Year's Best Scifi 7 Part 4

HEMOLYSIS ACTION: UNKNOWN.

And so on. A mutation. Doing what?

Making Donnie very sick. In ways no one could predict.

Many bacterial mutations resulted in diseases no more or less virulent than the original... but not all mutations. Streptococcus pyogenes already had some very dangerous mutations, including a notorious "flesh-eating bacteria" that had ravaged an entire New York hospital two years ago and resulted in its being bombed by a terrorist group calling itself Pastoral Health.

"T4S," Ca.s.sie said, hating that her voice shook, "the situation has changed. You-"

"No," the AI said. "No. You still can't leave."

"We're going to try something different," Bollman said to Elya. She'd fallen asleep in the front seat of somebody's car, only to be shaken awake by the shoulder and led to Agent Bollman on the far edge of the patio. It was just past noon. Yet another truck had arrived, and someone had set up more unfathomable equipment, a PortaPotty, and a tent with sandwiches and fruit on a folding table. The lawn was beginning to look like some inept, bizarre midway at a disorganized fair. In the tent, Elya saw Anne Millius, Donnie's nanny, unhappily eating a sandwich. She must have been brought here for questioning about the castle, but all the interrogation seemed to have produced was the young woman's bewildered expression.

From the music speaker came the same unvarying announcement in House's voice that she'd fallen asleep to. "I will let the hostages go after I talk to the press," T4S said from the music speaker above the patio. "I want the press to hear my story. That's all I have to say. I will let the hostages go after I talk to the press. I want the press to hear my story. That's all I have to say-"

Bollman said, "Ms. Seritov, we don't know if Dr. Seritov is hearing our negotiations or not. Dr.

McTaggart says the AI could easily put us on audio, visual, or both on any room-screen in the house. On the chance that it's doing that, I'd like you to talk directly to your sister-in-law."

Elya blinked, only partly from sleepiness. What good would it do for her to talk to Ca.s.sie? Ca.s.sie wasn't the one making decisions here. But she didn't argue. Bollman was the professional. "What do you want me to say?" "Tell Dr. Seritov that if we have to, we're going in with full armament. We'll bulldoze just the first floor, taking out the main processor, and she and the children will be safe in the bas.e.m.e.nt."

"You can't do that! They won't be safe!"

"We aren't going to go in," Bollman said patiently. "But we don't know if the AI will realize that. We don't know what or how much it can realize, how much it can really think for itself, and its creator has been useless in telling us."

He doesn't know either, Elya thought. It's too new. "All right," she said faintly. "But I'm not exactly sure what words to use."

"I'm going to tell you," Bollman said. "There are proven protocols for this kind of negotiating. You don't have to think up anything for yourself."

Donnie got no worse. He wasn't any better either, as far as Ca.s.sie could tell, but at least he wasn't worse. He slept most of the time, and his heavy, labored breathing filled the lab. Ca.s.sie sponged him with cold water every fifteen minutes. His fever dropped slightly, to one hundred two, and didn't spike again.

The rash on his torso didn't spread. Whatever this strain of Streptococcus was doing, it was doing it silently, inside Donnie's feverish body.

She hadn't been able to scream her frustration and fury at T4S, because of Janey. The little girl had been amazingly good, considering, but now she was growing clingy and whiny. Cartoons could only divert so long.

"Mommy, I wanna go upstairs!"

"I know, sweetie. But we can't."

"That's a bad smart program to keep us here!"

"I know," Ca.s.sie said. Small change compared to what she'd like to say about T4S.

"I wanna get out!"

"I know, Janey. Just a while longer."

"You don't know that," Janey said, sounding exactly like Vlad challenging the shaky evidence behind a dubious conclusion.

"No, sweetie. I don't really know that. I only hope it won't be too long."

"T4S," Janey said, raising her voice as if the AI were not only invisible but deaf, "this is not a good line of action!"

Vlad again. Ca.s.sie blinked hard. To her surprise, T4S answered.

"I know it's not a good line of action, Janey. Biological people should not be shut up in bas.e.m.e.nts.

But neither should machine people be killed. I'm trying to save my own life."

