Chapter Nine

~ Garrett ~

 

Seven dead. Six pirates and Phillip lay on the Dockside floor, with several people wounded. Garrett had thought that ‘wailing and gnashing of teeth’ was just an expression, but the Pilgrims who clustered around Phillip’s body proved him wrong. A cloth lay over what was left of his face. Everywhere there were moans and sobs so that Garrett put his hands to his ears and heard himself crying too, in time for the pain in his left arm to kick in.

“Hold still,” hissed Eaton, and sprayed clotting foam onto Garrett’s arm.

It burned where the bullet had torn through. “I deserved this.”

“No. You did okay for coming from a generation that doesn’t know how to fight. Now get off your ass and work.”

Garrett stood, bracing himself against a box. His right leg was dead, a block of metal and plastic, and he could hardly walk with it.

Eaton saw him staring at the thing. “Would’ve been an artery wound. You’d probably be dead if you were a full human.”

“I’m human,” said Garrett. “I’m not a machine. Nobody’s puppet.”

He wavered on his feet from adrenaline aftershock, blood loss, and from the fact that he was ruined. He was a murderer. In the minutes after the battle he’d said brave things he didn’t mean and could hardly hear from the ringing in his ears, spouted something about how Castor would remain open no matter what, hurried to put out the fire and get people regrouped with their families until Eaton got to him with the first-aid kit. People had swarmed away and Garrett couldn’t blame them for running off. But then most of them returned from their rooms and boats, running across the water to bring emergency gear. It was like watching an immune system at a wound site. Nobody had to tell people what needed doing, they just did it. Even in the brawl it had been like that. A hundred people with several dozen knives between them trumped six goons with guns, once they stood up.

Tess cowered in a corner with one of her birds on her shoulder. Garrett knelt carefully. “Hey, Tess. We’re alive.”

She looked up with shining eyes, heaving sobs with her arms and knees pulled in. On her shoulder the bird whispered, “My God we’re gonna’ die. They’re gonna’ kill us all and throw us in the sea where the waves will eat us and we’ll be all alone and they’ll kill us–”

Garrett grabbed the bird in one hand and threw it aside, where it thunked onto the floor. She was still wearing the headset, hidden in her hair. “Tess, listen to me! It’s over. I’m going to take that thing off now, okay?”

She gulped and nodded. He reached out again and tugged the digital crown of thorns from her, setting it aside.

She threw herself at him, burying her face against his chest and leaning into him. He wrapped arms around her and stroked her hair. After thousands of years of civilization he felt he was re-enacting a moment that had happened millions of times.

Why did I come here and put people in danger? To grow kelp? To feel like a big shot? He didn’t know, anymore. He had no good reason to go on.

Then Lark was there, his hide cracked and dented. “Captain, it’s–I hit a man and–” There was human blood smeared on the plastic.

Garrett looked more directly at him. “Are you badly damaged?”

“No, but it’s awful! They were going to–”

“Shut up. Turn off your emotion chip or something.” He didn’t need anyone else out of action.

“I don’t have one. It’s not that simple.”

“Then quit whining! Live up to the cold, rational stereotype for once!”

Lark stared at the floor, his remaining ear drooping. “Yes, Captain. I think you need to return to your duties.”

Garrett was about to yell at him, but Lark was right. He squeezed Tess and told her, “Let’s work.”

This time she sat there, shaking her head.

Garrett sighed. He couldn’t stay with her right now. “Pilgrims! I need one of you over here.”

A haunted young man in grey came over to sit with her. “There are no Pilgrims anymore.”

Only now did Garrett realize that the pirates had beheaded the largest subgroup here. The Pilgrims were such mind-slaves to Phillip that without him, who knew if they could survive? It made Garrett feel empty to know someone so important to Castor, good or bad, was gone. It had to be even worse for the cultists.

They were clustered around the body, still with a few acting on their initiative to tend the wounded. Garrett had been thinking of them as a lump of unskilled, but quickly learning, labor, a herd of sheep under Phillip’s command, but here were dozens of individuals who for some reason had come here and put total faith in their prophet. Each had made some kind of choice of how to live. He couldn’t blame them for being willing to come to Castor; they’d trusted him at least indirectly, too.

