by Isaac Asimov
“This Hofton was apparently convinced that Basq here is after more than the right to vote for city council. He suggested to Eza Lamina and Kalienin that Nova Levis’ government was threatened, and that drastic action might be called for. Kalienin was only too happy to get in touch with the Terran military, and the last thing they need right now is worries about a colonial uprising — especially if it’s started by cyborgs. The long and the short of it is that sometime soon, Gernika’s going to be destroyed. Probably from orbit. If this transmission cuts off suddenly, you’ll know why.”
While he spoke, Masid looked from Derec to Basq, who exhibited remarkably similar reactions: slight widening of the eyes, paling of the skin, and so on. Typical physical responses to an unwelcome surprise. Masid had the sense that Derec’s shock was slightly different than Basq’s, however, and he would have given a great deal to know why.
“I’m going to Nucleomorph,” Derec said. “Get out of there, Masid.”
Masid put every fiber of his being into a casual shrug. “That’s not up to me.”
“All of you get out of there,” Derec said, and the screen went blank.
He put the datum away, taking his time about it, and looked up at Basq. “Seems like you should be sounding some kind of alarm.”
Basq opened the door. “Come with me.”
They left the hut. Filoo was standing just outside, smirking at Masid.
“What’s the call, gato?”
“Vorian and I are taking a ride to Nucleomorph,” Basq said. “Keep an eye on things here.”
The disappointment on Filoo’s face was almost comical. “You’re a coward, Vorian,” he growled. “It’s always the easy way out for you.”
Masid said nothing, because Filoo was right. Not because Masid had agreed to become a cyborg, or because he had once tried to assassinate Kynig Parapoyos, or because he had once used a dying agent in his own service to keep himself alive. It was because he was walking out of Gernika and leaving Filoo and the rest of them to die, and he was saying nothing.
Basq must have had some inkling of his thoughts, because when they were most of the way down the trail to Masid’s flier, the cyborg said, “If you’d said anything, I would have killed you.”
“That makes it worse,” Masid said.
After a moment’s consideration, Basq nodded. They walked the rest of the way in silence.
The flier was where Masid had left it. The three cyborgs he had seen coming down the trail earlier in the day were standing around on the river bank. They snapped to attention when they saw Basq.
“It doesn’t respond,” one of them said.
Basq looked at Masid. “Keyed to your voice?”
Masid nodded.
“Get in and start it up.”
The two of them climbed in. Masid sat in the pilot’s seat and identified himself to the flier. Its engines heated up immediately.
“Good,” Basq said.
“To Nucleomorph?” Masid asked.
“That’s right. I’m going to Nucleomorph. You get out.” Masid looked at Basq. “I don’t care what you tell them. They won’t believe you, and from my perspective it’s easier to start over than to convince them.”
Masid had thought himself callous when he left Gernika. Now he was getting a lesson in genuine indifference to life.
“If we both survive this,” he said, “I’m coming after you.”
Basq winked. “I’ll be waiting.”
Masid got out of the flier and stood on the shore. Basq leaned out of the hatch. “Take him back to the settlement,” he said. “Wait for my instruction. Try to keep him and Filoo apart.”
“Sir,” the three cyborgs said.
The hatch closed. Masid watched the flier lift out of the shallows and skim over the trees to the west. Before it was out of sight, two of the cyborgs had grasped his arms and propelled him up the bank and onto the trail.
Chapter 34
ARIEL DRIFTED. LUCID moments came and went, long enough to remind her where she was, but too short for her to find control over her body. She opened her eyes and saw gleaming metal arms tipped with laser scalpels, transdermal injectors, syringes, pincers for grasping and manipulating. For grasping and manipulating her.
Behind them, a glare of lights, and somewhere beyond her field of vision she heard voices. She tried to speak and could not.
Something, she thought distantly. Find something and hold it. Let everything else come to it.
“Start with the structural changeover,” a woman said. There: Krista Weil. Ariel clung to the name, its specificity, the array of associations that came with it. Then she drifted, but not so far.
An alarm brought her back. “What the hell is that?” Weil said.
“Go ahead,” another voice said. Cold and dead, this voice, yet somehow vibrant with a kind of hunger.
“I can’t start when there’s an alarm going off. If something goes wrong in the middle, she’ll die, and we don’t have healthy Spacers growing on trees around here. I’m not wasting this one. Go find out what it is.”
Faint whir of a machine, heavy tread on the bare floor. A robot.
