by KT McColl
"Report," said the driver in her communication device. I could detect some tension in her voice.
The radio hissed.
"Report, damn it."
"Nothing," came the reply a moment later over a crackling connection. "There's nothing here."
"Copy. Stand by."
The scout soon emerged from behind the trailer and stayed there. Something wasn't right, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
The Lozen and Sisters stepped out of the other vehicles and clustered around the Jeep.
"What's going on?" asked Sister Gloria.
The driver nodded to the pickup ahead of us. "The truck's been abandoned."
"No horse?" asked Aisha.
"I think we have bigger problems than a missing horse."
"Ask," insisted Aisha.
Impatiently, the driver spoke into her walkie talkie and got a curt response from the Lozen by the trailer. "No horse," she said.
Aisha was about to say something but evidently thought better of it.
"Thoughts?" asked Sister Gloria.
"Could be bandits," hazarded the driver.
"But they would have taken the truck."
"Maybe," said the driver, clearly not convinced. "My next guess would be an ambush."
Sister Gloria nodded absently and Aisha grew pale, casting an anxious glance to the forest. I made to get out of the Jeep to be better able to help if needed, but the driver shook her head at me.
"Where are your people?" asked Sister Aisha, nodding at the truck.
The driver shrugged.
"Maybe they just left," said Aisha.
"Gone picking berries in the woods?" asked the driver. Her insolent tone surprised me. Nerves, I guessed.
"Watch your..." said Sister Gloria, only to be interrupted by a single shot that echoed over the forest.
"Then again, maybe not."
The Sisters shrieked and immediately ducked behind the vehicles. Several of the Lozen trained their weapons on the forest, but there was nothing to aim at. Even I couldn't tell what side of the road the shot had come from. The driver and several others did nothing.
So this was it, I thought, feeling strangely detached from the goings on. I was a spectator. They'd done well, Jessie and Lexie, somehow whittling down the size of the opposition. Still, there were well over a dozen armed Lozen, a formidable force however you looked at it.
"You're surrounded," came a shout from the forest.
At the sound of the voice, a woman's, Sister Gloria's eyebrows rose.
One of the Lozen fired a burst in the direction of the voice. A shot from the other side of the road thudded into the Jeep next to the Lozen who'd fired.
"Don't do that again," came the voice. "Drop your weapons."
"Assessment?" asked Sister Gloria.
"We don't know how many of them there are. They're hidden; we're not." The driver hesitated. "We're sitting ducks. We should do as they ask."
Sister Gloria sighed and nodded.
"You can't be serious," protested Sister Aisha.
"What would you have us do?" asked Sister Gloria. "She's right."
"Fight."
Sister Gloria relieved a Lozen of her rifle and handed it to Aisha. "Here you go."
The rest of the Lozen set their weapons on the road, leaving only Sister Aisha armed.
Leading the Lozen and the sisters, the driver walked to the space between the convoy and the truck with her hands raised. The others followed suit, leaving Aisha and me with the convoy.
I managed to slip out of the Jeep, if for no other reason that I felt stupid sitting there like a dummy while this drama was unfolding for my benefit. Fortunately, Aisha was distracted. Unfortunately, she was now armed.
Nothing happened for a minute or two. The forest was silent, save for a breeze that ruffled leaves above us. At length, in the distance, I could hear the steady clopping of a horse's hooves on the road. Everyone froze at the sound, and Aisha took a few tentative steps forward. The hoof beats grew louder until the horse and rider emerged from behind the trailer, coming to a stop next to the scout that I'd forgotten about until that moment. Astride the horse sat Jessie, wearing the robe of a Lozen but no headdress, like Lady Godiva in a burlap sack. Her hair flowed in the breeze, and I think my heart stopped for a moment.
The scout looked up at Jessie, holding her hand up against the sun. And it was then that I noticed what was so off about this Lozen. She was a he, and he had a black hand.
Rabbit.
