The Dying Light (43 page)

Turning back, she saw that his eyes had opened. They weren’t looking at her, though; they stared straight upward at the ceiling, as though he didn’t even have the strength to turn them.

The noise came from his side: one finger was tapping gently on the edge of the bed.

She leaned in closer. “You can’t talk, right?”

With some effort, he managed to swallow, but his lips refused to move. Only his finger seemed to have any life, tapping continually on the bed.

“Tap once for yes and twice for no, okay?”

But the tapping continued unchecked. Only gradually did she realize that there was a pattern to the sound. He was doing more than just trying to get her attention: he was tapping in code.

She had studied various simple methods of signaling at the Armada Military College, but this one she didn’t recognize.

“Uri—”

“I’m listening,” said Kajic.

She half smiled. “You’ve been learning from the Box,” she said. “So, what’s he saying?”

“It sounds like a variant on a very old code, one I’ve not heard in practice before.”

“Can you decipher it?”

“He seems to be saying”—Kajic paused—”that he’s as Human as you.”

“What?”

“ ‘I am as Human as you are.’ That’s the message he keeps repeating, over and over.”

Cane’s finger stopped and the room fell silent.

“That’s it?” She leant over Cane. “What does that
mean
?
Are you trying to reassure me?”

He didn’t reply. His eyes slowly closed, and she was left facing a corpse once again.

“Dammit!” She slammed the flat of her hand against the bed. “Uri, keep a close eye on him. The moment he wakes properly, I want to talk to him. And don’t let him out of here—or anyone else in, for that matter. Understood?”

“Understood, Morgan.”

she added.

said the young reave.

Of course not, Roche thought to herself bitterly as she left the room. That’d make things too goddamn easy...

* * *

She walked to burn off her frustration, and to keep herself active. There was too much work to do for her to rest: loose threads to tie up, plans to set in place just in case the Crescend
didn’t
contact her, decisions to make. Would she return to the COE and see what happened, or try somewhere else? If the clone warriors had appeared in many other places, as Rufo had suggested, maybe ranging further for information might be fruitful.

There was one image she couldn’t shake: it was of the cloud of seed machines that had made the revenge capsules which had in turn made the clone warriors. Rufo, via Maii and the
irikeii,
had imagined them dispersing outward through the galactic halo, then inward again, converging at one point. Why he had imagined that, she didn’t know. Maybe he was aware of something she wasn’t, or maybe it was just the easiest way to visualize what was going on. It might have meant nothing, but she found it hard to forget. If the clone warriors
were
converging, it would make sense to find out where they were heading. And meet them there.

But without the Box, many things she had taken for granted became complicated. Collecting and collating data from a variety of sources was just one of them. Monitoring Cane was another. She was appalled to realize just how dependent she had become on the AI during their short association. The Box had fulfilled many of the simpler functions of other machines but with the independence and initiative of a person trained in many different fields.

Even something as basic as flying the
Ana Vereine
would be difficult without the Box. Kajic oversaw most systems, and there were numerous dullard AIs to take up some of the slack, but Kajic was still only Human. He needed to sleep, like everyone else, and made the occasional mistake. At some point, she supposed, she would have to find him a crew.

Right now would be the ideal opportunity, too. Galine Four had been lost when the Gauntlet collapsed, and as a result the
Ana Vereine
’s holds were full of refugees from the station, jammed in with the isolation tanks she had jury-rigged for the resident outriggers. The latter had weathered the disaster well, even the ones like Lud who had lost their all-suits; some were already talking about where to sell the spare spine and what system to target next. It was the station personnel, more used to comfort and space, who were complaining. Some, she was sure, would happily accept an offer of employment in exchange for better conditions, even if only in the short term.

Myer Mavalhin was one of them. He had eventually made it onto the ship, and his incessant calls for her attention were no doubt designed to ensure he wasn’t kicked off again before he tried to plead his case one more time.

After talking to Cane, she went to the holds, found him among those crowded together there, and took him into a secure office cubicle to talk in privacy. His expression betrayed hope, which she was quick to dispel.

“You’re not coming with me, Myer,” she said. “And if I can’t say it enough times to make it sink in, then that’s your problem, not mine.”

“Why are you so adamant about this, Morgan?”

The question was reasonable enough, and she did her best to answer honestly, to keep old hurts out of it. “One: you’re unreliable; I can’t depend on you when I need to. Two: you’re a loose cannon, thinking more of yourself than the people around you. Three: you don’t have the sort of experience I’d need for someone in this situation—”

“As if anyone has,” he interrupted, avoiding her gaze.

