The orbital’s temperature is gelid; she expects she is the only human up here. Samsara can populate this place with its own proxies, maintenance clusters under its direct command. She wonders if this was how it came to realize that it does not require humans, for affection or much else. That it is a being unto itself, as singular and exceptional as the sun. The old fear, from before the dawn of artificial sapience. What use could an AI have for humans, after all. She paces the circular room, the unblemished floor, the featureless wall. No furniture.
Her datasphere remains active, not that there is much she can do with it. She has no access to Anatta’s channels, has no access to the orbital’s channels; she is alone in her head, with only the data that she’s received from the previous Thorn.
“Anatta was called something else, before.” Samsara’s avatar has appeared without sound. “Even the moon was given many different names, the gods of the bow and the gods of the chariot, the woodsman and the goddess and the rabbit. The faiths of old were strange; even my name carries a remnant.”
It remains the aspect of gift, but its features have shifted toward the Warlord of the Comet’s. A reminder to Ovuha of her potential fate: to be broken down and made to perform before all of Anatta, a puppet. She turns from the slit of window. “Was the suicide the Comet’s idea or yours?”
The AI makes its face ripple, muscles undulating under the skin. “I was made to understand the human heart. Before my birth I was fed a wealth of information; by the time I came to consciousness I was able to predict, with slim margins of error, the course of any person’s emotions, the actions they would take as a result.” A shake of the albino head, white curls rippling. “How many sleeper agents did you slip through, right under my nose?”
Ovuha makes her expression as blank as the AI’s, or as close as a human can get. “If Samsara knows the human heart, then there is no point asking me questions. All the answers you can already calculate and account for. What I want; what I meant to do; why I am here. No doubt you know better than I, and will momentarily surprise me.”
“With complete data, I would be able to. Of your behavior and impulses, I have less than a year’s worth of records—too small a sample size. And while I hold a full archive of your battle stratagems, that is not the same.” Samsara unties its sash, lets the robe hang loose and agape, a glimpse of a smooth translucent body, an anatomy of mute commentary. “But I knew when the Warlord of the Thorn changed, though there was no official—or public—succession. The manner of warfare shifted, some fundamental tactics were inconsistent with what had been done before, an inferior copy. I fought you intimately through my Peace Guard bodies and it was easy to tell I wasn’t fighting the same Thorn.”
“Your attention flatters me.”
“Yours is the humanity that lies furthest from Anatta, the history most severed. Nearly another species.” It lets down its hair, tresses like sand-tinted snow, as though to emphasize the strangeness of its proxy body. To emphasize the image of the Comet. “Of all the exiles, you and yours do not need Anatta. Mahakala can host human life, that much I have extrapolated, at half the capacity of Anatta or more. So all you had to do was lie low on Mahakala, remain hidden for a few generations more. Instead you sacrificed a part of your fleet and came here. Why, I wonder? What benefit outweighs this enormous cost?” A step closer to Ovuha on long, insectoid legs.
“By your own claim, I’m as open a book to you as any citizen of Anatta. I invite you to read me.” The temperature has dropped another couple degrees, will soon approach a point of discomfort.
It leans close, herding her toward the window. “You were losing the war against the Comet and also against me, defeat on both fronts. No doubt your successor was chosen as well as you could find, and no doubt they did as well as they were able, but you left them to die, didn’t you? While telling them that you came here to undo Samsara. To defeat me and remove once and for all the greatest threat. That became their oriflamme, their prayer, their final hope as they fell in battle. The dream that you will save them, it was their reason to fight and their reason to die.”
Ovuha remains where she is, the AI’s face bare centimeters from hers. Her breath stirs the white eyelashes. “When I dreamed of dealing with the foremost AI in person, I thought it would be efficient and to the point. None of this guesswork. But AIs are built by humans, and must by necessity inherit our foibles. I cannot blame you.”
Samsara smiles with thin, sculpted lips. Perfect teeth, enameled in metallic sheen. It settles back on its heels; its torso is long and it was able to lean almost impossibly forward without losing balance. Now it straightens back to its full height. The shape is correct but there are small details—the odd proportions of limbs, the joints in unexpected places—that show Samsara does not mean its proxy to be precisely human. She wonders if anyone’s ever noticed this. Samsara is in human image, that is the assumption, the received wisdom; in what other image can it be. “I have better uses for you than torture or, for now, putting on a show,” it says. “Director Ehtesham is what he is, serving the purposes for which he has been allocated. But those purposes are not meant for handling a warlord.”
It is as good as an admission that the AI has not only allowed the excesses of the Bureau to go on, it has encouraged them. “Why let Director Ehtesham and his likes do what they do at all? It’s a waste of time and resources.” She takes a breath—it is now so frigid the air knifes her tongue—and clenches her teeth to keep them from chattering. By supreme effort she forces her arms to stay at her sides. No amount of chafing her hands together will bring sufficient warmth.
“Without cruelty, compassion cannot be conceptualized. Without filth, virtue loses its meaning. And base urges, Warlord, must have an outlet.” Samsara ties its robe shut. “I do not need to interrogate you. But I have a task for you. I will be sending you to a lunar base where you will meet lesser AIs, newly made, hardly more than elementary heuristics. Each you are to break or drive to self-destruction within a time limit. You may use any method. I will let you access the base’s systems, if your implants have the bandwidth for it.”
“And if I don’t perform this task, I get executed.”
“You get executed,” it agrees. “So will your Captain Hinata and any other I uncover, now what I know what to look for. It will be no hardship. Unmaking is the simplest of processes, and I estimate you are a specialist. You are good at breaking things, aren’t you, Warlord?”
Chapter Fifteen
When the supply drop arrives, Suzhen asks to return to Indriya.
“How come?” Samsara sits primly in the shuttle, still in that proxy with the vaguely maternal face. Dressed more sternly this time, in dark fabrics and acute angles. The staid clothes are gone. “I do not object. But I’m surprised.”
“I miss people.”
The AI gestures her into a seat. “That’s reasonable. Did you notice anything irregular?”
Samsara talks around the jungle, even though they are barely ten kilometers from it. “No,” Suzhen says and waits to be caught out. Her guidance is online once more, eavesdropping on every heartbeat. But nothing happens. The intelligence merely nods, looking absent, though of course an AI cannot be absent-minded. They are the most simultaneous being that exists, everywhere at all times.