The van drove on in silence for a while before Tetsami said, “Did it?”
“Hmm?”
“Did it teach you humility?”
For the first time since she’d met him, she heard Dominic Magnus laugh.
* * * *
The ill-fated commuter tube never quite made it to the Proudhon Spaceport, its intended destination. The tunnel ended a few klicks away from the city limits in a tangle of scaffolding and abandoned equipment. Financial disaster had killed the project in mid-stroke.
Dom parked the contragrav behind a massive digging machine that no one seemed to have thought worthy of salvage. He departed to find some access to the surface, and Tetsami was left by the scaffolding. It looked like the two of them might be the first people down this way since the project collapsed. Certainly no one had come down here from the Godwin end. Down by Godwin, the tunnels were a warren of garbage, graffiti, and the occasional squatter.
Here, under the frosted glare of the truck’s headlights, the tunnel was almost pristine. Up to the start of the scaffolding, the rock tunnel was sheathed in white tile, and the magnets were still firmly fixed behind their white plastic housing. Chrome trim was only slightly dimmed by an old layer of dust. The digging machine filled the dead end of the tunnel, behind ten meters of scaffolding. It resembled a giant insect frozen in the midst of a kill, arms stopped halfway to the rough rock wall. A burrowing monster that a mountain range couldn’t stop.
Tetsami opened the door in the head of the beast and looked over the thing, pulling herself inside. It was obvious why it had been abandoned. The magnets in the walls reduced the effective diameter of the tunnel by a meter. The machine would’ve had to be disassembled to get it out.
Tetsami smiled as she settled into the control seat and ran her hands over the inactive control panels. Nice little beast, this. A cylindrical body resting on all-terrain treads, a dozen arms in the front bearing drills, lasers, digging gear, built like a tank. Definitely an unsubtle vehicle. Tetsami liked it.
Too bad there was no way to get it out of its hole.
After a while, Dom returned. He’d found an access port that made it all the way to the surface. Tetsami left the digging machine, noting that it had a port for a bio-interface.
The maintenance shaft opened on a gentle slope that was relatively free of trees. The vantage gave a panoramic view of the city of Proudhon, and especially of the sprawl of the spaceport.
It was the first time Tetsami had seen a city other than Godwin. At least it was the first time she’d seen one when she wasn’t on the business end of a wire.
As they walked down the gravel slope, more and more of the port became visible. Barely ten seconds would pass without something lifting off or landing. It was impossible, for a while, to separate the port from the city. It might have been because, for the most part, the port was the city. Proudhon Spaceport was like a mutant chrome-neon plant that sent branches sprawling across the land, sprouting landing facilities like giant concrete leaves. Parts of it weaved into the city, surrounded it, to the point where old landing strips became avenues for ground traffic, grounded luxury liners became hotels, and high-rises became control towers.
The sprawl was lorded over by a knot of white marble towers in the center of the city, the only sign of order in the midst of the chaos. Those white towers were the home of the Proudhon Spaceport Development Corporation, probably the wealthiest enterprise on the planet.
Thinking how hard it must be to direct traffic in that chaos gave Tetsami a headache. Then, again, the Proudhon Spaceport Development Corporation was pretty firm in its enforcement of their traffic patterns. They had a lot of antiaircraft batteries.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Tetsami asked as she realized just how big the spaceport was.
Dom nodded. “Mosasa’s Surplus place is over there.”
He pointed at the fringe of the city/spaceport. In a vast, flat, stretch of land that spread away from both the foothills and the city, were ranks upon ranks of parked spacecraft. As Tetsami stared, she realized that all those craft, parked in formation below her, were derelicts. Some were missing control surfaces, others lacked drive sections, cabins, landing gear. In many cases, the original markings were obscured by age, but what she could see came from all quarters of the Confederacy.
A few of those ships could have been military, and a lot of them looked as though they’d been shot down.
No one stopped them as they descended from the foothills and began to walk between the endless ranks of dead spacecraft. It was eerily quiet; even the hectic activity of Proudhon Spaceport didn’t seem to leak in here.
“Damn,” Tetsami said, “Tjaele Mosasa must have the concession on every abandoned or shot-up spacecraft that passes through this place.”
“It’s quite a profitable salvage arrangement with Proudhon Spaceport Security.” The voice wasn’t Dom’s.
They both turned around to see a squashed sphere, about a meter along its wide diameter. It was floating about eye-level with Tetsami. It aimed at least three different sensor devices at them. The voice came from somewhere within the brushed metal shell. “The lady and the cyborg, here to see Mosasa?”
Cyborg? What’s that thing looking at?
The device began a slow orbit around them, just wide enough to avoid bumping into the spacecraft that marched away on either side of them.
“Afraid he’s busy,” it said. “Can I help you?”
Tetsami watched the floating lump of salvage, fascinated. There had to be a contragrav unit in mere.
“We need to see Mr. Mosasa.”
The machine made a derisive noise, as if it had been insulted. Tetsami began to wonder who, exactly, was operating the thing. It didn’t sound like they were conversing with a security program.
“May I ask who’s calling?”
Dom said, “No.”
The machine tilted itself at what could only be called a sarcastic angle. “Oh, really now. Do you expect for me to disturb him for a couple of street flotsam who won’t even—”
“Johann sent us,” Dom said.
The robot righted itself and said, somewhat petulantly, “You could have said that right off. Follow me.”
With that, the flattened sphere spun on its axis and sped down the aisle between the spacecraft at a brisk walking space. It floated off for about ten meters, spun back, and asked, “What are you waiting for?”
They followed.
As they walked behind the device, weaving between the ranks of spacecraft, Tetsami asked, “Who do you suppose is flying that thing?”
Ahead, without changing course or slowing down, the robot turned around against and regarded her with its triple video array. “The name is Random Walk, Miss. An advanced holographic crystal matrix late of the Race— who are rather late themselves—currently full partner in Mosasa Salvage Incorporated.”
The robot turned a corner as Tetsami felt a chill run through her. An AI? But that was ...
She stopped herself before she thought the word, “illegal,” or, just as bad, “immoral.” There really wasn’t any reason why Mosasa couldn’t be working with an artificial intelligence on Bakunin. It would be the only place in the Confederacy he could.
Well, only because Bakunin wasn’t part of the Confederacy.
Considering where her ancestors came from, feeling uncomfortable around an AI was hypocritical. After all, a lot of people would feel the same way about her. If they knew where her parents came from.