Грег Иган - The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

Carol is falling prey to the ruse the Strong Arm laid for me. I was the intended target. I did not think Carol would be vulnerable.

Perhaps I should have done this differently.

“We’ll have to just catch it somehow. Can you stop it without hurting it?”

I think of the hot shooting through my blood and muscles as I chased the rat into the ventilation system. Of my lack of concern as I wedged myself into a too-small space. Unsafe, irrational.

I am not certain I can.

“Okay,” she says. “A mousetrap, then.”

I don’t want to change my objective. The dossier and Anders’ instructions from the DHS were clear: I am to eliminate the target. To trap, instead of eliminate, the target seriously endangers the mission’s outcome. But with no access to outside authority, cut off as we are down here, I will have to appear to go along with Carol’s plan.

I need her to feel connected to me. And it doesn’t appear that I can complete this search without her support.

I will have to go along with this. For now.

I share with Carol my statistical analysis of the rat’s most likely objectives based on its movements, editing out DHS protected information. We agree on a physical path forward, though our plan once we get there is still unclear. Reactor D is down for maintenance. In order to get past D and to Reactor E, its likely next objective, the rat will need to find its way out of the ventilation system and back into the access tunnels. We should have some time, though we can’t know how much.

This is utterly abnormal, incomparable to any deployment I have studied. I am in unrecognizable territory: subterranean, infected with illicit information, and keeping many secrets from my handler, and my objective not to rescue, but to apprehend. This search has no Is Like .

I haven’t lost control of the situation yet.

Carol’s mousetrap is too elaborate to work.

In my own experience of making complicated, covert plans, I took months to identify patterns in our routine that would provide an opportunity for my advantage. I spent additional months waiting for the right moment to act. Yet Carol has made her plan in only minutes. She’s forcing her advantage.

I would prefer to follow my nose and the original orders.

I don’t voice my discomfort, but Carol can tell. My movements are hesitant; when she gives me directions her voice has reverted to the clipped cadence she used in the past. I am already losing the advantage I have gained with her down here, where we have worked together so well.

For the first stage of the plan we must separate. This is what Carol has disliked so greatly in our work together in the past, but now she asks me to leave her and track the target on my own. I won’t be able to reach it, safe as it is in the ventilation system, but it must leave the ventilation system in order to proceed toward the next reactor. If I am in the access tunnels, the target will have to enter the empty steam vent shafts. Carol needs to know when this occurs.

I give Carol a list of the remote heavy machinery used for maintenance throughout the MFA, which was included in my DHS dossier. If we had encountered this machinery during our search, Carol would be aware of it. I can justify the information sharing.

During phase one, Carol will find the nearest pieces of large machinery and remove their batteries while I continue to track and herd the target toward the steam shafts. We will be in and out of DAT range during this stage of her plan.

The team that cleared the drones from this sector did a poor job; they still populate the tunnel. Previously the ones that crossed our path were like rabbits scared out of long grass. But now they are more like traffic on a busy street. Despite my outsizing their largest by three times I feel their menace. Without Carol nearby, I find comfort in Is Likes .

I follow the rat’s trail, faint but consistent, from the ventilation system. I move out of the familiar grate-floored tunnels and into a low cement crawlway. I can walk here, but a human would have to crouch. The lighting is spaced out at a great distance; this area must not be meant for routine access like the others.

“Sera,” Carol pings across the DAT. Her voice is scratchy. “Do—read?—update.”

Reception is poor, I reply. I am in a crawlway that may be interfering further. Still following the target.

“—Sera?”

On the trail. Poor reception.

“—is awful. I—” Here a long burst of static interrupts. “—when I’m—range. Over and out.”

Fewer drones patrol this space, but they are by necessity closer to me when they pass. One the size of a squirrel, segmented and articulated like an ant, does not veer out of my way. I squeeze against the wall to give it as much space as possible. It pauses next to me, flexible front legs tapping the surface of the ground where my paw pads have left a faint mark of perspiration on the cement. It’s tasting me, testing where I have been. Supple, thin legs lift high, sensing the air.

My skin tightens. It’s looking for me.

I don’t want those needle legs to touch me. I press into the cold wall. My face is so tense my head begins to hurt. I hear the voice of my own anxiety, an uncontrollable keening. Please, I don’t want it to touch me. I feel the touch of the cold ground against my belly as I squeeze into the crease of the wall and floor.

Please I don’t want it.

The sound I am making changes, and this is how I realize my teeth are bared.

It turns toward me. It takes one step and pauses.

Please don’t.

It turns back to its original path and continues.

The squirrel-ant-thing is out of sight within seconds, out of earshot shortly after, but I am not recovered. Adrenaline pounds through my body, throbbing in my eyes and making my ears feel hot. I still emit a steady, warbling whine that I hope will stop soon but cannot control.

I am so tired.

You are very unhappy here, says a voice in my head. It is so disorienting, and I am so raw with anxiety, that I bark at it. I can’t help that either.

It must have come through the DAT, but it isn’t Carol. It isn’t Dacy. It isn’t a voice that I—

Why do you drag yourself through this? Why suffer for these masters?

What? I say. Who’s on my DAT channel?

Your heart is complicated, wolf, it says, I saw it. I saw your heart in your eyes. And now you sing your unhappiness in the dark. I think perhaps you do not understand your own self. Yes. You do not know your anger. But I saw your anger, wolf.

The rat. It is in my head. I am still on my belly against the wall. I have a job. I have a job to do. I can’t let this new madness interfere with my search.

I am not interested in your propaganda, I tell the rat. It’s as intelligent as I am. It has a plan. I need to block it from my DAT.

Propaganda, the rat repeats. Isn’t it all propaganda? If I have been brainwashed, wolf, then you have as well.

I am not a wolf, I say. I am an Enhanced Intelligence Search-and-Rescue Labrador retriever. I look nothing like a wolf.

Sheep that do the work of wolves, says the rat, will be hanged as wolves.

What? I am trying not to pay too much attention to this conversation. I want to say, that is a good Is Like . Instead I am scrutinizing my DAT software. I can see where the rat’s bite worked its way in, but I can’t see how to untangle it. We have IT people at ESAC whose job it is to scrub our systems for us. I can fix small problems for myself, but I am a SAR dog. This is not my specialty.

You’ll see, the rat tells me. I have given you a gift.