The A.I. War, Book One: The Big Boost (Tales of the Continuing Time) (15 page)

Melissa didn’t look at him; but a smile twitched across her lips. “As the Security Chief, I would say that you are suffering from paranoia.”

“And as Melissa du Bois?”

The smile grew. She had ordered a mug of hot chocolate with whipped cream; it sat on the counter, next to her handheld, with a transparent cover over it, and a straw stuck through it. “You’re flattering yourself.” Now she did glance at him, looking up from her drink. “A lot.”

“Uh huh.” Trent gestured to Guido. “I’ll try one of those.”
Anything but black breakfast tea,
he thought.

“I’m really not looking for company, Gene.”

“Uh huh.” Trent sat down on the stool next to her.

Ken glided by them, wearing his p-suit, chess set in one hand and helmet in the other. “I’m an old man,” he said loudly. “And this young punk kept me playing chess after a twelve-hour work day! He’s a slavemaster! And a chess fiend!”

Trent said, “Good night, Ken.”

Melissa said, “Good night, Sub-Chief Wilson.”

Trent said, “He asked me for a game.”

Melissa studied him. “You don’t listen very well.”

Trent grinned at her. “Okay. What would you like to tell me?”

She turned away from him. “That you don’t listen very well.”

“You said that once already.”

“And I had to repeat myself,” she observed. “Because you don’t –”

“Yeah, well.”

“I’m not looking for company,” she said for the second time.

Guido appeared in front of Trent, holding a mug of hot chocolate. He hadn’t taken his sensable traceset off, nor removed the goggles; apparently he’d made the drink by touch – he found the countertop by touch, clicked the magnetic base of the mug to the metal surface, and wandered away.

“There are two million people at Halfway,” Trent said. “Did you know that?”

“I knew that,” Melissa said.

“And you just ran into me, did you?”

“It’s a long story,” she said.

“I’m not in a hurry.”

Melissa sipped at her drink. “I am the Chief of Security at Halfway.”

“I knew that,” Trent observed.

“So I live in the house that the last Chief of Security lived in. And the one before that, who was a man named Neil Corona, who came here, to Highland Grounds, with some frequency. Do you know why he came here so often?”

Trent shook his head.

“His house – my house – is two minute’s boost from here.” She smiled at Trent. “You’re staying at the Halfway Hilton. All the civilians on your team are. That’s almost twenty minute’s boost from here. And you happen to be here by chance?” Her English took on both a mocking tone, and a little of the French accent she had had when Trent first met her. “You expect me to believe that you didn’t come here looking for me?”

“I didn’t,” said Trent, “though I would have if I’d known.” He paused. “This is destiny, then. Us running into each other.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Destiny?”

“Destiny. Kismet, karma, fate. We were meant to meet one another tonight.”

“I do not think so.”

Trent couldn’t think of anything to say, so he said what he was thinking. “I love your face.”

Her expression and her voice chilled a good ten degrees. “Excuse me?”

“God gives you the face you’re born with; but you earn the face you die with. So they say.” He wanted to touch her, to run his fingertips over those gorgeous cheeks. He wanted to kiss her. “You have a great face. It has character.”

“You have Adam Selstrom’s face,” she said gently.

“I loved my wife,” said Trent.

Even more gently she said, “You were a damn fool, Gene.”

“There’s that.”

She nodded and turned back to her drink. “You seem like a nice enough fellow. Maybe some day, many years from now when things are different, we can continue this conversation. Right now, though –” She looked at him again. “I couldn’t sleep. So I came here to drink hot chocolate, audit my reports, and compose one. To the Elite Commander, telling him that ‘everything is under control, and he is not to worry.’ Right now you are preventing me from doing that.”

“Everything is under control,” Trent said. “Everything is cool. In fact,” he said, “we are cool. Cool, young, hip, and in control.”

Trent could hear the quote marks around the word. “‘Hip’? I don’t think I know that slang.”

