The Last Human Page 8

  [I have no respect for lawbreakers], says Hood. [But I do not wish to kill you. You may still give it up willingly.]

  Outside the room, drones are beginning to gather. They murmur to one another, fretting about this threat of violence. They send peaceful messages on the public channel, but they cannot fit through the door behind Hood. No, the Network can do nothing here; this is bounty hunter versus Widow.

  “I am her mother,” hisses Sarya’s mother, attempting to struggle. To her daughter, watching in her room, the meaning is clear. A mother would die before giving up her daughter. Which means there is nothing to discuss.

  [Be reasonable], says Hood. [I am reasonable. Those who come after me may not be.]

  “She is a person,” hisses Shenya the Widow, struggling in a grasp that Sarya knows too well. “And she is my child. My bond. I brought her out of darkness.”

  Barely three meters away, Sarya’s mouth drops open. I brought her out of darkness. It’s an ancient Widow phrase, one of many. Her mother has said it to her countless times, sometimes lovingly and sometimes with that unique black irony that mothers use when their daughters misbehave: I brought you out of darkness, and I can send you back in. But why now? Is Shenya the Widow saying something else? Does she know her daughter is listening?

  Or is this Sarya’s own idea?

  Sarya drops into a crouch before the prosthetic on the ground. With trembling fingers, she opens its Network interface. She mouths the words as she swipes through options. I brought her out of darkness. She works quickly. She disables safeties. She confirms. She takes responsibility when asked. Yes, she’s sure. No, she doesn’t want to watch a presentation on environment safety.

  In the common room, Hood sighs. [I do not wish this], he says. [But these intelligences shall bear witness: I did everything in my power to dissuade you.]

  Multiple assents appear via Network. Sarya watches from her room with growing rage, assigning a unique hatred to each and every person who has turned against her mother and sided with this bounty hunter. She doesn’t feel bad for this, not at all.

  Sarya flicks a single finger through her Network overlay.

  Like everything on Watertower, the quarters are built to house as wide a variety of beings as possible. The water can be delivered at any temperature between freezing and boiling. The atmosphere has nearly as large a range, and can be ordered with nearly any composition necessary. And, of course, there are the lights.

  Instantly, with no transition, the common room switches to [Sunlight: Type F, Maximum]. The tiny video feed becomes a blazing white rectangle, and Sarya turns away, the purple afterimage following her gaze. At the same instant her heart leaps when she hears a giant’s bellow and the sound of chitin striking deck. Hood has done what no one does twice; he has lost sight of a Widow.

  And then Sarya’s hands are clamped over her ears, and she is stumbling backward from her bedroom hatch. From the twin video feeds and through the reinforced material of the wall itself comes a rising shriek, a piercing scream of rage that ascends in frequency and volume to an unbearable level. It is a blade, a knife, a sound that has evolved over eons to strike fear in the hearts of prey across an entire solar system.

  It is the hunting cry of the Widow.

  “Mother!” shouts Sarya, but she cannot even hear herself. And then she is on her face, shoving her fingers in her ears and her body into the synthetic flooring. She’s heard stories of this, but never experienced it herself. The scream speaks to her own instincts, tells them to run, to hide, to drop and die. She can do nothing but flail her legs and try to dig herself through the deck and out of sight—

  And then her senses shut down.

  (“Welcome to Network!” revision 5600109c, intelligence Tier 1.8–2.5, F-type metaphors)

  WELCOME TO THE REGISTRY!

  Doubtless you’ve had many things to worry about over the past few centuries. Your species has/have recently discovered that you are not alone in the universe after all! Most societies are surprised to learn that they share a galaxy with approximately 1.4 million intelligent species. And after your shock and awe has worn off, you might be left wondering: how does a society so large keep track of everyone?

  The answer is simple: the Network Registry.

  HOW DOES IT WORK?

  Every member of every Citizen species receives a Network registration. This is a public and permanent identifier that can be used for travel, communication, and a raft of other Network privileges. If your species becomes a Citizen, you will need to submit an official name for both your homeworld and species, both of which will be translated into Standard and entered into the Registry. However, there is one hiccup that affects nearly all entries.

  Earth.

  Now don’t get too excited, because that’s not your Earth. It can’t be, because approximately 99.994 percent of new species call their home planet by a name that translates into Standard as Earth.*1 Typically the name of the species is derived from this word as well and translates to “Earthers,” “Earth-dwellers,” “Earthlings,” etc. Because the Registry would be useless with 1.4 million species all named “Earthlings” who originated on “Earth,” species are asked to come up with new names before being granted Citizenship.*2

  To get you started with some ideas, please see this message’s attachments. Included are the current Registry, plus the latest list of recently released names from Citizen species who have left the Network, are now extinct,*3 or both. Keep in mind that many first choices have been taken for millions of years, so if your first choice is similar in style to “The Courageous,” “The Gentle Ones,” “The Unstoppable,” etc., you may have trouble finding something in a reasonable time frame.

  Now get to brainstorming!

  *1 Given the fact that all species begin life far below tier one, it should not be surprising that they have usually named their birthplace some unimaginative variant on the phrase the ground. What is more surprising is the fact that every species seems bewildered that everyone else has done the same.

