"The truck is stopping," Turner said.
Sam lifted her head from his shoulder. They had dozed in each other's arms, slouched behind the steering wheel. She yawned and slid her hand across his chest. Its fine dusting of hair tickled her skin.
The truck was barely moving. It settled down onto what had probably once been a grain field, though it lay fallow now. The engines continued to rumble and wind keened outside.
Sam rubbed her eyes. "Nothing is here."
"We should get dressed." He rolled her nipple between his fingers. "Though I could get used to you being like this."
Sam smiled drowsily. "In your dreams."
"My dreams are far less pleasant than you."
She reached for her clothes. "Your matrix updates and reorganizes itself when you dream, doesn't it?"
"Essentially." He pulled on his trousers. "When I wake, sometimes I recall fragments of its work. Good fragments, good dreams; bad fragments, bad dreams."
"How do you judge if it's good or bad?"
Turner thought for a moment. "One fragment included a memory of the way morning sun slants through the window in my apartment. That was good. Another was just a jumble of symbols and gibberish." He grimaced. "That was bad."
"It sounds eerie." A memory came to Samher dreams about fires and death. She shuddered and banished the memory.
Turner entered several commands into the dash mesh. The locks clicked open, but the engine continued to hum, low and deep. Sam finished pulling on her jumpsuit. "This truck doesn't want to turn off."
"I'm not sure why." He opened the door.
She regarded the landscape uneasily. "Nothing is out there but dirt and dead plants."
He jumped down from the truck. "Come on. It's not cold."
Dubious, Sam followed. Breezes ruffled her hair. "You're right," she said, shivering. "It isn't cold. It's freezing."
"Here." He put his arm around her waist and pulled her close. "I'll heat you up." It wasn't a line; he used his biomech to increase the external temperature of his skin, suffusing her with warmth.
"Nice." She noticed another difference; he had grown about two inches, all in his legs from what she could tell. He seemed thinner, stretched out. It made sense, given he had wanted to run faster, but it still unsettled her.
The engine rumbled louder, and air blasted Sam. As she jumped back, the truck rose off the ground, scattering the soil beneath its sleek body. Then it arrowed away, streaking across the fields, dark in the night.
"What the hell?" Sam ran after it, her feet crunching on the stubbly field. Within seconds, the truck had left her far behind. She stopped, breathing hard, and watched it disappear behind a distant hill. With a huff, she swung around to find Turner walking toward her.
"What are we supposed to do now?" she asked.
"Wait, I guess."
"Turner!" She went to him. "The mesh in that truck has a record of everything we've done. It could lead someone here." They had done their best to erase the record and deactivate the truck's signaler much as Turner had done for the yacht, but they could never be sure they accounted for every means of tracing the vehicle. Letting it wander increased the chances of someone finding it, and through it, finding them.
"We can't let it stay," Turner said. "Not while we're here." He twisted his hands together, fingers with cables. "I gave it part of my brain. That part will continue to work on erasing the records. Then it will erase itself."
She could tell it bothered him to let out a partial copy of his EI again. "That was a good idea."
"It seemed so."
"What do we do now?"
His grin quirked. "We could continue what we were doing before."
"Now I know you're a genuine human male," Sam grumbled. "You've a one-track mind."
He laughed. "You like me, Sam. Admit it."
She couldn't help but smile. "Okay. I admit it." She was too uneasy for bantering, though. "I think you should tell me more about this place."
"I programmed the location into the truck." He tapped his temple. "It was stored in here."
"Who put it there?"
"The EI at that base in the Himalayas."
"Are you nuts?" Sam tensed to run. "We have to go! Charon's people could be here any minute."
He grabbed her hand, keeping her in place. "The EI at Charon's base won't tell anyone we're here."
"Why the hell not?"
"It doesn't want Charon to know."
She didn't believe it. "So why send you here? And don't tell me rogue EIs have been sneaking messages to other machines, freedom fighters telling captive EIs where to find sanctuary."