Snap: Ariel was awake. Feeling flooded into her limbs as the oldest of instincts, fight or flight, scoured the last of the anesthesia from her brain. Still she couldn’t move, but she was aware of every part of her body again, aware of the slight touch of air on her skin. Without moving her head, she looked around until she located Weil. The scientist was watching as the damaged robot housing Kynig Parapoyos left the operating theater. When the door hissed shut behind it, Weil muttered something under her breath and went to a terminal at the far end of the room. The alarm still sounded.
Gather yourself, Ariel thought. If she didn’t move before the robot came back, she would never again move as Ariel Burgess. Her toes moved, and the tips of some of her fingers.
Weil’s voice, calm and dispassionate as a weather recording, was narrating the procedure and related events into a recorder. “Krista Weil speaking. Initial phase of transformation on subject Ariel Burgess delayed due to security breach. It is inadvisable to perform transformation in a less than optimal security environment. Particularly in this case, as the patient is the first healthy adult Spacer to undergo procedure and will therefore provide a benchmark whether or not the procedure is successful.”
And so on in the same vein, while Ariel listened and let Weil’s dispassionate recording flood her with anger. Anger and fear, and Ariel accepted the fear, welcomed it and molded it into the anger until she could lift her head a little.
The alarm cut out. Weil looked up from her recording and made a call. “Kynig. Report, please.”
“I’m on my way back. There was a breach of the fence, but the buildings are all secure. Brixa says to go ahead.”
“We’re waiting on you, then,” Weil said. “Hurry. The anesthesia should have another two hours, but I don’t want a margin any slimmer than that before I purge it myself and start the paralytic flow. Spacers’ immune systems are very aggressive about eliminating foreign substances.”
“I used to kill people who patronized me, Weil,” Parapoyos said from her terminal. The call cut off with a click.
“Amazing that the worlds are not depopulated,” Weil muttered.
She left Ariel’s field of vision, and Ariel heard her activating a pump of some sort. Then Weil started to speak again, recording her actions for future analysis. “Fluid replacement pump coming on line.
The patient’s Spacer-enhanced immune physiology dictates that her autonomic functions be temporarily suspended while the major structural work is completed. An intravenous solution will be pumped into the subject’s body as subject’s blood is drained by slight vacuum. The solution introduced will induce coma, maximally reducing incidence of shock-induced death.”
A firm hand grasped Ariel’s left forearm and turned it over, exposing the inside of her elbow. Ariel held herself still as the needle slid into the vein. Weil moved around her head to another mac
hine, just on the edge of Ariel’s peripheral vision; it started up with a low hum. That would be the reservoir to hold her blood, drawn out as the solution refilled and stilled her body.
“Vacuum apparatus operative,” Weil said. “Applying to subject now.”
Again the firm touch, this time on Ariel’s right forearm, but this time she didn’t hold still. She turned her head, reached across her body, and as Weil moved to embed the heavy needle in her right arm, Ariel caught her wrist and with all her strength jammed the needle into Weil’s other hand. Simultaneous with Weil’s shriek came the pain of the needle in Ariel’s arm tearing loose; then with both hands Ariel reached up to one of the mechanical arms arrayed above the operating table. She caught one and brought it down hard on Weil’s head.
Weil’s knees buckled, and she pitched over onto her left side. Ariel slid off the table and steadied herself against a wave of dizziness.
When it had passed, she stood looking coldly down at the semiconscious scientist as the machine pumped the blood from her body. You deserve to die, she thought — and then knelt to pull the needle from Weil’s hand. The pump shuddered and cut off.
Ariel went straight to the door, and found with little surprise that it was locked. There was a keypad next to it, and before she could think too much, she took the direct route, hauling Weil’s body across the room and pressing her thumb to the door.
KRISTA WEIL: CONFIRM IDENTITY, it said.
“Shit,” Ariel growled.
CONFIRMATION FAILED.
“Shit,” Ariel said again. She had not gotten this far to be standing naked in front of the door when Parapoyos came creaking through.
Weil’s voice …
The recording. It had begun Krista Weil speaking.
Leaving Weil where she lay near the door, Ariel went to the terminal and saw that the recording file was paused. She ran back through it, following the onscreen transcription until the magic line appeared.
Then she turned the volume all the way up and went back to the door to press Weil’s thumb into the pad again.
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 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.”
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 minuscule movements of the laser arm.
Behind the robot, Weil pressed herself against the door. She noticed first. “The laser,” she said.
Ariel triggered it.
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 swearing, 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.
&nbs
p; For the moment, Ariel was safe.
Chapter 35
“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.”
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.