  *2 Don’t worry! You can register your representation(s) of “Earth” and “Earthling” alongside your new official name. You’ll find that some species are referred to by their unofficial names even more often than the official ones.

  *3 To discourage undesirable behavior in name claiming, e.g., genocide, please note that a species name must be dormant for 100,000 years in order to re-enter the registry.

  “Get…up,” hisses a voice somewhere up above. It fights its way through ringing ears and into a battered head. Sarya rises to one knee and nearly keels over from the overpowering stench in the air. Widow pheromones, hot metal, burning insulation, leaking coolant, goddess knows what else. She falls to her hands and knees and retches.

  “Up,” repeats the voice. She is hoisted to her feet by a collection of very hard, very sharp implements. There is nothing at all soft about her mother right now. “You will carry this,” hisses the voice. A satchel is thrown over her shoulders and tightened mercilessly.

  “Hey, that corporate ship is all docked now,” says Helper’s voice from the ceiling. “Network says they’re looking for somebody, which I’m pretty sure I predicted. There’s a big public announcement that everybody’s supposed to cooperate if they run into—”

  “Enough, Helper,” says Sarya. She rises, still shaky, from her hands and knees.

  “A corporate ship?” hisses Shenya the Widow. She tilts her head, as she always does when she’s using her Network implant. “Searching Watertower? What corporation?”

  “Oh, some deep-space archaeological firm,” says Helper. “Let me look it up real quick—”

  And then Shenya the Widow’s blades slip out from under her and spark across the floor. She lands with a disturbing crack and a furious hiss, limbs swinging and scrabbling for purchase. The battle has apparently not left Shenya the Widow unscathed.
>
  “Off, Helper,” hisses Sarya as she stumbles backward out of range. She leans against the doorframe and takes a breath, her ears still ringing. She very nearly offers to help her mother, but she squashes the impulse. Her mother will do this on her own, or not at all. And then she will tell the story in the future, of how Shenya the Widow needed no help to deal with a bounty hunter many times her size. She will work those scars into every conversation, and she will be insufferable about it.

  “Pain without fear,” whispers her mother as she draws herself to a shaky standing position.

  “Pain without fear,” answers Sarya automatically, struggling to stand upright herself. “Did you—” she says, then coughs. “Is he—”

  But she realizes she doesn’t need to finish either sentence. She did, and he is. The bounty hunter takes up most of the common room floor, sprawled on his face. He looks smaller than before—and then Sarya realizes it’s because his arms have been removed. The big one rests in the corner while his long whip twitches at her feet.

  Unsteadily, she steps over it—with half a mind to stomp it into the floor. She remembers its cold caress on her face and body, and the memory lends her strength. She makes her way to Hood’s torn body, stepping over streaks of fluids of various colors and viscosities. She stands above him, eyes tracing his dented form and sliced tubes. He is oddly beautiful, in a way—and yet she doesn’t feel a trace of sadness. This is on you, Hood. You should have known this was coming when you decided to take the daughter of a Widow.

  “This is…not the time for gloating,” says her mother behind her.

  But Sarya has already found what she’s looking for, peeking out of a dented compartment. She crouches above the smoking form, hands tracing warm metal. When she rises and turns back to her mother, she is inserting earbuds.

  “He took my gift,” she says quietly.

  She does not thank her mother for protecting her. That is not the Widow way. Widows speak thanks for small things, for gifts and favors. The large things, the sacrificing of lives and the killing of threats—these are taken for granted.

  “You…go first,” her mother says when they reach the door. She seems to be having difficulty assembling sentences. “I will follow and…protect.”

  Only now does Sarya begin to realize what has happened here. A dead bounty hunter—yes, that’s only justice. But now she is stepping over a—what is that? The bile rises in her throat. It’s another limb. But whose? Did it belong to the babysitter? To old Baz? To the arboretum caretaker? “Where?” she manages to say, unable to take her eyes off the oozing stump.

  “Away,” says Shenya the Widow, swaying.

  And Sarya finds that she is able. She strides to the door and barely jumps at all when it opens and a figure slumps into the room, head lolling. She refuses to look down as she steps over it, out into a deserted corridor, but the leaking silhouette in her peripheral vision is unmistakable. That was the babysitter. A variety of emotions are fighting for attention now, but she keeps it to the essentials. I am Widow. My rage is my weapon. I am Widow. My life is my own. I am Widow. There are no secrets between Mother and do not panic do not panic Mother is injured do not panic— No. A Widow does not panic. Not even when she has to help her wounded mother step over her disemboweled babysitter.

  From the ceiling, an alarm is blaring. Two more bodies lie out here, formerly the property of intelligences strong enough to escape the apartment but not durable enough to make it to a medication station or the hospital deck. Trails of multicolored fluids lead in both directions, alternating streaks and drips. Sarya attempts to view the scene abstractly, like a Widow would. Isn’t it interesting how many intelligences are full of some kind of fluid? Yes, yes, it is. And tactically speaking, this much fluid on the ground means eliminated threats. There, that is how a Widow thinks. Much better. Except it’s not much better because she is not a Widow, she is a Human, and Humans leak from everywhere all the goddess-damned time and seriously what is with her eyes right now because these people were enemies, they betrayed her, they deserved everything they got—

  But the tears keep coming.

