Emissaries from the Dead

8. OZ

I’d expected to find all three of my guides waiting for me upon my ejection from the Interface, but instead found Oscin Porrinyard standing vigil alone.

The vestibule was a small chamber, similar to but quite distinct from the one I’d entered. The gravity was light, the air cold and marked with unfamiliar scents. The curved walls were alive with shifting lights, the ground spongy. The far end of the chamber narrowed, becoming a corridor that curved to the left. Though presumably built for AIsource use, its shape still seemed too conveniently scaled to human dimensions. I thought stage setting before a wave of weakness overcame me.

Oscin immediately seized my arms and guided me as I sank to the soft plastiform floor. I almost protested Oscin’s hands on my person, the way I’d protested Gibb’s, but the shock made it a medical necessity. So I said nothing as he eased me back against the nearest solid wall, which adjusted at the moment it felt my weight, becoming a soft, supportive cushion. Its touch felt disturbingly intimate, almost invasive, but I was not up to protesting.

Unseen Demons, they’d said.

I must have spoken those words to myself ten thousand times in the year since they’d become my personal mission. They’d roused me from despair, from apathy, from the feeling that nothing I could do would ever redeem what I’d done.

They’d given me a reason for living.

But I’d only shared them with one other human being, and he was dead.

The diplomatic crisis on Catarkhus, one year earlier, had involved several alien governments in a wrangle over the proper venue to try a disturbed human being named Emil Sandburg, who had admitted to murdering a number of the indigenes.

All the established protocols of interspecies law had argued for Sandburg to be tried by the locals, but the Catarkhans, while sentient, were nevertheless so closed to the universe that the rest of us lived in that they were incapable of even understanding that crimes of any kind had been committed against them. Blind, deaf, and unable to sense us in any way, they weren’t even aware of our presence. To them, the visiting humans, Riirgaans, Tchi, and Bursteeni delegations were just invisible, intangible presences whose influence on their lives was neither felt nor suspected.

In short: Unseen Demons.

The phrase had come up more than once during my investigation. It was a convenient metaphor, an elegant description of what walking among the Catarkhans had felt like.

But even as I’d worked out the compromise that had allowed Sandburg to be remanded into human custody, the greater implications of the case had haunted me.

Following the celebrations, I’d stood before the broken Sandburg, in the cell where he’d been awaiting extradition, and faced him as an equal: one Monster to another. Why not? My opponents in the case had already sullied me with the crimes I’d committed on Bocai; he knew what I was, and understood that I was just as guilty as he.

It made him the only available audience for the conviction that had struck me, in the course of my investigation.

I’d stood before him and said, There’s one other thing I want to share with you, Bondsman. It has to do with what happened at Bocai.

I still hated saying the name of the world where I’d been born.

Bocai had been home to an unremarkable sentient race, too comfortable with themselves to compete with Riirgaans and Hom. Saps and the rest of that sick, motley crew in the game of who got to rule more squares of the vast, celestial chessboard. They had ventured into space, found it not to their liking, dismantled their space program, and moved back home, happy enough to play genial host when offworlders dropped by to enjoy the feel of soil beneath our shoes.

They were even happier to oblige when a small colony of human academics, including my parents, wanted to lease an island where they, and a group of equally curious Bocaians, could experiment with raising their children side by side. The point of this remains murky to me, despite years of poring through the papers and correspondence both sides left behind. As near as I can determine, it was just a shallow utopian gesture, designed to prove once and for all the oft-discredited truism that we’re all the same beneath the skin.

There was no reason the mere attempt should have done any harm. After all, while Hom. Saps and Bocaians were the end-products of two completely unconnected evolutionary processes, they still seemed to have more in common than not: both species were omnivorous, mammalian four-limbed bipeds, both had two sexes, both had binocular vision, both indulged in things like art and music and fiction, both tended toward tribal family structures, and both were capable of metabolizing the same foods, separated only by a few differences in ideal diet. It was even easy to mistake one species for the other, at least in the dark.

The differences, like the greater hairiness of human beings and the greater prominence of the Bocaian eye, were so minor that some of the diaries left behind, by the human adolescents of the colony, confessed sexual attraction to adolescents of the Bocai. Actual coitus was so impossible that the mere thought was ludicrous, as the evolutionary parallels had stopped short of providing compatible genitalia. But the attraction existed, and testified that by all surface criteria, human beings and Bocai were able to see each other as slightly more exotic versions of their own kind. That illusion was the whole reason it seemed so natural for the Hom. Saps and the Bocai to exist in the same community, to join each other’s families, to call each other cousins, and help raise each other’s children.

