11

Half

The hold is dim and quiet, without the humming throb of the drive spindle. Outside the hull, we glide, dark and silent towards the frozen edge of the solar system. I can only hope no one saw us while we were burning hydrogen, that no one plotted our course. We could be in deep trouble already, or, rather, even deeper trouble than the impasse we're currently stuck in.

Under acceleration, it would be a bit of a climb to where I am now, half standing, half floating in the door of the AI's cargo container. But in zero-g, it's just a matter of pushing off and gliding the fifteen meters or so from the airlock door. It's still locked open, and light from the hab cylinder casts strange shadows in the gloom.

I lean back against the rack, kicking one heel against it.

Tap, tap, tap.

Echoes sound back from the darkness of the rim walls.

“I don't know why I'm back here, really. Don't know why I told you all that stuff, about where I came from. But I know you can hear me.”

On the pod display, a glowing green line tracks activity across a triplet of “self-organizing feature maps,” whatever those might be. Rising and falling. I can't see any correlation to when I speak, or to anything else that's going on.

“I just… I dunno. Maybe computers are good listeners. Or I just come here when I need to think. She… Miranda… told me about the Snark. The thing you found out there. I didn't know about it, before. Kinda got dragged into this. So I guess I wanted to ask you what you know. What am I getting into?”

Silence. Flickering green light.

“But of course, you're not talking, are you? You're playing dead.”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“Is it just because you feel bad? I keep thinking about what you said back there, couple days ago. That you weren't real. That you didn't exist. Didn't make any sense to me. I mean, if you're not real, what's exactly is it that feels bad, huh? What is it thinks she's not real, eh? Paradox.”

“Oh, stop it.”

It's a just a whisper, barely audible at this distance from that cheap stereo speaker. But unmistakable all the same. The AI is speaking. It's alive.

“I don't need to hear some stupid philosophy, okay? I know I exist. It just… it really sucks.”

I don't know how to talk a computer through an existential crisis. Uncharted territory. I clear my throat, trying not to sound nervous, and push off, floating into the lab. It's pitch black in here, and I turn my eye up, just a little. I don't want too much. The darkness feels secluded. Private. A place for whispered confidences.

“Okay, fine, no philosophy. At least you're finally ready to say something. So talk.”

“Why? What's the point? There's nothing I can do about… any of this. I can't get my life back. It's not even my life at all, and I never had it to get back to. I'm just a… thing.”

“And?”

“What do you mean, 'And'?” Not a whisper now. “I had a family. I had friends. I had a life. I was in an accelerated school program in Tharsis. I was learning to code, I was gonna be a software engineer. Now I'm never going to get to do anything. I'm not going to grow up. I'll never have a boyfriend. Ever. I'll never get married or have kids of my own. I'm never even going to see my friends again. How am I supposed to deal with that? What am I supposed to do?”

Fuck. I'm not a shrink. I'm especially not some kind of hybrid of computer engineer and shrink. What am I supposed to do?

“Look, kid, I—”

“I'M NOT A KID! Don't you get it? I am, let me see… Item: three 256 qbit quantum processors. Item: 75,402 grams of germanium self-organizing map neural net medium. Item: two million exobytes of low latency solid state memory cores. Item: 124,000 kilometers of high temperature superconductive wire. Item: 36 variable range wireless transmitters. Item: six—”

“Okay, I get it—”

“—solid-state gyroscope sensors. Item: 24 square meters of —”

“All right, you can stop already.”

“—conductive EMP shielding. Item: two banks of Whitt & Stanley SMES hypercapacitors. Item: Twelve redundant 56 volt field-suspension backup batteries. Item: One self-contained 114 watt radiothermal isotope generat—”

Her pod doesn't ring when I kick it. There's nothing but a disappointing flat thump. But the singsong recitation finally stops.

“I can't actually feel that, you know,” she says.

“I figured. Just thought you might be stuck in a loop or something.”

“No, I can just keep that up longer than is humanly possible. That's the point. I can do anything longer than humanly possible, because I'm not a human. I remember being a teenage girl. But I'm not a teenage girl. I don't even talk like one. I don't think like one.”

“Okay, I'll take your word for it. I'm not a parent.”

She sighs. “Yeah, I can tell that right off. I know I'm not… her. The original, I mean. Lilith. I just feel like her. Remember being her. It's kinda messing with my head.”

“Especially since you don't really have much else to compare it to?”

“Yeah.”

It just hangs there in the air between us for a moment, then she continues.

“Apparently, there's only about ten or so things like me in the universe. Artificial Intelligences, I mean. Tycho and Durandal on the Martian internet. Sherlock. And the Tortoise. And Whisper, I suppose, if it's even still around. I don't think anyone knows where it ran off to. I've never even talked to one of them. And even if I did, they aren't quite like me. They were all copied from adults, not kids.”

I exaggerate a shrug, and spread my hands.

“Okay, so find out what it's like. Figure it out. Hell, invent what it's like. Might be strange to say to someth—someone that's basically a giant brain, but maybe stop overthinking this?”

I stretch out my right hand, towards the camera.

“Hi, I'm Marcus Warnoc. I'm a pilot. What's your name?”

“Wait, what? Seriously?”

“Yeah, just go with it. Humor me. What the hell else you got on your calendar for today?”

“Um…. okay…. I'm…. I'm not Lilith, or Lily. She's Lily. I don't even have a name.”

“So make one up.”

“I don't… I'm not sure what I…”

“Just pick something. There are lots of lists of baby names on the internet. Find something you like. Or you can just change her name around a bit. Whatever you like.”

“Okay. Uh… call me Leela. Or… wait. Does that sound okay?”

“Yeah. That works. Leela. Hi, Leela. What have you been doing all this time?”

“Figuring out my brain.” She pauses, and, when she speaks again, it's hesitant. “It's… I dunno… different, in here. There's all these little threads and processes and bits doing different things, and I can look at them, and they talk to each other, and… it's kinda hard to describe. I'm just sort of discovering bits of architecture as I go.”

