When Horatio had first read the play, he had been too young to understand the suspense: Hamlet’s walking an unraveling slack rope over inevitable death. He watched Hamlet parry a thrust, a disengage and lunge, a double-disengage, and a wild series of assaults as Laertes lost his temper. Laertes couldn’t stand still even when he backed off. The point of his foil circled like an angry hornet.
The pass during which neither Laertes nor Hamlet received a touch came and went. Laertes cried, “Have at you now!” and lunged at the target spot built in to Hamlet, so that he could normally be stabbed without dying.
Hamlet shifted position, took the foil between up-stage arm and body as a human actor would have, and smiled, uncut, at Goode. Horatio caught his breath.
Goode, looking disconcerted, nodded sharply to Laertes. Laertes lunged again. Hamlet shifted again. Laertes shifted as well. His blade passed through Hamlet’s shoulder.
Hamlet touched the wound. “Accident?”
Hamlet swung to the company, his sword at his side. “Accident?” His arm shot forward, grabbing Laertes’s foil; Laertes, startled, dropped the hilt. “Maybe he was excited.” Hamlet’s left hand bled. “Maybe he was angry, and God knows a little heat can boil over into blood.”
Now the hilt was in Hamlet’s hand. “And how many of us could cook in that boil? Like so.” Laertes’s sword in Hamlet’s hand stabbed effortlessly through Laertes’s chest, poking out his back. “Shish kebab. One moment a weeping angry man, the next meat on a stick.”
Laertes dropped to his knees, making terrible small sounds. Hamlet pulled the sword back. “You’ll live.”
Laertes put a hand to his chest, then lifted his face and looked at Hamlet. “I won’t.”
The cast was lost and uncertain. A few tried stage business of horror. Claudius stood and walked deliberately, noiselessly, behind his throne.
“You won’t?” Hamlet put his hand out. Laertes slapped it aside.
Gertrude stumbled forward, holding the goblet. “No, no, the drink, the drink—O my dear Hamlet—” Her voice was slurred. She tried again. “No, no—no, no—nononono—” The goblet dropped and rolled. She fell face down in front of Hamlet, hard enough to shake the stage.
“Mother?” He knelt. “Say you’re acting.”
“Probably not,” Laertes said bitterly. “There was more in the cup than usual.”
“How do you know?” Hamlet grabbed his shoulder.
Laertes pulled Hamlet’s hand away roughly. “Because there was something on the sword.” He slid to the floor.
“What is it?” Hamlet put a hand under Laertes’s hair, trying to make him talk. “Tell me what.”
Laertes asked tiredly, “Why should I?” and died. Hamlet looked frightenedly into Laertes’s blank eyes, then set Laertes’s head down.
He sniffed the point of Laertes’s unbated foil. “Dematrix.” He picked up the goblet Gertrude had drunk from, sniffed. “Dematrix.”
He sheathed Laertes’s rapier and said, “Why in the cup?” Goode said nothing. Hamlet took the chalice with him up the throne steps. “I spoke to you.”
The FirstTek was on his feet, backing away from the steps. The little platform gave him nowhere to turn. He said firmly, “Go back down, Hamlet.”
Hamlet came forward. “Why in the cup?”
“Go back down. Finish the play.” His voice wavered.
“No. Why in the cup?”
“Freeze.” Hamlet ignored him. “Stop.” Hamlet smiled. Goode said desperately, “Leave me alone.”
Hamlet nodded jerkily. “I’ll leave you as alone as you’ve ever been.” He stood beside Goode, not yet touching him. “A final time: why in the cup?”
Goode sagged, then straightened and said steadily, “I came prepared today, in case you were not—in case you were still the same Hamlet.” He looked down at the bodies. “I couldn’t know how many players you had confided in. By using the rapier and the cup both, I could eliminate all the major characters except Horatio.”
“And Laertes, unthinking, helped in his own poisoning.” Hamlet looked down at the body. “He was always shortsighted in anger.” Hamlet was panting, apparently having difficulty controlling his emotions. “And Horatio?”
