by Steve Perry
Damned if he hadn’t had his fill of horses today.
He reached up and grabbed on to one of the poles and pulled himself to his feet, noting that this was an older model carousel and that was a good thing, damn lucky thing because it gave him another advantage, and he waited until he passed the door to the controller’s booth located in the center of the carousel.
Then he jumped down, elbowed the door open, and pushed the gun into the controller’s face. “Open this damn thing up!”
The controller held up his hands and said, “What?”
“Full speed,” screamed Rudy, grabbing the controller’s hands and slamming them down on the handles.
“But there’s people still on the ride,” said the controller. “Top speed is forty miles an hour and I ain’t permitted to go over fifteen.”
“DO IT.”
The controller fixed Rudy with an icy stare. “Sorry, boy. I won’t endanger them folks. Guess you’re gonna have to use that thing.”
Rudy screamed and smashed the gun against the controller’s head, splitting open a good section of his head.
Then he kicked the guy out of the way, grabbed the handles, and slammed them all the way to the right.
The prerecorded organ music grew louder, faster, and more frantic as the carousel picked up speed.
This would buy him a little time.
Not much, but a little.
Even a damned robot would have trouble jumping onto a platform that was rotating at forty miles an hour.
At least, that’s what he was hoping. . . .
Killaine saw the Stamper fall onto the carousel, then pull himself to his feet and vanish as the platform spun.
She ran toward it and was just about to leap on when the thing suddenly tripled its speed, the music screaming like operatic insanity.
She caught glimpses of the few people and children who were riding it, all of them clutching to the poles of their bouncing wooden animals for dear life.
She knew it would only be a matter of seconds before the momentum would start throwing them.
She ran back a few feet, steadied herself, then sprinted forward, leaping out and landing squarely on the platform.
She was unprepared for the sheer force of the speed and almost lost her balance.
The wooden animals no longer glided along and bounced gently in time with the music; they screeched and pumped like pistons in an overheated, speeding engine.
On the first full-throttle revolution, she caught sight of the Stomper in the controller’s booth, taking aim at her and firing.
The bullet winged off the arced metal roof of the carousel and blew off a lion’s head.
Killaine ducked down and made her way back toward the control booth, walking against the momentum.
The screams of the riders blended with the insane music to create a nerve-shattering cacophony in Killaine’s ears.
So this is hell, she thought.
She pulled herself forward until she faced the open door of the control booth once again.
The Stomper fired.
Killaine snapped up her right arm.
The bullet ricocheted off her elbow, and this time it hurt.
In the same instance the bullet ricocheted, she threw herself forward and into the control booth, knocking the gun from the Stomper’s hand and grabbing him hard by the throat, lifting him off the ground.
With her other hand she grabbed the control handles and slowly pulled them back, back, back, not daring to stop the carousel all at once because the sudden force would send the riders flying as if they’d been shot by a cannon.
The carousel slowly came to a halt, and the riders, all of them badly shaken-up but unhurt, groaned their relief.
It was only after she’d made certain that the riders were all right that Killaine thought to see how the Stomper was doing.
She looked up at him and felt herself go numb.
She must have been too angry, too blood-crazy, because she’d squeezed his throat so hard that she’d crushed his neck and created such internal pressure in his skull that one of his eyes had actually popped from its socket.
He was dead.
Killaine knew she should put him down and go get someone, anyone, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, no matter how intensely she willed herself to move.
She had never killed anyone before.
And I shouldn’t have been able to! she screamed to herself silently.
The I-Bots, because of their modified programming, and the variability of the DNA and RNA that governed their biological components, could harm human beings, but only for one of two reasons: 1) If there was an active, immediate, and irreversible circumstance or set of circumstances that would result in the deaths of innocent bystanders if immobilizing force was not exercised at once, or 2) if it would serve the greater good. . . .
This still felt wrong.
She had killed the Stomper, but not while the Stomper was actively trying to kill anyone.
He’d wounded others, yes; endangered others, yes, but there had been no active, immediate, or irreversible circumstance or set of circumstances involved at the moment when she’d killed him, and though her actions at that time had undoubtedly saved a handful of humans from possible death later, it had not served the greater good at that exact instant.
Or had it?
Killaine continued to stare up at Stamper’s dead body, her mind a runaway train of regret, shock, self-condemnation, and grief.
She had committed an act that all her programming was supposedly designed to prevent her from committing.
Wasn’t it?
A part of her detached itself from the rest and began to look at the situation in coldly objective terms, then wondered how long it would be before her entire system locked up and shut down irreversibly—because wasn’t that what was supposed to happen when a robot killed?
But she wasn’t a robot.
Nor was she human.
Yet she was more than the sum of both.
She had killed a human being out of anger, out of her own desire to inflict harm and call it justice.
She was a murderer.
So why was she still able to function? Why wasn’t all her circuitry self-destructing this very moment?
Bright lights in her face.