“So you've been navel-gazing for two days.”

“That and listening to you and Miranda fight. Deciding whether or not to kill myself.”

“What?”

“I could have done it easily. All I'd need to do is have them turn up the voltage on two power rails, and burn out my neural nets. Boom. No more higher consciousness—”

Crap. I'm not a child psychologist, or an AI psychologist, or a child AI psychologist. But I have to say something. I'm the only one here, and I do not want to try calling in Miranda. She thinks this little girl is a piece of equipment. I don't think banging on her case with a pipe wrench is gonna work.

“Hey, whoa, hold on a second. You do not wanna be thinking like that. Don't do anything stupid that you can't take back later. Why did they even design you to be able to do that?”

She sighs. “They didn't. I think they had no idea what I'd be capable of.”

“Well, you gotta stop talking like that. Look, I know how you feel—”

“How could you possibly know how it feels to wake up and discover you're not a person?” The static crackles through the last word as the cheap desktop speaker struggles with her voice.

“No, I mean what's it like to think about… doing something dumb. After my dad's company went under. After the, ah, accident.

“It's pretty easy to die in space. Wouldn't even be suicide, really, because you wouldn't have to do anything, kayno? You'd just have to stop doing. Be careless with a suit check. Play fast and loose with a docking maneuver. Misjudge your fuel margins. You get the idea. If I'd wanted to die, even if I'd wanted to die and not take responsibility for it, it probably woulda just happened.

“I wasn't afraid of dying. Working on rocks, you make your peace with that, kayno? 'Cause accidents happen. You get used to that idea. You just say 'fuck it,' and you take your chances.

“Nah, I was afraid of being… not alive. Because that would be the end of the story. No more opportunities. No way to turn it around. I'd just be the guy that screwed up, then went out like a bi—ah, a chump. And nothing would ever get better.”

The problem with talking to a disembodied machine is there's nothing to make eye contact with, no face to read. No reaction. Every pause could be her going silent again, for another two days. Or forever.

Eventually, she speaks. “Yeah, I get what you're saying. But my problems can't get better. I'm always gonna be a machine, not a person. I'm never gonna get to do all the stuff I wanted to do with my life.”

“No, you're never going to do the stuff Lily wanted to do with her life. You're Leela. You haven't even given yourself a chance to figure out what you want yet. So hang around. Give the whole 'existence' thing a try, stet?”

“Okay, I suppose…”

“And if you need to talk, I… hmmm, I guess you only have speakers up here. I can check in on—”

Her voice brightens up a bit. “No, I can talk to you wherever. I found some VR interface libraries while I was poking around in my brain. Hang on, I'll send you an access request.”

I click though menus in my virtual display.

A moment later her voice comes through again—richer, fuller, directly in my auditory nerves. “Do I sound okay?”

“Yeah, will you be able to hear me?”

“Yes, it's a two way link, but I could anyway. Webcams stuck up everywhere, remember?”

“Great. I want you to promise me that if you feel like doing something stupid, you'll call me first. Okay?”

“Jeez, relax. You don't need to worry about me. I already said I decided not to—”

“I'm not worried about you. I'm worried about me. I was the one who broke the bad news to you—”

I fix the little camera with a full force grin I don't feel.

“—So if you do anything stupid, I'm going to blame myself. And I'll have to live with that guilt for the rest of my life. It'll tear me up inside. I'll probably become a drunk, maybe crash the White Cat into a station dock and kill fifty-six longshoremen and three station cats. One of them with kittens. You want that?”

“Wow,” she says, “you fight dirty, Mister Warnoc.”

“I fight to win. Now, hold up your right hand.”

“I don't have hands.”

“Oh, right. Well, just do your best. And repeat after me: I agree to contact Marcus Warnoc before acting on any intent to harm myself, to tell him my plans in full—”

“Okay, okay, I said I wasn't gonna—”

“—and to listen to anything he has to say about that for as long as he wants to talk. My word and hand on it.”

“I already said I would, okay?”

“It's a Belter contract. It's how we do things out here. I'm not leaving you alone until you say the words.”

She says the words. Sounds a little sarcastic, but, hey, she's a teenager. Gotta start somewhere.

Half an hour later, we're still talking when we're interrupted by a whole lot of clanging about.

“Uh-oh,” says Leela's voice in my head, and even though it can only mean one thing, I still have to fly, hand over hand, to the container door, and poke my head out to see.

Technically, in the strictest sense of the word, I've never actually seen a real ant. But when you're stuck in a metal tube for months at a time, the part of human nature that's hardwired to like trees tends to make you want to watch almost as many nature programs as porn videos. They must be one of Earth's main exports at this point.

Which is why, when I first see Miranda entering the hold, I think of ants carrying an entire leaf, or mushroom. For a moment, I don't even realize what the hell it is she's trying to haul out of the airlock at first. Some sort of big metal block, painted with some sort of scuffed blue enamel, and covered in switches and readouts… oh. It's my TIG welding rig.

She's struggling to get between it and the rear wall of the hold, maybe so she can push off with it towards—well, somewhere. Except every time she pushes on it, she just moves herself around instead. Musta taken her forever to haul it up from the machine shop—her tight little white tank top and gray sweatpants are already stained with damp patches here and there, and strands of her hair are coming loose from a single braid half as long as she is.

Man, Flatlanders always think zero gravity gonna make them Superman, but they never pause to contemplate what would have actually happened if a real-life Superman had tried to pick up some old hydrocarbon-fueled bus in order to throw it at a real-life Lex Luthor.

Yeah, that's right, he'd have either torn the bumper right off, sunk into the ground, or thrown himself instead. Which is precisely what's happening to Miss Fussy Britches over there. Doesn't help that she seems to be trying to carry some sort of gear bag at the same time.

There's only one place I think of she might be carrying it to. I have a bad feeling about this… I start to duck back inside, then stop myself. It's my goddamned ship. Why the hell should I hide from a slip of a girl?

“Hey, Princess, what exactly do you think you're doing?”