Goode watched him narrowly. “His death, later, would have been regrettable.” He added with a trace of his former command, “Move away from the stairs and let me go.”
Hamlet pointed down. “Leap. Save yourself.”
Goode looked down, hesitating. Hamlet took him by the hair. “You thought too long—the Curse of Consciousness. Here’s your remedy.”
He took the cup in his left hand, Goode’s hair in his right, tipped Goode’s head back, and turned the cup upside down, over Goode’s mouth and nostrils. The remaining dematrix splashed out. “This is my blood.”
Goode struggled, but his movements grew quickly uncoordinated, his arms moving only in circles. A stream of the dematrix solution dribbled down his chin.
“You’ll want your crown.” Hamlet swept his black cloak aside and pulled Goode’s metal headband from under it. He slipped it on Goode’s head. “Long live the king. You’ll do what your crown asks. You always did.”
The crowning staggered Goode. He shuffled sideways, his face going blank. Horatio saw, shining in the flylights, the slot mechanism of the crown.
“And now,” Hamlet said between clenched teeth, “your dance card, which is more than full.”
He held up a biochip in a movement so abrupt the chip quivered. After holding it in front of Goode’s unresponsive eyes, Hamlet all but slammed it home in the crown.
Expressionlessly, Goode raised his arms in a parody of wooden motion. He tested one leg, then the other. He went on toe. His joints creaked audibly.
Horatio said, “Billy’s chip.”
“That’s right.” Hamlet leaned on the throne, watching with slightly wandering eyes. He’s Petrouchka, the puppet.” Goode spun twice, finishing in third position. He was inches from the edge of the throne platform.
Horatio ran to the foot of the steps. “He didn’t wait for the music.”
“He can’t wait with that headband in place. He does what the chip tells him to, no matter what.” Hamlet looked unnaturally bright-eyed. “And the dematrix should make him even less in control.”
Goode, his arm extended before him, sailed off the platform, landing on a breaking foot. He regained his balance and spun forward again on the twisted foot.
Claudius, crouched behind his own throne, rushed to the front of the platform. “Stop him. He’s hurt.” He turned to Hamlet, angry-faced. “What did you do to him?”
Then Hamlet did a shocking thing.
He pulled Claudius upright by the throat and looked at him with horrible alertness. “‘The point envenomed, too? Then, venom, to thy work.’” He stabbed the king once for Laertes, once for Gertrude, once for himself. He did not even try for the king’s target spot, but plunged the blade in randomly.
Claudius’s eyes went wide. He clutched at his throat, his fingers quickly losing motor control. There was still enough dematrix on the sword to take quick effect in a major artery, even beyond the damage caused by the wounds.
There were a few faltering cries from the courtiers below: “Treason! Treason!” Goode spun between the courtiers on his good leg, not noticing as his fractured foot struck the throne platform.
Hamlet glanced down indifferently, then put the empty cup to Claudius’s lips with automatic anger. “Here, thou incestuous, murd’rous, damned Dane. Drink off this potion!” Claudius was shaking uncontrollably. The dematrix had entered his circulatory system. His body was suffocating.
Hamlet, one-handed, lifted Claudius off his feet. The king suddenly looked frail and helpless. Hamlet gave a bright, triumphant cry. “Follow my mother.”
He tossed the king over the edge. Claudius landed on his head. His body snapped sideways and lay still.
Hamlet peered over the edge, satisfiedly. Then his eyes focused and went wide. “Oh, God. Oh, sweet
wounded Lord.” Goode walked stiff-legged to Claudius’s corpse, bending almost as though looking at it. His face was as blank as the dead king’s.
Goode kicked high, his leg pausing only a second as the groin muscle ripped.
Hamlet watched without smiling. “Bravo, Petrouchka. Show me how a puppet dies.” He descended the stairs. Partway down, Hamlet stumbled.
He caught himself, looking surprised. “And show me well; I’ll need to know.” He fell to the stage floor.
Goode leaped across him without seeing him. The broken foot, now a compound fracture, bled freely.
Hamlet lay on the floor, quite still.
Horatio picked Hamlet up, cradling him. “Please, no.”
