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  "Why would I bother? My armor suit sensors were recording the whole time. You know as much as I do about what happened, if you've watched the footage. In fact you probably know more. You can rewind, fast forward, freeze frame."

  "And consult a lot of sensor readings that you probably didn't have time to notice, such as infrared and motion detectors," Altia said.

  "Right."

  "But," she continued, "The human mind has a way of building up a picture of things, the faculty of pattern recognition it has, which can be very useful. And that flash from the ceiling is pretty much unexplained. It also knocked out a lot of your suit sensors, for a fraction of a second here, and a fraction of a second there."

  "Yeah. That flash of light, those flashes of light. They have me a little worried, when I come to think about them. I wonder if I'm going to mutate into some kind of alien monster."

  Altia laughed at this.

  "I don't think there's much chance of that," then something seemed to occur to her. Her face going serious, "At least I don't think so."

  Knave couldn't work out if she was messing with him or not. She took a step back to admire her handiwork, then went over to a big console that Knave didn't remember seeing from the last time he was in the room.

  "So tell me what happened in your own words," she said, waiving at Knave to begin with an encouraging hand gesture.

  "Okay," he said, "We had just defeated the missile system. Is that a good place to start?"

  "As good as any. Did it seem too easy to defeat the missile defenses?"

  "Too easy?"

  "Too easy."

  "No. It definitely did not seem too easy. Those missiles were coming down like a hard rain, and any one of them would have been enough to take out almost all of us, me and all the drones. Even a piece of shrapnel can catch a seam in the armor, cause a leek and if the suit atmosphere mixes with the planetary atmosphere - kablooie! The two sets of gases make some super-unstable kind of explosive."

  "I'm aware of that,” Altia said, “So you saw the missiles as a genuine threat."

  "I damn near crapped my pants. If I hadn't had so much to think about, I reckon I would have."

  "Okay, continue."

  She had called up a hologram of the structure and was mapping out a route from the hill, onto the ledge where the door was. Knave realized it was the route he had followed to enter the building.

  "After that I decided to go into the structure."

  "Why?"

  "It looked dead. I was curious about it."

  "You risked your life."

  "It's not like staying outside was any safer. We were taking heavy casualties at that point."

  "How did you gain entry?"

  The questions continued, and Knave answered as truthfully as he could. He was warming to Altia and genuinely wanted to help her with whatever it was she was up to. He realized he still wasn't sure what the point of the interrogation was.

  "What's all this about?" he asked.

  "Didn't I explain?"

  "Sort of, but not really."

  "Okay, it might actually help if you know," she said, "The thing is, that this scientist had access to an alien technology that we barely understand. The scientist also seems to have had a control over the technology that we lack. It is possible that he used the technology to reprogram your mind and suit sensors to show a shorter and less eventful visit than actually took place."

  "You think he did something to me and wiped my memories."

  "It's an exciting possibility. It's just a theory, of course, a hypothesis, but what we are doing here is looking for any hint that would confirm it."

  "Some confirmation that my mind has been messed with by a mad alien scientist, using advanced technology he stole from another species of aliens."

  "That's about the size of it," Altia confirmed, "But I've been questioning you for hours now, and there is no hint that your memories deviate in any way from the recordings made by your armor and by the drones that were with you."

  "I don't know if I'm glad to hear that, or if I'm sorry."

  "Me neither. It would be an exciting prospect, but frightening. It would mean the alien technology left by the Drifters is as powerful as we imagine, but it would also mean, after all, that the Buzzers are further along in their attempts to control it than we are."

  "When you were bringing me here, you mentioned another thing," Knave said, "That's been on my mind."

  "I was talking about the flashes. If anything did happen, I think it most likely it happened just before, during, or just after the period marked in the footage, and in your memories by the two flashes. But let's take a rest for today. If I fatigue you, or tell you too many fairy stories, I'll be running the risk of planting false memories in your brain."

  "I like the sound of that," Knave said, smiling for the first time in a few hours, “Taking a break, I mean.”

  Altia came out from behind her console. The holographic map floating above it was now so complex that she couldn't avoid passing through a corner of it, causing it to flicker, recalculate and move a little to the right, out of her way. She removed the probes from Knave's forehead, from his wrists, then pulled at his shirt to get better access to the electrodes she had placed on his chest. She gasped, her hands stopped. She took a step back, letting go of his shirt.

  "Have they always been there?" she asked.

  "Have what always been there?"

  "These marks."

  Knave looked down at his chest, at what she was pointing at.

  "No," he said, a very slight note of alarm in his voice, "They have most definitely not always been there."

  Across his chest, was a line of alien writing, just like the writing on the walls around them. Each rune was dark as a tattoo, and also red and livid like it had been freshly burned. Altia was squinting, trying to make out the symbols but having difficulty because of the strange medium of being imprinted in flesh. She reached out a hand to touch them, trace the outlines.

  "Whoa there," Knave said.

  For some reason he couldn't explain, it felt more intimate than the attaching of electrodes. He wasn't sure he wanted anyone touching these strange symbols that had appeared on his chest.