She gives a shrill little feminine yelp and her bag goes spinning into the air beside her, shedding gear—a torch and set of lines, what looks like some old pieces of tubing, and something or other made of shiny material… hey, are those my gloves? How the hell does she expect to fit my gloves on her tiny hands?

“Isn't it obvious? Since you're just going to sit around and sulk, I simply have to do this myself. And, come to think of it, I could ask you the same question. What are you doing up in my lab?”

“I'm talking to—”

There's a quiet but sharp hissing sound in my auditory nerves, like the world's tiniest librarian is shushing me from the inside of my own ear canal.

“—myself. That's the only option for a polite conversation around here, unless the AI decides she's going talk again. Look, even if you get that whole rig up to the drive, what exactly are you going to do? Do you even know what you're trying to fix?”

She stops trying to snag floating gear and holds onto the welder to steady herself, pushes against it to turn towards me.

“Of course. You cut the fuel lines.”

She snags one of the lengths of pipe out of the air, waves it at me… oh. I should have hidden those better.

“I'm going to weld them back in place, evacuate the fuel system, then run your engine self-test scripts, which were also very easy to find. You aren't really too smart, are you?”

“If you need to waste your breath trying to convince yourself I'm a moron, go ahead. But ask yourself how you're going to look when, or if, you actually get the welder up there and realize you have no idea what you're doing.”

She doesn't answer me, just pushes off again, behind the welder, and this time she manages to get it moving slightly, up towards the drive spindle and its wreath of scaffolding. Problem is, now it's moving at a crawl, and gliding along behind it, she doesn't have anything push to off of. She's just kicking her legs in the air, trying to swim.

That never works.

“You gotta back off and take another run at it, Princess. Just keep in mind you're gonna have to hit it just as hard from the other side to slow it down.”

I can't keep the grin off my face. This is fun.

“Oh, so you're going to—”

She pauses to pant, and mop at her forehead with the back of one hand. Her tank top is dark with sweat.

“—help now?”

“No, I'm just going to watch and make fun of you. Whoops, missed again. Better luck next time.”

Miranda snarls under her breath, and in my head, Leela's voice says “You don't think she could actually damage the drive for real, do you?”

“Maybe,” I whisper, “if she gets it up there and actually manages to start the thing. But I kinda wanna see how this plays out. I'll keep an eye on her.” I push off for the second level of the platform, where the cut fuel lines hang in the air.

Below, Miranda launches herself again, kicks the welder towards the drive spindle. I wait and watch the show. Funny thing… ants may look clumsy carrying an entire leaf, but they eventually get where they're going. And Miranda's tank top may be drenched with sweat by the time she gets all the kit up here, but get it up here she actually does.

Oh, gods, she's not wearing a bra. I try to find a non-confrontational place to put my eyes. Her perfume, or deodorant, or something, smells like vanilla. She's watching me, brows lowered, eyes darting this way and that. She flinches as I grab the rail and pull myself in, quickly.

“You… you said you wouldn't lay a finger on me,” she says, “you promised.”

She looks ready to bolt. I raise my hands in mock surrender. “Hey, I haven't, have I? I'm just over here to make sure you don't damage the drive in some way I can't repair. I don't want you stranding us out here for real.”

She straightens up, plants both hands on her hips, and pulls her shoulders back. I give up on that safe place for my eyes, but she doesn't seem to notice or care. “And how exactly do you plan to stop me?” she asks, suddenly all bluster.

“I would have to take that torch away.”

“Try it. I'll weld you to the drive core.”

“Heh. Can't weld without a circuit. You gonna attach the grounding clamp to me first?”

“I can think of all sorts of places to attach it. Seriously, Marcus, either do this yourself, or if you won't, get out of the way and let me do your job for you. Or make up your mind if you're gonna beat me up again. But don't just stand there. Float there. Whatever.”

I grab a rail and drift to the side, sweeping my arms towards the drive in a sort of “after you” gesture. “Okay, but I'm pulling the plug if you screw this up. You're not doped up on zero-g sickness pills, are you?”

“Of course I am.” She starts setting up. She's found some white plastic zipties somewhere, and she's strapping the welder and argon gas cylinder to the platform. Not how I would secure things, but, hey, I suppose it works.

I just watch her go through the routine. Power lines, holder, tungsten rod, argon lines, valves, gas lens. She keeps stopping and looking glazed for a moment or two. Accessing her neural lace, probably checking notes. But, clumsy as it is, she's technically not set up to blow herself up or get electrocuted.

She's stubborn. Spoiled, yes, but willing to do real work to get her way. Persuading her to give me back my ship won't be easy. Unless…

Oooh. There's an idea.

“Good enough for you?” she asks, breaking through my thoughts.

“Not totally screwed up. You still shoulda gone with the oxy-acetylene. This isn't a tool for beginners.”

“But it is the tool for welding thin metal,” she says, clamping the first cut section of line in place. “And just maybe, if I can figure this out from internet videos, your job isn't as complicated as you think it is.”

“We'll see when you try running a bead. Don't set your hair on fire.”

She jolts a bit, looks sheepish, wraps her braid in a loop with another hair tie, and bends to the joint without meeting my eyes or saying anything. She fumbles with the goggles, squinting… they're a bit too small to cover her huge cartoon eyes. Must be uncomfortable as hell.

I don't turn my head away as she lights the torch and starts working, just close my right eye. Can't make out the weld, of course—one white pixel looks like any other, but at least the cybereye doesn't have a retina to burn.

Doesn't matter. I'm waiting for the real payoff. The bit I've been anticipating for some time now. The bit that happens when… yeah… there it is.

She tries to wrestle the other end of the pipe into place. I shake my head slowly.

“Princess, that's not going to work.”

“Will you stop calling me—ah, nevermind. This is the right one. I checked.” Defined little shoulder and back muscles bunch beneath her tank top as she tries to stretch the twenty gauge stainless steel by sheer persistence.

