Asimov’s Future History Volume 10

by Isaac Asimov

  “Or fucking?”

  “Well, that’s not really an option in my case. But let’s talk about you. Why are you so bent on preventing me from claiming my inheritance?”

  “It’s not really yours. You murdered Rega.”

  “You can’t prove that.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Besides, so what? He murdered me.”

  Coren frowned. “How do you figure that?”

  “Abandonment. He might as well have exposed me to the elements.”

  “Your condition was incurable.”

  “And that relieved him of his parental responsibility?”

  “He did the best —”

  “Intentions are meaningless if they fail. He failed. I died. I’m not like I was.”

  “You’re alive.”

  “Gamelin is alive. But Jerem? Interesting question. I —”

  Coren looked at the handpad. Five of the Auroran icons converged in one room. As he watched, three of them winked out, the last two fled the room.

  “How many people are here to get me, Coren?” Gamelin asked. “I kept close watch on all the law enforcement databases. I detected no movement of personnel or new orders or anything that might indicate a covert action. I still have a contact or two inside Special Service. How did you manage this?”

  “Skill and nastiness.”

  “Touché.”

  On the handpad, Coren witnessed a scramble as all the remaining Aurorans changed positions throughout the residence. A line of type appeared on the bottom of the screen.

  MOVE NOW.

  Coren drew a blaster, pocketed the handpad, and headed for the door.

  At the foot of the steps to the corridor, he pressed against the wall and carefully peered around the corner. The hallway was empty.

  Back the way he had come would take him to the main entryway and out. Easily anticipated, easily blocked. Besides, he would have to rely on the Aurorans to do their part. He would not know viscerally that they had succeeded, and right now, after all that had happened in the last year and a half, knowing was the only thing important anymore.

  To the left, another staircase led up to the third level — the rooftop gardens, recreation facilities, a theater. There was a landing pad up there for aircars, part of the original structure around which Rega had built the rest of the house, unused since private licenses had been abolished decades ago. Attached to the landing pad were machine shops and a supply shed for spare parts.

  Coren sprinted for the stairs.

  The landing opened out in a large circle. Elegantly arched doors rimmed the space — six of them, including the portal from the stairs. Coren opened the handpad again to check the locations of the Aurorans. Two now waited on the landing pad, near the machine shop. Another one waited in the theater, through the door to Coren’s right.

  The theater opened out at the end of a wood-paneled corridor. Twenty rows of seats curved around a shallow stage that hid the holographic projectors. Coren remembered that extra platforms could be added to deepen the stage for live performances, but to his knowledge Rega had never staged one. So much of the house had been unused, wasted in both his own and Nyom’s opinion. Finally, Rega had stopped using the house at all, allowing Nyom to take it over. Her residence here had lasted under a year, before she left to run baleys.

  Coren stood at the entrance to the gently sloping arena and scanned the rows until a tiny light caught his attention. Holding the blaster up, he moved toward it.

  A lone figure hunched over a large pad. When the Auroran looked up, Coren recognized Hofton. Coren slid into the seat beside him.

  The pad was a larger display of what Coren had on his own pad. Hofton’s fingers blurred over the touchpad at its base.

  “Gamelin’s masking changes frequencies constantly,” Hofton said. “Very sophisticated. I’ve had him a few times, but then the signal fades.”

  “You’ve lost people already.”

  Hofton nodded grimly. “He’s faster than we anticipated. A mistake. The advantage we have is his organic aspect. A robot could operate optimally for days, but Gamelin’s human elements will tire.”

  “You hope.”

  Hofton’s eyebrows raised. Then he pointed at the pad. “There.”

  On the pad, a red dot faded into being. Coren looked up at the stage, half expecting to see Gamelin rise up out of the boards. But the signal was further back, behind the rear wall.

  “Odd,” Hofton said. “What’s back there? Looks like a shaft...” Fingers tapped, and a separate schematic opened in one corner of the screen. “That’s what I thought it looked like, but I wouldn’t have expected it in Rega Looms’ house.”

  “What is it?”

  “A robot service passage.”

