Serpent's Gift (32 page)

Stop that!
her survivor-self ordered brutally.
You're acting like an idiot. What
do you care what happens to them? Ten minutes ago you were thinking that
they'd corrupted you with their namby-pure attitudes and oh-so-moral crap,
and now you're sniveling like a major asshole. You've got to look out for
yourself, sweetcheeks, because you can bet all of "Helen Benson's" bankroll
that if Serge and Hing knew what you were doing, they'd turn you in in a
second and your ass would be out of here. Think they'd ever give you a
second thought once you were gone?

The concentrated burst of anger calmed her down, made her think more cl
early.

Phillips was still talking,
setting up tentative timetables for 186

docking
at Docks Eleven through Twenty, on the other side of
the station,
the uninjured
side. "And by the way," she said, we've
just received a
communication from StarBridge Station's ¦
chief. Just prior
to, or during the crash, which occurred at
13:24
station time, did anyone notice anything funny glitching u
p your
computer?"

All
of the ships must have replied in the negative, because she continued,

"Well, I guess that confirms that it was strictly some local glitch--whatever it was. What happened here at the Academy
and
at the station was that at 13:23, a full minute prior to the crash, the entire system blipped out for a fraction of a second. It just blipped off, then back on. Then for a moment when it came up again, we saw ... well, let me show you."

She must have pressed a control, because a window suddenly showed to her right, taking up about a quarter of the image. It was filled with ship and vessel coordinates and schedules, plus docking times. Heather watched as the playback suddenly blinked, as the computer hiccuped .. . and then data vanished and was replaced with--

--Heathertoo.

The image was exactly as the girl had seen her, wearing that terrified expression, then it tried to melt and meld into some underlying image but never quite made it. The image spoke: "The guidance beam setting is all wrong! Guidance beam error-- error, error--too soon--too fast! Evacuate Docks Five and Six! Emergency override on that guidance beam!"

Then the window blinked again, and the normal shipping and docking data returned to the playback.

"Ever see anything like that?" Phillips asked, then cocked her head as she listened. "No, me neither. Totally illegal swapout or something. No, I've never seen her before, and from what the head of Security said, no one else has, either. She's certainly not one of the controllers, though one of the controllers remembers saying part of that as soon as she realized what was happening with
Night Storm.
But that part about 'error, error' sounds like it was the
computer
talking. Doesn't make a damned bit of sense."

Phillips paused for a moment, listened, then said, "It's got to be connected with the crash, it can't just be random garbage.' The communication was local, we know that much--and it won't take long to track it down and identify whoever that was. The Security Chief is saying it has to be sabotage, so that redhead's going to have a lot of explaining to do, whoever she is."

187

Heather gasped and, unable to take any more, switched off the terminal. She felt the room spin around her, heard her blood roaring in her ears.
I'm gonna
faint,
she thought dispassionately as her palms went clammy and her eyelids fluttered.

You don't have
time
to faint! her survivor-self barked.
Put your head down,
asshole!
Immediately, Heather dropped her head between her knees, gulping air desperately. Her eyes watered, and her stomach heaved. She forced herself to slow down her breathing, easy .. . easy. Cautiously, she raised her head, saw that everything was stable again. She swallowed hard.

They'd seen Heathertoo. They'd be looking for her. With really sophisticated search programs, tracer programs. And when they found "Helen Benson,"

they'd trace her to Heathertoo--and then to Heathertoo's creator. This was no longer just a case of computer tampering. People were
dead.

She kept hearing Rob's warnings about messing with the computers, the environmental systems, how everything was tied in together.

That's impossible! I only messed around with the school's AI. I never tapped
into anything at the station except those financial programs! Nothing I did
could've affected the guidance beams. . .

You called the station while you were inside the AI,
a brutal voice inside her warned.
You stayed inside, pushing and prodding, moving things, making
sure Heathertoo did what you wanted. How would you know what else you
might have affected?
You never paid any attention to anything else!