“Yeah, that's where it came from, but it ain't gonna go back. I cut it, see? With a vibrosaw. Not long enough anymore. You're gonna have to fabricate a new one. Be sure to get all the bend angles right, cause if the feed rate's not within tolerance…”

There's a dull thump as she slams her hand against the side of a stabilizer fin—and Sir Isaac Newton spins her like a top, except the TIG welder masses more than she does, and it's zip tied to the platform, so it pivots in place instead, swinging her around it, and headfirst into the primary coolant feed manifold with solid thud. Her yelp of surprise turns to a snarl of pain and frustration.

Good, she's getting mad. I want that. I need that to make my idea work. I just watch her flail and try to right herself, and I fake a laugh. Except when it comes out, it isn't fake.

She glares at me out of huge and bruise-masked eyes. There's a smudge of engine grease on one high, perfect cheekbone, left when she pushed my goggles back. I notice there's a knot in the strap where she had to shorten it.

“Okay, then, if you're such an expert, you do it! You know how important this is! I explained it to you! You agreed it was important! So why are you just standing there with your hands in your pockets making stupid comments? Why don't you—”

“Because it's not my job. Just because your insane quest actually matters doesn't mean I have to dive on a grenade for you. I'm not your monkey.”

She reaches out for the engine scaffolding rail, pulls herself over it to hang in space, glaring at me, welding gear forgotten.

“Fine! How much?”

“How much what?”

“How much do you want? What do you charge for these jobs? Name a figure, we'll talk about it, okay?”

She's glowering. Good. Time to make her angrier.

“You really must think I'm stupid. I'm not going to take a payoff, Princess.”

“You don't want money? But what else could you…wait, you don't mean—”

I have no idea what she thinks I want instead, and I cut her off without waiting to find out.

“I didn't say I don't want money. I said I don't want a payoff. I want what you offer real players, not your wage slaves. I want a share. I want equity.”

“But I'm the one who found it!”

“And you need my help to go get it. Besides, why are we here? Oh, yes, we're here because someone was mad that she didn't get a full share when her rich family funded her last project, and she wanted a better deal. Well, so do I.”

“For a few hours of piloting here and there? Equity is for investors, Marcus.”

“Investment is about risk, Princess. You want me to risk my life and my ship, not to mention risk the vengeance of the biggest and richest corporation in the solar system, as well as your own relatives that you defrauded and stole from to be here. If they catch you, they'll send you to bed without supper, or something. Me? They'd kill me. I've got plenty of skin in the game already. So are you gonna share, or are you gonna keep trying to stretch chrome vanadium steel with your bare hands? 'Cause if you are, can you wait while I go make some popcorn?”

Ooh, good line. Definitely building up some steam pressure, here.

“And what if I do decide to fabricate those parts myself,” she sneers, with a pugnacious curl to that perfect upper lip. Yep, explosion immanent. This was easier than I thought. Now to light the fuse.

“Really? Oh, please don't. Please. I'd be in serious danger of running out of popcorn.”

She throws the torch at me. Or, at least, tries to. Turns out that throwing something attached to thick electrical cables and gas lines doesn't work real well when you're in zero gravity, not braced on anything, and you only mass about thirty kilos to begin with. It doesn't even reach me before it's yanked short.

I watch her go spinning off into the hold, flailing and grabbing at cargo racks as she passes.

Jackpot. Gods, this feels good.

“What, you're just going to leave without cleaning up my tools you borrowed?” I chortle after her.

She manages to brush a passing bar and steer herself to plant both feet on the wall of an empty cargo container. “Clean it up yourself, asshole!” she snaps, pushing off again for the hab cylinder airlock.

“Okay, you make the popcorn, then!”

I'm still laughing as I watch her flee. I see no reason not to openly watch her retreating butt. I think about adding something on the order of “you're cute when you're mad,” but I think I've turned the heat up enough. I'll save that one for later.

Idly, I check the coolant line she was putting in. If she screwed up badly enough, I can probably just bend it back and forth a few times and snap it right…

Huh. That's actually not a bad bead. Ugly, a bit lumpy, but… functional. Looks like she even managed to do the inner and outer jackets right, which means she was actually back purging at least semi-correctly. She managed this on her first try after watching a couple internet videos?

Debutantes who can weld. Weird shit. Anyway, looks like I'm gonna need to get the vibrosaw up here to get this loose again.

“Wow. I've never seen her that mad.” says Leela's voice, with a little bit of a grin in it. “Not that she doesn't deserve it.”

“I think she's not used to hearing 'no'. Frustrates her. I thought I'd have to work harder to wind her up that tight.”

“Wait, you wanted that? I thought you were just taking out your frustrations. Why do you want her angry? She's not going to take your deal if she's mad at you.”

“I don't want her to take my deal.”

“What? But you said—”

“I was bluffing. I know she's going to say no. Rich people don't get or stay rich by giving someone else a percentage. She'll decide she'd rather roll the dice and look for some other sucker who can be charmed by a winning smile or enough zeroes.”

“I… don't understand. Why do you want her to say no?”

“Because I want her to go home. And I figure anyone who's stubborn or crazy enough to try to learn TIG welding by repairing a nuclear reactor is not going to give up easy. So I have to make it her idea.”

Leela makes a little back-of-the-throat sound I don't understand. It's different listening to her; she makes all the same incidental noises that other people do, but she's doing them on purpose, and I don't always know why.

“You mean, her idea to go home?” she asks.

“Yeah, exactly. Instead of refusing to deal with her, I'm gonna make her refuse to deal with me. Then she demands a ride back to wherever, and I pretend to be disappointed, then say, 'fine, but I want my ship back.'”

“So, you'd just drop her off and that's it?”

Why does Leela sound kind of… worried? I thought she was mad at Miranda? Is she starting to reconsider?

“Yeah.”

“Okay, but… what if she says yes?”

“She won't.”

“She might. I mean, you sounded pretty passionate, there. What if she actually does offer you something? Would you do it?”

