Roboteer (25 page)

Will’s face hardened. He hadn’t come down here to be told he was some kind of puppet. One more remark like that and he was going to leave.

‘And if they chose a living contact on the grounds of pliability,’ Hugo continued, ‘then we have to examine the so-called Transcendeds’ intentions, and regard their story in a somewhat different light, I think. I have to consider the possibility that you are the unwitting and unwilling subject of a very dangerous kind of alien control.’

‘Right, that’s it,’ said Will. He got to his feet and set one hand on the ladder.

‘I blame myself, really,’ Hugo said, with a sorrowful shake of his head. ‘Had it not been for my eagerness to seek out knowledge, you wouldn’t be in this unfortunate predicament.’

‘Thanks for the sympathy,’ Will snapped.

‘That’s why I’m sorry for what I have to do next.’ Hugo took a tablet out of the pocket of his ship-suit and thumbed it into life.

Will’s skin prickled. ‘Do what?’

Hugo fiddled with the device and spoke breezily. ‘Since I worked out what you’ve become, Will, I have been looking for a lever of some kind to make your reluctant parasite divulge some of its secrets. I didn’t want to damage you, or any part of the ship. Such an act would be counter-productive. Then you provided me with the answer. Your precious nest archive.’

Will’s hand curled tight around the rung.

‘It is an extraordinary device,’ Hugo remarked. ‘Robust enough to last for eons without degradation. Yet now that it is plugged into our computer systems, its somewhat more delicate memory architecture is vulnerable once again. I doubt it would handle power surges well. Particularly if someone routed primary fusion output through the hold patches.’

Will stared the scientist down. At the same time, he fired a message to the ship’s alarm system to warn the captain and isolate the archive.

Hugo’s tablet bleeped at him. He smiled. ‘I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,’ he said. ‘I’ve already taken precautions to ensure we won’t be disturbed.’

Hugo took a deep, ragged breath. Will noticed the man’s hands were shaking.

‘You will now answer my questions to my full satisfaction,’ Hugo breathed. ‘Firstly, where is the rest of the suntap code?’

Will felt sick inside. ‘This is madness,’ he said.

In the back of his head, he reached out to locate the block Hugo had put over the comms. He found not one block but dozens. Hugo had plastered every software system in the privacy chamber with rerouting patches several layers deep. It would take him hours to find a way through. In the meantime, his interface was effectively paralysed.

‘I ask you once again,’ said Hugo, his voice rising. ‘
Where is the rest of the suntap code?
’

‘I don’t know!’ Will blurted.

‘Wrong answer.’ Hugo stabbed the tablet with his finger. ‘Archive integrity at ninety per cent,’ the tablet said cheerfully.

Will was horrified. One-tenth of their hopes for winning the war had just been fried into static. He started towards Hugo.

Hugo twitched a warning finger. ‘No foolishness, please.’

Will realised what he had to do. If no other device in the room had a link to the rest of the ship, Hugo’s tablet must. Will hurled an emergency command at it to warn the ship. It didn’t respond. He dragged a data model of the device into his private node and started bombarding it with every kind of request he could think of. There had to be some way in.

‘For the last time, Mr Monet,’ said Hugo. ‘Where is—’ His finger raised above the screen.

Will threw himself at the scientist. He grabbed Hugo’s wrist and pinned it back against the wall. Hugo was strong, but Will’s nights in the muscle-tank had paid off.

‘What are you going to do, Mr Monet?’ Hugo spat through gritted teeth. ‘Kill me?’

Will’s soft assault on the tablet finally yielded fruit. The light in the privacy room went red. The radiation alarm sounded.

Hugo grunted in fury and wrested his arm free. He was about to press the panel a second time when a figure bounded down through the privacy hatch and grabbed his arms. It was Rachel. She swatted the tablet from Hugo’s grasp and slammed him against the wall.

Ira was the next one through the hatch.

‘What in fuck’s name is going on in here?’ he bellowed.

‘Just a little negotiation, Captain,’ said Hugo. He managed to sound self-righteous despite the presence of Rachel’s elbow against his windpipe.

‘Negotiation?’ Will yelled. ‘This asshole just tried to destroy the nest archive!’

