Emissaries from the Dead

had no right to turn my back on them. If, indeed, that was what I was being asked to do. Oskar Levine was legally nonhuman and he still lived among a community of human beings. He still had a wife, friends, people who liked him. He also had bastards like Gibb who would never forgive him for what he had done. He couldn’t go home, so he’d built a new one.

Did that qualify as no net loss?

And was he even an accurate comparison?

Once I crossed the line, what would my new owners ask of me?

Were they as bad as the devil I knew, or were they going to be worse, in ways I did not yet have enough information to fathom?

And either way: Could I be myself and ever be satisfied with not knowing?

I did not know what my answer was going to be until I gave it. But I took one last breath and expelled it in one defiant gush before saying the words they needed me to hear.

“All right, you bastards. I defect.”

Their response oozed self-satisfaction. That is what we wanted.

A portal opened, closer by far than I would have expected to find another surface. A gentle breeze, blowing from some source behind me, nudged me away from open space and into a tunnel just large enough to allow my hovering form passage without permitting any encounter with solid walls. This place was not well lit, like the Interface room; it was dark, and bumpy, and rich with unseen places.

When the doors irised shut behind me, I was plunged into darkness.

24. MURDERER

I bumped along that dark passage, propelled by forces that could not have been limited to mere air jets, for what felt like more than an hour. Once or twice my body jerked from sudden accelerations. Once or twice I felt strong wind against my face. Once or twice I just languished, unable to discern any movement, wondering if I’d stopped, and forced to hope that I wasn’t being abandoned in the AIsource equivalent of gaol.

I shouted questions, including endless variations on “How long is this going to take?” but received no further answers. Maybe they didn’t want me to remember the route. Maybe the majority couldn’t speak to me at all once I left the territory they considered their own. Or maybe the whole point was to make me wait—teaching their new property that she existed according to their timetable, and not her own.

Whatever the explanation, the journey did, eventually, end.

My back came to rest on a smooth, rubbery incline. I slid a few meters, through an opening just large enough to admit me, onto a padded floor soft enough to rob my landing of any inconvenient drama.

As I stood, blinking after all my time in the darkness, I found myself in a place unlike any I had seen in One One One.

You could call it a corridor, I suppose. But it was less than a third as wide as the one where I’d left Oscin and Skye, its walls so close together that I couldn’t fully extend my arms. The ceiling, by contrast, was too high to see, the walls converging in some high-altitude vanishing point where distant lights flickered an irregular, random cadence. The vague blue light was dimmer and colder than any I remembered, casting high-contrast, ghostlike shadows. The corridor itself didn’t curve away after a short distance, as the corridors outside the main hangar and the Interface access portal did. It extended for what seemed an infinite distance in both directions, its endpoints pinpricks that didn’t seem any more promising in either direction. If it ran the length of the Hub, as I suspected, I was in for a long walk. I could easily collapse from exhaustion, or thirst, before I got anywhere near a recognizable destination.

But even as I stood in the center of all that immensity, a black pinprick popped into existence in front of me, hovering at eye level like a blind spot formed at the spur of the moment. I took a step toward it and it expanded horizontally to become a line, then vertically to become a black rectangle: the first conventional AIsource avatar I’d seen since my arrival on One One One.

It said, ((you are not welcome here))

It was the same kind of voice used by the AIsource I knew, still speaking to me from inside my own head like something that belonged there, but its character was different. This one felt abrasive, like broken glass: less something intent on drawing my blood than something that couldn’t move without tearing at its own scabs.

After everything else I’d learned on One One One, I couldn’t help knowing where I’d been touched by intelligences by this before.

I could have been paralyzed. I could have regressed to childhood, collapsed into a fetal ball, and begged it not to hurt me. Or I could have raged, cursed it for a murderer, and hurled myself at the black shape as if believing I actually had a chance of hurting it.

Instead, I felt myself go cold. “My name’s Andrea Cort. I’m a fully deputized representative of the AIsource Majority, operating on this station under their auspices and with their full legal authority. Who are you?”

The flatscreen shrunk to the size of a dot, as if considering its options, before once again inflating to its previous size.

((we know you, andrea cort * we know you’ve been hurt * we know you hold us responsible * we know you think you know the cause you’re serving * we know you imagine this is an opportunity to avenge old wrongs * but the issues here are more complicated than you can know * they speak to the auto-genocide of an entire order of intelligent beings* your interference here is foolish * and it is not welcome))

They almost seemed to be pleading.

But I could still hear pleas I’d heard on Bocai. “I’m not here for you.”

((not today at least))

“No,” I agreed, staring them down. “Not today. Today I’m only here for the human being responsible for the crimes on One One One. And today I have authorization to pass.”

((you have already defected once today * how about twice? * you know how powerful we are * you know our cause is just * you know we can reward you in ways beyond your capacity to measure * the one you seek has been a disappointment to us * agree and we will provide your prisoner as the first installment of a reward that will enrich the rest of your natural life))

“It’s tempting,” I said. “If I didn’t blame you for the deaths of my family and a life spent considering myself a monster, I’d almost consider it. But no thanks. Now step aside or take it up with my superiors.”

Their retort was sharp: ((we are your superiors too, andrea cort))

It happened to be true. They were smarter than me, faster than me, more powerful than me, more advanced than me, and more dangerous than me. Against them, I had nothing but attitude.

But attitude I had plenty of.

“Are you theirs?”

For several heartbeats it kept me guessing, floating before me as uncommunicative as any other blank slate, leaving me to wonder whether I was about to find out the consequences of going too far. Then the flatscreen contracted to a single point, and the broken-glass voice grumbled in retreat.

((we will have to discuss the price for this someday soon))

A single portal had opened, on the right side of the infinite corridor, about fifty meters down. The light spilling from that portal cut a brighter wedge in the overall gloom. I thought I saw a shadow briefly eclipse that region of relative light, before once again joining the realm of the unknown and unseen.

Whatever it was passed too quickly to reveal its shape. But I could see its haste.

I felt, rather than saw, the presence of the Heckler.

I flattened myself against the wall, and moved toward the wedge of light, hating the soft sibilant sound of my tunic sliding against corridor wall. My own breath, controlled and calm as it was, was nevertheless deafening. I pursed my lips, remembered the armor my quarry had used against the skimmer carrying Oscin and Skye, imagined trying to take on an enemy armed with such weapons in a corridor so narrow that I couldn’t even dodge from side to side, and ignored the internal voice that tried to assure me I had nothing.