Аннали Ньюиц - Autonomous

“Might I please have a look at some of your machines?” There were his perfect AU school manners again. He pointed at two atmosphere chambers that looked like plastic bubbles on metal carts. A mild pressure differential engorged the rubber gloves that researchers used to reach inside the airtight chambers. It created the illusion that the machines were covered in reaching hands.

Krish seemed a little startled by Threezed’s formality. “Sure—go ahead.” Krish shrugged and turned back to Jack. “Do you have a place to stay? We’ve got a loft back there that people crash in sometimes. There’s even a shower.”

“Thanks, Krish.” Jack touched his arm.

He tilted his head at her. “Is somebody after you for this?”

“They haven’t caught me yet. But yeah. I’m going to help out with Med’s project and then lie low for a while.”

“Nothing’s changed for you, huh?” Krish’s tone hovered between bitterness and admiration.

She started to reply, to tell him that everything had changed. To retort that she wasn’t just sitting in some fancy lab with tenure and grants, because she’d spent her life actually doing things. But instead of snarking, she wondered about all the ways Krish might have changed, too. Jack rested a hand on her knife hilt and stared up at the light wires woven into the high ceiling of the Free Lab. They created the same generic striped pattern as the ones she’d memorized on the ceiling of her cell all those years ago.

JULY 10, 2144

Paladin had never approached Camp Tunisia with the access levels of a fully fledged agent. When he checked his maps now, he found directions to a small flight pad beside an arched, luminescent entrance into the facility beneath the dunes. A spider bot covered in tools greeted him.

Hello. Let’s establish a secure session using the AF protocol.

Paladin replied that he could use the latest AF protocol, version 7.7.

Let’s do it. I’m Blazer. Here are my identification credentials. Here comes my data. Please leave your vehicle here. You may continue inside. That is the end of my data.

For Eliasz, Blazer vocalized the standard greeting: “Welcome to Camp Tunisia.”

Already on the local network, Paladin started saving encrypted data to a directory devoted to the mission. Fang contacted him while he was still uploading some geotagged maps of Jack’s probable route out of Inuvik, with statistical likelihoods assigned to each route.

Hey, Paladin. Remember our secure session? Let’s keep using that. It’s Fang. Here comes my data. Meet at the attached coordinates for debriefing. Bring Eliasz. I have an IPC rep here who is not very happy. He wants to know why you almost burned down a valuable energy source for Iqaluit. That is the end of my data.

Paladin replied that he’d received Fang’s data.

Cradling his shattered right arm in his left, Paladin led Eliasz into the cool tunnel whose end was represented on his internal map as a block of garbage characters—encrypted, except for bots whose rank gave them the proper key. They arrived at their destination long before the encryption began, passing an icy server room and several radio frequency beacons before finding the conference area.

Fang was there with the IPC rep they’d met before their trip to Baffin Island. With the rep were two other humans, one in crisp corp casuals and another whom Eliasz must know based on the burst of electricity Paladin saw in the facial recognition area of Eliasz’ brain. The bot settled heavily into a chair, laying his mostly detached arm on the table. Next to him Eliasz nodded curtly at the man he’d recognized.

“Hello soldiers,” said the rep. “This is my colleague from the IPC, Senator Haldeman. I believe you know each other?” Paladin was not included in the question, and Eliasz nodded mutely again. “And this is Dr. Hernandez, Zaxy’s VP of public relations.”

Fang beamed a message to Paladin. You look a little worse for the wear.

Paladin desperately wanted to talk to somebody else about what he’d gone through, but he kept his answer curt. Some of this damage is deliberate, and some unavoidable.

“I understand you almost took down the solar power grid in Iqaluit, Eliasz,” the senator intoned in an accent that broadcast a life of educated privilege in the Free Trade Zone. “Luckily, it was very quickly contained, and hasn’t become an international property incident. But it’s going to be hard for me to keep this little problem with drug hooligans under wraps if you keep blowing up solar farms.” He paused, and Paladin watched the senator receive a small stream of data packets. He routed it from a neural hub to a device implanted in his right cornea, which he tried to check unobtrusively. “We’re always happy to help any large company stop criminals, of course.” The senator nodded at the Zaxy VP, who offered an empty smile. “Piracy undermines free trade, and punishes the most productive members of our society.” Having finished his speech, the senator checked his cornea feed again.

Eliasz stabilized his heart rate, then looked calmly at the senator, the IPC rep, and the silent Zaxy VP. “We were nearly killed by anti-patent terrorists on Baffin Island. You are lucky we made it out alive with our intel. We’ve narrowed our search down to Casablanca, and I can guarantee we’ll know where Jack is hiding in less than a week. Once we know that, it will be simple to stop the crime.”

Wrinkling his nose, the IPC rep waved his hand around as if he were wiping bugs out of the air. “Keep the damage to a minimum. Don’t create any messes you can’t clean up yourselves.”

The senator’s blood pressure spiked as he read new data arriving in his implant. “Eliasz has done excellent work for us before. I have full confidence in him.”

Fang sent data to Paladin again. Looks like the Senator has bigger things to worry about. Representatives from the Brazilian States are threatening an embargo on Zone biofuel. I predict this meeting is about to end and you’re going to have less than 24 hours for rehab before hitting Casablanca. Eliasz works fast.

How do you know that?

I am reading the Senator’s transmissions. And I have worked with Eliasz before.

The meeting did wind up rather quickly after the senator’s vague statement of approval. The VP remained silent and the rep’s eyes twitched nervously as Eliasz shook hands with all three men. They ignored Paladin, and as the senator and VP hurried out, the rep pulled Fang aside for a short conversation. Paladin and Eliasz were alone at the table.

“Looks like we can patch you up now, buddy,” Eliasz said, touching Paladin’s detached arm softly. “Let’s try to move out in twenty-four hours, OK?”

“I am going to find my botadmin.” Paladin had already located Lee in one of the labs below them, and exchanged messages. Lee was available any time in the next two hours.

“I should come with you.”

“I will go with him, Eliasz,” vocalized Fang, rejoining them as the delegate left. “Why don’t you get some sleep? You’re going to need it.”

Eliasz remained at the table studying his mobile as the two bots filled the doorway, then disappeared into Camp Tunisia’s maze of hallways lit by ubiquitous, low-power LEDs.

Paladin turned his main sensor array toward the bot. Fang’s morphology was insectile: He looked like a two-meter-tall mantis. His torso, balanced on six highly articulated legs attached to his chassis, was a block of circuitry and actuators, which themselves supported two massive arms fit for missile launch, industrial operations, and nanoscale machine repair. Right now, the arms were folded in half at his sides, and he regarded Paladin with dozens of sensors mounted in two fat, sinuous, segmented antennas curving from the top of his torso. Beside him, Paladin’s bipedal bulk looked almost human.