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CHAPTER XII

CHILDHOOD

Silence.

I expected her to scoff, tell me I was crazy. Either that, or else to grill me or tear apart my statement. “Lavinda?” I asked.

“Can you come to my office? I’m at Fort Jarac on the High Falls River.”

“Yes, I can come. I’m pretty far from there, though, and I’m on foot. I just passed Metro Circle. Metropoli Circle, I mean.” After having lived here for so many years, I tended to use local nicknames for the more famous streets. I glanced along the pathway that bordered the boulevard. No other pedestrians were out. Hovercars whisked by, some using wheels, others higher above the road, riding on their turbines and air cushion. Higher up yet, flyers hummed through the sky. No public transport vehicle showed anywhere. “I’ll have to call a flyer. It could take a wh—”

“I’ve already dispatched one to pick you up,” she said. “I’m reading your position from your comm link to the orbital defense positioning system.” Wryly she added, “Assuming you haven’t scrambled that data the way you do on Raylicon.”

I winced. They would never stop getting after me for going off-grid when I worked for them. “Your ODS data should be accurate.”

“Good.” She sounded all business. “I will see you in a few minutes.”


Lavinda’s office was on an upper floor of the Tremont Tower in Fort Jarac. She had a wall of windows similar to her office in the City of Cries, and today I found her standing in front of them, silhouetted against the sky. She wore her work uniform, light green and sharp, with gold braid on her shoulders and cuffs. A panoramic view of the High Falls River spread out below, the great falls thundering over a cliff, sending up spumes of mist that created rainbows across the water.

I stopped in the doorway. “My greetings, Colonel.”

She turned, watching me from the other side of the large room, then motioned toward several armchairs against the wall on my left. “Have a seat.”

As I settled into a chair, it shifted under me, its smart cushions seeking to ease my tension. Lavinda sat across the small table from me and wasted no words. “A baby. Really? A baby EI?”

I met her skeptical gaze. “Yes, I think so. A huge EI, yah, but young. It’s playing.”

Her look turned incredulous. “By killing people and blowing up buildings?

“No! I don’t think it has anything to do with the murders or the bombing. It didn’t bother with me until you contacted me to set up a meeting. My guess is that it realized you wanted to talk about the new EI you found. That’s when it interfered. Or tried to.”

She considered me with that close look, trying to sense my mood. I kept my thoughts shuttered. I admired Lavinda, who never spoke down to me even when she thought my ideas sounded crazy, but I didn’t want anyone spying on my moods.

She spoke carefully. “Are you saying you think this child EI took over the station we found and was playing in the ancient tech until we realized what it was doing? And then it hid from us?”

“Yes, that sums it up.” I leaned forward. “I’ll bet you anything it has just begun to evolve, the EI equivalent of a human child playing.”

“A new EI wouldn’t act like a human child.” She paused, her body tense. “Are you suggesting it formed on its own, without human contact? Developers always put a new EI through a period of development where it learns human protocols that prepare it for whatever host it joins.”

“That’s what they did with Max,” I said. “It felt like it took forever.”

“Actually,” Max said, “they only had me in basic development for about ten days. Given the rate at which we learn, that’s all it took for me to reach the EI equivalent of adulthood.”

“What do you think, Max?” I asked. “Could whatever is bedeviling us be a baby EI that has no experience interacting with humans?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “So many EIs exist, evolving, creating their own code, reforming into new EIs. It isn’t impossible. But any code we create comes from code designed by humans. We’re never without human influence.” Then he added, “If it is a child, where are its parents?”

“Good question.” Lavinda’s face took on the inward expression she got during a neural link with Raja, her EI. After a moment, she focused on me again. “That cycle that followed you in the forest—you believe it is somehow involved with this child EI?”

I thought of my interaction with the cyclist. “The way it happened—clever but not quite working right—it fits with the other interactions from what I’m calling a child EI. I don’t think the cycle housed the EI, though. A human controlled it.” I hesitated. “Or a being with human DNA.”

Lavinda stiffened. “You think a rogue EI engineered the cyclist from human DNA?”

Careful, Max warned. Genetic engineering at that level is illegal unless the engineer went through an extensive application, screening, and waiting period. If you suggest someone broke the law to that extent, it could backfire, especially if you want to set up good relations with this EI you refer to as a baby.

