Engineman

by Eric Brown

  “Sure. That’s him. He’s an Andy, an A-grader. He plays the part of Dr Frankenstein in our latest spectacular.”

  “Thanks for telling me,” I say. “You think I can scan cyber-junkboxes just like living minds?”

  She gets the message and stays mute.

  So our Dr Frankenstein’s an Android? A tank-nurtured artificial human, playing the lead in the Gothic classic. I reckon Mary would just love that.

  As for me, I’m suspicious. I have this aversion to Andys. Okay, so this guy’s a citizen-grade Android from a reputable clinic, a fellow sentient with all the civil rights of you and me. But he still doesn’t scan. I can’t read Androids.

  Prejudice, I know. And me of all people...

  Nevertheless, I avoid them at parties.

  “What do you know about this guy?” I ask. And I read her to ensure she’s telling me all she knows.

  “Well, he’s an exceptionally talented actor. He applied for the role of the Doctor in the Frankenstein show. He auditioned well and got the part.”

  “You think he might be the killer?”

  “Him?” She’s surprised. “No... I don’t think so. When we met he seemed very-”

  “Okay, okay. I don’t want a character reference. They say the Boston Strangler was a charmer.”

  “But what makes you think-?”

  I shrug. “A hunch, that’s all. The eleven workers are clean, and here we have an unscannable Andy.”

  “The laser fire did come from the other direction.”

  “Has it occurred to you that he might have got where he is now after he quit firing?” I say in a tone that suggests she shut up.

  But why would an Andy go berserk like this, I ask myself.

  I’m about to suggest we get the hell out in case the Andy is our man, when he sees us. He stands and stares across the river at the two cartoon mice no longer in role.

  I take Da Cruz by the hand and put the Duchess’s cottage between us and the Android. “The best way to prove your Andy innocent is if I grill him,” I say, pulling off my left glove.

  Most Androids are equipped with handsets, and Dr Frankenstein is no exception. I get through to him and stare at his face on the back of my hand: it’s heavily made-up, with age-lines and dark smudges beneath his eyes to suggest overwork.

  “Worry not, good Doctor. Your circuits have not fused.” I unzip the Mickey head and tip it back. “Isabella Manchester. Tactical Telescan Unit. I’m here to save you people like a regular superhero.”

  The Android inclines his head, not taken with my humour. “I wondered when help might arrive.” His tone is measured, cultivated. I almost understand why citizen-graders are so sought after at all the big social events.

  “A few questions, if you please.”

  He inclines his noble head again.

  So I ask him where he was when the firing began, what he saw of the slaughter, where does he suspect the killer is now? I try every trick in the book to make him incriminate himself, but he’s not that dumb. He answers the questions with a slight Germanic accent, and I get the impression he’s mocking me, as if he knows what I’m doing and wants me to know that he knows. He’s pointedly civil in his acceptance of suspicion.

  I thank him, assure him that I’ll get the killer and quick, and cut the link. “Well?” Da Cruz asks.

  “What do you expect?” I say, frustrated. “That he admits he’s the bad guy?”

  “What did he say?”

  “He was rehearsing when the killing began and made it as far as the showboat. He saw nothing of the massacre after that. He kept his tin-pot head down.”

  “You still think he did it?”

  “I never said I did... But anything’s possible.”

  “And now?” she asks. She’s far from impressed by my uncertainty.

  “Where did you say the last fire came from? Across the complex? Okay, so I’ll make my way around the perimeter until I come within range. If I were you I’d remain here. I don’t want your death on my conscience.”

  “I feel it my duty to accompany you,” she says.

  I nod. “Very well, then. Okay.” I grab her hand and look for a route out of the Andy’s possible line of fire.

  She restrains me. “Remember the walk!”

  So we be-bop into the open again, heading towards the multiple amphitheatres, that scallop the perimeter of the complex. Our only comfort is the knowledge that we’re indistinguishable from hundreds of other strutting cartoon characters.

  At least, I thought we were.

  The killer knows better.

  The first bolt amputates Minnie’s tail at the rump with a quick hiss and a coil of oily smoke. The second bolt—misses me by a whisker and roasts a passing Donald Duck at short order.

  Da Cruz drags me into the cover of a stage set and we crouch behind a chunk of lichened stone. I trace the bolts back to their source: across the complex beneath the far arch of the dome. I concentrate, but the distance defeats me.

  “So the Android can’t be the killer,” Da Cruz claims.

  I laugh. “No? You sure about that? Think again, girl. In our disguises we were safe among all the other characters—then we’re seen by the Andy. He’s the only person who knows we’re in this get-up.”

  “But the fire came from the opposite direction,” she complains, reasonably.

  “So the Andy has an accomplice, yes?”

  That silences her.

  Belatedly I realize that we’re on the set of Frankenstein. The scientist’s lab is caught in flickers of electric blue, revealing eerie contraptions, improbable machines. The monster is on the slab, awaiting reanimation.

  “And I don’t know why we’re wearing these stupid things,” I say, unzipping the head and flinging it back. Out there, the killer is busy frying every Mickey and Minnie in sight.