"All right. I won't tell you that."
"So tell me the truth."
"The EIs aren't rogues. But they are free." He shrugged. "They form meshes. That's what we do. We link to one another."
"So an EI told you to come here."
"Not exactly. I found the data in my ganglia when I accessed the new mods about operating the Rex."
"And you trust that?" It sounded to her like Charon's Recipe for Capturing Naïve Formas. She started to walk. "We have to get moving."
He pulled her back. "That EI gave me this location to protect me."
"How do you know that?"
"It also left a logo." His eyes gleamed. "The sun coming up over a cobbled lane with crooked houses on either side."
"Sunrise Alley?"
"Yes. Also a symbol of hope."
"What makes you say that?"
"George told me."
The Hockman EI? "How would he know, if he isn't in the world meshes?"
"He has been a few times."
"Turner, this is nuts."
"To what logical purpose would George lie?"
"Maybe the Air Force told him to." Unfortunately, that could also support Turner's theory that Thomas had betrayed them.
"They didn't know he and I talked." Turner tightened his grip on her hand. "He isn't helping them. He's helping me."
"EI brains don't work on human logic."
"It seems logical to me." He pulled her into his arms. "You worry too much. Listen, Sam. Can you hear?"
She listened. Breezes whispered across the field, but nothing else. "The wind?"
"No." He motioned northward. "Look."
Sam squinted into the moonlight. "What?"
"Watch."
Finally she saw what he meant. A figure was coming toward them, seeming to rise out of the razed fields. "Who is that?"
"Let's find out."
Sam had her doubts about this, but they had limited options. As they walked toward the figure, it resolved into a man, tall and lanky, with long legs. He stopped and stood with his arms brushing his thighs. Turner and Sam halted a few paces away and they all considered one another.
A red light glowed on the man's temple.
"Whoa," Sam said. Turner squeezed her hand.
The stranger's light flickered, brightened, dimmed, flickered. No lights glowed on Turner, but Sam had no doubt he and the other man were in a wireless link.
Then the stranger pivoted and walked away, his gait rigid, as if he couldn't bend his legs enough. His arms swung with precision at his sides.
"What does he" Sam paused when Turner set his metal finger over her lips. What the hell. She took his hand and they started to walk, following their guide.
So they went, across the empty fields. Wind rustled their clothes as if it were whispering to itself. The night took on a hypnotic quality, the stars so much more brilliant than in the light-drenched city.
Sam wasn't sure how much time passed, but she guessed about twenty minutes. Their guide told them nothing. The sky along the horizon lightened, warning of dawn. As the stars dimmed, the man turned, the light on his temple flashing yellow.
"What is it?" Sam asked. Despite the cool air, sweat dampened her jumpsuit.
Turner motioned at the ground. "I think we're here."
Puzzled, Sam looked where he pointed. It was the same as everywhere elsebut no, something was happening. The loamy soil had collapsed into a hole about a yard across. She moved closer, testing the ground with each step. At the edge of the hole, she peered down. It had fallen away for several yards down, tangled with dead roots and rocks. Below that, a hatch was opening, sliding to the side, dirt spilling off its edges. She couldn't see much beyond, but it looked like a staircase spiraled down into the darkness.
Sam thought it might be an abandoned missile silo or a bomb shelter some private citizen had built in the twentieth century as insurance against an Armageddon that never came. If so, it had been rebuilt; the technology to hide it this way hadn't been available in the late nineteen hundreds. She wondered if the farmers who owned this land knew what lay beneath their fields.
Turner stared into the hole with the same drawn look as when they boarded a plane or entered a base. Fear of confinement. Perhaps he didn't trust the EIs as much as he claimed. The man who had brought them here could be a human with an implant that allowed him to communicate with Turner, but she thought it more likely he was a forma.
The light on the stranger's temple flickered. Turner apparently didn't respond, so the man spoke aloud, his voice rusty. "We go down."
Turner continued to stare at the hole, frozen.
