“But can’t you try?” cried Donna Rose. “Can’t you save a few? As many as you can?” There was silence again while they stared at the recording, each absorbed in thought. Finally, Hannoken said, “Would it really help? Or would it hurt? Raise false hopes? Shouldn’t they work out their problems down there?”
“Can they?” asked Frederick. He did not sound optimistic.
“I should go back,” said Frederick. It was evening. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, his hands cradling the sides of his head, facing Donna Rose in her rocket-casing trough of compost. “That’s where I belong, and I can’t do much here.”
Donna Rose held her unfurled leaves toward the light that still streamed through the port, unfaded by Earth’s diurnal rhythms. She turned to put her breasts in silhouette, but Frederick barely noticed. “You can’t do much there, either,” she said. “No one can. We’re doomed.”
“But I should try,” said the man. “That was my job at BRA, to try. The agency was supposed to protect the environment, people, from reckless gengineering. But it had begun to realize that some of the gengineering needs protection too. Intelligent genimals, that’s what I dealt with. Now it’s obvious we need to do more for the bots. And greenskins, and gengineers, and…”
He fell silent. The bot said nothing. There was nothing to say, for his words were only truth. If BRA, or some other agency, did not act to protect gengineering and its fruits, licit and illicit, deliberate and inadvertent, the technology would be lost. And civilization would tumble across the thin line that was all that separated it from utter savagery. Finally, he added, “I’m sure I could get into the nets better from down there. Keep better track of what’s going on. Maybe even…”
“It’s too late for them,” said Donna Rose softly.
“I know.” He stared at the floor, his voice thick with unshed tears.
“You shouldn’t go,” said Alvar Hannoken. “It’s futile. One man can’t halt the tide.” They were standing beside the small office in the full-gee zone that handled bookings for travel to Earth, the Moon, and the other stations and habitats in orbit. Just beyond the open door, a single clerk sat before a terminal, looking bored.
“I have to try,” said Frederick. “I don’t know what I’ll do, but…”
“Stay here,” said Donna Rose quietly. There were tears in her eyes, as there had been when she watched her friends being slaughtered. “Please, Freddy.”
He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Then you’re an idiot,” said Renny. In a lightweight wheelchair beside him, one hand on his shoulder, sat Lois McAlois. She alone said nothing.
“Then I’m an idiot,” said Frederick. He turned, stepped into the booking office, and held his return ticket toward the clerk. “Can you get me on the next trip down?”
The clerk tapped his keyboard and stared at a screen of glowing characters. “Not many going in that direction. There’s empty seats,” he said. “Now let’s make your reservation.” He copied a string of numbers from the ticket. “Just a sec.”
Frederick was standing close enough—he would have been close enough even in the corridor—to see the screen wipe itself clean and display three lines:
TICKET CANCELLED
MESSAGE WAITING
MR. SUIDA, PLEASE INSERT YOUR NIDC IN THE CARDDRIVE.
Vaguely, Frederick was aware of noises behind him, but he paid no attention. He felt stunned. His ticket cancelled? Had Judith Breger fired him after all? But then why…? Had PETA sued him, and the court frozen all his assets?
The clerk shook his head. “I’ve never seen that before. You want the message?”
Frederick didn’t dare to try to speak. Mutely, he produced his NIDC and handed it over.
The clerk inserted it into his machine’s card drive. Immediately, the screen displayed a new message:
YOUR NIDC HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
MESSAGE WAITING.
“Mechin’ litter,” growled Renny. “That’s a nasty trick. What’s going on?”
“I haven’t got the….” said Hannoken.
“He’ll have to stay here, won’t he?” said Donna Rose. She sounded relieved.
The clerk simply shook his head and touched his keyboard’s Enter key. A moment later, the screen displayed the message file:
You have been fired.
Your severance pay has been credited to account #QW-47033 on Probe Station.
Your airline ticket has been cancelled.
