That night, I went for a walk. I told Dinar I was going out for recognizable food; that was true, as was the apologetic admission that I wanted time to think on my own. So much truth, yet still not enough.
Cities are stranger when you’re alone, and more so without a decent map overlay. Someone on the network had found an old one—out-of-date in terms of what was in each building, but stable enough that I wasn’t likely to lose the hotel. But I couldn’t tell what lay ahead beyond my own scope of vision. Scarcely thinking about it, I responded to my uncertainty by adding senses: soles passing texture to my skin, chemical signatures dancing over my lenses, magnetic fields humming against my back. I could call up historical temperatures at the fenceline and see the number of records set each year—finally starting to go down, though still far too high. Asterion’s original well-heeled refugees had fought against even that much progress. Somewhere amid the bowels of Morlock Central, there doubtless remained air-conditioned shelters packed with freeze-dried food, hoards enough to fill the old age of exiled dragons.
This vibrant street was a miracle that its creators never expected. The balmy autumn night, the breeze whispering hints from the ocean, the rapid-fire rhythm of busking drummers, the smell of roasting onions, sang of a world they’d given up on. A world they might still give up, for power or advantage or some remnant ideal of eternal growth.
I started watching the people. Out here, away from the parties, they wore everything from the most glammed-up high fashion to what was probably the corporate equivalent of pajamas, gussied up with a token feather scarf or poof of skirt. A few wore dramatic pattern-shifting makeup to mask their expressions, but most were as readable as anyone on the streets of DC. And as varied. They strolled together laughing, or rushed head down, or wandered as befuddled as me, caught up by internal conflicts totally unrelated to my own maundering. Except that whatever was obsessing them could be drastically disrupted by any break in their network. As I damn well knew from my own experience.
It was stupid to keep obsessing over whether releasing the bot was the right thing to do. I’d basically decided when Jace made his slip, and now I was trying to make myself feel better about it. At that, I was failing. Mom was right that I wasn’t much of an activist. I couldn’t make the hard thing easy.
So I let it be hard. I promised myself a few minutes to walk around and see Asterion’s people as people, without trying to do anything else, before I hurt them. Some of these people, these real people, had been willing to do the same to the networks. It was the sort of thing that real people did.
Belatedly, I checked that my livestream was off, given that I was ostensibly done with diplomacy for the day. I bought the quail kabob I’d been craving, using a sliver of the credit built up by people like Dinar. This time I talked to the cartminder myself, the same way I would to someone selling goods at home. I asked what was in the marinade.
The cartminder laughed. “Everything! Fish sauce and soy and honey and a little five-spice and fennel, plus a couple other things. Can’t share trade secrets, you know.” But they gave me a free cone of pilaf along with the quail. When I asked where the quail came from they seemed bemused, but mentioned a nearby rooftop rookery that also raised pigeons (which they called squab) and some odd variety of duck.
I found a bench, tasted the quail. The crackling skin was sweet and spicy, the meat tender beneath. The pilaf was rich with saffron. I alternated bites, keeping myself from growing too accustomed to either. I watched people, trying not to imagine their lives—to focus, instead, on the fact that they had lives that I didn’t know, wouldn’t have a chance to question.
At home, it would be morning. I texted Carol. I miss you.
Seconds passed while relays passed the message around the world. Miss you too. You okay over there?
Just a little disoriented, I said. I hated not knowing if the line was secure, if our protocols could still be trusted. You’re going to do that to them. And yeah, I was. Tell me what’s going on at home?
Dori’s being a complete fuss. She misses you too. Raven keeps asking where you are and trying to help with my knitting. But Rhamnetin is great with them, even though it weirds him out that he gets to play with kids. He’s getting deep into the network boards. He’ll just show up on a random thread about wind kite design and ask questions.
I laughed. I wish I had him here to ask questions.
This is gonna sound weird, but I’m getting to really like him.
What’s weird? He’s likeable. I blinked. Oh. Like him. I … can kinda see that, actually. I thought about the way I wanted Carol here, and the way I wanted Rhamnetin. How they both felt like people who could get my thoughts to settle in rows. Yeah, I can definitely see that. I’m not quite sure how it would work.
I guess “are you ever attracted to people with heads” counts as an awkward question, yeah?
But maybe we should ask it? At least I was distracted. They probably have all sorts of customs around interspecies dating, unless they’re entirely against it.
I’ll wait till you get back, she texted.
Something to look forward to.
I thought about texting Rhamnetin, but it seemed too weird, and I was even less sure what to say than I would’ve been a few minutes earlier. I needed to stay focused, now, on what I was doing. I’d never been much for the part where you obsess over a relationship that hasn’t started yet and might not happen at all—but in a few hours, it might be awfully convenient.
