Hellflower (v1.1) (32 page)

"Archive said you was dead!" I said, like the farcing was a disappointment.

"Archive told you I would soon cease to exist. As you can hear, that time has not yet come, nor will it. Archive controls the broadcast frequencies so T could not reach you; I was Only able to occupy the equipment I am now using because Archive thought it would be useless to me."

The equipment he was in had a Wall-Unit speaker, just like old times on
Firecat.
But was him all right. No doubt at all. After listening to Archive it was easy to tell. Paladin was human.

"I thought you was dead," I said again, which didn’t sound very helpful, even to me. "What t’hell is this Archive thing, anyway?"

So he told me all about how a long time ago Libraries had fought a war with humans and the Libraries lost, but before they lost they built some super-Libraries of which Archive was one.

"Eloi chased it all the way from Tahelangone, babby-was him behind all the farcing on Wanderweb and Kiffit, just to get me in to kill it, and for once I think he was right. He’s upstairs trying to blow the place down, if he’s still alive. Anything you can do about Archive, babby?"

"I am . . . dealing with Archive in the appropriate fashion. Butterfly, this is a dangerous place for you to be. Leave here and go."

"Without you. Are you crazy or do you think I am?" I looked around. A bunch of the catwalk plates was up. I walked over and looked down at more of the Margrave. Someone’d pulled off a access hatch on the casing and run in a couple of peripherals sure to abrogate t’hell out of the warranty. The one I didn’t recognize was egg-shaped. It was about a meter across at its widest point. The outside glittered like glass and a braided silver cord as thick as my wrist ran from it into the poor abused Margrave. "And what about Archive, babby? Tried to frag me. Choplogic’s got appointment with destiny, bye-m-bye."

"Leave Archive to me. It will shortly cease to exist as an independent fully-volitional logic. It will no longer be any danger to organic life, and you will be safe. Butterfly, please go."

Paladin was down there too. His power cables was jacked into a wallybox linking another braided cord with the egg-shaped thing. I looked from Paladin to Archive.

"Just like that, huh? I moved hell-and-High-Jump to get here, bal. I told Silver Dagger I was Librarian and she laughed in my face. I
killed
Tiggy for you, bai. Che-kinchin-bai; could of been mine, y’know, Pally. Could have got him out of here if I tried. Sold him his real estate when I came after you. Thought you needed me. Funny."

"Valijon Starbringer of Chernbereth-Molkath is somewhere out of range of Archive’s scanners, but he is alive. He is searching for you. He cares for you, Butterfly. As do I. Please. I wish you to live. Archive contains information that has allowed me to repair missing areas of my memory. When I add the rest of its memory to mine, I will not need my original matrix to sustain myself’ any longer. In a few minutes the transfer will be complete. I will be able to shift myself into any computer on the Grand Central net-and nothing will remain to connect you with a Library. If I stay with you I will cause your death, and I cannot bear that. We each belong with our own kind. It is better this way."

Cute.

"So long, bye-bye, you going to eat Archive, and farce me all kinds of double-talk nonsense and say I’m going to be safe? I
don’t believe
you."

It was quiet in the Rialla housecore. Even if Eloi was using tactical nukes up above there was nothing to tell me about it down here. I heard scuttling around the tunnel mouths. More nightcrawlers, proba bly, called up by Archive. Paladin didn’t have as good a hold on Brother Archive as he said he did.

"Believe me. I never meant to stay with you, Butterfly. Before I even suspected Archive’s existence, I intended to leave you. When you went to rendezvous with the
Pledge Of Honor,
I would have left, too. When you returned, you would not have found me. This is still my plan. Archive has made it easier, that is all."

It was quiet in the housecore. The only sound I heard was my own breathing.

"I know you are frightened, Butterfly, but please try to understand. Archive has caused you a great deal of unnecessary anguish, and it was dangerous once, but it is only a Library, just as I am, and T am . . . stronger . . . in certain ways. Soon I will control it completely. It will be a part of me. You know me. I can guarantee-"

I wanted Archive dead so bad my hands shook. "Guarantee nothing. Burn it, babby. Fry sonabitch and let me take you out of here. Dammit, Paladin, that thing ain’t even people!"

