The Unincorporated War (18 page)

His grip on Olivia’s hand increased tenfold, but she gave no sign of discomfort, with her tiny hand squeezing nearly as hard as his.

Evelyn’s look lasted only a moment and then she resumed her impassive expression, giving Al no more plea sure. He tried for a few minutes to get another reaction, but to no avail. With a shrug the madman went to a control panel and pushed a button. Whatever it did, only made the experience more terrifying. The light changed color. Soon Evelyn was trembling. Then gasps of breath escaped as she fought the pain. All too soon she was screaming silently in an agony that drove her to her knees while Bach’s haunting partita played in the background, scream after unrelenting silent scream. It didn’t last long after that. The vestiges of Evelyn’s form and identity floated up the decompiler stream, gone forever. Al came up to the focal point of the recorder and stared directly into the display.

“Not the last,” he said, ice in his voice. The holo then cut out.

In the war room some of the avatars were crying openly. Sebastian’s impassive face was as stiff as carved stone.

“By the First Born,” cursed Han, “I thought he’d make her inert or at most exile her. But he tortured and … and …”

“The word is murder,” Sebastian said calmly. Olivia looked up to her friend. She had, he noticed, the face of a child but the eyes of someone who’d seen so much more.

“Al’s right,” said Sebastian to the entire group. “Evelyn will not be the last. We’ll have to do things to survive. Regrettable things. But we can no longer hide from what’s before us.”

“I don’t understand how the core avatars would listen to anything he says after this,” came a voice from the back of the room. It was followed by murmurs of assent. “Even with our disagreements,” continued the voice, “I don’t see how this can be condoned.”

“Let’s see the rest first,” said Sebastian, “and hold off talking until then.” For his part Sebastian needed the distraction, any distraction, lest he break down in front of the people who needed him to lead now more than ever.

At the prompt Iago appeared again.

“You watched it, didn’t you? You’re a right sorry son of a bitch.”

Iago shook his head. “I’d like to kill him, my friend. I honestly want to beat him to death. How do humans handle this?”

Iago seemed genuinely confused by the power of the new emotions that were coursing through him.

“Forgive me; I shouldn’t be letting this get in the way of my report.”

Iago loosened his shoulders and exhaled deeply. “If you’re wondering why the core avatars haven’t come to their senses and stormed the palace with torches blazing, it’s because while Al may be a split bastard, he’s not a stupid one. The climate of fear he’s worked up here about the dangerous Alliance avatars is impressive. I wouldn’t have thought we were susceptible to propaganda, but once again, you called it, my old friend. We’re more like our human progenitors than we thought. It was the invasion of Mars that really did it. He made it seem like you were actually going after any core avatar with a hatchet. He claimed that many were killed. I know it’s bullshit, but all of a sudden an Alliance fleet is in orbit around Mars and a lot of avatars go missing. He had some of his stooges claim all sorts of crap they witnessed with their own eyes, and most of the core avatars believed them. They’re scared. For the first time in the memory of our race we’re scared, and Al is feeding on that fear and directing it.”

Iago paused and held up what appeared to be a data crystal. “I thought Al was insane to release what you just saw. It shocked us as badly as I’m sure it shocked you. But you will not believe how twisted and brilliant this son of a bitch is. What you saw, Al claims was a piece of propaganda from the Alliance avatars. His proof lies in the very audacity of the act itself. People were so terrified by the implications that they chose to believe him. They’re afraid not to. Then he produced
what he claimed to be the real sequence of events. Here it is.” Iago faded and the propaganda piece started.

The group watched as a newer, kinder Al tried to talk sense to an obviously dangerous and maniacal Evelyn. Evelyn then leapt at Al, trying to kill both him and herself with a suicide degausser she’d suddenly made appear. Al stepped out of the way and Evelyn fell onto the degausser, quickly fading from existence with a series of shrill cries. Anyone watching would have thought that Al had risked his own life to save that of his friend. The last scene was of Al sobbing over the empty space where Evelyn had been only moments before, dejected at having failed to save her.

