“This is an unexpected turn.”
Tasman placed a bony white hand across his pale lips and stroked his cheek with fingers so gnarled that his knuckles looked like the burls of an ancient tree. “Ours could not have attempted the murder, not without tripping a death reflex.”
“They weren’t ours,” said Watson.
“Factions within factions,” Tasman whispered. “I always wondered what would happen. I don’t know if this is good news, but it certainly could work out for the best.”
“What?” Watson demanded.
“Neural programming is an immature science, something we developed as we went along. Apparently, our successors face similar problems.
“Whenever they’ve reprogrammed clones, they’ve left bodies behind. Do you know what that means?”
“They’ve triggered death reflexes,” said Watson.
“Yes . . . yes. Watson, clones die when they discover they are clones. That is why we program them so carefully to avoid killing them.
“When the politicians called for new clones to replace the Liberators, they wanted extensive programming . . . sometimes the programs caused conflict. They wanted fighting machines that would never attack their makers unless their makers declared independence. They weren’t meant to kill humans; they were created to attack aliens if we ever found any. By the time we finally encountered aliens, the clones had been fighting nothing but humans for decades.
“They have programming in their brains that forces them to follow orders, right? They also have programming in their brains that tells them they are natural-born. What would happen if an officer ordered a clone to acknowledge he was synthetic?”
Watson thought about this. Conundrums. He’d enjoyed playing with paradoxes as a boy. One of his favorite paradoxes had been, “If God can do anything, can he create a rock that is too big for him to lift?” Those had been juvenile mental masturbations. Now he faced a conundrum that could bring down an empire.
He looked through the office window. The aides outside working at their computers were all clones. What if I went out and told those aides that they are clones? Watson asked himself.
“What happens if you tell a computer to shut down and to do a mathematical equation at the same time?” asked Tasman.
“It tells you it has a program running and asks you if you still want it to shut down.”
“And if you do?” asked Tasman.
“It shuts down,” said Watson. “It shuts down without finishing the equation.”
“Which is precisely what happens when you reprogram a clone,” said Tasman.
“What are you talking about?” asked Watson.
“Those clones have hundreds of programs etched into their brains, some active, some dormant, some complementary and others conflicting. Some programs carry priority scripting that makes them able to override other programs. The way we designed their brains, their minds work just like computers.
“Think about it. What would happen if somebody tried to override the programming in a computer by introducing a random protocol? What if you told the computer, replace all programs written in a certain language with programs written in another language? You might not disable all of the programs that you wanted to disable, and the surviving programs might override the programs from the second language.”
Tasman picked up a notepad and scanned over files. He mumbled, “So many programs . . . so many things that can go wrong.” The man seemed energized.
“But they’re clones. They’re all exactly alike. Wouldn’t they all have the same reaction?” Watson asked as he turned to watch the clones outside the window. To him, they looked as indistinguishable as ants.
“There is a colonel in the Marines; I believe his name is Hunter Ritz. Have you met Ritz?” asked Tasman.
“I’ve met him,” Watson said, turning to face Tasman again. “He’s the ranking officer in the Corps right now if you can believe it. Harris was negligent about promoting officers. He didn’t spend time on administrative functions like promotions.”
“And you worked for Admiral Cutter?”
Watson nodded. “Sure.”
“How would you have described Cutter?”
“Stiff, formal, a by-the-book sort of officer.”
“And Ritz? Is he a by-the-book-type Marine?”
Watson laughed. “He’s like a kid who never grows up. Everything is a game to him, even war.”
“What about General MacAvoy?”
“Not the brightest man I’ve ever met.”
“Is he as smart as Cutter?”
Watson laughed. “MacAvoy? The man’s a hammerhead. I’ve seen blocks of wood that were brighter.”
“And yet he and Cutter started out with identical brains created out of the exact same DNA. They have the same programming, too,” said Tasman. “We didn’t create Marine clones and Navy clones. We created military clones.”
“So why did MacAvoy come out like MacAvoy and Cutter come out like Cutter?” asked Watson. “That doesn’t make sense.” He asked the question though, in the back of his mind, he jokingly wrote MacAvoy off as a product of brain damage.
“That’s what happens with low-priority programming,” said Tasman. “We arranged their brains so that experience would override low-priority programming. We needed some clones to become Marines and some to become soldiers and others to become sailors, right? We needed them to think differently, to act differently, to develop different skills.
“I expected their programming to be more stable. I thought they would all have similar personalities, but their experiences began overriding the low-level scripts right from the start. Some clones showed signs of aggression by the time they were three. Some were more studious.
“If the scientists that the Unifieds have assigned to this task still have a one-size-fits-all mentality, they’re going to kill more clones than they convert,” said Tasman. “During the alien war, a number of clones acted out against higher-priority programs. There were acts of vandalism and insubordination. The vandalism, that’s a midlevel programming problem, but it’s associated with insubordination . . . they’re not supposed to be able to act up under any circumstances.
“I’d need a few live specimens and a team of psychologists to pinpoint the problems. We both know I will never have an opportunity like that.
