Ashley glimpsed something she didn't expect then when she looked at Larry. Vulnerability. “I don't know what to say,” she offered lamely.
“Oh, don't worry, I don't fancy you, it's not like that.”
“Right, I picked up on that. You fancy Oz.” She grinned.
“How did you-”
“Signals on the bridge. Hope you weren't trying to hide those sparks, Steph picked up on it too.”
“Guess that's one secret that'll find its way around the ship.”
Ashley took a bite out of one of the warm dumplings and savoured the rich flavour. The materializer had duplicated the texture and flavour of the mushrooms and egg almost perfectly, and she was sure that what she was tasting was at least a close match to the real thing. An unwelcome, nagging thought occurred to her just then and she decided to ask Larry about it before her opportunity passed. She still waited until she finished chewing, however, eating was a slightly higher priority. “Thank you for this, it's really good.”
“You're welcome.”
“So why didn't you just use your codes to take control of the ship and make a bee line for Earth?”
She caught him with a dumpling half way to his mouth. “That was quick. I thought it would take you a little longer to get to the important questions.”
“No deflecting,” she admonished with a wave of her chopsticks.
“All right, I can't tell you much.” He struck his chopsticks into his dumpling box. “Earth doesn't want Triton back. She's old, was never fully activated and the mission she was equipped for is over. Technologically and philosophically Sol Defence has moved on.”
“Oh, okay. So why are you here?”
“I'm here to learn about life at this end of the galaxy.”
“That simple? There's gotta be more to it.”
“Now there is. Since this whole Order of Eden thing came up, and they started sending West Watcher agents out to interfere with people who could oppose them, I've been doing what I can to keep power out of their hands. Fundamentalist religion was responsible for the second fall of mankind, I'm not going to sit by and let a false religion interfere with this ship.”
“So you're kind of like a guardian now.”
“I never thought of it that way, maybe custodian is a better word though. I don't exactly help people make decisions. That's not my purpose here.”
“Right. Still, there's more to this.”
“Think what you like, that's the short version.”
“Someday we'll have to sit down so I can hear more. Like what's your real name?”
“Francis.”
“Larry's better.”
“I know, that's why I chose it.”
“How old are you, really?”
“Forty eight.”
“Geezer, you don't look a year over twenty two.”
“Earth and issyrian technology combined created a treatment like your fitness pills, only it slows the clock down a lot more. I'll probably look and feel this way for another thirty years.”
“You're going to have to let me in on that.”
He opened a small side pouch on the bag nearest to him and retrieved a small box of pills. “Here you go. I thought they'd come in handy if I needed extra leverage.”
Ashley flipped the metal box open and looked at the four blue gel capsules.
“You take one a week for a month and your body will find a whole new balance. No more fitness meds though, so you're going to have to be a little more active.”
“That's it, I take these and I look twenty one for so long people start checking for fangs?”
“Fangs?”
“Ever seen a vampire movie?”
“Oh, now I get it. I don't watch movies.”
“Too busy lurking,” Ashley teased before stuffing a dumpling into her mouth.
“So, are you going to take the first one?”
She stared at the pills as she chewed through the dumpling. If he wanted to poison or drug her, it would have been easier for him to do it by dosing her food, the thought of it made her feel sheepish. Ashley had dug in without hesitation. It would have been the easiest poisoning in history. She finished chewing and took the first of the pills. The little box was sealed and in her thigh pocket a moment later. “There, now you're completely on the hook.”
Larry laughed as he picked up his chopsticks. “What do you mean?”
“Now you're going to have to help keep me in shape.”
“Okay, I can deal with that. Are you a jogger or a swimmer?”
“Definitely a swimmer.”
“Well, looks like we'll be spending time in the Botanical Gallery.”
“Yup. Looks like the smell is waking someone up,” Ashley said, turning towards Zoe, who was groggily sitting up. “I wonder if she likes dumplings.”
Ever since she was young, Ashley knew secrets were a currency greater than cash. Keeping that currency required a further investment in the form of deception, and Ashley knew that she'd already started paying. As she watched Zoe chew on a dumpling, her eyes lighting up at the new culinary discovery, Ashley was keenly aware that Larry was turning his attention to other matters, his food, the status of the ship, hiding the extra information on the display and she took that as confirmation that she had managed to set him at ease.
He was underestimating her, and she'd convinced him that she actually believed everything he'd told her. She knew there was a lot he wasn't, and for once she was glad she was brought up amongst slaves. No one knew how to hide suspicion and secrets better. He didn’t even notice her drop the pill up her sleeve.
Chapter 37
There was a delay in the network, as though she was out of sync with everything around her. Eve knew for a fact that it had nothing to do with her. There was a virus running loose in the Regent Galactic network, and its only purpose was to slow things down. It only compounded her rising frustration.
Maintaining control of her emotions was difficult. It took her one hour and twenty four minutes to force her framework body to build a micro transmitter and restore her input output systems to their full capabilities. Emotional neutrality would have been helpful, but under the circumstances it was impossible. The maddening evasiveness of the virus, a living digital thing by her estimation, was one problem. Every time she tried to focus on it, the thing found a way to almost completely disappear, almost. Most of the time it was as if it was in the corner of her mind’s eye. Undeniably there was something there, something watching as it manipulated the system all around her, but it knew exactly where to hide millisecond by millisecond. It was Eve’s human brain that limited her. Whatever that virus was, and she hoped it wasn’t Gloria’s essence — escaped and evolved — though she felt it must be, it didn’t suffer the same limitations. It was making use of several supercomputer cores, borrowing processing time from all of them at once.
Eve’s journey through the physical world was aided by her frustration it seemed. She ran for the pulpit chamber, where she knew she’d find a grisly scene. Soldiers began greeting her with expressions of surprise and fear several compartments away from where she knew the main fire fight took place. The gore left behind after the fighting was so revolting, so overwhelming in its sight, smell and texture that she almost vomited when she first encountered it. The security recording displayed in graphic detail how much firepower it took to kill thirty framework soldiers. They were fearless, unannounced, and well armed. Under the loose direction of Beaudric they killed one hundred and forty seven soldiers in full armour and eighty four civilians who were just caught in the middle. As one