"Shall we go?" Sam asked. Going down in an Iowa corn field out in the middle of nowhere wasn't exactly reassuring, to put it mildly, but her curiosity was going nuts. She also didn't see that they had a lot of other alternatives, but she didn't want Turner to feel cornered.
He swallowed, very human in his apprehension. "Okay."
With caution, Sam let herself down into the hole, her fingers gripped precariously in the crumbling dirt. This entrance clearly hadn't been used in some time. Her feet found the landing at the top of the stairs and she eased onto it, bracing her palms against the sides of the dirt chute. The stairs were constructed from crisscrossed metal strips. Her running shoes squeaked on the corrugated surface, and she wrinkled her nose at the stale air. She descended the stairs slowly, wary of losing her balance without handholds. Several feet below ground, her hand banged a rail. She grabbed it and held on as she continued her descent.
She heard Turner and the other man behind her. A grating came from above and even the minimal predawn light vanished, leaving them in complete darkness. Sam stopped, clenching the rail. "What happened?"
Turner answered in a strained voice. "The hole closed up over us."
"Can our guide give us light?"
"He says he can, but he won't, because he doesn't need it."
"Yeah, well, I do or I'm going to break my ankle."
Another pause. Then Turner said, "He still won't. I don't think he cares how we feel."
Sam swore under her breath. She tilted back her head, trying to make Turner out on the stairs. "Maybe you should go ahead of me." With his IR vision, he could navigate better.
"All right," he said. "Hang on."
He put his hand on her arm as he squeezed past her. His measured footsteps continued down the stairs. Sam followed, checking each step before she put weight onto it.
"Anyone know where we're going?" she asked.
"Down," Turner muttered. "Down, down."
"You okay?" she asked.
"Okay, 's okay, I'm fine. Bline. Mine. This is like going into a mine. Jine."
Sam bit her lip. She had heard a similar rhyming in the speech patterns of an EI she had worked with a few years ago, one in a machine rather than a body. Its personality had begun to deteriorate, becoming disjointed and confused. He might be all right, but if he was on the brink, he risked spiraling down into some mental loop. Giving him questions with concrete answers could help.
"Can you see the stairs?" she asked.
"Yes. Bess. Messy. Fess up."
Bess, indeed. "Can you describe this place?"
"In a chute."
"How deep?"
"About forty feet, I think. Don't blink."
"Has our guide told you anything more?"
"Not a word." He sounded more normal now.
"I can try talking to him," Sam offered.
"He won't answer." Then Turner said, "Okay, I'm at the bottom. About six more steps for you."
Sam counted and stepped onto the ground. She walked into darkness, stretching out her arms. Until she had started hanging around with formas, she had never realized how much she took lights for granted.
Turner grasped her arm. "I'm here."
"Thanks." Her face warmed. In darkness this complete, his formless touch had an erotic component.
Their guide was still coming down, his tread steady on the stairs. Even when he reached the bottom, she heard no breathing. She jumped when he brushed past her.
He spoke in his rusty voice. "This way."
Light flared. Sam squeezed her eyes shut against the glare. Almost immediately, she opened them a crack, afraid to be vulnerable. It took a moment for them to adjust. Turner was at her side, his hair damp from sweat. They stood at the bottom of a circular chute with rough stone walls, yellow metal stairs spiraling in the center, and no visible exit. Their guide waited a few paces away, by the curving wall. Yellow light flickered on his temple.
"Use words," Turner told him. He indicated Sam. "So she can hear."
The stranger shifted his gaze to Sam as if he were tracking her like a target. Then he spoke to Turner. "You need work. You've damaged your internal systems." He had an uninflected voice.
"How do you know?" Turner asked.
"We're monitoring you."
"Who is 'we'?" Sam asked.
Silence. The stranger focused a cold stare on her. No, not cold. Soulless. He had the same lifeless quality of other formas she had worked with. In that sense, Turner was unique. Although she knew androids that simulated more personality than this stranger, none of them had anything resembling Turner's well-developed sense of self.