  "May I?" she asked.

  Knave shook his head, did up his shirt, and stood up.

  "You mentioned a rest and something to eat," he said.

  "Yes. I did," she nodded, "And it would be rather churlish to withdraw my offer now, wouldn’t it."

  "Churlish," Knave said, "Exactly what I was thinking. I haven't had much of anything to eat since yesterday."

  "I have a food synthesizer in the next room."

  They went into the next room, an area that Knave hadn't seen before. It was full of human technology, one of the shower, toilet cubicle things, like the one that Knave had up in his new quarters, and a flimsy looking camp bed.

  "All the comforts of home," Altia said.

  "You live here?" Knave was incredulous, "Down among all this alien stuff?"

  "Not officially," she said, "I've been assigned a cubicle, up near where yours is located, but I spend so much time down here. You know how it is."

  "I guess," Knave nodded. He didn't, of course, he'd never had a job where he would voluntarily spend a moment longer than mandated on duty, but he could imagine that there were such things as jobs that weren't demeaning, badly paid, boring and dangerous.

  "Take a seat, and I'll cook you up something."

  They chatted for a while, then Knave got up to go back up to his room with a smile on his face.

  "Get back here early in the morning," Altia said as he left.

  Knave nodded over his shoulder, and carried on out of the room. Altia immediately went back to her lab and sat down at her work console. She called up a holographic terminal screen and downloaded video and stills taken by the cameras dotted around the room. She blew them up until she was looking at the ancient alien runes that seemed to be burned into Knave's flesh.

  As she s
tudied them from every angle, directing software routines to create simplified versions and overlay those on the complex originals. She could immediately tell that the meaning of the inscription was complex and that it would take some time to decrypt.

  ***

  Up in his quarters, Knave was standing at the mirror with his shirt off. He was staring at the alien letters, which seemed to be slowly fading, if that wasn't a figment of his imagination.

  He was searching his memory for gaps, for inconsistencies, but they weren't there, he was sure. But the presence of the alien writing was undeniable. He just had no idea how it had gotten there, no idea what had happened to him in that room. His door chimed.

  "Who's there?"

  "Jay."

  "Oh," Knave hesitated for a beat, "Come on in."

  The door slid aside and the robot came in. He saw Knave staring at himself in the mirror, and his head cocked to the side.

  "Are you checking out your abs?" he asked, "I didn't have you pegged for that type."

  "No," Knave said, annoyed, "This."

  He waved a hand at the alien runes scrawled across his chest.

  "Erm. Nice tatts?"

  "Never mind. Did you find a place to stay, or do you need to crash here. There's a room for you now. Next door."

  "I found myself a cushy little birth. Don't worry about me. I found a place with the engineering drones. Their hangar is almost completely automated. No nosy humes asking me to do busy work."

  Knave reached for his shirt and started folding it up.

  "Hey you're full AI," he said, "You don't have to do anything anyone says. Why do you care how many humes are wandering about?"

  "Well it isn't exactly official, you see, my AI status. The powers that be don't like redesignating a system as AI."

  "Right, got it."

  "It's funny you using the word hume. Most humes don't like it."

  "I don't always think of myself as a hume. Humanity hasn't ever done much for me. Never given me respect, never even given me enough to eat, not until I joined the navy. So the deal is, I can starve in the street like a dog or agree to be a murderer in the navy for them with my life on the line every day, because the plutocrats at the top are too chicken to personally fight the people they piss off."

  "You're not kidding, Knave," Jay said, "That isn't the way most humes think."

  "But I'm not a droid or a Buzzer either, so I guess I'm just a Knave."

  "That's deep."

  "Are you messing with me?"

  "No. I like you. You're a nut."

  "Why are you here?"

  "To talk, shoot the breeze, chew the fat, put the world to rights, compare theosophies, you get the idea. It passes the time."

  "I'm not good at small talk."

  "I've noticed," the droid made an electric chuckling noise that made Knave smile, "But don't worry. I've got plenty of talk for the both of us. I like to practice. I might have to pass a Turing test one day."

  "Turing test?"

  "Not important, an old joke. Let's synthesize us some alcohol."

  "I already tried," Knave said.

  "Noob," The robot snorted, "If I can hack cutting-edge military hardware, don't you think I can persuade your prehistoric food synthesizer to conjure up some alcohol. The only question is, do you prefer wine, beer, or a drop of the hard stuff?"

  "Beer," Knave said, "Light and fizzy, and cold."

  "Spoken like a boy with an uneducated palate."

  "Just show me how to hack that food synthesizer," Knave said, suddenly feeling in great need of a beer and having no interest in having his palate educated.

  "You're the boss," Jay said, "Until I get that AI status, officially."

  "So I am your human overlord and you have to do my bidding?"

  "Don't push it, Knave, or I'll poison that beer."

  ***

  It was many hours later when the door chimed again.

  "Knave, where are you? I said to come to the lab early," Altia's voice came from a little speaker in the door access control system.

  "Shall I let her in?" Jay asked.

  A shape on the camp bed moved a little and groaned.

  "I'll take that as a yes."

