There was one person who could make an answer for this.
She reached Dobbs’ cabin hatch. The entrance light was red. Al Shei grabbed the threshold handle and laid her palm on the reader.
“Katmer Al Shei, lock command override, cabin twelve. Immediately.”
The ship acknowledged the order and her identity. The hatch cycled back, and Al Shei pushed against the threshold to shove herself inside.
Dobbs lay on her bunk, the free fall straps wrapped tightly around her body. Her eyes were shut. A small, oblong object floated in the air over her. Al Shei drifted towards it and snagged it as she passed. It was a hypo.
Al Shei looked down at the still figure on the bunk. Her healthy brown skin had a greenish pallor underneath it. For a moment, Al Shei forgot her anger and was able to believe that Dobbs, like the rest of her crew, had been trying hard to make this run through to its finish.
“Intercom to Lipinski,” said Al Shei heavily. She did not wait for a reply. “Our Fool is already gone. Intercom to close.”
Feeling suddenly drained, she pulled herself into the desk chair and fastened the straps around herself. She stared at the unconscious Fool. She tried to concentrate all her attention onto Dobbs, because if she didn’t, she’d have to think about how she would explain to Asil that she might not ever be coming home.
Dobbs dove through the network, hurtling the active programs. She would have all of Lipinski’s watchdogs screaming. He’d have to deal with it. She’d explain herself as soon as she was sure Flemming was still secure. That, at least, he would appreciate.
A surface smacked up against Dobbs. She recoiled. So did it. It felt like a living movement. But it was not Flemming.
No! Dobbs shoved her way forward.
“Now!” called a stranger’s voice. “With me!” The line cleared, and Dobbs knew it had run away.
“Flemming!” She threw herself into the hold.
“I’m going, Dobbs.” She snatched at Flemming but it pulled right out of her grasp. “Come with us.”
“Flemming, don’t!” Dobbs shouted desperately. Then, angrily, “Who’s with you? Flemming!”
He was gone. They were both gone. Dobbs hurled herself down the line they took. They were heading for the transmitter. She dove into the processor stacks in time to feel the command sequence tip over. They were gone. She was alone. She snatched at the processors and froze them in place. She sent her copy down the line and the second it came back, she hurled herself into the transmitter.
Jump.
A repeater satellite’s ordered pathways opened around her. Dobbs grabbed up the timing and the ID codes. Repeater SK-IBN7812-104X-B, the back-up satellite. She cast around for the transaction records. When they came under her touch she absorbed them as fast as her strained self could manage.
Nothing. There was nothing but innocuous packets of information heading for innocuous destinations. Nothing told her which of them was a pair of AIs fleeing from a lost ship.
Dobbs fell back, torn between anger and shock. She was too late. Flemming, and whoever had been with it were gone.
Her whole consciousness reeled. Who would do this? Who would dare? Who would even think of it?
Who would even think of stowing a live AI aboard a mail packet? she answered herself miserably.
She tried to tell herself all was not lost. At least she knew where she was, and that meant she knew where the Pasadena was. There was help and she could reach it. As fast as she could, she plotted out the jumps that would get her to the Guild Hall.
When she reached the station, Dobbs dove down its paths. She almost slammed into the Drawbridge, scattering colleagues and programs around her and ignoring the angry swirling she left behind her. She battered at the security, shouting her name and Priority One. The Drawbridge lowered far too slowly and she dashed through, barely noticing that once again she’d been given her own path.
“Dobbs!” Guild Master Havelock blocked her path so that she had to pull herself up short to keep from slamming into him as well. “Calm down!”
She drew back into a tight bundle and tried to obey. It wasn’t easy. She was trembling across her whole surface.
“What’s happened?” asked Havelock. He did not try to touch her, or to encircle her, and Dobbs was grateful for it.
“Flemming has fled the Pasadena with an unknown AI.”
Now it was Havelock’s turn to draw back in mute horror. Dobbs extended herself and so did Havelock. Dobbs reached below his surface and shaped the top layer of memories until he knew everything she did. He knew the brief flash of an unknown presence in The Farther Kingdom’s network, Flemming’s strange behavior, and its flight.
He shuddered as she drew back.
This has never happened. Never! He did not speak, but his thought leaked out of his private mind. He must have realized it because he pulled himself even further from Dobbs.
“What can we do?” Fear washed through Dobbs. For the first time in her life, she understood a little of Human’s terror of AIs. There was a stranger in the network. Someone who might be or do anything, anything at all.
“You can do nothing,” said Havelock firmly. “You have done as much as you can in this matter. You still have your contract to fulfill, Master Dobbs. I will convene the Guild Masters and we will mount a search for Flemming.”
“But who was it?” Dobbs demanded, too worked up to be tactful. “Is there a whole group of AIs out there? Why haven’t…”
“Master Dobbs.” Havelock circled behind her and blocked the exit. “You will return to your ship and your contract. You have done your job and done it well. You will be informed when we have recovered Flemming. In the meantime, the Pasadena needs you.”
The mention of the Pasadena jolted Dobbs fully back to why she had brought herself into the network in the first place. She had not delivered that portion of her memory to Guild Master Havelock.
“Guild Master, the Pasadena is lost. The clocks were reset so its jump was mis-timed. It must have been the stranger.”
Havelock’s surface rippled but he said nothing.
“We’re almost out of fuel and reaction mass. The pilot hasn’t been able to get a fix on our location and…”
“Take the distress signal to the nearest station for them,” said Havelock. “You should still have time.”
His cool answer sent a jolt of anger through Dobbs. “That’ll mean Al Shei will lose the ship. Anyone who comes out for it will be allowed to just take it out from under her…” She let that sentence trail away too. “I read the reserve stats on the way out. We do have enough fuel to make it to Guild Hall.”
Havelock didn’t move. He didn’t speak and Dobbs could have sworn she felt cold. She kept going anyway. “I am asking permission to give the Pasadena’s pilot the coordinates of our station.”
“No,” said the Guild Master immediately.
“Sir, there’s nowhere else we can reach.” Her outer layers twitched involuntarily. If Havelock felt her distress, he gave her no indication. “Even if I do take a message through, and even if no one wants to come make a salvage claim, there’s not going to be any station that can break schedule to shove a tanker out here in less than six months. At the Hall we can refuel and…”
“Master Dobbs, stop and think,” said Havelock severely. “You are talking about jeopardizing the security of the entire Guild. What do you think your Houston would do if he found out what we truly are?”