by Jeff Edwards
I laid my hand on the translucent polycarbon door. The bulletproof surface was cool under my palm. I pushed gently and the door swung inward without a sound. Surf’s door-lock virus had apparently done its work.
I stepped inside, slid quickly to the left of the doorway, and stood with my back to the wall. Even with no light to silhouette me, I wanted to get clear of the doorway as quickly as possible.
I gave the lobby a quick scan. No bad guys in sight.
I knew that John didn’t have any security people, because he didn’t trust them. I’d probably heard him say it a thousand times; he’d pulled enough sentry duty in the Army to know that guards are expensive, inattentive, and not very effective.
It was his sentry robots that had me worried. If they were just drones, remote-controlled by John’s AI, they’d have gone down when the virus took the mainframe out. But if they were true robots, with on-board CPU’s, they could operate independently of the AI.
John and I had never discussed his defense systems; it just wasn’t the sort of thing that came up in polite conversation.
Of course, there was still John himself to think about, and his gunslinger—the woman with the laser.
I crossed the lobby quickly but quietly, ears cocked for any sound not of my own making.
At the door to the stairs, I did another jack-in-the-box entrance, ready to shoot man, woman, or robot. The stairwell was empty.
The stairs had emergency lighting. Battery-powered lamps cast half-moon shaped pools of light at the tops and bottoms of each landing, leaving the stretches of stair between in near darkness. The Night-Stalkers filtered both the light and dark areas to nearly uniform shades of cool green.
The machine pistol led the way up the stairs. I followed it as quietly as I could, struggling as I climbed to develop a sixth and seventh sense: some precognitive ability to sniff out where the bad guys were hiding.
I climbed the first three flights without incident. But just after I made the turn at the half-landing between the third and fourth floors, I heard a spitting sound from somewhere above me: a quick string of puffs, like pressurized air being forced through a tube. The wall next to my head erupted in a shower of powdered sheetrock. I hit the floor, rolling onto my back with my legs dangling down the stairs, the machine pistol swinging up in search of a target.
There! Up on the fourth-floor landing: a sentry robot! I squeezed off a burst, my rounds hammering the robot’s thorax. The ceramic flechettes must have shattered harmlessly against the machine’s carbon-laminate armor, because its Gatling gun fired in instant response. I half-rolled/half-shoved myself back down the stairway, the steps pummeling my spine as I slid out of the robot’s arc of fire. A hail of projectiles chewed up the floor where I’d been a millisecond before.
I slid another few meters until I could get a hand onto the side rail and fight my way to my feet. The robot wasn’t firing anymore, but I could hear the whining of its optical sensors as it scanned for me in the darkness. I ran down the stairs to the third-floor landing.
I paused at the fire door that opened off the stairway, and took a few seconds to figure out my next move. The sentry robot was now directly above me, on the fourth-floor landing. It couldn’t get to me without coming down the stairs, a feat that a wheeled machine couldn’t manage. True, the robot controlled the stairs that led up to John’s fifth-floor apartment, but there was another set of stairs at the west end of the building.
The only problem was, I’d have to hunt for those other stairs. I’d had a couple of informal tours, but I’d never really paid attention to the building’s layout. Usually, I just took the elevator directly to John’s apartment.
For a half-second, I considered swapping weapons; my Blackhart’s steel-jacketed bullets would almost certainly penetrate the robot’s armor. I could blow the robot away, and make it up to John’s apartment in seconds. But the Blackhart wasn’t silenced.
Up to now, the exchange of fire had been quiet enough to escape detection by anyone outside of the stairwell. A single shot from the Blackhart would change all that, and I wasn’t ready to advertise my position just yet. Better to stick to the third-floor for now, and look for that other set of stairs.
I opened the fire door and slipped through, low and fast, the machine pistol sweeping back and forth while I scanned for targets.
