The Forever Watch (30 page)

Sorry,
he unicasts to me.
I have to give them these little nuggets. Pep talks. Or they start to lose focus.

Does anyone really know anyone else? And I was just thinking that only I could see the deep thinking behind his simple face.

The intensity in their eyes gets to me.

It's okay, Leon. I'm just tired. I think I'll eat more in a while.

He explains to them what I have done for their little rebellion. That I am the reason they have expanded to more than just a handful of isolated individuals believing that they alone could see that something was wrong. My code lets them search through the Web without being caught, lets them communicate with each other and know that there are others like themselves. Barrens uses the word
destiny
.

I am still in range of direct Implant-to-Implant link, and he thinks to me,
Yeah, I know. I'm laying it on a bit thick, huh? Don't think badly of them. They are smart, they have great ideas, and they have all kinds of different skills. But they're not used to hearing other people say what they've been afraid to believe, and for some reason, they like it when it's me saying it. Couldn't tell ya why, babe. Maybe my ugly mug stuns them into being receptive for the bullshit. I am still only me.

Oh, I hope that is so. I shove aside a moment of indulgent fantasy, of him and me running away together, and being happy, and forgetting about mysteries and deaths and the darkness cast by the fake sun in the Habitat.

I will have it out with him soon and be free to talk and to yell, to scream.

 

 

Barrens delegates various jobs. He deals with the minutiae of running their group, checking on food inventories, reading reports, communicating with other groups. Lunch is stew and bread. I sink into a couch in front of a data terminal, close my eyes, and lose myself in the glittering light, the unfolding complexity of my program's growth, studying what changes have occurred while I was held by ISec, and during the months I was too busy in construction to pay attention.

It's grown even more in the time I was in captivity. It recognizes my touch on its code instantly. What used to be just results being returned and dry documentation and data tables is now accompanied by cheerful, musical pings. As if it were welcoming me home.

I cannot deny any longer that it is becoming artificial intelligence, and not in the way the term is used in the present to describe a whole class of dynamic algorithms, but the old way. Turing-testable, Strong AI. It is as Karla said.

It can now write itself without restriction. I don't think anyone in Barrens's group realizes that it is no longer under our control.

Dinner is flat rice-noodles, fried with lemongrass, curry, and peppers, and ground beef, fish tacos, and steaming trays of corn bread.

Too soon, and not soon enough, it is another “night.” Or at least, Barrens is off-shift.

The shift that was asleep comes awake, and he introduces me to more of them. He repeats some of the same bits of motivational talk.
Weird, innit? As individuals, we don't like it when people are repetitive in conversation. But in groups, repetition is vital, like something is lost in the transition from a single person listening to a collective.

We linger long enough that when we walk away from the central hall down a narrow shaft allocated to sleeping quarters, we are alone. The previous shift with us have already parked themselves in their little coffin chambers, while the rest are behind us, having breakfast, waking up to face another day of diving into the Nth Web and searching for more secrets, or planning this or that or, I suppose, any of the hundred tasks it takes to start up a revolution.

Barrens clears his throat. Suddenly smaller, shy. “There's empty spots further down, we carve 'em out as we need 'em. Ah. But this one is me.” The quiver of invitation.

While recovering from their Doctor's neurosurgery, I'd been sleeping in the makeshift clinic around the corner. Tonight is the first night I'm free.

Only then did it occur to me that in the months we were apart, he might have found someone else, been with someone else. That he is not …

We
seem
to be alone, but now I can hear the silence. They are listening, I guess, the ones in the sleeping cylinders close to us.

I like to think that the dark shade of my skin hides the blush, but I know he can see it. I slide by him and crawl into his sleep-space, one of dozens of hollows carved out of the walls, stacked together like the cells in a honeycomb. It feels like the dorms again, back in the Class V Center, scrunchies on the doorknobs warning off roomies, everyone knowing who was sleeping with whom.

Only, when he shuts the hatch behind us and crawls alongside me, his massive shadow over me reminds me and I cannot help it. I shiver and close my eyes.

I remember the same face, aglow with fire, crushing me. Crushing Miyaki, but her last moment is mine, in my head.

What is it?

I cannot live in fear of my guard dog, my lion. “I want to talk. And out loud. Not just Implant to Implant. I need to hear your voice and my voice too.”

People in the sleep chambers next to us can practically hear us breathing, Hana
.

“A moment.”

Filed away in my skull, in memories where I learned construction techniques, materials design, and plastech processing, is an entire subsection on how to soundproof a closed space. I use these techniques now. The surfaces around us glow as I restructure the walls, adding damping cells where the dense metallic crystal is softened and made porous, and manipulating the angles of the rigid support struts to diffuse more sound out and away from the surrounding sleep-spaces to the other side of the load-bearing wall that marks one of the outermost edges of the sanctuary. The hatch too is modified, made more concave, to catch sound and direct it, again, out to the sanctuary wall.

Now, we cannot hear anyone around us. The echoing footsteps of the people walking to and fro, the hum of their conversations, it all fades away.

In this dim, narrow place, we are as alone as can be.

“Leon, what happened with Officer Miura?”

The cushions under us whisper as he turns, taps at a panel above us. The ambient light intensifies enough for us to see each other clearly, but it is still soft, low. It comes from a single glow strip installed along just one corner of the hexagonal cell.

The shadows across his face are sharp, and I think of how the others in my life see Barrens, the harsh, rugged planes and angles of his broad cheeks, the thick brow, his heavy jaw.

As he closes his eyes, his hands clench. His shoulders twitch, those savage teeth press together and grind. His fury fills the air around us, violence in the air.

Halting words. Stuttering as he rarely does. He tells me of bringing Officer Miura in. Of needing someone to teach these kids how to take care of themselves.