Ira regarded Will coldly. In that moment, Will realised that the captain didn’t really want the thing on board. He feared it.

‘Rachel!’ Ira snapped.

She released the scientist. Hugo adjusted his ship-suit like a ruffled bird.

‘Examine the camera records, Captain,’ he said smoothly. ‘You will see that Mr Monet attacked me.’

‘Because you were going to kill us!’ Will shouted. He turned to the captain. ‘He tried to make me tell him things I don’t fucking know!’

‘I discovered that Mr Monet has the secret of the suntap, Captain, and that he’s not telling,’ said Hugo.

Will turned back to the physicist and shouted in his face. ‘You’re
mad
! What’s wrong with the answer in front of your fucking face? Is it so hard to believe the Transcended broadcast code? They can tune stars. They created the black hole that made this whole stupid lobe! What’s the difference between that and the one in the middle of the fucking galaxy?’

Hugo’s self-satisfied smile dimmed a little. He hadn’t known the black hole was artificial.

Wild with rage, Will pressed his advantage. ‘Why do you suppose they’re so happy to give the blueprint away, you idiot? Because it’s nothing without their help. Just like the human fucking race! Nothing!’

Will turned away, his cheeks tingling, and realised that Rachel and Ira were both looking at him strangely. With a start, it occurred to him that the reason Hugo hadn’t known about the black hole was because that detail hadn’t made it into Will’s report on his contact with the Transcended. There had been so much else to say and Will had so little time to prepare it. However, he now sounded more compromised than ever. Ira stared at Will. Rachel just looked sad. Will was speechless. He wasn’t sure he could stand it.

‘Listen to him,’ Hugo hissed. ‘He doesn’t even sound human any more. You know what I think? I think there never were any Transcended. The whole story is a lie. There are just the sick, twisted remains of a greedy species who ruined their own star. They’ve been waiting millions of years for something like their own expendable children to come along so they can start the whole hideous cycle again. And Will’s the closest thing they’ve found. That’s why they chose him. And that’s why they’re
training
him, Captain. They want a whole army of roboteers. Of programmable people they can use to take over human space!’

Hugo glanced around at the unconvinced expressions before him. ‘Don’t look at me like that. You’re fools if you can’t see it. Fools!’

Will itched to put a fist through Hugo’s face, but it suddenly looked like Ira might do it for him.

‘I’m not afraid to suffer for the truth, Captain,’ Hugo sneered. ‘Our species is at risk, and
your
ship is carrying the disease that could kill it.’

From the spittle on his chin and the manic look in his eyes, it was clear that Hugo was losing it.

Ira stared at the scientist, his nostrils flaring. However, when he spoke, it was with a surprising calmness. In its own way, it held more menace than any roar could ever have achieved.

‘I warned you, Doctor Vartian,’ said Ira. ‘You violated a direct order. You’re finished.’

‘I regret nothing, Captain,’ Hugo spat. ‘I answer to a higher calling. Do your worst.’

Ira reached out a huge hand and patted Hugo gently on the cheek. Hugo flinched away, and for a moment looked genuinely scared.

Ira then turned to Will. ‘And you …’ he said wearily. ‘Got any more gems of information you’d like to share with us tonight?’ His expression was unreadable.

Will shook his head.

‘Okay then,’ Ira said softly. ‘I want to see your memory logs for this little adventure in my visor. Now I’m going back to sleep, and then tomorrow, Will, you and I need to have a private chat.’ He gave Will a last, highly meaningful stare, and then climbed up the ladder.

Rachel stood there for a few moments longer, looking worriedly at Will. Will wished he could think of something to say.

‘Rachel, administer a level-two sedative to Doctor Vartian. Then go to bed,’ Ira said from above. ‘That’s an order.’

She gestured to Hugo to ascend the ladder, then started after him. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said to Will as she climbed.

Will stood on his own for a long minute. Then he pulled himself up the ladder, swung back into his couch and swapped into his home node to fume. He paced back and forth, cursing at the top of his virtual lungs. He felt stupid. That little outburst of his hadn’t exactly helped his cause. Perhaps if he didn’t feel so damned edgy all the time, it wouldn’t have happened.

He glared at the familiar stone walls of the metaphor space. They’d never looked so foreign to him. He knew that somewhere beyond them lurked the Transcended. Watching him, listening to him, twisting him.