"But I wanna go upstairs!" Janey wailed, in an abrupt descent from a miniature of her rationalist father to a bored six-year-old.

"I can't do that, but maybe we can do something else fun," T4S said. "Have you ever met Pranopolis yourself?"

"What do you mean?"

"Watch."

The roomscreen brightened. Pranopolis appeared on a blank background, a goofy-looking purple creature from outer s.p.a.ce. T4S had snipped out selected digital code from the movie, Ca.s.sie guessed.

Suddenly Pranopolis wasn't alone. Janey appeared beside her, smiling sideways as if looking directly at Pranopolis. Snipped from their home recordings.

Janey laughed delightedly. "There's me!"

"Yes," T4S said. "But where are you and Pranopolis? Are you in a garden, or your house, or on the moon?"

"I can pick? Me?"

"Yes. You."

"Then we're in Pranopolis's s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p!"

And they were. Was T4S programmed to do this, Ca.s.sie wondered, or was it capable of thinking it up on its own, to amuse a bored child? Out of what... compa.s.sion? She didn't want to think about the implications of that.

"Now tell me what happens next," T4S said to Janey.

"We eat kulich." The delicious Russian cake-bread that Vlad's mother had taught Ca.s.sie to make.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what that is. Pick something else."

Donnie coughed, a strangled cough that sent Ca.s.sie to his side. When he breathed again it sounded more congested to Ca.s.sie. He wasn't getting enough oxygen. An antibiotic wasn't available, but if she had even an anti-congestant... or...

"T4S," she said, confident that it could both listen to her and create customized movies for Janey, "there is equipment in the locked storage cabinet that I can use to distill oxygen. It would help Donnie breathe easier. Would you please open the cabinet door?"

"I can't do that, Dr. Seritov."

"Oh, why the h.e.l.l not? Do you think I've got the ingredients for explosives in there, or that if I did I could use them down here in this confined s.p.a.ce? Every single jar and vial and box in that cabinet is e-tagged. Read the tags, see how harmless they are, and open the door!"

"I've read the e-tags," the AI said, "but my data base doesn't include much information on chemistry.

In fact, I only know what I've learned from your lab equipment."

Which would be raw data, not interpretations. "I'm glad you don't know everything," Ca.s.sie said sarcastically.

"I can learn, but only if I have access to basic principles and adequate data."

"That's why you don't know what kulich is. n.o.body equipped you with Russian."

"Correct. What is kulich?"

She almost snapped, "Why should I tell you?" But she was asking it a favor. And it had been nice enough to amuse Janey even when it had nothing to gain.

Careful, a part of her mind warned. Stockholm Syndrome, and she almost laughed aloud.

Stockholm Syndrome described a developing affinity on the part of hostages for their captors. Certainly the originators of that phrase had never expected it to be applied to a hostage situation like this one.

"Why are you smiling, Dr. Seritov?"

"I'm remembering kulich. It's a Russian cake made with raisins and orange liqueur and traditionally served at Easter. It tastes wonderful."

"Thank you for the data," T4S said. "Your point that you would not create something dangerous when your children are with you is valid. I'll open the storage cabinet."

Ca.s.sie studied the lighted interior of the cabinet, which, like so much in the lab, had been Vlad's. She couldn't remember exactly what she'd stored here, beyond basic materials. The last few weeks, which were her first few weeks in the castle, she'd been working on the protein folding project, which hadn't needed anything not in the refrigerator. Before that there'd been the hectic weeks of moving, although she hadn't actually packed or unpacked the lab equipment. Professionals had done that. Not that making oxygen was going to need anything exotic. Run an electric current through a solution of copper sulfate and collect copper at one terminal, oxygen at the other.

She picked up an e-tagged bottle, and her eye fell on an untagged stoppered vial with Vlad's handwriting on the label: Patton in a Jar.

Suddenly nothing in her mind would stay still long enough to examine.

Vlad had so many joke names for his engineered microorganism, as if the one Barr had given it hadn't been joke enough....

The moving men had been told not to pack Vlad's materials, only his equipment, but there had been so many of them and they'd been so young....