Heather shuddered convulsively. Computers were so weird the way they consolidated data, the way systems handled programs. And the AI was the weirdest part of the computer. It was organic. Made its own rules. Wrote its own programs. It
thought,
not quite like a human thought, but it thought. Fast.

Really fast. And this one had Mizari origins, so it'd be less humanlike than a human-originated AI. She'd been bouncing around in there, pulling strings, making sure Heathertoo the puppet danced just right.
Oh, shit. Oh,
shitshitshit!

She suddenly felt very small, very helpless, very young. Shivering, she whispered to the machine, "I didn't mean to, honest!" As though apologizing to it would do any good. "I just wanted some money of my own, so I'd be safe! I didn't mean to hurt anyone! I'd never do that on purpose!" But that didn't matter now. People were dead. Maybe Hing and Serge were dead--

and it was
her
fault. Heather moaned aloud.

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Don't forget that StarBridge Station Security was now looking for Heathertoo.

They'd probably start by checking personnel records, which would take them a while and get them nowhere. But they'd also have programmers, systems analysts, good ones, and they'd be tracing the mystery image through the computer.

A sob of sheer panic caught in Heather's throat, making her gulp, but no tears came. That's right, she never cried, and she wouldn't let herself now--

though it might have been a relief. No, she had to get busy, she had no time to snivel.

Resolutely, Heather swallowed the lump in her throat, feeling her survivor-self surge to the fore, letting it think for her, guide her. It was her survivor-self that had kept her sane and functioning during all the bad times--when her mother had died and, soon after, when her father, instead of comforting her, had dissolved into shrieking, gibbering insanity. Her survivor-self had kept Uncle Fred from killing her, helped her in all those foster homes. Her survivor-self had gotten her off Earth, into space, where Uncle Fred and Aunt Natalie could never touch her again.

Resolutely, she listened to her inner voice, then reached for her computerpen, at the same time turning her terminal back on.
You can stil do
something no one else can do,
it told her.
You can go in there and wipe it all
out, all the evidence, all the traces. Destroy Heathertoo. Wipe the record of
the call to the broker. Dissolve that money-making program back into
random electrical impulses. Get rid of the money.

She balked at that last. Destroy the money?
Her
hard-earned money? No!

She couldn't. That money meant freedom. Escape.

You've got to. There's no way you could sneak off this rock now, so your only
defense is to play the innocent eleven-year-old. That means scrapping
everything that can tie Heathertoo to you.
Everything!
Now
get moving!

The child sucked in a lungful of air, struggling to clear her mind. She wouldn't think about Hing. Wouldn't think about Serge. Wouldn't think about them as victims of explosive decompression, frozen hunks of red meat and organs, floating forever in space...

She'd only think about what she had to do. How she had to wipe out all traces of her tampering.

Just this last time,
she told herself.
After this, never again. Wipe the slate
clean. Start over. They'll never know. And I swear, if I get out of this, I'll
never,
EVER do this again.

She closed her eyes and
pushed,
then it was as though her mind 189

were falling, plunging into the computer. She submerged herself in its mechanical order, experiencing the incredible complexity that was at the same time inhumanly simple, for it had no emotions, no feelings to influence its judgment.

Nanoseconds later she was traveling the grids, the pathways of the programs, the data, heading deep into the innards, toward the organic component of the AI. But even as she sank further into the mind that was not a mind, she heard her survivor-self chuckle at her naive promise of future honesty.

Sure,
the survivor purred sarcastically,
you'll never do this again. Sure.

A mental echo of her own laughter, twisted and perverted until it sounded inhuman, evil, followed her like a ghost into the darkness.

190

Rob rubbed his face tiredly as the familiar dialogue washed over him; he was only half paying attention to it. Stretched out on his couch, he wore shapeless old gray sweatpants and a sleeveless red tee-tank. The "Johns Hopkins" emblazoned across its front was so faded it was nearly indistinguishable. On the stylish coffee table in front of him rested half a piece of fudge-marble cheesecake and half a mug of tepid coffee.

