KRISTA WEIL: CONFIRM IDENTITY.
In four steps, Ariel was back at the terminal. She tapped the screen and Weil’s voice boomed out of a hidden speaker: “Krista Weil speaking.”
Ariel paused the recording and was back to the door in seconds.
She opened it, feeling a surge of angry satisfaction, took a half step out—and saw Parapoyos’ robot shell coming around a bend in the corridor.
Even a damaged domestic robot could run her to ground before she’d gotten up to a sprint. Ariel had no choice but to duck back into the operating theater. She didn’t think it had seen her, and maybe she’d been lucky there; she hadn’t gotten a good look at the robot either on Brixa’s flier or in his office, but she was fairly sure its optics were damaged, and part of its skull had melted away to reveal the 228
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circuitry beneath. Unless the designer had built in complete redundancy in its sensory systems, installing parallel controls for the positronic and organic brains, Parapoyos would be operating at less than peak effectiveness.
Ariel looked around the operating theater for an escape route or something she could use as a weapon. High on one wall was a rectangular window of one-way glass, but Ariel had no way of getting up to it and no way of knowing whether she could break it with what was at hand. There were racks of instruments, but none that a human could use to attack the alloy surface or frame of a robot—or, probably, the reinforced polymers of the window. If she could get to the positronic brain, she might be able to disable whatever systems Parapoyos didn’t control, but she had no way of knowing which systems those were, or whether there in fact were any. The fact that he could operate the robot body after positronic collapse and a point-blank energy discharge to its head indicated that more than enough redundancy was there.
She was dithering with seconds before the door opened and Parapoyos either killed her or turned her back over to Brixa. I’m still sick, Ariel thought. Have to focus.
It struck her as ironic that she’d fought off the anesthesia but not whatever microbe she’d picked up. The post-Burundi’s augmentation had made her even stronger than the average Spacer—strong enough that Weil’s calculated dose had worn off too quickly. For the first time in her life, Ariel found herself grateful she’d had the plague. The feeling wasn’t anymore ridiculous than any of the other emotional contortions she’d put herself through in the last week or so.
There she went again, spiraling down into herself. Ariel slapped her own face, hard enough to bring tears. When she’d blinked them away, she was looking at the instrument array over the operating table.
She got to the control panel as Parapoyos’ voice came from the intercom. “Krista, open the door.”
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The software commanding the instruments was on standby. Ariel woke it up, moving with the pure economy of desperation. There were defaults for the scanning of a patient and a list of procedures, beginning with skeletal replacement. Ariel didn’t look any further. She touched an icon and took manual control of the surgical laser. It wouldn’t have enough range to burn Parapoyos at the door, but if she could draw him close enough to the table…
“Krista. Open the door.” Parapoyos was getting impatient. And Weil was stirring on the floor.
The laser could be operated by joystick or VR interface. Ariel didn’t have time for the VR; using the joystick, she swiveled the arm around until the laser was pointed at the door and dialed the range all the way up. Through the camera mounted next to the laser, she could see the upper part of the doorframe. She left it there as Weil sat up.
“Krista!”
Parapoyos’ voice spurred her to her feet. Looking wildly around the room, Weil pressed her thumb into the pad and before the complex AI could speak said, “Krista Weil.”
The door opened, and the robot came in. “She attacked me Kynig,”
Weil babbled, “she shouldn’t have been awake for two hours at least but she came right off the table and stabbed the needle into my hand and then—”
“Shut up.” The robot looked around the room. “Ariel. You can’t hide.”
“I’m not trying to,” Ariel said from where she crouched behind the control panel. In the camera view, she had the laser centered on the robot’s undamaged optic port.
It looked in her direction and started forward. She tracked it, knowing she had very little time before Parapoyos noticed the minis-cule movements of the laser arm.
Behind the robot, Weil pressed herself against the door. She noticed first. “The laser,” she said.
Ariel triggered it.
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Parapoyos was less than three meters from the operating table, but even that was too far to give Ariel any real hope. Through the camera view, she saw the robot’s optic glaze over, and a puff of smoke curled up from its head. Parapoyos grunted, and the robot jerked to the side.
Ariel sprang from behind the console as the laser cut out, covering the distance to Weil while the robot stumbled. Parapoyos was swear-ing, but he regained control. It stood turning its head from side to side, trying to locate her by sound.
Ariel had one thumb dug into Weil’s larynx and the other twisting the scientist’s arm up behind her back, keeping her between Ariel and the robot. “Open the door,” she whispered into Weil’s ear. Weil started to shake her head, and Ariel squeezed. A throttled cry escaped the scientist. “Open it,” Ariel whispered again. She backed Weil to the door and maneuvered her around to press her thumb against the pad.
KRISTA WEIL: CONFIRM IDENTITY.
Ariel twisted Weil’s arm hard, and at the same time relaxed the pressure on her throat. “Krista Weil,” the scientist sobbed.
“Krista, you goddamn idiot, don’t open the door!” Parapoyos shouted as the robot pivoted around, but the door was already open.
Ariel dragged Weil through with her, and the door slid shut as the robot came across the room. It banged into the door with frightening force, but Parapoyos couldn’t open the door himself.
