Of course the wet brain remained, but safe inside a ceramic neurocomplex. There was a mammalian heart, a cloned stand-in implanted when the original heart suffered a bad reaction to the first-generation armor. And among the other wet pieces was Warren’s original sex organ, tucked inside its specially designed underwear.
Harry was uncomfortable with his son’s transformation. That was another blessing of standing on the cusp of this new age. Yet the man who wanted to clad the world in machinery would never give his boy more than the occasional tease or the thinnest threats to maybe, maybe restrict his access to R&D.
One morning, father and son were basking in a UV bath, and with a casual tone, one said to the other, “You know, his daughter is getting married.”
Father recognized the subject, and that’s why he said nothing. For a long while, he managed not to let the boy bait him into another tirade.
“Glory and the summer solstice,” Warren said.
Nothing.
“Three days from now.”
The old, ageless man showed a slight nod, and then a word finally leaked out. He couldn’t stop himself. He asked, “So?”
“We’re not invited,” said Warren.
Using every type of eye, Father stared at the machine body lying beside him. Then with care, he said, “I know you.”
“You do?”
“You have a scheme.”
“I might, yes.”
“For the wedding…”
“I want us to be there.”
That led to a very human snort. “Well, I don’t want to be anywhere near that goddamn garden show.”
“But isn’t this an opportunity, Father?”
“What kind of opportunity?”
“Your enemy and every one of his allies will be on that island,” said Warren. “Besides Devon’s death, nothing will bring so many of those important meat-bags together again.”
Suspicion lifted the glass eyes. “What are you suggesting?”
“I’m proposing.” Warren paused to laugh at his joke. “What I’m saying is that my father shouldn’t ask too many questions about what his child might or might not have been doing with the Secrets Department of his military wing.”
Sometimes the old man forgot how dangerous the boy used to be. He cursed softly, and then he carelessly laughed at his son. “You think I don’t know what you’re planning? Of course I know. The weapons, the mercenaries? All those high-end viruses ready to cripple every Ames’ security system? You truly think you could hide that activity from me?”
His son said nothing.
Then after a moment, very quietly, Warren said, “So you do know about my work.”
“Of course I know about these hobbies. I’m not an idiot, son.”
“You’ve been watching me, have you?”
“From the first day. I even let you put my name on the work. I don’t approve of your methods, but these are good tools, good capacities. Should that pretty boy ever give me any reason to go to war.”
Warren waited for a moment. Then he said again, “His daughter is getting married.”
“Tits dancing down the aisle, and who cares?”
“I care.”
“You?”
“She’s a goddess,” the young man said.
Harry threw out another curse, adding, “That is madness.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“But you don’t know what I want. Do you?”
“Besides spreading chaos? Well no, maybe I don’t fully know your intentions. But still—”
“Father,” Warren said, a new voice booming from inside his chest. “Father, you know nothing. Nothing.”
“What’s that?”
“I let you watch me. That was my plan from the first day. And I knew that you wouldn’t understand my intentions, which was why everything else has been so easy.”
Rare curses followed—words normally reserved for the man’s sworn enemy.
Then Warren dropped a hand on his father’s knee, and he said, “Shut up.”
“No.”
“Or keep talking. I don’t care. But I want you to stand up, Dad. I want you to stand up now.”
Harry tried to rise. But to his horror, he discovered that he couldn’t move his legs or his feet, and even his fingertips were frozen in place.
“What’s wrong here?” the old man asked.
“I found a new malware.”
Alarmed. “What’s that?”
“Malware that takes control over one Pinchit-designed cyborg.”
Years ago, when his son was being bad, Harry grew fearful. But most of that fear was about his good name being ruined. This was a different sensation, a deeper and richer terror than anything felt before. Yet even as the adrenaline flowed, his electronic alert systems remained calm. Panic was making his flesh tremble, but the shell outside was as calm as could be.
“Why can’t I stand up, Warren?”
“Because I want you to stay where you are, Father. Just like I wanted you to believe that you were in charge of me. But while you watched one project, the most important work was being done out of sight.”
More curses ended with a despairing voice asking, “What do you want?”
And the young man laughed, saying, “What I want. What I want. The most beautiful woman in the world is set to be married, and what do you think I want?”
“This is sick,” said Harry Pinchit.
“This is love,” his son said.
“You’ll take her by force?”
And Warren laughed, saying, “You still don’t see it. Plain as can be, and you aren’t anything but blind.”
THE ONSLAUGHT
The purple brother was never as drunk as he acted. That put him in fine company. Many of the great drinkers in history were pretenders. His name was Lugon, and because he was secretly shy, rum was a useful prop at social events. Not that he was ever perfectly sober either. Far from it. But this morning’s intake wasn’t nearly enough to give him extra courage. Just enough rum and whiskey with a couple beers, and he was put in a place where he could steer his emotions wherever they needed to be.
After some determined cowering on the ground, Lugon realized that being pissed was the only solution.