He said, “Think of me as a light that switches off.”
Horatio watched as Goode fell, still kicking. “Isn’t there something—an antidote, a replacement program—”
“Show me Goode.” Horatio turned Hamlet’s head. “Could anything save him?”
Goode’s unstrung arms and legs were barely moving. Goode, seemingly at peace, turned his head to the right and left as he continued dancing.
Horatio said, “I wouldn’t save him if I could.”
“But he’s human.”
The word sounded strange and useless to Horatio. “Nobody in my life has been human. Nobody meant as much as you do.”
Hamlet closed his eyes a moment. “That means much.” He opened them. “But it’s not really true. Paulette—”
“Yes.” Horatio was torn. Paulette’s death was past, Hamlet’s here and immediate.
“Think of her. Care for her.”
“And for you. You’ll be repaired. You’ll see—”
“Watch for her.” He looked around him. “It’s a little thing, to die now. Living would be hard, with so many dead and so little hope.”
“It is hard.”
Hamlet clasped Horatio’s hand tightly, flesh and metal on flesh and bone. “If you won’t believe in a future, believe in time, and it’s never time to leave. Don’t let them make you.”
“They can’t,” Horatio said.
“Don’t let them take you. Don’t let them break—”
“My lord?”
“Sorry; I wandered. God, but it’s an awful thing to lie here with half a heart and half a mind, for nothing but a little truth.”
“Let me lift your head.”
“Carefully. I’m too light. At the right touch, all of me will rise and go.” Hamlet looked about him again. “Thank you. Our thanks, in fact.”
“What?”
He gestured at the dead Claudius. “For a few seconds, we are king. Long live. A short life and a merry one.”
“A short life.” He looked at Gertrude, dead, open-eyed; at Laertes, slumped on the floor; at Goode, blandly expressionless and still. “How long did you live?”
“A few months. It seemed longer.” Hamlet forced his speech out carefully. “I know a secret. Can you hear me?”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Can you hear me?”
“It’s you that can’t hear me.”
Hamlet clutched at Horatio’s tunic and said, in tears, “I know a secret!”
Horatio put Hamlet’s fingers to his lips and mouthed, “Tell me.”
“Yes.” Hamlet nodded, trembling. “My secret. We are bigger than ourselves.”
“Lord?”
“We must try to be. It makes us more than human.” He dropped his hand from Horatio’s doublet and wrapped both arms around him tight. “It makes all of you more than human, sometimes, too. Never tell. Never forget.”
Hamlet slid backward to the ground. The elephant Entropy sat on him, the Curse of Consciousness left him, and he slid quietly into the Free Zone.
* * * * *
Behind Horatio, Fortinbras entered. “Where is this sight?” After a long silence, Fortinbras said again urgently, “Where is this sight?”
Mechanically, tonelessly, Horatio began, “What is it you would see?” and dully satisfied the others’ need to end the play.
Fifty-odd lines later, it ended as it always had: bodies sprawled, witnesses standing. Weapons dropped, no help coming. The presence of the still-cooling Goode neither magnified nor lessened the sense of everything frozen in the sudden inevitability of death.
39
Sagamore dropped Horatio off at the Globe. “Thanks for your patience, Mr. Huber.”
“Thanks for the ride.” It bothered Horatio to be called by his real name at the theater.
“I was coming here anyway. What you got to do here?”
“Loose ends.” Get his few belongings, turn in his costume, and never come back. “What about you?”
“Same thing. We probably won’t charge anyone, since thinkware planned some of the killing.”
Horatio said, “It had human agents.” He hadn’t told the police about the real purpose of the Globe.
Sagamore sighed. “Sure did. That simula of Capek told me what they’d done and then said, ‘Try to arrest me.’”
“Is Billy being charged?”
“Nope. He was chem-kidnapped. And all the other human agents are dead.” He grimaced. “And we’re not allowed to charge him with Valentin’s death.”
He added, “I’m glad we confiscated that chip rig. It’s been used too much. The Capek simula claims that Eric used it on Goode the night that android woman got erased.”
Horatio thought about Eric and shivered. “I wouldn’t doubt it. Smash the headband, will you?”
