AI - Alpha Part 19

"I don't know." At least his chest no longer hurt. "How long was I out?"

"About two hours."

The car had pulled up to a bungalow. It was too dark to see beyond the reach of the headlamps, but the

silence outside and the lack of other lights suggested they were far out in the countryside. Although they had headed east initially, they could have gone in any direction while he slept, into Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, even Pennsylvania or New Jersey.

Alpha got out and came around to his side. She stood back several paces as he opened his door.

"We'll stay here tonight," she said.

Thomas wondered if she was stopping for him. She didn't need the rest; she could simulate eating or

sleeping, but her body required neither. The closest she came, as far as he knew, was the need for partial

dormancy every few days to do maintenance, and she could do that in the car while it drove.

He maneuvered his broken leg out and stood up, holding the door. He knew why she had left his crutches behind; it constrained him even more. By breaking his leg, she had countered his resistance almost as effectively as if she had brought Jamie. He had his brains and his experience, but her training at least equaled his own, she had the mind of an AI, and she also had physical augmentations. He had managed without crutches at his house because he had railings inside and on the front stairs. But in just the few steps to her car there, he had almost fallen, and it was farther to the bungalow from here.

"I need my crutches," he said.

"Can't you walk without them?" she asked.

"Not much." The cast covered most of his foot and came halfway up his thigh. Although plastiflex didn't

weigh as much as the plaster doctors had used in his youth, it was unwieldy. He tried a step, but he stumbled and had to grab the car door.

"Maybe you should take off the cast," Alpha said.

He stared at her, incredulous. "My leg's broken. It won't heal right without the cast."

Alpha rubbed the back of her neck, an odd gesture. She shouldn't feel physical strain. She could simulate muscle fatigue, but he didn't see the point.

"All right," she said. "Just don't give me trouble."

"All right what?"

"I'll help you inside." She holstered her darter, then came over and put an arm around his waist. "Lean

on me."

Good Lord. Alpha was the last "crutch" he would have expected. She was no wisp, though; with her boots on, she stood at his height. Wary, but curious, too, he put his arm around her and let his weight settle into her body. She felt human, though not like any woman he had known. Even most men didn't

have such toned muscles.

With Alpha's help, he limped to the bungalow. Even that brief distance left him short of breath. He tried not to torment himself by remembering the time he had run the Boston Marathon and then gone drinking

with his buddies, or his days in training as a pilot when he could endure eight, even nine gees, not just one flight a day, but two, sometimes even three.

At the bungalow, Alpha let go of him, and he leaned against the log wall. She pressed a panel by the

door, and lights flickered within it, probably reading her synthesized fingerprints. Or maybe she was

chatting to the lock's mesh. After a few seconds, she pushed the door and it swung inward.

Thomas hobbled into the bungalow and leaned on the wall for support. A musty smell greeted them; he doubted anyone had been here for months. Alpha followed and locked the door with the same fingertip process she had used to enter. Bolts slammed home inside the wood-covered portal.

The place reminded Thomas of a woodsy lodge, and it wouldn't surprise him if Charon had bought it from some bankrupt vacation chain. It consisted of one room with two beds, a bathroom, and a kitchenette. The walls were real pine and sported paintings of mountain landscapes, possibly the Appalachians. He limped forward, ungainly in his cast, and collapsed with relief on the nearest bed.

"You all right?" Alpha asked. She was standing by a console-table that separated the kitchenette from

the main room.

"Fine." He seemed to be saying that a lot lately. He didn't know if it were actually true, but at least the pain from his angina had stopped.

"I have more pills," she said.

"I don't need them yet." He lay back down. "Now what?"

"You need food, don't you?"

"Later." He felt too nauseated to eat.

"Let me know if hunger becomes a problem."

"All right." He watched as she sat at the table and activated the console. Good. If she spent time on the

meshes, she might leave a trail his people could follow.

He pushed up on his elbows. "Going to talk to someone?"

"No." She lifted her darter. "Stay there."

Thomas didn't much feel like getting up. "Why don't you tell me what you're doing? Then I won't be

inspired to spy on you." He didn't really expect an answer.

To his surprise, she looked up. "I'm activating a program Charon set up in case a situation like this ever occurred."

He smiled wryly. "You mean, in case you have a general on your hands you don't know what to do

with?"She looked uncomfortable. "No. In case Charon is dead."Whoa. That sounded like a breakthrough. "Then you admit it?"She let out a long breath, and for the first time she showed uncertainty, another hint of the vulnerability he had thought he saw earlier. "No one in his organization knows his primary copy died."

His unease returned. Was she trying to bring another Charon to life? "We destroyed every copy of him."

"How do you know?" she asked.

"From Pascal." Surely she knew Pascal's copy of Charon included Charon's memory of his other copies.

"Let me pose a scenario," Alpha said. "Charon knows that if any copy of his mind falls into the wrong

hands, his enemies can use it to find the other copies. What is the logical solution? Hide the copies from himself."

"How?" Thomas didn't want to believe she could reanimate one of the worst criminal minds in history.

"If he hides it, he knows where he hid it. So we know."

"Ah, but if the data is in a matrix rather than his brain, he needs only to delete the data from one memory location."

The team working with Pascal had considered that possibility. "He can't eliminate the knowledge

completely. A trace would remain. In an EI as complex as Charon's, no single memory location exists for any but the most trivial data."

"Perhaps. We will see."

Thomas started to get off the bed. "No."

"Don't." Alpha turned off the console. "I started the process two days ago. I'm just checking it."

Thomas remained sitting, his broken leg in front of him. He felt strange, with a tightness in his chest.

Great way to strain the cardiovascular system; get involved with an android bent on re-creating a maniac who could start World War III.

"What did you find?" he asked.

She answered with that eerie lack of emotion. "If a viable copy of Charon remains, I haven't been able to make contact."

The pressure against his breastbone receded. "I take it that means no Charon."

"Not yet." She shut down the console.

She might be lying about her lack of success, but he didn't think so. To lie and then simulate honesty

required a complexity beyond what AIs possessed. She might manage it if she were evolving into an EI.

That was no guarantee she would choose to act any differently, but it offered the hope. He remembered Sam's theory that he evoked Charon for Alpha. It seemed strange; a machine should respond to him, not someone he resembled. And yet . . . no one fully understood what caused the jump in development that turned an AI into an EI. Could he be witnessing such a birth?