“It’s like cool,” said Trent, “but it requires more work.”

“More work.”

“Well, that’s not accurate actually,” said Trent thoughtfully. “Being cool requires no work. Mostly it requires detachment. You can be cool and not care about being cool. Being hip requires style and effort. You can’t be hip without working at it.”

She was smiling again. “So we are ‘cool, young, hip, and in control.’”

Trent thought about it. “Well, I can only speak for myself. And I’m not really young any more. And I’m not sure I’ve ever been hip. And my life is pretty thoroughly out of control.”

“But you are cool?”

Trent grinned at her, pleased with himself; she was enjoying herself, enjoying the conversation. “Don’t be silly. For God’s sake, I’m a
programmer
.”

She laughed. “So you are not cool, young, hip, or in control.”

“No, not really,” Trent admitted. “But it’s a cool thing to say to people. You get interesting conversations.”

“Yes,” said Melissa, obviously amused. “Interesting conversations.”

Trent paused, then offered, “I used to have a collection of sunglasses. They were cool.”

“How long ago?” she said instantly.

Trent didn’t even have to think about it; he’d lost them when he left Earth. “When I was eighteen.”

“So you could say that it has been a while?”

Eugene Yovia was thirty-six; Trent said, “Well, eighteen years.”

Melissa shook her head. “That’s a very long time, Gene. By statute of limitations, I am not sure it counts any more.” She took a sip of her hot chocolate, and sat looking at it for a moment. “I think I need to go home now,” she said finally. “My hot chocolate isn’t.”

It popped out. “Want company?”

She was an Elite, and incapable of blushing – but the tips of her ears turned bright red. She didn’t look at him. “My God. You aren’t shy, are you?”

“Is that a no?”

“It strikes me as – indiscreet. At best.” She burst out, “Do you always proposition women like this?”

“All the time,” Trent admitted.

She stared at him. “What do they say?”

“ ‘Yes.’ ”

“Really?”

“Well, sometimes. Sometimes they just blush. Like you’re doing. Other times they take the opportunity to insult you.” Trent shrugged. “You never know unless you ask.”

“My God. Well, I am not going to say yes. I think,” she said, “I’m going to go home now.” She picked her handheld up, touched it to the payment strip at the edge of the counter, and came to her feet.

Trent nodded. “That’s cool.”

“Cool.” Melissa stood looking at him, and then smiled, unwillingly. “That word.”

Trent found himself smiling back at her. It was as though the muscles in his cheeks had taken on a life of their own. “Maybe we’ll run into each other again.”

Melissa seemed to have the same problem. She smiled back at him, clearly fighting it. “Don’t hold your breath, Gene.”

AFTER SHE LEFT, the counterman, Guido, said, “Not in this life, Chief.”

“You have an amazingly annoying voice,” said Trent, and paid and headed home.

16

THE FOLLOWING MORNING was Saturday, March the 23rd.

Trent awoke to the sound of Ken’s voice outside his door.

“Wake up! Wake up you cringing salt-sensitive slug! We have work to do!”

There was a pause.

Trent lay in the low-gee darkness. Without opening his eyes, Trent checked his inskin.

4:58 A.M.

“Jesus and Harry,” Trent said aloud. “That old man has got to go.”

“WE CAN HAVE breakfast at the Relay Station,” Ken said. “Dress warm.”

Trent made a noise that could have been interpreted as
good
, or as
I wish you’d shut up
.

The trip from the hotel to the Relay Station was uneventful. The Halfway InfoNet Relay Station is off toward Halfway’s Earthside Edge; Ken’s sled made its slow, careful way through Halfway’s marked spaceways. That early in the morning, there was relatively little traffic except for automated sleds moving freight through the city.

Trent didn’t even look at the city around him. Halfway hangs in geosynchronous orbit, along the same longitude as Navajo Spaceport, but its clock is set to Greenwich Mean Time. At 5:15 A.M. Halfway local, the planet beneath them hung in darkness. Cities limned the edges of North and South America, outlined the shores like a diamond necklace.