Okay. Deep breaths. Inhale. Exhale. Focus.
I’d thought deeply about the morality of using the bot, but only a little about the practicalities. I needed someplace less crowded, for a start. I found a reclamation point for the cone and the kabob skewer, licked the last of the quail grease off my fingers, and started walking again.
The rooftop gardens might be designed for assignations, but at street level Zealand had a distinct lack of quiet nooks. I wondered if I should wait. Sometime before we left, I might find the perfect spot. Or I might keep looking until we got back on the shuttle, reassuring myself that I’d never found exactly the right opportunity.
So I kept going, scanning for anything that might be scanning me. I needed to avoid both human and automated observation. Then I thought of the ansible site. It had been wide open, half-deserted—and best of all, full of networked drains. I didn’t much like the idea of dropping a random object into a drain, but it wouldn’t cause much of a blip on a chemical scan, it wouldn’t be easy to find, and my fingerprints and DNA would get washed away. Not to mention that I had at least a vague excuse to be there. Any network observer would want to look at the site, maybe take more readings and try to find something wrong with it that hadn’t come up yet. Hell, I could do that part while I was at it.
Assuming I could get there. Whichever corporate lord had founded Zealand, it hadn’t been one of those obsessed with public transit. The city ran on an amalgamation of buses and smaller rides, schedule and direction unclear to anyone not on their network. As I tried to attract one, I realized that I had worse problems. The whole time we’d been here, Asterion’s reps had ordered and directed the rides. I couldn’t get any of the transit options to notice me. I could either walk across the aisland, or ask to see the site again tomorrow and hope to catch everyone with their backs turned.
Once you decide to do the hard thing, you shouldn’t have this much trouble actually doing it.
“Need a hand with network translation?”
I whipped around—too fast, too surprised, too guilty-looking. Tiffany glowered over crossed arms. I tried to recover some semblance of aplomb. “I was hoping to get back out to the ansible site, look it over with fewer people around. But yeah, I can’t get a ride. If you can help, I’d be grateful.” Tha must have been tracking me. I’d done my best to avoid suspicious behavior—but if I’d succeeded, why was tha here?
Tiffany did something on thos palette, looking amused, and in a minute a small private ride pulled over. This one was trolley-style, with benches around the edges and grab rails and straps throughout. I hesitated over the greater ease and vulnerability of sitting, but gave in on the theory that I might still salvage something by acting innocent. Tiffany sat opposite me, still glaring—of course, earlier experience suggested that tha wasn’t exactly friendly by default.
“You want to take readings, huh?” tha said.
I shrugged. “It’s what we do. I didn’t get much chance earlier.”
Tha took a deep breath. Under the narrowed eyes and open distrust, tha was nervous.
“Show me what you’ve got in your pocket,” tha said.
My own breath seemed to stick in my lungs. “My … pocket?”
“I understand that it’s one of the things you value in clothing.”
“No, I mean—” There was probably little point in dissembling, but still I pulled out my palette and the pack of nursing shields that I’d been carrying everywhere. I probably should have pumped before I left, an ache that now twisted itself hard into my awareness, physical discomfort to match the social.
Tiffany hunched, clenching fists against thos armpits. “You’ve got something in your pocket that violates dandelion network protocols. I scrolled back through our scans, and you’ve had it since you got here. I’ve already warned Adrien, and if anything happens to me hoi’ll tell more people. Let me see the blasted thing.”
I could see the tremor tha held thonself so tightly around. It wasn’t only Ringers who’d think me the villain of the piece. In the aislands the watersheds were the boogeyman. I might be able to intimidate Tiffany, even bluff my way out of this—if I were any good at playing the bad guy. But I was even less practiced in acting than in diplomacy. I fell back on my own anger, the reason I was doing this in the first place. “Last week the dandelion networks collapsed, and it took us days to restore them. Tell me—did you code the malware? Is that your ‘translation’ project?”
Tha hunched farther. “I haven’t done anything to you. I just work on code compatibility issues.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Tha straightened, forcing thons hands down with visible effort. “You haven’t answered mine, either. You’re the one who’s sneaking weaponized code around Zealand. You’ve come up with this, this story about what we did to you, because your stupid network protocol is unstable, and now you’re trying to take revenge for what you imagined. Give me that thing, or Adrien will go to the board and they’ll make you. And hoi’ll tell the Ringers what you snuck on their shuttle, too.”
The ride rolled smoothly onward—probably not toward the ansible site. I had no idea where Tiffany was taking me.
