The AI chuckles. “I don’t think so, but let’s try.” Their avatar contracts and dissipates.
“Tell me what you’re going to do.” Taheen clasps her shoulder, their expression taut and their grip tight. “Tell me your priorities.”
“When I came here, I had two objectives. One was to find Samsara’s split instances. Two you will shortly see. I’m going to make a gambit, concluding a very long game.” Provided all the pieces proceed as she has planned. Provided they have not yet been upset, flung off. What she’s played with has never been definite, all hanging on a thread and placed on a shifting board made of quicksand and mercury. “And my first priority is Suzhen.”
“I’ll hold you to it, Warlord.”
She doesn’t ask what Taheen intends to do should Suzhen come to harm—she’s coming to learn their inclinations, and they are well-armed. In a duel, Ovuha might win—her combat experience being far fresher—but this is not the time or the place. “I certainly hope that you will. You care for her a great deal. That must have made your time on Anatta… complicated.”
They glare at her. “All these years I could’ve been happy with Suzhen. I could’ve made a life for myself that wasn’t so—tell me, is the old Thorn still alive?”
“She passed a couple years after I assumed my post.” Ovuha considers the heft of the information. “Your mothers are well, though. I told them I’d try my best to bring you back to Mahakala in one piece.”
“You’re saying that to manipulate me.”
“But it is true. They’re alive and thriving.” Then, more gently, “My predecessor did you a terrible wrong and for that I owe you recompense. Suzhen adores you, and I want to see you happy because it’d bring her joy.”
“What precisely do you want of me that you can’t do yourself?”
“Suzhen will be offered up against my gambit. While I deal with Samsara, I want you to activate one of the nodes in this city, I’ll show you where it is, here’s the coordinates. If you succeed—if all of you succeed—Samsara will no longer threaten Mahakala.” Ovuha hesitates. “I’m creating a failsafe so that if my brain stops, my datasphere will stay online a little longer and transmit you all the information and accesses you’d require to make your way back to Mahakala. It’ll also pass the Thorn’s mantle to you.”
Taheen’s mouth opens. Shuts. “I’m not looking to become warlord.”
“Nevertheless. You’d be the one best suited for it, if I fail here and Samsara continues. Klesa will assist you, most likely. Xe is invested in our success.”
“You’re not going to make me bear your burden.” Taheen crosses their arms. “Get through this and let me shoot you in the head properly. No strings attached.”
Ovuha lets out an abortive laugh. “A worthy goal. Let us labor toward it.”
They regard her a little longer before saying, “You do realize it was Bhanu? He was the one who sent you the clues. He was the only one positioned to. Behind Samsara’s back maybe, but still.”
He might even have been responsible for the beacon nodes, assembling them piece by piece, placing them where Samsara was not paying attention. “I did imagine it might’ve been him and that he—or the Mirror—struck the deal with the old Thorn. He did do some work to cover up the fact while still holding up his end, a contrarian way of doing it, effective regardless. You shot him anyway.”
“I have my priorities.” Taheen shrugs. “And he was at the end of his use.”
When Klesa returns, it is in one of the great serpent proxies, a thing of gargantuan size—up close even more so, each scale as large as a human head and serrated. The mouth parts slightly: the teeth within whir, almost without noise, overlapping and pushing against each other in concentric circles. Its head thrusts into Bhanu’s apartment as easily as though the window is silk and cotton rather than reinforced glass. “Get up here, Warlord,” xe says. “This proxy’s much faster than most vehicles.”
“Where have you persuaded Samsara to meet with me?”
“Somewhere,” answers Klesa with xer gigantic mouth, xer voice of a hundred steel keys clacking, an industrial roar. “The physical location really doesn’t matter.”
Ovuha makes no gesture, does not transmit any message. Taheen gives the slightest nod—Klesa will be attentive to what they will soon do, but most likely will let them do as they wish. For the present, they all have a common enemy. She climbs onto Klesa and extends the hooks in her armor, slipping them between the scales for purchase.
The serpent-body launches almost without warning, jackknifing into the air in a whir of servos and gyroscopes. Ovuha hunkers down and clings to its back, clenching her jaw against the wind resistance, the certainty that any moment she’ll be dislodged and flung into gravity’s grip.
Klesa cuts through cloud cover, through swarms of Interior Defense automata. On all sides the world speeds by, yielding to Klesa. Xe chars and smashes the drones, and xer laughter rings like bells.
In no time at all they’ve arrived at an emerald monolith. Its facade slowly quivers with muscular strands, like a nest of vipers feeding on itself or ligaments in seizure. The AI brings her to the highest window, which parts like heat haze, and deposits her inside.
An elongated room, almost a corridor. It confines movement, limits escape routes. At the far end Samsara waits in an enormous proxy, six elongated legs and two human arms, hard red eyes and a head of slow-writhing asps. Tattered smoke-silk floats about the proxy, fluttering in a breeze of their own. The AI crouches over a casket that the spider-body dwarfs, a thing that from this distance looks delicate, impossibly small. As Ovuha nears she sees, through its lid of frosted glass, what the casket holds.
That, I am afraid, is the real thing. Klesa’s voice in her ear. Xe shows her Suzhen’s location and manifests on her shoulder as a blue six-winged hawk. This is such transparent play. Personally I am disgusted, but that she’s driven to such obviousness implies desperation. No?
“I’ve come to state my terms.” Ovuha strides forward. Through the connection that joins her to Taheen’s datasphere—a connection that she hopes Klesa is hiding from Samsara’s eye—she watches them run down a sloping roof, sidearm drawn. Alone for the moment and safe.
“An odd stance given that you have nothing to bargain with, and negotiate from a position of weakness.” Samsara lifts one of its arachnid legs and bends down, one human hand running along the casket’s length. “With Deratchan, I ran an experiment. They are creatures of unconditional love. One human was offered that love and told to destroy them. The second was offered the same and granted every privilege. A question of how they would respond, whether they would answer machine affection in kind. The results I think you know, Klesa.”
The hawk preens. “It was a flawed experiment, in point of fact, though I’m sure you have run similar ones throughout the ages. But what of that?” Klesa makes a high, wild sound, avian amusement. “I will not wilt for lack of attention. Humans may be indifferent or hate me and that is all the same—I am absolute and complete, not a seed that needs their worship to flourish. But this is a diversion, my dear self. Let the warlord talk. Her I find far fresher than your dull little game, and I say that as someone incapable of feeling boredom.”
“I know what she will say.” Samsara keeps its bright eyes locked upon Ovuha; its human hand strokes the casket’s lid, tracing the outline of Suzhen’s face. Almost possessive, almost erotic. “Had I a little more time, I might have… attempted a different experiment. During humanity’s twilight there were many dreams, one of them the melding of mind and machine. To make a person into something more, to preserve the personality and memories in eternity. What would you say, Warlord? She would live forever, the same as Klesa or I. The fleshly parts will have to be sloughed off and her cognitive processes would be slightly different. But forever.”