“Yes, sir,” I said through the robot. “But I did not ask for the operation.”
Michaels made a note on his comp-board.
“Who authorized the operation?” Patterson asked.
“I believe it was the World United Federation, sir. The operation was very expensive, but it did get full approval.”
“Let me rephrase,” Patterson said. “Who allowed you to be operated on?”
“My mother,” I said.
“So you had no choice in the matter.”
“No, sir. But if they had waited until I was old enough to make the choice, I would have been too old for the operation. It has to be done at a very young age to allow the nervous system and bioplastic fibers to grow together properly.”
“In other words,” Michaels said to Patterson, “we have over 200 children who all had the operation done without their consent. And if we want to take advantage of this new technology, we will have to continue operating on children who have no choice. The world may be a better place with this new technology, but they’ll pay the price.”
“Sir,” I said.
All eyes turned to the robot.
I continued. “Since I have been this way all of my life— at least as far back as I can remember—I have never thought of it as paying a price. Being able to explore outer space and Mars through the body of a robot has been something so great I can hardly describe it—”
“Really,” Michaels said, cutting me off. His eyes turned flinty. “Because of the operation, you’ve spent your whole life in a wheelchair. You might know what it is like to walk on Mars or on the Moon, but you don’t know what it’s like to walk on Earth. So let me ask you this. If I could guarantee an operation that would allow you to walk but take away your ability to control robots, would you have it done?”
“That is an unfair question,” I said, stunned. “I was the only one out of all the kids who suffered spinal-cord damage because of the operation.”
“In the future, mistakes will happen again. Would you trade your robot control to be fully human?”
“Are you suggesting that because I need a wheelchair, I am not fully human?” I insisted as hotly as I could through my robot voice.
Michaels blushed. “Let me rephrase that. Would you trade your robot control to be able to walk? Would you allow us to operate on another child, knowing that this child, too, might suffer the same nerve damage you did?”
I couldn’t answer. That would be like playing God with someone else’s life.
After long seconds, Michaels sat back in his chair. “As I thought. I don’t think we need to ask any further questions.”
CHAPTER 16
Half an hour later my robot rolled in the low gravity and zero atmosphere of the Moon. In orbit, where my body was hooked to computers, I wasn’t tired yet. I’d just been in New York through one robot body, and now I was back on the Moon through another.
Here, in the Moon dust, my robot couldn’t show emotion, of course, but my own excitement was nearly enough that it bounced forward.
The plan had succeeded!
During my time with the ethics committee in New York, someone here on the Moon had moved the platform buggy inside the low flat building above the mining operation.
That meant they had also moved my robot inside. When I had entered robot control, my robot was already past whatever security system was guarding this warehouse. Amid all the activity inside, no one had noticed as I’d lowered the robot onto the ground and out from beneath the buggy.
There were probably two dozen men working in space suits. I assumed they came in daily from the closest sector of the Moon dome—the Manchurian Sector. The men were working at various tasks, but most were moving pallets of boxes from one end of the building to the other.
Then one man noticed my robot. He gestured at it from beneath his helmet, then moved it into an elevator. A short ride took me down. When the doors opened, I was in a gigantic vault. And ahead, I saw about 20 robots like the one I operated. They held equipment that looked like giant torches and were cutting out blocks of material. It was obvious that their work had expanded this giant vault to the size it was. I couldn’t imagine how many months they had already been doing this.
It only took a couple of seconds to move beside the nearest robot.
“Hello,” I said. “We need to talk.”
The robot kept pointing the giant welding torch into the rock face.
“Hello!” I shouted. “We need to talk!”
Still it ignored me.
Then I remembered.
We were on the Moon. No air. Which meant no sound waves.
They couldn’t hear me. I couldn’t hear them. Was this rescue attempt over before it could begin?
“Nate!”
Almost immediately he removed my blindfold and headset.
“Back from the Moon already?” he asked. He unstrapped my arms and legs.
I sat up and rubbed my wrists. “I’m back.” The familiar walls of the small space station loomed above me. Or below me. Or beside me. It was hard to guess. In space, there’s no up or down or sideways.
“What did you find out?” Nate asked.
“We couldn’t talk.” I grinned. “But we could scratch in the Moon dirt.”
It had taken a while, but I’d finally learned from one robot what I needed.