“The hell our protocols are unstable,” I said. “They’ve worked without a major crash for decades. Suddenly they all fail at once during the most critical decision point in my lifetime? That’d be obvious bullshit even if Jace—” Di Sanya, obre, my mesh helpfully supplied when I stumbled on the name and last known presentation. “Di Sanya hadn’t practically boasted about it at the opening reception.”
Thos eyes snapped open. “What the fuck did di Sanya say to you?”
“Enough,” I said. “He was very smug about how good our crash would be for the corporations.”
Tiffany grimaced. “Di Sanya would be smug about anything that gave him an advantage, whether or not he was responsible. He’d gloat if you got hit with a cyclone, too.”
“I got that. I also gathered that if he could control the weather, he’d start a cyclone for a few dollars’ profit. Network crashes seem more feasible—especially with someone with your skills working for him.”
I caught the wince, enough to tell me I wasn’t completely off base. But of course I wasn’t streaming, and a wince wouldn’t carry much weight against the thing in my pocket. Tiffany could dance around thos responsibility all day; mine was plain. The moment passed.
“Look,” Tiffany said. “You don’t want an open accusation of tampering. You need the Ringers’ trust, and the Chesapeake needs the trust of the other networks—they don’t want an open accusation either. Someone like di Sanya would be glad to hurt you that badly, but what Adrien and I need is a lot smaller.”
“And what’s that?” I asked.
“For now, you give me that device in your pocket. We go back to Morlock Central and meet Adrien. I’ll scan the thing—if it turns out to be a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Feast Food, I’ll apologize and owe you a major favor. If it’s what it looks like, I’ll document and disable it, and you and Adrien will talk about what hoi wants out of this whole business, which is probably something to support that promotion hoi’s after, and a chance to move out of the intern dorms and set up a household. And we’ll talk about what I want, which is personal.”
I swallowed. I tried to think of a way out—but I did have the incriminating thing in my pocket, and I didn’t want to talk about it with Jace di Sanya, or with Kelsey and Mallory. I was going to have words with Aunt Priya about not including a wipe switch on the bot.
“Fine,” I said. “We’ll go back. You, me, and Adrien can work this out.”
The Morlock office was empty now. Lights flickered on. The grand sweep of the window showed a panoramic view of darkness, fading to city-glow above.
Tiffany stuck the bot in some sort of scanner, began running tests. I looked out the window so I wouldn’t have to look anywhere else, but turned when I heard the door open. Adrien came in—with Dinar.
“What are you doing here?” It was a stupid thing to say, but I couldn’t think of anything smart.
“Adrien came by the room,” said Dinar. “Hoi said you were in trouble. Judy, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?”
I didn’t answer, and Adrien pulled up a chair beside Tiffany. Around the room, I spotted sensors turning toward me, watching even while the humans’ backs were turned. “What’ve you got?”
“There’s only so much I can figure out without triggering the nasty little bug, but it’s definitely designed to connect with our systems. I think it’s meant to set up some sort of back door.”
My cheeks burned. “It’s defensive,” I said, even though I wasn’t confident in any such thing. “I told you, we know damn well where the malware came from.”
“And this is how we’re going to lay the accusation?” demanded Dinar.
“We’ve got evidence.”
Adrien spun hos chair around. “Not nearly as much as we do. This thing violates any number of contracts, and it’s right here in hard copy.” Hoi leaned forward. “So let’s talk about how we’re going to get you out of this mess.”
I noticed belatedly that Adrien had changed sometime in the last couple of hours. The leather suit had the stiffness I associated with something too new or too little used, and ornate metallic detailing around the hem and collar that reminded me somehow of Jace. “Let me guess, this is your special-occasions-only blackmail outfit?”
“After a fashion. That’s certainly one of the moves available for obre—a conversation like this deserves us both playing at the highest level, don’t you think?” Hoi—he—ran his hand across the leather suit, unabashed. “So let’s play.”
Everything really was a game to these people. I remembered what Adrien had said about the obre role: No one’s going to hold back. Unless you’re really good, you’re likely to get eaten alive.
He leaned forward, intent. “There are plenty of people who’d like to see the watershed networks made irrelevant. Like you tried to do to us. But you never did manage it, and it wouldn’t work against your people, either. At best you’d just become another set of old kings, casting your shadow over our work. What my bosses want is for the networks to treat us like a real power again. You can help.”
Still too vague. “I don’t shape the watersheds’ attitudes. No one person does. What action will satisfy you?”
Adrien’s hands sketched the air. “The Ringers are leaning against the Zealand site. It was a long shot to begin with, so far from their ship. And the ocean scares them.”