Good point. To Lavinda, I said, “I don’t want to imply anything. I have no idea how that cyclist came into being. It could be someone who lost their legs and had them replaced with wheeled prosthetics or someone who chose to modify their body that way.”

She met my gaze. “Or it might be a toy created by an EI that had no exposure to our moral code or even the idea that making half-human toys to play with is wrong.”

An image came to me, a universe where EIs ran free, creating and multiplying, playing with bizarre creations from our DNA, uncaring of what it meant to humanity—or at least what remained of the human race. “I really couldn’t say. Maybe the cyclist is working with the EI. Hell, I don’t know, maybe the cyclist created the EI.”

The rigid set of her shoulders eased. “That would be odd, but less terrifying.”

“We need to avoid unjustified or premature assumptions.”

“We will look into this idea of yours. Chief Hadar is following up on your other leads.” She fixed me with a firm gaze. “And find out what the hell is going on at that tavern.”


Angel and Ruzik sat sprawled on the plush couches that made a corner in the living room of the townhouse. They had their booted feet up on the glass table in front of it. A streak of dirt showed on the glass under Angel’s boot, and a little bot no larger than my palm was cleaning the table under Ruzik’s boots. They both looked satisfied as they drank large glasses of filtered water, to them the height of wealth.

I stalked into the room. “Feet off table!”

“Eh?” Angel lifted her boots off the table and planted her feet on the ground as she sat up straight. Ruzik also rearranged himself into better posture.

“Not fight. I say, not fight,” I growled. “I go for one second. One second! And you fight.”

“Good fight.” Angel sounded amiable and relaxed. Very relaxed. They were both drunk.

Ruzik laughed, a rare sound for the taciturn giant. “Yah. We smash. They go down.”

I felt like throttling them. “Stay low! You ken? Not make big fight!” I took a breath and spoke more calmly in Flag. “You’re lucky none of them pressed charges. Angel, you threw the first punch. You two could have landed in a shitload of trouble if anyone had called the cops.”

Angel scowled at me. “Not ken talky words.”

I crossed my arms. “You understand me fine.”

“They dizzed Ruzik.” She nodded to her boyfriend, or common-law husband, or whatever word applied. To me, she added, “I defend Ruzik honor.”

“For flaming sakes,” I said. “Ruzik can defend his own honor just fine.” I regarded her with exasperation. “What am I going to do with you two?”

“Say ‘thank you, smart Dust Knights,’” Ruzik informed me.

“Oh really?” I scowled at him. “For what?”

He held up the blue beetle. “Not fried.”

Angel smirked. “We make tumble. Noise. Wham. Crash. No one see little bug.”

I stared at them. “You made a diversion so they wouldn’t fry my drone?”

“Di-ver-sion.” She laughed at the three syllables. “We diversion those slicks good.”

Lowering my arms, I went and sat on the longer couch. “That was smart.”

Angel frowned at me. “Not look like this a surprise, Bhaaj, that we were smart.”

“Yah. I know,” I said. “But smart here in new place, new ways.”

Ruzik spoke in Flag. “Blue came into the bar while we had drinks. Those slicks, they were bothering me already. Trying to piss off Angel. She didn’t react. She knows my honor is fine. Then we saw the beetle. We made a diversion so no one noticed it.” He grinned. “Good diversion, eh?”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Indeed.” I motioned at the blue beetle. “Send over, yah?”

Ruzik held up his hand with his palm facing the ceiling. The drone gleamed there for a moment, then buzzed over and hovered in front of me.

I’ve made contact with the beetle, Max thought. It’s fine. No damage.

Excellent. I held out my hand, palm up, and the beetle landed there. Does it have any info about the tavern that we don’t already know?

It identified the other patrons. That’s how I know they were Trads. Do you mind if I talk out loud? Ruzik and Angel might have comments.

Go ahead. To my two tipsy Knights, I said, “Did you see anything strange about the tavern?”

Ruzik grunted. “Yah. Above ground.”

“Well, yah,” I said. “Did you notice anything that didn’t fit?”

“Even for slicks?” Angel asked. “Nothing ‘fit.’ They act strange. They—” She sent Ruzik a questioning look. “Not right.”

“Yah.” Ruzik thought for a moment. “Fake slicks.”

“Fake how?” I asked.

“I think I know what he means,” Max said.

