Aneka Jansen 6: The Lowest Depths of Shame (12 page)

‘Original? The hair. The hair is different…’

‘I got upgraded,’ Aneka said. ‘There’s a lot of it going around.’

‘I see…’ He returned his gaze to Winter. ‘This is going to cause some… issues.’

‘What I’m here for will,’ Winter said, waving him to his seat. When they were all sitting she went on. ‘The AIs from Negral, of which I was originally one, have set up shop in a new location, Shadataga. We have a custom-built education facility there. We plan to open it to anyone willing to learn, but there will, obviously, be some… stipulations. Given that I’m going to be throwing my weight around, I think it’s time the Jenlay learned who Winter
really
is, rather than the stories manufactured about me. Frankly, it can’t get much worse than Herosian spy or Xinti agent.’

Elroy nodded, conceding the point. ‘Stipulations?’

‘This is dangerous stuff we’re talking about and we need to be sure that the people learning about it aren’t going to use it to murder their neighbours. We will restrict types of study. We will teach anyone prepared to meet our requirements who can pass the entrance assessment. That means both branches of Humanity, and the Torem and Herosians.’

Elroy took in a long breath. ‘The current climate is not one to suggest teaching higher technology to either the Herosians
or
the Torem. The latter are in our bad books for running off and hiding when the war started.’

‘I know,’ Winter replied, ‘but if the Jenlay can’t accept it, they will be excluded. To be honest, there are very few Herosians who will manage to get in. But we won’t close the door to them. Abraham Wallace is very keen to get at least one Torem in.’

‘Tosimna,’ Aneka said. ‘She worked with us on the Agroa Gar analysis. She’s a genius at warp engine theory.’

‘I understand,’ Elroy said, ‘but politically this is difficult. Someone is going to portray this as technological blackmail.’

‘I wouldn’t disagree,’ Winter replied, ‘but we have technology here which can make a star explode. We cannot allow that to get into the hands of someone who would actually use it.’

Elroy sank back on his seat and looked up at the ceiling. Then, from nowhere, he burst into laughter. ‘It’s just like old times,’ he said. ‘The crew of the Garnet Hyde go off on some new adventure and bring me back a political problem of grand proportions.’

‘We do our best,’ Aneka said, smiling sweetly.

Tristar Township, 16.9.530 FSC.

It had taken Elroy a couple of days to ride over FSA and Navy objections to the Hyde’s crew returning to New Earth, but he had done it. The transport drones could handle six people or three tonnes of cargo, or a combination of those, so two of them landed just outside Tristar Township and then Aneka and Delta lugged the large tent they were going to set up in Gillian’s backyard over to the house.

By the time they got there, Janna had finished virtually crushing her daughter to death and was free to start on Aneka.

‘You’ve changed your hair,’ the dancer said, her voice soft and emotional.

‘I’ve changed my whole body,’ Aneka replied. ‘New and improved Aneka.’

‘You can’t improve on perfection, dear. Though I do like the hair.’

Janna let go and backed off, and Aneka was immediately grabbed around the waist and lifted off her feet by Dillon. The big man was putting in a valiant effort, he still had Ella in the other arm, but Aneka’s ninety kilos was a little bit too much of an addition and he lowered her back down with a grin.

‘You’re a bit lighter than you were, but you still weigh more than you look like you should,’ he said.

‘Well, you got a new back, I got a new body. It’s lighter than the old one, but it’s still got a metal skeleton. How are you doing?’

‘Good. Still doing some exercises the doctors gave me, but I can lift my weights as well as I ever could. They say I might even get better.’

Katelyn, standing nearby until her partner had finished demonstrating his prowess, walked over and gave Aneka a hug. ‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘What for?’

‘Knowing you, being on the Hand of God for your “Christmas” party… I don’t think they would have done any different for anyone else, but they recognised us and it got us helped faster.’

‘It helped,’ Dillon agreed, ‘but the Old Earth people spent a lot of time and effort getting injured people back on their feet.’ He looked meaningfully at Aneka and then Ella. ‘There are a lot more cyborgs around than there were. Funny how people will have a few bits of metal put in when the alternative is never walking again.’

Katelyn nodded. ‘It’s becoming rather… impolite to express anti-cybernetic opinions around Yorkbridge. The Herosians have replaced robots and cyborgs as the big fear factor.’