  “May I have your attention, residents of Watertower Station,” says Ellie’s voice from everywhere, suffused with an unusually businesslike edge. “For those of you who missed my previous announcement, I would like to stress the fact that there is absolutely no need to panic. There is no reason there should be any loss of life or even injury. There may not even be a serious problem, but you know how we like to be safe. That’s the Watertower way! All that said, please make your way to the nearest airlock and prepare for evacuation. You have thirty-six minutes at the outside.”

  Sarya swallows, attempting to focus on the problem at hand and not the mess at her feet. She must have been unconscious for the previous announcement, the one where Ellie surely explained what the hell was going on. She considers asking Helper, but decides she really doesn’t need its cheerful voice in her ears at the moment. She wonders, for just a moment, if she is the problem. Would they evacuate an entire station due to a Human sighting? It’s happened before. Helper has dug up a half-dozen different events that led to evacuations.

  “We must go,” hisses Shenya the Widow, trembling limbs clattering against the doorway. “They must not find us here.”

  In the light of the corridor, Sarya can see that her mother’s carapace is cracked across the front, and her mandibles are barely moving. And that sentence—well, Sarya would never say this aloud, for obvious reasons. But her mother sounds…frightened.

  Sarya wants very badly to ask questions. She wants to know what could frighten Shenya the Widow, the hunter-killer who just took down a three-meter titanium-plated nightmare on her own. But she also knows that this is the time for action, not questions, not fear of mysterious corporations, not internal crises over slaughtered neighbors who maybe didn’t even want to be there, who maybe just got caught up in the moment or got scared, or—

  She takes a sudden, violent breath. She doesn’t have time. She has thirty-six minutes at the outside.

  Her mother spends the last of her strength dragging herself to the nearest utility hatch, which means she can no longer protest when Sarya wrenches it open and hauls her, bodily, into the darkness beyond.

  “I…just need to rest,” says her mother in a tortured whisper.

  “Not yet,” says Sarya, supporting her as the outer door drifts closed. “Just a few more meters and then you can get off your blades for a minute, okay?”

  “I am Widow,” murmurs Shenya the Widow, so quietly that Sarya is not sure she heard it at all. “There are no secrets between—” And then the inner door opens, and the rest of the proverb is lost in the roar of Watertower’s maintenance corridors.

  [You’re not the Human, are you?] says the nearest cart as they approach.

  “I have no idea what you are talking about,” shouts Sarya, dragging her mother forward.

  [It’s just that there’s been talk of a Human. I don’t really know what a Human is, but everybody seems really scared and that makes me scared, so I was just making sure that you’re not the Human.]

  “This is my mother,” says Sarya. “She’s injured.” Badly.

  [Yes], says the cart. [She just killed some people.]

  Of course. If one Networked drone knows, they all know. “That’s true,” says Sarya. “But—”

  [But the station is about to explode], says the cart, lowering itself to the deck for loading. [You’re lucky: that’s actually the one circumstance in which I can help you.]

  Perhaps Sarya is beyond surprise now, in some sort of survival state, because the news barely registers. So the station is in danger. How is that any more extreme than anything else that’s happened today? “How long to the nearest airlock?” she asks briskly, as if she’s planning a day trip. She begins throwing one black limb after another over the lip of the cart, since her
mother seems to have lost any ability to move on her own.

  [Three minutes], says the cart, [I feel that I should warn you, however, that all lifeboats at that airlock have already been launched.]

  “Twenty-four minutes, everyone!” says Ellie’s voice in Sarya’s earbuds. “I also thought you might want to know that I myself have been successfully evacuated. I am now broadcasting from the fine ship Wanderlust, which was kind enough to host my intelligence core.”

  “Okay,” says Sarya, voice tight. “How long to the closest airlock with lifeboats?”

  [Calculating…], says the cargo cart. [Twenty-five minutes! Would you like me to plot the route?]

  No, because that is an idiotic plan that would only occur to a low-tier mind. Sarya wonders briefly if all the sub-legal intelligences on Watertower have escape plans. Is there space on a lifeboat for a cargo cart, let alone the tens of thousands that run through Watertower’s back corridors? Perhaps that’s another hint that she’s in some strange mental space, because the image of fleeing drones piling into lifeboats is so ridiculous she nearly laughs. No, a lifeboat is clearly not the answer…but there could be another possibility.

  She throws her own legs over the edge and works her way into a corner of the cart. She lifts her mother’s head onto her lap and holds it as the cart rises, swaying. “You’re okay,” she tells her mother, willing it to be true.

  “It was only a matter of time before they found us,” says Shenya the Widow, and Sarya has to bring her ear almost to those trembling mandibles to hear. “I knew that when I kept you.” She rattles, deep inside her thorax. “You were so hideous,” she whispers, and chitters a long laugh into a choking silence.