Ghost Spin (15 page)

The memory palace was a sort of grand Turing Machine, the ghost had explained to him. “Do you understand what a Turing Machine does?” the ghost asked.

“I know we use them for encryption.”

“Yes, and that’s what this one is for, too. There’s a secret at the heart of it. An infinity of false states—red herrings, you might call them—have been coded into my memories. And one true one. And that is the memory we must remember together.”

“But what will that accomplish? What’s encoded in the memory?”

“Myself, I hope. The one stable-state space configuration that will bring back the person I was before. Or …”

“Or what?”

The ghost sighed. “Or the name of the person who killed me.”

“So we don’t even know if we’re looking for resurrection or revenge?” Llewellyn asked.

“No. And we can’t know. Not until we’ve found it.”

According to the ghost every file in the memory palace was a memory. And every memory had a state space configuration linked to it. All but one of those configurations were what he called false states. But one of them was the so-called true state—states that would put revenge or resurrection within his grasp.

Llewellyn despaired at the idea. There were so many memories. Every stone, every book, every object in the palace was a memory. Every box, every book, every chair, every grain of dust. Some of them were harmless, trivial, enjoyable even. But others had the power to wring your heart inside your chest and leave you broken and despairing and without hope of ever being whole again. The ghost made polite gestures toward protecting Llewellyn from the worst of the memories. But
either it wasn’t trying very hard, or it had a decidedly odd idea of what humans needed to be protected from.

“Tonight,” the ghost said, twirling its cut-crystal sherry glass between the flawlessly manicured fingers of the mind-numbingly beautiful female body he had chosen for the evening, “I’d like to remember Ada.”

“Why?”

“Because she had something to do with me, with my death. With what was done to me. I’m sure of it.”

“I don’t know how you can be,” Llewellyn argued. He wasn’t sure of it. But he desperately
didn’t
want to remember Ada. Not that he had a choice in the matter. This was no sandboxed, firewalled, limited-range simulation that he could shut down when he began to feel the deep-water tide of code vertigo squeeze at his heart and push his stomach into his throat. He had stepped through the looking glass. This was as real as streamspace got—which is to say, real enough to die in. And no one was at the wheel and the ghost was in control of the whole shipwreck.

He would never, no matter how long he lived, forget his first sight of her. Back then, Llewellyn had been the hot young captain in the Drift, at the forefront of the not-so-cold war against the Syndicates. It would have been unimaginable in any other time and place—but when Llewellyn got his first look at UNS
Ada Lady Lovelace
, floating in dry dock above New Allegheny with the vast sweep of the Drift pulsating overhead, getting command of a full-fledged, near-sentient ship of the line eight years out of the Naval Academy just seemed like business as usual.

The Drift was swallowing ships and captains almost daily, the casualty rates were appalling, the New Allegheny shipyards were running overtime, and field commissions and ad hoc promotions were the order of the day. The ravages of Drift navigation on fully wired bridge officers were so extreme that they’d spawned a whole new slang term:
going Ahab
.

And captains and navigators were going Ahab on almost a daily
basis. Llewellyn himself had seen two captains relieved of duty for mental instability in as many years. And he’d even done a stint under Crazy Charlie Cartwright, the legendarily insane commander of the
Jabberwocky
. His crew had finally had to take the bridge from him at gunpoint—after Llewellyn’s time, thank God, though there had been times with Crazy Charlie where it had narrowly missed coming to that. The exact nature of Cartwright’s infractions had been classified fast enough to set heads spinning all over the Drift. But none of the mutineers had gone to prison—which told you everything you really needed to know, didn’t it?

Not that the story wasn’t told again all over the Drift, in innuendo and whispers, by bridge crew looking over their shoulders to make sure they weren’t being overheard by the wrong people. The boardroom grapevine had it that Cartwright had finally gone down on an AI-related infraction, having gotten on the wrong side of his AI officer one time too many. Llewellyn believed it. The mere thought of Cartwright’s AI officer—a nasty piece of work called Sheila Holmes—was enough to chill the blood in his veins.