‘What are your plans?’ Janna asked before things could get too serious.

‘Shannon and I are heading over to our place,’ Drake said. ‘We’ll get together whatever we need to take away, and then we’ll be heading back to the Hyde.’

‘Cassandra and I have our own places to visit and loot,’ Abraham stated.

‘Delta and me are going to help them,’ Monkey said, ‘and then we’ll come back here.’

‘We have this tent to set up,’ Gillian said. ‘The rest of us will be staying here, and don’t suggest you people moving into the tent. One of the reasons I’m here is to sign over the house to Janna and Sharissa. You’re all settled so you’ll stay put and we’ll bunk in the yard.’

‘At some point,’ Aneka said, ‘we’ll go see what’s left of our apartment. Maybe we can salvage something.’

‘The building’s unsafe,’ Dillon said. ‘They’ll let you in for brief periods, but the last I heard it’s going to have to be demolished and rebuilt.’

‘Quite a few buildings in Mid-town are the same,’ Katelyn added unhappily.

Ella gave a sigh. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure there’s that much there that I want. It’s just that it was my home and I’d like to see it again before I move out for good.’

‘You’re moving to this Shadataga permanently then?’ Janna asked. Her tone was a little melancholy.

‘Yes, but if things go according to plan, that won’t be as much of a problem as you’d think. Come on, let’s get the tent up and then we can sit down and get caught up on everything.’

Yorkbridge Mid-town, 17.9.530 FSC.

There was a big crack in one of the wall screens in the lounge and it was dark, but now that Ella had the same sort of multi-spectral vision that Aneka had, neither of them were having much of a problem negotiating the room.

‘The kitchen’s a mess,’ Ella commented. It sounded a lot like it was something to say.

‘Uh-huh,’ Aneka responded. From a small cabinet against one wall, she picked up a crystal figure, blowing the dust off it. ‘This made it,’ she said. ‘I’m glad about that.’

Ella headed for the bedroom and Aneka followed. There was no real damage. A chair was overturned and there was no power. Everything was covered in dust. Going to the wardrobe, Ella pulled it open and looked inside. Then she picked up a jewellery box from the floor and put it into the bag she was carrying. A dress was added, and then she turned and looked around the room.

‘It’s not much for the years I’ve lived here,’ the redhead said. ‘I’m taking these because they were presents. I hardly ever wear jewellery, aside from the ring you gave me. I can have anything else I need made on Shadataga… And Aggy’s collecting the data from the servers. A lot of my life is digital…’

Aneka nodded. ‘I think the only other thing I want isn’t here. I hope it survived.’

‘What?’

‘We need to go out to the university,’ Aneka replied. ‘What’s left of it anyway.’

The Islands.

Large sections of the university were rubble. The quad where Aneka had bought coffee so often was half-filled with the remains of the taller structures that had surrounded it. The Administration building was significantly shorter than it had been, but there was a ground-level entrance that was fairly open, given that the doors had been blown off their hinges.

They had had to take a transport out to the site. The monorail was a wreck, cutting off the islands off the coast from the mainland. As far as they knew, no one was living out in the rich homes that had dotted the little archipelago anyway, so there was no one to be inconvenienced by that. From the transport, the view of the crater where the starport had been told more about the Battle of New Earth than any report.

‘The vaults are underground,’ Aneka said as the couple made their way in, ‘so I’m hoping they’ve survived fairly intact.’

‘If we can get down there,’ Ella replied. ‘There’s an emergency stairwell. Uh… this is hard to figure out with no light and all the fallen masonry. There, in the corner.’

The door was jammed, but it gave as ninety kilos of robot body slammed into it, opening onto a Plascrete stairwell. Up was more or less destroyed, and that had fallen into the down end of it leaving chunks of broken aggregate on the stairs.

‘Maybe I should go down alone,’ Aneka suggested.

‘And leave me in the creepy, dark corridors on my own? Nuh-huh. I’ve climbed worse, and it’s not like I’m in heels.’ Which was true: even Ella had decided that work boots were more appropriate for walking around unstable buildings. ‘Do we know where we’re going?’

‘Basement B, section twenty-seven.’

‘Hopefully it’ll be easier on the second set of stairs then.’