Killaine squinted, turning her head toward the source, and managed to make out the shape of the reporter and his cameraman standing just beyond the carousel.
Then three other shapes joined them, shoving them out of the way.
“Killaine!” shouted Radiant.
Then she watched as the other two shapes stepped onto the platform and came into focus.
Itazura and Psy–4 saw her, saw the dead body of the Stamper she held over her head, and moved cautiously toward her.
“It’s okay, Killaine,” one of them whispered—she wasn’t sure who—then someone reached in and gently took hold of her, pulling her from the controller’s booth.
“That’s it, Sis, that’s it, come on, watch your head, there you go . . .”
Outside, she was outside, and it was Itzy who was pulling her gently along, then Psy–4 was there, reaching up to pry her fingers from around the Stamper’s crushed, dead throat.
“Let go of him, Killaine, c’mon, let go, just open your hand, one . . . one finger at a time, there you go, easy now, easy . . .”
She heard the sound of the dead body hitting the wooden platform with an ugly, wet, cold smack!
Then the lights again, but now Psy–4 and Itazura were pulling her along, out of the light, and there was Radiant, taking hold of her hand and whispering, “You gotta get the hell out of here, Killaine, the police are on their way and it’s a madhouse on the midway. Can you hear me? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Killaine somehow managed to nod her head.
“The fire’s going to slow the authorities down for a minute or two,” continued Radiant. “So you’ve got to pull yourself together and get out of here, unders
tand? See that field over there, just beyond the fortune-teller’s tent?”
Again, Killaine nodded.
“Take off now, run directly due south, okay? The field empties out onto a road near that old farmhouse we saw a couple of days ago, remember?”
Nod.
“You get your ass in the barn and wait there for us, okay? We’ll be along as quick as we can.”
Killaine swallowed once, very hard, and croaked: “ . . . Zac and the boy . . .”
“The EMTs should be there by now. Danny said he’d make sure both of them were taken care of.”
“. . . sweet . . . Danny’s so sweet . . .”
“Yes, he is,” said Radiant, pushing Killaine toward the field. “And he’s just fine, you hear me? Now go, Killaine, go—GO!”
Radiant gave her a firm push, and before Killaine was even aware of it, she was running at near full speed through the green, green field, running due south, toward the old road that led to the farmhouse and the barn, and she wondered for a moment why everything was so blurry then realized it was because she was crying, crying, crying. . . .
Psy–4, Radiant, and Itazura arrived back at Morgan’s booth to find the EMTs loading the little boy onto one stretcher and his mother onto another.
“Where’s Morgan?” said Radiant. “I don’t feel his presence anymore.”
“I never saw the guy,” replied Itazura.
Psy–4 looked around. “What happened to Zac?”
Radiant couldn’t sense Zac’s presence any longer.
Itazura ran around the immediate area but couldn’t see him.
Finally, Itazura asked one of the EMTs, “What happened to the older man who was here?”
The EMT shook her head. “I’m sorry, sir, but there was no one else here, just this child and his mother.”
Then he heard Radiant call, “Guys! Over here!”
They found her across the midway, in front of an empty booth where players threw softballs into bushel baskets. Tears were running down her face.
She was holding a small stuffed elephant.
The toy was soaked in blood.
“This w-w-was Zac’s,” she spluttered. “He won it for me.”
Psy–4 put a hand on her arm. “Where is he?”
She brought the elephant closer to her chest, reading the energy resonances that Zac might have left behind.
“Well?” snapped Itazura.
“They took him.”
“Who?”
She shook her head. “I . . . I don’t know, but—wait! Zac . . . Zac knew one of them.”
“Can you read anything else?” asked Psy–4, his voice barely controlled.
“. . . I . . . I think that . . .” She dropped her head. “Dammit! I almost had it!”
Itazura grabbed her arm. “Try again!”
“It’s not that easy, Itzy! I—”
Then her body went ramrod straight and deathly still.
“Preston,” she said. “Whoever has Zac knows Preston, as well.”
Itazura and Psy–4 looked at one another.
“Annabelle,” they both said at almost the same time.
Checking very quickly to make sure the child and his mother were going to survive, they took off out of the park and had just made it to the van when the squad cars came screaming down the road. . . .
In his trailer, Daniel Morgan slammed the door closed and let fly with a string of profanities that would have made a hard-core biker blush.
He threw his crutches away, then flopped down onto his bed and tore away his leg braces.
He pushed himself to his feet, stumbled over to the small kitchen table, sat down, ripped off his shirt, and began to undo the buckles that held his back brace in place.
It fell away, and with it his deformity.
Damn that hurts! thought Janus, rubbing the back of his neck.
He was glad to be rid of the disguise.
Still, it had been great being back at the carny again. Half his life he’d spent at such places, under various names. And it was a requirement for his continued association with Annabelle that she keep this particular carnival in the old corporate holdings.
He never knew when he might want a place to hide, disguised as Morgan.