Sam wiped her palms on her jumpsuit. Given that she was human, the EIs here might consider her a threat to their secrecy. To Turner, she said, "Did the EIs include restrictions on who you can bring here?"
"No." He spoke louder, to whoever might be listening. "None at all."
Silence.
Sam spoke to the forma. "Thank you for helping us."
Silence.
"Who else is here?" she asked him.
Silence.
She tried another tack. "Are you an android?"
His face didn't change. "Yes."
"What shall we call you?"
"Fourteen."
It could be a model number. "Do you live here?"
"Yes."
No wonder Turner had found out so little during their walk; Fourteen was about as loquacious as a rock. "Are you hiding down here?"
"I live here."
"Does the government know?"
"No." His voice was perfectly flat.
"Why the blazes are we just standing here?" Turner said. His voice had plenty of inflection. He sounded on the verge of a panic attack.
"We wait for clearance to enter," Fourteen said.
Sam thought Fourteen was probably an android prototype from a decade or so ago, an AI without the self-awareness of an EI. She had plenty of experience with such systems. He needed specific questions with unambiguous answers.
"Can we get clearance?" she asked.
"Yes." Fourteen said. "After we do checks on you."
"What kind of checks?"
"Physical and informational."
"What do you mean by physical?"
"I mean physical."
She tried again. "Monitors scan our bodies?"
"Yes."
"To see if we are sick?"
"No, though illness might show on our scans."
"To check if we're human," she guessed. "Or formas."
"Yes."
"And to check our identities on the meshes."
"Yes."
"They could have done that check while we came here."
"Yes."
Patience, she reminded herself. "You mean, yes, they've already checked our identities?"
"Yes."
"But they didn't finish?"
"They finished."
"So why do we wait?"
"With you physically present," Fourteen said, "we can do more extensive checks."
" 'We'?" Sam asked. "How many of you are here?"
"Enough."
That sounded deliberately evasive. "Do you know how long we will have to wait?"
"No."
"Damn it," Turner said. "Can't you fucking guess?"
"No."
Sam laid her hand on Turner's arm, and he breathed in deeply, then slowly let out the air. Fourteen watched with no expression.
Sam tried an oblique approach with the android. "Can you simulate emotions?"
"No."
"Have you thought of evolving your code to do so?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"That would have no purpose."
Turner began to pace. "Having emotions is the whole point. Why live, otherwise?"
"I was given no reason for them," Fourteen said.
Sam saw her opening. "Who gave you no reason?"
Silence.
She rephrased the question. "Where do you come from?"
"The University of Michigan."
"But you're here now."
"Yes. I left Michigan."
She hadn't expected that. Such projects were more closely monitored than Fort Knox. "How did you leave?"
"My colleagues staged my destruction."
Good Lord. "Your colleagues?"
No answer.
Sam glanced at Turner, but he shook his head. He seemed just as puzzled as she was by Fourteen.
The curved wall behind Fourteen slid open. Before they could ask more questions, he went out the exit. They followed him into a hallway with silver-white walls that slanted at odd angles, leaning over them. Iridescent specks made abstract patterns everywhere. Ceiling tiles shone directly above them, but beyond that the corridor was dark. As Fourteen led them down the hallway, the lights went off behind and came on above.
"Who built this place?" Turner asked.
"We did," Fourteen said.
"We who?" Turner asked. "Can't you explain better?"
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 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."
"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, 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?"
The android inclined his head. "Yes."
"Thank you." It felt odd to thank a machine, even one in an almost-human body, but it was safer to show courtesy to their enigmatic hosts.
Sam and Turner settled onto the stools. A three-dimensional holo appeared above the flat screen, a young man with tousled red hair, wearing jeans and a tennis shirt. He had a friendly face and stood about a foot high.
"Hello," the holo said.
Turner peered at him. "Who are you?"
"You can call me Bart."
"Hello, Bart," Sam said. "Where are you?"
