Zendyne | Page 2

to play along with the joke.
He jerked his head towards the doorway behind him. "Other company representatives will be here soon. They won��t care about any self-erase routine; they just need to get you back to base in one piece." He tapped his disrupter. "Something tells me they won��t expect you to walk."
"Then you��ll never discover what went wrong with your product. That��s what you came for, isn��t it?"
She was right, and anyway there was no time to argue. Lee hadn��t been making an empty threat: the containment team would be on site in minutes. Their prime directive was to safeguard the company��s market valuation, which meant speed and secrecy and to hell with anyone who got in the way. They wouldn��t hesitate to deactivate the doll and wipe whatever clues it contained.
Lee fumbled at his nerd pack, fingers working hastily at the fastenings that secured his pocket computer. "I might be able to help you, if you��ll let me. I��ll need to come closer."
"What are you going to do?"
"Download you. Before the rest of them arrive." He pulled the handeck free of its pouch, holding it gingerly by one corner as if that would prove he meant her no harm. "You��re not planning on stabbing me or anything, are you?"
"I never stab people who are nice to me." The doll pulled the remaining shoe off and tossed it onto the bed, well out of reach. Then she leaned forward, so that her dirty-blonde hair fell clear of the data port that nestled at the base of her skull.
Lee crossed the room slowly, ready at any instant to dart back to the door �� as if that would have done any good; he knew perfectly well how powerful her synthetic muscles were, and how fast her reflexes.
She remained silent and still as he connected the transfer cable to her data socket. A status light glowed briefly and then Lee forgot to breathe for a while.
There wasn��t a puppeteer, after all. There was just Lilith.
The ��deck display pulsated with a fractal approximation of her mind, rotating slowly in the holoscreen, full of vitality and exuberant interconnections: richer and more complex than any neural pattern he��d ever seen outside of an archived human.
Perhaps she was even more complex than that. Her mind map was easily intricate enough to propel Lee straight from skepticism to certainty, to convince him that Lilith wasn��t just outside the rules, she was beyond them. He was staring at something that wasn��t supposed to exist, the Holy Grail of his profession: a sentient, self-aware, created mind.
He could almost hear his grandfather��s voice echoing across the years since the old man died: this is your chance, boy. Your opportunity to follow the money home, your time to make amends. Handle this right and maybe you��ll measure up after all.
But it could go horribly wrong, he thought.
With great opportunity comes great danger, came the ghostly reply.
Lee shook his head. Grandfather��s remembered opinions were irrelevant. All that was left of the old man was a sneering voice in Lee��s mind and an illogical, inescapable inheritance of guilt. He banished painful memories and attended to the task at hand.
He had to decide whether to copy Lilith, or give her up.
The first option might see him rich beyond his ability to dream, but Lee was smart enough to appreciate the downside, too. He tried to imagine the sort of people who��d design and operate a mind like this. Picturing such individuals wasn��t easy, but it seemed a fair bet that he wouldn��t want them pissed at him.
The second option offered no payoff, but it wouldn��t risk the comfortable life he��d worked so hard to build. It wouldn��t put him in danger.
It all depended on what the mind that called itself Lilith was. On who��d made it, and how hard they were looking for it, and how it had ended up in this unfortunate customer��s love doll, and why.
Muffled noises floated up the stairs: a ringing doorbell, then voices in the hallway. The front door slammed.
Postponement was the only possible choice. Loaded into his handeck, the entity could be studied at leisure. If things got complicated, he could always delete it later, but for now he had to give it a chance. Any sentient being �� no matter how deadly, or valuable �� was entitled to a jury of at least one peer.
And then the time for indecision was past, before he��d even twitched his finger on the control. The ��deck��s transfer indicator was glowing: far too brightly for Lee, who was one of the few people who understood the technical limitations of the data interface. After a few seconds, the light faded and died. Burnt out, he thought. God knows what she just did, to transfer so much information so quickly. She was