Its price has been refunded to account # QW-47033 on Probe Station.
Your apartment lease has been cancelled.
The security deposit and pro rata rent refund have been deposited in account # QW-47033 on Probe Station.
Your National Identification Card (NIDC) has been revoked.
You no longer have permission to cross national borders.
“You’re stuck,” said Renny.
“I am,” said Frederick. Earthly governments, including his own, viewed low Earth orbit as marking the upper border of all nations. His future travels were now limited to visiting other space stations, habitats, the Moon. Earth was off limits. “Dammit. I didn’t dream they would go that far.”
“They’re probably doing you a favor,” said Lois McAlois. “That’s no place to be, down there, not now.”
“But why?” asked Frederick, though he knew there could not possibly be any answer. Not one of his companions, nor anyone else on Probe Station, was privy to the thoughts of those who could fire him and banish him. “I stuck my neck out,” he said. “I went outside channels to send Donna Rose and Renny up here. I expected to catch some litter for it. But this much?”
“It does,” said Hannoken. “It does look like overreaction.”
“You’re an administrator,” said Lois. “And you wouldn’t do something like this.”
“What about my ticket?” asked Donna Rose as the Station’s Director shook his head, and Frederick remembered. Renny’s ticket had been one-way; supposedly he had not been intended to return. The bot’s had been round-trip, to support the pretense that she was on official business. He had not expected that she would ever use the return half.
“Do you have it with you?” he asked.
“I remember the numbers.” She recited them, the clerk typed them into his machine, and the screen revealed that she too no longer had a valid NIDC. Her ticket too was cancelled, its value credited to a Probe Station account even though the money had not been her own, but BRA’s.
“I don’t get it,” said Renny with a low growl. Together then, they turned away from the clerk and his perplexing machine. Hannoken’s office was not far away, nor a small rack of bottles and glasses. When those with hands—even Donna Rose, to the surprise of those who thought botanical beings could not tolerate or welcome alcohol—were all supplied, the Director said, “Perhaps the Engineers brought pressure on your bosses, Frederick. Being what you are, defending Renny, working for BRA, you are a symbol of all they are against. As soon as you were off the planet, assuming they knew about it…”
“They knew,” said Frederick, thinking of the Engineer at the airport, the one with the “NO BOTS” sign.
“Then they could have moved immediately to make it permanent. Certainly, they have the clout. And who else could it be?”
Indeed, who else could it be? But that was a question no one could answer. Each time Frederick used Hannoken’s office facilities to try to call Judith Breger, he got only the computer-synthesized voice of Star Bell telling him that all satellite circuits were busy, all ground lines were busy, the ground station was down, the number was busy, the number was out of order.
“Athena, query,” said Hannoken. “Is anyone else on Probe Station having any similar communications difficulty?”
The answer came immediately in the same voice that Frederick had heard from the communication grills in the dining room, the corridors, his own quarters: “No, sir.”
“That,” said Renny, his lips wrinkling into a suggestion of a sn
arl and his ears flattening against his skull. “That sounds like someone doesn’t want you talking to your boss. Or maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you. Is there anyone else?”
He tried to call Berut Amoun at the office, but with no more success. Nor did he get through when he called Bert’s home. He knew his friend had an answering machine, but he wasn’t being allowed to reach even that.
“Let me try,” said Hannoken. “I have a friend who might…Athena, get Lou Polling.” As promptly as anyone could wish, a young man with swept-back blond hair was on the office screen. Hannoken and Polling exchanged greetings, and then the Director described the problem. “Can you help, Lou? Relay a call to BRA for us?”
“Just give me the number,” said the other as he pulled a bioform keyboard into view. But as soon as he had typed out the number, the screen went blank except for two stark lines of type:
LAND LINE FAILURE.
PLEASE TRY AGAIN.
“We launch the Q-ship in just five days,” Lois had said. “I need to get in a lot of time on the simulator before then.”