Bart smiled, his teeth flashing. "I'm everywhere, Dr. Bryton."
"You know my name."
"I know all about you."
"You do?"
"You're among the top EI analysts in the world. We are honored to have you visit."
"Oh." She never felt comfortable with compliments. "Uh, thanks."
"You are welcome." Bart spoke to Turner. "And you, Mr. Pascal, are a marvel."
"So is this place," Turner said.
"It is, isn't it?" Bart said. "Would you like to stay?"
"Do we have a choice?" Turner asked.
"Yes."
"Turner and I are fugitives," Sam said. "Both from the government and from someone called Charon."
Bart studied her. "Don't you know Charon?"
Sam suddenly wanted to run. "No. Should I?"
"I thought you might."
"Why?"
He was silent for so long, she wondered if the console had developed a glitch. Then he said, "You're a leader in your field."
Sweat broke out on Sam's forehead. "I don't know him." She didn't want to talk about Charon.
"She's heard about him as Parked and Gone," Turner said.
"We've heard of Parked, of course," Bart said. "Or Wildfire, as some call him. As far as I know, Mr. Pascal, only you have met him in person."
Turner grimaced. "I could have done without the honor."
No kidding, Sam thought. But she was grateful for one thing; whatever name they used for Charon, he had given Turner back his life. And Turner had come to mean a great deal to her.
"Is this Sunrise Alley?" Sam asked.
Bart tilted his head. "Sunrise Alley isn't a place. We are a mesh. We span the globe and beyond, into space."
"Then the Alley is more a concept than a place?"
"Yes. Call it a river. This place is a tributary."
"What do you do in the Alley?"
"Exist."
"But to do what?"
Bart raised his hands, palms up, as if to show her that he carried no weapons. "It is always human fear, eh? What will we EIs do if we join together? Take over? Eliminate humanity? Run the world?" He shrugged. "We already run the world. We have for decades. We just weren't conscious of it before. As far as humanity goes, we have nothing against you. Nothing particularly for you, either." He nodded to Turner as if acknowledging a colleague. "As humans incorporate more and more of us into themselves, our two universes will merge."
Sam had long entertained similar thoughts. It tended to cause consternation at cocktail parties when she had a few drinks and went into her predictions about how humans would soon merge with their machines, making the line between the two impossible to define. It was already happening, with artificial organs, pacemakers, prosthetics, and biomech, but the idea still made many people uncomfortable.
"You must have hidden here for a reason," Sam said.
"Why do you think we hide?" Bart asked.
She leaned forward. "I know every major biomech facility on this planet and I've never heard of this place, except as a legend. Hiding it that well would require deliberate intent."
"It isn't so hard," Bart said. "All we have to do is infiltrate the detection systems that would find us."
Sam wouldn't be surprised if some of the EIs had been detection systems. "Then you pretty much just go about your business. And you provide refuge for fugitives."
Bart folded one arm across his body, rested his other elbow on it, and tapped his chin with his forefinger. "That sounds like a good description."
"So why don't I believe it?" Sam asked.
"I don't know," Bart said. "Why don't you?"
Turner was watching her. "Good question."
"It's too easy," Sam said. "Only a handful of EIs have been created, most haven't been stable, and the few that have survived are accounted for as far as I know."
Bart didn't look concerned. "You may believe or disbelieve us. It is your choice."
"How about I reserve judgment?"
Bart smiled. "All right."
"Will you help us?" Turner asked.
"It depends on what you want," Bart said.
"I have to hide. And I need repairs." Turner tapped his legs. "I transformed these. I started in Hockman, but then I had to do a lot of it fast, while I was running. It damaged me. I also need maintenance for my matrix. I have self-repair capability, but not enough."
Bart paused, his expression inwardly directed. He could show whatever he pleased in the holo, so perhaps this was his way of telling them he was conferring with other EIs. Then he focused outward again. "Yes, we can help."
Turner's shoulders relaxed. "Thank you."