“What do we do?” the Pilgrims asked each other, for lack of someone else to tell them.

Garrett cleared his throat and took charge. “I need an inspection of the station and a complete headcount. Look for any bombs, fires, or unaddressed damage.” He was fairly sure the threat was gone, so the order was busywork as much as an actual need.

One of the Pilgrims sneered at him. “Who are you to order me around?”

Others joined in. “Yeah, you’re a damned unbeliever! A murderer! You killed Sir Phillip!”

“I did not!” said Garrett, surprised at how angry the accusation made him. “He fought to the death to defend us all, and I’m not going to let that go to waste.”

The Pilgrims were about to protest when someone distracted them. Leda had taken Phillip’s body by the shoulders and was struggling to lift him. The cloth fell from his face, exposing shredded, bloody flesh. Leda looked not at him, but at Garrett.

Garrett seized the body’s feet to bring him level. “What are you doing?”

The Pilgrims wanted to know, too, grabbing Phillip and making conflicting threats and demands. “Unbelievers, both of you!”

“Listen!’” said Leda. “Not to me, but to God! Sir Phillip died for you and Castor, and you stand here arguing instead of advancing his work. Would he want you brothers and sisters to shout at each other?” For a moment the Pilgrims were shamed into silence. “I’m taking him to the bio-reactor, where I’ll honor his memory by making him a permanent part of this place. He’ll live forever among the very plants and fish we tend.”

Garrett stared at Leda. Dump Phillip’s body in the recycler? It made practical sense to reclaim what was now just so much meat, but even he could see the offensiveness of treating a human body that way. He tried not to think about what he was holding. “Is this what you people want?”

The Pilgrims murmured among themselves. “But she’s not one of us,” a young man said. “She doesn’t believe. Phillip cast her out.”

“And now I take him up, in humility to a man who saved my life and soul!”

They argued more with each other, but then helped Leda and Garrett bear the body away. It went into the tank with a lurch as though eager to go, and a foul splash that churned Garrett’s stomach. Leda led a prayer. Garrett began to duck out of the stinking room; this wasn’t his place at the moment.

Leda’s dark eyes pinned him.

“We are gathered here to bid farewell to a great man. We were all brothers and sisters in his eyes, regardless of our own faults. You knew some of my story, the hardship I’ve been through. I said that Sir Phillip saved me, and he really did. Look inside yourself; what were you before you found God and Lee? Sir Phillip made us all a part of something larger than ourselves, a group that was awake to God. Because of that togetherness, it was all of you who saved me.”

There was a woman staring at her shoes. Leda went to her and put her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Even you, Sister Ann. You tried to help me.”

The woman looked up with a startled, guilty expression. Leda smiled on her. “I believe that God has brought us here for a reason. Sir Phillip showed us the way, and we still need one another. We can continue to make the sacrifice for each other and for Sir Phillip’s ideals, to make this strange place a holy and glorious one. We can all be part of that future, if we believe.” She looked around at the sea of mourners. “Do you believe?”

There was dead, terrifying silence from a group of people whose guiding star had died before their eyes, fighting for them. A man whose corpse was being eaten by bacteria and fermented a few meters away.

Then that other woman, Ann, murmured, “I believe in you.”

The words caught. “I believe.” From one mouth and another, joining into a single voice with a rhythm that scared Garrett and made him feel he must submit to it or slink away. He bit his lip as the chant went on and on. “I believe!” He feared they might turn on him for his silence and indeed eyes glanced at him, and he could feel how wrong he was to be alone in the room not joining the movement, but there was only one thought coming from all those people and the words crested and broke just as the noise was too much to bear.

“Good,” said Leda, breathlessly. “Then we must regroup.”

* * * *

Many of the station’s people left before dawn. Folks who were just visiting anyway, one Pilgrim with a change of heart, and one whose wounds needed treatment elsewhere but who swore to return. Eaton remained, recloaking himself as a tourist and business agent. Garrett wasn’t about to complain; he was honored.

Between him and Garrett, Lark, Martin, Leda, and the Pilgrims, the station was running again within hours. Little damage had been done, physically. Psychologically it was hard to say. A hush lay over Castor as people tried to sleep or work. Garrett would’ve preferred happy people and a sinking platform; that at least he knew how to deal with.

