Tidelands: I-Nine (16)
Backups. Inquisition. Lockpick. Daddy. Click.
If she’s to make it up there – whatever little chance she has of that – there are things Squirrel must attend to first.
Chief among these are the drones. Not the little sentinel tasked with tailing her, which will already have snitched on her to its masters, but its older, more potent siblings – it must have them – such as the mangled specimen that had earlier rolled before her feet, and more of which are on their way. And while no lights flash and no sirens sound, there will be cameras, sensors, tripwires and alarms, and by now even good old-fashioned human report, all right this second doing their best to earnestly impress upon those-who-really-should-do-something-about-it the fact that things have gone spectacularly tits-up.
All of which means any advantage surprise has given her is diminishing fast, and soon she’ll find out what backups there are in place to contain off-script scenarios such as this – and backups to those backups.
So maybe she should give all those backups a little more to think about.
She looks across at the enclosure into which the pole-men had been trying to coax the blue-eyed giant, its cage door now leaning askew, croaking weakly on its one remaining hinge, and examines the neighbouring hutches, their more biddable occupants safely contained and chemically compliant.
For now.
The voices have been bad again.
She wakes, groggy and befuddled – too much so to enact the ritual of the sun – and almost straight away the questioning recommences.
[Where did you go to, Eva? What happened?]
If all this has been just another game, then Azimuth is playing it poker-faced – not that it has one. A stern parent, trying to coax from its errant child the specifics of the misdemeanour for which it will later be punished, all the while reassuring that it is honesty and candour that will stave off the worst of the consequences.
But the AI is most concerned with the breach of security that her brief absence implies. For apparently – she is piecing this together now, from the direction of its questions – there is no record of what happened, of “where” she had escaped to, only a gap where such data should be.
And so the questions come, ceaselessly, the full-bore expected inquisition; more tests, more probing – verbal, chemical (probably), electronic – repeated over and over and over, but to the same lack of result. The whole process is making her stubborn, recalcitrant – for if this interrogation is part of The Game, then Azimuth’s disapproval is too, just another cruel trick, another test with some insidious purpose. And if she truly, finally has something that they cannot get at, she is not about to give that up willingly.
But the truth is, she cannot herself now remember. For her memory has its own lacunae; like a dream that fades on waking, only half-snatches remain – a woman? A room that was not a room? A key.
Reflexively, she looks down again at her palm: as empty as before.
And finally, when all Azimuth’s questions and procedures fail to produce satisfaction, he comes.
“Eva.”
He takes the empty seat opposite her at the table near the window, next to the entrance to the inner balcony – when was the last time she was allowed out there? And when was the last time he himself had come to visit? The rare, personal touch, reserved for special occasions – though whether as punishment or inducement, she’s never quite been sure.
He rubs at his temple, wearily – or is he accessing something on his implant? He looks older – does he? There are streaks of grey, just above the ears, where she thinks there weren’t before. Lines around his eyes too. But she can’t be sure – she sees him so seldom, it’s hard to retain one image long enough to make comparisons. And she’s never been very good at faces.
“So, how have you been?” He looks at her, attempts a smile.
She looks briefly into his eyes, and quickly away again.
“Fine, thank you. Daddy.”
If that’s in fact who he really is.
Stegrun’s efforts have had little effect on the cage doors. Squirrel focuses again, crafting an image of the door being ripped off its hinges, bashed inward with foot or fist. In response, his poundings have roused the inhabitants, some of whom have responded in kind, but all their efforts are to no avail. How had he broken his own cage? Because it was open, exposing a weak spot on the hinge? But these doors are more securely in place, little red lights studding the perimeter of each frame. A reinforcing field, of some sort? Electronic locks? So who has the keys?
She scans the area – perhaps it’s worth searching one of the unconscious pole-men. But no, there will be nothing so literal as a key. A bustle from outside, some movement near the door. Quickly! Think! And then she spies it: a control hub, over to one side, half hidden by a half-smashed crate. Is it still functional? Can she interface with it? Hack it?