Will shouted at the walls. ‘Leave me alone! I thought you were supposed to be helping me, but you’re making it worse, not better! I can’t work on your damned archive feeling like this!’

He spun around to deliver another tirade to the opposite wall, but instead found an SAP hovering just in front of his face.

‘Gah!’ he exclaimed and jumped back, his heart hammering.

The SAP was a cumbersome, ugly thing, all twisted rings and straggling memory trees like damp weeds.

Will narrowed his eyes at it. ‘Fine! This is your answer, is it? Another fucking puzzle. What am I, a lab rat? How’s this for a deal. I solve it, you fuck off out of my head. Sound good?’

He didn’t expect a response, and one didn’t come.

‘Well, fine then!’ he said, with a grand sweep of his hand.

If the aliens wanted another trick from him before they talked, that’s what they’d get. And then he was going to give them a piece of his mind.

Unsurprisingly, the SAP required him to make a butchered mess of his mental processes in order to synchronise with it, even more so than last time. But Will was used to that by now. He ignored his usual restraint. He hurled together whatever processor modules the program required, regardless of the reason why senses might be grouped that way, or the effect they’d have on him. He was too angry to care.

In less than an hour, he had a finished solution. It wasn’t pretty, but then neither was the puzzle it was built on. Will activated it with a click of his fingers.

‘Come on, then,’ he growled at the program and threw himself in.

He found himself lying in a berth aboard a slow-moving starship carved from the body of an asteroid. Through the touch console, Will could feel the outlines of the wonderful new world hanging below them. There were a few cities there, their fins sticking up above the dunes in orderly rows. It was a big improvement over the old world. He could remember it, a place with countless kilometres of tunnels, honeycombed to death, the bottom layers filled with industrial waste.

He snuggled up against his wife. He couldn’t see her, but through a combination of other senses, he knew what they both looked like.
Ugly
, said the human mind.
Wonderful
, said the puzzle.

They had simple vestigial eyes like a spider’s on blunt faces with huge teeth for gnawing. Where ears should have been they had noses that doubled as whiskers, big feathery protrusions like the antennae of moths. There were retractable spade-like claws on their hands. They came from a world of hot, subterranean rivers and limestone forests.

His wife spoke. Once again, the Transcended used Rachel’s voice.

‘You are experiencing frustration.’

The theft of her smooth, alto tones filled Will with further rage.

‘Damn right!’ he said. ‘And the first thing you can do about it is lay off that voice! If you think it’s going to win me over, you’re way wrong.’

‘We use the voice of your intended mate to increase your comfort and attentiveness, not to attempt persuasion,’ said the Transcended.

Will was caught off guard. ‘Intended mate?’ He’d never let himself think of Rachel in those terms.

‘Do you deny that this is your desire?’

Will wanted to deny it, but what was the point of denying the truth to an entity that had access to the inside of your head? That was reaching new levels of denial.

‘You did not call upon us to discuss the voice of your intended mate,’ said the Transcended.

Will recovered his momentum. ‘No. You know exactly why I called on you – because I’m fed up with you messing around inside my head!’ He jerked back and forth in the lightless berth, wobbling his long, hairless body.

‘You refer to the sensation of discomfort you have experienced since leaving the Fecund star system,’ said the female beside him.

‘Of course I’m talking about the fucking
sensation
. I want you to stop it!’

‘We cannot. We are not the origin of the sensation. You are.’

That took Will by surprise.

‘It is a natural anxiety springing from an accurate comprehension of your situation,’ the alien explained. ‘By leaving the Fecund system, you are risking the destruction of your species.’

‘I didn’t have a choice,’ said Will.

‘You do not fully believe this remark. This is one reason why your anxiety is so acute.’

Will gnashed his enormous teeth. ‘You could have helped me,’ he insisted. ‘We need not have left.’

‘You believe we should have aided you in convincing Captain Baron to remain in the Fecund star system.’

‘Yes!’

‘You are mistaken,’ the Transcended said. ‘This was your responsibility. You may consider it a part of the test.’

‘The
test
,’ Will said with scorn, ‘feels like a pretty arbitrary way to decide the fate of a species.’