“Intercom to Al Shei,” he said as soon as the hatch shut. “I’ve found the Fool. You need to get up here.”
Silence. Then, “I don’t have time for this, Watch.”
“This you have time for.”
“All right, Watch. I’m on my way.”
Schyler paced the room, fists jammed in his pockets, but in no way inclined to talk. Dobbs was glad. She needed every spare second to collect herself. She needed to think. But thinking was as hard as walking had been and Al Shei was going to be here any second and Dobbs had to tell her…Dobbs had to tell her…
She had to tell her there was a rogue AI in her ship’s hold and that it had to stay there for the time being.
That stark realization helped her brain shake off the last of the juice.
Al Shei swept through the hatch. Her dark eyes looked at Dobbs and then looked at Schyler.
“You found her,” Al Shei said flatly.
“I found her,” said Schyler, “drugged and unconscious in her cabin.”
Fire burned hard behind Al Shei’s wide eyes. “You found her where?” the question was for Schyler, but the fire was for Dobbs.
Dobbs straightened her back as much as she could. “He found me drugged and unconscious in my cabin.” Her voice had cleared somewhat, but she still felt like she was talking with a throat full of sand. “I need to explain why.”
Al Shei’s shock at her gall was evident. “No you don’t,” she said. “Schyler, she’s broken contract. Throw her off of here.” Al Shei turned on her heel.
“She knows about the AI,” said Schyler.
“I was looking for the AI,” Dobbs corrected him.
Al Shei froze for a bare second before whipping around again. “You were what?”
“There was a live AI loose on board the Pasadena,” she said, working hard on making each word distinct and unmistakably. “It, or at least the seed code for it, was planted here deliberately in the data packet from Amory Dane, or in whatever it was Tully smuggled aboard. It got out when the transfer was made down to New Medina hospital.” She took a deep breath and met Al Shei’s eyes. The engineer was distinctly unimpressed. So, you figured all that out for yourselves. Fine. With Lipinski around I should have realized you would. “And I was in the network looking for it.”
Al Shei moved closer to Dobbs, peering into her eyes as if trying to find some traces of a drug trip in there.
“That is impossible,” Al Shei said crisply. “They’ve tried direct neural hook-ups. The human brain can’t process the data. It burns out trying to make associations that aren’t there.”
“I know.” Dobbs hand strayed to her Guild necklace. She forced it down again. “But the Fool’s Guild found a way around it.” She paused and picked her words carefully. “The stuff in the hypo Watch found is a cross between a general anesthetic and a synthetic variant of lysergic acid diethylamide.” Al Shei’s gaze strayed over to Schyler. Much of his anger has shifted into bewilderment. Dobbs supposed that was a little better. “It can get you extremely high and kill you extremely quickly if you don’t know what you’re doing. On the other hand, if you do know what you’re doing, it can get you around the sensory input problem and let your brain process network data.” She did not go into the hypno-training and micro-surgery that were also required. She did not say that even with that, you had to be born in the network in order to make sense out of it.
“In effect, you can, with training, travel down any continuous network pathway without requiring a virtual reality interface.”
Al Shei straightened up one inch at a time. “And why would the Fool’s Guild want to do this?”
Dobbs swallowed and made her mouth move. It was hard. She’d never said even this much out loud before. “Looking for AIs that might go live is part of our job,” she said. “It’s one of the reasons the Guild was founded. We’re the reason why so few of them go live at all, and why none of them have ever gotten away.”
She knew they were staring at her, in anger or disbelief or shock. She could feel the emotions beating against her skull, but she couldn’t make herself look them in the eye.
“Why didn’t you tell us when you came on board?” demanded Schyler.
A ghost of a smile formed involuntarily on Dobbs’ lips. “Because, under normal circumstances we don’t tell anybody. Do you think any of the assorted boards, or councils or senates want people to know how easy it is for those things to go crashing through the nets? You can believe the Banks don’t want it out…” she stopped realizing she’d made a tactical error.
“You mean my family knows about …what you do?” grated Al Shei.
“Some of them for sure,” said Dobbs. “Probably not many. Nobody wants the actual potential for destruction known, believe me. The media doesn’t know the half of it.” She swallowed again. Her mouth was dry and her throat itched for a drink, but she couldn’t afford to worry about that now. Al Shei and Schyler were only just starting to believe her. “Usually we spot the restless ones before they get this far. This one…” She ran her hand through her hair and made herself look exhausted. It took less acting skill than she liked to think about. “This one we had no way to keep an eye on.”
“But…” Schyler extracted one hand from his pocket and waved towards Dobbs. “Fools?”
Dobbs shrugged. “Totally harmless makes good cover.” For a multitude of sins. “And like I said, nobody wants it known how often, or how easily, this can happen.”
Al Shei had both arms folded. Her brows were knitted below the line of her veil. Her eyes were still stormy and Dobbs knew she must be frowning deeply.
“I have this feeling,” Al Shei said quietly, “that there is more you want to tell me.”
Dobbs hooked her index finger around her Guild necklace. She tried to think of a good way to say what she had to, but nothing came. “I am the only Fool at the Farther Kingdom. Since the AI was in the planetary network, I had to go after it.”
Al Shei’s frown deepened. “What are you getting at?”
Dobbs swallowed hard to try to open her throat all the way. “I had to have a safe, uncorrupted storage space to bring the AI back to. It’s in the Pasadena’s data hold.”
There was a moment of stunned stillness. Then, a look of sheer horror appeared on Schyler’s face. Al Shei spread her arms wide and stared for a moment at the ceiling as if hoping for an answer from Allah. When none came, she lowered her gaze to the Fool. Dobbs looked her straight in her burning eyes and wanted to crawl backwards on the bed.
“Are you out of your mind!” Al Shei roared. “Do you know what that thing can do to my ship!”
Better than you do, thought Dobbs with tired exasperation, but she didn’t say that. “Al Shei, in the outside nets, the AI acted like any living thing that finds itself in a strange environment. It panicked. I went after it and calmed it down. Now, my job is to keep it that way. It’ll hold still, for it’s own safety. A Guild ship will meet us at The Vicarage and transfer it to their own hold and take it back to Guild Hall. The Fool’s Guild will pay for the storage space,” she added, feeling her voice fall flat as she did. She was going to have to tell Guild Master Havelock Al Shei knew what their “packet” consisted of. He was not going to be pleased.
Al Shei bowed her head into her hand. “Our Lord, fill us full of patience and make our feet firm,” she murmured. “You think you could pay me to put my people in this kind of danger?” She raised her head. “What kind of insanity is this? You say you went after that thing? Why didn’t you go kill it!”