The kids weren’t staying on the Moon. They were on a space station somewhere. In orbit around the Moon. The rest I could guess. It was just like the pod of kids we discovered in Parker, Arizona, where Ashley was before she came to Mars. They were hooked up on permanent life support, unable to move out of their jelly tubes, living only through their robots.
“So,” I said, after I explained that to Nate, “let’s go rescue them.”
“Sounds good to me. I’ll call Cannon and tell him what we found out.”
“Just one little thing,” I said. “Down on Earth where I’m headed next. That dumb interview with Ms. Borris.”
CHAPTER 17
That evening, through the video lens of my robot, I stared directly into a television camera. Behind the camera was the operator, a skinny man with a ponytail who had only been introduced to me as Ben.
The robot was in a television studio. The backdrop behind it was of New York City at night. In front of my robot was a coffee table with magazines. In a chair beside the robot was the legendary Ms. Borris. She wore black again, and I overheard her joking to the cameraman that it was her favorite color because it helped her look slim. Her natural hair was curly and cropped short. It looked far better than the platinum wig had when she pretended to be a nurse.
I thought of the mysterious phone call. How I believed it had been my father telling me I could trust Ms. Borris. And how, if it had been my father, he knew the interview would be taking place.
“Remember,” Ms. Borris told me, interrupting my thoughts, “normally this is taped. But there has been such a demand for this exclusive interview that we are going live tonight to our worldwide audience.”
“How is my hair?” I asked. With my robot arms, I pretended to smooth out imaginary hair on the robot’s head.
Ms. Borris smiled. It took away much of her fierceness. “Nice touch,” she said. “I wish the camera had been rolling when you did that. It would be a great opening shot to this news documentary.”
Live to a worldwide audience. I reminded myself to be careful of what I did and said through the robot.
“Ready?” she asked.
“I have a bunch of questions for you.” I lowered the robot’s voice. “When are we going to be able to talk about—?”
“Camera’s rolling,” Ben said. “Live in five … four …”
“Ready,” I said. Cannon had insisted that favorable and immediate television exposure was probably more important to the future of robot control than the recommendations of the ethics committee of the World United Federation. If people saw that robots were nothing to be afraid of and if they saw good use for rob
ot control, their mass opinion would force vice governors all across the world to allow more tax money to be spent on robotics.
The only trouble was the questions in the back of my mind I couldn’t escape. Would I trade my robot control to be able to walk again? Would I allow an operation on another child, knowing that this child, too, might suffer the same nerve damage I had? I sure hoped Ms. Borris wouldn’t ask those questions.
“Three … ,” Ben continued to count down.
Ms. Borris calmly sipped from a glass of water and set it down.
“Two … and—”
Ms. Borris spoke directly at the camera, reading from a teleprompter that scrolled words on a screen in front of her. “I’d like to introduce to you Tyce Sanders. Well, not Tyce himself, but a robot that he controls. Later in our show, we’ll give you some of the technical details that make it possible for a human to control robots. You may, however, already know some of this. As I’m sure you’re aware, very recently it was the robot Tyce controlled that prevented a nuclear meltdown just outside Los Angeles.”
Ms. Borris turned to me. “First of all, let’s talk about the situation you’re in right now. It will give our viewers a sense of the potential of robot control. As I understand it, because of threats upon your life, you currently control this robot from a space station that’s in orbit between the Moon and Earth.”
“Yes,” I said. I explained that in the afternoon I had answered questions via robot for the ethics committee. I didn’t tell her, of course, about my brief time on the Moon and what I had learned there.
“Let’s get back to the ethics committee later,” she said. “I’m fascinated by the fact that you can almost be in two places at once. Are you telling me that if you had access to 20 robots all across the world, you could go from one to another to another?”
“Yes,” I said. “I cannot switch instantly, but it is possible.”
“So you could speak to me here in New York and five minutes later speak to someone else in London, England? And then five minutes later, Paris? And so on?”
“If a robot was waiting in each place.” I thought of the ant-bot in Ashley’s locket. And wanted this interview to be over so I could try to talk to Ashley again. “Not much different than using a phone.”
“Is it tiring?”
“Physically, it is not.” I explained how, during robot control, I was totally motionless. “Mentally, I can last as long as I would normally be able to stay awake and concentrate.”
And so our conversation continued. I answered questions about growing up on Mars. I told her how it felt to go into robot control and how it felt to come out again. I told her about the capabilities of robots. That took well over a half hour of interview time.