For the moment, Ariel was safe.
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“You know,” Masid said as his three guards walked him back into Gernika, “it’s amazing what people will do contrary to their best interests.”
“Shut up,” one of them said.
Masid laughed and forced himself not to look at the sky. “What are you going to do, kill me? Get in line.”
Another of the cyborgs swatted Masid on the side of the head, not hard enough to injure but more than enough to bring tears to his eyes. “Shut up.”
“That’s the spirit,” Masid said. “Listen, if I told you I had a secret that might save your lives, would you let me talk to Filoo?”
“Only life you need to worry about is yours, meat,” the first cyborg said.
They were back at the hut Masid had just left an hour before. Now or never, he thought. “The trick is to quit worrying about yours because you know there’s not much left in it. That frees you up to get concerned about other people. I’ll give you the secret for free: Sometime in the next few hours, Gernika’s going to turn into a hole in the ground. You want details, send Filoo to see me.”
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The three cyborgs were looking at him with identical flat gazes.
Early versions, Masid thought. The tech must be improving fast.
“I’m going inside now,” he said. “Ask yourselves why Basq was in such a hurry to get out of here after he talked to me.”
Masid went into the hut, shut the door, and sat down to wait.
He didn’t have to wait long. Five minutes later by his datum’s chrono, there was a sharp crackle of weapons fire right outside the door. By the time Masid had gotten to his feet, Filoo was standing in the open doorway.
“So you got the message,” Masid said.
“Ten seconds,” Filoo said. “
Talk.”
“Terran military’s coming. Maybe right now.”
Filoo’s mouth twitched, as if he couldn’t decide whether or not to smile.
Now, Masid thought, and he was across the room chopping down on Filoo’s gun arm while Filoo was still trying to figure out the joke.
The weapon went off, and Masid felt a wash of heat over his right foot; then the gun hit the floor and Masid had Filoo on his back.
“No time to debate,” he said. “I’m going. You try to stop me, I’ll finish this right now.”
Hatred flared in Filoo’s eyes. “Postponed,” he said. “That’s all it is.”
“Here’s hoping,” Masid said. He released Filoo, picked up the gun, and ran out into Gernika as distant thunder sounded.
His message had gotten out. All around there were carts piled with belongings, and the few working transports groaned under the weight of passengers in numbers far exceeding the vehicles’ capacities. Still the citizens of Gernika forced their children aboard the transports, reaching through the windows to tear bags and parcels out of passengers’ hands and make room for more children. Groups of cyborgs argued violently, divided over whether Basq had deserted them. Adults shouted; children cried.
Thunder sounded, much closer.
Not orbital, Masid thought. They’re going to come in close.
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A group of arguing cyborgs caught sight of him. “He lies about Basq!” one of them shouted over the chaos, and the group started toward Masid. He thought he saw something like gratitude in their eyes—the gratitude of the terrified for a way to displace their fear.
They would kill him on the offchance that it made them feel safe.
Filoo’s gun was in Masid’s hand, but he couldn’t shoot people for being frightened and confused.
“They’re coming!” he screamed, and ran.
As he was turning, he saw the group of cyborgs break into a run, and Masid knew he was going to die. Then the thunder over the horizon turned into a deafening roar, and something black and shining reared up over the trees, holding its position like a mantis poised to strike. A line of explosions obliterated the end of the main street, and the concussion came to Masid as a series of staccato hammer blows that went on even after he’d felt his eardrums give way. He tripped, and before he’d hit the ground another line of bright fire incinerated the cyborgs pursuing him, together with the nearest two heavy transports and everyone inside. The after-image seared his eyes, and something was wrong with one of his feet; still he got up and ran through a rain of falling debris, not sure where he was going except that it was away from the rolling line of destruction.
As his vision cleared, he saw two more attack craft coming up, forming a triangle over Gernika. A stand of trees disappeared in a bloom of smoke and fluttering leaves, and Masid realized that the Terrans were strafing the cyborgs who had managed to get out of the settlement. The three attack craft were long and jointed, with pivoting engines at the ends of their four stubby wings and ordnance bubbles like the heads of mosquitoes, swiveling faster than his eye could track in seach of new targets. He looked toward the hut where he’d left Filoo—it was gone. He looked to his right; where Basq’s headquarters had stood was now a partial skeleton of beams, burning fiercely in the midday sunshine.
The dormitory complex exploded with a wave of heat that dried 234
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Masid’s eyes in their sockets. He stumbled and sat down, realizing only after he’d hit the ground that something had knocked him over.
Fighting to get his breath back, to get out of the open before the Terrans got to him, he turned over onto his hands and knees and saw what had knocked him off his feet: a small torso, part of one arm still attached. During the interminable moment it took him to get to his feet again, Masid saw the gleaming alloy of the rib cage, within it the burst and bleeding lungs, and below it the ribbed spinal column, shining with blood and ending in a tangle of charred and curling filaments. He fled.