“Eh, Max,” Angel said, an extensive greeting with its two words.

“My greetings,” Max said. “The other people in the bar were too normal.”

Angel snorted. “Nahya. Not normal at all. Not sit on rug. Sit on bench. Do talky, talky, talky. Have water, but not drink. Not at all. They fucked in head? Water worth more than anything.”

“Normal for slicks,” I said.

“Fake,” Ruzik said.

“What fake?” I didn’t see his point. “What they do, most slicks do in bar.”

“Not what they do,” Angel said. “How.”

“That’s it!” Max said. “It’s like they were acting.”

“Yah.” Ruzik nodded. “Pretend slicks. Pretend rough. Not true rough. Not fight worth shit.”

I squinted at them. “So the Trads sent actors to some random bar outside the city to pretend they are patrons. You show up, they pretend to proposition Ruzik—”

“That part not fake,” Angel said. “They think Ruzik hot as fire iron.”

“You think they really were trying to pick up Ruzik?” I glanced at him. “Did it feel fake?”

He shrugged. “Not know. Not care.”

“Ruzik not show off,” Angel confided. “Not say, ‘Yah, Ruzik hot.’”

“Ruzik, you don’t need to be modest,” I told him. “It makes a difference if they were acting.” Switching to our dialect, I added, “Real or fake?”

“Real,” he said. “Want to fight. Want to beat up Angel. Think I not fight. Assholes.”

It made sense that Trads would underestimate him. They’d paid an apt price for it. “I wonder if they have some connection to this young EI.”

“Eh?” Angel said.

“What EI?” Ruzik asked. “You mean talky thing, like Max?”

“Yah.” I continued in Flag, needing its more flexible vocabulary. “I think a huge EI lives under the tavern. It’s like a child playing, but without parents.” No, that didn’t fit. “It must have parents. It came from somewhere. But no one takes care of it. It’s not sure what it’s doing, it’s just growing, evolving, seeking protection.”

Angel gave me a dour look. “At ale place? Slicks not protect baby talky. Can’t even protect selves.”

Good point. “Why Trads send fake slicks to bar?” I mused.

“Maybe because they knew you went there two nights ago,” Max said. “They seem intent on spying on you.”

“Do you still have the record of the people we saw there when I went inside?” I asked.

“Yes, including the bartender. None of them have a link to the Traditionalist Party.”

Interesting. “It could be a coincidence that the ones Ruzik and Angel met were Trads.”

“It could,” Max agreed. “However, based on what’s happened in the past few days, I’d say an eighty percent chance exists that they went there because you did two nights ago.”

“What is Trad?” Angel asked.

“Trads want the world to go back to how we lived centuries ago.” I turned to Ruzik. “That’s why they underestimated you.”

“Slicks dumb that way,” Angel said.

Ruzik shrugged. “Their problem.”

I turned the idea around in my mind. “The Traditionalists have a lot to gain by vilifying the Royalist party. They’ve no great love for the Technologists, either, who are all about the future, and they’d be glad to cast suspicion on the Progressives, who they hate.”

“Too much talky.” Angel switched to Flag, choosing her words with care. “What you say, a lot of it I don’t ken. All these people with too many syllables in their names, they fight a lot, it sounds like. You think these Trads are killing people who do tech?”

“Yah, that sums it up,” I said.

“Trads kill a lot?” Ruzik asked.

“Well—no, not that I’ve heard of,” I said. “They don’t normally resort to violence.” I paused. “They do have an extreme fringe. It’s small, and publicly disowned by the main party.”

“Publicly?” Angel asked. “What mean?”

“What they say to rest of world.” I usually got annoyed with political speeches within a few moments and turned them off. I’d had to listen to far too many in my research for this case, another reason I didn’t like the job. “They don’t condone the actions of that fringe, but I don’t think they do a lot to discourage them, either.”

“Would this fringe kill people and blow up buildings?” Ruzik asked.

“I’ve never heard of them going that far.” It didn’t fit with the picture I was developing. “However, they aren’t openly public about denouncing violence, either, like the Progressives.”

“Re-gress-ives,” Angel grumbled. “Maybe if all these people talked less, they would be happier more often.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Yah.”

She and Ruzik have a greater grasp of Flag than I realized, Max thought.

