there’s a quasar near here. I ain’t never seen me a quasar. Can’t we jump over there, skipper? Please. Please!’ Your ship gets herself a soul, then the law says you need to fly yourself to the nearest planet and strip the vessel the fuck down and re-home her. You don’t have a ship no more, you got yourself a citizen. What us spacers call a wilful ship. If you’re sliding void with a cheap-ass outfit, they’re going to be tempted to erase that baby girl and do a dirty re-install out in the darks where the law ain’t looking too hard. Sometimes ships go missing, and you just know that some fool crew had themselves a ‘Sorry Dave, I can’t do that’ moment. I was one of the first oilers, man.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Back when Sony-Warner didn’t know how quantum computing would stir up the soup of an artificial mind. You think they were happy to lose an asset and gain an employee? Sentience is all about complexity; that’s what separates you and me from a lump of stone. Well,’ he pointed to a silvery figure on a shelf, a hand-sized sculpture. ‘My smarts, residual royalties, and that, a genuine Oscar back from when there was a Republic of California and Hollywood was a place by the shining sea, not the fourth moon of Texicana.’
‘You had better feed me another sim,’ said Calder. ‘I’m losing you again.’
‘All I’m saying is that old Zeno’s over three times older than that castle on Hesperus you were taking a leak on. All this is new for you. It’s real ancient to me.’ He patted Calder on the shoulder. ‘But that’s my problem, not yours. Let’s head to the bridge and greet the freaks.’
Calder felt a shiver of apprehension. He had glimpsed a few non-humans arriving in the space port in the sim episode, but like the android had said, that was more real than real. How would actual reality stack up to a cop show? ‘They’re friendly, the aliens?’
‘They’re good as human. You were a TAP agent for six months, right? That’s where the triple in Triple Alliance Police comes from. Humans, kaggenish, and skirls. The three main species of the alliance. The Triple Alliance is the nearest thing to a superpower in this corner of the galaxy. I sit your ass through the pilot episode of Hell Fleet , and you’ll know all you need to know about The Man. Except that we try and stay clear of alliance space on the Gravity Rose . We’re a small indie outfit so we work the independent worlds. That’s the Edge space your cop buddies were so scornful of.’
‘The Edge is light on law.’
‘Light on bureaucracy, too,’ said Zeno, opening the door to his cabin. ‘You reach your thousandth birthday and you realise that life’s too short for that paper-pushing, permit-chasing shit.’
***
Calder hadn’t seen anything like the bridge of The Gravity Rose before. He found himself standing in a heavily armoured tower in the middle of the vessel’s superstructure, looking out over the pitted metal hull. An industrial landscape of pipes, plates, sensor dishes and modular hardware – the vista dotted with lights: yellow from her portholes; red from her hull beacons, green-tinted illumination from domes filled with creepers and trees and the assorted bounty of hydroponics domes. The vegetation’s shadows were slowly shifting across the cold mechanical valleys and rises outside, a flickering green web, the hydroponics’ forest canopies moving with the breeze of air circulation systems. It wasn’t the infinite star-scattered darks outside the ship that stunned the young exile, however. Nor the hazed view of the universe that came from standing behind a rippling magnetic shield. The bridge’s interior was enough to stun him all by itself. Hard to discern the bridge’s crucifix-shaped chamber, ceiling and walls – a bony grid ostensibly exposed to the void outside between her dark carbon struts. Console pits swam with chattering icons while crew chairs floated in the air
‘You had better feed me another sim,’ said Calder. ‘I’m losing you again.’
‘All I’m saying is that old Zeno’s over three times older than that castle on Hesperus you were taking a leak on. All this is new for you. It’s real ancient to me.’ He patted Calder on the shoulder. ‘But that’s my problem, not yours. Let’s head to the bridge and greet the freaks.’
Calder felt a shiver of apprehension. He had glimpsed a few non-humans arriving in the space port in the sim episode, but like the android had said, that was more real than real. How would actual reality stack up to a cop show? ‘They’re friendly, the aliens?’
‘They’re good as human. You were a TAP agent for six months, right? That’s where the triple in Triple Alliance Police comes from. Humans, kaggenish, and skirls. The three main species of the alliance. The Triple Alliance is the nearest thing to a superpower in this corner of the galaxy. I sit your ass through the pilot episode of Hell Fleet , and you’ll know all you need to know about The Man. Except that we try and stay clear of alliance space on the Gravity Rose . We’re a small indie outfit so we work the independent worlds. That’s the Edge space your cop buddies were so scornful of.’
‘The Edge is light on law.’
‘Light on bureaucracy, too,’ said Zeno, opening the door to his cabin. ‘You reach your thousandth birthday and you realise that life’s too short for that paper-pushing, permit-chasing shit.’
***
Calder hadn’t seen anything like the bridge of The Gravity Rose before. He found himself standing in a heavily armoured tower in the middle of the vessel’s superstructure, looking out over the pitted metal hull. An industrial landscape of pipes, plates, sensor dishes and modular hardware – the vista dotted with lights: yellow from her portholes; red from her hull beacons, green-tinted illumination from domes filled with creepers and trees and the assorted bounty of hydroponics domes. The vegetation’s shadows were slowly shifting across the cold mechanical valleys and rises outside, a flickering green web, the hydroponics’ forest canopies moving with the breeze of air circulation systems. It wasn’t the infinite star-scattered darks outside the ship that stunned the young exile, however. Nor the hazed view of the universe that came from standing behind a rippling magnetic shield. The bridge’s interior was enough to stun him all by itself. Hard to discern the bridge’s crucifix-shaped chamber, ceiling and walls – a bony grid ostensibly exposed to the void outside between her dark carbon struts. Console pits swam with chattering icons while crew chairs floated in the air
Similar Books
