125 - Reaching Out

Terry caught himself just on the verge of mentally screaming at his poor, naive brainseed. “Yes, Agador. This is an argument.”

Eshmaeel stared at his feet in the sand and Davood had just sat down with his head in his hands. Terry stood with his hands on his hips. “Fine. Mom. Get Eshmaeel in touch with his boss. Let them know that Davood needs help.”

“You could write to your friend.”

He paused, startled. “Friend? What friend?”

Agador almost sounded as though he were blushing. “I have your watchdog program you left on the moon. Haraklez Vania and another girl came into code and exchanged information with it... and you were dreaming of her in the carniv--”

“--Yes, yes,” he cut in. “So she is really the way she presents herself, not just some wish-fulfilment avatar for a four hundred year old man with strange tastes?”

Eshmaeel stared. “Ha! No.  She's a girl. I was away trying to fit into your weird country long before she and her father and the new Radiance showed up. Right around the same time as the old man died.”

“Wait! Wait! What? I thought I knew but this doesn't...” With a click, Agador opened that file and it slotted into his consciousness as neatly as if Hara had actually spoken to him instead of his program. “Oh. Yes. I see.”

“I can connect with the Lin while moving, Terence, so I can retrieve information for you, and you may send a letter directly to the Siwion of Milar.”

“Mom,” Agador said. “She's not really a princess. Her father's the warmaster. It's his husband, her stepfather, who is the new Emperor.”

“Emperor. How many people in his empire?”

Mom clicked her cabin door open and Terry supressed his shudder stepping in. I am just never going to get used to that. She looks like a bug and I always feel like I'm being eaten.

“893,456, not counting the Nadu survivors,” Agador said. “Nadu--”

“Wait, Agador! Don't just dump--”

“-- three thousand, nine hundred and two survivors of Prime's attack. Source: Lainz newslin service.”

“They use this network of theirs to disseminate news then,” Terry sat down as Mom got up and began moving at her best run across the sand, with no more nonsense about systems checks and testing insufficient systems.

“Terry...” Eshmaeel hadn't, in all the time they'd been trapped together inside Mom, really opened up. He reached up and dropped his veil. “Ask me what you need to know. I won't lie to you anymore.”

“Not even by omission?” He couldn't keep the cynical note out of his voice.

Davood rolled himself back up in his blanket, turning his back on both of them. “I don't wish to hear any of this. Mom... would you be so kind as to help me sleep?”

Neither of them heard Mom's response but Davood's presence went away like a tide washing away.

Eshmaeel looked down at his interlaced fingers. “I'll do my best. I won't deliberately lie.”

Terry felt a knot relax in his gut that he hadn't even realized was there. Finally. Finally they were on the same side. Information was about to flow.

“Why don't I print you boys some tea?” Mom said.

**

Dear Haraklez Vania,

Please let me introduce myself properly rather than having a machine program do so --and I happened to be asleep and dreaming when you found me in code last time. I'm Terry. I understand from a Lainz friend of mine that both the Milari and the Lainz... and all the others... don't feel the need to have Keepers for their girls, so I am casting my propriety to the winds and addressing you directly. I do hope that your father will not see this as a good excuse to cut me into collops.

My... for want of a better word... my ferret or my hound (actually a brain seed named Agadore) informs me that you and I should be able to meet in code here if your Great Hive allows it.

So Prime is out to get all of us as I understand it? There must be a way to get word to either the Maximal courts where the Corporates keep tabs on each other, or the nearest cluster of neighbours, perhaps the Freilander's Coalition or the Union, to call in some of their martial forces to keep him from making us merely go away.

Agadore cannot reach any of the system code while on the planet, without alerting Prime or his dragons, unfortunately, though it seems that perhaps we can help each other out. In this case the stranger running away, is running from a mutual threat.

I am open to being contacted in code, should your Hive and your security animals agree; although your ferret seemed to like me well enough when I presented as a program. I hope she doesn't take a dislike to me in the flesh and decide to bite me.

Reaching out a hello, through your network I am,

Terence Arthur Cameron, exiled machine Tech Second Class.