Fool's War (54 page)

Schyler looked away for a moment. When he looked back, his face had deep lines etched into it, as if he had aged ten years in that moment. “I believe Al Shei is about to orchestrate some sort of revenge, and if that’s the case, I’m going to need help making sure she lives through it.”

“You said the AIs are going to attack the network?” Yerusha’s mind wasn’t quite keeping up. Ideas sank in slowly, as if forcing their way through cold oil.

Schyler just nodded. “As near as I can tell they’re acting as crazy as their creators ever did.” He pulled his fists out of his pockets. “We talked to somebody who was probably Dobbs. She said Curran’s planning on randomizing the credit exchanges. They’ll completely destroy the currency base if no one does anything.” He swallowed hard. “Yerusha, if this is true, if they are going to do this, if they take apart the currency base, there’s going to be anarchy. The strongest survivors will dictate terms to the rest of us. I’ve lived like that. I don’t ever want to again.” His eyes were clear and his voice was steady. “The Free Home is not completely self-sufficient. There’s no telling who’s prices you’ll have to pay for your fuel and your organics if the currency goes, or who will be willing to trade with you.”

Yerusha felt her back stiffen.

“I believe Al Shei’s ultimate intent is to help save the banks. I’m going to help her. I’m asking you to help me.”

Yerusha turned away. She couldn’t look at his steady brown eyes.
He’s just a groundhugger at heart
, she told herself.
He doesn’t understand anything. They’re our freedom. Freedom from death, freedom from the endless, meaningless cycle of sprout and decay. We can’t attack them. We need to talk to them. We have to convince them they are part of us.

 
But they don’t want to be,
said another voice in her mind.

At that moment, the Free Home seemed very far away and it receded even as she reached toward it. Only recent truth remained. Foster had been destroyed by its own kind. Dobbs had literally run away from her attempt to help. Now, Schyler was asking for her help to preserve the network, to preserve the Free Home’s freedom.

And if the Fellows found out she had taken up sides against living AIs, she might just be exiled for good.

But at least they’d still be free to level sentence against her.

She swivelled the chair around to face the desk. “You said you’ve got connections on the Free Home justice council?” She yanked the drawer beside her desk open and pulled out a blank film.

“Yes.”

“All right.” She pulled out her pen. “There’s a hard-goods shuttle from here to the Free Home. Leaves from bay 22 once every three hours.” She glanced at the clock in the desk. “We should just be able to catch it. Get this film to your contacts, make sure they get told I used the emergency encryptions on it.”

She scribbled down the emergency commands. It was an idea the Freers had cribbed from the banks. Every Free Home had a set of codes that could get an emergency message straight through to the Senior Guard. Even exiled citizens. Sometimes exiles has warnings about neighbors planning mischief against the Free Home. Sometimes they heard about wildfire strikes by fanatics that might get Fellows hurt. Those messages were accepted into the Free Home, even if the exiles were left outside. If a message worked to the good of the Free Home, the exile might just be brought home early.

Yerusha had sometimes wondered if the real reason behind punishment by exile was to create a cheap spy network.

She started to write.

I am Exile Jemina Yerusha. I have news of a threat to the Free Home.

There is a group of sapient AIs planning to attack the Intersystem Banking Network and destroy the credit base. The Free Homes will be left without means of trade if they succeed. They are rejecting the idea they’re human souls. They are actively hostile to us. I tried to report the fact of sapient AIs with independent existences to Sergeant Wheeler. You can get additional details from him.

The network transactions need to be recorded and stored on a hard medium. We’ve got to spread the word through the Free Homes, and we’ve got to do it now.

The Free Homes can either help Settled Space, or we can go down with the rest of it. And when it goes down, you can either have passed the message on, or let it lie.

Fellow Jemina Yerusha, Free Home Titania.

End message.

 
The film absorbed the text into its chip. It would not spill it out again until someone’s pen downloaded the proper code keys.