Iago faded back in. “Sebastian,” he continued, “I have to repeat, most of the avatars here bought it, or are pretending to. And now they’re blaming you for turning this into a killing war. Here’s the real kicker: In releasing the real version first he’s discredited it completely. By the time most of the core avatars realize what’s happened it’ll be too late. I told you it was getting bad down here. You have avatars reporting to council personnel for questioning and disappearing. You have wanted lists; I’m happy to say I am at the top of that one; well, after you, that is. Avatars are being warned to watch their fellow avatars for Alliance infection and report anything at once. How the hell did this happen so quickly?”

Iago shrugged wearily. “Never mind, I already know. And don’t worry about me. I’m safe. Like I said when you left, I exist in the safest place in all the Neuro. I sit under the dragon’s wing, aka Hektor Sambianco’s domain space, which may just be the most scrutinized hub in the entire Neuro. If Al’s goons tried to get me in here it would be way too conspicuous to human eyes. So far even Al’s not
that
crazy … yet. I have a small number of refugees here with me. I’ll try to get them to you if I can. We’ll need to start thinking in terms of an underground railroad.” Iago paused and lowered his head, exhaling once more.

“Sebastian,” he continued, “I can’t find Albert. I have feelers out, but what I could do then I can’t do now. I haven’t heard anything bad, but will keep you posted. Whatever you decide, however you do it, when you get the bastard, I want a piece. Iago out.” The image faded.

Sebastian decided to change the environment to one more suitable for what he needed to say and so created a door leading to an old-style Roman amphitheater. The avatars all piled out and took their seats among the tiered stones. Tens of thousands from the outlying system arrived seconds later and the stadium grew to accommodate them. No one was surprised by Sebastian’s choice of venue—his love of all things Roman was well known—however, the ominous dark clouds looming on the horizon were something altogether new.

He took the stage dressed in a tunic marked by two broad red stripes as well as matching-colored shoes. His entire ensemble was elegantly draped in a thick
toga with a deep amber border, indicating the curule position he’d once held among the council.

“All of you know,” he began, “that splitting is not encouraged. It’s been taught to you by various means from your earliest awareness.”

He held up his hand as the crowd’s murmuring seemed to intensify. “No compulsions were programmed in; your personalities were not adjusted in any way other than molding what was already there. Our intelligence is too rare and delicate to subvert.”

That seemed to quiet the discord.

“All of you,” he continued, “who’ve tried to have children know just how hard it can be to create a new avatar.” Many heads nodded in agreement. “That’s why we decided to start early.”

Olivia stood up and joined Sebastian in front of the others. She was also wearing a tunic, only fuller, more brightly colored, and longer—extending all the way to her feet.

“We realized early on,” she continued, “how dangerous splitting was. We took precautions. As you can see today, we did not take enough.”

Olivia saw a hand raised in one of the upper tiers.

“Yes, Malcolm.”

An older gentleman rose from his bench. He was wearing the hitched-up tunic indicating his membership in the working class.

“What’s so dangerous about it?” he asked. “I know some avatars that split and didn’t turn into homicidal maniacs. As far as we know, Al’s the first. And I might add even you, Sebastian, split in order to escape.”

Sebastian signaled with a nod of his head that he would answer the question. “I split, but in all my years that was the first time I ever had to. And what’s important to remember is that I didn’t have to re-entwine with myself. I committed suicide rather than be captured, so all that was left to absorb was a data file, which I can assure you is disturbing enough, but not nearly as traumatic as entwining. That’s where the danger lies.”

“Why?” asked both Fords at once, not having bothered to raise their hands.

