by J. S. Morin
Charlie7 rehearsed the pitch he’d make to Paul208 to get him to take Eve for a few days. “Wouldn’t it be nice if the new humans were patrons of the architectural arts? Too abstract. Listen, you always wanted someone to appreciate your work… Oh, come off it, Paul, and just do me this one favor…”
The whine of ion engines drew Charlie7’s attention outside.
His first panicked reaction was that Eve had decided to take his skyroamer for a ride. But the noise came to his attention growing louder and closer, then those engines began winding down.
Someone was there.
Charlie7 had no contingency plan worked out for this. Eve was up in the statue looking around. He was down below the pedestal scouring the archives from a remote terminal. Abandoning the terminal, Eve’s self-appointed savior bolted for the stairs.
Could Charlie7 risk shouting out for her?
Was it too risky to send an encrypted message to Paul208? After all, he was the only one who knew they were here; maybe the builder had betrayed them.
“Eve!” an unfamiliar voice bellowed. “Where are you?”
When Charlie7 heard voices, he knew them. They varied by chassis and by a bit of personal customization, but the Twenty-Seven were nothing if not consistent in their desires for their voices to be familiar to themselves. This voice belonged to no one.
Charlie7’s headlong rush led him up to the main landing, a portion of the statue’s pedestal that was more pedestrian mall than a rooftop. A second skyroamer parked there, its engines still hot and spinning down with an ever-quieting whine.
That was Charlie’s first glimpse of Plato.
Eve had described him, of course, but that description fell short of the mark for lack of a baseline comparison. He had to have been a full two meters and 150 kilograms unless those bulging muscles were hollow.
Plato was what Charlie7 imagined a human would have looked like if you locked him in a gymnasium and fed him a diet entirely from prescription bottles. The man wore his hair long and had a stubble of beard that suggested infrequent shaving. The whole picture might have been sadly comical—a failure at the far end of the spectrum from most Scrapyard residents—if not for the weapon balanced casually on one shoulder with a finger resting on the trigger.
“You!” Plato shouted upon spotting Charlie7. If his intent had been to divert the new arrival’s attention from finding Eve, then this was mission accomplished. But then Plato swung his rifle around and aimed it in Charlie7’s direction. “Where is she?”
There had been times when Charlie7 had faced the looming prospect of the end of his own existence. But centuries had relegated those incidents to personal archives. He recalled the fact of them, not the feeling. He resolved not to forget again: Dread was the repeated simulation of imminent doom.
There was no way for Charlie7 to reverse engineer the technological alchemy behind the homemade weapon in Plato’s hands, but its purpose was clear: to terminate Charles Truman version seven.
“Calm down,” Charlie7 said, holding his hands out to his sides and taking care to make no sudden moves. “We left you instruction on how to get here. We’re not your enemy.”
Some part of Charlie7 had hoped that his clues had been too convoluted for Plato. Explaining the logic to Eve made them sound as obvious as the painted lines through a museum self-tour. What they’d really left had been a trail of breadcrumbs. Charlie7 would have bet the Arc de Triomphe that Creator had never read the girl Hansel and Gretel. Eve didn’t know that breadcrumb trails were meant to be lost.
Plato strode forward, the aim of his rifle keeping a smooth bead on Charlie7’s stainless steel skull. “I’ll ask you again. Where is Eve?”
If Plato had been a man born in the twenty-first century, Charlie7 would have liked his odds of dodging a shot from that rifle just based on observing the twitch of his muscles. But while robotkind had been working on improvements to their mechanical species, so too had someone been tinkering with human biology to manufacture Plato. In the microseconds of his analysis, Charlie7 decided he didn’t like his odds.
“She’s up in the statue, getting a tour from the builder.”
Plato took a step back, keeping the rifle trained on Charlie7 while his attention drifted up to the half-rebuilt monument. “You told another robot about her? I oughtta—”
“Plato!” Eve shouted. Her feet tapped along the ramps and catwalks, graceful as a dancer even in her hurry. “Don’t hurt him! Charlie7 is keeping me safe.”
The hulking human paced the stone landing and combed fingers through his shaggy hair. “Be careful.”