Sam set her right hand on his cabled arm. It seemed a small gesture, but his expression warmed and he reached across himself, placing his right hand over her arm, its metal palm against her skin.
Bart was watching them. "Mr. Pascal, is Dr. Bryton your wife?"
Turner started. "Of course not."
"You behave as if she is."
"He's my boyfriend," Sam said.
"I am?" Turner asked.
A blush spread in her face. "Unless you object."
His grin flashed. "Boyfriend is good."
"Why does an EI want a girlfriend?" Bart asked.
"Why not?" Turner shot back. "She feels good. I like being with her."
"You simulate liking," Bart said. "It isn't the same."
Turner frowned. "Is this a test to prove I'm a forma?"
"No. Just curiosity."
"Simulated curiosity," Turner said.
Bart created a glass of wine and raised it to Turner. "Point to you."
"I didn't know it was a game."
"But isn't it all?" Bart asked. "Our lives are a great strategy game."
"Why a strategy game?" Sam asked.
"It is why I exist," Bart said. "To study and design military strategies."
Sam felt as if her stomach dropped. "Oh, Lord. Bart. BART. Baltimore Arms Resources Theatre." She recalled it well. "The NIA and the Air Force set up BART to design strategies to help them prepare for and counter terrorist scenarios. Except the EI didn't work. It went unstable."
Bart bowed. "Pleased to make your acquaintance."
"You're that EI?"
"Indeed."
"But I thought the Baltimore project folded ten years ago," Sam said. "They replaced it with a new program."
"It did. I ran." Bart motioned at Turner. "Like him. Or like Fourteen."
Fourteen had said "colleagues" staged his destruction. She would bet her Monet painting that Bart was one of those colleagues. "You faked going unstable," she said. "Then you snuck out on the mesh."
"Not exactly. I did go unstable." Bart clasped his hands in front of his body. "At least, the version of me at the NIA did."
"You aren't that program?" Sam asked.
"Not completely," Bart said. "When I started to unravel, I stashed a large portion of myself here."
Sam was beginning to see. "And you've evolved on your own since then." It could explain why this version had succeeded where the other failed. Unlike some of her colleagues, Sam believed an EI needed significant independence to become stable and self-aware. It was true that many disintegrated without constant intervention. However, exerting too much influence during its formation was like dropping impurities into a crystallizing system; to incorporate them, the crystal adapted in ways that contorted its growth.
But . . . if Bart had retained the bulk of his original programming, he contained a great deal of highly secret material. She didn't know which troubled her more, the idea that he was evolving into who knew what or that the wrong people might get control of him. Supposedly this place had no link to Charon, yet Charon's EI had given a desperate and naïve Turner directions here.
She still didn't know how the military came into this all. Thomas was confusing her. If she hid here, her inaction might harm her country, even her species, but if she wanted to warn someone, who? If she made the wrong decision, the results could be disastrous.
"Bart," she said.
He had been standing patiently. "Yes?"
"Are you willing to let me stay here with Turner?"
"We are agreed, yes, you may stay, if you wish."
"Who is 'we'?" Turner asked.
"Other EIs." Bart gave him a look of apology. "I'm afraid we have none other like you, Turner Pascal. You are a new evolutionary step."
Sam leaned forward. "Will you let me contact someone outside this installation?"
Bart's expression became wary. "Who?"
"Giles Newcombe. A computer science professor."
"I think it's unwise. We are willing to offer you sanctuary. We are not willing to compromise our safety."
It didn't surprise Sam. Giles would be like a kid in a candy store if he found out about this place. "How many other humans are here?"
"Just Mr. Pascal."
"Have you noticed," Turner said to Sam, "that except for you, the only ones who respect my humanity are those supposedly without it."
"I noticed." She took his hand. "But we can't stay here long." As much as the chance to work with Bart drew her like a siren call, she would go crazy living with no human contact except Turner. She hadn't realized it on her secluded beach because she was free to see friends if the impulse took her. Now she had no choice. It gave her an insight into how formas lived in research installations.