Which is why I’d had two sets of siblings, one human and one not. I’d had two names, one human and one not. I’d lived in two worlds, one human and one not.

I’d doted on my Vaafir, the Bocaian equivalent of a father. I’d slept in the home of my Bocaian family as much as I’d slept in the home of my biological parents.

I had been three years old before I fully understood why there were two completely different kinds of people, four before I was even sure which kind I belonged to.

I was eight on the night everybody became monsters and slaughtered each other.

I had never even come close to making sense of that night’s carnage until the day on Catarkhus when I stood before the murderer Emil Sandburg, who had tortured and murdered six sentients for no reason beyond sheer frustration at their inability to see or hear him.

The cell was monitored, but I’d activated a hiss screen to flood the listening devices with noise.

I said, What makes us think we’re better off?

He looked past me, through me, through even the walls of his cell, seeing not the shape of his cage but the shape of the idea that was forming. His lips twitched, the look of a man fed an exotic treat who was trying to decide whether he liked it.

Maybe, I said, it’s the kind of idea you have to be crazy to imagine. Maybe it’s the kind of idea you can only believe if you’re desperate for some kind of absolution. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea, just an old one we thought we could safely outgrow. Maybe the Unseen Demons who we used to believe influenced all our worst impulses really do exist, and we were only wrong about what they were and where they came from. Maybe they come from all around us, and we’re just not equipped to notice them. Maybe that frustrates them so much they get even by pulling our strings. I took such a deep breath that the rest of my words emerged in a semi-hysterical shudder: Maybe one was with me on Bocai. Maybe one was with you, here.

From this moment on, I said, my life’s about finding out, one way or the other.

And if I do find them, I’m going to make damn sure they’re properly judged.

I’d never shared my theory with anybody else.

Sandburg could not have done much with the knowledge, as he’d lasted less than four weeks in his penal colony before being murdered by another inmate.

In that time, the mantra Unseen Demons had become a reminder to myself. Something I’d muttered aloud, whenever I’d needed reminding that I couldn’t allow myself to be beaten.

As far as I knew, nobody had overheard me. The hiss screen I’d used during that last meeting was state-of-the-art tech, which shouldn’t have been beatable by anybody.

But the AIsource had been listening.

By the time this is done, you will meet your Unseen Demons.

What was that? A threat? A warning?

Or worse?

A confession?

Without Skye beside him, Oscin looked like any other man. The only indication of a consciousness larger than his own was a certain distracted quality, as if he was splitting attention between me and another equally pressing problem. But his lips had curled into a smile other people might have found reassuring.

I murmured, “Where’s your other half?”

“Why, Counselor? Would you be more comfortable with her?”

“I don’t need to be comfortable. I’m just surprised to see the two of you apart.”

His next smile came complete with closed eyes. “My components are never apart, Counselor, but we don’t necessarily have to be physically next to each other in order to be together. We can undertake separate conversations with separate people, or act in concert a million kilometers apart. Right now, Skye is being quite charming with Mr. Lastogne. I promise, they’ll be back soon.”

“Where are they?”

Oscin saw my suspicion. “It’s just a routine break, Counselor. We didn’t know how long the AIsource would keep you. For all we knew, you might not have come out of there until after the suns turned off, tonight. In the meantime, Mr. Lastogne needed to stretch his legs, and Skye, being my usual delightful self, offered to go with him. That body has much more luck exercising charisma, I’m afraid.” He unclipped a canteen from his belt, curled his lips around a gentle sip, then offered it to me. “Would you like some water? A buzzpatch?”

“No.”

A vague disappointment darkened his features, but then he shrugged, set the canteen down by his side, and crossed his legs into a relaxed lotus. “Did the AIsource tell you something about yourself that they had no right to know?”

The surprise must have shown in my eyes. “Maybe two things.”

“It’s no big deal, Counselor, just a local habit of theirs. You may be familiar with the works of a twentieth-century fantasy author named L. Frank Baum? Specifically, his novel The Wizard of Oz?”

I’ve never related to fiction of any kind, let alone works of such ancient vintage. “No.”

“That’s too bad. You see, Skye the single’s mother was a dear woman who loved antiquarian fantasy, and read her that particular work more than once.” A soft nostalgia entered his eyes, as he lost himself in a cherished memory that had never truly happened to him. “It’s about the ruler of a magical country, whose power is entirely based on his false reputation for omnipotence. He frightens his subjects, plays on their fears, and makes them so terrified that they flee his presence thinking he’s more than human.”

