The Passenger Ch. 10

Layne smiled and shrugged.

"That should help to make up for what Raz and his pack are likely to do to him sooner or later. They've taken longer than I expected, but they should get around to it eventually. Speaking of which, I'm expecting Raz in a month or so. Will your new formula be ready for initial testing by then?"

Blaar nodded.

"I expect so. Deke should recover from his sexual frenzy one of these days, and at that point I'll have the data I need. I'll run it through the DNA synthesizer and grow up some specimen, and Raz can take it from there. Commercializing the stuff is something he's far better at than we are. I wasn't built for that much legwork."

"Not to mention the field testing." Layne smiled. "Anne and Harvey seem to be very good at that part."

Blaar gave him a suspicious look.

"You actually like them," he said, almost accusingly.

Layne thought for a moment, then he nodded slowly.

"Yeah... I guess I do."

"You are getting old."

Layne shrugged.

"It gets all of us in the end. Just wait until it's your turn."

"It won't effect me quite this badly, I'm sure."

Layne chuckled.

"Yeah, right. Don't bother to try and bullshit me, Blaar. I am, as you are so fond of pointing out, a psy-op, after all."

"Alright, fine. I admit it. I like them too. They've become... friends, sort of."

Layne nodded slowly.

"Speaking of friends, what's Pete doing right now?"

"He's on Radix at the moment. It looks like Deke Ryder had another set of Vergence Sigma's R&D records stashed away somewhere, and Pete thinks that they might have had another lucrative project going, next to their little venture in AI technology. He decided to go and see what he can find."

"'If it's there, he'll find it," Layne said confidently. "We've known a lot of guys in industrial espionage, but he runs rings around all of them. The job he did for us at Vergence was nothing short of brilliant. Not only did he get all their R&D data out of there, but he actually managed to make sure their AI prototypes would become emergent. The guy's brilliant."

Blaar nodded.

"What's been happening to those other AIs, by the way?" he asked.

"They're showing some promise," Layne said. "The one on C'endre is doing particularly well. He's become deeply involved with the People's Leader there, and I think we can expect some political changes before long. That should make our operations a lot easier."

"It should give us a few new avenues for R&D as well. So far we've concentrated on mammalian species, but the biochemistry of oviparous life forms might hold some profitable options too. I've just started to look into it, but I think I can see some definite possibilities there."

"Good," Layne said. "Let me know if you need anything. I imagine it'll be a while before you're ready for field testing, though."

Blaar nodded.

"Yes. So for the moment you can continue to concentrate on Harvey, Anne and Raz."

Layne gazed into the distance.

"Do you... Do you ever feel bad about it?" he asked after a long pause. "About them, I mean. About what we've been doing."

Blaar gazed across the dusty Manakan landscape.

"Well... No. I think they genuinely love each other," he said after a while. "Harvey and Anne, I mean. Who knew that an emerged AI could be capable of real love? Yes, I know, you told me, but I guess I never believed you. But I was wrong, and they're genuinely happy together. And Raz is enjoying himself, too, and by and large the entire Gawrran race is happier as well. So no. I've got no regrets. When we were in the Service, we both did things that were far worse than this."

Layne grunted.

"Which is exactly why we retired from the Service," he said.

"Yeah. We did some really bad shit for really bad pay. What we're doing now is already making a lot of people very happy, and it will do a lot more good in the near future. And it's making all of us obscenely rich in the process, too, which doesn't hurt either. So all in all, I think we're doing better now than we've done in a long time."

"So it's all good, then?"

"Yeah. It's all good."

- The End -