I could see Bobrov shake his head but that was about all I could see.
“Cancer,” said Bobrov. He laughed. “Tell me, robot man. We can build machines that can land on the moon. We can build machines that can walk and talk and think like men. We can build a machine that allows one mind to be transferred into another. We truly live in an age of miracles.”
“I sense there’s a but coming.”
“But,” said Bobrov, and I had a feeling he hadn’t heard me, “there are still some problems we face that cannot be solved. The cancer I have is incurable, inoperable. My own body has failed me. And yet here I am, about to make a great transcendence. I shall become immortal, and I shall lead the program for the next thousand years.”
I felt like pointing out the difference between eternity and a very long time but this didn’t seem to be the moment. The disk hanging over my chair didn’t have a cube in the claw behind it because that cube was in my chest, and I had an inkling that any moment now my mind was about to be pushed out by the mind of the man seated opposite.
The disk spun on the machine above us. It spun pretty fast. The whine was picking up, too, turning into a tornadic howl that someone was going to notice.
There was a thud from somewhere next to me, and then I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. It looked vaguely like a tree falling.
I glanced sideways and saw Artem hit the deck, his eyes closed and his expression less surprised than a little disappointed.
There was a tugging on my arm. I turned my head and saw wavy hair that looked wet. Then Fresco Peterman looked up at me from behind his dark glasses.
“Quick, Sparks, time to go.” There was no doubting his accent now. He could have sung “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the opening of the World Series with a voice like that.
I looked down. He was working at the strap holding my left wrist to the armrest. I glanced at Bobrov but the glow from his crystal was pretty big and I wasn’t sure he could see us. I don’t even think he’d seen his old army buddy go down.
My hand came free. Fresco reached around to the other one and released the buckle and then he stood back and looked at me. After a couple of seconds he gave me the hurry-up by waving his hands.
I tried to move but the emergency override was still in place. I had a poke around in the log to see if I could override the override, but it was going to take a little bit of time. I told Fresco the same and then I said, “Forget me. Evacuate the auditorium, quick smart.”
Fresco shook his head and his hair didn’t move an inch. “Already taken care of. Eva has everyone outside. The other theaters are clearing out, too.”
“Eva?”
Fresco patted my shoulder. “She’s fine, Sparks. Don’t worry about it.”
Then he looked up at the machine with the spinning disk. I followed his gaze.
“But we’re still transmitting?” I asked.
Fresco nodded. Then he grabbed for something inside the thing he was wearing that he thought was a dinner jacket. He pulled out Agent Daley’s strange gun and he aimed it at the machine.
Bobrov was on him in an instant. His exit from his chair had been hidden behind the pink glow but the way the old man roared when he tackled Fresco suggested he was none too pleased with his interference. The two of them went down and began wrestling on the floor. Fresco was a big guy and had managed to surprise Artem with a knockout punch, but his footballer physique was matched for now by the weaker Bobrov’s sheer desperation.
Then an alert rang around my head like a church bell and I was a robot in control of his own body again. I stood from the chair and I went to help Fresco but just as I moved something grabbed me around the wrist with a grip like a damn vise. Then I was pulled around with more than a little violence.
Bobrov wasn’t the only one who had found a hidden strength.
Rockwell stood before me, one of his clamp hands holding me tight. He pulled my wrist down and I had no choice but to go with it. Sure enough I was on my knees in two seconds flat.
I looked up at his face. The bandages were unraveling and tangled around his metal frame legs. The glasses were still there. I had a feeling I didn’t want to see what the bandages hid.
Then I saw something else. He had a power lead, a fat one with a corrugated rubbery surface, jammed down the front of his shirt. The lead ran to the console behind him. I could see dials on that console and all of them were redlining.
It seemed he was going to take a little of that extra energy flow for himself.
Rockwell stared at me with those dark glasses and his voice buzzed at me like saw blades going through lumber. If he was shouting real words or just screaming in rage, it all sounded the same to me.
I screamed in rage myself. I pushed myself up. Rockwell was strong but he was still a fragile thing that lacked poise and balance. I was big and bulky, solid as anything and twice as heavy. I pushed up with my legs and out with my arms and something broke in Rockwell’s arm. It levered upward and he staggered backward.
I turned and went for Bobrov and Fresco. The gun was still in Fresco’s hand but keeping a hold of it was impeding his fight.
Two clamps around my neck this time. I grabbed at them and tried to pry them off. I was working hard at it but they had good leverage. Rockwell got his face against my ear and buzzed and buzzed and buzzed.
There was a bang and a flash and the clamps were gone. I fell forward against my chair. I spun and got back to my feet.
Eva McLuckie was standing there in her red dress and those dark glasses, holding the thick black cable that used to be plugged into Rockwell sparking in one hand. Rockwell shuddered on his feet in front of her. I wasted no time, sending a punch toward his glasses with enough force to stop a bus. As soon as it connected his buzzing stopped and he flew backward, landing against the machine. Eva cried out in surprise and I grabbed her, throwing myself around so I was between her and Rockwell.