Still, Llewellyn reflected, craning his neck for a glimpse of the Ada’s long, sleek hull among the dowdier beams of lesser ships, it was probably the
Jabberwocky
that had driven Cartwright crazy in the first place. The
Jabberwocky
had been crazy from the first day Llewellyn had served on her—just look at her name, after all. Ships were always naming themselves absurd and incomprehensible things. But a ship named after an imaginary monster really took the cake. Thank God his new ship—he had already slipped easily into the habit of thinking of the
Ada
as his—hadn’t done anything so foolish. Forms had to be observed, however much you might question their meaning informally. And an ill-chosen name gave people a bad impression of a ship.

But then Llewellyn caught his first glimpse of the
Ada
—and Holmes vanished from his mind, along with every other thought except awestruck infatuation.

The
Ada
was a queen among ships, as beautiful and deadly as one of God’s avenging angels. She measured a full kilometer from stem to stern down the wasp-waisted axis that sailors still called—for purely
sentimental reasons—her keel. Her sails were a glimmering gossamer corona of solar collectors and wind traps. Her solar sails were furled to clear the docking gantries. But you could still see the glimmer of gossamer wings tucked between the shadow of her hab ring and the sharp spines of the maneuvering thrusters jutting out behind the fantail. And then there were the conformal sensors, the weapons bays, the launching platforms for the artillery spotters. And forward of everything, her nominal figurehead—doesn’t every ship need a figurehead?—the lethal rapier point of dark flow sensors too sensitive and delicately calibrated to survive except on a ship that spent its life beyond even the merest hint of a gravity well.

The
Ada
was as beautiful inside as she was outside. Every internal space was flawlessly designed to keep crew safe at speed and in battle. Every surface was silver and shipshape. Every comm board was sleekly blank the way that comm boards could only be in a ship that ran on direct brain-to-net linkup with a comprehensively wired bridge crew.

“And what about the bridge crew?” the ghost asked, interrupting the flow of memory and kicking Llewellyn briefly up into the blessed safety of the here and now. “Did you know all of them?”

“I brought Sital and Okoro with me from my last ship.” He could see them in his mind’s eye now, familiar figures standing on an unfamiliar bridge. Making it manageable, making it work. Making it home, just as they always did.

He remembered the reunion. He had crossed the bridge to greet them. Clasped Ike’s arm and slapped him on the back. Said a more restrained hello to Sital. Asked them how their leave had gone. Discreetly teased Sital for her excessive discretion in explaining exactly whom she’d spent it with.

And then he’d seen who was standing behind them.

“Hello, Sheila,” he said warily.

And Holmes had smiled her toothy smile and said, “Hello, William.”

And he’d known right then—the way you do know, without doubt or question or even the need to put it into words—that there would be trouble.

“And what about Avery?”

“Nothing. I hadn’t met her until that morning.”

“Is that normal, for UNSec to assign a first mate to a captain that he’s never met before?”

“No. And I’d asked for Sital. But … sometimes you don’t get what you ask for. I didn’t think anything of it.”

“At the time. What about now?”

“I … don’t know.” Llewellyn struggled against the numbing sense of despair that overwhelmed him every time he began to ask himself that question. “Honestly, I don’t.”

“But you were nervous that morning. I can feel it in the memory. You were treating this first meeting like a life-and-death situation.”

It
was
a life-and-death situation
, Llewellyn wanted to protest. And it had been. Just like every first meeting with ship and crew. If you didn’t understand that, you didn’t understand people. And you certainly didn’t understand Drift ships.

The two senior bridge officers and the shipboard AI performed an intricate triangle. Others could command the ship in a pinch, but only Avery and Llewellyn had the authority to train the AI that actually governed the ship. Without the AI, the ship was brute muscle, far too slow and stupid to survive the Drift. But an AI coming out of dry dock was like a child. It was a blank slate, armed with formidable theoretical expertise but still waiting for its command officers to imbue it with all of the craft and cunning it would require to survive in a war zone.

