“What happens to me if I don’t m—”
“Don’t activate the portal early, Sheila.” His tone was tense. She shuddered. She didn’t know how a robot could experience worry, but Micah managed it. He’d lived a long time, planned a great deal, and they were on the brink of departure, ready to leave on a mission of vital importance to humanity’s future with no guarantees either of them would return.
She nodded and sighed as she realized the implication of his statement. “You aren’t going to be here when it’s time activate the portal. That’s why I have to do it myself.”
“My journey will take quite a bit longer than yours. I’ll time my departure so as to maximize the chance we’ll arrive simultaneously.”
She felt the staggering responsibility. She’d be all alone here at the end before walking into Hell. She wanted to argue with him, to spend weeks finding a better way, but at this point there was little time. She had a few hours before she’d leave, less than that until she’d be alone.
“Micah?”
“Yes?”
“How do I activate the portal once the batteries reach capacity?”
He chuckled and nodded at a large button on the touch screen. The button read “Activate Portal.” Sheila laughed. At least that part was straightforward.
They left the larger portal room and returned outside to the sounds and scents and peaceful vibrations of Eden, and Sheila felt some of her pessimism melt away. Micah walked around the building they’d just been in and through a grove of trees, ending in a clearing further away from the river than when they’d started. “Here we are.”
Sheila looked around. Outside a few birds fetching bits of dried grass for nests, she saw nothing. “What’s here?”
Micah smacked his head with his hand, a human gesture save for the loud metallic clanging sound it produced. He fumbled in a pocket before pulling out a large key. He aimed it at the center of the clearing and pressed a button.
Sheila gasped.
A gleaming, silvery sphere appeared, roughly twenty feet in diameter. It hovered two feet off the ground. She heard no engine thrum, saw no displacement of the grass beneath the… thing, nothing to indicate the method by which it remained elevated off the ground. “What is that?”
“It’s a ship. A flying aircraft.”
“But there’s no such thing as a flying aircraft!”
“Says the woman who just moved six thousand miles by walking through a door. Says the woman who journeyed through a collapsing city in a car that drove itself and traveled underwater.” He arched an eyebrow. “If you’d like, I’d be happy to crawl under the vessel and prove it’s already flying.”
She felt her face flush. “Sorry. Habit.” She paused. “You’re flying there in… that thing?”
“It’s perfectly safe and quite fast, but even so it will take several hours to complete the journey. I’ll leave once my travel time matches the amount of time projected until the batteries complete their charge.”
As she looked at the flying craft in amazement, she realized there was one question she’d still not asked. “Micah, where exactly is Phoenix Headquarters?”
He blinked. “Didn’t I tell you? It’s in outer space, miles above the surface and beyond the clouds in the atmosphere.”
She burst into uncontrolled laughter.
—16—
DEIRDRE SILVER-LIGHT
THE WATER FROTHED and splashed as Deirdre lumbered toward the shore, toward where Jeffrey lay. He had to be alive. To the best of her knowledge, he was the only living human being left in this part of the world.
Unless he’d already succumbed to the death she feared she’d face long before reaching New Venice.
She slowed her armor down as she reached him and stabilized herself before examining his armor. The slick sheen of Ravagers covered the suit. It meant nothing; he could be alive or dead inside the armor, or long gone. She doubted he’d left the suit behind, though; he hadn’t struck her as being suicidal. He’d rather kill her than himself.
She swallowed.
She reached out to the area of the helmet and used her metal-clad fingers to slick the Ravagers off the transparent glass, wondering what she’d see. An empty suit? His face dissolving from a Ravager infiltration through a crack in his suit?
She saw his face there, eyes closed, skin pale. There was no evidence of Ravagers inside the helmet; though it didn’t preclude a rupture and initial pulverization starting elsewhere, it seemed a positive omen. She glanced down at the suit, noting with curiosity that the legs of the armored suit floated in the river, bobbing up and down as the gentle current meandered along, generating sounds that ought to soothe. Why would he be half out of the water?
The only way to answer that question was to ask. And the only way to ask was to confirm that he lived.
She first needed to get all of the Ravagers off his armor and then check for respiration levels and his pulse rate, something she couldn’t detect through the thick metal suit; his chest wouldn’t rise and fall even if he breathed comfortably.
Deirdre wrapped her arms around the waist and pulled him into the shallow water, moving him twenty feet from the shore where the water reached her knees. She noted no change in his facial expression, no indication of awareness on his part of the movement. She pushed him under the water, fully submerging him, and watched, fascinated, as the Ravagers recognized the futility of their predicament. Surrounded by water, unable to move without solid terrain for traction, their programming forced a full deactivation. The oily mass slid in a lifeless manner and diffused through the water, each of the individual Ravagers settling on the riverbed. They’d reanimate only if once again on dry land, and only if they detected a perceived attack.
She remembered a tale her father once told, a common myth among the earliest human civilizations. In that story, a great flood covered the land, burying every bit of the Earth’s terrain under water. She wouldn’t mind such a flood now. It would solve their most pressing issue. They’d have new challenges to face, to be sure, but she doubted those could be worse than the scourge of the destructive machines.
