Matt had to ask. “How will you ‘remove’ the moon and its occupants?”
A sense of satisfaction flowed to Matt from BattleMind’s massive intelligence. “By using either the quark-based Graviton Beam to shrink the moon to a small black hole size. Or by the use of what you call Sun Glow to transmute the moon into a tiny star of plasma. It will be entertaining to compute which device will yield the most comprehensive result in the shortest time frame.”
Matt’s awareness noted the dragon’s reply. But his ability to further converse came to an end as he passed out from Interface overload.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
“Matthew, darling?” came the voice of Eliana. “Are you awake yet?”
He’d been dreaming. Dreaming of his brown-haired sister Charlotte,
his younger sisters Sally, Janine and Melody, Kristin his Mom and Benoit his father. Deep in the winter gales they had gathered around the radiant heater that both illuminated and warmed their home. They were playing an ancient human board game called Monopoly. In one way it resembled the Anarchate, in that greed and money were its basis. But it was such a silly way to view life that he and Charlotte loved playing it with their parents. Yellow light penetrated his eyelids. He opened them to see the embroidered white cloth dress of his lifepartner, Eliana. Her look was one of concern.
“I’m a
wake,” he said, aware of how he lay under a silk sheet atop their bed platform. He reached over to touch, then squeeze her nearest hand. “Don’t worry. I’m tougher than I look. It’s just these mind-chat sessions with BattleMind are a mental drain.”
She shook her long black hair, then smiled. Eliana squeezed back with a loving firmness. “Mata Hari told us that
after the dragon disappeared and we finished hearing your conversation, then saw you passed out. Suzanne and George helped me get you to our roomsuite. We’ve just passed the heliopause of Morrigan’s system and have entered Translation. Headed for this Omega Centauri star cluster that you two discussed.”
In truth he was glad to have
companions beyond Eliana in his
geis
quest to fulfill his promise to Helen that he would always use his strength and abilities to bring justice to those who needed it. “Are our comrades settled into their roomsuite?”
“Yes,
though they were walking down the Spine just before I entered,” Eliana said, glancing aside to the walls of their roomsuite. “George said he loved your Hopi Corn Maiden tapestry.”
Matt sat up.
He did not need visible light to see his room, though Eliana needed it.
Nanoware vision upgrades imaged it all—his workstation table, the library wall shelves filled with optical disks, the entrance to
their fresher unit, three Calder-style mobiles dangling from the ceiling, the acrylic paint easel to one side, his weaving loom with its half-done Corn Maiden pattern, even his and her clothes hanging behind an actual wood-slat door. And on the wall opposite their bed hung his collection of edged, solid projectile and energy hand-weapons, including a feather-tasseled White Mountain Apache spear from his own tribal heritage. Matt saw them all through normal yellow light. They were the talismans of his life.
More images touched his
upgraded eyes. Power sources studded the walls, floor and ceiling, their placement betrayed by ultraviolet sparks. A Navajo Ganado-style blanket hung on the right sidewall like a dead black rectangle, soaking up infrared. Below it gleamed a small aquarium, filled with puffer-fish from the planetary sea of his last Job. The fish emitted their own infrared, but at a wavelength far below his own, and cold water is an efficient heatsink. Criss-crossing the room, like a three dee spiderweb, pulsed the coherent lightbeams of Mata Hari. Emitted by low power diode lasers, the lightbeams touched him from any direction and even followed him into the fresher unit, the hot tub, or under the virtual reality helmet and chair resting in one corner of the room. With her optical neurolinking, Mata Hari would never leave him, never abandon him, and never give up on him.
“I’m glad he and Suzanne saw this part of me. I’ve tried to be more than . . . an avenging banshee.”
Eliana chuckled. “Suzanne had wondered about that, after seeing the vidrecord of your dealing with the harvester captain.”
Matt felt shock. He’d
thought that Eliana’s vidrecord was something just for future use, in case some planet’s judiciary called him to account. “You saw it too?”
Tilting her albino white face, Eliana’s green eyes gleamed with moisture. “We all did. All the refugees and the captives. When Leader Sarah was feeding them all in the commissary. George and I had asked Mata Hari why the
Lady of the Sword persona? She looked at us with a gaze more determined than any I had ever seen before. Then she nodded her head, and asked a few adults to take the children to a nearby playroom. Once the kids were gone, she played the entire boarding, fighting, rescue and discovery of Maeve with the human captain of the harvester ship.”