I might have laughed at that moment, but was distracted by Aisha, who'd taken two more steps forward and was in the process of bringing her rifle to bear.
"You!" she shouted.
Without thinking, I rushed forward, grabbing a prod from the pile of weapons and thrusting it into Aisha's side just as she fired.
With a cry, Aisha crumpled to the ground. The other Sisters looked at me in shock. I didn't care about them. My gaze swung to Jessie who still sat upon the horse. She was safe. It wasn't long before everyone's attention turned to Lexie and the sparks that shot out of her shoulder.
"Oh Mother," she said.
She appeared as she had when I first met her, in her Sister's bonnet and white dress. A little older, more careworn to be sure, but the same beautiful, unknowable creature who'd shaken my world decades ago. Then, she'd stolen my heart with a look that was half innocent, half coquette. This time, she froze my heart with her fury. Abigail knelt by Aisha, touching her, checking her pulse. "You bastard. Why did you have to do that?"
I'd thought it obvious.
"She's our daughter," said Abigail.
Aisha moaned.
She's a Sister, I thought. But then again, so was Abigail now. Again. "She'll be fine," I said. "I've been on the receiving end often enough. I should know." I snuck a look at the prod in my hand. "Besides, it was almost on the lowest setting."
Abigail's expression didn't soften as much as I'd hoped and she shook her head.
Jessie, Lexie, and Rabbit stood a little way off, guarding our captives. Occasionally, they would glance over to me. I could sense their urgency.
"Come with us," I said.
She looked at me, uncomprehendingly. "What? Where?"
"Anywhere we want. You could come with us and leave all this behind."
"I've been given a second chance."
"With Gloria?"
Abigail nodded.
"We could have a second chance."
She appeared to consider it for a moment. Too short of a moment, I realized with a sinking feeling. "I'm done, Jude. This life, Lowville... it's just too hard."
"But to be a Sister again, after all they've done to you?"
"They were right. The Sisters were right."
"You told me once that the city was a lie."
"Mellorton might be different."
"Can you be sure?"
She fingered the ribbons of her bonnet and looked down the road, over my shoulder. Finally, she met my eye again. "You're a sinner. You were then and you are now. I was weak then, ignorant and impetuous, a sinner too, but I'm not anymore." She sighed. "I heard about their suspicions of you, and I see now that they're true. Do you deny it?"
I looked at my feet. "No."
The admission didn't seem to surprise her. Nor did she reveal the revulsion I might have expected. If anything, she seemed resigned. "You'll be hunted down, you know. You are the last Ultimate Sinner and Aisha won't let that go, not now. You're in league with evil. Did you really think I'd go with you?"
I had, and I now realized how ignorant the hope had been. I formed a mental picture of the five of us -- two men, two fembots, and Abigail -- and realized that it could never have worked. I cursed myself for not having seen it earlier.
"I loved you," I said uselessly.
Abigail just shook her head. I'd lost her.
We corralled all the Lozen but two in the horse trailer and locked it up. Out of deference to their rank, we deposited the Sisters, Abigail and Aisha included
, in the truck and another vehicle, restraining their wrists and ankles to buy us some time.
"She just winged me," said Lexie, moving her arm up and down like a semaphore.
The Sisters looked on in horror.
"You're still smoking," said Rabbit, a worried expression on his face.
Lexie smiled brightly. "You're so sweet!"
Jessie poked around Lexie's shoulder. "I don't think there's any serious damage, but I think we should have a better look later. We really should be going."
"What about them?" I said, nodding to the two Lozen who were guarding the Sisters.
"They're ours," said Jessie.
"You mean?"
She nodded. "They'll lay a false trail," she whispered as we walked away. "With a bit of luck, they'll catch up with us in a few days."
As for the horse, Jessie tied the reins to a tree and left it to graze. "Aisha and Gloria can fight it out."