He stared at the food, then desultorily took another bite, washing it down with the cooling brew. He glanced up at the wall holo showing his favorite old film.

Little early in the season for this one, isn't it, Gable?
he asked himself.
Not
even near Christmas.

On the screen, Clarence, the rotund little angel, was drying the clothes he'd been buried in, in the small caretaker's shack on the bridge. Nearby, a bitter, disillusioned George Bailey fumed because he'd had to risk his life to save the angel from drowning in the icy winter river. What George had really wanted to do was kill
himself---
not save anyone else. This rescue was a
major
inconvenience.

Rob watched Jimmy Stewart handle the role of George Bailey with an uncanny verisimilitude. And wondered why he was watching this film now, tonight, for perhaps the two hundredth time.

Heal thyself, doctor,
he thought.
Couldn't be because you ended up in your
dad's--and mom's--business, just because you were expected to, is it?

Couldn't be because you ended up running

191

StarBridge because it was what was expected of you, hmmm? The less
glamorous job, but the oh, so important one?

StarBridge Academy as metaphor for the Bailey Building and Loan

Company, how about that one, boys and girls? He scowled at the

cheesecake and shoved it away. Oh, he had the blues
bad
today!

Now George was experiencing Pottersville, the alternate- universe Bedford Falls--the town as it would have been had he never been born, the fulfillment of his depressed wish as he stood hopeless on the bridge. It was a sick town, full of greed, anarchy, corruption. An analogy for all the things good people have to fight--and lose to--on a daily basis. Boy, Capra knew how to pull the strings, didn't he?

Rob had seen pictures of Capra in his later life. It'd shocked him how much the filmmaker had come to look just like Clarence.

There was George, frantic in the graveyard, staring at the tombstone of his brother. Clarence was explaining that the reason his brother died was because George hadn't been there to save him from drowning when they were kids. And because George hadn't saved his brother, his brother wasn't alive to save the troopship filled with soldiers, and all those men had died as well.

Little pebbles, big ripples,
Rob thought morosely. He glanced around his living room, trying to find comfort in his familiar things, wondering how long he--or any of them--would be here at StarBridge.

His suite consisted of four rooms, living room, den (where he was now), bedroom, and bathroom. It was his refuge, a place where he could get away from everything and everyone, and just be himself--alone.

Well, almost alone. The small black cat curled beside him slept soundly, purring softly, her rumbles of content vibrating through his body. But even stroking Bast didn't cheer him. Rob looked from her to the pictures of her mother, Isis, daughter of Sekhmet. They'd been good companions to him over the years.

His eyes moved to the left of the screen where a simple feather and grass weaving hung. He'd once had an original Peter Max hanging there, but had replaced it when this arrived. The Max had taken up residence in the bathroom, and he'd programmed the walls to match its bright psychedelic colors.

The white weaving was about a meter square, and simple in design. Over it hung an ultraviolet light, so its hidden design

would glow. The design showed the stylized images of two huge cranelike avians, with a human between them. Near them was a

192

avian, a baby. The style was reminiscent of the Anasazi, he thought, yet different. Beneath it, on a piece of paper-thin beige bark was written, "From Taller, the tallest of the White Wind People, this gift presented to the See-Through Man, given through his partner, Good Eyes." At the bottom of the inked message was a large, three-toed footprint--Taller's signature.

Rob had only spoken once to the avian leader, but knew that his

hologrammic projection had unnerved the proud, nontechnological alien. He was glad that he had Tesa, known to the Grus as Good Eyes, to handle future communications between them. Staring at the beautiful weaving, he thought about pebbles and ripples. Tesa was certainly a big ripple. If he hadn't given her the chance to go to Trinity, and she hadn't decided to accept that assignment, what would everything be like now?