There was a distant explosion. Whatever Rockwell had broken with his fall, the big machine was spinning out of control. It rocked in the frame, enough to shake the theater to its foundations and send dust and debris raining down on us. With Eva in front of me I hunched around her for protection and pushed the pair of us forward toward Fresco. He got free of Bobrov and scooted toward me, wrapping his body around Eva from the other side.
I looked up. Bobrov rolled to his feet. He had blood on his face and his smock was torn. He looked at me. Then he noticed Artem unconscious on the floor and he started yelling something in Russian.
There was another bang from behind us and I saw the lick of flame reflected in Bobrov’s eyes before I saw the fire itself.
I put my head down and pulled Fresco and Eva in tight, hoping it’d be enough.
Then there was a lot of light, and a lot of heat.
Another bang.
I was pretty sure that this time, it was me.
34
I was upright. So far, so good. I felt cold. That was a little alarming in that I knew I couldn’t feel cold. Or hot, for that matter.
Actually, that wasn’t true. I could feel hot and cold. I could sense them and measure them. But they didn’t bother me, not usually. My operating range was pretty wide.
But the fact was I was cold. Cold and tired. I had circuits shorting all the way down one side and my logic gates were flipping like a casino croupier shuffling the decks.
And I hurt. A lot. This, too, was nonsense. A scientific impossibility. Didn’t stop it from being the truth, though. Of course it wasn’t real pain. I figured out that much. It was an echo, a template of pain taken from the template of a man.
The template of Professor Thornton, my creator.
I heard the ticking of the second hand of a fast watch. I smelled cigarettes and bad coffee and the smell of pine-scented furniture polish filling a hot and stuffy office.
I closed my eyes. I opened them. Made no difference. My optics weren’t working. Or maybe they were, but all I could see was the flashing afterimag
e of a woman with big hair dressed in tight slacks and a tighter sweater holding a steaming mug in one hand and a cigarette between the first two fingers of the other hand. The cigarette was held up in the air like she had to an important message to tell the world. Her hair was blond and her makeup was too thick but I liked her smile.
She pointed at something and then she was gone, dust on the wind, a dream half-forgotten.
There were people near. Specifically, two people.
“Like this?” said the first. A man’s voice. Familiar, but I couldn’t place it. A good, strong voice. The kind of voice that could sell you soap on the TV and you’d like it.
“Careful!” A woman. Young. Young but confident.
“No, honey, you’re doing it wrong. Look, try again, only this time…”
Three people, not two. This one was a woman, too. Older. Her voice deeper, the result of a twenty-a-day habit.
Ada.
I felt a tugging sensation. I felt hands on me. Four hands, rocking my chassis, trying to get something plugged into my front.
“He’s leaking,” said the man. “Oh, dammit, my jacket!”
“It’ll come out,” said Ada. “I’ll give you the name of my dry cleaner. Just down the street. They’re good, too. Maybe you can slip them some extra and they’ll lose it for you.”
“Almost got it,” said the young woman.
“Steady,” said the man. “And what’s wrong with my jacket? I like my jacket!”
“I can recommend a therapist, too,” said Ada.
I checked my clock. It was late. Too late.
And it didn’t bother me. I could remember.
“Ready?” asked Ada.
I could remember everything.
“Hey,” said the man. Maybe I’d moved. It was a little hard to tell. “Just hold on, Sparks, one thing at a time.”
“Here goes nothing,” said Ada.
And then my alarm went off and I woke up to another beautiful morning in Los Angeles.
35
They stood in front of me, the pair of them, he in a houndstooth jacket that looked like a TV screen tuned to thin air and her in a black dress. The big black rings of makeup were gone from around her eyes. I thought she looked better this way.
Fresco must have seen I was awake. He didn’t move any except to crack his famous smile. “Hey, Sparks, welcome back to the land of the living.”
I smiled on the inside and I looked at the ceiling while I tried to figure out what was what. We were in the computer room back at the office.
“What happened to our privacy policy, Ada? I really don’t want to have to kill these two.”
There was a sound like someone taking a long, long drag on a cigarette, then a sort of dull popping sound like someone blowing out a lungful of hot smoke.
“The exception proves the rule, Chief,” said Ada.
“I’m not sure that means what you think it means.”
“They’re fine. I cleared them.”
“Oh,” I said.
I looked down. I was in my alcove. I was missing my suit. I was also missing my detective’s shield, which should have been on my chest. In its place was a metal plate a different color from the rest of me. It bulged a little more, making my front rounded instead of flat.
I tapped at it with a finger.
Fresco’s smile dropped and he looked sideways at Eva and she looked back at him. For the first time I noticed they were holding hands.
Then Fresco turned back to me, seemed to hold his breath, and he tapped his cheek with a finger.
I reached up to my own face and felt it. There was a scratch under one eye. Not very deep, not very long, but a scratch all the same.
Seems there was something that could ding the special bronzed steel alloy that Thornton and Thornton’s bosses had been so pleased with.
Something like a building falling on top of me, for instance.
Fresco looked like he was about to cry. Then Ada laughed.
“Relax, Peterman, Ray’s just being a big baby. Aren’t you going to say thanks, Ray?”