Maybe it was his weariness – even his genie body needed more rest than it had been getting – but the sight aroused a homesickness in Trent that he had not expected.

Earth was so close he felt he might reach out and touch one of the glowing cities.

Ken said, “Trent the Uncatchable had his hands on this station for three days, you know.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard. From you, most recently.”

“I expect he did something with the gear,” Ken said.

“Probably.”

“You think? They’ve been all over this place ever since. Never found anything.”

Trent knew that Ken could not see the faint smile inside his helmet. He shrugged enough for Ken to see it. “It’s what I’d have done, if I were him.”

THE INFONET RELAY Station at Halfway was a two hundred meter long collection of microwave dishes and laser farms, clustered around a long pressurized cylinder.

The lock was wide enough for four or five people; Ken and Trent went through it together and unsuited once they were in pressure. A skinny young woman with a jet black buzz cut waited for them. She was barefoot, wearing blue jeans and a blue pullover sweater, and an unbuttoned long white cloth coat. Her toenails were painted with a rainbow, beginning with red at the left little toe and crossing the spectrum to violet on her right little toe. Her fingernails matched her toenails, except that the progression of colors went the other direction.

Every few seconds, an apparently random fingernail or toenail would glow briefly, and then fade.

Several years previously, when her hair had been longer and blonde, and she herself had been ten centimeters shorter, Trent had heard the former Chief of Security at Halfway, Neil Corona, describe her as a young Audrey Hepburn. At the time Trent hadn’t known who that was, but he’d looked it up, and it was close enough then – now, dark-haired, taller and thinner and even more delicate, the resemblance was striking.

Ken introduced them. “Jackie, this is Bad Jack, so you have that in common already, the name thing.”

“Eugene Yovia,” Trent said.

“Gene, this is Jackie Egiarasa,” Ken said of the genie whose real name was Michelle Altaloma.

Trent didn’t think his expression changed.

“How you doing?” Michelle asked.

“Getting by,” said Trent, “Getting by. Yourself?”

“‘I can’t complain, but sometimes I still do.’” She kicked off down the corridor and they followed.

“I hear you’ve been having a few problems.”

She glanced back over her shoulder. “This shit gear! It’s a decade old, that scumbag Trent did things to it that I can’t figure out, that even
Kenny
can’t figure out, they should break this fucking place up into pieces small enough to evaporate and send it back to Earth in flames, that’s what I say.”

“We’ll fix it,” said Ken confidently, “now we got Gene here. That face! Whatever’s wrong with this station will see that face and submit to the natural dominance of Bad Jack!” They came to a cross-corridor and Ken drifted to a stop. “Kitchen’s here, I’ll make some eggs and toast. Jackie, you take him on down to the freezer and get him started.”

Michelle stopped with a touch of one hand to a handhold, rotated herself until she was just upside down relative to Ken, and gave Ken her complete attention. “I’ll go freeze my buns off with Gene here,” she said slowly, “but only because it’s
you
asking, Ken.”

“You could learn to point that stuff at someone with a working pecker,” Ken observed, “you wouldn’t have to go home alone every night. You two go on.”

Michelle kicked off and glided away down the corridor. Ken gestured to Trent and Trent came a bit closer. “Pecker works fine,” Ken said in a stage whisper, “but you can’t give that kind any encouragement.”

Michelle called back to them, “I only have eyes for you, Kenny baby. C’mon, Gene, get a move on.”

THE FREEZER EXTENDED twenty meters long, two deep, and three high, with workstations lined neatly up every meter and a half. The monitoring holo status gadgets were mostly green, Trent saw at a glance, which was good; aside from himself and Michelle the room was empty.