She held Jeffrey under the water for several minutes, pushing down to counter the natural buoyancy of the armor. She’d never tested her own suit for its submersion capabilities, but had no reason to believe her actions would have any negative impact upon Jeffrey.
She finally let him float back to the surface and scanned the suit of armor. She rolled him over and checked again. She saw nothing suggesting any Ravagers remained, but knew that she’d never see even a few thousand machines still clinging to the Diasteel exoskeleton.
If they’d survived the five minute submersion, though, there was nothing she could do to “kill” them. Time to take the next step.
She rolled Jeffrey over so that he floated face up, and began working the clasps securing the helmet to his suit. She felt the helmet loosen and then pulled it off his head. His head hung limply, chin falling away from his chest. She moved her fingers to his neck to check for a pulse before remembering the thick Diasteel glove covering her hand. She maneuvered his face and hers so his mouth faced her helmet. His faint breath fogged the glassy material. He was breathing, a fact that provided her with no small amount of relief. She frowned, though, as the fog cleared and didn’t reform. Then, after what seemed an eternity, he exhaled again, more faintly this time.
Was his breathing rate slowing?
A scenario unfolded in her mind. He’d grabbed additional meat from the carcass roasting over the fire after he’d awakened to find her sleeping, and had only then started walking away. He’d made it to the river and most of the way across before, like her, deciding his best chance to eat and drink in safety involved standing in the middle of a large body of water. He’d eaten the meat, and it had gotten stuck in his throat. He’d managed to get his arms back into the sleeves, the suit resealed, the helmet clasped, and then he’d passed out. Or perhaps he’d taken a drink of water and choked. Regardless, it seeme
d that something had compromised his breathing and rendered his skin so pale. She needed to do something—and quickly.
Her mind flashed back to the training from Roddy, the techniques he’d recommended in a scenario such as this. Forcing air into the breathing passages would help jumpstart slowed or halted breathing and help remove obstructions in breathing passages. One did so by pinching the victim’s nose and blowing into the mouth.
She moved his helmet into the water, beneath his body, so that she could hold him and the helmet with one arm. She then unfastened the clasps on her own helmet and pulled it from her suit. She pushed her helmet beneath the surface and pinned it between her knees, keeping her right hand free. She maneuvered her left arm under his neck, straightened his head, and pinched his nose with her right hand. She then dipped her head down and put her lips on his. His breath smelled of cooked meat. A small bit of stubble scratched the sensitive skin of her face. She tried to ignore the smell, along with the sensation and realization that she was essentially kissing an unconscious man, and a virtual stranger at that. This was her job, medical care, no more, no less. She blew into his mouth, fighting the natural instinct to turn the contact into an actual kiss.
Real kisses with men she barely knew had gotten her into this predicament.
She blew and pulled back, watching his face for any reaction. She repeated the process three times, then held the contact and closed her eyes, inhaling and exhaling directly, reveling in the touch of another human being in a world where she might never experience something of the sort again.
She opened her eyes a moment later and found him staring back at her.
She pulled away.
She couldn’t read his expression. Humor? Horror? She swallowed inwardly. Pleasure? Perhaps the best description might be surprise. Whatever Jeffrey’s last conscious thought had been, it hadn’t involved waking with her mouth on his.
“I… you weren’t breathing, and… my husband, he taught me how to… I was trying to help you and…”
Jeffrey held up his hand. “Stop. Whatever you thought you were doing, you weren’t. I hadn’t lost consciousness, you bloody fool. I was sleeping, which is precisely what you were doing when I woke up earlier. I thought you’d agreed to take the first watch, and thought I could sleep in safety because you were around.” His gaze narrowed. “I never agreed to keep watch while you slept, and given that you couldn’t keep your eyes open like you’d promised, I felt no obligation to stick around.”
She found it odd that he’d tried to justify his departure, especially given that he’d never entertained any discussion about sleeping shifts, had just told her he’d sleep first and dozed off before she’d uttered a word in protest. But she’d argue that point later, if it still mattered. “I was awake long enough to see you sleep. I know how often and how deeply you breathe when you sleep. Your respiratory rates just now were about a quarter that, and when I got your helmet off your breathing couldn’t even fog my mask.”
He glared at her. “Liar.”
She folded her arms. “Why go to sleep in the river? Rather risky, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t go to sleep in the river. I rested near the shore before crossing to get some additional sleep, and…”
His voice trailed off as he looked around, and his eyes ended on the now-nearby lake. His eyes flicked to the nearest shore—that on the south—and back toward the lake. “Why’d you drag me across the river, Deirdre?” His tone, though accusatory, contained a hint of doubt. Even he realized the ridiculousness of accusing her of dragging him into and across the river.
She shook her head. “I didn’t. I crossed myself, saw you unconscious and barely breathing, legs in the water and Ravagers crawling all over you, and—”
He squirmed out of her embrace and stood up, his face twisting into a look of horror. “You took my helmet off with Ravagers on me?” His tone was now one of disbelief and righteous anger.