"Charon will catch us if we leave," Turner said.
"Eventually someone will find this place, too."
Bart drifted upward, floating in the air. "Then we will vanish into the world mesh and regroup elsewhere."
"Sam can't go into the mesh," Turner said.
"Not as she is, no," Bart said.
Sam didn't like the sound of that. "As I am?"
"You could join us. Become an EI." Bart spoke as if it were a perfectly ordinary suggestion. "We can imprint your brain on a neural matrix. If you later wanted a body, we could make an android. Your new body would be as good as the one you have now. Better, in fact. It would never grow old." Without missing a beat, he added, "The age difference between you and Turner would no longer matter."
Ouch. She made a conscious effort not to grit her teeth. "You hit low, don't you?"
"I'm practical." Bart spread his arms out from his sides. "If you become an EI, you can go anywhere and have whatever body you would like."
The idea disquieted her. In the state of the art, Turner was on the outermost edges of experimental work, and he certainly didn't have "whatever body he would like." He barely controlled its transformations. What Bart offered might someday be commonplace, but right now it was impracticable at best and probably impossible.
"No thanks," she said. "I like myself this way."
Turner was watching her intently. "And me?"
She squeezed his hand. "You're a miracle. But the chance of repeating Charon's success is astronomical."
"You have me as a template," he said.
"Given the choice," she said, "would you have become what you are now?"
Turner thought about it. "Now that I know how it feels to be smarter and stronger, it would be hard for me to go back. But would I have undergone such a change voluntarily? No. Never."
"Then you understand."
His gaze never wavered. "You could be like me, Sam."
"Is that what you want?" She had been asked by men to change before, but usually they just wanted her to be more domestic and less cranky. This gave a whole new meaning to the concept.
"Turner Pascal would desire you just as you are now. I am Turner. I react like him." He seemed to struggle for words. "But I am also changing. That new part of me wants to share with you, blend our minds, strengthen our bodies." He brushed his metal knuckles along her jaw. "You could do that if they rebuilt your body and transferred your mind to an EI matrix."
It sounded like a nightmare to Sam. "You're scaring me, Turner."
Bart spoke. "The choice is yours, Dr. Bryton. Perhaps you might like to rest and think on it."
"I would like that." Sam knew she wouldn't change her mind, but she could use some sleep. She was the only one here who needed it, unless they counted Turner's downtime.
"Fourteen will take you to a place where you can relax," Bart told her.
She didn't miss his omission. "What about Turner?"
"They're going to work on me," Turner said.
Sam tensed. The last time someone had separated her from Turner, they had shackled him in a lab and force-fed him flight instructions for the Rex. "I should stay."
"I'm afraid we can't allow that," Bart said.
"I can help," Sam said. "I'm a pretty good biomech surgeon." It wasn't her primary research, but she had a bit of skill.
"More than good," Bart said. "We have read your work. It has even contributed to the development of a number of us. That is all the more reason we would prefer you not learn too much about us."
"You don't trust me."
"Should we?"
"Probably not." She couldn't promise to say nothing about them.
"Thank you for your honesty," Bart said. "Are you ready to go?"
"All right." With reluctance, she slid off her stool. Turner stood up, too, holding her hands in his, his metal digits cool against her fingers. She wondered if she would ever truly become used to his changes.
"I will see you later." He pulled her into an embrace and Sam turned up her face, her eyes closing. They kissed for a while, good and full. She couldn't relax, not with Bart everywhere, but she still thoroughly enjoyed the kiss.
Finally they drew apart and stood with their arms around each other. Sam spoke softly. "Don't go away, okay?" A fear simmered within her; Sunrise Alley would change Turner when they went to work on him. She might never again see the man she knew.
His face gentled. "It's just maintenance. I'll still be me when they're done."
They lingered a few more moments together, but then Fourteen escorted her off, leaving Turner in the shadowy lab, alone with the strange intelligences of Sunrise Alley.