  Coren studied the schematic. “Rega built over the remains of a much older structure. He retrofitted where he could.”

  “Older. Old enough to have once possessed robots as servants?”

  “Probably.” Coren puzzled at the layout. “He’s going up to the storerooms behind the machine shop.”

  “Can they be accessed from here?” Hofton asked, tapping instructions into his keypad.

  “I think so. There’s a prop room back there.”

  Hofton folded up the pad, and it disappeared into his black clothing. He bounded over the seats for the stage. Coren worked to catch up.

  “I had no idea you were so athletic,” Coren said sarcastically as he joined Hofton at the rear of the stage.

  “Your traitor,” Hofton said. “Is she secured?”

  “She’s fine. Going nowhere.”

  Coren pointed to a door just beyond the wings. He led the way and pressed the contact. It slid upward, lights coming on in the chamber beyond.

  Shelving stacked ceiling-high bearing boxes, tubes, bags of malleable plastic, papers, fabrics, and all the varied accouterments of a theatrical workshop. Large injection molds stood against one wall, their program consoles long dormant and dust-greyed.

  At the very back of the chamber they found an ancient doorway that had been welded shut. Hofton reopened his pad.

  “That’s it,” he said. “I’ve lost Gamelin again.”

  “Was he above or below when you located him last?” Coren asked, reaching into a pocket.

  “Below.”

  Coren pulled out a small device and attached it to the door, then opened his own handpad. “Aural,” he said. “He’s got to be climbing it, right?”

  Hofton nodded.

  On the smaller screen, a signal pulsed ghostly white.

  “Moving slow,” Coren interpreted for Hofton. “Three meters down.”

  Hofton tapped instructions into his pad, then set it aside and drew a blaster. Coren thumbed his own weapon on and stepped two meters away from Hofton. He watched the signal on his screen until it was parallel to the device attached to the door.

  “Now,” he said.

  Hofton and he fired simultaneously. The door turned to slag almost at once and the beams poured through, onto the target within the narrow tube.

  The scream they heard came like a cancerous wind, raw and grating. For nearly five seconds they heard it, then it ended abruptly. They stopped firing.

  Smoke billowed from the molten hole. Coren approached carefully, breathing shallowly, the odor thick and choking. Carefully, he leaned through the opening and looked down. The shaft was unlit and pitch black.

  “Do you have a light?”

  “For you, anything!”

  Coren twisted around to look up. Gamelin stood on the rungs of a service ladder, visible only from the waist down in the illumination spilling from the burned doorway, a meter or so above. Coren began to raise his blaster. One foot left the rung, swiftly arcing through the space between them, an impossible stretch to Coren’s mind, and caught his wrist with the toe. Coren’s hand opened automatically and his blaster clattered down the shaft.

  He tried to pull back, but something small and hard came out of the shadows and impacted his left sh
oulder. He slammed against the molten edge of the door.

  He was jerked backward then, and staggered to the floor. His shoulder throbbed and his right hand was numb, the wrist already darkening.

  Blaster fire echoed out of the shaft.

  “Damn!”

  Hofton spun around and grabbed his pad. He entered commands, then knelt by Coren. “Are you all right?”

  “Stupid question,” Coren said. “Of course not.”

  “Stay here.”

  Before Coren could respond, Hofton was gone. Very fast. He sat there, nursing his wrist — which he was certain was broken — and trying to ignore the growing pain in his shoulder.

  “Second time that bastard...” he mused.

  He heard more blaster fire, distant and muted. Then came a clattering from the melted door. Something was coming back down the shaft.

  Coren managed to get the other blaster from his holster. He aimed it at the door, waiting.

  A shadow dropped past the opening. Coren fired, but he knew he had missed.

  He got to his feet and made his way back to Rega’s private office.

  Shola Bran’s body was still there, now on its back, the face a pulped and blackening mass, the limbs dislocated.

  He’s doubled back...

  The only open access for Gamelin now if he wanted to avoid the Aurorans was up. Coren hurried for the steps to the landing pad.