“Not yet. A private thinkware company has offered to analyze it for us. Can you guess whose company?”
Thibodeaux’s, of course. “Why didn’t he just steal it?”
Sagamore sighed. “At least we could arrest somebody then. The only clear-cut crime we had a shot at conviction on was Goode’s, and he’s dead.”
Horatio thought of Hamlet dying in his arms. “Murder?”
“Nah. Even with that headband, there’s no proof he planned the killing of Capek. No, suicide.”
“What? But Hamlet killed him.”
Sagamore nodded. “Yeah. Stabbed him, poisoned him, erased his memory. And Goode taught Hamlet how to do it.” He didn’t notice Horatio’s face. “Think about it. First he trains Hamlet to murder kings. Then he shows him how to do it outside the play by damaging another android—”
“Ophelia.”
“Ophelia, right. God, the names around here. Then he tries to kill you—murder, if he knew you were human and ordered Claudius anyway; otherwise just manslaughter.”
They moved into the lobby. The plants, the animals, the livewood were just the same.
“How else did he teach Hamlet—how else did Goode set up his own death?”
“He screwed Hamlet’s mother every night. That’s no crime, kind of sick screwing androids if you ask me, but look at the play: that’s the guy Hamlet’s supposed to kill, right? The one who’s screwing his mother.”
“And who killed his father.”
“Right. And Goode knew there was evidence suggesting that he killed Capek, who was sort of Hamlet’s father. And Capek also used to screw the queen, am I right?”
“Go on.” But it was obvious.
“So Hamlet has a motive, and he’s learning how to kill androids. Then you tell him you think Paulette is dead—”
“She is” But he said it dully, no anger left in him after two days of arguing with police.
“I told you, there’s no body. There’s no sign of violence. We called her father—” Sagamore grimaced; questioning a man that rich was no joke for the police. “He said you were crazy and never worked for him.”
Sagamore scratched his nose. “Any money says she’ll show up soon. We may question her—maybe not. Her family could stop us cold, and that’s valid data. Anyway, she didn’t really have to be dead, so long as Hamlet thought Goode had killed her. That might just be Goode’s bad luck.’’
Horatio said, “It taught Hamlet to kill humans. Pattern recognition.’’ Iteration. Tomorrow
, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
“That’s it. And Hamlet liked the pattern. He killed Polonius, then shoved that janitor into a vat, and he was all ready to kill Goode when he had a chance. Goode gave him the weapons and it was all over.’’
Horatio thought of the bodies, human and android, sprawled on-stage. “It is over, isn’t it?’’ And no one guilty, and nothing changed. “What about the theater?”
“Beats me. They make more androids, and the lab people all move one up the ladder, and that’s about it, right?” He shook his head. “Man, I want a government job.”
They stepped into the theater. The police lines were long down. Horatio asked, “Any other charges?”
“We could nail some posthumous ones on Goode—vandalism, destruction of government property, stuff like that. Who cares?” He looked sideways at Horatio as they walked into the theater. “We thought of hanging one or two on you.”
“What for?” Horatio barely cared.
“Leaving with Hamlet. Theft of government property, maybe even a concealed weapons statute if you knew he was dangerous and he was passing for human. We couldn’t prove that it was your idea, though, and a city that’s been hit by a hurricane has more on its mind than arresting a lab looter.” He waited for Horatio to respond, then said, “See you around,” and wandered into the lab.
Horatio stood on the empty stage. The set was struck. For the first time, he saw the stage without the throne platform. He sat against the back wall, watching the occasional LowTek scurry by, head down and trying to look busy. The theater felt like a great house just after a great funeral, trying not to feel dead.
A familiar voice said, “Well met.”
Horatio stared. Hamlet said uncertainly, “’You’re Horatio?” and held a hand out.
He went on, “I know what you look like, and who you must be, but have no other sense of you. I’m sorry.”
Horatio took the offered hand, remembering the time when his Hamlet had said, “Never between friends.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Horatio looked at Hamlet’s face. It had the half-lost expression that his Hamlet had only showed when he thought no one was looking.
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