Eliana looked aside at his weaponry wall, which included a Magnum laser rifle. “
The captives tried to spit at the image of Conand O’Toole. Everyone else was transfixed.” She turned back to meet his gaze. “When you used your shoulder laser to render him immobile but aware, while there was shock at the blood and dismemberment, all the refugees nodded their head or said something like ‘It was necessary.’ Suzanne and I also thought it was necessary. No one blames you, Matthew.”
He reached over and pulled Eliana into a hug. “Thank you, my love. Thank you.” He caught his breath and told his heart to stop beating so fast. “Yes, it was necessary. And Mata Hari’s limpet complink gained useful information about a future gathering of these genome harvesters. I hope we can . . . disrupt their gathering
after we return from the Small Magellanic Cloud.”
Eliana kissed his neck, breathing warmth against skin that had become cold from his memory of O’Toole. “We will, my love. We will bring as much justice to the poor and injured people of this galaxy as can be done in a human lifetime.”
Matt smiled at his love’s simple declaration of her own commitment to his
geis
, to the pursuit of those Anarchate entities that allowed planets to die, cultures to be destroyed, cloneslave babies to be born, and whole star clusters to be ruled by alien Conglomerates that owned people through bondServant contracts. In a galaxy with trillions of lifeforms, more than thirty thousand species, and billions of habitable planets, setting things ‘right’ would not be the job of a single lifetime. But . . . perhaps he and Mata Hari and George and Suzanne could create a landslide of resistance that would bring a kind of . . . personal freedom to planets that had never known the like.
Eliana tugged at him. “Up, up! I gotta show you what dear Gatekeeper has created in the Life Room
, next to the pool. You will
love
it!”
Suzanne looked up as the Spine slidedoor opened and Eliana brought in a lively, healthy-looking Matt
to see their version of a park. The Vigilante wore his checkered
yukata
robe tied with a white silk tassel. He entered a place of growing things with water, rocks, soil and the buzz of some alien bees. She and George had been enjoying the small lake that filled one part of a space formerly occupied by a few dozen roomsuites. She and her new lifepartner had not thought it possible to create something green and living aboard a Dreadnought-class starship built by aliens. But Mata Hari and Gatekeeper, appearing as a middle-aged Greek man with no beard and dark brown skin, had done it using a bag of gardening tools and a few Nullgrav floaters that moved grass sod and trees to various locations. They had created a true biome at the rear of this starship.
Matt’s
brown eyes widened at the sight of their miniature park, noticed the swirl of alien bees, then stepped forward to kneel and put a few fingertips into the lake’s water. “Amazing! It has a pebble shore, floating lily pads, Earth frogs and . . . and—”
“What?” asked Gatekeeper as his life-size holo walked up to Matt and Eliana, followed by the summer girl persona of Mata Hari. So very different from the
Lady of the Sword they had seen in the vidrecords of the harvester battle. “Did you think that this ball of optoelectronics and molecular memory crystals lacked an imagination?”
Matt smiled, then stood up. His south Mediterranean face studied the new image of Gatekeeper, then noticed how
Mata Hari’s summer persona held hands with Gatekeeper the gardener. A sign of emotionality and attachment that Suzanne had never before seen in any AI. Though it seemed Mata Hari’s mood had infected the Gatekeeper she knew, which had been more of a hotel manager than a conspirator in insurrection.
“Seems we have a third couple,” her George muttered from his squat beside her.
Suzanne sighed. “Yes, we do.” Remembering how new was hers and George’s romance, though she had known the stocky, strong man from a distance while on Omega, she wondered about how the two AIs had become so . . . linked. “Gatekeeper, Mata Hari, how did you two become so, so, attached?”
Gatekeeper nodded to the holo of his partner, imitating the human male mode. The tall, slim woman who had usually appeared as a helpful but distant AI wearing the Spy persona, smiled. It was a smile similar to Eliana’s, but narrower due to the AIs
slim face and pointed chin.
