Steelheart

by William C. Dietz

  It made sense. Doon nodded as something heavy hit the front door. "Here they come—time to leave."

  The back door opened with ease. The android raised his weapon, used his sensors to probe the darkness, and spotted ten to fifteen small green blobs. They scuttled for cover. Other than the rats, and the heat generated by slowly rotting garbage, the alley was clear.

  Doon motioned for Mary to follow, waited till she was clear, and fired two shots through the open door. Mary looked surprised.

  "Just to keep their heads down," Doon explained.

  The roboticist nodded.

  The replacement arm felt good. Sojo, to the extent that the rider reflected his personality, was dormant and would remain that way as long as Doon made decisions that met with his approval. Doon wasn't sure how he knew that, but know it he did, and he was grateful for the elbow room.

  Ice, snow, and garbage crunched under their boots as they hurried away. A rectangle of light appeared and disappeared as a neighbor checked to see what the ruckus was about, concluded that he wanted no part of it, and returned to bed.

  The battering ram hit the door again. Wood shattered, locks popped, and the security system took note. ' 'Intruders have entered zone one. I repeat, intruders have entered zone one.

  Clamface didn't know much about technology, or how the voice was generated, but then who did? Beyond the Devil, that is. The staff was clad in hand-worked metal filigree. It made short work of the nearest speaker.

  The crypt seemed like the logical destination, since it was dark, snow continued to fall, and there was no place else to go. The android led the roboticist through darkened streets, beat on the cover with a length of pipe, and was relieved when no one took exception to the noise. The cable vault was empty.

  Hinges squealed as he lifted the lid, and Mary wrinkled her nose. The vault lay side by side with the subsurface sewer system, and fissures connected the two. The hole—for Mary could think of no other way to describe it—had the charm of a recently opened grave.

  Still, nothing was likely to equal the comparative comfort of her recently abandoned home, and the holy lands were a long way off. There would be a lot of discomfort, and she might as well get used to it.

  The roboticist found the rungs with her boots, took them one at a time, and stepped onto a duracrete platform. Doon had warned her of the ankle-deep, half-frozen slush at the bottom, and she had no desire to step in it.

  Cognizant of his responsibilities as host, Doon lowered the lid, activated his battery-powered lamp, and hurried to make the vault more comfortable. He didn't require any external source of warmth, but she did, so he broke the seal on a heat cube and lit the fuse. It sizzled, caught, and transformed itself into a small but extremely hot fire.

  Mary sat on her haunches, pulled the gloves off her hands, and held her palms toward the heat. The light played across her face.

  In order for robots to understand human society and integrate themselves into it, they had to understand what made one person beautiful and another ugly.

  That's why parameters regarding the relative sizes of eyes, nose, ears, lips, and other body parts were routinely programmed into robotic social interaction systems and used as part of the complex calculations necessary to estimate how a particular human ranked within his or her culture.

  Watching Mary, and basing his judgment on what he knew of human males, Doon classified her at the upper end of pretty, verging on beautiful. Something of an advantage prior to the Cleansing—but a threat during times like this. A lot of men would want her—and some would do anything to get her. None of his business ... but troubling nonetheless.

  Satisfied that his guest was a little more comfortable, Doon lit her stove, poured water out of her canteen, and put it on to boil. "Sorry about the mess," Doon said, "but the maid has the day off."

  "How rude," Mary responded, trying to emulate his light-hearted tone. "It's hard to find good help these days."

  "Yeah," the android agreed. "Even robots are hard to come by."

  In spite of the fact that Mary had already made the decision to leave Shipdown, it seemed that her life was out of control. The sudden loss of her home was a shock. She didn't want to cry, not with what amounted to a stranger looking on, but couldn't help herself. The tears came on their own.

  Doon gave the woman a moment, sat on the ledge beside her, and slipped an arm around her shoulders. "I'm sorry, Mary, I really am."

