack of lighting if I hadn’t had thirty-seven drones on patrol in the immediate area.

(Drones had picked up previously identified humans and augmented humans returning to the other houses or passing through the area, and I’d conducted safety checks on unidentified humans encountered for the first time. I was cataloguing power signatures on some small mobility devices used by non-augmented humans for medical reasons; I hadn’t seen these anywhere in the Corporation Rim, though maybe that was because I hadn’t spent much time hanging out on planets with human populations not exclusively engaged in corporate slave labor. (The entertainment media showed planets that weren’t all corporate slave labor, I had just never been on one.)) (The drones had also tracked the five younger kids on a completely illicit expedition to a nearby creek where they had performed some kind of ritual that involved jumping out at each other from behind bushes and rocks. They returned to the house without being caught by the adult humans or older siblings and were now collapsed in their upstairs bunk room, watching media.)

(The house actually had secure sealable window and door hatches, WHICH NO ONE USED, but at least this made it easy for my patrol drones.)

As the vehicle settled into its spot, Mensah said, “I’m just going to sit outside for a bit. Why don’t you go on back to the festival? There’s a few more plays tonight, aren’t there?”

I try to avoid asking humans if there’s anything wrong with them. (Mostly because I don’t care.) (On the rare occasions where I did care, it would have meant starting a conversation not directly related to security protocol, and that was just a slippery slope waiting to happen, for a variety of reasons.) But humans asked each other about their current status all the time, so how hard could it be? It was a request for information, that was all. I did a quick search and pulled up a few examples from my media collection. None of the samples seemed like anything I’d ever voluntarily say, so before I could change my mind I went with, “What’s wrong?”

She was surprised, then gave me a sideways look. “Don’t you start.”

So there was something wrong and even the other humans had noticed. I said, “I have to know about any potential problems for an accurate threat assessment.”

She lifted a brow and opened the vehicle door. “You never mentioned that on our survey contract.”

I got out of the vehicle and followed her toward a group of chairs next to the house, scattered around in the grass under the trees. The shadow was deep so I had to switch to a dark filter to see her. “That was because I was half-assing my job.”

She took a seat. “If that was you half-assing your job, I don’t want to see what you’re like when…” The smile faded and she trailed off, then added, “But I suppose I did see you when you were doing your best.”

I sat down, too. (Sitting down with a human like this would never not feel strange.) Her expression wasn’t upset, but it wasn’t not upset, either. But I could tell my smartass comment had taken us down an awkward conversational avenue where I hadn’t wanted to go. I wished I was ART, who was good at this kind of thing. (The thing being getting you to talk about what it wanted you to talk about but also making you think about what it wanted you to talk about in different ways.) (I wasn’t kidding when I said ART was an asshole.) “You didn’t answer the question.”

She settled back in her chair. “You sound worried.”

“I am worried.” I could feel my face making the expression whether I wanted it to or not.

She let her breath out. “It’s nothing. I’ve been having nightmares. About being held prisoner on TranRollinHyfa, and… you know.” She made an impatient gesture. “It’s completely normal. It would be odd if I wasn’t having nightmares.”