“Don’t be stupid.” She met his glare with one of her own. “I pulled you under the water until all of them deactivated and floated away. Then I took your helmet off.”
He looked at the shore once more, and saw the indentations near the waterline, roughly the shape of his suit. He saw the small, twitching bit of Ravager ooze there. And he once more stared at the lake in the distance.
She watched him process all of the data and reach the inevitable conclusion.
He looked back at her, a look on his face of, if not thanks, at least grudging respect. “It seems I owe you an apology. I don’t know how I ended up over here, because I have no memory of crossing the river. I mean, I wanted to cross the river, but…” His voice trailed off, and she saw something flicker in his eyes, some profound realization. But whatever it was he’d concluded, he didn’t share it with her. “Thank you.”
She nodded before handing him his helmet. “You might need this.”
Jeffrey accepted the helmet, never taking his eyes off her as he dumped the water out and secured it atop his suit. She matched his action, wistfully longing for the fresh air once more. “Care to join me for the rest of the journey to New Venice?”
He paused briefly before offering her a faint smile. “Let’s go.”
He turned and lumbered toward the shore, heading in the direction of the lake to the east, and Deirdre followed, her mind overwhelmed with the memory of the kiss that wasn’t a kiss.
—17—
MICAH JAMISON
MICAH JAMISON HAD performed human behavioral analysis for more than a dozen centuries. He’d seen people in all manner of stressful situations. He’d observed them react to various stimuli from their environment, including receiving word that a loved one had died. With millions of such observations completed, analyzed, and cataloged, he’d reached a singular conclusion.
Humans made no sense.
Sheila, a human woman, was no exception to that rule. He’d not told her the location of the Phoenix Headquarters; analysis suggested optimal positive response would come if he allowed her to ask him for that information instead. Their destination didn’t matter as much as their mission. He’d been prepared to answer the question, of course. She’d requested a factual response, not analysis or an opinion, questions that weren’t innately easy for a logic-based machine. And so he’d told their destination, just as she’d asked.
In response, she’d burst into an uncontrolled bout of laughter.
It made no sense. Why would she laugh? He knew that laughter predominantly indicated amusement, but there was nothing funny about his response.
Was there?
He frowned.
She dropped to her knees, the laughter deepening until she seemed to no longer draw breath. That wasn’t good; humans needed to breathe to live. He moved toward her. Pattern-matching suggested hyperventilation, and he moved closer as his brain searched for the techniques he’d learned 984 years earlier to assist someone afflicted with that malady.
Sheila held up her hand, palm facing him. He stopped. She dropped her hand to the ground, clutching at the grass in the clearing where he stored the flying craft. She sat back on her feet and set her hands upon her hips, sucking in copious gulps of air. Her face was flushed red, not of embarrassment, but what?
She finally regained the focus in her eyes and looked up at him. He couldn’t make sense of the message there either.
“I don’t understand,” he admitted. “Why did you laugh? Were you… amused by my answer?”
She offered a short, mirthless chuckle in reply. “No, I wasn’t amused. It was a defense mechanism.”
Searches through his online memory banks revealed that he’d learned the meaning of the term but had moved those patterns to offline storage due to a computed lack of practical usage for his present incarnation. “What’s a defense mechanism?”
She arched an eyebrow. “You’ve been alive for almost fifteen centuries and don’t know what that means?”
“I’ve never technically been alive.”
“Semantics.”
“I once knew the term but during one of my memory consolidation efforts elected to archive it. That means that I don’t at present know what that phrase means.”
She frowned. “When people are thrust into troubling or stressful circumstances, the strain on them mentally and emotionally can be overwhelming. In extreme circumstances, all ability to react and think in a rational manner vanishes. It’s possible through a seemingly unrelated behavior to minimize those adverse effects.” She arched an eyebrow. “I sound like a dictionary.” She put her hands on the ground and rocked herself to her feet, then stood up.
He processed her response. “So the laughter means that you’ve been overwhelmed by all of the happenings and new information over the past few days.”
She snorted. “You think?”
“That was sarcasm.”
“So you have learned something in fifteen centuries. Well done, robot.”
If he were human, he’d probably feel nettled, annoyed at the dig. Should he react in a human manner? In the interest of time, he merely frowned. “You laugh to avoid dealing emotionally to overwhelming new experiences.”
She nodded. “In my case, yes. Others might rock back and forth, or scream, or cry.” She shrugged. “I know I can deal with a lot, but we all have a tipping point. That last bit of emotional strain was finally more than I could handle. With everything else I’ve experienced over the past few days, the idea that the elites of this world are living in space ought to be the least surprising bit of new information. I mean, you’ve got a ship that will fly, you’re a robot who’s fooled an enormous number of people—including me—into thinking you’re human, and I just walked through a door and wound up thousands of miles away. And that’s ignoring my discovery of my husband’s affair and the fact that he and everyone else in my city are dead. By itself, that latest bit of news isn’t that shocking. With everything else, though… it was just too much. So… I laughed.”
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