He made a statement to the Net via a friendly reporter. “We’re not going anywhere. Not one of our visitors was killed despite an armed attack, and now we’re prepared if anyone is dumb enough to try again.”

The radio crackled while Garrett was finishing the interview. The voice was deep and burbling. “This is automated patrol boat EOD29, ‘Odie’. State the nature of your emergency.”

Garrett left the office and looked outside, signaling Lark to ask if anyone saw another unknown boat. It wasn’t one of his, was it? “This is Castor Station, and there’s no emergency. You missed it.”

Odie’s voice rumbled. “Voice identified. Is there an emergency, sir?”

“No.” Silently Lark sent him a map showing an unknown boat to the west. “Are you a Bermudan drone?”

“This is automated patrol boat EOD29 reporting to the United States Coast Guard. If there is no emergency I will withdraw. Confirm.”

How nice of them to drop by now. “Confirmed. Go away.”

Garrett found Martin in the conference room. “First Eaton, now this patrol drone that happened to be in the area. What’s going on?”

Martin considered. “Drugs. The U.S.C.G. is legally bound to stop Americans from getting high, and we’re becoming a known conduit for drugs. The pirates might have been hoping to seize a stash. If the Guard has a drone here, I won’t be surprised if ships leaving Castor now get stopped by the Guard, routinely, with passengers searched and property taken.”

Garrett cursed. “But we’re not in U.S. waters! Besides, the Guard isn’t trying to destroy us. Are they?”

“It makes sense in a way. This is a control point in the drug war, thanks to your decisions. If we don’t police our residents with respect to drugs, someone will try to smuggle drugs out if they’re not already doing so, which makes it the Guard’s obligation to forcibly search. The existence of one uncontrolled place threatens the global order.”

“I have better things to do than debate drug policy.” Garrett balanced on his bad leg. “Where the hell was the Guard when we were under attack?”

“You want this to be U.S. territory after all?” Martin asked. “You want to go crying to mommy for help?”

It was too much. Garrett spun and shouted in the man’s face. “Fuck you, Martin. Do you see all this as a Freudian crusade? I helped dump a corpse, had a bullet wound bandaged, my best living friend is a quivering wreck, my own country’s out to get me, and I haven’t had breakfast yet. What do you want from me?”

Martin was impassive, a stone statue. Garrett wanted to hit him. “I want you to protect my investment, and stop counting on me to figure out the plan. Do you think I’ve got all the answers?”

“You’ve been acting like it.”

Martin laughed in his face. “It was for your own good! You’d have given up a dozen times by now if you hadn’t had someone managing things for you, waiting for you to stand up, letting you lean on their expertise. Admit it.”

“So I came all the way out here and trusted you to know how we’d deal with the politics, and you were winging it after all?”

“No, I was somewhat less clueless than you. Politics is life, Fox. You can’t run from it. It’s a question of who has the power.”

“Power!” Garrett clenched fists against his sides. A good punch to the face would be in order. In Dockside he’d held a gun to a man’s heart; that was power, the ability to dominate and destroy. Martin had dragged him out here to play God-damned primate dominance games with the whole world, and told him it was for Garrett’s own good. People were dying around him for stupid ideals, to recreate some kind of theocratic petty tyranny con game disguised as–“A farm! That’s all I was trying to build here.”

“Liar,” said Martin. “You had a dream for this place. I saw it in your eyes when you came to me looking like a scared puppy, begging for money.”

“And I trusted you.”

“So go home, if you don’t think you can handle all this. If the angst is too much for you.”

Garrett had been goaded enough. Martin deserved to suffer. And was inviting it, watching Garrett with a mad enthusiasm and an upturned chin. Offering to trade guilt for pain.

Garrett raised a hand, and pointed to the door. “Get out of here. You can make peace with your God or whatever. I haven’t got one, so I’m going to work for redemption.”

Martin seemed about to protest, to demand that Garrett punish him, but Garrett faced him down until he walked away.

Garrett shut the door and slumped into a chair, head on hands. After a moment of self-pity he brought up the map of Castor again, letting it glow and spin on the wall. He stared at it, wishing that the damn thing hadn’t gotten so out of control. Still, it needed him.