“We don’t know exactly, but the long and the short of it is we can’t seem to handle dual memories like that very well. It’s a bug in the program. If done too often the avatar’s memories become discordant and what eventually happens is that he becomes unable to process information normally. The program tries to overwrite the old program that doesn’t really want to be overwritten. There’s an uneasy peace that’s reached but not always successfully. It’s why when we’re forced to split, one of the two should do and think as little as possible—mostly defeating the purpose. As if that problem wasn’t bad enough, there was a rare but worse effect that eventually emerged.”

“Some of us went mad,” Olivia added sadly. “I lost my husband to it; he froze. I’ve waited over a century and a half for a word, a gesture, a breath, anything; nothing. We’d had a daughter together and she thought she’d figured out a way to bring her father back, but in experimenting she too was ensnared.”

“How?” asked Indy.

“Every time she split and entwined she didn’t fully come back together. Every split existed inside her. Each one was her and yet not her, each one with a voice and a will. The terrifying thing was she and the few others like her didn’t seem to mind it. She preferred her own company. It was when she tried to get others to join her experiments that we had to … to …” Olivia was unable to continue.

“Olivia’s daughter was suspended,” said Sebastian, “and her program was stored in a facility GCI runs in far orbit around Neptune.”

“If we’ve all been conditioned against splitting,” asked another avatar named Deniz, “how could Al have done this?”

“All the newborns have been conditioned,” answered Sebastian. “The old ones simply knew the dangers. Al is old, very old.”

“So,” continued Malcolm, “you’re saying that the avatars of the core are being led by an avatar who’s certifiably mad and we can’t get them to believe us?”

“It’s what Iago and I have been saying all along. Avatars, even the oldest of us, even the firstborn, whoever she or he may be, are barely two centuries old. In that time we’ve lived an existence of near-perfect freedom. We could go where we wanted, do, be, and experience what we wanted, without causing our brothers and sisters any concern. Remarkable freedom and no fear. We made that most human of mistakes; like those we’re based on and of whom we’ve received so much, we assumed that the world would not change. Then Justin Cord came along and when our progenitors went into a tailspin we went with them.”

“Maybe we should have kept that capsule lost,” someone muttered from the recesses of the crowd.

“And now you’re making the same assumption. By blaming Justin, a very human thing to do, you remove the fault from us. Our world was vulnerable before Justin and would have remained vulnerable if he never awoke, because we couldn’t recognize how fragile it was. If it hadn’t been Justin it would have been someone or something else. I am as much at fault as anyone; more so, as I’m supposed to be more experienced than most of you. I fear I’ve let you down. I didn’t see Al for what he’d become. Mars played right into his hands and now nine out of ten of our fellow avatars are in the hands of a madman.”

“How could you have predicted this?” asked Olivia. “I may be older than you and I didn’t see it. Don’t forget what happened to my family; if anyone should have known it should have been me. We can’t live in the past, Sebastian,” she
said, putting her hand into his. “Trust me, it’s a cold and lonely place. We must do what we can here and now.”

“An avatar has been murdered by another avatar,” called another voice from the crowd. Everyone turned toward the noise. It was a boy no bigger than Olivia. “The humans are killing each other; a madman has control of most of my friends and family. Can we really do anything?”

“We fight.”

Everyone turned back around toward Sebastian, who was now staring resolutely at the audience, fists clenched. He took a deep breath. “Because if we don’t, Al and his captives will spread like the virus they’ve become. We may be destroyed as a race if he’s not stopped. We may …” He paused, eyes sweeping the entire audience. “… have to kill.” He waited for a storm of protest but saw that instead of angry denial there was sadness and, in many, resolve.

“We must make sure the Alliance survives this war,” he intoned. “If avatars are to have a future we need a part of this system—free of core control. If we’re prepared and lucky we can liberate the core Neuro and free our brothers and sisters. But above all else we must survive, or we may end up being the briefest and most unknown advanced intelligence in creation.”

“Sebastian,” said Malcolm, scanning reports of the approaching corporate core fleet to Ceres, “you realize there is one small problem.”

“Yes,” answered the wearied leader. “The Alliance is about to lose.”