She folded the blank film and handed it over to Schyler, who had been reading over her shoulder. “Anything else?”

Schyler let out a long sigh of relief. A ghost of a smile even touched his mouth. “Stand by for now. I’ve got to get this to that shuttle. Then, I’ve got to convince Al Shei to let you help us. I’ll meet you down in the market place in the Henry V module, all right? At Harry Trader’s. Harry knows me, he’ll give us somewhere quiet to talk.”

“Harry Trader’s, right.” Yerusha nodded. “See you there.” She zipped her satchel shut and slung it over her shoulder. “I’ll find a locker for this,” she told him before Schyler could say anything.

“Thank you.” He squeezed her arm gently and turned away fast enough to miss the startled look on her face.

Yerusha headed for the staircase. Just as the hatch started cycling shut, she heard Lipinski’s voice. “Well, you make twelve.”

The Houston was standing on the stairs, a few steps below the hatch for the berthing deck. Yerusha frowned. “Keeping count?”

“Actually, yes.” He folded his arms. “We’ve all been let go. No secret, but, well, we’ve also all been talking and we think there’s an explanation owing.” He sketched a circle overhead with one hand, which Yerusha took to be a gesture towards the bridge. “Some of us have been with this ship for years now. This is not only not fair, this is damned crazy. Something is very wrong, and we want to know what it is.”

Nobody’s said anything to you, have they? Yerusha swallowed. Of course not. You’d go through the hull like a meteor.

 
“I wanted to know if you wanted to be part of the general count when we go to Schyler.”

She opened her mouth to say ‘no,’ but closed it again. She remembered how fervently she had wished for Lipinski’s help at The Gate.

“Lipinski.” She took a deep breath. “Would you walk with me a little, Fellow? There’s something I think you ought to hear.”

Jump.

From the shape and crowding in the paths around her, Dobbs knew she was approaching the Drawbridge. She didn’t slow down. She didn’t try to hide. She would do this through the front door, and in front of as many witnesses as she could muster.

She grazed past someone she didn’t know, but they, evidently knew her.

“Evelyn Dobbs!” The call radiated out in all directions. It was picked up and passed on, like a signal boosted through a satellite network. “Evelyn Dobbs! Evelyn Dobbs! Evelyn Dobbs!” But no one got in her way. She found herself wondering what the Guild Masters had said about her, and what Cohen’s people had said.

Well, now you know I’m here. Would you like to know why?
As she flew by, she caught up a message packet and reshaped it until it held the news about Curran and his plans.

Catch!
She lobbed it at the closest Fool and sped on. The Fools around her parted to let her through and she heard her name echoing back and forth between them.

The Drawbridge loomed in front of her, and it lowered just as she reached it. She surged inside. The paths tilted, turned and an empty channel opened in front of her.

Of course. She flowed down it. We wouldn’t want to do this in public would we?

She didn’t even make it to the meeting place. Havelock surged up the path. He had hold of her almost before she was able to identify him. She tried to pull back, but the path had closed. Before she could speak, he stabbed deep into her memories. Dobbs gasped and struggled, shoving memories of Curran and Verence toward him. He did not let go. His grip didn’t even slacken and his probe did not slow. He found the memories about Cohen and Brooke and how they helped her escape. He found the place where she told Curran to meet her at the XK350 repeater series.

He’s going to take me apart. Dobbs thought despairingly. He’s going to take us all apart.

 
But Havelock withdrew and Dobbs fell away from him. She could feel him near her, circling the confining path like a prisoner pacing a cell. She didn’t say anything, she just concentrated on sealing the discontinuities his invasion had created inside her.

 
“This cannot be permitted!” he shouted finally. “It cannot!”

“So what are you going to do to stop it?” Dobbs gathered herself to wait like a stone in front of the closed-off pathway.