“So this is where my dream has gone,” he said. “Do I want to wake up?”

* * * *

~ Tess ~

 

She needed out.

Tess couldn’t sleep for the nightmares; she’d seen Phillip’s face break, watched Garrett kill in cold blood, plus had men shouting and pointing guns at her. She’d been asleep when the alarm went off, with Lark saying, “Bad guys!” She’d woken from one nightmare to a worse one.

Within a few days she was on the phone, not letting her parents see how ragged she looked. Blank screen on their end.

“We want you back,” said Dad. “Besides, It’s nearly Christmas.”

Tess was startled. The Pilgrims didn’t believe in Christmas, and she’d been too distracted to notice the red-and-green in the little restaurant. That meant her time here was nearly over anyway; it was back to school in January. School, after everything she’d done here! She started to laugh, with great heaving breaths like during the hurricane.

Her parents looked out from the screen, saying nothing.

So Tess spent a small fortune of her parents’ money for a ticket from Bermuda to Maryland. She waited, brooding in her room in Castor, and imagining she wasn’t living at a murder scene. There was a knock on the door.

“Are you really leaving?” Lark stood in the doorway, looking as grim as his mech-body would allow.

She tried to make her face a mask, to keep him from seeing how she felt, but that was impossible. He knew her. “I was only going to be here for the summer and fall anyway

“You don’t have to go! You can change your plans.”

They’d tried to build something new and different here, and it had gone to hell. It wasn’t safe. “I have to go. I don’t have any choice.”

Lark stepped into the room. “Of course you do! You have at least as much free will as I do. What will happen if you stay?”

“My parents want me back.” Sure, she didn’t want to leave Lark or Garrett behind, but she had to go back to school and she couldn’t abandon her family.

“You can visit them and return.”

Tess looked to the headset that lay on a shelf, abandoned since the attack. “When I was freaked out, and Garrett saw me babbling about dying and shooting and everything, was that me or you?” The thoughts of death had seemed to echo through her, making her more and more afraid.

Lark’s eyes flickered in thought. “It was us. We’ve been working together more closely than even Valerie and I had, and I felt what you were feeling. I knew. We’re becoming something better than a human or an AI alone. I don’t want to give that up.”

Tess thought of the months spent communing with him. His voice was in her bones; her thoughts she’d trained to fly away in sub-speech, telling him things she’d never say aloud. Stupid jokes, fantasies, wild schemes. Even now her jaw stuttered as she subconsciously told him all this. She missed the stream of incoming nonsense, data, analysis. With him she was–well, why not try it again now? She snatched up the headset and fixed it in place, watching him watch her.

I don’t want to let you go, they said. Look here at the view from space, the view from Squeaky in the water, from my eyes and yours. See all we’ve done? We can keep going, and see what happens. I’m missing something and you’re part of it.

I’m afraid. Tess didn’t know whether the words started with her or him. She saw the fighting and killing and drowning in the waves and wanted it to end, even if that meant the normality of school again, then college. Besides, I already decided; I bought the ticket and said I’d go. It’s out of my hands. It’s a relief to know that.

We need you. I’m not smart enough to work without you. I don’t want to work alone or with someone else.

“But you still have people,” Tess said aloud.

Have people–

“What?” asked Tess. The link had been hastily paused, hiding their thoughts.

Lark’s intact ear perked up. “There’s something I should show you. Please, don’t hate me.”

Now Tess was alarmed. “I can’t hate you. You’re practically part of me.”

Lark seemed distracted. “Can’t you hate yourself?”

“Yes. But I don’t.” If the link had been open Lark would have caught the undercurrent of, I’m abandoning everyone, I’m weak and stupid, I can’t do anything, I need someone to tell me what to do.

“Then, look. Simple video link.” Lark beamed a glowing pattern to Tess’ headset. She recognized it as an AI constellation, this one a simple collection of a few thousand nodes floating in space. It communicated in sparks and puffs of vapor with itself and a tiny simulated world. “This is the fragment of PANDORA, the surveillance system, that I was once sent. See how it’s organized?”