  The sobbing continued for a while, then grew less intense and died away. The roboticist wiped her face with a sleeve. "Sorry about that... it won't happen again."

  The arm felt suddenly awkward, and Doon withdrew it. "Don't be. I'm the one who should apologize—especially after I went bonkers in your lab."

  Mary smiled weakly and blew her nose on the rag he handed her. "You scared the heck out of me."

  "Think how I felt," the android said ruefully. "There's nothing like waking up to find that another entity has taken control of your brain."

  "He's still there?"

  "In the background—but annoying just the same." "Monitoring your thoughts? Measuring them against his objectives?"

  Doon's eyebrows shot upward. "Yeah. How did you know?"

  Mary shrugged. "He told me. While you were under. Something about traveling to Flat Top to deliver some files. Do it, and you're free."

  "Exactly," Doon agreed somberly. "Never mind the fact that if Flat Top is where the rumors say it is, I'll have to pass through the holy lands to get there. Like most dead folks, Sojo couldn't care less."

  "So?" Mary asked. "What will you do?"

  There was silence for a moment while Doon's eyes rolled out of focus, his jaw tightened, and his body grew tense. Then he was back. His voice sounded grim. "This Sojo guy was good, real good, and I can't break free. How 'bout it? Is there anything you can do?"

  "Not with what I have in my pack."

  Doon nodded. "I hate to say it—but Flat Top, here I come. How 'bout you?"

  The water had come to a boil, and the roboticist took the pan off the burner. "I'm headed east—to look for my daughter."

  Doon frowned. "East? Into the holy lands? No offense, but what makes you think she's alive?"

  Mary poured the water over a twice-used tea bag and willed the color to change. "I built a relationship with a Zid female. She made inquiries and found out my daughter is alive. Or was a few months back."

  The android had doubts, lots of them, but knew better than to voice them. Not then—not while she was so vulnerable. "So that's it? Your mind is made up?"

  Mary sipped the tea. It was weak but hot. The warmth seeped through her body. The eyes that met his over the top of her cup were calm and determined. "In a word, yes."

  The android nodded. "Sounds like we're headed in the same direction. Care to team up?"

  Mary frowned. "I could use the protection—but what's in it for you? Outside of free tune-ups?"

  Doon smiled. "Tune-ups are good—but I had something more in mind."

  "Such as?"

  "Marriage. I could use the cover—and so could you."

  Mary smiled crookedly. "I'm not very good at the wife thing—just ask my ex-husband George."

  Doon laughed. "George is an idiot... but that won't stop us from finding him. And your daughter." He said it to comfort her more than anything—but found that he meant it.

  Mary nodded and stared into the fire. One part of her life was over. Another had begun.

  It was a long unpleasant night while Doon relived Aho's death, and Mary held him in her arms. It seemed unfair somehow that some humans could kill without any signs of remorse, while androids were made to suffer. But such was the power that creators have over those they create.

  Mary wanted to help, wanted to take the pain away, but knew mere was nothing she could do except hold him, and wonder why she could empathize with a machine and not her husband.

  When daylight finally came, it pushed beams of light down through vent holes to throw circles on the
duracrete below. Mary centered the stove under one of them, prepared a package of instant cereal, and repacked her gear.

  Hinges squealed and the lid crashed to the ground.

  Doon scanned his surroundings, concluded that it was too early for pedestrians, and threw his pack onto the unmarked snow. He completed the climb and turned to help Mary. She accepted his hand, cleared the vault, and shouldered the heavier of the two pack sacks. The riot gun hung waist-high.

  It was cold, and the sky was unremittingly gray, but the snow had stopped. Endslope, and the turnout where the land trains paused to trade one cargo for the next, lay thirty-five miles to the east. That's where the real journey would start, and that's where they were headed. "Ready?"

  The roboticist nodded.

  "Good—we're off. Keep your eyes peeled for scavs." The machine led, and the woman followed. There was no one to say good-bye.