The door led to a large room that housed an automated assembly line. Seven or eight rows of conveyor belts stretched the length of the assembly area, each running down the center of a complex scaffolding of crossed I-beams. Dozens of robotic arms hung from each scaffold, manipulators and sensors paralyzed without power.
No sign of bad guys.
A thermex cylinder of liquid nitrogen bled tendrils of cool mist into the darkened air. Through my Night-Stalkers, the rising vapor gave the room the look of a horror vid seen through dark green sunglasses.
A ceiling-mounted security sensor array stood mute watch over the fire door, its vid lenses, infrared snoopers, and motion detectors blinded by the loss of power.
The door eased shut behind me with a barely audible click. I made my way across the room, moving slowly and carefully down an aisle between two assembly lines, following the machine pistol in my outstretched fist toward a door in the far corner.
My path took me past the nitrogen cylinder. A ribbon of cold air brushed my cheek like the breath of a ghost, raising goose bumps down my spine.
The door at the far side of the room opened as easily and quietly as the fire door had. It led to a hallway lined with doors, darkened except for evenly spaced puddles of light thrown by the emergency lanterns.
I peeked around the doorframe into the corridor, straight into the barrels of a Gatling gun. I jerked my head back, and a hail of shots pelted the door next to where my head had been. I felt a tug in the left shoulder of the jacket, where a round punched through a fold in the fabric without striking flesh. The rest of the shots stitched across the door above my head as I dove back into the assembly room.
I’d caught a glimpse of it: another sentry robot, making a beeline up the corridor toward me.
I hit the tile and slid down a stretch of floor between two rows of equipment. The machine pistol got between my chest and the floor, jamming into my ribs with bruising force.
My left elbow bounced off the base of an I-beam, sending that weird numbing fire up my arm which can only be triggered by the funny bone. The door to the hall swung shut behind me.
I struggled to my feet, encumbered by the tingling in my left arm, and the machine pistol in my right hand.
The door to the fire stairs was on the other side of the room. Stairs represented safety; wheeled robots can’t handle stairs.
I headed for the fire door, angling to the right to get a couple of the assembly lines between me and the hall door. How in the hell had the robot found me so quickly? Was it in communication with the sentry robot on the fourth-floor landing? If it was, they were capable of launching coordinated attacks without the aid of their AI, a thought that did not bode well for our Intrepid Hero.
The robot came through the hall door before I’d covered a third of the distance to the fire stairs. I waited for it to start shooting, but it didn’t. Apparently it was programmed to shoot only when it had a reasonable chance of hitting its target.
I started to edge closer to the fire door. Rows of equipment blocked my view of the robot, but I could hear the squelch of its neoprene wheels on the tile floor as it rolled up and down the aisles searching for me.
I kept moving, trying to stay low enough to use the assembly lines as cover. I came to the end of a row of equipment and crouched behind a rack of electronic heat-sinks. The fire door was only about five meters away, but it was five meters of open floor, with no cover to hide me from that trigger-happy robot.
My best bet was to track its movements by ear, and sprint for the door while the robot was farthest away. I listened. Nothing. No squelch of wheels on tile, no whining servos.
I fl
exed the tingling fingers of my left hand; the feeling was beginning to return. Was the robot gone? Had it given up on finding me, or moved its search to another room? Neither answer seemed very likely.
I held my breath in the green-tinted darkness, and strained to hear. Nothing. No... Wait... Something. Just at the lower threshold of my hearing, the quiet hum of electric motors, so faint that it might be my imagination.
Could that be it? Was the robot sitting quietly in some concealed position, waiting to ambush me when I made a break for the door? I didn’t think robots were supposed to be that intelligent, but it never pays to underestimate your opponent, even if it happens to be a machine.
Surf had accused me of doing just that: underestimating machines. He’d rubbed my nose in the fact that machines were stronger than I was, faster, more durable, more meticulous; they could learn; they could create.