While she debates this the first of the drones comes through, the biggest she has yet seen – a dark metal sphere emitting a high-velocity near-inaudible whine. And then a second.
She feels the giant begin to sway, to stagger; feels a peculiar lethargy start to straight-jacket her thoughts, strangling her connection with her mount. She reaches out to the hub, begins to feel her way past its defences – but too late.
The pole-men are coming back in too; sheepishly, at first, fanning out, their sparking prods thrust in front of them. And through their number strolls the man in black.
[You are trouble, aren’t you?] he says to her, without uttering a word.
For – naturally – he is a Natural too.
“So what happened?” he asks.
A frown of concern. Paternal, conciliatory. Let’s the two of us get to the bottom of this, shall we?
Eva calls him “Daddy”, but it is just a word. She has no memories – fond or otherwise – with which to associate it; no foundational bonding experiences, no childhood snapshots of precious times, games played and lessons learned – at least, not the traditional ones; only these occasional tête-à-têtes, islanded in her memory like mental landmines.
“Where did it begin?”
Part of her wants to tell him – even the little bits she can remember. Just to please him. There is within her a deep-seated urge to comply, almost instinctual, in-built, hardwired. But equally instinctively, unconsciously – for she has no conscious reason to distrust him, her father – the need to resist.
“It’s OK.” He smiles reassuringly.
She looks out the window, onto the balcony. Suddenly a mental flash – of herself, standing, folded arms leaning upon the railing, looking over and down – the view that she despises. People on the walkways, crisscrossing the air, drones shuttling to and fro, and all dwindling down into the darkening depths of the central shaft. But she has never been allowed out onto the balcony – has she? So when was that? She looks at the little red light on the balcony door.
“You were playing Sabotage, Azimuth tells me?”
When will it all stop? She is so tired of it. Tired of the questions, the deceptions, the doubts, The Game. She feels so old; old in a way that her memories do not entitle her to be. But they must be there, somewhere, mustn’t they? Memories that she might one day recall that would justify this unshakeable lethargy, this miserable neverendingness.
“Why don’t you walk me through it,” he says.
Not a question.
The backups to the backups have now arrived: tanks – of some description; steel-limbed arachnoids that scuttle, roll, and rear up into praying mantises sporting an array of death-tipped prongs.
But their services will not be needed, for not just her ride but Squirrel herself feels her own limbs begin to slacken and lose coordination, feels her focus begin to grow soft, woolly, as a soporific fog drifts in, muffling her thoughts in a cotton-wool cocoon, stopping her from … what had she been about to do? But it’s gone. There is something, still, squirming away, something off-stage, furiously whirring, but just out of reach … Like when you walk into a room and just stand there, forgetting what you came for. What’s that called? Threshold amnesia. That’s it – ironic, to recall the name for the thing she can’t recall. She was about to…?
The man in black strolls forward; his gait has an elegant economy to it, that same practised, dancer’s poise, though in it the threat of something more dangerous than a pirouette.
[That’s it.] A voice in her head again – his voice. [Settle down, now, there’s a good girl. It’ll all be over soon.]
Stegrun drops to one knee, his head beginning to loll, as the psychic sedative continues its work, bleeding through the connection between rider and mount, lulling them both into a stupor.
[A shame, really.] The man in black moves closer. His head tilts; she sees a face in the lenses of his huge black wraparound shades; a face slack, awash with confusion, almost drunk – her own face. [Think of all the fun you almost unleashed.] He smiles.
That was it – what she was doing.
Unleashed.
The squirming whirring off-stage thing jolts as something finally snaps into place.
And somewhere – maybe only imagined, or maybe somewhere far outside her – there is the faintest of sounds.
Click.
Tidelands is a weekly sci-fi & fantasy serial that publishes every Friday, emailed straight to your inbox. Part 1 is free to read, but you can keep up with the story by signing up for exclusive access, or buying ebook or paperback editions of the collected instalments as they appear.