Above the workstations, a long window ran the length of the freezer and looked out over the main array of dishes and the collection of lasers and light collectors. Beyond that were the glowing dots of Earth’s cities, and the occasional fireflies of a moving sled or ship. One dot, toward the Earthside Edge, was large enough that Trent could recognize it from here; it was the remains of Francis Xavier Chandler’s old house, if house was the right word for a structure with over 800 rooms – mothballed since the Reb attack upon it during the TriCentennial Rebellion.

Even with his coat on it was colder than he’d been expecting. Below freezing; minus 5 degrees Celsius, at a guess. That was a bad sign, or a good one maybe: it meant the gear was running hot and they were compensating.

Michelle pulled herself into one of the seats and hooked a toe under a hold to steady herself.

Trent did the same at the workstation beside hers and turned to look at her.

Michelle Altaloma was one of the few genies Trent had ever met, beside the Castanaveras telepaths with whom he’d grown up. She was Truebreed, the product of a Johnny Reb project that had run up until the TriCentennial. In many ways she was better designed than he was: they had learned something about putting people together, in the ten years between his birth and Michelle Altaloma’s. Trent knew that her vision was better than his, and suspected that all her senses outstripped his. He was reasonably sure that the protein-based portion of her intellect outperformed his as well.

“You know,” said Trent, “for someone who might be smarter than me, you are pretty fucking stupid.”

She blinked. “Why?”

“Egiarasa?”
Egia arraza
, in Basque, meant “true breed.”

She grinned at him. “It’s an Italian name, I tell them. Besides, the PKF are stupid.”

“By which you mean that Basque isn’t installed by default in Elite autotranslation software. But the first deep analysis pointed your way is going to pick it out as fast as I did.”

She shrugged. “I’ll be out of here by then. You want to talk business?”

“When I fled Earth,” Trent said, “I bought a ticket using Mohammed Vance’s name.”

“Right, and Mohammed Vance knew immediately it wasn’t him buying that ticket, and he chased you and chased you and chased you and you wish you’d never done it, so I should take this as a lesson. You want to talk about business instead of olden times?”

“A normal human wouldn’t be barefoot in here.”

She frowned. “Yeah, I know. But by the time I realized how unusual it was, people had started commenting on it. I’m sort of stuck with it now, it’s a bit of the character.”

“Why is it so cold?”

“Some really clever attempts at attention are putting a strain on the gear.” Michelle looked pleased. “Pretty sure it’s Ring. I think we’ve attracted its scrutiny.”

Trent laughed. “Jocko Singer is petty, predictable, and completely ruined with spite. There aren’t many more useful people in the System.”

“I helped.”

“And a good job. I could kiss you.”

“I’d enjoy kissing you,” she agreed, “except for that face.” She raised her voice. “I can’t be kissing Bad Jack. Sorry, dude.”

Trent had heard Ken’s approach as well. Ken stuck his head into the cold room, said, “Kiss him anyway, introducing you two was part of my
clever plan
bringing him out here this morning, he can always get that face taken off. The eggs and toast are ready. Should I save some for you, Gene?”

Trent turned to face his workstation. “Cook some more,” he said absently. “I might be a bit. Don’t wait for me.”

He was aware of Michelle going off with Ken, aware of the quiet settling in around him. He could hear the hum of the cooling system: aside from that and the sounds he made himself, the freezer and all the equipment within it was silent.

An unaccustomed excitement was stirring in Trent. He felt the muscles in his stomach tensing.

“Hello,” he said.

A polite, gender-neutral voice said, “Hello, M. Yovia.”

Trent felt himself smiling, muscles in his cheeks moving.

He spoke without the English accent. “Man the is this. Pays Crime. Clothes mother’s his wears General Secretary the.” He waited five seconds, said
with
the English accent, “I wear a Stetson now” – and waited two more seconds and said softly, “Wake up.”

There was a pause so short it might have been only in Trent’s imagination.

The InfoNet Relay station said, “Hello, Boss.”