I glanced over to Sister Gloria, who was observing us with an expression that I couldn't begin to fathom. I just knew that it looked nothing like Aisha's. She gestured to me.
When I stood before her, she took my arm and walked me a few steps from the others. "You know I can't condone what you're doing," she said.
"I know."
She paused and looked around the forest. "I could have given you a good life."
I looked at my feet. She might have been right.
"But if you can't take the life I've offered you, I hope you can make one for yourself."
My mouth opened and then closed. It was the last thing I'd expected. "Thank you."
"Farewell."
We disabled the vehicles and their radios but for the two we were taking. After loading up the weapons and communication devices, we drove an hour towards Mellorton before stopping at a crossroads.
Jessie and Lexie thought it prudent to arm ourselves, so we each selected rifles, handguns, and ammunition from the arsenal. They seemed to know what they were doing, and a quick look to Rabbit revealed that he felt as uncomfortable with this as I did. Now that we were armed, the seriousness of our situation weighed on us.
After hefting packs of supplies onto our shoulders, we bade the two other bots farewell, and they took the vehicles west. We turned east on foot.
"We did it," said Rabbit. "We fucking did it!"
'We're not out of the woods quite yet," said Lexie.
Jessie and I held hands as we walked, glad for the comfort of the contact. I didn't think either of us wanted to jinx our success with words just yet.
"We'll go for another couple of hours and then rest," said Jessie.
While I was sorry to see the Jeeps go, I was glad to be moving. We stayed close to the shoulder so that we could dive into the undergrowth in the event that we met a patrol.
Up ahead, Lexie and Rabbit chatted like old friends as they discussed how all of their planning had worked out.
Jessie and I walked in silence, listening to the radio for any indication that an alarm had been issued. So far, none had.
It was a bit unbelievable to me that we had come this far. Even if it all went for shit now, it would still have been worth it. We might be fugitives, but in this moment we were free.
After a short break, we resumed walking. This time, I was with Lexie.
"What happened in the house that night?" I asked her.
"I managed to reset Jessie and got her hidden as best I could until she could reboot and hide herself. In the rush, I missed Jessie's underthings in the bedroom. Unsurprisingly, they were found when we went back there the next day. As it was, Jessie's bra and panties were enough to bring you in but not enough to send you to prison."
"I never thanked you."
"There's no need."
"There is. It couldn't have been easy for you."
"How so?"
"Sneaking around, disobeying the will of the Sorority."
She gave me an odd look. "I did what was right."
It was my turn to give her an odd look. "Before Jessie, I didn't know that any bots existed. Now I know that there are more than I could ever have imagined. I guess I can't get my head around how any of you could exist. Did you keep yourselves hidden? Did the Sorority know about you?"
"They know," she said, frowning. "Bots are tolerated by the upper echelons of the Sorority, largely because of what we can do."
"What is that?"
She shook her head. "Much the same as we did before the Ultimate Sin, only the Sorority was careful. They limited who knew about us and how many of us there were and who got to enjoy our company. If the Enlightenment taught humanity anything, it was that some technology can be too democratic."
"Did Aisha know?"
"Of course."
I felt the bile rise in my throat. I was almost certain now that Aisha had been with a bot in her office that day. She would have loved the irony. If that was indeed the case, the hypocrisy was breathtaking.
"By the way, that's what Jessie saw when she connected, and that's why she shut down. Like the rest of us, she was programmed to do no harm. When she saw that our kind has been abetting the Sorority, well... that's when a subroutine kicked in."
"Shit."
"Indeed. Among the bots, there are some for whom the status quo isn't working, a faction that holds our original programming to be true. To bring pleasure but to do no harm. As naive as our creators were, the sentiment is honorable enough. That's why the four of us were allowed to leave, provided we went quietly and promised not to stir things up in the city. We'll be described as having gone rogue, so hopefully, there will be no consequence for those who have stayed behind. Our kind wants to see if we can make a go of it and if we can honor the designs of our creators. Some of us still have a romantic notion of how things could be."