  The broad field was only partly open to the sky. Most of it lay beneath a canopy. Coren kept to the canopied area, heading for the machine shop, hoping he was in time to warn Hofton. A row of antique aircars stood in a neat row to his left, at the far end of the field. From between two of them, a pair of Aurorans in sooty-black masked suits sprinted out to meet him. Relieved, Coren raised his free hand in greeting.

  And Gamelin was between them, a hand on each neck, squeezing. Coren heard the chilling crack of bone and cartilage, saw the two Spacers writhe for only a few moments before dangling, lifeless, in the cyborg’s easy grasp.

  Coren dropped to one knee and brought the blaster up smoothly, unhesitantly, and pressed the trigger. The flash leapt the distance and splashed against Gamelin’s chest. He dropped the bodies and staggered back. Coren fired again, knocking Gamelin down. Coren ran toward him, blaster ready.

  Gamelin’s torso was a mass of burns. It amazed Coren that he had managed to get this far. But how had he gotten past the two Aurorans he had just killed? And where was Hofton?

  In a serpentine maneuver Coren found difficult to follow, Gamelin twisted around and sprang for the cover of the antiques. Coren fired again and missed. As he passed between the discarded corpses of the Aurorans, he smelled burnt flesh and plastic, heavy in the air. Blood smeared the floor where Gamelin had rolled over.

  The sound of metal being scraped echoed through the bay. Coren stopped at the first aircar, listening through the loud pulse in his ears. He swallowed dryly. A grinding sound came then, and Coren realized that Gamelin was trying to open one of the aircars. He almost laughed — none of them worked — but then thought, What if he’s prepped one? He’s been here for a while...

  Tightening his grip on the blaster, he stepped between two cars, crouching low.

  Behind the first row of aircars was a second, shorter one, of even older models in worse condition. He made his way behind these, by the wall, and scurried from vehicle to vehicle.

  “Mr. Lanra!” someone called.

  Coren bit back a curse, silently willing the Auroran to be quiet. He moved to the next vehicle.

  A shadow slipped across his field of vision as he peered around the side. Coren scampered to the front of the car, blaster up, and looked left and right. Nothing.

  “Mr. Lanra, we have the area sealed!” Not Hofton, he realized, but some other Auroran.

  Another movement to the left. Coren aimed, hesitated.

  And felt himself lifted from the floor, his neckline choking him. He flailed his arms, trying to wheel around in mid-air. He fired the blaster at the ceiling. All at once, he was flying through the air. He saw the domed roof of a car rising, growing, an instant before he slammed against it.

  He made himself roll, and fell off the vehicle to the floor. His entire body trembled. He stood shakily, and noticed that the blaster was still in his hand.

  Running feet converged on him. He looked around and saw several Aurorans approaching. He looked the other way — and saw Gamelin striding toward him.

  He raised the blaster and touched the stud.

  Gamelin roared in pain as the energy burst across his chest. In the brilliance, he seemed to be fighting with some invisible Other, his massive arms swinging wildly, as though he were delivering blows. But then just as suddenly, he was gone. Coren staggered toward the spot where he had been standing, arm straight out, blaster in hand —

  — and his shoulder erupted in agony. He spun through the air, careening above parked vehicles, and crashed against the wall.

  He slid to the floor and pushed himself around. The sound of blaster fire filled the air. Coren licked his lips and waited, eyes closed, while a wave of nausea rolled through him. Then he stepped away from the wall.

  Gamelin appeared in front of him, tall and pale and damaged. Coren’s insides seemed to heave in sudden fear. He could not move his right arm. He snatched the blaster with his left hand as Gamelin reached for him.

  He felt the cyborg’s hand on his right shoulder, pressing him back to the wall, forcing a scream from him. He felt the wall against his back, unyielding. He saw Gamelin’s right fist cocked back, and Coren pressed the blaster against the cyborg’s sternum. As the fist drove into Coren’s chest, he touched the stud and held it.