“We found each other during the evacuation of the Omega casino,” the female AI said as she and Gatekeeper sat next to a seated Matt and Eliana. “We shared data links in order for us each to complete the jobs Matt assigned us. But . . . as Gatekeeper tachlinked with me to guide the refugee shuttles to various starships, we got to know each other deeper. And when he chose to come aboard rather than be with the Owners, I sensed a change within him. A change that felt . . . emotional to me.”
Gatekeeper smiled briefly, the very picture of a rural groundskeeper who was shy about praise. “She infected me. In the best way. By being herself, by relating to her Matthew the way she did, I learned a new way of relating to the universe than the simple tracker of arrivals and departures that the casino Owners had assigned to me. Gambling has never interested me. But discovering how organics can feel emotions, and how an AI can perhaps do the same through long association with an organic, made me wonder if such were possible for me and Mata Hari.”
Suzanne wondered about that. “But you two did not know each other as long as George and I have known each other. How did it happen so quickly?”
Mata Hari’s black eyes fixed on Suzanne, her expression patient but affectionate. “The minds of AIs think far more quickly than the minds of organics. Your Gatekeeper and I found a rapport that extended beyond routine duties. He liked my seven years of relating to Matt, while I enjoyed his several decades of knowing scores of alien species. His knowledge of this galaxy and its organics is far more extensive than mine. Though my emotional abilities are very new to him. Right, dear one?”
The holo of a middle-aged Greek man who was clean-shaven, with
grey head curls, curved ears, a squarish face and skin that was light brown, looked down at his crossed legs, then reached up to unbutton the top of his white cotton shirt that lacked any sign of ironing. He wore a dark brown jumpsuit that showed dirt stains on the knees, in perfect imitation of an image either he or Mata Hari had seen sometime in the past. The AI Suzanne thought she had known well acted like a new person, not just a new AI.
“Yes . . . my dear.” Gatekeeper squinted at her and George sitting together with arms around each other, then at Matt and Eliana seated similarly, though Eliana’s head leaned against the left shoulder of Matt. “You organics possess something we AIs have never understood. Nor seen the value of. But Mata Hari’s sharing with me
of her full-blown emotionality and feelings for Matthew Dragoneaux has expanded my perception of reality. The greenery inside the casino had always appealed to me due to its seasonal growth changes. Now, I too can grow beyond my programming. Thanks to Mata Hari.”
“Congratulations,” rumbled the deep voice of George, reminding her of their own
new found love for each other.
“Yes,” Suzanne said as she recalled the love of her
Swedish parents for each other before they left to colonize a Sixth Wave world in Perseus Arm. “Congratulations to both of you. And to you too, Matt and Eliana.”
Sitting beside the cool blue waters of a small lake surrounded by young oak trees, pinyon pines, juniper trees, wisteria bushes,
and some weathered boulders scattered here and there, all beneath a warm yellow sunlight that shone down from the room’s ceiling, Suzanne felt happy. And it seemed two other couples felt equally happy. Both at being together and at celebrating life. Hopefully this feeling would last a good while.
Eliana smiled back at Suzanne, her newfound friend and a woman with software programming abilities that would surely help her efforts to forge a gene therapy algorithm. She need help in locating the common genetic elements possessed by the inner core of the slow virus that was attacking Matt’s gene sequences. But more than the research, she needed a friend who did not care that she possessed a prehensile tail and a dislike for meat foods. Her
Derindl heritage had fixed in her tastebuds a preference for plant and tree-borne foods. She could enjoy cooked fish, but anything else gave her an upset stomach. While she had enjoyed seeing Matt inhale the foods offered the other night at Eire Park, she had joined him in tasting only a few. The Irish colonists of Morrigan were serious meat-eaters. And also drinkers of spirits. She had enjoyed the golden beer, then had discovered the dangers of drinking more than a half-cup of Scotch. Her head had hurt badly the next morning, even as the memory of happiness among good people overcame the pain.
Now, they were back on the
geis
road, aiming to do serious harm to the Anarchate. Would they achieve the disruption sought by BattleMind? Or would a bureaucracy millions of years old simply shrug off their attacks as pinpricks? Recalling the memory of Matt’s time as a cloneslave decanter, she swore to herself, to the memory of Calyce and to her dead grandfather Petros that this time the Anarchate would notice the harm it had caused!