How intelligent were these robots? Apparently, this one was smart enough to lay an ambush. It also seemed to be trying to minimize the damage to the equipment in the workshop by not firing at me until it had a clear shot. Was it just waiting for another chance to shoot at me, or was it smart enough to keep me from escaping until reinforcements arrived? It didn’t seem safe to discount any possibilities.
I already knew the machine pistol was useless against the robot’s armor, and I wanted to avoid firing my Blackhart.
Could I make a run for it? If my suspicions were correct, and the robot was covering my escape route, its Gatling gun could cut me to ribbons before I covered half the distance to the door.
Both of the obvious choices, fighting and running, pretty much stank.
Wait a second... What was it that Iron Betty had said about choices? Something about the power to come up with a third alternative when only two choices are apparent. Was there a way to apply that idea here?
I had nothing with which to destroy or escape the robot. But did the robot itself have something that would help me overcome it? Maybe I could turn its own strength against it, sort of the psychological equivalent of Judo.
Its hardware was off limits. If I got close enough to touch its armor or weapons, the robot would blow me away.
That left software. There might be a way to screw up the robot’s control code. I had no virus to inject into its CPU, and no giant electro-magnet to erase its program. I wasn’t in a position to reprogram it... Or was I?
If the robot was as intelligent as I thought it was, it would be capable of learning from its experiences. And, if it was capable of learning, maybe I could teach it.
I lifted my head just enough to see the top of the nearest conveyor belt. A line of small circuit boards stretched down the length of the belt. I set the machine pistol gently on the floor and picked up five of the little circuit boards. I slipped the first board between the index and middle fingers of my right hand, and pitched it into the darkness with a flick of my wrist. The board sailed through the air like a thrown playing card, and crashed into something three or four aisles away with a clang.
The robot’s servos kicked in immediately, buzzing erratically. From the sound, it was right about where I’d guessed it would be: at the same end of the assembly lines as me, but two or three aisles away. I could only assume that the modulated whining meant that it was panning its optical sensors back and forth, attempting to lock onto the source of the noise.
Its wheels squelched across the tile for about a second, paused, squelched for another second, and then stopped. The robot went silent again, just the low hum of its electric motors at the bottom of my hearing threshold. If my guess was correct, it had started to investigate the noise, and then changed its mind and returned to its position of ambush. The robot was smart; it had recognized the noise as a diversion, and wasn’t going to let me lure it away.
I waited a couple of more seconds, and then lofted another circuit board in a totally different direction. It ricocheted off something with a metallic thump and then skidded across the tile floor. The sounds from the robot were a close reenactment of the first episode. It rolled a couple of meters off station, frantically scanning for the source of the noise, and then returned to its chosen spot.
The third circuit board I threw brought the servo whine that meant scanner movement, but not the squelch of its tires. The robot had looked around, but it hadn’t rolled off station even for a second.
By the fourth circuit board, the robot’s servos didn’t react at all. It had recognized the noises as a series of decoys, and didn’t even bother to scan with its optical sensors.
The robot didn’t respond to the fifth circuit board either. I picked up Ryan’s machine pistol and knocked the butt of it against the base of the nearest I-beam. The resulting clang didn’t bring so much as a flinch from the robot. It had learned; this particular intruder uses noise as a distraction. Therefore, in order to avoid being tricked by the intruder, it must disregard all sudden or unexpected noises.
I turned around and started making my way back up the aisle to the other side of the room. Although I tried to move quietly, as long as I kept my head down, I didn’t have to worry about making noise. The robot had programmed itself to be functionally deaf.
When I reached the far end of the aisle, I peeked carefully around the corner of the row of equipment, down the next aisle. I didn’t expect to see the robot there; based on the sounds it had made, it was probably two or three rows over.
Perfect. I could get back to the hall door without crossing the robot’s field of vision. I was about to head for the door when it occurred to me that I was probably underestimating the robot again. How long would it wait before abandoning its fruitless ambush? If I left it here, would it be trying to shoot me in the back two minutes from now? Better to take it out first.