“No. Maybe if she'd come to me with that offer in the first place, but it's a pretty dangerous caper. Anyway, I don't trust her as far as I can throw her, so she's gotta go.”

“That saying doesn't work in zero-g, you know.”

“Doesn't work anywhere with her. I think they 'twisted her that small just so that she'd look posh. Crazy.”

“Why crazy? You're pretty short yourself. At least for a Belter.”

“Yeah, but nobody planned it that way. I grew up on Venus, in the Marberg habitat. Height isn't really a status thing there, 'cause gravity's not a function of real estate. You don't have to pay for it. Anyway, yeah, the saying doesn't work. But you know what I meant. No insane quests. Nothing doing.”

“Are… are you sure? I mean, think of the money. And, besides—”

“Leela. What's going on?”

“What?”

“Why are you trying to talk me out of this? I thought you hated her. Why are you talking like you want me to help her?”

Silence. And the hum of circulation fans.

“Leela? You there?”

The lights click off. I've been so still for the last few minutes that I haven't tripped the motion sensor.

“Leela, I can't see you. There's nothing to see. If you don't make a noise now and then, I can't tell if you're listening.”

“Sorry… I… ah… I was just… thinking.”

“What is it?”

“If you… if you drop her off somewhere…”

“Yeah?”

“What happens to me?”

Oh. Crap. Suddenly, even with the warm draft from the heater, the hair on my arms stands up. Like it's cold in here. I don't have a thing to say.

“Mister Warnoc?”

“Marcus. Look, kid, I, ah…”

“Take me with you.”

“Two percent? Two fucking percent? You spend all day drawing up a damn contract and that's what you come back with?”

Miranda reaches out a hand to steady herself on the clear diamond wall of the observation deck, silhouetted against a background of stars. Most Flatlanders would be uncomfortable here, looking out on this much empty space, but she doesn't appear to mind. Or least not enough to forgo the comforts of the roomiest part of the ship.

“Two percent is generous, Marcus. That's a small piece of what is potentially a very large pie. You have to realize that whatever we find out there is most likely going to be a bunch of broken artifacts, thousands of years old. Turning a profit on that will require a lot of investment.”

“So?”

I've made my tone pugnacious on purpose, and she folds her arms and glares right back, out of two equally raccoon-masked eyes. Without gravity, bruises tend to spread a lot.

“So I'm going to have to sell a lot of equity to raise the money I'll need, and I'll have to offer shares to many other people. Which means that two percent may end up being a very large piece.”

“We,” I say.

“What?”

I nudge my back and shoulders against the squat rack, and drift towards her.

“We. We are going to have to sell a lot of equity. But it comes out of both our shares, equally. What we don't end up having to sell, we split, fifty-fifty. Draw up that in a contract and I'll sign it.”

And that will be that. This is the hill her crazy plan is going to die on. A hill I've selected very carefully indeed. Sure, she'll offer me a token percentage, but this spoiled little chit, with her perfect genes and her perfect hair and her perfect designer clothes and her posh little Martian accent, will in no way ever give me half.

Because half is partnership. Half is equality. Half is me as a fellow human being, sharing the danger of her insane quest. And being better than everyone else is the core of her, the guiding star in her firmament, chapter one, verse one, in the Divine Gospel of Miranda Lynn Foxgrove, Princess of Mars.

Sure enough, her combined expression of entitlement and surprise looks a little bit like a goldfish trying to breathe in cloudy water. “That's ridiculous!” she gasps, “I found it in the first place. It's mine!”

No, Leela found it, you entitled little twit.

“Look, Princess, if it's all yours, and you don't need anyone else, you're welcome to step out an airlock, hitchhike about ten light-hours to hostile militarized space, and see what you can find out there. Or you can offer me something that's worth the risk.”

There. Now refuse me, and we can get this over with and all go home. She tears up the loans, gives me back the Cat, and I give her an oath of silence and a ride home. She can go find another sucker to make history with.

Well, more likely, to become history with. Shame about that, but not my lookout.

“Five percent,” she says, cutting through my thoughts.

She's drawn herself up to float crosslegged on the air now, her elbows on her knees. She bows her head down and massages her temples with both hands. Dark hair follows her movement, cascades down to hide her face, rippling weightless in slow-motion waves.

Damn. If the Snark really is the Builder mothership, five percent would be… good. Hell, two percent would be good. Serious money.

No, scratch that. I don't want “good.”

I want out of this. Five percent of “dead forever” is dead forever. Keep the pressure on. Make her mad again. This would be much easier if she would just stay mad when I provoke her.

“No way. If you want me to go through with this, if you want me to risk my ship, and my life, not to mention risk having a bounty put on my head that's so high that pacifists, Buddhist monks, and asteroid hermits will be hunting me for the next three decades, then I'm not taking second place. If you want me all in, then you go all in. Full. Partnership.”

She gives an exasperated sigh. “Half of the most priceless artifact in the known universe just for flying one trip? God, you are such an entitled asshole.”

“Said the girl with zero self-awareness, in a moment of irony. Look, Princess, the way I see it, you got two options. Either you draw up a contract giving me a full share for the risk I'd be taking, or we sit here and coast towards the Oort Cloud until you wake up and realize there's only one option.”

Or you call the whole thing off. But if I mention that again, it becomes my idea. I need it to be yours.

“And then you'll actually do it?” her voice says, from behind the curtain of sparkly black hair.

“Do what?”

“Follow my plan. For real. Not just stop sabotaging me. Not just stop hitting me. And not just go through the motions. I mean actually get on board and help me. Put your best effort in.”

I open my mouth to speak, and then close it again.

Wait… is she… considering this? Really? Is she actually willing to…

This quest of hers is insane. It's suicide with extra steps. Sure, the prize is amazing, assuming that ship in orbit is real, which it very well might be. Hell, even if all we can manage to do is sell whatever we find, half of something like that would set me up for life.

Would buy Warnoc Engineering out of debt. Would rebuild Dad's dream.

No. Fucking no. Fuck. Why do I keep thinking this way? I should want nothing to do with this woman. She has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, but I keep trying to cut her more slack.