It sounded as inane as any other fairy tale. “This is an AIsource station. They run the place. They are All-Powerful. Or, at least, more than human.”

His attention snapped back to the here and now. “True. As they no doubt pointed out, one way or another. But on this station, they like reminding us of that fact, and they have a sincere talent for coming out first in any confrontation. They specifically like dropping references to things you consider personal; the more private, the better. Leaving you to wonder how the hell they know.”

Another difference between the way the AIsource acted elsewhere, and the way they acted here. I didn’t much like their etiquette, on-site.

“This is their home ground,” Oscin said. “Here, they feel entitled to a little arrogance. And they exercise it at every opportunity.”

“Doesn’t explain how they know—”

“You’d be surprised what they know. They don’t advertise it much, but they’re said to have an interface, somewhere—not here, of course, but on some other installation—where anybody willing to pay the fee can ask any twelve questions and receive twelve accurate answers. It doesn’t matter how obscure the questions might be, whether they’re about the location of buried treasure or the most shameful secret of your life. The AIsource guarantees perfect accuracy. I’m not about to say there is such a place, but based on some of the things they’ve said to me since the singles Oscin and Skye linked, I’d be very surprised to find out that there isn’t.”

“Yes,” I said, “but how?”

“Their computation speed is something like one million times the average human being’s. Their storage capacity is something close to infinite. They’ve been, pretty much, everywhere. How much would elude you, if you had resources on that scale? Face it: they’re the font of all knowledge. It’s just that on neutral ground, they’re polite enough to avoid rubbing our faces in it. Here, they want to.”

I wondered if that would extend to sending anonymous hate mail, then discounted the idea as unlikely. My long experience with hate mail had taught me it was a tactic for the frightened and impotent. If those messages did come from within One One One, a human being was sending them. But was it a human being responsible for the deaths of Warmuth and Santiago, or just one of the small legions of people who hated me for other reasons?

The thought was enough to give me cottonmouth. I took the canteen, put it to my lips, and threw my head back so far that rivulets ran down my chin.

When I gave it back, Oscin took another gulp before sealing the vessel tight. “Well, there goes that theory.”

“What?”

“Some cultures disapprove of arrangements like mine. They call them criminal, or even perverse. On some of my past postings, there’s been so much discrimination that Oscin and Skye have had to pretend to be a pair of separate individuals just for personal safety. For a moment there, I was afraid I had to watch myself around you.”

“How do you know you don’t?”

He almost laughed. “You drank from my water, Counselor. Most of the people I’m talking about wouldn’t.”

“That’s stupid,” I said. “What would drinking your water have to do with it?”

“They give my condition the status of a disease and can’t help acting like it’s contagious. I agree, it’s stupid. But I’m happy you don’t feel that way.”

I wondered why the likes of the Porrinyards would even care, since I was nothing to them; decided it was one of those strange people-behaviors I didn’t need to know about, then forced myself to my feet. Oscin saw what I was about to do and jumped up, intent on hovering nearby until I could stand without assistance. I resented the hell out of that even after I almost swooned. “So what else did you want to tell me?”

“Pardon?”

“I’m not stupid, sir. You hustled Lastogne out of the room. Is there some information the two of you needed to share with me that you didn’t want him hearing?”

“There’s only one of us,” Oscin said.

“Forgive me. Whenever you two act independently, you strain the limits of my syntax. What did you want to tell me?”

“Nothing about your investigation.”

“About Lastogne?”

“There are any number of things I can say about Peyrin,” Oscin said. It wasn’t hard to read undercurrents of resentment in the calm but chilly way he spoke the other man’s name. “But no, not him either.”

This was still a prime opportunity to follow up on one of this station’s many contradictions. “I’d like to ask you about him anyway—or at least, something he said about you yesterday.”

“Oh?’

“He’d said, ‘They’re cylinked. They don’t make friends in the usual sense.’”

He seemed darkly amused. “Peyrin said that? Why, the backstabbing son of a bitch.”

There were depths here I wasn’t getting. “I’ve never met any cylinked pairs before, so I had no reason to disbelieve him. But between the way you’re acting, and some of the things you’ve said, makes me wonder if he’s…”

Oscin finished the sentence for me. “…full of Tchi shit.”

“Exactly.”

