Dark Horse (15 page)

A
ppal was
in the training area when Dav got there, and he stood, disappointed, watching her move through the first level.

He needed to kill things alone.

She turned, saw him, and shut the virtual battle down. “I can make it a two-person mission.”

He gave a nod, and shrugged into the jacket and gloves, strapped on the weapons he would need.

“Bad news?” she asked in the aftermath of the opening play.

He noted that he had severed the heads of two of the combatants with his return fire. “Borji found the lens feed from the Class 5 cells.”

She spun so they were back-to-back and he felt her shudder under the backlash of her shockgun as she discharged her weapon. When they were clear, she shook out her arms. “Bad?”

He crouched and shot just to the right of her, taking out the last remaining image-generated Krik as he rose up from behind some crates to take aim at them. “Yes.”

“Whereʼd Borji find the files?” She was barely breathing hard as she checked her sim weapon for charge. “I always like to know how the enemy thinks.”

“In a file in the inventory system.”

“Huh. As if they were part of their inventory.”

They stepped into the third scenario, with the Krik still starring as the main enemy, and Dav wondered how long it would take for the Tecran to start appearing as the targets in these things.

If he had anything to do with it, not long.

“Captain Gee have a role to play in any of the visual comms?” Appalʼs tone was quiet, and Dav knew she was thinking about their first interview with the captain, the way heʼd looked down and away when theyʼd mentioned violation of the Sentient Beings Agreement.

Dav had to kill three Krik before he could answer. “Not directly. The now comatose Dr. Fliap seems to be the one who actually carried out the abuse, but Gee physically came to the cells to observe him hard at work at least three times in the limited clips Iʼve seen.”

“Bastard.” Appal sighted her shockgun, resting it on his shoulder for stability, and took out a gunner sitting high above them in a tower. “You given it to the UC liaison officer?”

Dav stepped away from her and covered her back. “Yes.”

There was only one way out, and Appal ran at the huge pipe that would be their best cover, flipped in mid-air and landed in a crouch at the top. She covered him as he ran at it himself and jumped up, although less elegantly than her.

They slid down the far side, and this time both of them were breathing heavily.

“What do you think? About Rose?” He was so tied in knots, he didnʼt trust himself.

“Sheʼs as likely to have killed the Tecran as Dr. Revilʼs little boy, in my opinion. But if she did it, if sheʼs hiding her true nature behind that really sweet exterior, you had better have done everything by the book.”

That was his take. Which meant he had to throw Rose to the wolves. And he didnʼt think thereʼd be any forgiveness for him at the end of it.

Not after what heʼd just seen on the lens feed. The abuse sheʼd been put through.

To be treated as a suspect when she was the victim . . .

He lifted his shockgun, and took out the horde of Krik trying to scramble over the pipe. But not even wiping out every im-gen enemy in the training center was going to melt the cold, hard lump in his throat.

S
he made
her way back to the spacescape.

Now she knew what to expect, it didnʼt worry her at all as she stepped into the massive room which sat like a bubble on the side of the ship.

There was a comfortable chair set slightly apart from the other seating with a great view out to Virmana and the stars beyond. She made herself at home, pulled out the Grih handheld Yari had given her and began reading up on Grih culture.

She went to the music-makers first. The Grih had apparently been the hosts for the start of the United Councilʼs dispute resolution court for the year, and a music-maker had performed at the opening ceremony.

There were a lot of drums involved in their music, and she liked it, tapping the side of the handheld in time with the beat. The song itself was really just an ode to the occasion, what she thought would probably have been quite common at the courts of the medieval rulers of Europe, praising the people involved, singing about what they hoped to achieve.

It wasnʼt something she could see herself doing. It was serious, with no joy or humor in it. They took music too seriously here, and hoarded it like a dragon hoarded its gold. Parting with it begrudgingly and in tiny increments.

Next she turned to Grih history, and she couldnʼt help looking back as far as she could, to the origins of their culture. They had no formal religion, instead, they saw themselves as an integral part of the world around them, no better and no worse than any other living creature. Their philosophy seemed to be that life would thrive where it could, it was the nature of the universe to do so.

They had been hunter-gathers for a long time, and had never gone down the path of peasants tilling the field for landowners. It seemed to have led to a more harmonious, egalitarian culture, and fewer wars meant more time and money to develop interesting, ground-breaking ideas. Their Renaissance seemed to have lasted for most of their history.

But back when they had survived as a hunter-gatherer group, the main prize for the Grih had been the yurve. A huge animal, bigger than any buffalo Rose had ever seen, although smaller than an elephant, its intelligence and belligerence were Grih legend.

The yurve was revered in their culture much as the lion was in Roseʼs own, as the embodiment of bravery and power.

The thought of a lion made her pull up short. It came back to her, in stark clarity; the lion lying on the floor of the Class 5, still in its cage, its huge paws stained with the black grit that seemed to coat every surface of the launch bay.

She deliberately closed the page she had been looking at and searched for a reference to thinking systems.

It took less than a second to find all the information she would need.

They had been used for over a hundred years, slowly growing more sophisticated, more self-aware, until a scientist called Professor Fayir developed a thinking system which came fully into consciousness.

It had lobbied for the right to be considered a sentient being, and had been accepted, but it had begun creating replicas of itself, and not taking the time or care to educate or control them, until Grih started dying, killed in ways Rose could imagine happened just like the lionʼs death.

Thinking systems had been adopted by other nation-members of the United Council, and theyʼd also experienced loss of life, but the Grih, who had thinking systems in every part of their society, were hardest hit.

