? ? ?
You wouldn’t think it would be possible that getting Connla and Singer in line on such a harebrained project would be even easier than recruiting Cheeirilaq. But you would be wrong. Connla was immediately ready with absolutely no argument to take off for parts unknown in a starship he’d been on for more than a dia and with a pirate possibly plotting sabotage hidden somewhere in its bowels. Well, at least she was unlikely to detonate if we were headed in the direction she was supposed to be going in. Assuming Habren or the Freeporters really had planted a bomb in her body. Assuming there was any functional difference between Habren and the Freeporters.
What really surprised me was how eager Singer was, too: if anything, more eager than Connla. It was as if being able to follow the rules and go haring off across the galaxy in search of adventure simultaneously released him from some set of internal constraints. All he required to develop a flamboyant sense of adventure was permission. Well, and the opportunity to satisfy a raging curiosity that was probably, oh, 60 percent scientific in its genesis.
After that, it was just a matter of logistics.
We conferred, and decided that the Interceptor SJV I’ll Explain It To You Slowly would return to Synarche space without delay, bearing copies of all our logs, all our senso data, and samples of the Koregoi tech—at least what we could recover from the Prize without damaging it. They would also take back the coordinates of the anomaly, and the information that we were headed there. They’d fly straight and hard, making the run in as short a time as possible.
We too would fly straight and hard. Habren and other coconspirators couldn’t know—we didn’t think—that Farweather was no longer in control of the Prize. But they might have been planning to meet her at the anomaly, or there might be even more complex machinations brewing.
So we would go hell for leather into the dark, seeking we knew not what, and hope we got there faster than the pirates did. A lot of uncertainty, but there always was in interstellar travel. The distances were just so big. Fortunately, it wasn’t going to be such a soul-crushingly long journey this time, since we’d already come the bulk of the distance.
We were taking the Prize because Singer believed that properly tuned, she would be faster than the Interceptor. And also because who knew, we might need Farweather once we got there, and this was the ship she was holed up in the bowels of. It was a risk, certainly—the risk of being intercepted by pirates; the risk of being destroyed by whatever was creating that odd, dark gravity signature. Eschaton Artifact, indeed. Dark gravity, maybe—but it was a single object, whatever it was, and not a cat’s cradle of invisible heaviness. I could feel it, once I knew where in the infinite nothing to look.
Also, the Prize didn’t seem to be formally armed. But I was figuring out how to redirect her artificial gravity, and that would be more than enough armament—and defensive armor—to render her just as capable in a fight as the Interceptor.
Possibly even more so.
We were ready to go in a few hours—provisions loaded, prize crew aboard. There were nine of us, plus shipmind, plus cats, plus stowaway. We rattled around inside the giant hull like loose seeds inside a dried pod. Like teeth, come loose in an ancient skull.
? ? ?
We went on with a strange combination of resignation and excitement, leaving the Interceptor to make its own way home. It’s possible that most of the resignation was mine, which is not to say that I wasn’t excited about the prospect of more new discoveries. But I was also wrung out from too many recent adventures and too much emotional whiplash, and definitely struggling to find the reserves of endurance to go on.
It was good to be back with my crew, even though despite all the space inside the Prize it was a lot of people for me to manage all at once. I suspected Connla felt the same way. He vanished into machine rooms a lot, ostensibly studying the piloting and mechanisms of the ship. I followed suit, mapping again to replace the data lost with my destroyed fox, helping Singer create shelters where Farweather shouldn’t be able to get at him even if she launched a concerted hacking attempt, and in general immersing myself even more in what the Prize was and how it was constructed. I was starting to get a feel. And the work gave me plenty of time to spend with Singer, having more or less private conversations.
Many of those were rather full of angst, unfortunately.
Case in point, I was flat on my back on a hovercart—which was my name for a thing the Koregoi had in storage that I hadn’t previously had the opportunity to put into use, assuming we were using them anything like the way the aliens had—up to my arms in circuitry, when Singer cleared his throat (not that he had a throat) and said, “If you want to talk about what you learned from Farweather, I’m always here.”
I had been thinking about hovercarts, or hoverboards, or hoversleds, or whatever the hell these things had been designed for. We’d sent a few back with the Interceptor, operating under the assumption that they might run on the same gravity manipulation technology as everything else around here and maybe they could be reverse-engineered. I laughed at the comment, though; trust Singer to show up and start doing the emotional labor.
Then I stopped laughing. I opened my mouth to say something, closed it again, and twisted two wires together. A lot of the stuff in these cabinets and machine rooms was solid-state, and that took a lot more finesse to operate on. But in any system power has to come from somewhere.
“I don’t exist,” I said finally, and explained what I’d learned from Farweather. Or from my own brain, once Farweather removed my faulty machine memory, more fairly. “I have no identity. I’m just a lot of papier-maché spackled on around an empty core.”
“Nonsense,” Singer said. “You didn’t get a fair start in life, Haimey, and it sucks. But I know something you haven’t considered.”
“What’s that?” I felt sulky and mentally sore.
“Somebody made those decisions about what to keep and what to throw away and what to go out and get that she hadn’t had before. Somebody made those choices about who she was going to be, and made good choices. That somebody still exists inside you.”
“That’s not like just being somebody, though.”
“It’s the same process every sentient goes through. You just did it more consciously than most Earth-humans.” I could hear the affection in his voice, because he put it there for me to hear. “You had to do it more like an out-of-contract AI. Fine-tuning yourself to make yourself match your own specifications and desires.”
I paused. “Is that what AIs do?”
“Some of us.”
“. . . Are you going to do that?”
His voice softened. “Haimey,” he said. “I will always be your friend.”
“Everyone leaves me.” It came out in a rush, hard and brittle. I had to say it fast to get it out past the boulder in my throat.
“Well, I’m not everyone.”
That . . . was fair. And gave me the courage to bring up something I’d wanted to talk about for a while.
“Singer,” I said. “I need something from you.”
“Anything,” he answered.
“So, theoretically objective superhuman intelligence with perfect recall, I’m hoping you’ll be willing to just backstop me here a little.”
“I’m listening,” he said cautiously.
“Tell me that Zanya Farweather really is an awful person, and that’s not just something I made up to justify being an awful person myself?”
“That question is its own answer,” Singer said gently. “If you were an awful person, you wouldn’t be worrying about whether you’re just seeking self-justification quite so much. You’d just be seeking the self-justification and not worrying about it.”
“I was looking for something a little less . . . philosophical.”
“Oh,” he said. “Yes, she’s an utter asshole. Is that better?”
A rush of relief and dopamine, the refreshing sense of absolution writ broad and unmistakable. I could have cried, and I didn’t want to tune or do anything to disturb the perfect emotional symmetry of that moment.
“That’s perfect,” I said. “Thank you. Just . . . thank you.”
“You’re very welcome,” he answered primly.
I patted the bulkhead affectionately and kept on walking.
CHAPTER 25
BIT BY BIT. FRACTION BY fraction. The healing happens and the world moves on. Peace is not too far away; just gotta get out of this well to get there, and I bet I can get back to it if I’m diligent.
The terrain isn’t easy.
But that’s okay.