He walked away, cocked his head as if listening to the advice of an observer I couldn’t see or hear, then came back. “Nobody’s a closed system without wanting to be, Counselor. Not even me. It wouldn’t be any more fun for me being trapped in two heads, with nobody else to talk to, than it is for an unlinked individual like you to be trapped in only one. So, yes, I do make friends in the usual sense. I care for some people. I get angry with others. I even fall in love from time to time, though it’s a little harder to manage, given that it has to be a person capable of pleasing my shared, and therefore somewhat more demanding, perspective.”

“And that’s where Cynthia Warmuth fell short?”

A little angry now: “Cynthia Warmuth was kind, generous, eager, compassionate, and, as I’ve already said, needy, pushy and grating. It’s a matter of taste, not misanthropy.”

“And yet,” I noted, “Lastogne said what he said. Why?”

“Didn’t I tell you on the way over that we made love once? I mean, Lastogne and I?”

“Yes.”

“The operative word is once, Counselor. Once and only once. Even then, it was cookie-cutter heterosexuality, which didn’t go anywhere substantial until this body”—Oscin gestured at himself—“left him alone with Skye in what his limited imagination was able to consider privacy. It wasn’t, of course; our gestalt was still involved even if this male body could not be. But from what you’re saying, Lastogne now rationalizes what happened between us as his own skillful seduction of Skye behind Oscin’s back, which is of course an absolute impossibility and a ridiculous insult. And now, to make matters worse, he seems to be blaming what I am as the handiest excuse for Skye’s lack of interest in a sequel. Please. Take what he said as the self-serving garbage it is. I’m not an exclusive club. I just don’t want him as a member.”

It was an interesting fresh take on Peyrin Lastogne, who had tried so hard to paint himself as a distant, cynical observer of humanity. I wondered whether he’d taken on that persona for my benefit. It was possible. One thing I’d learned, from being such a sincere bitch for so many years, is that some people wear misanthropy only as a fashion statement.

Lastogne could be one of those.

But maybe not. Oscin’s revelation established only that the man was not, entirely, the island he claimed to be. He was just a deluded, vindictive ex-lover. So what? He could still be a son of a bitch. Or even a murderer.

I said, “So if you didn’t want to talk about him, what did you want to talk about?”

Oscin switched gears with no visible difficulty. “I don’t know how to say this, Counselor. Considering where this conversation was a few minutes ago, it’s a risky thing to say. But, you know, the individuals Oscin and Skye were once very angry people. They both felt trapped in a place they did not want to be, in a life they did not want to live, and they made themselves miserable sharing their resentment with anybody else who could have been allowed into a world that, as far as they were concerned, allowed room for only the two of them. After a while they had so much anger between them that they started to direct it at each other. They began to fight. To leave scars.” For a moment his face seemed to shift, and became no longer his own but a reflection of how Skye might have looked were her body the one telling the story. “They didn’t link just so they could be indentured together. They linked because they were a few harsh words from breaking up forever. They linked because joining together as this new creation greater than the sum of its parts was their only alternative to walking out of each other’s lives and feeling incomplete for as long as they lived.”

I pushed myself away from the wall, tested my ability to stand alone without help, and found that I was now as steady on my feet as I ever managed to be. “Why tell me?”

He cocked his head again, and flashed a secret smile at himself. “I don’t have much time, Counselor. Skye and Lastogne are coming back. They’re not far away. I don’t think Skye will be able to delay him for more than another minute or so.

“So here’s the little I have time for. I’m an expert at angry people. I know that they come in many different flavors and I’ve learned to recognize what they are. Like Gibb and Lastogne. Like Warmuth and Santiago. Like some of the exiles you’re about to meet.” He had not faced me at all since beginning this speech, focusing instead on some distant point somewhere beyond me, beyond the blue walls, perhaps even beyond the territories encompassed by One One One. “Like yourself. I don’t know all the details yet, but I really don’t need AIsource help to feel like I already know you.”

Lastogne had said something much like that yesterday, and I’d reacted with little more than wry acknowledgment that he was right. Others in my life had confronted me with words to the same effect and I’d displayed boredom, defiance, even pride.

Oscin Porrinyard made me want to hit him.

But before I could go through with it, Skye and Lastogne turned the corner, at a junction some fifty meters up-corridor. Lastogne still wore his grimace-as-smile, and Skye walked with a sprightly bounce to her step that from this vantage point seemed deliberate mockery of whatever he’d had to say to her.

When I caught her eye, she winked.

It had to be meant for me. She wouldn’t have needed gestures to communicate with her other half.

When I glanced at Oscin, for confirmation, he was winking too.

My moment of anger faded, replaced by open confusion.

What the hell was all this about?