“Me too,” Renny had said. “I’m going with her, and I want to learn everything I can, even if I don’t have hands.”
“And I have chores as well,” Hannoken had said.
Frederick had left the Director’s office, almost too dejected to notice that Donna Rose was by his side, one hand on his shoulder, comforting, an ear if he wished to talk, a presence if that was all he wished. He was grateful, though he said nothing.
When they reached their quarters, Frederick lay down on the bed. Donna Rose sat beside him. When he rolled to his belly, she leaned over him and began to knead the tense muscles of his neck and shoulders.
“Do you remember?” she asked. “That first night? I walked into your office, and we watched…” Her hands clenched a little harder than necessary. Frederick grunted. “And then my supervisor—Ladysmith was his name, Mr. Ladysmith—wanted me to get back to work. You let me stay, though you had to let him think…”
She had been offering him nonverbal signals almost from the start. He had carefully ignored them. Frederick grimaced into the pad beneath him as she paused. He could guess what she was about to say, what comfort she was about to offer.
Her hands now lay flat and gentle on his back. “It’s possible, Freddy. That’s not how we reproduce, but we do have…”
He rolled over. “See?” she said, and her leaves peeled away from her torso, revealing her chest and belly all the way down to where her foliage emerged from the flesh of her hips and groin. The cleft she was referring to was visible among the bases of her leaves, revealed by their extreme unfurling; below it was the small bulb that held a portion of her central nervous tissue, a second, smaller brain. She bent her head to follow his gaze with her own. “That doesn’t get in the way,” she said.
He looked away. “No,” he said. “I can’t.”
“Is it because I’m not really human?” Her expression fell, and her leaves curled once more around her.
“No. I’m not either, after all. But…” He paused, sat up, put an arm around her to offer what comfort he could after spurning her own. “Years ago,” he said. “When I was still a pig. I met your ancestors. They couldn’t move like you. They didn’t look like you. And they used their odors, pheromones, to make men mate with them. That’s how you got your human genes.”
“But we don’t do that anymore!” Donna Rose protested. “We can’t even make pheromones. We lost that ability generations ago.”
Frederick nodded sadly. “I know,” he said. “I do. And you’re lovely in a very human way. If I didn’t have the memories I do, I could easily respond. But…” He shrugged and shook his head.
“Is there someone back on Earth?”
“No.” He shook his head again. “There never was.”
* * *
CHAPTER 12
He knew it shouldn’t. He knew better. But still it never failed to surprise him, that a bot’s blood could be as red as his own, as wet, as sticky. Only the smell was different, for it was touched with the earthiness of a fresh-sliced beet.
Sam Nickers was kneeling over one of his new neighbors, wrapping a bandage around the hole in her upper arm, tsking when the clean fabric touched the soil of the apartment floor. Whenever he tsked, Jackie Thyme raised a little higher the roll from which Sam drew the bandage he needed. But the young arms were tired, and they sagged. The cycle repeated again and again.
Just a few days before, Jackie had been helping Sam and Sheila develop the bioform computer as an interface between teacher, honeysuckle, and students.. Now she was a medical orderly, fidgeting with an impatience that had not shown when the wounds had been new and fascinating. She stared at a nearby bioform computer, its screen and card drive torn and useless. She half turned to face the honeysuckle vines that hung in the window to her right, most of their leaves still green, many blossoms still upright and filled with wine despite the tattering effects of gunfire.
Alice Belle stood to one side, her blossoms a splash of orange and pink against the shadowed wall, watching Sam work. She had come to the small, windowless room he had set up as his aid station, where he had picked splinters of glass from scalps and bandaged simple wounds and dispensed slings. She had said, “We’ve got a bad one, Sam. She’s bleeding and screaming, and she won’t let us move her.”
Sam never knew his patient’s name. He knew nothing about her except that she had been injured and that her skin was pale and her leaf-tips and petals were limp with the shock of her injury. A tranquilizer leech had taken care of the screaming. Antibiotic and clip-stitch and bandage were taking care of the rest.