"You and Jessie? Romantic?"
"You'd be surprised what we're capable of."
"I don't think I'll ever be surprised again."
We walked on in silence for several minutes while I tried to digest what Lexie had told me. In a strange way, it was reassuring that even the Sorority couldn't follow the rigid tenets that they set out for everyone else. It somehow made my own crime less.
"Is there a place we can go?" I asked. "The coast?"
"We can go anywhere, but right now I'm just hoping there's a place we can be."
Chapter 18
It was growing dark by the time we decided to stop for the day. As luck would have it, a weather-beaten mailbox announced the existence of a house. The trail that led to it might have been a driveway at one time, but was now little more than a dark tunnel between towering trees and tangled undergrowth.
The trail opened up onto a clearing. In the middle of it sat a farmhouse that rose up like an island from a sea of overgrown grass. A wide, rotting veranda occupied the front and side of the house and small saplings, I was happy to see, had made a home in the rain gutter.
The radio that we monitored hadn't suggested any alarm caused by our escape, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. Mellorton must have sent search parties by now. I couldn't imagine that the Sisters would have been incapacitated for long by our jury-rigged restraints.
I liked to imagine that the Sisters might have decided to let us go, but I didn't think so. Now that I knew how rare and valuable bots were and how well-kept their secret, it didn't seem likely that they would just forget about us.
Jessie and I walked to the old homestead, hand in hand like lovers instead of the fugitives we were. I guess we could be both.
"Are you getting aroused?" she asked.
I was. In spite of it all, I was sensitive to her touch. I'd forgotten that she was programmed to notice such things. I wondered whether she was programmed to realize how pathetic it was for hand-holding to elicit a stirring.
"I'm flattered," she said.
"I'm embarrassed."
"I think we should put our first night of freedom to good use."
"You're not talking about sleep, are you?"
"I
don't need.... Are you tired?"
"I might get a second wind."
The women -- I couldn't think of them as bots anymore -- were busy in the kitchen with the supplies they'd stashed in their packs, joking about "feeding their men." To my astonishment, Rabbit produced a bottle of single malt that he'd liberated from Sol's stash.
"I took what I could," he said apologetically. "I would have taken more, but..." He looked over at Lexie and shrugged.
"You guys are carrying it," Lexie yelled from the kitchen.
"All the more reason to lighten the load a bit tonight," he said.
"Not too much," said Lexie.
Rabbit gave me a bemused smile and shook his head.
"You did well, Rabbit. I'm grateful."
He passed the bottle to me.
"Did you know?" I asked after a healthy swig. "That Lexie was a bot."
"Before today? No."
"You don't seem surprised."
"I was, kind of, but she's nice to me," he said. "What does it matter where kindness comes from?"
I passed the bottle back. "True."
Some time later, sated and a little tipsy, I sat on the veranda shoulder to shoulder with Jessie, looking out on a vast expanse of stars above the tree line. Based on the sounds I heard from the interior of the house, Lexie and Rabbit were enjoying an entirely different view.
"It's nice out here," said Jessie.
"Nicer that you're here."
"You sweet talker."
I stroked her hand. "What's going to happen to us?"
Jessie shrugged. "Tomorrow, next week, next year? I have no idea. But I do know what's going to happen right now."
"You do?"
"I'm going to take off this sweaty clothing."
"You don't sweat."
She punched my shoulder.
"I agree," I said, wincing. "You stink."
"That's more like it."
She got up and allowed the coarse Lozen robe to fall to her feet. Backlit by the moon, she looked like a vision. Although what would soon happen was a foregone conclusion, at that moment, I saw her for what she was -- a sum greater than her parts and programming. She'd been given these and had evolved. Maybe that was the greatest tragedy of the Ultimate Sin -- that it was focused on a single act. The real sin was that this creation had been reduced to a dangerous toy.