AI - Alpha Part 34

Alpha's fist clenched. "He interfered with my life. Attempted reprogramming. Tried to teach me

betrayal."

Nothing could disguise Charon's triumph as he turned to Thomas. "Did you really think you could change the coding for an AI just by arguing with it? Especially one programmed by me, for loyalty? All you did was turn her against you."

Thomas had no answer. He would die knowing he had been a fool.

Charon handed Alpha the gun. "We should make sure he's dead anyway. When I signal, shoot."

She sighted the EL-38 on Thomas. He tried not to care, tried to tell himself nothing mattered except that

this nightmare would finally be over, but he feared death as much as anyone. He searched her face for some hint of the humanity he had seen before. He looked for the woman who had made love to him and found only a machine. She met his probing gaze with no response. He might as well have been a broken stick.

Charon stood over Thomas. "You should have given up. We could have shot you sooner and put you out of your misery. But you kept on. What do you call that? Stupidity? Is that what you call it?" Then he raised his hand to Alpha. And she fired.

XII: The Dark

Thomas instinctively snapped his eyes closed. The hammering bullets were so loud, he heard nothing else, not even his own breathing. Rock shards rained over him like shrapnel and the hammering went on and on and on-

And on.

And stopped.

He opened his eyes.

Alpha was standing with the EL-38 clenched in both hands, staring at the place where Charon had been

standing. She still had the gun aimed, but no longer at Thomas. Her impa.s.sive mask was gone and what she had hidden whenever she spoke of Charon showed clearly.

Hatred.

And she said, "It's called courage."

Thomas forced himself to look at Charon. Little remained but a smear of parts and blood on the rocks.

He couldn't even tell if most of it was tissue or synthetic. This time when bile rose in his throat, he couldn't hold it. He just barely managed to lean over before he lost what little he had eaten.

Alpha finally moved. She let the gun slide from her hand, and it fell next to Thomas with a clatter. Then, slowly, she knelt next to Charon and bowed her head.

She stayed that way for a long time.

Thomas wondered dully if he were hallucinating. Her shoulders were shaking. He pulled himself to his knees, groaning as agony flared in his leg. The cast had cracked open and the limb had probably broken again. He ignored it and slid over to Alpha on his knees. She didn't turn to him, but up close, he could see that, incredibly, her silence this time wasn't from lack of emotion.

She was crying.

Tears ran down her face. Her lashes were lowered, s.h.i.+elding her eyes. When he touched her shoulder, she shrugged off his hand. He hesitated, unsure whether or not to back off. Then she turned to him. She looked as if she were breaking inside in a way that had nothing to do with EIs and everything with

humanity. Staring at him, she made a strangled sound. He pulled her into his arms then, and they knelt together, the two of them shaking as they held each other.

"The game-I-" Alpha choked on the words. She pulled back so she could look into his face. "I'm

sorry. It was the only way to convince him to let you live even a short time."

"It was your idea?"

"Yes. He took the gun. He intended to shoot you that morning, when he first came."

"Why did you tell him what we did?"

"He accessed my memory." She drew in a ragged breath, a purely human response: she didn't need air. "I

managed to keep a lot from him. My mesh isn't as simple as he thought. But I couldn't hide something as

big as the night we spent together."

And he had thought it meant nothing to her. He wanted to protect his heart by refusing to believe her, but he wanted even more for it to be true. "Alpha-" He didn't know how to go on.

"I did the calculations," she said. "I extrapolated the future. Like you said. His future. It was ugly.

Horrific. But it was hard to-to change my program."

He wondered if he would ever truly understand the depth of what that statement cost her. It wasn't a matter of changing her mind. She must have rewritten major portions of code while hiding her work from Charon. He wanted to tell what that meant to him, but he couldn't put his thoughts about that incredible, astonis.h.i.+ng act into words. He felt strange, his mind dissociating from his body.

"I kept hoping Charon would search for you and leave me alone with the jets." Alpha had turned away from Charon's remains. "If you had come down, we could have left."

"I didn't trust you that much," he said.

"Neither did Charon."

"Is that why he had the gun?""No. He would never believe I could kill him." She spoke flatly. "Him? The brilliant mastermind who created me? Of course not." She tapped the hard, gleaming metal of EL-38. "This made him feel powerful. Had I pressed him to give it to me, he would have become suspicious. But I knew what he wanted even more than killing you himself. To see me do it."

"I didn't believe you would kill him."

"He brought me with him, away from the jets, because he wanted me to see your death." Darkness filled her gaze. "He craved it."

"He may succeed yet." His voice sounded distant to his ears.

She spoke urgently. "We'll get you to the station. You can repair yourself. Eat. Sleep."

"Need more than food. Sleep. I think I had . . . another heart attack. The nanos . . . probably only reason

I'm alive." He looked at the rope dangling above them. "I can't climb."

"I'll go. Charon's jet has medical supplies. A stretcher. And ropes. I'll haul you up. Somehow." She stopped as he lay on his back. "Thomas? Can you hear me?""Yes," he whispered. The sky blurred.Her voice caught. "Don't die."I'll try not to. Did he say it aloud? He heard her stand up. Perhaps he heard the rustle of the rope.

Perhaps not. His mind was dimming. He was moving down a dark tunnel. A light shone at the end, serene, welcoming. Someone was beckoning him . . .

XIII: The Choice

French onion soup. He knew that smell.

Thomas didn't want to wake up. The smell, however, lured him. He opened his eyes and saw white. He

wanted to roll over and find the source of the smell, but when he thought of moving, nothing happened.

Then he realized what he was seeing. A white ceiling. He was back at the weather station.

A hand touched his forehead. Thomas rolled his head to the side and saw Alpha sitting in the chair by

the bed. Across the room, the white curtains on the bedroom window rippled in a breeze.

"We're back." His words rasped. The covers felt warm and the pain in his leg was a dull ache.

"Here." Alpha offered him a spoonful of soup.

Thomas lifted his head and swallowed. It was too much effort to sustain, though, and his head fell back

on the pillow.

Alpha gave him an exasperated look, but it was obviously a cover for intense relief. Complicated, astonis.h.i.+ng, EI relief.

"I've been trying to feed you for two days," she growled. "Please cooperate."

"h.e.l.lo, Alpha," he whispered.

She put her hand behind his head and lifted it up. "Eat."

He let her feed him. The soup tasted heavenly, and her hands-which could so easily kill-were gentle.

When he finished, she set his head on the pillow and put the bowl on the floor. He wondered at her appearance, her mussed hair, her rumpled clothes. Apparently he had been lying here for two days. Had those hours been rough for her? A machine would keep itself in optimum working order, but a human could be distracted. She looked extremely distracted.

"You're a beautiful sight," he said.