  8

  e col' o gy / n / the branch of biology that deals with the relations

  between living organisms and their environment

  Dr. Gene Garrison stared up at the monitor. The screen drifted in and out of focus. Or was it him? By reading while the words were in focus, and resting when they weren't, the roboticist was able to make his way through his considerable e-mail and, more important, keep his staff centered on Project Forerunner. The current missive was from the newest bug-chaser.

  MEMO

  Priority: 3

  To: Dr. Gene Garrison

  From: Bana Modo

  Re: Project Bio-Structure

  I am sorry to hear that the current state of your health mandates a reduced work schedule... and hope we can meet in the near future.

  My initial review of Project Bio-Structure is complete, and the findings are somewhat alarming. (See snared folder PBS-1 for a full multimedia report on my work up to this point.)

  As you know, the original survey team consisted of Dr. Arao Styles, Dr. Imo Toss, and Research Assistant Amy Reno (synthetic). Styles and Toss were killed during a trip into the field—and Reno is missing and presumably terminated.

  She did manage to send field samples via messenger, however (for which we were forced to pay a rather exorbitant fee), and they have been studied by three members of your staff. All of us came to the same conclusion: WE ARE UNABLE TO FIND ANY INDIGENOUS MICROORGANISMS WHATSOEVER. All of the specimens reviewed so far (including those captured locally) are associated with the arrival of—and subsequent colonization by—alien species, i.e. the Zid, Mothri, and human races.

  There is even some evidence to suggest that the rather limited (by Earth standards) number of resident animals were introduced by the Zid colonists.

  These findings give rise to a number of interesting possibilities:

  (1.) The indigenous organisms exist—but the survey teams missed them.

  (2.) The indigenous organisms were destroyed by recent climatic changes, by alien organisms, or by some other means.

  (3.) The indigenous organisms never existed to begin with.

  Given the fact that the first two theses seem most likely, I am directing my efforts toward eliminating one of the two. More resources should be dedicated to this project. Please respond.

  The room swam. It took the better part of five minutes to stop. Garrison struggled to marshal his thoughts, but they were slippery things that squirmed like fish in a net. A microphone picked up his somewhat halting words, rearranged where necessary, and formulated a sentence:

  MEMO

  Priority: 1

  To: Bana Modo

  From: Dr. Gene Garrison

  Re: Project Bio-Structure

  Forget theses one and two—concentrate on three.

  It was all Garrison could manage—and it was all he wanted to say. He croaked the word "Send," saw the screen blink in response, and let darkness pull him down.

  Thousands of nano, alerted by changes in his body chemistry, rushed to repair the most recent damage.

  A quarter mile away, his eye to a microscope, Modo heard his terminal beep. He turned, pressed a key, and watched the message appear. It surprised him, and more than that, scared him. No microorganisms? How could that be?

  9

  sen' ti ent / n / capable of feeling or perception;

  conscious; as in a sentient being

  Mallaca Horbo Drula Enore the 5,223rd was far from happy—a fact made apparent by the manner in which the five-ton, six-legged sentient stalked through her underground habitat. The tunnel, which she thought of as "the passageway that parallels magnetic meridian twenty-two, while passing through class four crumble-dirt, class two rock-melt, and class seventeen tool-ore," was twenty feet high and thirty feet wide. Just right for her enormous insectoid body.

  Like all Mothri, Enore bore a striking resemblance to an Earth-normal beetle. An entomologist might have described her casing as "elongate-oval." In addition to six sturdy legs, Enore was equipped with shoulder-mounted tool graspers, medium-length antennae, and a handsome pair of mandibles. Her pearly gray dorsal surface was fringed with green pleasure fungus that faded to black armor, which in addition to protecting her internal organs could produce work-light for sustained periods of time. The light was an absolute necessity for a multilegged tool-user whose body blocks sunlight and who spends most of its time patrolling subsurface tunnels.

  Enore's unhappiness stemmed from a number of things— the never-ending cave-ins, the intransigence of her peers, and the conditions on Hive, the Mothri home world—all of which were intertwined like the roots of a tree.