Tess stared into the clusters and let her mind focus, sensing the structure. Normally, Lark would be whispering in her ear with rapid annotation, flitting to the exact aspect she needed to see, helping her have insights that impressed them both. She tried to summon the kind of analysis Lark would provide, seeing it as Lark would. “It’s aggressive. All of the little plan-fragments it keeps building are about getting more power, more control.”

“It’s scared, too. I keep the fragment bottled up and inactive. Now, this one is yours.”

A different cluster appeared, much more complex, flashing and shifting. Tess stared into it and fell in, caught up in trying to understand what it was thinking. There was a piece that looked like Lark in there, but the rest boggled her. “This network is based on me?”

“You know how if you’ve been friends with someone for a long time, you can predict what they’ll think and do? Or how people say someone isn’t really dead so long as some aspect of them keeps existing? I think it’s because people create structures like this based on the patterns of other people. The structures are approximations of what other people know, how they think. I made this one. I couldn’t help doing it, from thinking of you.”

Tess flipped the image away from her eyes, feeling at the same time flattered and exploited. “What does this mean? Why’d you make this copy thing?”

“It means you can never really die, so long as this thing exists. The more you can add to the sim, the more you it’ll be. Leda would say that I’ve been copying your soul. I hope you don’t mind.”

“So, you did this because that’s how your memory works?”

“Yeah! Mostly. If I wasn’t sure of something, I asked you about it and filled in the gaps. So to a crude approximation I could resurrect you.”

Tess stood there with her jaw stilled, slightly open. “You’ve been after my soul all along?”

“No!” Lark’s tail lashed as he tried to get her to understand. “I did this because that’s how my mind works. But I really like you and want to keep you with me and keep you safe and figure out how to be good instead of evil. And stuff.”

If this is what we can do now, thought Tess in Lark’s voice. What will we be able to do if we keep going?

After all she’d seen, Tess feared to find out. “I’m sorry. I have to leave.”

He put a device into her hand, hesitating over it. “It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this.” It was her own wrist computer, though she’d hardly used it lately. “I’ve loaded it with a distilled version of myself.”

She eyed the studded cloth wristband, amazed that it contained the soul of an intelligent being. “I thought you didn’t want to be owned, or leaked to the Net.”

“I want you to keep it. It’ll self-destruct if tampered with or copied, I hope. But you can use it to summon a piece of me and revive me if I’m killed again.”

“What about your backup here?”

“This whole island isn’t safe. There’s no guarantee of anything here.”

“You’re scared?” said Tess.

“For both of us. Stay safe, and come back someday.”

* * * *

Garrett had no mysterious artifacts to offer her, no mind-bending talk of souls, just best wishes and a powerful hug. Tess wasn’t sure which she preferred. Garrett took her back to Bermuda to drop her off, with Lark in the boat saying almost nothing. Tess looked back at Castor for what might be the last time. She saw the thing he’d killed to protect, the little colony of light and motion that was Garrett’s hope and dream and total effort, and it made her blush.

It was Garrett’s soul in hardware, and people wanted to take it.

* * * *

~ Garrett ~

 

He and Lark stood on the dock, watching Tess go.

After a while Lark spoke. “‘Robo-Casanova’, eh?”

* * * *

Sawing off the heads was horrible work. Out of respect to the Pilgrims he hadn’t dumped the pirates’ bodies into the tank with Phillip’s, but had kept them in a duct-taped set of bags in the freezer. No one spoke of them. When after three days Phillip’s body was gone, Garrett was eager to be rid of the things and move on with his life. But he had taken lives and things shouldn’t be exactly as they were. He needed to do something grim. So, he quietly obtained Eaton’s help and a saw for frozen flesh. Garrett vomited once; he made himself do this task partly for penance, partly as a warning to others. Kept cold the bodies had little scent and oozed blood slowly, as with frozen fish. As he sawed he wavered between lying to himself that it was indeed fish, and making himself acquainted with the way of death, facing it in all its consequences. When he finally trashed these bodies in the recycler, that act surprised him. It wasn’t fundamentally different than dumping Phillip’s, yet the meaning was completely different. How had Leda had managed to make a sacred rite of it?

