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A new voice spoke. "He answers as best as he can."
Sam froze in the process of taking a step. The new voice had come from the shadows ahead. She
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lowered her foot. "Who is that?"
"Here." Now the voice was next to her.
Turner indicated a mesh in the wall. "It's coming from there."
Sam spoke to the mesh. "Who are you?"
"You could call me a sort of interface."
"For who? Or what?"
"Would you like to see?"
Her pulse jumped. "Yes. I would."
"Then come in."
The wall in front of her irised open into an oval. A wild mess of equipment crammed the area beyond:
pipes, robot arms, random bits of machinery. Beyond the clutter, a room stretched out, filled with
shadows and more equipment.
Fascinated, Sam squeezed through the half-blocked opening. She and Turner entered an asymmetric
cavern with catwalks hanging from the high ceiling. Lab benches, forma chairs, and consoles cluttered the
space, equipment leaning at odd angles to the floor. Although sporadic lights flashed here and there, it all
seemed quiescent. Sam stared around, bewildered and fascinated. Who had built this chaotic place? No
one human, she would wager.
Turner seemed relieved to be in a larger space. Fourteen showed little interest in the lab, but he followed
the two of them, watching intently.
"Can you link with any meshes here?" Sam asked Turner.
"Not yet. They block my access much better than the systems at Hockman."
"Who are 'they'?" Sam asked.
"Whoever runs this place." He spoke thoughtfully. "EIs. Fugitives, like me. I'll bet I'm not the only one
they've invited here."
"Is this what you meant by Sunrise Alley?"
"It could be." Turner halted by a tangle of pipes and set his palm against the vertical portion of a blue
one, bowing his head as he leaned against it, resting. He seemed exhausted. Sam wanted to help, but she
wasn't sure how. He clearly needed more than he could get from powering himself down for routine
maintenance.
Turner lifted his head. "The EI in the Himalayas didn't give me much to go on, just a few places where I
might find formas outside human control. George couldn't add much." He peered up along the twists and
turns that the pipe followed to the ceiling far overhead. "I called it Sunrise Alley because it fit the
descriptions I'd heard."
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"Why do you think Giles is wrong that Sunrise Alley and Charon might be the same?"
"Charon is definitely a person." Turner shuddered. "I spent the two worst weeks of my life with him. I
think he enjoyed hurting me."
His haunted look tore at Sam. "What did he do?"
"After he put the sensors in my skin, he wanted to see if I could perceive pain." Turner sounded as if he
were gritting his teeth. "I can."
"No wonder you don't like to talk about him." She wished she could free him of the memories. "I'm sorry
to ask. But to help you, it would help if I knew more about him."
"Such as?"
"What does he look like?"
Turner averted his gaze. "Brown hair. Medium height and build. Brown eyes. An average face, I guess.
You would never notice him in a crowd."
"Can you make a holo of him?"
He wouldn't look at her. "I don't want to."
She tried another angle. "What did he do for a living?"
"Where did he go at night, after he manacled me to a mech-table? I have no idea." He met her gaze. "All
I know is that I hated him."
"I'm not surprised." Sam started to reach for him, then remembered Fourteen, who stood back several
paces, watching them. "We need to find out if Charon has a link to this place."
"He doesn't," Turner said. "Not according to George."
"Maybe George doesn't know. Or he lied."
"George can't lie."
"How can you be sure?"
"Call it EI intuition. But it's intuition based on my analysis of behavior patterns and our situation."
It didn't surprise her. An EI often developed such "intuition" if its personality stabilized. It took time to
build up and implement the necessary store of knowledge, but Turner had started with human patterns,
so the process was already happening with him.
Most EIs developed a limited understanding of human emotions. Turner was already a kind-hearted
man; if his EI continued in that direction, he would end up with better empathy than most human beings.
However, he could go the other way, tending toward some sort of norm for EIs, becoming like the
others, less empathetic. Madrigal had a strong personality, but she was less tuned to human feelings,
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which sometimes led her to make odd decisions, like that business with the name Samantha. Sam knew it
might be wishful thinking on her part, but she thought Turner would become more attuned to emotions,
not less.
Right now he was considering Fourteen. "Maybe he knows if Charon is here."
Sam had watched Fourteen in her peripheral vision throughout their conversation, but he had shown no
change in his demeanor, posture, or face. Now she spoke to him. "Are you familiar with the man who
calls himself Charon, Wildfire, and Parked and Gone?"
Fourteen regarded her dispassionately. "No."
"Does anyone with that name have links to this place?" Turner asked.
"None I know of."
Sam exhaled. "I wish I understood more about all this." She tapped the pipes. "What do these do?"
"I think they carry coolant," Turner said.
Sam supposed it made sense. A lab with this much equipment needed cooling systems. The layout was
bizarre, though, with pipes curving up and over consoles in odd geometries. Then again, if only androids,
robots, and formas lived here, they would build for their use. Probably what looked like crazy angles and
equipment to her were suited to the different needs of the inhabitants.
"Is anyone here?" Sam asked. "We would like to talk with you."
A light appeared on a console several yards away, half hidden in the maze of pipes, glowing blue as if
someone had molded a piece of the sky into a small dome and brought it down here. A robot arm
hummed and swung past the light. With so many pipes in the way, Sam couldn't see clearly, but it looked
like the arm picked a box off a stool in front of the console.
"Come on." Sam took Turner's hand and drew him with her, headed around the pipes. As a scientist,
she found this lab a wonderland; as a pragmatist, she feared she had signed her death warrant the
moment she became aware of this place.
The robot arm cleared two stools in front of the console, which was powering up, its Luminex surface
active with lights glowing like bright marbles. Its vertical video screen cleared into a wash of blue and the
horizontal holoscreen swirled with speckled gold and black patterns.
Sam glanced at Fourteen. "Okay if we sit here?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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