Running wherever he found a path clear of fire and rubble, Masid came to a crouch under a partially collapsed wall. Smoke stung his eyes, and he still couldn’t hear, although each new explosion came to him as a thump he felt through the soles of his feet, one of which was badly burned, the blistered toes sticking out through a charred hole in the boot. If Filoo had gotten out of the hut and survived, Masid was going to find him.
A trickling in his ears irritated him. He dipped blood from each ear with the tip of a pinky, felt nothing but a wave of passing annoyance at having to have his eardrums put back together. Time to get moving again, he thought; the thud of explosions was lessening, possibly coming from farther away as the three Terran craft tracked survivors into the forest. Masid looked up, didn’t see anything but sky and smoke. He scampered, limping. from rubble to pile of burning rubble, relying on smoke to scramble the Terrans’ visuals and the fires to disguise his infrared signature. If they had oxygen-exchange detectors on board, the fires might confuse those, too.
From the shelter of a caved-in roof, Masid peered along the length of Gernika’s main street—it was all craters and wreckage, fire and smoke, bodies and parts of bodies. Masid had the feeling he was present at an extinction, and rage filled him. He had seen too many desperate people killed by the pressures of history.
He ducked back into the wreckage as one of the Terran craft 235
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appeared again. Stuttering lines of energy reached up from the trees, and in a glittering burst of metal one of its wings was torn away, falling into the forest trailed by an arc of black smoke. The craft heeled over, righted itself, and returned fire.
Where had the cyborgs gotten heavy energy weapons? Masid didn’t have time to consider it. The diversion was buying him some time, and he used it to get across the street to the side nearest the river, and from there into a hollow in the side of a hill made by a fallen tree. The Terrans wouldn’t drop troops; they knew that even hardsuited soldiers wouldn’t be more than an even match for a cyborg, and the last thing they needed was casualties to complicated what was already a delicate political calculus. So the ships would come back, and they would pound the remains of Gernika until no sign of life remained on their scanners. Collapsing walls weren’t enough to kill a cyborg.
Masid, gato, you might just live through this, he thought. Stay here in the trees, don’t move too much, wait for them to flatten everything and hope they mistake your signals for a large mammal. They’re not looking for plain human signatures, right? Right. They’d only have automated subroutines looking for an electronic signature, too.
He thought it would work. The damaged craft wiped out whomever had been firing at it, and swept back over the trees to station itself over the ruined settlement. Then it methodically began bombing every square centimeter of Gernika. Huddled against the hillside, Masid could see nothing, and he still couldn’t hear, but dirt rained down around him and the earth shook as if convulsing. When the pause came, he opened his eyes, and only then noticed that he’d closed them.
A low thrum reached him, and he peered upward through the trees.
The Terran ship had interrupted its bombing, and was moving slowly in Masid’s direction. Can’t be looking for me, he thought, but his hand went to the gun anyway. Like a slingshot against an asteroid, but he’d be damned if he just sat there.
The ship paused directly over him. Masid looked down, realizing 236
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that what he had in his hand wasn’t Filoo’s gun; it was Masid’s own datum, and its screen was blinking with the message INCOMING CALL
FROM DEREC AVERY.
Oh, Avery, you dumb son of a bitch…
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Derec was cruising as fast as he dared along the Bogard’s western bank, dodging overhanging trees and keeping himself as unobtrusive as possible after having seen a flier zip past
him near Gernika. Then he saw the three military craft coming in from the north. They split up and dropped out of sight to the east.
The strike was happening.
Call Masid, he thought. Then he saw smoke in the distance and realized he couldn’t tell Masid anything he didn’t already know. There would be time to compare notes later.
A renewed sense of urgency came over Derec; he gunned the flier away from the riverbank and covered the remaining kilometers to the Nucleomorph lab complex in a few minutes. Hovering just outside the fence line, he debated his approach. There was a front gate, and a road snaking away from it into the forest; between the fence and the buildings was an open space patrolled by what he assumed were armed guards. Not the kind of place he could just walk into.
Then again, he wasn’t walking. Outside the fence, on the far side of the complex, Derec saw a flier parked. A section of the fence was 238
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down, and technicians were working on it. So someone had already made an unauthorized entry. Who?
Parapoyos? No. He’d been created here, and if his robot chassis was still functional it would be here already.
Masid. The flier must have been his. After all, he knew where Ariel was, and had told Derec to go there, and he wouldn’t have been able to call Hofton’s datum and let Derec know he’d gotten out of Gernika.
Derec called him to see where in the complex he was. They had a better chance of getting Ariel out together than either of them did individually.
Damn the interference around here—at first it looked like he was getting through, and then a few seconds later the infuriating CONNECTION FAILED blinked on the datum’s screen. Nucleomorph’s countermeasures were nothing to trifle with, if they could block all data traffic into the complex.
The direct approach, then. Derec lifted up to a hundred meters and simply flew over the fence, planning to land at the closest doorway and break it down if he had to.
Right away he knew he’d underestimated the countermeasures. The flier’s controls locked in his hands, and its power cut out, setting him into a glide that led straight at a broad glass wall between two of the outer buildings. Derec just had time to put his hands up before he hit the wall with a boom that echoed down after him into unconsciousness.
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