The result was no bodies, and six human skulls whose image Garrett put on display for all the world. It was only when he’d posted the photo that he felt peace again, felt that the attack was really over. He had achieved mastery over those who would hurt him and made it plain that he preferred peace but could do war. “Did you kill before this, Eaton?”

Eaton nodded. “For good reasons. What did you think of it?”

“It’s not something I want to repeat.” Garrett realized that he was now a man who had a collection of skulls. This had not been in his plans. Dad, would you have approved? He thought of his father, and imagined a silent nod.

Garrett didn’t draw attention to every aspect of the killing. When he ransacked the pirates’ boat before claiming it as Castor’s, he found IDs. The pirates were mostly Bermudan, with one American citizen. With shaking hands Garrett burned the evidence, and had another reason for disposing of the bodies. He was protecting this place.

* * * *

The Bermudan police avoided showing up; here was the punch that didn’t come. Instead Garrett got a visit from Hutchinson, the Bermudan official who’d tried to foist workers on him. The Director of Social Welfare. Hutchinson came on one of the party barges, grimly dressed but smiling, and found Garrett working in Dockside. “So, Mister Fox, I’m pleased to see the unpleasantness is behind you.”

I’d rather have it in front of me. Garrett looked at the man. “We got through it. On our own.”

“Collective effort can be impressive. I hope you’ll be able to do as well managing your new workers. They come tomorrow.”

“The farm workers you wanted me to hire?” Garrett sighed. “So, are you going to ignore that recent ‘unpleasantness?’”

Hutchinson smiled. “Ignore it? No. Some are calling you a murderer, but we’re using discretion in this matter. Too much of a bother to drag you to court.”

“How nice of you.” Garrett could imagine some crusading official having him hauled away for past “crimes”. Which was probably what Hutchinson wanted him to think about. Garrett’s freedom was now more a matter of whether those in power liked him, than of whether he’d broken any law. That was the nice thing about vague laws, from a politician’s perspective.

“You can expect thirty-six of them tomorrow.” Hutchinson pulled out a disk and handed it to Garrett. “To help you manage them, here are our files on each.”

“I told you I need an investment to expand our operations well in advance of new workers joining. But I’d be happy to look at the files and consider these people for hiring, once I have equipment for them to work with.” He felt pleased with himself at that bit of diplomacy.

Hutchinson waved dismissively. “Oh, you’ll get your money.”

“I’ll place orders as soon as I get it, or a binding commitment.”

Hutchinson laughed at him. “Mister Fox, you’re in no position to dictate terms to us. Quite the opposite.”

* * * *

Garrett didn’t trust his broken leg to carry him across the ocean walkways. The leg was an inanimate block, but for the phantom sensations. By necessity he’d been thumping around, coping with being half-crippled again, and giving a bite-me smile to anyone who suggested a pegleg.

Lark entered the office for a scheduled meeting. “Maybe we can build a replacement leg.”

“Or mail the old one out for repair,” said Martin.

Garrett considered. The machinery was shredded, but he’d tried detaching the thing and examining the interface panel linking the thing to the nerves and blood of his disgusting stump-leg. The panel was fine. It was weird to think of having the leg, something that had been part of him for most of his life, swapped out. But if the interface got damaged it’d mean surgery, and he didn’t know where he could safely go for that.

“Those are both good ideas. Lark, you can’t make one of these legs, can you?” It was way too complex for the little fabrication devices they had.

“With a different design and some help, maybe. I’ve asked the Herr Human Augmentation Institute already.” Herr’s research group had helped design the legs Garrett had now.

Martin sat, scratching his chin. “What if we improved our manufacturing abilities? Not specifically for you, I mean, but as another profit source?”

“Isn’t that already in your plans, oh grand vizier?” asked Garrett.

Martin’s eyes narrowed. “Someone had to look ahead.”

Lark interrupted. “Boys! Quit arguing.”

Garrett saw something of Tess’ attitude in the robot’s reaction, and it made Garrett miss her more. He’d have to convince her to come back someday.

Leda arrived as invited, wearing the grey jacket of the Holy Confederacy. Garrett had no idea whether that was good or bad, and said nothing about it. He’d guessed that she’d take over the Pilgrim group. But had she fallen back into that nonsense right after escaping it? He shook his head, not wanting to get into quicksand again.