I crossed the aisle to the next row of assembly equipment, and peeked down the next aisle. No robot.
I worked my way through two more rows before I found it. The robot was at the extreme limit of the effective range of my Night-Stalkers; its silhouette was just a darker green shape against a blurry green background. I assumed that it was keeping its optical sensors pointed toward the fire door that it expected me to escape through. The fact that it didn’t start firing the second I stuck my head around the corner was reasonable proof that my assumption was correct.
I had a couple of problems. First: I couldn’t see the robot well enough to target it. The laser sight on Ryan’s machine pistol was useless. Its green beam was close to the shades of green used by the electroptic image amplifiers in my Night-Stalkers. I wouldn’t be able to see the targeting dot with my Night-Stalkers on, and I couldn’t see the robot in the dark if I took them off. Second: even if I could see the robot well enough to target it, the machine pistol still wasn’t powerful enough to put it out of action.
I started to edge closer to the robot. Its guns and optical sensors were pointed toward the fire door, and it was disregarding any noise that I made. Theoretically, I should be able to march right up behind it. Maybe I could get close enough to topple some piece of equipment onto it, or something.
As I worked my way closer, I had to keep reminding myself that the robot couldn’t see me and refused to hear me. I tried not to think about the fact that it had started to investigate my decoys twice, and then changed its mind and returned to its favorite vantage point. If it could change its mind about that, it could change its mind about ignoring the sounds that I made.
As I moved closer, the robot’s image seemed to waver in the lenses of the Night-Stalkers. Streamers of vapor made the air around it seem to blur and ripple. It was parked next to the cylinder of liquid nitrogen that I had passed on my way in.
The first pieces of a plan began to stir around in my brain. It wasn’t a very complicated plan, but it was a plan nevertheless.
I continued to close on the robot until I was seven or eight meters behind it. Then, I laid on the floor and took aim, not at the security robot, but at the cylinder of nitrogen beside it. I mentally crossed my fingers, and ga
ve the trigger of the machine pistol a squeeze.
The ceramic meat-grinder rounds weren’t designed to pierce armor, but they had no trouble punching through the thin double-walled thermex of the nitrogen cylinder. The wounded cylinder spewed super-cold liquid all over itself, the conveyor belt, the floor, and my friend the robot.
A good third of the robot frosted over instantly. The carbon-laminate and steel of its armor and chassis pinged as they contracted at different rates.
I drew a bead on the robot’s back and pulled the trigger again, pumping a dozen or so rounds into the now frozen machine. The frosted metal and iced carbon-laminate shattered like fine crystal. The robot toppled to the floor in a shower of electrical sparks, its pneumatic Gatling gun pointed toward the ceiling. A few of its servos whined and jerked convulsively and then it lay still in a pool of smoky vapor. The assembly room was silent again.
Chalk one up for the good guys.
I walked back to the hall door. The fractured security robot made no move to stop me now. I eased the door open and peeked around the corner again.
This time, there were no shots, and no robot. I thought about Iron Betty’s dire prophecies concerning Homo Trovectior and I almost laughed aloud. Machines might be able to run faster than humans, shoot straighter, fly higher, and calculate Pi to seventeen-hundred decimal places, but until machines understood treachery, Homo Sapiens was destined to stay on top.
My secret amusement was short-lived. I wasn’t just dealing with robots here. There was still John. And, as I was finding out, he was quite well versed in the arts of treachery.
It took me two or three more minutes of cat-footing around the halls to find the second stairwell. I did another jack-in-the-box entry, and then climbed to the fifth-floor without running into any more of John’s robots.
When I reached the top of the stairs, I laid Ryan’s machine pistol on the upper step and drew my Blackhart. If there was going to be more shooting, I wanted the knockdown power of the 12mm steel-jacketed slugs. In about thirty seconds, John was going to know where I was anyway; I wouldn’t have to worry about giving away my position.