  Like Enore, the rest of the Mothri had been placed on Zuul for a single overriding purpose: to establish DNA-egg repositories that would ensure the future, of the species, and more important the subrace known as Graal, or "Gray Backs."

  Never mind that the home world's sun was stable, that Hive was relatively young, or that Mothri technology could deal with climatic change, rogue asteroids, and most anything else that the universe might throw their way. The need to establish widely dispersed egg repositories stemmed from instincts far more powerful than logic.

  There had been a time, thousands of years before, when a single predator could invade and destroy an entire nursery. A more populous species might have ignored such a threat, but the Mothri, less numerous because of the demands they made on Hive's food supply, were not so fortunate. They needed what amounted to DNA banks—designed to insure the species against catastrophe.

  All of which explained why the Mothri had continued to build repositories both on Hive, and later on planets such as Zuul. Eggs were precious ... and eggs would be protected.

  Not all eggs are created equal however, and the Blue Backs, a more numerous subrace, had retaken the throne. Instinctively motivated to favor their own DNA, the Blues knew of the problems on Zuul, but found endless reasons to let them continue.

  Repeated demands for evacuation had been met with every sort of bureaucratic obfuscation, the latest being a request for an unprecedented egg-by-egg census, which would not only take months to complete, but would provide the Blues with potentially valuable data regarding the size, viability, and potential of the Grays' repositories. Something Enore would rather die than provide.

  A robot, only a twentieth the size of the being it served, emerged from a maintenance way, "felt" the Mothri's presence via the vibrations she made, and quickly withdrew.

  Unconcerned by the trouble she had caused, Enore passed the opening, turned into the cavern through which water sometimes flowed, and made her way toward a stalactite of eternally seething nano. The tiny machines, none larger than the point on a microstylus, and many smaller by far, were capable of assuming thousands of different configurations.

  In spite of the fact that the tiny machines owed their existence to Mothri intelligence, none had been created by them. Not directly, that is, since the enormous beetles were ill-equipped for such fine work, and preferred to delegate such tasks to machines that specialized in design.

  Enore stepped under the stalactite and gave
the necessary order. "Audio-video link with Huubath, Zenth, Rota, and Tortna. Execute."

  The pops, clicks, and whistles that comprised Mothri speech were translated into what humans perceived as static and sent to the stalactite's CPU. It took the order, downloaded the necessary plans, and gave the necessary instructions.

  The nano seethed, reconfigured themselves into a chassis, circuit boards, cabling, amplifiers, switches, circuits, pickups, a screen and more. A link was opened to the surface. A video signal was beamed to a transfer station and relayed from hilltop to hilltop. Once the call was over, each antenna would be broken down into its component molecules and stored in a subsurface burrow.

  Not the most elegant way to communicate—but the most practical, given the fact mat Zid-controlled humans had seized control of the Mothri satellite network. That was just one of the seemingly endless disasters that plagued the colony.

  Many miles away, deep within repositories equal to Enore's, the signal arrived, was processed by quickly responding nano, and passed to the resident Mothri.

  There was Nar Edar Fomo Huubath the 1,937th, Lorca Demo Singa Zenth the 6,217th, Hitu Purla Borbu Rota the 5,973rd, and Pitho Mebra Tralo Tortna the 4,339th. Not a single one of whom had a brain in their heads. Or so it seemed to Enore. Rota, grumpy as always, was first to answer. "This had better be important—some of us have things to do."

  Enore made it a habit to spy on her peers—and they on her. That being the case, she had a pretty good idea what Rota had been doing, and used the knowledge to score some verbal points. "Oh, really? Like what? Sleeping all day?"

  Rota made a grunting noise. "All of us have to sleep— even you, oh eggless one."

  Enore was far from eggless, though less fecund than the rest, and therefore sensitive. She was about to explode when Huubath cut in. "Don't we have enough problems without attacking each other? I'm ashamed."