People were dead. Guards had been cooked. Lugon’s smug, endlessly sober brother—the lucky groom—could not be more obliterated. But at some point the purple man discovered a rifle cradled in his hands, and the surviving bodyguard was shouting instructions. Which was almost funny: The big pillbug giving the troops marching orders. What the creature said was probably smart, and useful, and timely. But Christ, the beast didn’t realize just how messed up everyone was. These were rich people, and they were naked people, and nobody listened worse than a bunch of naked rich boys and girls thrown into a nightmare.
That’s why Lugon shouted, saying, “Pick up the damned bombs, Devon. Or I’ll goddamn shoot you myself.”
Which the big man did, which actually seemed to turn the mood around.
Suddenly cyborgs began dropping through the fog, close enough that the air shivered. And then the ground shook too. Yet odd as it seemed, the worse the world shook, the bigger and braver Lugon began to feel.
Everything is nuts, but Devon couldn’t stop talking.
“It’s that goddamn Pinchit,” he shouted. As if it mattered. But the old man at least was holding a rifle now. Only he wasn’t aiming it like he should. He was pointing at flowers, as if petals were the problem, and unnoticed by him, the keratin barrel twisted like a snout on a mosquito, trying its desperate best to aim at a genuine enemy.
“I can’t fucking believe it,” Devon kept complaining. “Pinchit is attacking my girl’s wedding—”
“We don’t know who,” Ankyl began. Then quick as can be, the pillbug aimed at something only his eyes could resolve, punching a hole in the fog with the first round, explosive shells lining up before slicing one after the next into a hard armored shell.
Somethin
g high overhead exploded.
And Lugon sent up a few rounds too, just to be neighborly. Just to belong. Which helped coax his adjacent soldiers into a state where they sent up their own rounds.
Waving three arms, Ankyl gave more orders.
The non-drunk man translated military speck into terms that spoiled nude and cowardly souls would understand.
“Spread out. Lie down. Shoot.”
People did all that, and they didn’t do that. Every reaction was case-by-case. For all of his brave talk, the purple boy struggled to lie back, and he had to concentrate just to throw a few gear-eaters at the sky. And when those bombs exploded, far closer to him than he intended, he was suddenly spraying the air with his own golden urine, for no reason but sheer panic.
“It is Pinchit,” the old idiot insisted. “Who else?”
“None of the hardware is known,” the bodyguard insisted.
“So everything was invented for today,” Devon said, wasting breath and brain on the problem. “That’s what the bastard did. That’s what I would do.”
Meanwhile, the purple man was undergoing his own brief, tumultuous career as a soldier. Fearless and then cowering, he crawled backwards, trying to hide inside the useless space between two cooked guards. Nothing smart was happening inside his head. But then a honeybee appeared in front of his nose, pointing the public camera at something interesting. Which happened to be his face. Then the bee fled or was killed, replaced overhead by long silver aircraft. Lugon half-aimed the rifle, and the rifle did the rest. This time his shells tore the bastard apart. Unless somebody else’s gun made the shot. But it didn’t matter. The victory felt like his, and that gave Lugon enough confidence for another burst of fire and some determined running, and after the acquisition of a new hole, deep and soothing, his courage felt like it would last for a hundred years.
More aircraft appeared, hovering low, long rotors turning hard to blow away the bothersome white fog.
Lugon battered one machine until it fell, and several more guests managed to drop more of their enemies. Then came a moment, and maybe it was longer than a moment, when it wasn’t insane to believe that this battle could be won, or at least some kind of ugly stalemate might grab hold for the next little while.
Which was when a giant war machine appeared, blotting out the noon sun.
The machine released a breath of carefully sculpted plasma. Every tall tree ignited in the high branches, and the sudden heat made for difficult breathing, and every blast from the little guns did nothing to a behemoth that drifted lower by the moment, bringing a famous voice that caused the island to shiver as it roared.
“Surrender or be dead,” was the threat.
The little army couldn’t have folded faster. Guns were tossed from hiding places. Sobbing bodies begged for mercy. Even Devon dropped the last gear-breakers, investing his final hopes by muttering into a dead microphone, ordering the offline security system to come back to life and fight for him.
Where was the pillbug?
Nowhere visible, that’s for sure.
Lugon expected that he would surrender too. But then the victor jumped from the monster ship, jumped and landed hard in front of him and then jumped again, ending up straddling the top of the black altar that was beginning to melt and bubble, and on its corners, burn.
The cyborg named Harry Pinchit looked at the horrors, the face behind the battle mask apparently stunned by the destruction.
But his voice wasn’t stunned. Loudly and with relish, the voice said, “Now tell me. Where is the bride?”
ONE MORE DEATH
The bunker was locked, and then it was unlocked.
Glory was inside, blind and barely safe and still enraged by what had happened and what she imagined happening. And then some cyborg brute dragged her into the smoky, ruined air, allowing her the chance to kick it once, breaking a few of her toes but earning a little satisfaction with the pain.
She crumbled.
A voice she recognized said, “Someone pick her up.”