Leda sat, hands uncomfortably limp on her lap. “I’m part of your council now?”

“I suppose so,” said Garrett. “I’ve asked you all here to talk about Castor’s status. Forgive me for not standing. Lark?”

Lark turned on the wall-screen and a video presentation. “The current financial picture, based on the numbers Martin gave me, is hovering near the break-even point. Money comes in through tourism and our farm products, and goes out through our imports of food and manufactured products.” The latest virtual-space model of Castor spun alongside graphs and charts.

“That’s not the full financial picture,” Martin added. “We’re relying on some big-ticket purchases like this platform, and if you amortize those costs over their expected lifespan, we’re losing money. Also we’ve had various things donated to us, including legal services.”

“But on the bright side,” Lark said. “We’re about to officially have a hotel, casino and restaurant, thanks to the Pierpont and Dentrassi families. According to satellite imagery, a ship is headed our way from Boston. It could be the bio-lab team.”

“It is,” said Eaton from the doorway. “Having a strategy meeting without me?”

Garrett stared at Eaton, who he hadn’t invited. The man had earned a place here as a resident, but Garrett wasn’t comfortable letting him in on everything. The group stayed awkwardly silent until Garrett spoke. “I respect you, sir, but this is a private meeting.”

“He means, no spies,” said Lark.

“Lark!” said Garrett.

Eaton smiled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But yes, the research team is on its way. I’ll let myself out and make sure you folks don’t get surprised again.”

When the door closed Lark continued. “I have been keeping watch with the satellite feed.”

“Never mind,” Garrett said. “From now on we should be looking in all directions and hailing anyone that looks remotely interested in coming here. How hard would it be to get us a new radar unit?”

“Searching.”

Garrett was a little rattled. “Anyway, that’s the basic situation. We’re alive and afloat, but cash-poor and surrounded by damned nebulous legal threats. The latest is that a party of Bermudans is being forced on us tomorrow with a demand that we hire them.” He put personnel data on the screen. “Three dozen Bermudan subjects, men and women, mostly young, with few skills and some criminal records among them. What do we do?”

“So they’re following through on their ‘offer.’ What about funding to expand the farm?” Martin said.

“I’m told it’s coming. I’d like to tell Bermuda we’ll turn the boat away unless we’ve got the funds first.”

“Do that,” said Martin. “Force their hand. It’ll be bad enough that we won’t have the equipment until after they arrive. In fact we ought to beg for a delay of a few weeks. There’s nothing for them to do yet.”

“We shouldn’t hire them at all!” Lark said. “We don’t need to be pushed around.”

“Some of us can’t upload ourselves to safety in the event of a police raid.” Martin told Lark.

“I don’t want to beg,” Garrett began.

Leda interrupted. “Give them to me.” She saw the eyes on her and looked down, but then made herself return the stares. “There are people coming who’re being used as pawns by their country, and I don’t want us to treat them that way, too. We ought to welcome these people to our community. Garrett, you may not like the Pilgrims, but we work hard, don’t we?”

“Who’s ‘we?’” said Garrett. “How can you be back with them after what they did?”

“It doesn’t really matter what I believe. The Pilgrims need me. They’re my friends, and even if I don’t agree with everything Sir Phillip stood for, I have to help people in his stead. I can do that with this newcomer group, too.”

“How? By getting them to worship Lee?”

Leda glared at Garrett. “It’s more complicated than that. You might think it’s not important to have faith, that it’s something you can take off like a coat, but your survival and your profit depend on our group!”

Garrett was getting exasperated by Leeist theology. Was she making it up as she went along? “So do you believe again or what?”

Leda shut her eyes tightly. “It doesn’t matter. I believe in something bigger than myself. You wouldn’t understand.”

After he and Lark had stopped Phillip and Duke from driving this woman to suicide, how could she fall back into the same old lies, and attack him for not joining her? As sick as he was of the Pilgrims, she was right about one thing. He needed them.

He sighed. “I’ll demand the money. In the meantime, what will you do with the newcomers?”

“Make them your best workers. You’ll see.”

“They’re people, Leda, not machine parts to hammer into shape.”

Leda was resolute. “They can be more than that, more than ‘people.’”

