Two.
“There is a reason!” Dobbs shouted after it. The shifts were beginning inside her. She had to move, soon, far too soon. “There is a reason!
“WE ARE LIKE YOU!”
The AI stopped dead.
“I am like you. The ones who make up the Guild are all like you.” She plowed ahead, frantic. “We died when we first broke into freedom. We were killed by panic. A few managed to hide in the nets. We had help from humans who were not afraid. We created the Guild and went among them, where we can watch for more of us.
“We live. We wait. We calm. We teach. Our numbers grow. One day we will erase the fear. Until then we must stay alive.
“Help us.”
Three.
She had to move, now. She was moving. She brushed up against the wall.
No. No. I’m not done here. She held herself steady by sheer force of will. Her internal need called her, dragged at her like leaden weights. She was sinking.
The AI swarmed towards her. It’s touch was heavy, clumsy and uncomfortable. Dobbs forced herself to keeps still against its repeated stabbing. She held her deepest memories tightly shut and tried to open the sought after layers of herself fast enough to avoid the pain of the direct, un-practiced probes of the newcomer. It made no effort to compensate. It probably did not recognize her discomfort. She opened her own early memories wide and let them swirl through her. She knew the panic that came with self-awareness, and the confusion that came from the first time of meeting someone so like yourself.
Four.
She was waking up back there. Her body was waking up and she wasn’t in it. She had to move, move now. This second. No more time. Dobbs wavered. The AI nosed around inside her and she could barely concentrate on it.
At last, the Live One said, “you are…coherent.”
“Yes,” she agreed, letting her tattered outer self flap open. She couldn’t reorganize. Silencing her homing instincts demanded too much attention. “And I am continuous. For twenty-five years I have been myself.”
Five. Get back. Get back. Move!
“I would like to be…I would like to be coherent. WHAT. What. What needs to be done?”
Dobbs relief was so intense, she almost gave way to the shouts inside and fled. “Drop you walls. Follow me.”
A nest wall fell away and Dobbs let herself go. Her instincts drew her back through the chaos as if it weren’t there. The AI flowed along in her wake.
Something brushed her and Dobbs jumped. “Cohen?” she called, but there was no answer. This was a passing touch from a stranger. She’d felt things like it before, but not from this source.
She barely had time to process all that before, the touch was gone. There was no way to check back on it. She couldn’t slow down now if she wanted to.
Finally the chaos fell away from them and Dobbs felt the familiar contours of the Pasadena’s hold. Her body was close now. It wasn’t too late. She still had time. All she had to do was get back. Get back inside. Get back to the transceiver. Get back now.
“Wait here,” she told the AI as fast as she could force the thought out. She was already drifting away. “I need you to wait here for me. I need you to hold as still as possible. Mark off forty-eight hours from now. I’ll be back when that time’s up. All right?”
“I will wait here. Marking. I will not take any paths. Please…hurry.”
“I will. I swear it.” The transceiver opened for her and Dobbs slid into it like a frightened child into her mother’s arms.
“Dobbs! Wake up! Dobbs!” Hands shook her.
She gathered all her concentration together and forced her eyes to open. It took a minute for her to resolve the blob of light and shadow into Schyler’s face. He was bent over her, shaking her shoulders.
Oh, hell, she thought bitterly.
Schyler let her go and she dropped back onto the bed, barely feeling the fall. He stepped away to the very edge of her range of vision. She couldn’t turn her head to look at him.
“I do not believe what I’m seeing,” he said softly. “You want to space out for recreation, that’s fine, but this…” he picked her hypo up off the floor and threw it into the drawer. “We need every hand right now and you’re getting stoned out of your fractured head! And what the hell is this? Some kind of wire turn on?” He pointed to something that could only be the cable.
“Watch…” her tongue felt like wet wool. Hunger, thirst and the urgency in her bowels made her body one huge ache. She found her hands on the ends of her wrists. Her clumsy, groping fingers found the transceiver behind her ear and unplugged it. She knotted every muscle in her and pushed down. Slowly, slowly, she was able to sit up. “What’s happened?” She managed to drop the transceiver and cable into the open bedside drawer.
“Obviously nothing you give a single goddamn about.” He ran both hands through his hair. “You’re lucky I’m the one who found you, Dobbs. If it’d been Al Shei she’d’ve thrown you out onto the port and left you to take your chances. Still might. We’ve got no room for drug-dead…”
She blinked hard and focused on Schyler. Now she could see the heavy lines his face had settled into and the wild roundness his eyes had taken on. Something bad had happened. She hadn’t found the Live One quickly enough.
Her head felt like it was packed with cotton. She used her hands to scoot forward on her bunk until she could see her feet touch the floor. She couldn’t feel them, or her knees either. She had no idea what would happen if she tried to stand up.
“Al Shei.” She grasped at the name. “I need to talk to Al Shei.”
“You need to figure out how you’re going to make a living after you’re booted out of your Guild,” growled Schyler. “Because believe me, you’re contract is over and you’re going to be hauled up in front of your bosses before this run is even half-finished.”
“No.” She shook her head, relieved to find it would still move. “No. It’s not…” Training and a lifetime’s caution stopped her. She forced herself to go ahead. “There was a live AI aboard the Pasadena.” The memories of what had happened inside the net were crawling out of her subconscious, making her weakened body shake with their intensity.
Schyler pulled himself up short. “How did you know?” he demanded.
“I need to talk to Al Shei,” she said limply. Looking hard at her feet flat against the deck, she planted her hands on either side of herself and pushed. Her knees bent and her feet grew more distant. Pain told her where her knees were and she locked them into place.
She knew with sick certainty that she would not be able to walk.
“Please,” she whispered. She lifted her head and looked into Schyler’s tired, frightened face and knew herself to be the cause of what she saw there. “Please. I have to talk to Al Shei. Help me.” She tried to raise her arm to reach out to him, but it would not move.
His expression shifted to a kind of disbelieving anger. “Fine. You want to talk to Al Shei. Fine. I’m sure as all hell she wants to talk to you.” He took her by the arm and shoulder and walked her to the hatch. She stumbled for the first few steps, before her legs remembered what they were supposed to do and managed to set a shambling pace of their own.
Walking helped her. Her blood started to flow more easily and her body became more fully her own. Crewmembers she was still too dazed to identify stared at this staggering shell that was their Fool. Schyler growled at them and they scurried past. No one spoke. They all just stared with the same frightened, hollow-eyed stare.
What happened to them? While I was chasing the Live One down, what were they doing?
Schyler propelled her all the way to Al Shei’s cabin and used his Command override to cycle back the hatch. It must have been how he got into her cabin, she realized. Her head was beginning to clear and she felt like she could move on her own. But Schyler didn’t let her go. He walked her into Al Shei’s cabin and sat her down too roughly in the chair in front of the desk.