“You know, Watson, I was already retired by the time the Avatari came, but I heard about New Copenhagen. I always wondered how it was that clones came to ignore their programming. Until this moment, I never figured it out.”
Watson said, “From what you are telling me, it sounds like the Unifieds have a problem on their hands.”
The chilled air carried a chemical scent. Watson noticed, but didn’t bother think about it. Tasman sniffed, and muttered, “The new air conditioner.” Using his arms to brace himself, he managed to stand in his wheelchair so that he could peer over Watson’s shoulder. He looked, dropped back into the chair, then motored around Watson for a closer look.
The scent smelled like chemicals. Janitors? Watson asked himself. Is that smell cleaning supplies?
The clones in the office had all collapsed without a struggle. Tasman, who had programmed this reaction into their brains, had never seen it put to the test. He stared across his laboratory fascinated and terrified.
One of Watson’s bodyguards, the natural-born, opened the door. He said, “We need to go.”
Watson started to ask what had happened, but he knew. He saw the lab workers lying on the ground and slumped across their computers.
The bodyguard looked at Tasman, and asked, “You created their programming, is that right?”
“I did,” Tasman answered, still staring at the fallen clones.
“How much information will they remember when they wake up?” asked the bodyguard. When Tasman didn’t answer, he grabbed the old scientist by his collar, and repeated, “Will they remember names and addresses when they wake up?”
Tasman shrugged his shoulders, and s
aid, “Everything.”
“Will the bodyguards remember they were bodyguards?”
“Yes.”
“Will they remember briefings?” the bodyguard asked, now holding a pistol in one hand.
“Yes. Yes, they will remember their names and their missions and their orders . . . everything,” said Tasman. “They will remember what they were doing in this lab and what they discovered. The only thing they won’t remember is the reboot itself.”
Without saying a word, the bodyguard stepped out the door and fired bullets into the skulls of the two clone bodyguards.
Watson jumped as if startled from a deep sleep.
“We need to go,” said the bodyguard.
“Go?” asked Watson.
“Now!” shouted the bodyguard.
“Howard, you need to come with us,” said Watson.
“We’re not dragging that chair,” said the bodyguard. He swept the room with his pistol, looking for any sign of movement. Outside the door, the two dead bodyguards lay in bright red puddles of their own blood. The other clones would soon wake, but not the clones on Watson’s security team.
The natural-born bodyguard asked, “How long before they wake up?”
“I don’t know,” said Tasman. “A scientist got doped last summer. He woke up five minutes later.”
“We’ll have to carry him,” said Watson.
“That’s not my job. He’s not my job,” said the bodyguard. “If you want to bring him, you carry him. My job is getting you out.” As he said this, he knelt beside the dead bodyguards and took their guns. He handed one to Watson, who dropped it into his jacket pocket.
“You want to keep that out,” said the bodyguard. “That gun won’t do you any good if it gets stuck inside your pocket.”
Watson pulled the pistol out and held it in his right hand.
“They’ll kill me,” Tasman said, looking right and left, desperation showing on his face. “You can’t leave me here!”
Without saying a word, Watson bent down and flipped the old man onto his left shoulder. He was old and brittle, with balsa-wood bones and kite-string muscles. As Watson started for the door, Tasman groaned, a dry and pained sound that emanated from his core.
The bodyguard trotted ahead, his own pistol out, the other in his holster. Without looking back, he said, “Old man, if you slow us down, I will shoot you.”
“You’d shoot a crippled old man?” Watson asked.
“Whatever it takes to accomplish my mission.”
Tasman couldn’t have weighed a full hundred pounds. Watson placed him at eighty, maybe less. At eighty pounds, Tasman was easy to lift, but he slowed Watson, and he made it clumsy to step over the bodies that covered the floor.
They left the lab and entered the hallway. Nothing had changed. The lights burned as brightly as ever. The air-conditioned air was cool and had the lingering scents of ammonia and chlorine.
The bodyguard didn’t run. He stayed eight feet ahead of Watson, purposely slowing himself down to match Watson’s pace. His expression remained impassive. Not looking back, he growled, “We need to hurry, sir.”
Watson said, “I’ll be there by the time the elevator arrives.” Even as he said that, the elevator opened.
“You can’t take Tasman, sir,” said the bodyguard. “We don’t have time.”
“I’m not leaving him,” said Watson as he sprang over two unconscious soldiers and stepped onto the elevator.
The doors closed.
“Do you have the car ready?” the bodyguard asked into the discreet microphone in his collar. He nodded, apparently pleased by the answer. Looking at Watson, he said, “It’s going to be messy in the garage. Be ready for some blood.”
Tasman, folded over Watson’s shoulder like an old-fashioned mailbag, his hands and head dangling down Watson’s back, labored for breath. He twitched and rolled to take the weight off his stomach. His breath rattled in his throat.
The elevator passed the lobby without stopping and went directly to the fourth floor of the underground parking lot. How long has it been? Watson wondered. Have they started waking up?
The doors to the elevator slid open revealing the bodies of the clones that Watson’s natural-born bodyguards had shot—six men lying with arms and legs spread, pools of blood expanding on the marble floor beneath them. They wore military uniforms.