“
Four
,” she continued firmly. “You rarely listen to anyone but yourself—especially if it’s something you don’t want to hear. Even now I doubt I’m getting through to you.”

He grimaced slightly. “So much for hoping it’d be like old times.”

“There was never going to be any chance of that, Myer,” she said bluntly. “You want me to keep going?”

“Thanks, but I’d prefer you didn’t.” He looked at her then in a way that she found disconcerting. “You know, Morgan, back in College you’d have given in to a bit of coaxing and sweet talking—like that time when we scammed that cruiser to Temoriel. Remember? God, you swore three shades of purple there was no way you were going along with it. But in the end you did,
and
you enjoyed yourself, too. You always did. That’s what you were like in those days. I could rely on you then.” He shrugged, apparently unaware of the irony in his words.

“I’ve more important things to worry about now,” she said.

“You tried that excuse then, too, but it didn’t have as much power over you. Now it’s as though the important things are all you have left. You’ve... changed, I guess,” he concluded.

She smiled at this. “I guess I have,” she agreed, and got up to leave.

But he had one thing left to ask her.

“Did you ever find your parents, Morgan?”

The question took her by surprise, and she stopped and stared at him for a long moment. “What?” in the end, was all she could manage.

“Your parents,” he said. “
Did
you ever find them like you said you would?”

“No, I...” she began. “I mean ...”

“I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Just that I knew what finding them meant to you, and I was curious as to—Hey! What’d I say?”

But she was already running from the room, ignoring the sound of Myer calling after her. She could hear Kajic also, in a moment, as well as Maii. But she didn’t stop to reply to any of them. She just kept running, moving through the corridors of the ship as though she were being chased by demons...

Her parents...

She remembered. Her aspiration had always been to join COE Intelligence. Part of that had been her desire to travel, and to escape poor conditions on her homeworld, but another part had been to gain access to powers ordinary citizens didn’t have. The records on Ascensio, her homeworld, had been closed to her when she shipped out to Military College. She had always intended to return one day to find out who her parents had been. She had had a mother once, and a father. Something about them must have been recorded somewhere. Even a name would’ve been better than nothing.

But she had never gotten around to it. How could she have forgotten them? What had happened to her? Perhaps she had changed more than she had ever allowed herself to realize.

She didn’t see the corridors that whipped by her. She didn’t even care. Intentionally or not, Myer had managed to hurt her very deeply, and she was running from him as much as herself. Maybe if she ran hard enough, she could forget that she was crying, too. Tears spilled out uncontrollably, welling up from somewhere deep within her; somewhere long forgotten...

said a voice inside her head.

She came to such an abrupt halt that she almost tripped over her own feet. She swayed on one spot for a few breaths, wiping at the sweat and tears on her face and waiting for the voice to speak again.

it said finally.

<
Box?
>

how
?>

true
location?> She was slowly catching her breath, but felt as though she were losing her mind.

what
?
>
Confusion quickly changed places with anger. She had lugged that damned valise hundreds of kilometers across a desert world, thinking it the most valuable thing in the galaxy—only to find that it was a
decoy
?

are
you? If you weren’t destroyed with the
Sebettu,
you must be around here somewhere. On the
Ana Vereine
? But how did you get on board? The only thing I brought with me from Sciacca’s World was the valise. Along with Maii and Cane and Haid, of course—>

She stopped as a terrible thought occurred to her.

me
.>

said the Box.

* * *

Now she was certain she was losing her mind.

She remembered being in orbit around Trinity, where AIs were made for the COE by the Crescend. She remembered waiting for the mysterious engineers to arrive to take her down to the surface, where she would be given the AI she had come to collect. But she didn’t remember anything after that point, because somehow she had been rendered unconscious. The next thing she knew, she had awakened with the valise strapped to her wrist and the Box’s voice inside her head.

operated
on me? Without my permission?>

Hugging herself, she slid down the nearest wall until she was squatting against it. Too many shocks; too much uncertainty; too much to be afraid of. she asked.

She closed her eyes, trying to get her head around the concept of having an AI inside her, but not even really wanting to succeed. She was riddled with it—like fat, or cancer.

important
one, wouldn’t you agree?> She had been invaded, and she was angry with how dismissive the Box was being about it all.

said the Box.

can
get out of this if I choose to?>

The Box seemed to ponder this possibility.

She didn’t answer at first as doubt suddenly welled in her.

Ana Vereine,
which was much farther away than I had you believe. Juggling you and Kajic was difficult, but by running the backup in the valise it was possible. Had the need to talk not been so great, I would not have bothered. Certainly it was the only time I broke my usual cover.>

She shook her head.