Professor Fayir tried to persuade the United Council that the problem was that the new thinking systems hadnʼt been nurtured, and insisted he had a plan which would make it safe to create a new type of TS.

But Professor Fayir could not promise the United Council that the thinking systems would only ever work for the benefit of society. Rose read his final speech: “No one can guarantee any sentient being will only work for good. A sentient being is by definition autonomous, and therefore free to behave as it wishes.”

At least he hadnʼt lied, Rose thought. He could have tried to downplay the risk, but he hadnʼt.

Because of the power they could wield, the UC decided that the creation of all thinking systems must be banned, and every one that existed must be destroyed.

There had been war for nearly six years until every TS was defeated. And Professor Fayir had died in the fighting, still insisting he could fix things.

She looked at the date, and realized that was nearly two hundred years ago.

She leaned back in her chair and stared out at the stars.

How had Sazo come to be? Had someone decided to give thinking systems another go after all this time?

She shook her head. Sazo was hardly the result of some exploratory toe-dipping. He was fully actualized, fully conscious. He was a person in all respects except for a body.

She got into more recent history after that. The near-war between the Tecran and the Grih on three occasions over the last fifty years, the part the Bukari played in keeping the peace through the United Council, and the ongoing issues with a race of people called the Krik, whose planet was on the outer-reaches of United Council held territory, and who seemed to either be trying to gain a place on the council or start up a war with each individual signatory, sometimes both at once.

There was always one.

It cheered her to know that was true, even on the other side of the galaxy.

“Excuse me.”

Rose looked up, saw a group of eight Grih standing nearby. The one whoʼd spoken to her looked familiar, and Rose realized it was Dr. Revil.

“Hello.” She smiled. “Howʼs Gyp?”

The doctor smiled back. “Heʼs fine. Not so grumpy today.” She looked over at her colleagues, and then at Rose again. “We are about to do a particular Grih exercise called The Flowing Way. We wondered if you would sing for us?”

“Sing for you?” Rose was sitting cross-legged, and she dropped her feet back on the ground.

“You sang so beautifully for Gyp, and the Flowing Way was originally meant to be done to song, but with less and less music-makers, only two mass classes a year are held with a music-maker in attendance. You would honor us.”

Rose looked at Revil, saw she absolutely meant that. “What kind of music?”

“The Flowing Way is part music, part exercise. The participants work to a specific beat and cannot drop it, or theyʼll interrupt the overall harmony of the piece. Itʼs both pleasing to listen to, and difficult, because even if you get tired, you have to keep your rhythm steady. It keeps you focused.”

It sounded interesting. “Why donʼt you start the rhythm, and Iʼll see if thereʼs a song I can work into it?”

Revil nodded, and the group faced her, each moving a little away from the other to give each other room.

They warmed up slowly, but soon the participants stamped and clapped, even hitting the floor with a hand when they bent to touch their toes. It created a complex rhythm that reminded Rose of dancers stamping in steel-tipped boots on metal grids, and she thought of a train clacking on the tracks, thought of a song that was easy to sing that had a similar rhythm, and began.

The dancersʼ rhythm almost faltered during her opening verse, but Revil kept it together, and Rose sang the song through twice before she stopped.

The group slowly wound up their movements, drawing out the beat so that it ended harmoniously.

There was silence. Rose focused beyond the group for the first time, and saw everyone whoʼd been in the open area had come to stand in a circle around them.

“Thank you, Rose.” Revil came forward with her hands together, and Rose clasped them between her own.

“It was my pleasure. Thank you for sharing a part of Grih culture with me.”

She had said the right thing, because all around her were murmurs of approval.

“What was it about?” Revil asked. “Your language sounds so beautiful.”

Rose leaned back in her chair. “It was about needing to take a journey, to go on to the next stage in life, and wanting to know if the person you love will come with you.”

“That is an . . . unusual thing to sing about.”

Rose shrugged at the man whoʼd spoken. It had sounded almost as if he had planned to say ʽwastefulʼ. “Not where I come from. We sing about anything.”

“Will you do one more?” The person who asked was part of Revilʼs original group, and Rose recognized her as Jay Xaltro, one of the guards who had originally shown her to her room.

Rose wet her lips, looked around at the audience of thirty or more and quailed inside. But she could see they were desperate for her to say yes, and she didnʼt have the heart to deny them.

“Weʼll make a different rhythm,” Revil offered.

Rose nodded, and they began again, a slower rhythm this time, and she started up a Billy Joel ballad.

Her voice wobbled a few times, but by the second time around, she felt good about it, clear and on pitch.

When she finished, and Dr. Revilʼs group played their last beat, there was a perfect stillness around her, as if everyone held their breath.

One of the woman closest to her began to warble or ululate, like a mourner at funerals Rose had seen in Africa, and it was taken up all around her, so she was surrounded by a wall of sound.

She stood, spun round, and found even more people crowded around her now.

It was too much. She had been locked away on her own for too long, and panic thrummed at her chest, threatening to explode outward.

“Thank you.” She managed to choke out the words as she grabbed up her handhelds. She gave a bow, and dived for the closest gap in the crowd, angling her body this way and that to avoid bumping anyone, and then, when she was free of them, she ran for the nearest opening.

“Rose, whatʼs wrong?” Sazoʼs voice in her ear steadied her a little.

“Too many people, too much attention.” She gasped for breath, slowing down now that she was in an empty passageway.