“Miya came to us the week after you were caught. She seemed okay, y'know? F-fine.” He trusted her. “Better than fine. She believed it when we told her what we had. When we showed her.”

He goes silent. Nostrils flare.

If I interrupt, he'll stumble on the words. Surrender. He is close to the edge, close to switching over to the beast. That's not what we need, and I put my hands on his cheeks and pull his head so our eyes are level. Stay with me, you.

His hand reaches out. I lean into his touch. And feel him transmit through our implants.

I brace myself for more scenes but it is a list. A list with hundreds of names.

“Bullet's the one that found them. Each early Retirement. It wasn't just the ones we thought.

“Made ourselves look. Each one. Every early Retirement, if there's a place we're sure they vanished, Bullet's been able to go there and
see
their Mincemeat remains. All the way back to first-generation crew. A death like that leaves a footprint that his talent can find even hundreds of years later. That's how long it's been with us. It's something the top officers are doing to the rest of us. And then Monster found us other things too. Adjustment records, for people connected to an early Retirement. Not every single one, but I guess the ones where there are direct witnesses, they need their memories fixed. It's what would have happened to me if I'd stuck around Cal's apartment long enough for the Enforcers to get there.”

The world around me tilts. Yes. Impersonal, heartless documents. The best and the worst kind of proof.
If there are Adjustment records, you know it's official.
I hold it together.

Miyaki helped them plan the next step. The theory that developed was that it was some sort of awful R&D project. And if there are experiments, there must be labs where they are conducted.

“She found hints of it for us, even. She led us to … You heard it, for sure. Beijing Section, abandoned all at once? They're making labs there, Hana.”

His words sketch a picture. The other side of the work I was doing for City Planning, the hidden reflection in the mirror. Of endless cages, heavily reinforced. Buildings clad in hardened armor from the inside out. The staff mostly wear either the gray of Information Security or the black of Enforcers. But there are a number of Doctors from the Ministry of Health, red-trimmed white coats.

“We saw it. We saw them moving in samples in bottles. Pieces of the monsters in the tunnels. And pieces of people.”

They got in, saw what they could see, and got out. Cleanly, it seemed. “Only, nobody noticed how Miya was acting different when everyone started talking.'”

All those discussions about what it could mean. And there had to be other labs too. Other secret locations that had been running experiments from the very beginning of the ship's launch. And somehow, everyone agreed, Mincemeat tied into the monsters in the dark, and the hidden history of the Noah's alien origin.

He blinks, and by the sickly light of the glow strip, his eyes are unnaturally dark. Shark's eyes looking into mine. “That was the trigger, I guess. Critical combination of terms.”

Calmly, calmly, while everyone was walking and talking on their way back to the Sanctuary, just as they reached a stretch of the tunnels that had grid power, Miyaki Miura started killing them. She stalked them through the brightly lit halls, drew her weapons, began her lethal dance.

“They fucked her up, Dempsey,” Barrens whispers. “Adjusted her. Couldn't reason with her anymore. Kill or be killed.”

His voice cuts and snarls. His hands vibrate in place. Is he remembering it now? Remembering the sensations as his hands beat his friend to death?

“She was. My oldest friend. Couldn't knock her out. She kept getting up. Kept … When it was done, just left her there. Close to the abandoned Hab sections.”

After a shuddering breath, he steadies himself. Becomes still.

Did they Adjust you too, Hana? Are you going to get set off on me?

There is no answering that.

We lie close and quiet.

“I can't stay,” I whisper. “I shouldn't.”

“How are you going to get me to let go?”

For the first time in forever, I press a kiss to his cheek. Press dark fingertips against his pale skin. He twitches and sighs, the scowl easing from his mouth.

We kiss and it is harsh and bittersweet. There is no telling if a switch inside my head waits for Karla's psychic finger. It is not my imagination after all, his people following me with their eyes; since waking, whenever I am not around Barrens, at least one of his people with a crossbow is always behind me.

It is my turn.

I tell him about my doubts. My fears. How hurt I was when he thought protecting me meant leaving me.

“I mean, a note, Leon?” I laugh just a bit, but I'm also tearing up.

I stutter through the moments. Shaking through the halting silences, passing along fragments of moments when the words fail completely.

The strangers with the crossbows in the darkness, snuffed out. It is I, shaking, remembering the darkness, the adrenaline. The swaying scaffolding.

The solid weight of his arms pulls me close.

He is scowling, but it is not at me. Fury again.

“Damn it. Trigger-happy punks.”
I told the others their people needed more training.
“Those dipshits. Made it sound like they escaped from ISec, coverin' their fuckup.”

He slams a fist into the wall, dents it deep.

“Leon.”

They could have hurt you. They almost killed you. Don't feel guilty for them, Hana.

Barrens tries to explain something about the divisions in the movement. The other leaders are smart, he insists. But the egos. “Wish I could lock 'em in a room with me and all of us duke it out an' settle things.” His great big chest expands with a slow, deep inhalation.
But I can only lead those who want to follow, I guess. I can't just bust heads anytime there's a disagreement. Wish I could.

It is exhausting, all this unloading.

A break?

Yes.

Just as we used to when one or the other would get too steamed during an argument, we pause and breathe. And let it go.

Stories still wait between us. The things he has been doing. My weeks in the detention center, the feeling of abandonment, being under the microscope of Karla.

In the silence of this cell, there is only the sound of each other breathing. I scoot closer still, right up against him. It may never have been a perfect society to Barrens, but to me, it was
close
. Everything was fair, determined by testing and science. Instead, there is a terrible shadow, so much more than I thought we did not know.

Still there is this, between us. There is the warmth of his arms. There is the hesitant tenderness of his touch, as though I am the most fragile thing he has ever beheld.

“I don't want to sleep yet,” I admit.