Seeing the blood, Watson was not unmoved, though he had seen enough blood and killing on Mars that the sight of death no longer sickened. He saw the bodies, breathed deep to steel himself, and tasted the last remnant of the chemicals in the air. Realizing that the air was almost clean, he wondered how long it would take before the clones awoke.
Beyond the clones, a long black sedan sat, its doors hanging open.
One of the bodyguards screamed, “Everybody into the car! Into the car, now!”
Tasman, still draped over Watson’s shoulder, continued to fight for every breath. The bodyguards held their pistols out and ready.
“Who’s the old guy?” asked one of the bodyguards.
“Scientist,” said another.
“Why’d you bring him?”
“POTEME wouldn’t leave him.”
“Speck,” said the first bodyguard.
Watson saw two clone officers sitting in a car. He said, “We need to warn them.”
“We’re not here for them,” said a bodyguard. He growled like a dog, grabbed Tasman from Watson’s shoulder, and tossed the old man into the backseat of the car.
“Hey! Hey! Don’t go in the building! Chemicals in the air . . .” Watson shouted to the clones in the car as his bodyguards shoved him into the backseat.
The clone officers heard the shouting and turned to look, but they clearly hadn’t understood. One of them seemed to have recognized Watson. He took three steps toward the car.
Watson asked, “Whose car is this?” as the bodyguards sat in the front seats.
“You passed him,” said the driver.
“Dead?”
They were moving now, screeching around the corner, dashing up ramps.
“Sure. I killed him,” said the driver. “I didn’t want him reporting his missing car.” He floored the gas pedal, and the car lurched forward. “Alan Cardston is going to wake up any minute now. He has the license and make of every car in your fleet. We needed a new set of wheels he doesn’t know about, and we needed to make sure he didn’t hear about a stolen vehicle.”
“What about security cameras?” asked the natural-born bodyguard who had shepherded Watson down the elevator.
“Out of commission,” said the second bodyguard.
To Watson, the escape felt more like a kidnapping than a rescue. Looking out the back window, he saw clones racing out of doors . . . and then the gunfire began. The car sped on.
A second sedan followed them. Watson looked at the driver, a natural-born, maybe an off-duty bodyguard.
“What about the gate?” asked the bodyguard in the passenger’s seat.
“Don’t worry about that. We got a couple of ours at the gate.”
Cardston an enemy, Watson thought. An unpleasant man, but one of the most competent officers Watson had met. Alan Cardston had once saved Watson’s life. Cardston the enemy? The world had just turned over on its head.
Three clones appeared at the top of the ramp, more poured out of the building. They wore security bands and carried M27s. They didn’t wait to fire. The last streaks of daylight still shone in the sky, a calming dim. The thick windows muffled the gunfire as bullets struck the car. Looking up between the seats, Watson watched the windshield crack into a thousand shards without shattering. He could no longer see what was in front of the car. All he could see was that the world ahead was brighter than the world he had left behind.
The car skidded, scraped, and bounced up the ramp, hitting a human and careening off another car as it dashed onto the road.
PART III
THE AGGRESSOR
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGH
T
Location: Guanajuato, New Olympian Territories
Date: July 25, 2519
Night, in the mountains in a drizzling rain. There was no wind, and the water evaporated from the air as quickly as it disappeared from the rocks.
Freeman could see stars through the gauzy clouds. He didn’t bother with his goggles; in another minute, visibility wouldn’t be an issue. During daylight hours, this was the side of the camp that the guards had used as a firing range.
He sat on an inaccessible spot on the ridge, about two hundred yards from the edge of the camp. If he ran straight ahead, he would fall down a sheer twenty-foot drop. If he survived the fall, he would cross bare ground, leaving him an easy target, then he would need to contend with the electrified fence.
Freeman didn’t intend to enter the camp.
From the perch he had chosen, he had an unqualified view down the central lane that led from the motor pool to the dormitories. Once the action began, he would have a clear shot.
Freeman had already killed the six guards at the entrance to the camp. They were the first to die. He didn’t bother with the guards by the motor pool. Their time would arrive soon enough.
After giving his gear one last pass, Freeman pulled the remote from his satchel and pressed the button.
Five hundred yards away, two rockets fired, the hoarse cough of their engines sounding soft and low. The first rocket arced over the fence and struck a jeep, knocking it over on its side, causing the gas tank to explode and sending a ten-foot pillar of smoke and flame into the air.
The second rocket, an incendiary weapon that sprayed thermite on impact, struck the fuel depot. Exposed to oxygen and aluminum filings, the thermite ignited, rapidly reaching forty-five hundred degrees, instantly melting the sides of the tank so that it leaked fuel and fumes that exploded in the heat. The flames and the reaction traveled into the fuel tank, causing a greater explosion that shot a knotting, twisting, fist-shaped fireball 150 feet in the air.
From his perch, Freeman saw the fireball rise above the buildings and dissolve. He watched the chaos below. No alarms or Klaxons sounded in the camp, just men running, grabbing guns and rocket launchers, racing toward flames. One side of the camp was bathed in quavering orange light, the other the steady white glare of halcyon.
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