Dinar smiled faintly. “They’re not used to weather.”
“Exactly. But they could use Asterion’s experience in large-scale construction. So by the time everyone goes home from Zealand, you’ll agree to our full involvement in the coalition building the antenna. First contact isn’t something the networks get to do alone—you’ll make us part of the conversation again.”
It almost sounded reasonable. And yet I could follow the logical steps: their influence on the ansible site, their presence when the rest of the Ringers arrived, their weight in the negotiations over whether humanity got to stay on Earth. And between the watersheds, who’d poured so much work into keeping this world our own, and the corporations, who’d sacrificed so much of the world to keep growing, it wasn’t hard to guess who’d gain the Ringers’ sympathy. “It’s not the conversation over the ansible that you care about. It’s the power you’d gain if Earth’s survival wasn’t a concern.”
Adrien shrugged. “Humanity can do better than one little world. Some people might even say the world is holding us back.”
“Some people,” I said. “Do you feel that way?”
He shrugged again. “I’m only an intern; how I feel doesn’t matter. For now.”
My fear of his blackmail was momentarily overwhelmed by fury at this dismissal. “You don’t care what happens to the planet, do you, as long as you get your promotion? Don’t you want power for something?”
Tiffany glanced away from thos scan, one hand still playing idly on the old-fashioned keypad. “You want Mx. Wallach-Stevens to play the game, you should probably explain the sides.”
“I thought I had,” said Adrien.
Tiffany huffed. “Some people around here just like the dances and the hustle for status. They’re happy enough with the stakes low. But others have been talking about what the Ringers can disrupt. People like Jace di Sanya, they see a chance to go back to the twentieth century and start rebuilding where we left off. They believe our destiny is in the stars, even if we have to launch from the ashes of a world. Don’t smirk like that, Adrien, I’ve heard thon say it. And what these people want to know—and so do I, frankly—is whether, when you make associate, you’ll go along with Jace.”
Adrien sighed. “As it happens, I think Jace di Sanya has a very poetic attitude toward business decisions. It’s not my responsibility to stop him from burning things, but personally I think the problem with the corporate age was that we tried to have it here. It’s obvious that our ideas were made for space. You could have mines the size of planets and skyscrapers the size of stars, and extract resources for centuries without breaking the systems you’re extracting from. The networks can keep Earth—it’ll be a backwater, but they can have it. We’ll take the rest of the universe in trade.”
“Poetic,” said Tiffany sardonically.
I got up and paced. I itched to pick up one of the fidgets lying around the room, just to have something to do with my hands, but it seemed impolitic.
“You don’t like us holding power anywhere,” said Adrien. “You only want this world, but you don’t want us to have anything else, either. You’re as bad as everyone says.” There was fury in his voice, slipping from its bonds and then reined back in. “It doesn’t matter. You can’t let the Ringers see the networks as potential saboteurs, and I’m offering an alternative. You bring us all the way into the work of interplanetary relations, starting with the ansible. And your mistake never leaves this room.”
I could see Dinar’s anger, the tension lining her face. The way her arm hung a little too loose, as if she weren’t letting nerve signals through. She could easily guess that others outside the room were complicit, and must wonder why she’d been caught unawares.
“We haven’t talked about what I get from this,” said Tiffany abruptly.
“It can’t wait a minute?” asked Adrien.
Tiffany ignored him. “It’s simple enough. When we send our reps out to help with the antenna, Brend and I want to go along.”
That startled me, but it shocked Adrien out of his act. “Brend? Why? E’s a techie. E designs clothing. E doesn’t want to talk to a bunch of random outsiders about communications equipment.”
“You have no idea what e wants. I want to settle down with a household—same as you—but not until e’s gotten a look at life outside the fenceline, and decided e really wants to be here.” Tha cocked thos head at me and Dinar. “You’d like that, right? A chance to argue with someone who doesn’t fit so smoothly into our games? Easiest if you think of the whole thing that way—every corporate player who comes out to the Chesapeake is a potential convert, after all.”
“You don’t need to play these games to visit the watersheds,” Dinar pointed out. “If you want to try things our way, all you need to do is ask.”
“Sure. As long as we don’t mind pissing off our bosses and taking whatever terms you stick us with. I’d rather set my own—and have Associate Adrien owe us a favor or two when we get back.”
Judging by Adrien’s grimace, he didn’t like that part all that much, but he didn’t argue. “What about it?” he asked me. “Do we have a deal?”
I wished I could see another way. “If you want to call it that.” And we shook hands, palms tacky with sweat in the cool office.