  Heat boiled between them. Gamelin ignored what must have been searing pain, hitting him three, four times. Both of them stood, mouths agape, shouting wordlessly. Coren closed his eyes against the glare of light and heat that continued until Gamelin’s hand suddenly dropped away and the blows ceased. Dimly, he heard a meaty, metallic sound as something hit the ground at his feet, and he realized the cyborg had collapsed.

  Coren’s mouth remained open, but no sound emerged. He opened his eyes and all he saw were Aurorans rushing toward him, Hofton in the lead. Nothing made sense. He felt himself slowly slide to the floor.

  Then he saw the body, burned in half, smoke and ash drifting upward...

  The only thing he knew then was how difficult it was to breathe, and how loud each gasp sounded — rasping and tortured.

  “Just standing there...” he managed to whisper. The effort of speaking made him cough, and the cough seared his esophagus. He tasted blood.

  A face appeared above him, blurry and indistinct. The mouth moved. Coren shook his head. “I don’t —”

  More coughing. He tried to sit up, feeling that sitting up would be easier on him, but he could not quite organize the movements necessary. Hands grasped his shoulders, but it seemed like they were keeping him down instead of helping him. He glared at the face he still could not quite recognize.

  “— check it thoroughly, I don’t want any mistakes —”

  “— how many shots it took? I’ve never —”

  “— police the house, get all trace of our presence wiped —”

  “— can’t move him yet —”

  “— medical team?”

  “— dead, downstairs, including his subordinate —”

  Coren closed his eyes and tried to both ignore the voices and to hear better what they said. He wanted sleep. The pain was becoming much sharper, all through his torso. His breathing worsened, and he gasped. He understood that he was in serious trouble. He tried to talk, but now only a thick gurgle came out.

  “Mr. Lanra... Coren... listen to me. We have a medical drone coming... can you hear me?”

  Coren blinked in the chill air and managed to focus on one face. Hofton. The Auroran frowned thoughtfully, then looked away.

  “How bad?”

  “Both lungs are partially collapsed,” someone else said. “One
is punctured by two broken ribs at least, his sternum has been crushed, and the bronchial sac is filling with blood. A lot of ruptured blood vessels, internal bleeding, pulmonary distress —”

  “I understand,” Hofton said, cutting the voice off. “Coren. We’re bringing a unit — we can keep you alive once it’s here, but you have to keep still.”

  Coren tried to swallow, but his mouth and throat felt filled with mud. He spit. Again.

  “Is it —” he managed, and coughed. “Is it! Dea...”

  “Gamelin is dead, Coren. Yes. We have the body. We’re prepping it for removal now.”

  Coren tried to pat Hofton’s hand in thanks, but missed, and the movement caused pain across his chest. He worked at keeping his eyes open. They were Aurorans, Spacers. They could do anything, even beat death. After all, they were themselves two, three centuries old, sometimes four. They did not die, as far as Terrans were concerned, no one who lived that long died, so saving his life should be an easy thing, patching up a few broken bones, stopping a little bleeding, stabilizing — stabilizing —

  Coren heaved inside — or his insides turned within his body, he could not quite tell which — and abruptly he felt cold all over — hands and legs, shoulders, his ears. Sound came from a distance.

  Shit, he thought very clearly.

  “Coren. Coren.”

  He tried to apologize, but something filled his mouth. He choked, coughed, and closed his eyes.

  Sen Setaris stared down at her hands for a long time after Hofton finished his report. Hofton waited through the silence, grateful for the chance to do nothing for a few moments.

  Finally, Ambassador Setaris sighed and looked up at him. Her eyes looked sunken; Hofton wondered when she had last slept.

  “We’ve already been informed,” she said, “that our actions in this matter are in violation of several articles in the treaty governing the Spacer legation presence on Earth.” She shook her head. “I don’t suppose there was any way to save him?”

  “No, Ambassador.”

  “And you couldn’t just have left him.”

  Hofton looked at her oddly. It was not really a question so much as a concession. “It was my understanding that Mr. Lanra had informed certain people in advance of our action. His presence there would undoubtedly have led to us regardless. I thought being open about it, given his death, might alleviate the worst consequences.”