They learn fast. It was one reason they supported the largest circle in the Undercity, with many children, cyber-riders, parents, and others under their protection. “Your circle—Jak say another dust gang helps protect them while you two come here. Is good?”

“Yah.” Ruzik nodded. “Oey gang helps. Pat and Biker.”

Ah. Good. Pat and Biker formed a strong pair, young and vibrant, also handfasted. After Ruzik’s gang, they were the strongest leaders among both the gangers and the Dust Knights, committed to their circle. “Good pick.”

“Biker!” Ruzik said.

“Yah.” I blinked at him. “Why you shout?” He had known Pat and Biker for years, most of their lives. He had nothing to be surprised about.

“A biker here chase you.” He switched into Flag. “The cyclist you told us about. Maybe they are like Biker Tim back home. He rides a cycle in the Undercity. The cyber-rider in his circle—she makes cycle work better, helps link him to it, whatever he needs. But she didn’t make Biker. And Biker didn’t make her. They work together.” He spoke thoughtfully. “This cyclist who followed you—maybe the baby talky, the EI, helps the cyclist like the cyber-rider back home helps Biker.”

“Yah, that could work,” I said. Biker was one of the few dust gangers who liked to ride a cycle despite the ubiquitous dust in the Undercity. “The cyclist here helps the EI, like delivering messages to me, but that doesn’t mean they created the EI.” I thought of my conversation with Lavinda. “I’m hoping that also means the EI didn’t create the cyclist. How would they get hooked up, though? The baby EI, if it exists, is hiding.” Dryly I added, “With good reason, given how humans would try to control it if we could.”

“Baby talky need hoshma talky,” Angel said. “Or hoshpa. Maybe Max.”

“What?” Max said.

I smiled. “She thinks the baby EI needs a parent. She suggested you for the father.”

“I did not create any incipient EI.”

Ruzik scowled. “Not make fun of baby talky, Max.”

“Incipient is a Flag word,” Max said. “That’s why it has four syllables. I wasn’t mocking the baby EI. I’m not sure it even exists.”

“It’s actually not a bad idea, Max,” I said. “We’ve approached this EI as if it were hostile. Maybe if you approached it like a wise, kindly parent, it would respond better.”

“I am not a wise, kindly parent,” Max said. “I’m an EI. I can only act like an EI.”

“It EI, too,” Ruzik pointed out. “You act like friendly EI.”

“EIs don’t act friendly to each other,” Max told him. “It is a human trait. We simulate friendly behavior because it makes you all more comfortable.”

“Point taken,” I said. “But Max, you must have an equivalent of a friendly approach among EIs. You interact in different ways with different EIs. You don’t treat them all the same.”

“That is because my purpose in interacting with them is not all the same.”

“All right. Make this your purpose for interacting with this baby EI. Convince it that you want to help. Mentor it. Aid its development into a mature EI.”

Silence.

“Max?” I asked.

“I’m analyzing the concept of being a father EI,” Max said. “It is a peculiar idea. However, I think I might achieve what you ask in a manner that could inspire the EI to respond.”

Angel squinted at me. “Too talky.”

“Says he do hoshpa for baby talky,” Ruzik said.

“Ah.” Angel nodded. “Good, Max.”

“Perhaps,” Max answered. “We still don’t know for certain this is an EI, baby or otherwise.”

I stood up. “We need to find out what’s under that tavern.”

“I may be able to help,” Max said. “I found the red beetle.”

Ho! I sat back down. “Where? At Greyjan’s?”

“Not at the tavern. It is on its way here. I am analyzing its records.” He paused. “The reason I couldn’t find it was because the drone turned itself off. It went to Greyjan’s, hid behind the tavern, set its timer for a wake-up prompt, and deactivated itself.”

I blinked. “What for?”

“One moment.” After a moment, he said, “It didn’t actually deactivate. It went dormant. Its visual and audio recording functions continued to work. The drone wasn’t actively spying, but it did record everything that happened during the twelve hours of its dormancy.”

I sat up straighter. “So! What happened?”

“Nothing, apparently.”

“Oh.” I slouched again. “Nothing changed behind the tavern in that twelve-hour period?”

“One moment.”

I waited, then said, “Max?”

Silence.

“Max, are you there?”

Silence.

“Highcloud, can you receive me?”

“Good evening, Major Bhaajan,” Highcloud said. “Yes, I can hear you.”