Both generators, main and back-up, probably had some components made of long-chain hydrocarbons; most petroleum plastics were just long polymers made up of shorter-chain hydrocarbons....

Vlad had also called it "Plasterminator" and "BacAzrael" and "The Grim Creeper."

There was no way to get the plasticide to the generators, neither of which was in the area just beyond the air duct-that was the site of the laundry area. The main generator was way the h.e.l.l across the entireunderground level in a locked room, the back-up somewhere beyond the lab's south wall in another locked area....

Plasticide didn't attack octanes, or anything else with comparatively short carbon chains, so it was perfectly safe for humans but death on Styrofoam and plastic waste, and anyway there was a terminator gene built into the bacteria after two dozen fissions, an optimal reproduction rate that was less than twelve hours....

"Plasti-Croak" and "Microbe Mop" and "Last Round-up for Longchains."

This was the bioremediation organism that had gotten Vlad killed.

Less than five seconds had pa.s.sed. On the roomscreen, Pranopolis hadn't finished singing to the animated digital Janey. Ca.s.sie moved her body slightly, screening the inside of the cabinet from the room's two visual sensors. Of all her thoughts bouncing off each other like crazed subatomic particles, the clearest was hard reality: There was no way to get the bacteria to the generators.

Nonetheless, she slipped the untagged jar under her s.h.i.+rt.

Elya had talked herself hoa.r.s.e, reciting Bollman's script over and over, and the AI had not answered a single word.

Curiously, Bollman did not seem discouraged. He kept glancing at his watch and then at the horizon. When Elya stopped her futile "negotiating" without even asking him, he didn't reprimand her.

Instead, he led her off the patio, back to the sagging food tent.

"Thank you, Ms. Seritov. You did all you could."

"What now?"

He didn't answer. Instead he glanced again at the horizon, so Elya looked, too. She didn't see anything.

It was late afternoon. Someone had gone to Varysburg and brought back pizzas, which was all she'd eaten all day. The jeans and sweater she'd thrown on at four in the morning were hot and p.r.i.c.kly in the August afternoon, but she had nothing on under the sweater and didn't want to take it off. How much longer would this go on before Bollman ordered in his tank?

And how were Ca.s.sie and the children doing after all these hours trapped inside? Once again Elya searched her mind for any way the AI could actively harm them. She didn't find it. The AI controlled communication, appliances, locks, water flow, heat (unnecessary in August), but it couldn't affect people physically, except for keeping them from food or water. About all that the thing could do physically-she hoped-was short-circuit itself in such a way as to start a fire, but it wouldn't want to do that. It needed its hostages alive.

How much longer?

She heard a faint hum, growing stronger and steadier, until a helicopter lifted over the horizon. Then another.

"d.a.m.n!" Bollman cried. "Jessup, I think we've got company."

"Press?" Agent Jessup said loudly. "Interfering b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! Now we'll have trucks and 'bots all over the place!"

Something was wrong. Bollman sounded sincere, but Jessup's words somehow rang false, like a bad actor in an over-scripted play...

Elya understood. The "press" was fake, FBI or police or someone playing reporters, to make the AI think that it had gotten its story out, and so surrender. Would it work? Could T4S tell the difference?

Elya didn't see how. She had heard the false note in Agent Jessup's voice, but surely that discrimination about actors would be beyond an AI who hadn't ever seen a play, bad or otherwise.

She sat down on the tank-furrowed gra.s.s, clasped her hands in her lap, and waited.

Ca.s.sie distilled more oxygen. Whenever Donnie seemed to be having difficulty after coughing up sputum, she made him breathe from the bottle. She had no idea whether it helped him or not. It helped her to be doing something, but of course that was not the same thing. Janey, after a late lunch of cheese and cereal and bread that she'd complained about bitterly, had finally dozed off in front of theroom-screen, the consequence of last night's broken sleep. Ca.s.sie knew that Janey would awaken cranky and miserable as only she could be, and dreaded it.

"T4S, what's happening out there? Has your press on a white horse arrived yet?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"A group of people have arrived, certainly."

Something was different about the AI's voice. Ca.s.sie groped for the difference, didn't find it. She said, "What sort of people?"