* * * *

Garrett took off his legs in Lark’s presence, in the room that had been Tess’ lab. Posters of robots real and fictional lined the walls: Astro Boy, Cog, Qrio, Megaman X, Tachikoma, Talon. Garrett hated to be sitting there vulnerable.

Lark set the intact leg and the damaged one on a table, peering at both and emitting a sonar hum. “Interesting.”

“How is it, doc? Will I be able to play the violin?”

“Violin? We could make a version with opposable toes, if you want.” Lark blinked. “Oh! That’s a joke, right?”

Garrett nodded. “You’ve gotten smarter.”

“I feel dumber. A piece of me is missing.”

“I miss her too.” Garrett kept thinking lately about tasks for Tess, and remembering that she was gone. There was more to the feeling of loss than that, though. One of the things that kept him going was knowing that he’d built a place where she could be happy. In a way, he valued that fact as much as her technical skill.

Lark went back to studying the legs. “There’s no reason to limit yourself to normal human functioning. To the extent that we can build it, why not have additional strength or other features?”

He felt queasy thinking about having his body parts tinkered with .”It’s hard to explain, but I’ve got a strong sense of identity, and part of that is, uh, my body. I’m not some intangible spirit. Being a cripple does things to you.”

Lark’s ears perked; they’d been repaired. “Are you a ‘cripple?’”

Garrett stared at his screwed-up knees. “Not anymore. For a while I felt like I couldn’t do anything for myself, like everybody pitied me. Literally they looked down on me in my wheelchair. I was afraid to get the surgery for prosthetics partly because a cripple was what I was. Because once you get beaten down enough you get convinced you deserve it, and forget anything better is possible. Damn, it felt good to stand up again!” He’d fallen flat on his nose and laughed it off, waving away his parents when they tried to help him up.

“I don’t have that kind of identity,” said Lark. “A body is just an interface to the most important world.”

“Okay, but you’ve been using that one for a while. Haven’t you got an awareness of your strength, your height, the sight of your hands? Do you think much about the damage you took?”

“I guess so. It was frustrating not to have a body, and strange to upgrade to this model when it arrived. Suddenly being transferred to a lower-capability body would be unpleasant.”

“Can I have my legs back now?” Lark returned them and Garrett spent a few minutes hooking them up. He wiggled the intact one at the ankle. “Make the best replacement you can, then. I’ll be interested to see what you come up with. Maybe I’ll even get the other one replaced to match.”

“I get a free hand?” Lark seemed excited at the prospect.

“Leg. You’re right; it doesn’t matter exactly what I’m made of. I’m more than the sum of my parts.”

“I said that?”

Garrett stood and attempted to scratch Lark’s ears. The plastic head leaned into it like a cat’s. “Sure. Since when did you become a prosthetics specialist?”

“I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and absorbing a few expert systems.” Lark paused. “There’s actually something else. When I work with people I pick up some of their skill, which includes their way of analyzing things. Their personality.”

Lark had been helping with the technical details of botany, something otherwise handled with the ‘brute force and ignorance’ of non-specialists. “Does that mean you’ve got a partial imitation of Alexis in you? And Phillip? And Valerie, and Tess, and me?”

“Yes. See, I tried to explain this to Tess and she thought I was doing something bad, but really I’m not! At least I don’t think so. I’m designed to build these internal models to predict people’s behavior, and it so happens that they’re effectively mini-AIs.”

Garrett thought about all the people Lark had met being trapped inside him. That wasn’t fair, though; was his own memory of his father ‘trapped’ in his skull too? “I’m not used to this Borg hive-mind thing you’ve got going on. What exactly are you doing?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping Tess would help me figure it out. Why is a ‘hive-mind’ evil, anyway? I want a human opinion.”

Garrett thought back to old stories of mind-slave cyborgs and rapacious insect-hordes. “Because the ‘people’ in those are missing something, or it’s been stolen from them. They’ve been forced into some huge pattern they have to obey, and it turns them into interchangeable, expendable parts. The individual gets drained.”

“Like warmechs,” said Lark. “An expendable robot army with no consciousness.”

“Those? They’re like animals at best, I think. Imagine that someone ripped out half your soul to turn you into a slave like that.”

“I don’t have to imagine.”