“I will,” said Glory’s father.
“Yes,” said Harry Pinchit’s voice. “The rest of you back away. Let the man help his daughter, yes.”
Father was beside her. He smelled of smoke and crushed blossoms and piss and eviscerated guts. He also smelled just like her father, and she was so pleased to have his trembling hand holding hers, pleased enough to find tears on top of the rage that continued to grow worse and worse and worse.
The young woman began arguing with herself, trying to gain control over her vivid, dangerous emotions.
Then for the first time in Glory’s life, and maybe the first time ever, Devon Ames said the words, “I am sorry.”
He was whispering into her ear.
Harry Pinchit leaped down from the burning altar. That famous ugly face was protected behind a transparent nanoweave faceplate, and it wasn’t smiling. But the voice was joyous. A second mouth buried inside the chest said to the hilltop and to the world, “Hello, Devon. Isn’t this the most beautiful day?”
“What are you doing?” Father asked.
“What am I doing, Devon?”
“Starting a war,” Father said.
Glory stared at the stiff face and felt her father’s hand leave her hand, and then the cyborg laughed loudly. “What I’m doing is ending a war before it can begin. And believe me, the world will come to understand, understand and appreciate, what this means.”
At that point, the cyborg lifted his right hand, a giant barrel of diamond and caged light finding its target.
Father instantly put his hand over his daughter’s eyes, as if he could shield her from one last horror.
“Always the ugly shit,” Father shouted.
Glory knocked the hand away, and she stepped forward. Then she shouted at her attacker. With a voice that sounded tiny, what with the blazing fires and rumbling machines and the pounding of her own heart, she called out to him.
“You won’t shoot me,” she said.
Harry’s visible mouth opened and then closed.
The other voice asked, “And why won’t I?”
“Because people hate people who kill pretty things. And the entire world is watching. And I am the prettiest thing that has ever been.”
The cyborg seemed to hesitate.
Which was when the bodyguard burst from hiding, flinging the last handful of gear-breakers before launching his own powerful body.
Harry Pinchit wheeled, incinerating one bothersome bomb after the next.
But Ankyl was tucked tight, round and dense as a cannonball with his best armor leading. Another moment and he would have collided with the enemy’s face. Any other cyborg would have been too slow to react. But Harry’s body was laced with superconducting neurons, the reflexes ready for anything. That second hand had already aimed its weapon, and a kinetic round punched its way through the guard’s carapace, lifting the body into a useless trajectory, and missing the heart by very little, cutting a wide fissure through the creature’s belly.
Ankyl was cast aside.
While Glory continued walking forwards, fearless with rage.
Then Harry Pinchit turned to look at the bride, ready to kill her and her father and every other pretty thing in the world.
Which was when the sky spoke.
JUSTICE
The guard was an unanticipated problem. Somehow he was left untagged and far more competent than any scenario had allowed for. Yet every problem has ten solutions, or a thousand. Every attack is a mass of decisions and lost opportunities, and Warren handled everything well enough or even better than that. Success was in reach, and there was every reason to dance with his pride.
At the final instant, as the world and the solar system watched spellbound, Warren came to the rescue. He was riding inside a small vehicle that only looked like an ordinary sportscraft. Jets screamed, dropping him out of supersonic flight, and at the perfect moment he bailed out. Just him. On cue, his father’s mechanical shell flinched as if st
artled. On command, Warren forced the helpless living face to look skyward. Then with bare feet leading the way, he struck the smoldering altar, shattering ice and tar before his momentum buried him to his knees in the good red tropical soil.
According to the script, Father’s voice would ask, “What are you doing here?”
But on the fly, his son rewrote the line. It was obvious why Warren was here. So instead of empty dialogue, he began by shouting, “Don’t harm any more of these people. Father. Stand down and power down your weapons.”
“But this doesn’t concern you,” said the false voice. “Leave me alone, son. This is my day.”
Warren wasn’t carrying weapons. He looked like a cyborg scrubbed fresh by his UV bath. But bending low, he moved his various toes underground, and he fed energy to his legs, making ready.
His father’s face stared at him in horror, knowing what would come. But the body remained bold and arrogant and idiotic. And the voice roared one last time, saying, “I will not be insulted by this man. Not ever again—!”
Warren leapt at him.
Even the swift arms couldn’t lift fast enough. The guns were powering up to murder Harry’s only heir, but the impact was perfect, driving the world’s richest man off his feet. And in the end it was very simple and very quick, visible to an audience that watched through the surviving bees: A heroic young man having no choice but to drive his fist through the nanoweave mask, making a mess of the face that was still too much of a face to survive this kind of justice.
ONE GOOD MAN
The hero was floating in a blood-warm pool.
The hero was dying.
Eight days had passed. Countless investigations were underway, and the chain of evidence was not yet clear. But despite rumors and some paranoid notions, it was becoming apparent that Harry Pinchit had been involved with every part of the planning and execution of this blood wedding.
The Year's Best Science Fiction, Thirty-Second Annual Collection Page 87