I looked at the ceiling. “I was getting to it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Would help if I knew what I was saying thanks for, of course.”
Fresco didn’t move. Eva sighed and let go of his hand and reached for the newspaper on the table behind them and handed it over to me.
I turned it over and unfolded it so I was back at the start. The headline caught my eye. It was hard to miss.
FIRE AT NATIONWIDE PREMIERE
GRAUMAN’S CHINESE THEATRE SEVERELY DAMAGED
EXPERIMENTAL BROADCAST SYSTEM BLAMED
I read the article. There had been a fire at the theater. It had started a few minutes into the premiere of Red Lucky, forcing the cancellation of the nationwide simultaneous transmission, but fortunately everyone had got out thanks to the efforts of one of the movie’s own stars, one Eva McLuckie, who had reappeared on the red carpet after months away from the public eye to the rapturous adoration of the assembled press and gathered fans alike.
I lowered the paper and looked at Fresco.
“A fire, huh?”
Fresco’s smile returned. “Hey, you saved us back there, big fella. The whole damn roof came down, crash!” He mimed the roof coming down, with both hands no less. “If it weren’t for you, we’d be flattened.”
That explained a few things.
“What about the transmitter?”
“Destroyed in the fire,” said Eva. “We have a cleanup crew at the theater sifting through the wreckage.”
“They’re up at the sign, too,” said Fresco. “They’re dismantling the amplifier.”
I nodded. The two of them stood in front of me with expectant expressions. Like I was in charge of something.
“Rockwell and Bobrov?” I asked.
“Rockwell’s body was recovered at the theater,” said Eva. “There’s not much left of him.”
“And Bobrov?”
Fresco answered. “Missing at the moment, but we’re pretty sure he was caught in the roof collapse. His assistant, too—Rokossovsky. We were right in the middle of it.”
“What about the Soviet cell? You weren’t all CIA agents, were you?”
“No,” said Fresco. “But they’re being taken care of. The Agency has cooked up a way to de-process anyone who went through the Soviet mind transfer. They’ll all be back to normal soon enough.”
I smiled on the inside. “That’s a lot of cases of nervous exhaustion.”
“The Daily News is going to have a field day,” said Fresco. He frowned. “Vampires, the lot of them.”
“And how about you two?”
“We’ve had one round already,” said Eva. “One more and we’ll be cleared.”
Fresco nodded. “But we’re still going to be taking a lot of pills for a while.”
“Seems a small price,” I said. “What about Bobrov’s gang? The crew he brought over with him from the Motherland?”
“The rest of Bobrov’s unit was rounded up at Charles David’s house,” said Eva. “We’re still searching studio backlots for the Soviet shipments.”
I nodded. For a moment I had a vision of a car park on a rainy night and a big building and someone walking into it, his head hunkered down against the rain.
And then the vision was gone.
I blinked, or I thought I did, and the two movie stars were staring at me.
“The hotel,” I said. “What were you and Charles David doing with all that gear in the honeymoon suite? Bobrov didn’t seem to know anything about that.”
“Nothing to do with me, Sparks,” he said and he opened his arms and gave a little bow to Eva. “My team was me and Alaska.”
“Alaska Gray?”
“One and the same,” he said, and then he dropped his arms. “She’s fine, don’t worry. Little smoke inhalation.”
I looked at Eva. “And the hotel?”
Eva twisted her fingers in front of her. “We learned that Bobr
ov’s mental transfer process was based on something stolen from Professor Thornton’s lab. There had been some leaks in the months before Thornton’s death—the Soviets had managed to buy some of Thornton’s scientists, we think. Anyway, we knew that Thornton’s facility was sealed, but if we could get some of his equipment out and find out how it worked, we thought we could find out how to reverse the transfer process. Charles wasn’t handling the drugs the CIA had given us very well. He arranged to get the equipment out and to the hotel. Seemed as good a place as any—the Ritz-Beverly prides itself on discretion for people in our line of work.”
So Charles David had been responsible for the lab break-in—the one that had sent Special Agent Touch Daley after me.
I still needed to have a talk to Ada about that.
“But the hotel is being cleared out and decontaminated,” said Eva.
“Well, that’s good,” I said. I pulled myself out of my alcove. They made room for me as I went to the window and looked out of it. The sun was rising and the building opposite was no prettier than it had been every other morning I looked at it.
“Figuring out Thornton’s equipment sounds like a bit of a tall order for two movie actors,” I said, turning back to Eva. “If you don’t mind me saying.”
Fresco laughed at this. I looked at him and he kept laughing and then I looked at Eva.
“Mr. Peterman here,” she said, “was a physicist before he took up acting. Charles David left college to work as a mathematician for the DORL. I have a degree in computational complexity theory and was working at MIT before I decided to hang it all and get some of that LA sunshine I’d read about in Life magazine.”
“Get you,” said Ada. “Do you guys want medals, maybe?”
“Ada, that’s why they were selected by the CIA,” I said. “Right?”
Fresco laughed again, which I took to be a yes. Eva nodded with a smile that was a better answer.
“So what about you two?” I asked. “What are your plans?”
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