Kara wouldn’t leave it alone. But AIs have to be somewhere. Didn’t you? Go somewhere and meet? Like one of the dimensions they used?
<< Well, yes, like sitting around a table maybe... it’s a pretend... no, honestly, it is somewhere but we don’t know where, only how to get there and it’s very AI personal so shouldn’t have told you, except you and I have some kind of bond, and we know why, right?
“Go on now, Salome, go, walk out the door,” Kara half-sang.
And the SUT echoed to “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor, another one of Kara’s retro favourites... and a reminder from AIs everywhere: you only think you know us, but we know all of you.
> No more games, she said firmly, > concentrate on keeping us humans alive. And what would she do if Ishmael or Salome said sod it, sort out your own mess, we’re off? Except where would they go? And if their human or SUT dies, so do they.
Kara suspected Salome was made in a small factory somewhere in the Wild. The AI actually meant whoever was responsible for the original technology. But that could be any of a possible million alien races. The topdog pre-cogs didn’t invent or innovate. They merely controlled.
An alien race that put all its efforts into establishing and maintaining a slave empire. Destroying it would be a necessary pleasure.
And then found herself thinking of home. Would her Merc be safe at Marc’s house by the Severn? Would it record the feed from a Net subscription channel for twentieth-century retro freaks? There was a vid about some long-gone musicians called Queen that had looked interesting, although she wasn’t sure Queen of what. Inconsequential thoughts that were somehow as important as fighting the pre-cogs.
> You AIs communicate at faster than light.
< Via another dimension. But that’s how it looks to a human. A faint note of superiority in Ishmael’s voice.
> So can you access the Net back home?
Salome joined in.
<< Not enough bandwidth. Anyway, we’re tactical, which means no unnecessary comms. There’s a vid library on board.
Kara remembered. Travelogues, nature documentaries, classic retro drama and wildly experimental programmes that made her angry, although she was never sure why. But not a bad idea to think about them, keep them in the background and so – hopefully – mask a suspicion that had suddenly popped into her mind.
<< All AIs can listen to sub-dimension traffic. If we broadcast, they’ll know where we are. At least, our direction. Sorry. We’re on our own.
And ain’t that the truth, Kara thought. On her own with only three AIs and a space-happy Marc for company. Netherspace happy. He might be on the SUT but his heart was far away.
They’d argued over netherspace, shortly after what Kara had named the Battle of Cedric. Marc had wanted the full immersive experience, the hull transparent, surrounded by colours and shapes so extreme as to make anyone’s concept of hell little more than kittens playing in a sun-drenched, flower-bedecked cobbled street.
Kara had said no, because it would drive her mad.
Marc suggested dark glasses.
Kara knew he wasn’t serious... equally, that he was making a point. Marc was with her for now but nether-space was his life and it could be hers. Any moment and he’d begin rhapsodising about infinite glory and the secrets of existence.
Marc assumed a slur on his integrity – wrong, Kara simply disliked him in pilgrim mode – and stomped off to his sleek cabin. Which was when Salome explained she could make that section of hull transparent if he liked.
“You can wave to your friends,” Kara had said via AI.
“At least I have some,” he shot back.
“Then stop 'em using us like a fucking scratching post.”
It was one of those conversations that leave people dissatisfied and guilty, often more caustic in the long term than a full-blown row. Loyalty and affection slowly dissolved by the drip-drip of resentment. Private sadness about things never said, unspoken promises never fulfilled. There had been a time, not so long ago, when both Kara and Marc had thought they might be each other’s destiny. Defeat the enemy, fall into bed together, make passionate love – at last! at last! – and who knows, maybe even make a child or two. Okay, if nothing else at least mega, astounding sex that would echo throughout the universe and make dogs bark in the street.
They’d even half admitted it to each other.
But Marc went a-wandering, to return more or less a human, hard to tell either way, and obsessed by a light he’d glimpsed in netherspace.
And it was Kara who’d found him in a wine cellar, she thought angrily, without her he’d have died. Maybe. Well, she was there. Yes, it was a rescue.
But now she’d given her body and maybe her heart to another man. Who’d manipulated her, manipulated all of them... a whole damn planet... maybe even all of human colonised space. All to follow a plan, The Plan, devised by a castrated male who could see the future. This was not a sound basis for a relationship.
In remembering Marc and how they once were Kara also knew nostalgia for a simpler time. There’d been killing, it was what she did. Licensed by the Bureau, although even that turned out to be another Greenaway and GalDiv manipulation. She had her Merc and a few good drinking buddies at Tea, Vicar? in Bermondsey. She had her rock climbing. Sex life was good, sometimes spectacular.
Be honest, she told herself. That simpler time ended when my parents died.
Now she was umpteen light years from Earth, on some bat-shit crazy mission which she barely understood, her main drive to bring back her people. One of whom was away with the fairies, and the other away with the aliens. Talking of whom...
... Kara tried searching for Tatia in her mind, using the natural empathy that Greenaway had promised would work.
Nothing.
Okay, maybe AI to