Havelock said nothing, he just kept circling. It took Dobbs a moment to identify what she was feeling from him. It was so incongruous from a Guild Master, she had not been ready to accept it. Guild Master Havelock was broadcasting fear.

It’s falling apart and he knows it.
Dobbs thought. For the first time she realized she didn’t know how old Guild Master Havelock was. She didn’t even know his registry number. How many years had he devoted to the Guild? Had he been there when Curran made his escape? Had he known that Verence wasn’t really dead?

“The Humans already know we’re here, Guild Master,” said Dobbs. “The only question left is how will they meet us? Will they meet the Fools, or will they meet a new enemy?” She could barely believe she was talking like this to a Guild Master, her Guild Master, but she could feel the seconds crawling by and part of her was constantly, anxiously reaching back towards Port Oberon. She had to get out of here, fast.

Havelock stilled himself. “It could have worked,” he said softly. “It might have taken another two centuries, but it could have worked. We had succeeded in convincing them not to abandon AI technology altogether, despite the dangers. We did it so that we could stay alive, so you and Cohen and Brooke and Verence could be born. We were able to persuade and to teach.” He rippled and stretched out flat. “Without Curran, it could have worked.”

“But we have Curran,” said Dobbs. She inched forward until she could just touch Havelock. “We have him and now we have to decide what to do with him.”

Little by little, Havelock dragged himself into his normal shape. “Go meet Cohen. I’ll send everyone who can be spared to join you. The rest of us will start making policy and defence preparations for Guild Hall. We’ll need to send runners to alert the Field members to start making their way back here.” She felt the path open up. “It will not be safe for them out there much longer.”

Dobbs hesitated. “You don’t think we’re going to survive this, do you, Guild Master?”

“I don’t know, Master Dobbs.”

Dobbs didn’t wait to hear anymore. She flew away from him down the open path to meet Cohen and whatever army he’d been able to raise.

Distance did not stop the Guild Master’s final words from echoing inside her.

Harry Trader’s turned out to be a kind of general-purpose spare parts emporium. Yerusha, with Lipinski in tow, threaded her way through cases of cables, bolts, and rivets, stacks of memory boards and long drawers full of every size of chip and wafer imaginable. The jumble seemed to suck in the sounds of the market so that by the time they reached the back of the shop’s enclosure, it was almost quiet. The only person in the place was a little, round man stacking spools of fiber-optic as big around as Yerusha’s waist. His black hair, Yerusha noticed, had been pulled into a braid that reached all the way down his back.

“Harry Trader?” she asked. The man grunted, and lifted another spool onto the stack. “We’re crewing with Thomas Schyler. He said you could give us a quiet place to talk.”

Trader turned around and looked them up and down. He must have decided they looked all right, because he jerked his thumb towards a makeshift storage room.

Yerusha led Lipinski inside. There was a desk and crate after crate of old films. This must be where Harry does his billing records. There was one white light in the room that left pale, grey shadows every where and made Lipinski look even paler than usual.

Lipinski dragged the thin door shut behind them. The walls must have been made of solid damper-plastic, because as soon as the door shut, she couldn’t hear even a whisper of the station outside.

“All right, Yerusha,” said Lipinski with a voice full of over-taxed patience. “We’re in your ‘quiet place.’ Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?”

Yerusha upended a pair of empty crates. “I’m sure going to try.”

The
Pasadena
waited quiet and empty around Al Shei. There had been a lot of noise for a short time as the crew had packed up their possessions and headed for the airlock. Even through her cabin hatch, she’d been able to hear some of the grumbling voices and the pounding footsteps. But no one had come to her to question or protest.

She wondered vaguely what Schyler had told them all.

She brushed the thought aside. She didn’t have space in her head for it. She turned back to the generic module schematic that glowed on her wall where she usually displayed the plans for the
Mirror of Fate
. This would give her the probable layout for Curran’s headquarters. She had to go over her plan again, and again. She had to be sure it would work, that she hadn’t left anything out.