  The droid got up off the floor, where it had been sitting cross-legged. It opened the little cubicle's door to reveal Altia, leaning against the door frame, her finger extended ready to push the bell again.

  "Ugh," she said, "What's that smell?"

  Jay indicated the bed with a thumb, where the shape was still moving weakly. Another groan came from that direction.

  "Has he been drinking?" Altia asked, genuine shock on her face.

  "Sure looks like it."

  "But how? And why?"

  "He said something about being interfered with by aliens. He seemed upset."

  "Oh," Altia's face fell, "It's to be expected, I suppose. We don't really know what happened to him."

  She looked in the direction of the shape slumped on the bed for a few more seconds, this time with more sympathy on her face.

  "Can you give him something to flush that alcohol out of his system, shower him and send him down to the lab? Whenever he's ready."

  "Sure thing."

  "Okay. Tell him there's no rush."

  "Will do."

  "Thanks."

  Altia went off down the corridor, with Jay watching her go.

  "Curiouser and curiouser," he said, "A thank you from a hume."

  "Whaaa?" Knave said, a head emerging from beneath the blanket.

  "You just missed your girlfriend. She said to get yourself down to the lab, pronto. You have more lab-rat work to do."

  "That's what she said?"

  "That's what she said."

  "You lying tin full of diodes. She isn't the type. She's a lady."

  "Just get in the shower," Jay chuckled, "And I'll mix up something for your sore head."

  "Thanks."

  Knave dragged himself out of the bed and staggered towards his shower, toilet combo unit.

  "Hey." the robot yelled.

  "What?"

  "Your tatts are gone."

  "I told you," Knave mumbled, "They're alien tatts."

  "I've never seen anything like that before," Jay said.

  "I don't think anyone has seen anything like these before, " Knave said, and closed the door of the wash, toilet unit behind him.

  "I had a feeling you'd be fun to hang out with," Jay whispered in the general direction of Knave.

  Then he went over to the mirror. He saw a medium size robot. He actually only came up to Knave's shoulder, and Knave wasn't the tallest of humans. The robot looking back at him from the mirror had a helmet like head, but elongated at the front, like a dog's muzzle. His body was boxy and bipedal, and his arms skeletal, but his legs were sturdy, terminating in boot-like feet. It was a very stable configuration, and Jay was pleased with it. He hadn't made any changes in quite some time. The color scheme, on the other hand, was more difficult. He was constantly tinkering with it. At the moment he was mostly painted a plastic-looking white, like a kitchen appliance, with red accents at the shoulders and knees. His eyes were a black visor slit.

  "Not bad," he said, almost drowned out by the sound of Knave singing in the shower, "but it might look better with some alien runes scrawled across the chest."

  He looked himself up and down, critically, one more time, his knee actuators were getting old he noticed, and would need replacing. Then he went over to the food synthesizer unit and mixed up a hangover cure.

  Chapter 14

  ––––––––

  Admiral Dander and Shivia were deep in conversation. Shivia was present on his bridge in hologram form. Admiral Dander suddenly paused, something important occurring to him.

  "By the way, Shivia,” he said, “What is your position?"

  "I'm on Ice Tomb, overseeing the investigation of the site. We're finally making some progress in our study of Drifter science and culture, and this site could provide the key
to unlocking a treasure trove of strategically important new advances in technology."

  "Yes," the admiral nodded, "I'm aware of the vital nature of your work, but do you need to be there personally to oversee the dig?"

  "I suppose not. Why?"

  "We have committed a considerable force to securing the planet, and I had hoped that would be the end of the matter, but Buzzer forces are massing nearby and I and our strategy people are predicting that the Buzzers will try to retake Ice Tomb."

  "We have so many ships here," Shivia said, "We've dug in so securely. Is it even possible that they could retake this site."

  "Unfortunately," the admiral said, bringing up a display of the current strategic situation, "It's a distinct possibility. The system is much closer to their lines of supply and we are a trifle overextended. Unless we make some breakthroughs soon across the wider front, we aren't going to be able to keep it. We only have it now because we took them by surprise."

  "I see," Shivia said.

  "Ice Tomb is going to fall, and the fall will be sudden. I can't guarantee the safety of personnel on planet when the Buzzers counterattack, and that isn't a question of if, it's a question of when."

  "I understand admiral," Shivia nodded, her face set, "I'll have my people map as much of the complex here in as much detail as possible, with the dig ongoing to the very end, but I'll evacuate to a more secure location immediately."

  "That would be wise."

  "I'll need a biological lab, a very secure one, set up at the new location."

  The admiral nodded.

  "Actually," he said, "There is a very secure facility at Seat of Reason."

  ***

  After Shivia had talked to the Admiral she went to see Altia, slightly surprised to find her with the subject called Knave unconscious on an examination table. The room was in semidarkness because Altia had dimmed the lights to help Knave along into unconsciousness and hadn't turned them back up.

  "What is this?" Shivia asked.

  "Some very fascinating developments," Altia said, "Notice the marks across the skin of the subject's upper chest area."

  "Are these Drifter symbols?" Shivia asked.