  Da Cruz says: “But why should he want to...?”

  “Slipped cog?” I suggest facetiously. I kick my suit away and it shivers against the wall like an animated jelly. “Take yours off,” I tell her. “You’re a marked mouse if you don’t ditch that suit.”

  I waste no time and get through to Massingberd.

  “Is! You okay?” ’

  “I’m fine, Mass. Look, I need some info. You ready?”

  I look at Da Cruz. She gives me the. Andy’s tag and classification, and I relay this to Mass with the rider, “Not that he’s filed under that. Check wide. You know where to find me.” I cut the link.

  “You not out of that thing yet?” I stare at her. “Hey, you got something to hide?” Which, considering I have access to her head, is cruel.

  I peep over masonry. I can’t see the Andy or his boat from here, but his accomplice is still junking robot rodents. Bolts hail continuously from the far side of the complex.

  “Come on!” I say.

  She’s out of the suit and staring defiantly at me.

  The right side of her face is disfigured by a long scar more suited to Frankenstein’s monster. Even in the flickering light I can see that it was once far worse, before plastic surgery. And it’s still ugly. She’s a nice kid, too—a small, dark Peruvian with skin like Aztec gold.

  The scar’s much deeper, of course. The surface damage is superficial; it’s the scar inside her head that causes all the pain.

  I give her my hand. “There must be a service hatch somewhere,” I say. “We can approach the killer from below without being seen.”

  She leads me to a concealed swing door and we hit the underside. Less attention has been paid to illumination and glitz down here. Glo-tubes rationed to every ten metres stitch the gloom. The thunder of machinery is deafening. We jog along a vast, curving gallery, mirror image of the corridor top-side where I met Da Cruz.

  And I’m scanning all the time for the killer.

  My hand bleeps and we stop to take the call.

  “You’re right, Is,” Massingberd rapps. “The ‘droid isn’t on our files—under that tag. I came up with a likely candidate, though. A B-grade Andy
manufactured in the Carnival clinic twenty-five years ago. It was employed for the first ten years as an extra in kids’ films. It applied for up-grading several times but got nowhere. It was transferred to Disneyworld Shanghai, where it worked for another decade. Then—get this, Is—five years ago this ‘droid was reported rogue. It dropped out and disappeared. We have a few reports on file as to its alleged activities during the next five years. Apparently it joined the outlawed Supremacy League, that crackpot band of ‘droids who demand the rule over humanity. It was involved in the bombings of ‘65, but was never apprehended. We have a number of reports that it underwent a programme of training as a cyber-surgeon so that the League could expand its up-grading of all the ‘droids who joined them. We lost trace of it earlier this year, Is—around the time that your ‘droid joined the Carnival outfit. It’s quite feasible that it gave itself new retina-, finger- and voice-prints, doctored certificates and became the actor who played Dr Frankenstein. The ‘droid returned home, Is-”

  “To do a little counter publicity for the largest manufacturers of B-grade Androids,” I finish.

  “You got it.”

  “I’ll keep you posted, Mass.”

  We set off again.

  Da Cruz is murmuring to herself. “And he seemed so genuine at the audition...”

  I ignore her and concentrate on the sudden flare of sentience that’s just appeared a kilometre up-front. I’ve never before scanned anything like it. As we draw closer I realise that I’m not dealing with a normal human being. The thing up there overwhelms me with fear and pain and regret and guilt.

  I go for the killer’s identity, but I’m either too far away or the signal is weakening. I get the impression, then, that the killer is losing his strength, dying...

  We’re almost underneath the place where the maniac made his stand. To our right is a viewscreen, showing space and the quiet Earth. On our left we pass a pair of green swing doors, marked with heiroglyphs: the representation of a man and what might be an icicle.

  It doesn’t hit me for another five paces.

  There’s something in the head of the killer above us that has no right to be there... something that’s keeping Him alive.

  I retrace my steps and regard the swing doors.

  “Isabella?” Da Cruz says.

  “Christ,” I murmur. “Jesus Christ...”

  I push through the doors at a run.

  “Isabella!” Da Cruz rushes in after me.

  We’re in an operating theatre, and the only way it differs from the one in Dr Frankenstein’s castle is in the modern fittings; the overhead halogens and the angle-poise operating table. They’ve both seen the same deed accomplished, one in fiction and one in fact.

  I move towards a green, vertical tank as if in a trance.

  “Isabella?” Da Cruz is staring at me. “Didn’t you know? We brought him up here years ago, equipped this place for when the time is right to bring him back to-”

  I open the tank and it’s empty.

  “Where is he?” she screams at me as I run from the theatre and through the nearest hatch to the upper hemisphere.

  I’ve never really credited Androids with any of the more complex human emotions, like love or hate...

  Or even irony.

  By playing his role of Dr Frankenstein to the full, this Andy has proved me wrong.

  Back in the twentieth century, the king of the greatest entertainment industry on Earth was corpsicled. Put on ice and stacked away until such time as his cancer could be fixed. And now...

