Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)(25)
On the way here I had shared the recording of what I had found at Ganaka Pit. ART said, This is good news. You were not at fault. I agreed, sort of. I had been expecting to feel better about it. I mostly just felt awful.
Once inside the room with the door secured, I saw Tapan’s shoulders relax and she took a deep breath. The room was just a square box with pads stored in a cabinet for sitting or sleeping, and a small display surface. No cameras, no audio surveillance. There was a tiny attached bath, with a waste-reclaimer and a shower. At least it had a door. I was going to have to pretend to use it at least twice. Yes, that would be the cap on all the fun I was having today. I created a schedule and set an alarm to remind myself to do it.
Tapan dropped her bag on the floor and faced me. “I know you’re mad.”
I tried to moderate my expression. “I’m not mad.” I was furious. I thought my clients were safe, I was free to worry about my own problems, and now I had a tiny human to look after that I couldn’t possibly abandon.
She nodded and pushed her braids back. “I know—I mean—I’m sure Rami and Maro were furious. But it’s not like I’m not afraid, so that’s good.”
In my feed, ART said, What?
I have no idea, I told it. I said to Tapan, “How is that good?”
She explained, “In the creche, our moms always said that fear was an artificial condition. It’s imposed from the outside. So it’s possible to fight it. You should do the things you’re afraid of.”
If a bot with a brain the size of a transport could roll its eyes, that was what ART was doing. I said, “That isn’t the purpose of fear.” They didn’t give us an education module on human evolution, but I had looked it up in the HubSystem knowledge bases I’d had access to, in an effort to figure out what the hell was going on with humans. It hadn’t helped.
She said, “I know, it’s supposed to be inspirational.” She looked around and went to the cabinet with the seating pads. She pulled them out, sniffed them suspiciously, then took an aerosol capsule out of a pocket on her pack and sprayed them down. “I forgot to ask, did you get a chance to do the research you wanted to do here?”
“Yes. It was … inconclusive.” It had been damningly conclusive, it just hadn’t had the revelatory effect I had been, stupidly, hoping for. I helped her pull the rest of the pads out.
We got them arranged on the floor and sat down. She looked at me and bit her lip. “You’re really augmented, aren’t you. Like, a lot. Like more than someone would choose voluntarily.”
It wasn’t a question. I said, “Um, yes.”
She nodded. “Was it an accident?”
I realized I had my arms wrapped around myself and was leaning over like I was trying to go into a fetal position. I don’t know why this was so stressful. Tapan wasn’t afraid of me. I had no reason to be afraid of her. Maybe it was being here again, seeing Ganaka Pit again. Some part of my organic systems remembered what had happened there. In the feed, ART started to play the soundtrack to Sanctuary Moon and weirdly, that helped. I said, “I got caught in an explosion. There’s not much of me that’s human, actually.”
Both those statements are true.
She stirred a little, as if debating what to say, then nodded again. “I’m sorry I got you into this. I know you know what you’re doing, but … I have to try, I have to see if this guy really has our files. Just this once, and then I’ll go back to the transit ring.”
In my feed, ART turned down the soundtrack to say, Young humans can be impulsive. The trick is keeping them around long enough to become old humans. This is what my crew tells me and my own observations seem to confirm it.
I couldn’t argue with the wisdom dispensed by ART’s absent crew. I remembered humans had needs and asked Tapan, “Did you eat?”
She had bought some meal packs with the hard currency card and had them stuffed in her bag. She offered me one and I told her my augments required me to have a special diet and it wasn’t time for me to eat yet. She accepted that readily. Humans apparently don’t like to discuss catastrophic injuries to digestive systems, so I didn’t need any of the corroborating detail ART had just researched for me. I asked her if she liked media and she said yes, so I sent some files to the display surface in the room, and we watched the first three episodes of Worldhoppers. ART was pleased, and I could feel it sitting in my feed, comparing Tapan’s reactions to the show to mine.
When Tapan said she wanted to try to sleep, I shut down the display. She curled up on her pad and I lay down on mine and continued watching in the feed with ART.
Two hours and forty-three minutes later, I caught a ping from right outside the door.
I sat up so abruptly, Tapan woke with a start. I motioned for her to be quiet, and she subsided back on the pad, curling around her pack, looking worried. I stood and went to the door, listening. I couldn’t hear any breathing, but there was a change in the background noise that told me there was something solid on the other side of the metal door. Cautiously, I did a limited scan.
Yes, there was something out there, but no sign of weapons. I checked the ping and saw it had the same signature as the ping I had caught in the public area during the meeting with Tlacey.
The sexbot was standing on the other side of the door.
It couldn’t have been following me all this time. It could have been watching for me on the security cameras, tracking me sporadically through the port when I came back within range. That was not a comforting thought.