Clambering over Plascrete chunks as much as walking down the stairs, they made their way to the second landing. There was less rubble there, mostly because the larger stuff had got wedged higher up, but the door was, once again, jammed and Aneka had to slam it open.

‘That’s a fire hazard, you know?’ Aneka commented as she pushed the door wider and stepped through into the corridor beyond.

‘I don’t think the building codes are designed to keep you safe in case of massive bombardment from space,’ Ella replied.

‘Just saying.’

The walls here had been painted, but they lacked the gloss of the finish on the upper levels. Aneka had always thought the university looked like something out of
Star Trek
, all white and shiny with smooth curves. Now it looked like a white, shiny disaster movie. In
Star Trek
,
even the crawlspaces looked like they were polished every other day, but in the real world someone had decided that slapping some paint on the walls would do for somewhere people visited only to store things.

‘Section twenty-six,’ Aneka said, stopping beside a door. ‘I don’t suppose you know the code?’

‘I don’t think there’s any power anyway. They’re maglocks, so if you can get the leverage you should be able to just slide it open.’

There were no handles, and the metal door was smooth, but applying force to it and then pushing got enough of a crack for Aneka to get her fingers in. Then it was easy.

Ella peered at the edge of the door. ‘Two centimetres of steel and you just… pushed,’ she commented.

‘Winter really pushed up the power on this body. I had to cut in some extra oomph for the first bit…’

‘I sort of noticed. You should have seen the way your muscles bulged. Monkey would have been standing there with his tongue hanging out.’

Aneka gave her a grin. ‘What about you?’

‘I’ll save my tongue for later. Come on, I want to get out of this tomb.’

‘Not a tomb, you’re not in shorts.’ Aneka started hunting through the racks which were set in rows down the room.

‘Because the last time I wore shorts on a dig it worked out so well.’

‘What? A little poisoning’s going to put you off?’

‘Depends on the circumstances,’ Ella replied, which meant it had not put her off, not really.

‘Here,’ Aneka said, and she lifted something from a shelf. ‘It doesn’t look damaged.’

‘Good. Let’s get it upstairs where we can see it properly.’

They emerged into the bright sunlight and Aneka lifted the plastic tube on its black base. As the light shone on it, two figures appeared within: alien, and yet somehow just like you might see in any posed family picture.

‘There was no way I was letting this rot down there,’ Aneka said. ‘It spent enough time on a dead ship. I kind of know how that feels.’

‘Yes,’ Ella agreed. ‘That was worth coming here for, but I want to leave. Even in the sunlight, this place feels like it has ghosts.’

Aneka looked around at the ruined buildings and nodded. She had spent many hours in this place. It had been where she had come so that she could be declared safe to be on the streets, it had given her a job, and she had danced in stupid high-heels in the hall. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I know what you mean.’

High Yorkbridge, 19.9.530 FSC.

Winter stood at the podium in the large room which housed the Representatives’ Council, flanked on her left by Aneka. The fact that the latter was armed with a pair of machine pistols had not gone down too well with the security people, but since they seemed convinced that there was a threat of Herosian assassins, they had been hard-pressed to come up with a reason to deny the Shadataga Ambassador her bodyguard.

The Representatives did not seem especially happy, for the most part, either. A few were sitting back in their seats, looking relaxed about what was happening, but most were whispering to their neighbours and looking annoyed. It was not exactly a great sign.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Winter said into the microphone in front of her. ‘Representatives of the Jenlay…’ The noise subsided to a murmur and she continued. ‘My name is Sleep Brings Renewal to All Things, but you know me better as Winter. I was the artificial intelligence the Xinti created to lead Humanity to the stars. In this form, that of Xenia Winter, I was one of the co-founders of the Federation. I have worked tirelessly for over a thousand years to advance Jenlay civilisation, and now I am here to offer you knowledge even the Xinti did not possess.’

The noise level went up again and she waited for it to subside before continuing. Aneka decided that she would have waited about half as long before getting annoyed; Winter was, as ever, a patient woman.

‘The AIs from Negral escaped to found a new university on a world we’re calling Shadataga. It’s the Xinti word for education. There, people will be able to learn science as yet unheard of here.
Anyone
willing to meet our requirements will be free to learn there. The Humans of Old Earth are already considering who to send. We will be contacting the Torem in due course, and considering how best to approach the Herosians…’