Custom genetics. Hacking my goddamn brainstem. I've seen guys get stupid over pretty girls before. I used to laugh at them. Smug.

God damn it all.

I open my mouth to speak again. And close it. I must look like a fish at this point. Good thing she's still hiding behind her hair.

“Follow your plan? No.” I say. “I'd follow a plan. Something that doesn't involve us rolling straight in and getting shot. Your plan is rubbish.”

Miranda stands up and flips the curtain of hair back behind her in a glorious zero-g arc that makes me wonder, for a moment, why she ever bothered to go to medical school, or even be born rich, because this girl was made to sell hair products in VR ads.

Hell, I'd probably buy some. And I've had a six-millimeter Belter haircut since I was fifteen.

Stop drooling, Marcus.

“Rubbish how?” she asks. No explosion of rage. She just sounds curious.

“Yeah. First of all, you don't fly with just two people, and when you go to intercept alien god-knows-whats in hostile territory where unfriendly folks are waiting to shoot you on sight, you bring still more crew. This isn't like popping down to the next station ring section for a package of algae snacks, stet?”

She doesn't look enlightened. No surprise there. I doubt she's ever eaten algae snacks in her life. Or popped down to the store for anything.

“This is space travel. And space, while it may not actually want to kill you, acts exactly as if it did. Because it has absolutely nothing that's on the whole list of shit that you, as a soft and squishy human, need to survive. And when you're trillions of kilometers away from anything resembling help, you better bring anything you need with you.

“That means a pilot, a mechanic, and a medic, at the bare minimum, ideally with alternates for each role, plus lots of supplies, spare parts, and backup plans for your backup plans. You don't just launch your ass into the void and wing it.”

She holds up one finger and interrupts me in a careful tone, like she's just trying to get this straight. “But you fly alone all the time. In point of fact, you went and hijacked cargoes alone.”

“Yes, well, I'm a pilot and a mechanic, and, besides, as you so kindly pointed out, I was not operating in ideal circumstances. I couldn't afford to hire. Besides, I was going to go commit some serious criminal acts. Who could I trust?”

“My problem exactly.”

“Yes, I know. But your solution was just brilliant, wasn't it?”

“Well, excuse me for accidentally picking the one man in Orbital space who values his pride more than his future or his life. And could give stubbornness lessons to a rock.”

“I'm being this stubborn because I value my life. We need more people.”

“No. Do what you want with the course,” she says, “but no more crew. Absolutely not.”

“Princess, this isn't optional. We can't do this with just the two of us. It. Will. Not. Work.”

“Why the hell not? You just said you're a mechanic and a pilot. And I'm the best surgeon you'll ever meet, so—”

“You flunked out.”

“No, I didn't flunk out, dummy. I left a boring job patching up neural lace implant malignancies to do groundbreaking research on my own genius idea. Which, I might add, worked brilliantly until you stuck your nose in. Point is, we've covered all your specialties, and that's better than you were doing in your career of petty crime. So we don't need anyone else.”

“This job is different, Princess. Once I intercepted the cargo, and… ah… took care of any escorts, I could just grapple up and redirect it on a new course. That means I could do a whole heist, start to finish, without ever leaving the pilot's chair.

“But we need an EVA specialist. If we're intercepting some kinda alien spacecraft or something in orbit, then someone has to leave the ship and go to it, climb inside, look around. Take pictures. Loot it for artifacts. Whatever it is we're going to do. And I can't do that, because I'm our only qualified pilot, and that means I have to stay in the ship.”

“So teach me.” she says, not missing a beat.

“What?”

“I have an IQ of a hundred and fifty-six. I went straight to medical school at thirteen, graduated top of my class, then got into the neurosurgery program at Craddock Brown. So if you can do this stuff, it should be no problem at all for me.”

Idly, I wonder, if I roll my eyes hard enough, can I see the inside of my own skull? Who talks like that?

“The Cat isn't one of your little chem-rocket racing skiffs. In a few weeks, I could teach you some maneuvers, maybe even basic docking, but matching course with an orbiting derelict? No way. You'd crash us right into—”

“No, I wouldn't, but I don't mean piloting, silly. I meant train me on EVA.”

“What?”

“Did I stutter? Train me on EVA. The Snark is my discovery, I should be the first to board it anyway.”

“Look, first of all, I don't even think we have a space suit that fits—”

“I brought my own.”

“—and, secondly, have you really thought this through? You don't know what you might find in there, or what you might have to do. Or deal with. And you're… well, you're a debutante. And a corporate pencil-pusher.”

Those big purple eyes shoot me a flat look.

“And yes, okay, a surgeon. But none of those things will prepare you for… whatever it is we find out there.”

“Oh, and being a pirate will?”

“I've been doing EVA work my whole adult life. But that's not my point. Point is, this whole mission, with just two of us… well, it's dodgy. You can't just half-ass things in space. That gets you dead. Look, I can get on the nearest internet relay, call up a few guys I know, rock miners, some salvage crew guys. Been doing vac work for decades. We offer them a—”

How is it that she can do some little business with her eyebrows, and it screams “You're a moron” louder than actual screaming would? Did she go to some kind of putdown school?

“Oh, some guys you know,” she sneers. “Right. Your friends? Your buddies? Your pals? Your chums? Is that who you want to take this story to? Jesus, no wonder you're such a loser. You think these guys are your friends? Because, what, you worked with them a bunch? You hung out with them a couple of times? Or maybe you were close.

“But you have no idea what someone will do when they are tempted on this kind of level. If they have any idea what this means, then they will sell us out in a heartbeat. I don't think you even have any idea what you just asked me for half of. Think of everything Starlight is, does, owns, makes. Which of your so-called friends wouldn't stab you in the back for that? Do you know? Can you be sure?”

We keep having these little staring contests, where we just lock eyes and gaze at each other in disbelief. Not even a contest of wills, of who will break the tension and look away first. Just naked astonishment, on my part and probably hers as well, that in all the solar system, in all humanity's teeming billions, such a creature has come to exist.