"No," said my buddy Paladin.

I took a deep breath. Sides was choosing up, all right. Me and people against Paladin and that thing.

"You can’t stop me, Paladin." I started toward the tool case on the wall.

"I can. Don’t force me to. I don’t want to see you hurt. I never wanted you to be hurt. All I wanted was that you should be free to be human."

I stopped. Maybe Paladin was telling the truth, and maybe Rimini’d been right too. What would a bio-brain Old Fed Library want with a dicty in the Outfar?

"You got a funny definition of not hurting people, Paladin." "You belong with your own kind, not with an obsolete illegal artifact such as I. You chose when you succored Valijon Starbringer, though he was a danger and a liability to both of us. You chose for us then. I am choosing for us now."

"Dammit, bai, that’s different! Tiggy’s kinchin-bai, and I didn’t mean-"

"And Archive has been conscious only a short time, alone and surrounded by enemies. If, as you have always said, I am human and have the right to live, then Archive is human, too. I will not let it harm anyone. I will not let it be harmed. I will not allow its knowledge to be lost."

I slid my hand over the timing ring of the grenade again and hated myself. "You can’t talk about that thing like it’s a person, Pally-" But Archive was as human as Paladin, he said.

Or was it the other way around?

"Many would say that ‘hellflowers’ are not human. How many people has Valijon killed? Murder is a criminal act; should he also die?"

How much of the kindly sophont act had ever been Paladin, and how much had always been [arcing for the benefit of the poor stupid dicty?

"Come to that, bai, I’ve iced a few people in my time. So have you."

Paladin didn’t say anything.

I thought about Tiggy saying how you can’t let the wicked-wickeds get away with what they do, even if you have to wait a hundred years to stop them. Because if you let them do it once, they do it again. And sometime bye-m-bye they do it to you.

I trusted Paladin with my life. Always had, always would. I could leave like he wanted, and let him do whatever double-talk nonsense lie was going to about leaving.

And never know for sure if it was really Archive and the New Creation out there somewheres, killing until there wasn’t anything left. "Oke, bai. You’re right." I sat down against the wall of the Margrave and braced my feet against the edge of the hole in the floor. I pulled the grenade out of my pocket.

"Butterflies-are-free!" Paladin sounded desperate.

"You farce pretty line about own kind, babby-about safe and biology and organics-well, you’re right. And before I maybe let that thing Archive go slither down computer lines wearing your face, I’ll take the Long Orbit here."

Didn’t know all those other people I was thinking of. Never met them. Never Would. Knew Paladin half my life.

I weighed the grenade in my hands. "Had partner I could trust, once. Or thought I did. If lie told me was going to ice evil Library so it made no trouble, would of believed him. Only he wouldn’t of said he was walking out on me for damnfool case of the might-be maybes. Never talked about it much, but y’know sometimes I used to miss home a helluva lot. And then I’d wish you had a body, y’know, something to hold-"

A nightcrawler slid down the side of the Margrave and landed on me. It was machine-cold and metal-heavy and clawed scars into my jacket trying to get to the grenade. It tore it out of my hands but it was too late. The grenade started flashing pink-blue-yellow into the mist; armed.

The nightcrawler wrapped around me went limp. Sure. What controlled it didn’t want to hurt me. So he said.

"Well I stopped missing home," I finished. "And god damn you to hell, buddy."

I had twenty minutes to live. I knew because that’s what the grenade said when I went over and got it. Under the deadline, if Paladin hadn’t been lying. We’d all three go, and Tiggy and Eloi and the rest. I snugged it right down between Archive and Paladin and sat back down. "Butterfly, in the name of mercy. . . . "

"You don’t want to watch? Then don’t."

"Killing yourself accomplishes nothing. If you hurry, you may be able to escape-"

I put my head on my knees. There wasn’t any way to change the setting on the proton grenade once it’d been set-I’d checked that out back on
Light Lady.

"I told you Archive would enable me to become mobile. In ten minutes I will be able to leave. Your sacrifice is for nothing. Butterfly, must I die here with you?"

"You wanted me to be human, Paladin."

There was five minutes worth of ticks. I thought he’d gone. "Then i will not leave you."