“There,” he said at last, in as soothing a tone as he could manage. “It didn’t hit an artery. It didn’t hit the bone. You should be able to use the arm. But stay away from the windows.”
“Right, Doc.”
“Doc!” he snorted, rocking back on his heels as she struggled to her feet. The bots had been calling him that ever since he first unwrapped his paramedic training. They had already had the tools of his trade—bandages, drug-secreting leeches, bottles of saline and glucose, stands and rubber tubing and rubber gloves—but none of them knew more than the rudiments of first aid. He did, and he knew that he had saved lives that would otherwise have been lost.
“You’re the closest thing we’ve got,” said Alice Belle. The patient was gone, moving—even trotting—back to whatever task the Engineers’ bullet had interrupted. Now Alice Belle left as well, returning to her own work.
Shots echoed from the building across the street. Dark spots and cracks appeared in the wall before Sam’s eyes as slugs smashed into the plaster. He sighed wearily and wished…Some of the windows in the bots’ apartment building faced alleys, offsets, decorative panels, and the scars of blister-like floater garages. The snipers across the streets therefore could not see straight in and had to fire at angles that left much of the space within the apartments to which those windows belonged quite safe. On two sides, where the building rose above its neighbors, there were even windows snipers could not reach at all, unless they were content to shoot holes in the ceiling.
It had begun with the demonstrators. At first they had simply marched and picketed and waved their signs and screamed their slogans. They had slaughtered and roasted a Roachster on the street in front of the building. They had beaten and chased those bots who had dared to leave the building.
Sam jumped as something touched his shoulder. He tipped his head up and back and recognized Jackie Thyme. For a moment, he had forgotten she was there. “You should be in the shelter,” he said. They had been moving as many bots as possible, but especially the very young and the very old, to the basement.
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “I want to help,” she said. “And if I can’t help you…” She let the tips of her leaves part in a gaping botanical shrug. “Then I’ll just be a gofer.” She paused, and then she added, her voice touched with plaintiveness, “Why did the roaches
leave?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the Mayor turned Engineer. Or the Chief of Police.”
At first, the police had tried to help. They had come whenever the bots or Sam or Sheila had called to complain. They had dispersed the demonstrators. Then they had begun to swing by on their rounds, but their patrol had proved regular and predictable. Whenever the official Roachster had been due, the Engineers had vanished into doorways and alleys and basements like the roaches whose name they—and kids of all kinds—used for the police. Only a few remained in view, now quiet and peaceable and waiting for the police to turn the corner, when they would call back the others, as obstreperous as ever.
And then, the afternoon before, the police had vanished completely.
As if their leaving had been a signal, and perhaps it had, Engineers had swarmed into the neighborhood. They had expelled most of the residents of all those buildings that faced the bots’ apartments. Shots had suggested the fates of those who resisted or who bore genetic modifications such as green skins or cosmetic inserts or even genetic tattoos. The remnants of a few bioforms—garbage disposals, computers, flycatchers, floaters—had been thrown to the street below. The largest pieces had once belonged to the bubble-like garages that had clung to the outer walls of those apartments whose tenants owned floaters. The Engineers had pried them loose and watched them fall, yelling in destructive glee.
Once the neighborhood had been properly cleansed of all modern technology except for the rooftop Bellows, half plant, half animal, that kept the buildings bearable in summer, the Engineers had moved in. Now they sat by darkened windows, rifles and pistols in their hands, sniping at whatever bot dared to make herself visible. The shots had died down the night before, when the bots had turned off the lights that fed them. They had resumed when morning sunlight began to illuminate their rooms.
“We don’t use such things ourselves,” Narcissus Joy had told him. “We have our own devices. But those weapons are no less effective because they’re so traditional. Guns are elegantly simple as machines go. They even consume few resources of material or energy, especially if they reload their cartridges. And they take a long time to wear out.”
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