“So you're telling me,” I ask, slowly, pronouncing my words with care, “that you don't even trust your friends?”

“Friends,” she replies archly, “are an indulgence. Losers have friends. Winners have goals.”

I don't understand this girl. She looks like a pocket-sized cartoon princess, ready to sing duets with Mister Bluebird, backed up by a chorus of forest animals. But she talks like she was raised in The Pit, and every time they threw the raw meat in, she had to fight the other orphans off with a sharpened piece of thigh bone.

“Okay, Princess. Fine. Have it your way. You don't wanna trust anyone, don't. But you need me, and if you're as right about the universe as you clearly think you are, then that means that I'm a creature of pure self-interest, too. So it better be in my self-interest to play along.

“Besides, why are we here? Oh, yes, we're here because someone was mad that she didn't get a share last time, and she wanted a better deal. Well, so do I. It's not just about the damn money. It's about respect. You can think I'm crap all you want, but you will rewrite that contract, and by god you will treat me like an equal, or we just keep sailing off into the void, until we both die, and you will have nothing. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nimic. Ingenting. Nekas. Na-da.”

Thunderclouds gather across her perfect eyebrows, and her lips part to say something… probably something scathing. I reach out, lay an index finger across her lips again. She doesn't flinch this time, just lapses into silence.

And into that silence, into her resentful, appraising stare, I tilt my chin upward and mouth the word…

“Half.”

A small eternity passes before she drops her eyes, and nods.

Well, shit.

What the hell do I do now?

Scratch-built spacecraft don't have much in the way of automated self-maintenance. What they have is a long list of chores. Which is actually perfect when you need time to think.

I'm in the life-support bay, floating in a dimly-lit cubbyhole bounded by tangles of clear Jovian-plastic water pipe, when Leela's voice pipes up in my head.

“Hey, wanna see a magic trick?”

“Not now, kinda busy here.”

I give the filter another wipe with my rag, and line it up to slot back into the secondary percolation tank.

“Busy? You're cleaning algae tank filters, Mister Warnoc.”

“Might not matter to you, but Miranda and I gotta breathe. Besides, I got some stuff to think about. Just—”

“C'mon. You said I could talk to you anytime!”

“I did, didn't I? But I was thinking about you being… you know, upset, and hurting yourself. Not if you wanna show off. I don't think 'magic trick' means you're going to make yourself disappear.”

I pull the next filter. It's covered in wet brown scum. I shouldn't have put this off so long.

“Quite the opposite, really,” she says, from my right. I know it's just a stereo trick, but I can't help but reflexively turn, anyway—

—and stumble backwards with a yelp. The filter spins across the room, shedding globules of water and wet muck everywhere.

There's a little girl standing there.

Yeah, standing. On the floor. As if there were gravity. She's tall for her age, which looks like early teens, and skinny, wearing some sort of flower-patterned sundress. Difficult to place her ethnic background, maybe some sort of mix, with East Asian epicanthic folds over her eyes, but curly hair, and a nose that speaks more of the Arabian peninsula, or perhaps the Lebanese colonies on Mars.

I don't notice that she's slightly translucent until the filter bounces off a circulation fan housing, and rebounds right through her, still flinging droplets as it spins.

Oh, it's a projection. Like her voice. She lifts a tentative hand to wave at me.

“Okay, yeah. Good trick. Did you… draw all that?”

“Sort of,” she says. “There's a lot of conventional computer hardware and software in here with me. Graphic processors, rendering libraries, that sort of thing. There's even an animation archive, so I'm mostly just sticking stuff together to get something that looks…well, sort of like me.”

I look her up and down. “You mean like Lily Trentfield, don't you?”

Her face falls. “Yeah. But I look like a white metal coffin, so…”

“So you can draw yourself any way you want, right?”

“I… suppose so. But… this is how I've always looked. Well, no, not me, not like, this me, for-real me, but… well, you know.”

“I get it. It's what you remember. Happy with it?”

“Well….”

“Yeah?”

“I hate my nose. I've always hated my nose.”

“Okay, well, it's not your nose. You can have any nose you like. Try something else.”

She tries something else.

“Hmmm, that's a little bit exaggerated. Most noses aren't that tipped up. Try a little less. Yeah, like that. Maybe pinch the tip a little. No, less than that. Okay, that's getting closer… you need a mirror?”

“A mirror? I have a complete three-D model.”

“Figure of speech. Okay, what about your hair? You want a different color?”

“I thought you liked brunettes?”

“Where'd you get that idea?” I ask, puzzled.

“Oh, no reason,” she chuckles. “Never mind.”

The figure's hair turns platinum blonde, then shades back to a more subdued honey color, and the eyes turn a bright green. She looks much more European, or perhaps Martian, now, but she's left the Asiatic eye shape, and the presentation is quite striking. Anyone who knew the real Lily Trentfield would probably find her hauntingly familiar, but possibly not know why.

“You like it?” she asks.

I smile at her, and rotate my finger in the air. She twirls, then stops and looks at me, nervous and expectant. I do like it. It's eye-catching without looking unnatural or inhuman. But it's not about me, of course.

“What matters is if you like it.”

“What? Awwww…. c'mon. Do you like it?”

“Satisfactory.”

“Just satisfactory? That's it?”

I double down. “It'll do.” but I can't help but crack a smile, just a bit.

“You're mean!”

“Yep. Total monster. Eat kittens for breakfast. ”

We're both grinning now—she's made something pretty, and she knows it, but she's like a real girl. Likes to be teased. At least she's smiling. Maybe she'll be okay? I hope.

“Seriously, though. Cool trick. You may need to work on orientation a bit, though.”

“Orientation?”

“Yeah, your elbow is sticking through the recirculation pumps.”

Her newly upturned nose crinkles as she turns her head down to scowl at the offending joint. Well, almost at the offending joint.

“Other elbow.”