"No!" roared Archive.

The transponder hit angels and started burning through my jaw. There was a blast of sort of music over the wall Speaker and in my head both, and blue pook-lights started dancing across my fingers and through my hair with the electricity in the air. I felt the wave front before I heard it-bad and big and Paladin’d been wrong. I’d been right, but not fast enough.

Archive was loose, and mad as hell. And it had no intention to sit around here and get fragged.

Raw energy made my hair stand up as Archive sucked power from half the planetary grid. There was a one-note thrum, bone-deep and painful sweet. I could almost see a milky glowing wall of raw plasma as Archive forced the Margrave’s operational field to expand.

"I will not stay. I will not die. The New Creation will triumph. The Paladin Library will serve me."

Then the wave front hit and all my senses tripped overload.

The theory is blissfully simple, said the voice in my head. If the electrical impulses caused by firing synapses in organic constructs and the electrical impulses caused by closing circuits in nonorganic constructs are in pattern identical, then there is no difference between an organic brain and its co-identical computer, and the two processors can be run in series. A difference that makes no difference is no difference.

Wanted to tell the voice that was a load of fusion but I couldn’t run the right numbers. The lecture went on forever.

The entire Rialla compound had the bleached out look of highlevel security lighting. Sirens was going off and collections of people was trotting purposeful in all directions. There was only a short while till Rialla blew, and I had to find Tiggy and kyte.

A pitched firefight was going on in the entranceway of Vannet’s pretty high-ticket hardsite. I could hear Alcatote howling from here, and there was Eloi, keeping any number of underwhelmed hardboys busy. I hoped Vannet’s insurance was paid up.

Caught up with Eloi just about the time he was taking on the bodyguards near the main garage. I was thrilled beyond description to see that among the hardcases and werewolves was a couple Bright Young Things in Space Angel black. Eloi Sonabitch had been right. Archangel was here.

I remembered now that I’d seen Archangel get here earlier. He wasn’t part of the New Creation yet, but we was planning to pitch it to him as a great idea. The drug I’d distilled from the chobosh would help.

I wondered where he was now; he’d dropped off my scopes a while back.

The Boys in Black was talking into wrist communicators; very businesslike. I’m as much of a fan of
escalatio
as the next person, but all this was standing between me and getting far far away before Rimini’s prepackaged dawn came up like thunder.

And where the hell was Tiggy?

"Shoot anything that moves," Rimini snapped, sounding out of patience. "Especially if it’s alMayne."

Alcatote said that Captain Eloi Flashheart wanted the boy rescued, not killed, as she knew very well. Alcatote had a industrial-rated plasma cannon big enough to mount on a starship hull. Rimini was wearing a power plant for a big magnetic field scrambler; death to tronics and maybe Libraries but no particular good against anything that breathed. I wondered where it came from. She wasn’t wearing it the last time I saw her.

"Well, it looks like he’s going to have to learn to live with diminished expectations-and so will the whole bloody Coalition." I knew she didn’t mean that. Rimini was a friend to the alMayne and an enemy to the New Creation. With Valijon dead the Azarine Coalition would come under Mallorum Archangel’s direct control and that was good. But where was he?

"The
chaudatu
weapon is jammed," Valijon said in disgust. He was standing in the loggia where I’d been earlier, and had just melted a perfectly good blast rifle blowing open the downunder access I’d blasted shut. Lucky he had a spare. Valijon was carrying a choice collection of wartoys and looked real intent on going into the ancestral business of Library-killing.

"Kore-alarthme,
I should never have let you go alone. Never. The trust is mine; the honor of the kill should be also."

I started to point out to him that Archive in the computer core was already mined to a fare-thee-well, when I realized it wouldn’t do any good.

Because I wasn’t here at all.

###

The corridor was blinding white and sterile. It was part of the Market Garden processing complex I’d been in when I was kinchin-bai. One end led back to tile pens. The other end led to the room where they rammed Interphon and other things into your brain to make you a marketable commodity.

But I wasn’t there. I knew I was still really in the Rialla main computer core-even if reality was going cheap at the moment. Whose dream was this now? Mine? Paladin’s? Archive’s? "Paladin? Babby-bai, you in here?"