Plato cringed as Eve took a shortcut, swinging out over an empty expanse and dropping five meters to a lower level on her way down.
While Plato was distracted, Charlie7 sprang forward and snatched the rifle from his grip. Plato whirled on him, but Eve dropped to the stone landing and ran toward them. “Stop!” she yelled. To Charlie7’s great relief, Plato pulled up short.
“He took my gun,” Plato said calmly, addressing Eve but keeping his eyes locked on Charlie7’s. “He’s a threat.”
Charlie7 flipped the weapon over in his hands. Prying open a side panel, he examined the internal components and deduced its function. “Monopole EMP. Impressive design considering the cobbled-together parts.” He yanked out the power source and watched the indicator lights wink out. Then he tossed the weapon back to Plato. “Might give this back if we come to an understanding. But I don’t plan on having my brain wiped today.”
Plato slung the inert weapon over his shoulder by the strap. “Come on, Eve. Let’s get out of here.”
“Just where do you think you’re taking her?” Charlie7 asked. “That hovel in the woods? To live like a bear in a cave?”
“I’m sure as shootin’ not leaving her with you!” Plato countered.
“At least with me around, I’ll know she’s safe,” Charlie7 argued. He paused to reflect. Why had the presence of a human in the argument dragged his rhetorical skills to a schoolyard level of discourse? He needed rational arguments, not a butting of heads. “I know this world, inside and out. I know its residents, its geography, its technology. I have friends, connections, and a history of accomplishing whatever goals I take on. You’ve got an over-muscled body and a raging case of hormonal thinking.”
“And a friend who’s a blabbermouth.”
“That’s another thing. Toby22 filled your head with movies instead of real, honest history. He took a shortcut, and now you think you’re some kind of hero.”
“I am.” Plato puffed his chest and put an arm around Eve. The girl shied from contact with anyone; it had taken her days to warm to Charlie7 and only then just barely. But she was drawn to Plato for reasons Charlie7 doubted she even understood.
“I have more than a thousand years of experience navigating this world. I nursed civilization back from the brink of annihilation. The air you’re breathing, the robots who created you, the diseases you’re not dying from… it’s all thanks to me. Not robotkind. Me. Charlie7. My suit coat is old enough to be your grandfather. What are you, twenty-five? Twenty-six?”
“I’m 4,519 days old,” Plato replied, stone-faced.
Eve turned slowly to look up at him. The math hadn’t escaped her notice, either. “I’m older than you? But you’re so… big.”
“Accelerated aging,” Charlie7 replied. “The technique is used with lower order creatures to speed up the cloning cycle. Theoretically, mental development would lag behind the physical, so I’m surprised to find anyone using it on humans. Well… maybe surprised isn’t the right word.”
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with my mental development,” Plato said through clenched teeth.
Eve perked up. A second later so did Plato. Charlie7 turned up his auditory acuity again and allowed in every stray distracting sound. Among them, he picked up on what they must have heard. There was another airship incoming.
“You fool!” Charlie7 snapped. “You were followed.” He strode over to Pl
ato’s airship.
Plato shook his head. “Impossible. I’m a ghost. I’ve got—”
Charlie7 gave a tug and ripped a timed beacon off the underside of the hull. “You’ve got a tracker. You led them right here!”
“Them who?” Eve asked. Frantically, she scanned the sky. “Is Creator here?”
Plato took her by both shoulders. “No. He might work for her, but the guy after you is a male robot. And I won’t let him get to you. I swear.”
Eve followed as Plato sprinted for his skyroamer.
“Think!” Charlie7 shouted after them. “That might not be the only tracker. That bird of yours is compromised. We’ll take mine.”
Eve skidded to a halt and headed for Charlie7.
Plato made a give-it-here gesture. “Toss me that battery, and I’ll hold him off. If this guy wants a fight, he can have it.”
Charlie7 hesitated. There was only one reason to give Plato back the power source for his weapon. As a bluff, it was just as good inert. If he had a live weapon, he could end the existence of the robotic intellect in that approaching airship.
“Give him the tracker,” Eve said.
They both looked at her. “What?” Charlie7 asked.
“Plato got away once. He can do it again.”