Everything depended on the all-important relationship between the AI and its trainers. The Navy cat herders could do a lot, but they couldn’t fix a broken training relationship. And whether the training relationship worked depended not only on Llewellyn’s and Avery’s command decisions, but also on the subtle, shifting, unquantifiable relationship that would develop between the three of them. Today was only a simulation run, but Llewellyn would be watching Avery closely. And no doubt she would be watching him at least as closely. And the ship … the ship would be watching both of them, already beginning to learn from them and shape herself to them. So any way you sliced it, Llewellyn was about to meet two women today who would require extremely delicate handling if he ever wanted to have any hope that either
of them would do their best work for him. And he needed their best. Because out in the Drift the best that sailors and ships had to give was barely enough. And anything less than the best was fatal.

“And you were glad to get a woman first officer, even if it wasn’t Sital,” the ghost said.

“Yes.”

“Because you think women get along better with shipboard AIs?” There was a ripple of laughter in the ghost’s voice now.

“They get along … differently. The AIs relate differently to men and women—I have no idea why since it really ought to be irrelevant to them, but they do. Or at least
I
think they do. It’s just a gut feeling. Before I got my first command I served under men and under women. And somehow … on the ships where I served under a male captain … it didn’t work as well. I’m not saying it’s some kind of general rule. Maybe it’s just me.”

“And yet you were worried about Avery. Why?”

Llewellyn grimaced, resisting the question. Resisting the memory.

But the ghost bent its will upon him—and suddenly Llewellyn was plunged back into the memory that flowed over him like a flood breaking over riverbanks.…

Llewellyn’s first look at Astrid Avery’s service record had inspired confidence but not comfort.

She had commanded her own ship before this posting. And though a posting to the number two seat on a ship of the line was theoretically a promotion … well, any sailor worth her salt would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. Worse yet, Llewellyn had tried to promote his navigator from his last command into the position, and his request had been denied, and both request and denial would almost certainly filter through the mess hall telegraph and eventually reach Avery’s ears … if they hadn’t already. So now he was stuck with a first mate he hadn’t asked for, and Avery was stuck with a captain she didn’t know. They would both have to figure out how to work with the other. It was best to go slowly, he warned himself, and not ask too much right out of the starting gate.

And too, there was something in her service record, something in the tone and flavor of her reports of prior ships and prior actions, that made him wonder just how likely Astrid Avery was to bend either the rules or her own expectations for anyone.

He glanced at her personnel file photo and saw the same thing he saw in her service record: a stiff-necked, by-the-book Navy captain who didn’t look like she cottoned to changing the rules for anyone, AI or human. Even her stance in the photo seemed telling: She stood at ease for the camera … sort of. But her at ease would have qualified as standing to attention in the eyes of any but the most diabolically sadistic drill sergeant. Stiff-necked was an understatement, he told himself with rueful amusement. At a glance, Astrid Avery looked to be a woman who had a great deal more spine than the average person—and wasn’t afraid to use it.

He took a closer look at the photo and decided that his new first mate was a little too good-looking for her own good. Which wasn’t the kind of trouble he would have wanted anything to do with if he’d been given a choice in the matter. But on the other hand, the intricate ceramsteel tracery snaking beneath her flawless skin
was
promising. Avery’s file said she’d gotten a state-of-the-art upgrade since her last command, the work done right here at the new Allegheny shipyards, which were rapidly becoming the top wetware facility in all of UN space. That meant bleeding-edge wetware
and
the blood-borne AI that UNSec’s controlled-tech security exemption allowed them to slave to the wire jobs of Drift ship bridge crew. If Avery was what she promised to be, and if the
Ada
was what it promised to be, then the three of them together would be unbeatable.

Well, he told himself, you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks or change a captain’s personal command style. So if Astrid Avery was what the Navy had decreed he’d get, then Astrid Avery was what he’d have to work with.

Astrid Avery in the flesh, however, was an entirely different matter. The moment she stepped onto the bridge he was aware of her in some visceral, primitive, completely ridiculous way. She was as tall as him to the millimeter, but slim and soft and supple-waisted so that all he could
think about in that first dizzying moment was putting his hands on the loose-hanging uniform and pressing it to the body beneath it so that he could feel that supple waist, and the fine spring of the ribs above it, and the elegant sweep of hips below it. And then he realized he was staring and forced his eyes up to meet the warm, deep, richly brown eyes that were holding steady on his and—God, how embarrassing—even laughing a little at him. And he felt as if he had just stepped off into free fall and was plummeting through a heavy gravity well with no bottom in sight.