Reclamation(41)

“What happened to you?”

Perivar felt his mouth move, but no sound was coming out. He forced his voice to speak.

“There was a revolution in Eshina. I was a communications hack and a spy on the losing side. Eshina law deports revolutionaries by selling them as indentured servants. Tasa Ad bought me up cheap. He and his sister Kessa headed up a runner team. I was … bought to work the communications transfers for them.”

Kiv’s body rippled, sending rainbows glistening down his back where the light hit the membrane gel. “And you made a bond of some sort with Eric.”

Perivar nodded. “We’d picked up Eric off his homeworld. Weird place. Crashing old world orbiting a binary star. Tasa Ad had seen him in action on the ground and decided this one we’d keep. Eric’s not his real name, I just called him that because I couldn’t get a handle on the real thing. It goes on even longer than yours does.

“He really is amazingly useful. He can … do things to machines … make them move. Make a computer run just by touching it. Tasa Ad used him as a kind of super-systems digger and we were able to expand our … activities from just contraband running.

“Eric and I got along. At least, I liked him better than I liked Tasa Ad and a lot better than I liked Kessa even though that didn’t take much. I taught him a real language, showed him how to take care of himself on the ship, told him about things outside. Played big brother a little, you understand? We became friends, almost without me noticing it’d happened. I’m not … I wasn’t used to having friends.

“Then we got a new job, a weird one. Aguy named D’Shane wanted us to steal an artificial intelligence called Dorias out of a planetary network. The money was … really good, so Tasa Ad took it on. We used Eric for most of the work, of course. He found the thing and got it loaded into the isolation box we’d built for it and we took off to hand it over to our client.

“We were two days in flight and Eric came into my cabin. He looked sick, shattered. He said ‘Perivar, is it true that the people we transport are being taken without permission?’

“I hadn’t stopped to think about it until then, but I realized Eric had no idea what was really going on. Tasa Ad kept him on a short tether when it came to network information, and I’d never spelled out anything to him. He was a volunteer and his people either have no concept of … involuntary servitude, or, it’s so different from what we did that it never occurred to him that we were kidnapping and selling unwilling bodies. I mean, yes, when Tasa Ad and Kessa got them to the ship, they were drugged out and in capsules, but that was exactly how we got him on board.

“And I’d never told him about me.

“So I said something particularly insightful, like ‘And?’ And he looked at me like he didn’t know whether to be sorry for me or kill me on the spot. After a long time he said ‘Perivar, I don’t think you understand what you’re doing. Dorias does not want to go to D’Shane.’

“‘Dorias is a machine,’ I said. ‘It does what it’s told.’

“He said ‘Dorias is a … I don’t know the word he used, but the translator turned it into ‘Well-Made Soul,’ and he said ‘I won’t hand him across to D’Shane without his consent.’ He walked out and I stayed stuck to the spot, cursing myself for an idiot.

“Then, I heard Tasa Ad yelling. I ran toward the sound.

He … they … Eric … I mean … Eric, Tasa Ad, and Dorias’s box were on the bridge. Eric was at the comm board. I read his fingers. He was opening up a channel to somewhere, probably to a station, or maybe back to where we’d come from. I saw the cable on Dorias’s box and I knew Eric was getting ready to hardwire the AI into the open channel so it could get itself free.

“Tasa Ad was, of course, yelling at him to stop, and when he paused for breath, Eric simply said ‘No.’ And Tasa Ad reared up and said ‘You’ll do what you’re told, you damned barbarian, or you’re dead!’

“That got him. Eric whirled around and yelled, ‘Try me, Skyman, just try me!’

“Kessa came in at that point. Shoved her way past me, just as Tasa Ad lunged for Eric. She was armed. A dart gun. The cartridge was red. Serious poison.

“Tasa Ad grabbed Eric’s arm … and … collapsed. Kessa screamed something and raised the gun. I screamed something else and shoved her sideways and she pointed the gun at me and fired. Caught me in the arm. And I collapsed. And Eric grabbed her and she collapsed and Eric collapsed with her and there we all were on the deck together. The thing was, Eric and I were alive. Tasa Ad and Kessa, weren’t.”