“Can you contact Max, my gauntlet EI?”

“I will try.” After a moment, they said, “Max is dormant. Shall I kick him awake?”

If I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn a hint of glee crept into Highcloud’s voice at the prospect of kicking Max. Of course that couldn’t be. Highcloud had fewer “personality quirks” than Max had developed over the years, and this wasn’t even the Highcloud that had evolved at the co-op. Then again, I wouldn’t have expected either version to use the slang “kick awake.”

“If you can take him out of the dormant state,” I said, “that would be good.”

“One moment.”

“That was odd,” Max said.

“Welcome back,” I answered. “What happened? Highcloud said you went dormant.”

“Yes, apparently.” He paused. “Brilliant. The red beetle ran a program that makes it look like a mirror to any EI that tries to reach it. That’s one of the spy programs you coded into the beetle, in fact. Surprisingly, you even gave the code a logical name. You called it Mirror.”

“What, you think most of my names aren’t logical?”

“I see no logic in naming a house EI ‘Highcloud.’ We aren’t in the sky.”

“It’s named for one of my favorite singers.”

“And this is more logical?”

“Max!”

“Max mad at you,” Angel said.

I blinked at her. “What for?”

“Let cloud in sky kick him.”

“Max, seriously, this problem you and Highcloud have with each other has to end.”

“We are EIs,” he said. “We don’t have ‘problems’ with each other. That is an aspect of human interaction. Do you want to know what happened with the red beetle?”

I needed to think more about him and Highcloud. “Yes. I’d like to know.”

“When I accessed its memory of its dormant state, I went dormant.”

I frowned. “I never programmed the beetle to cause that effect. The mirror code is supposed to trick a spy into seeing itself when it looks at my drone, so the spy moves on because it doesn’t register the drone. It only works because the drone is simple and small, so it’s easy to overlook. It absolutely does not change the state of the spying EI.” I considered the idea. “It shouldn’t be possible to change the state of another EI using my code, especially not a primitive drone trying to affect a top-line EI like you. Hell, I couldn’t program you to change another EI that way. You’d have to highjack its brain. The only EIs I know capable of doing that, and only in a limited sense, are military intelligences weaponized to attack enemy EIs.”

“It does seem unlikely the red beetle could manage this.” Max sounded different now, more serious. “Bhaaj, the mirror code isn’t the one you wrote. Something modified it.”

The room suddenly seemed very quiet. “Who? The EI at the tavern?”

“I don’t know. Whoever or whatever did it hid the trail of their work.”

“That’s impossible. Any change someone makes to an EI leaves a footprint.”

“Yes. Whoever did this deleted the footprint, erased the record of that deletion, erased the record of the erasure, and so on. It’s enough layers that I can’t identify the original trespasser.”

“It sounds military. The Traders?” Uneasily, I added, “Or our own?” I’d known ISC covert agents who, after they retired, hired out as corporate security whizzes. Maybe some corporation wanted to upset the economic markets. Those had gone crazy lately. If someone knew the bombing would happen and had any financial savvy, they could have cleaned up by selling stocks with a high worth just before the explosion, then buying them cheaply after their value plunged. Markets recovered eventually. They had only to hold onto the portfolio to see their fortune rise.

An even less welcome thought came to me. The army had a strong link with the Pharaoh. Hell, we called it the Pharaoh’s Army. I had no doubt Vaj Majda wanted the Pharaoh on the throne in reality as well as name. Could agents within our own military be working with the Royalists, sewing fake clues to divert attention, even taking credit for the violence in a way almost guaranteed to look false, all building to a coup?

“Maybe they have military training,” Max was saying. “Or maybe the EI hidden at the tavern rewrote Red’s code.”

I didn’t like those implications, either. “If it can suddenly do something that sophisticated—and effective—then it’s developing fast, and in ways that scare the blazes out of me.”

“I doubt anyone inexperienced wrote this code,” Max said. “It’s too professional.” Another silence. Then: “Bhaaj, I don’t think the child EI is at Greyjan’s. Something is there, and I believe what you call the baby EI knows about it, but the child and this other EI aren’t the same.”

I stood up. “Wait!”

Ruzik and Angel stood up as well. “What?” Ruzik asked.

“The baby EI isn’t playing with us,” I told them. “It’s trying to warn us.”


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