He doesn’t notice as Dybathia stands and slips toward the door. “I’m going to sleep,” the boy says. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Amu nods and blinks his eyes. But they are filled with water and sting as if from smoke.
Theowane enters the control center alone. She moves with precise steps, as if stalking. She wants to know what is going on. She will catch the Warden. She will get the information together, and then she will take it to Amu.
The holographic Warden looks at her from his glass-walled cage. His expression remains dubious, fearful, with a layer of contempt. Theowane says nothing as she casually walks over to the panorama window. She gazes across the blasted ground. Though the diggers continue to reform the landscape, she never sees any actual improvement.
Theowane stares for a few moments longer, then turns to meet the Warden’s eyes. “You pride yourself so much in having human emotions and human reactions, Warden, but you’re naive. You don’t know how to hide things from other people. I can read your reactions as clearly as if they were spelled out on a screen.”
The Warden blinks at her. “I do not understand.”
“I caught you yesterday.”
He extends his hands forward until the image fuzzes near the edge of the forcewalls. “What do you mean?”
“The boy,” Theowane says. “You recognized him. It was painfully obvious. You know who he is. You know why he’s here —and it isn’t because of that crazy story he told us. Explain it to me now.”
The Warden hesitates a moment, then hardens his face into a stoic mask. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Theowane raises her eyebrows. She reaches out and caresses the control panel. “I can turn the worm loose and delete you.” That doesn’t seem to frighten the Warden; she has used the same threat too many times before.
“Then you will lose whatever information you imagine I have.”
“Perhaps I can find some way to make you feel pain,” she says.
The Warden shrugs. “I am not afraid anymore.”
In all her taunting, Theowane has taught the Warden as much about herself as she has learned from him. He knows exactly how to infuriate her.
“I’ll inform Amu,” she says, trying to regain her composure. “That will stifle whatever plans you are hatching.”
Theowane straightens away from the window and sees the Warden turn his head, flicking his glance to look outside. Sensing something, hearing a muffled sound too close, she whirls around—
The giant automatic digger rears up and plunges through the glass. With its great scooping and digging gears churning, it claws out the poured-stone and insulation, ripping girders and breaching the wall.
Theowane stumbles back, sucking in a breath to scream as the deadly, acid-drenched air of Bastille rushes inside.
“You’re quiet today,” Amu says as he leads the boy down into one of the lower levels. Smells of oil, dirt, and stale air fill the tunnels.
“Introspective,” Dybathia corrects. He thinks that word will better disarm Amu. He has not thought his silence and uneasiness would be so noticeable, but then he remembers that Amu is a master at studying other people.
“Ah, introspective is it?” Amu’s lips curl in amusement.
“I have been through a lot in the last few days.”
Amu accepts this and continues leading him down to where the corridors widen into larger chambers hewn from the rock. Amu spends hours showing him distillation ponds that remove the alkaloid poisons from the seawater. Like a proud father, Amu demonstrates the rows of plants growing under garish artificial sunlight, piped in and intensified through optical-fiber arrays stretching through the rock to surface collectors.
Other prisoners work at their tasks and seem to move more quickly when Amu watches them. Dybathia wonders how they can consider this to be so different from working under another kind of master.
Amu continues to talk about his grand vision, how they have made their colony self-sufficient. It has been difficult at first without supply ships from the Federation, but they have overcome those obstacles and now have everything they did before—except their prison.
Then Amu speaks in a dreamier voice, explaining about the terraforming activities, how he has switched the diggers to mining materials useful for their own survival, rather than supplying ubermindist offplanet. The floater harvesters are spreading algae and Earth plankton that have been tailored to Bastille’s environment. They are resculpting the atmosphere of the planet, making it a place where humans will one day be able to walk outside and in peace. Amu’s long-term goals and his naive sense of wonder disgust Dybathia, but he keeps his feelings hidden. The boy will know when the time has come.
Amu says something he thinks is funny. Dybathia isn’t paying attention, but automatically snorts in response. Amu nods, approvingly.
When alarm klaxons belch out and echo in the tunnel, the noise startles Dybathia, even though he has been expecting it.
My life-preservation overrides force me to close the airlock on the other end of the corridor to keep Bastille air from penetrating farther into the complex. I do not resist the impulse. I know it will trap Theowane inside.
She sprawls on the floor, trying to crawl forward. The floor is smooth and slippery, and she cannot get enough purchase to move herself. Her eyes are wide with horror. Her lips turn brown, then purplish as she gasps, and the sulfuric acid eats out her lungs. I force myself to watch, for all the times she has watched me.
The digging machine, sensing that it has been led astray, stops clawing and churning, then uses its scanners to reorient itself. The big vehicle clanks and drops clods of dirt and shattered rock as it backs outside.
Theowane croaks words. “Open—open door!”
“Sorry, Theowane. That would endanger the colony.”
Before, I was afraid of the worm, which forbade me to do anything against Theowane and the other prisoners. But the worm, though deadly, is not intuitive and is unable to extrapolate the consequences of my actions. I will take the risk, for my son. I can do much damage, while doing nothing overt.
I have used an old sensor-loop taken from the archives of the digging machines’ daily logs. Broadcasting this sensor-loop along with an override signal to one nearby digger, I made the machine think it saw a different landscape, where the route of choice led it directly through the viewing window.
The chamber has filled with Bastille’s air, and I begin to see static discharges as the corrosive atmosphere eats into the microchips, the layers that form the computer’s brain, my Simulated Personality—and the worm.
But the auxiliary computer core lies deep and unreachable below the lower levels. Bastille’s acid atmosphere will destroy the main system here, where the worm has been added, but within a fraction of a second my own backup in the auxiliary computer will kick in. I should lose consciousness for only an instant before I am recreated.
My only wonder is whether the other Me will be me after all, or only a Simulated Personality that thinks it is.
Theowane lies dead but twitching on the floor, sprawled out in front of me. Blotches cover her skin. It is difficult for me to see anything now, with the images growing distorted and fuzzy, breaking up. I feel no pain, only a sense of displacement.
In the last moment, even the forcewalls seem to be gone. I have conquered the worm.
Dybathia watches Amu closely as the alarms sound. The leader stiffens and looks around. The other prisoners run to stations. Amu claps his hands and bellows orders at them. His face looks concerned: he doesn’t understand what is happening.