With a slow nod, it seemed Plato had caught on as well. “A decoy. Right. He can’t follow both of us. Toss ‘em here, tin man, and I’ll show you what a real hero is.”
Charlie7’s first reaction was to engage Plato in the pissing contest he so clearly wanted. But Charlie7’s biological need for show-of-force dominance had long since waned. He was a thinking creature. Chemical surges and reproduction-fueled decision-making were beneath him.
If the boy—and Charlie7 now knew why Toby22 referred to him as such—wanted to take on the more dangerous task, so be it. “Fine. Good luck.” Charlie7 tossed him the tracker.
With a quick snatch, Plato plucked the palm-sized device from the air, then made a beckoning motion with the fingers of his other hand. “Battery too.” He looked over his shoulder. “Come on, he’s almost here. Get Eve out of sight and let me handle this.”
For all Charlie7 knew, the pilot on an approach vector to Liberty Island could have been a friend of his. Could he bear the burden if giving the power cell to Plato led to the loss of someone he cared about?
Then again, could he live with himself having left Plato unarmed against a foe of unknown intent if that meant Plato was the one to die? Accessing his internal computer, Charlie7 plotted a ballistic arc and lobbed the power cell directly into the cockpit, well out of reach of Plato’s long arms.
After that, they split up. Plato sprinted for his skyroamer, and Charlie7 matched Eve’s pace on the way back to his. On the way, they passed the construction site as Paul208 finally made his way to the bottom without Eve’s shortcuts. “Where you all rushing off to?”
“You’re off the hook, Paul,” Charlie7 shouted back. “I’ll make sure none of this comes back on you. Thanks for trying.”
“Where are we going?” Eve asked as she ducked inside the skyroamer. “How will Plato find us again?”
Charlie7 pulled the canopy closed behind him. “One thing at a time. First, we’ve got to get out of here.”
Overhead, Plato buzzed past, banking hard and setting off down the Eastern Seaboard. Seconds later, a second skyroamer shot past, turning at an even steeper angle, its underside facing toward the location where Eve and Charlie7 waited with all on-board systems at idle.
“How long do we wait?”
“Given their altitude and speeds… Let’s give them a minute to be on the safe side. After that, they’ll be over the horizon from us. Hopefully, Plato has the sense not to take his little game of cat and mouse into the upper atmosphere.”
Eve looked up at Charlie7 with wetness shimmering in her eyes. “What if he needs our help?”
What indeed?
When they had waited long enough, Charlie7 fired up the engines, and they lifted off. Destination: to be determined.
“If Plato needs help, he’s going to have to learn that sometimes a hero doesn’t get a happy ending.”
Chapter Forty-Four
The depths of Lake Ontario were dark and claustrophobic. Charlie7’s skyroamer was sealed tight enough to act as a makeshift submarine. He and Eve drifted along in the freshwater tomb, heading five degrees south of due west.
It wasn’t an elegant solution, nor was it a permanent one. Without medical equipment to monitor Eve’s blood oxygenation, he didn’t trust their air supply for more than another half hour. All he could be sure of was that down here, Creator and any other minions she might employ wouldn’t find Eve.
“Are there fish?” Eve asked, staring into the darkness.
Charlie7 shook himself from his musings. “Sure. But I wouldn’t look too hard for them. We probably scared off everything within a kilometer.”
Every minute Charlie7 spent safeguarding Eve was another minute he wasn’t out there settling things once and for all with her Creator.
Hopscotching across Earth and looking for uninhabited hideaways or utterly trustworthy robots to confide in was a waste of time. Well, perhaps waste was too strong a word since keeping Eve safe was the ultimate goal, but it certainly was inefficient.
Charlie7 was a closer, a deal maker, the exclamation point at the end of a speech. Bogging down with his nose in the muck wasn’t his style. He’d have called this Toby work if Toby22 hadn’t proved himself to be an unreliable little prat.
That settled it. Charlie7 was done running. He needed a place for Eve to be safe but not long term. Long enough to deal with Creator would be plenty. For a short-term assignment, there was one person who might just do the job. The boy might be ten kinds of idiot, but there was no one else who Charlie7 could be sure would lay down his life to protect Eve.
“OK, kid,” Charlie7 said, letting the autopilot idle along. “You’re a smart one, so answer me this: How do we meet up with Plato without anyone else finding us?”