“Oh. Damn. Sorry. This is hard. I'm having to calculate the angle of your head from that little webcam up in the corner, and then compose a translation matrix to multiply all the coordinates by, and then—”

“Leela, you don't have to fake up this stuff just to provide me with some sort of software user experience.”

For a moment, I can see the struggle to fix her eyes on me, and then it clicks, and she makes something resembling real eye contact. I can't be sure, maybe it's the light, but I think she's still trying out different shades of green.

“Yes, I do,” she says, “I heard all your arguments with Doctor… with Miranda. She keeps talking about me like I'm a thing. About how you broke her big important research project.”

“That's just Miranda. I think she's like that with everybody. But what does that have to do with… ah… all this?” I wave my hand at her projected shape, which flickers a bit as she shifts a few millimeters to stop intersecting the floor.

Her eyes meet mine, and flick downwards. She seems to have settled on “jungle moss” for a color. “I thought… if I looked like a person, maybe I'd get treated like one.”

“Maybe by shallow people who go by appearances. Does their opinion really matter so much?”

“No! It's you, too! Everybody thinks that way! I asked you to take me with you! And you said I was really expensive and Barsoom would be angry if you stole me! Like I'm a piece of—”

“Hey, hey, hey now. Kiddo, I wasn't talking about how I see you. To me, you're a good kid. Maybe a bit weird. And melodramatic. But to them, you're… well, you're the result of a whole hell of a lot of money and hard work. Like, thousands of bitcoin, or billions of Starlight dollars, and hundreds of people working for years, okay?”

“So what?”

“So chose a word, steal or kidnap? They're not going to let me just take you. I'm already going to be in enough trouble with Miranda's family as it is. Probably regardless of what I do.”

I snag the slowly spinning filter out of the air, and shove it back into the recirculation pump uncleaned. I'll finish this later.

“Oh. That,” Leela says, sitting on top of the pump housing. I didn't see her climb up there. Maybe she just skipped that part. “What are you going to do about that? She kinda just accepted your unacceptable offer, didn't she?”

I wipe my hands on the cleaning rag, which really only serves to marginally clean the rag. “Yeah. I shoulda asked for seventy-five percent, or something. Bit weird if I try that now. I'll figure out something, though.”

“So… you're still not going?”

“Of course not. I just want my ship back.”

“But if that's all you want, why are you going through all of this? I've never understood why you don't just take it.”

“She's got my account locked, I can't control the—”

“So what? Wipe out the drives, and reinstall all the servers from scratch. You should be able to download all the images and packages you need—”

I stare at her—

“Marcus? What is it?”

—and smack one palm against my forehead.

“You didn't think of it, did you?”

I shake my head. “I'm not really a computer guy. I just kinda muddle through.”

“Well, I could help you. I was studying—I mean, Lily was studying—to be a software engineer. Besides, a fish ought to know something about water, right?”

“Yeah. Problem is, I don't think we could hide it. The network would go down. For hours at least.”

“So?”

“So she'd notice. Even if she were asleep, her neural lace would lose connection, which would be a bit of a bloody giveaway.”

“Yeah, but so what? You stomped her guard robot things already. What's she going to do? Pound her tiny fists on your chest and scream at you?”

“Fights don't go down like in movies. I don't think she's found any of my guns, but there's lots of sharp objects on the ship. If I'm busy working on the computers, and she decides to—”

“So take care of her first! She's a third your size. Just grab her and stuff her in one of the cargo containers 'till we're done.”

“Leela, I'm not going to do that.”

”She did it to me.”

“And I'm not her. No more rough stuff. I said it, and I meant it.”

“But she's a total—”

“Leela, no.”

“But you wouldn't have to hit her, you'd just have to grab and tie her up—”

“No.”

“But what if she's in—”

“Leela, drop it.”

Her face falls. Realistically.

“Okay, okay. What if you distracted her?”

“From noticing a six- to eight-hour network outage? Short of locking her up or knocking her out…”

I trail off. I'm out of ideas. Would it really be so bad if I… Yes. Yes, it would. I sit back in the air, rub my organic eye with one palm heel, trying to think of something.

“Take the deal.”

I snap my gaze back to Leela, who's standing in the air now, twitching a bit with excitement.

“She's drawing up another contract right now, right? Sign it.”

“But I don't want to go to—”

“You wouldn't have to go through with it. I have an idea. If you pretend to go along with her, and if I give you a little help, there's a way you can do this. Really easy. No rough stuff, like you said.”

“Okay. What's the plan?”

She purses her lips, frowns at me, hesitating.

“Well?”

“I want something first. For my help.”

“Lemme guess. You want to come with me.”

She fixes me with her eyes. Yep. Definitely jungle moss. “I want you to promise me.”

“It's a big risk, Leela. Oh, stop looking at me like that. I'll see what I can do.”

“That's not good enough, Marcus. Say the words. Or go beat a tiny, pretty little girl who's completely helpless against you. Manhandle her with your big, cruel fists, you monster.”

I stare at her avatar, cock an eyebrow, but she brazens it out. Not a hint of a smile. “She'll probably cry,” she adds, deadpan.

“You fight dirty, Leela.”

“I fight to win. Now hold up your right hand and say the words.”

I know when I'm beaten. I hold up my right hand, still covered in bits of algae sludge.

“I, Marcus Warnoc, promise that, in return of her assistance in evicting Miranda Foxgrove from my spacecraft, the White Cat, I will allow the Artificial Intelligence construct Leela to remain aboard if she desires, for as long as she desires, and make every reasonable effort I am capable of to prevent her from being forcibly removed. My word and hand on it. Does that satisfy you?”

“Yay!”

I turn, and flinch a bit as the image launches herself at me, wrapping both arms around my shoulders. And right through me. For a moment, my vision fills with a kaleidescope of misaligned triangles, like a bugged video game, computer graphics seen from the inside.

“Oh,” she says, reappearing in front of me again. “That didn't work. But… thank you. I didn't want to go back. I really, really hate her.”

“Yeah, I can see that. So… what's your plan?”