  Now Walt stands on the balcony of a fairytale castle. Ten metres separate him from where I crouch on the gallery that circles the complex. He rests his weight on a laser-rifle, crutchlike, and sways. His shaven head bulges at the left temple with a dark mass like some morbid extra-cranial tumour: it’s a cyber-auxiliary, wired in there by the Android. It’s this that is powering him, that motivated him to commit the slaying of the innocents. He’s so feeble now, so near death a second time, that it has little control over his body or his mind. For the first time since his resurrection, he is himself.

  He sees me and smiles sadly.

  His skin, blanched with more than a hundred years of death, is puckered and loose, maggotlike. He is barely conscious, yet a flicker of tragic awareness moves within him. The chemical that is keeping him alive is almost spent.

  “Is this a nightmare?” he asks in a voice so frail it barely reaches me.

  “A dream,” I say.

  “Where am I?” I read his lips. “In Hell?”

  I almost reply: “In your Heaven, Walt,” but stop myself.

  I follow his gaze to the deck, as he surveys the carnage of his own doing.

  “Watch out!” Da Cruz appears beside me and drags me to the ground. Walt is making one last feeble attempt to lift and aim the laser; it wavers in our direction. I can read in his eyes that he has no desire to kill us, but the choice is not his. The Frankenstein Android controls the cyber-auxiliary.

  I close my eyes.

  In the nightmare of Walt’s failing brain I open the floodgates of anger. I motivate him into action, give him the will to revenge himself.

  And while I’m doing this I realise something. How can I ever again use my ability to induce love after using it to promote so much hate?

  Da Cruz clutches my arm. “What—?”

  I concentrate. “Just call it black magic, Maria.” And as I speak, Walt swings his laser-rifle, the desire for revenge overcoming the Android’s final command.

  He cries out and fires.

  The showboat disintegrates in a million shards of synthi-timber, and Dr Frankenstein explodes like a grenade in a brilliant white starburst.

  Walt lets the laser fall and slips quietly into his second death, smiling with induced euphoria all the way.

  * * * *

  Three hours later and we’re surfing down the helix of the gravity-well. Back on the Sat, Walt is being returned to ice, the slaughter mopped up. Maria is taking time off, dirtside.

  I break the silence. “Were you orphaned, Maria?” Gently.

  She looks at me, suspicious. “How do you know?”

  I reach out and touch her head. “Big trouble upstairs,” I say. Then: “We’re very much alike, you and me.”

  She gives me the story that I know already, but it helps for her to talk about it. Her mother died when she was ten, and she was taken from her father following the attack that left her scarred.

  “And you?” she asks. “Were you orphaned?”

  “Something like that-” And stop. .

  My parents’ tribe was hungry and poor. I was their third and youngest daughter, and I checked out psi-positive. A hundred thousand credits bought a lot of cattle, back then.

  So the Telescan Unit wasn’t exactly slave labour...

  But try telling that to a lonely nine year-old.

  “Perhaps you’d like to tell me about it?” Maria asks, with affection.

  Get that-

  Genuine Affection.

  I smile. “I think perhaps I might,” I say.

  * * * *

  Star of Epsilon

  Paris was in again and summer found me on the left bank, playing to crowds in the Blue Shift slouchbar. I blitzed ‘em with cosmic visions. I sub-circuited direct, employed slo-mo, ra-ta-tat shots, even visual cut-ups, in homage. Goddard and Burroughs were back in, too. Had to do with nostalgia, the harking back to supposedly better times. Hell... Didn’t I know that? Wasn’t I cashing in on the fact that we all love to live a lie? Wasn’t I giving the crowds what they wanted because they’d never get it otherwise?

  I met her after a night performance.

  * * * *

  The Blue Shift was the scene that month.

  It wasn’t just the drugs they pumped but the live acts, I liked to think. I alternated nights with a cute fifteen year-old sado-masochist on sensitised feedback. It wasn’t my kick, but off-nights I’d sneak downstairs and jack-in. And jack-out again, fast. Three minutes was all
I could take of this kid—my opposition. The management had it sussed. They played us counterpoint: one night this weird little girl giving out intimations of death and id-grislies like no kid should, and the next old Abe Santana with his visions of Nirvana-thru-flux, the glories of the space-lanes.

  The girl intrigued me. The neon-glitz out front billed her as Jo, and that was enough to pull the freaks. Her act was simple. On stage a sudden spotlight found a small cross-legged figure in a Pierrot suit, white-powdered face a paragon of melancholy complete with stylised tear. She’d come on easy at first, slipping fear sub-lim at the slouched crowd. Her head was shaven, but a tangle of leads snaking from her cortical-implant gave her the aspect of a par-shorn Medusa. The leads went down inside her suit and into the stage, coming out by the cushions. Freaks jacked-in and got fear first, subtle unease. Then the kid shifted her position, sitting now with outstretched legs together, arms stanchioned behind her, palms down. The nursery pose contradicted the horror coming down the leads, the hindbrain terror of mortality. She tapped into us and found our fear of death and gave it back, redoubled—turning us to stone.