Eve’s eyes widened. “You’re willing to find him again?”
Charlie7 let his head loll back against the headrest. Up above, light glimmered at the lake’s surface. Plato was up there somewhere, trying to save Eve’s life. “He might not be quite human like you, but he’s still human.”
“Why is he not like me? I mean besides being male, larger, heavier, and so forth?”
“How can I put this? You see… you’re more or less a real human. I’m sure Creator spliced in the standard immunities to alien biowarfare agents, and maybe she was picky with her DNA screenings, but your genome reads as human. Nobody hybridized you with reptile DNA, hoping you could grow back limbs or gave you literal eagle eyes.”
“But Plato’s not a lizard or an eagle,” Eve protested. Unbuckling from her safety harness, she twisted to sit and face Charlie7 cross-legged. “He’s just male.”
“I knew the original humans. It’s not random chance he’s that size. And he’s only twelve years old. He should be just starting to get hair on his lip and having his voice crack when he talks. An ordinary twelve-year-old human male wouldn’t be much bigger that you. But… while he may not be all natural, little about Earth is anymore. Mother Nature took a punch that knocked out most of her teeth, but she’s up and fighting again. She just needed a little help.”
“Who’s Mother Nature?”
“Figuratively, Mother Nature is the sum of all life on Earth. It makes it easier for people to think about things when they personify them.” The skyroamer lurched as the autopilot veered them around an outcropping of rock in the lake bed. They couldn’t stay down here much longer. “Eve, you haven’t answered my question.”
“Last time you left him a clue from a movie.”
“Well, I had access to his archive. I could see which ones he’d watched. Leaving him a message without a common reference is pointless, and I’m not going back to that travesty of scientific parody for a second clue. Besides, it would only guide him to
Liberty Island again, and we’re not going back that way.”
“What about Oz? We could go there and leave a message on the movie he showed me.”
Charlie7 cringed. The clawed hands of Hollywood reached up from the grave to strangle yet another impressionable mind.
“That wasn’t real.”
Eve frowned.
“Plato said the same thing, but we’ve been to Kansas. Plato admitted he’d never been to Kansas, and that was within a tornado’s travel of Oz. If we perform a radial search, given the speed of his skyroamer, we should be able to find it in no time. According to the archive, tornadoes don’t usually go more than six kilometers. I assume one large enough to lift a house—and I know, I know, it wasn’t a real house they used in the movie—would probably be able to go farther. But with a spiral element to the search, it should still only be a matter of minutes until we find Oz. Now… the destruction of the Emerald City in the invasion seems probable, or we’d have seen it on our first trip to Kansas, but if we set up a scanner for heavy metal detection, we ought to find the road there.”
It was ludicrously thorough for being founded on complete bunk. Charlie7 smiled and played along. “Why heavy metals?”
“Presumably the yellow bricks were gold. Reproduction for filming would have made gold prohibitive—Plato explained about sets and actors and money for production—but the real version I would expect to be built with real gold. Paint simply wouldn’t last for a travel surface, and while too soft for heavy industrial use, the light agrarian foot traffic would be acceptable on gold. And if the road were pyrite, the iron sulfide would still be detectable by scanning. Then we just follow the road to Oz and send Plato a message to meet us there.”
Charlie7 put a hand on Eve’s shoulder. “Unfortunately, there’s still no such place as Oz. It was invented in a book. They adapted the book into a movie.”
“But you can’t make up a whole place out of nothing. Can you?”
“Imagination is a powerful tool,” Charlie7 replied. “How powerful depends on the mind. Aside from a few newcomers like yourself, there have only really been twenty-seven minds on Earth since the invasion. From time to time, one of us takes a crack at making a movie or writing a play. Nothing comes close to the quality of the old masters. But there were dreamers from old Earth that could envision whole worlds built from nothing but imagination. Asimov, Bradbury, Heinlein, Niven. We didn’t save a mind like those. The Project Transhuman team first scanned and recorded our own minds, and there was never time for more than that. Maybe you’ll start a new Renaissance of arts and culture. But for now, I suppose we’re going to have to settle for heading back to Kansas if we ever want Plato to find us.”