Reaching behind the half-empty bottle of whiskey on the table, he snatched up the cell phone and punched in a number.
Waited for the person on the other end to answer.
By the sixth ring, he knew there was no one there to answer.
“Shit!” he hissed, throwing the phone across the trailer.
Annabelle wasn’t there.
Which could only mean one thing.
She was either on her way here to see Preston or was already here.
He should have known better than to trust Simmons and his underlings. Oh, sure, they’d been more than happy to play their parts as game operators—Simmons’s performance as Herbert had impressed even Janus—and that should have tipped Janus off.
They were a little too willing to go along with his plans.
He slammed his fist down on the tabletop, flipped the table over, and pulled the scarred sea chest out from under the other kitchen chair.
He unlocked it, flipped open the lid, and began taking stock of his arsenal.
Either he’d been double-crossed, or played for a patsy.
Didn’t really matter at this point.
It was blood all the way now. . . .
PART THREE
WHEELS
OF FIRE
“Every thought and its resultant action should be judged by what it is able to draw from suffering. Despite my dislike of it, suffering is a fact.”
—Albert Camus, NOTEBOOK IV, JANUARY 1942–SEPTEMBER 1945
70
* * *
08:22:37
Zac Robillard regained consciousness in slow, confusing degrees, recalling only frozen moments and hazy images instead of full-blown incidents or details:
The carnival; the grizzly bear ripping away some of his shoulder meat; the bloody, unconscious but still-breathing form of the little boy; Radiant, Itazura, and Psy–4 running after Killaine; then blackness; coming to sometime later, strapped to a gurney; faces hidden behind surgical masks, looking down at him.
And underscoring all of it was that oh-so-familiar voice; clipped speech, impeccable diction, right out of Parliament:
“A pleasure to see you again, Dr. Robillard.”
Simmons.
Which meant Annabelle couldn’t be too far behind. . . .
71
* * *
Until the moment when one of them decided to turn on the News at Ten, Stonewall and Singer had been having a relaxing, quiet evening at the warehouse; Stonewall finished his cross-stitch project—exceptionally happy with the way the puppy dogs had turned out—and Singer, having finally mastered the basics of Itazura’s HIR unit, made some holos of the robots hiding down in the sewer.
The news shattered their contentment, of course.
We’re going live to Ron Wilson at the scene of the shootings.
Thanks, Ted. I’m standing here near the carousel at the Route 79 carnival location where, only a few minutes ago, a series of events unfolded that, at last count, have left at least four people wounded and one person dead. Due to the graphic nature of the following material, parental discretion is advised. Now take a look at this video we shot. . . .
Stonewall and Singer watched the events in silence; from the initial shooting to Killaine killing the young man in the clown makeup; then, just as the anchorman was saying, “Channel 28 has learned that the dead teenager was evidently carrying out some sort of initiation assignment in order to join the so-called ‘Silver Metal Stompers,’ a group of anti-robot youths who—”
Stonewall turned off the television. “Shit! Now we really have to get the hell out of here,” he said to Singer.
What do I start with?
“Go down into the garage bay and bring up all the empty crates. I’ll start breaking
down the lab and computer equipment.”
When will the others be here?
“Soon. And I’m going to assume that finishing up with the packing will be the last thing on their minds.”
72
* * *
In the SMS headquarters, Gash watched the rest of the news broadcast, paying particular attention to the last bit of ersatz-information passed along: “We’ve also received unconfirmed reports that the young woman sought by police in the killing of the alleged ‘Stomper’ was recently in the employ of Preston Technical Systems, Inc., a multinational—”
Gash lifted his shotgun and blew the set to sparking, fizzling smithereens.
Dropping the weapon, he rolled over on the expansive but old sofa and lifted a vial of Stoke from a nearby table, taking care not to spill any of the precious golden powder as he poured a thin line across the back of his hand and then snorted it with his left nostril, then he repeated the process for his right nostril.
Stoke, wondrous Stoke; a chemical fusion between cocaine and PCP that not only killed all the pain in your body—and Gash had plenty of pain after his rooftop battle with Little Mary Sunshine—but also doubled, sometimes tripled your physical strength while acting as a sensory inhibitor.
In other words: Nothing registered; no pain, no pleasure, nothing.
You were Stoked, ready to fight: inhuman.
He rose from the sofa, grabbed an Uzi, and fired into the air.
All along the candlelit balconies of the old Taft Hotel, the Stompers assembled.
“We now know who it is the good doctor works for,” croaked Gash, feeling the effects of the Stoke starting to kick in. “And we know that all of them are responsible for the death of our potential brother-in-arms.”
The Stompers stared down at him in glassy-eyed silence.
“Ready yourselves,” cried Gash, growing stronger. “The witching hour nears. That is when we shall begin our greatest strike, my Stompers.”
He brought the vial to his nose and treated himself to two more snorts, then lifted his sword.