After a short break, she continued with her questions. By then I was totally relaxed.
“You were able to go into a nuclear plant under extreme conditions,” she began.
“Actually, my robot was. I directed its actions.”
“Of course.” She smiled. “Tell me, Tyce, if a robot is that unstoppable, wouldn’t it make the perfect soldier?”
“It makes the perfect firefighter. It makes the perfect worker in extreme weather conditions. It makes the perfect explorer on the Moon and on Mars,” I explained.
“But …” She leaned in. A fierceness filled her face. “If there were 200 of you orbiting in space and all 200 of you controlled armed robots down here on Earth, wouldn’t you be perfect soldiers? Don’t you see potential danger in that?”
“Who would build the 200 armed robots?” I asked. “Who would put them in place?”
My question seemed to catch her off guard. “I suppose,” she answered, “it would be military people.”
“Then,” I said, “maybe you should ask them those questions.”
For a moment, she frowned. Then she laughed. “Good point. Let’s get to the operation itself. I understand it must be done before children are three years old. With adults, for example, the nervous system is too fully developed and won’t properly intertwine with the bioplastic fibers that deliver information to the brain.”
“That is correct,” I answered. Now it was coming.
“So this operation is done to children before they are old enough to decide if they want it done or not.”
“Yes.” What was I going to say if she asked me if I would have allowed it to be done to me?
“So what if kids were taken from their parents at a young age and put into robot slavery?”
This wasn’t the question I expected. I hesitated too long.
“What if,” she continued, “I told you information has reached me that exactly this has already been done?”
“Then I would say that anyone who has that information and is holding it back to get better ratings on a show instead of helping those kids is using them just as badly as the people who put them into slavery,” I fired back.
I expected her to get angry.
Instead, she smiled. “You are exactly right, Tyce Sanders. And that is why, right now, to a live worldwide audience, our network is going to break an exclusive story on how kids forced into slavery and armed with soldier robots almost assassinated all the officials at the recent Summit of Governors.”
On a nearby television screen, I saw that the show cut from our interview and began to roll with the news story.
“How do you know all this?” I asked Ms. Borris through my robot. We were now off camera. Her exclusive story was giving out top secret military information.
“I’ll tell you everything,” she said. The bright, sharp expression on her face had been replaced by one of deep weariness. “Later tonight. If I’m not arrested by then.”
“But—”
“Ten o’clock tonight. Make sure you return to controlling this robot. I’ll have it all arranged so we can talk.”
“Tonight?” There was Ashley. And the Moon stuff.
“But—”
“Tonight,” she insisted. “Your father’s life depends on it.”
CHAPTER 18
I had to remind myself that my body was remaining in one place, the nice quiet calm of outer space. Because everything else seemed like a whirlwind. The Moon. Then the ethics committee in New York. The Moon again. Back to New York for Ms. Borris. It was as hectic as playing a computer game full-time.
And now?
The visuals from the ant-bot brought a weird mixture of light and dark to my brain. At first, I had trouble focusing. It took some zooming out with the ant-bot lenses until I began to comprehend that I was not in Ashley’s locket. It seemed like the ant-bot was screened from the light by something.
Hair?
“Ashley? Ashley?”
Without warning, brightness overwhelmed the ant-bot. It seemed like it was at the bottom of a tunnel.
“Hang on, Tyce.”
Ashley! Talking to me in a whisper.
“I’m going to tilt my head and hold my hand below my ear,” she continued to whisper. “Then crawl out onto my palm.”
So it had been hair from her head that had screened the ant-bot from the light. And she had hidden me in her ear?! Gross.
My entire world shifted, and I struggled to keep the antbot balanced.
“Ready,” she said.
So I crawled out of her ear and onto her palm.
Ashley held her hand in front of her face. I peered upward through the video lenses of the ant-bot. To me, her face seemed as big as the presidents’ faces carved into Mount Rushmore. I’d read about them once on an Earth history DVD-gigarom.
“I’m glad you’re back,” she said. “Why did you leave?”
I explained.
“That makes total sense. And it’s probably the best thing you could have done. They took me to the one place no one would ever look for me. I think our only chance is if they don’t know you guys know.”
“I don’t have much time,” I told her quickly. Ten o’clock, New York time, was approaching. I had to make sure I was in the robot in t
he television studio to talk with Ms. Borris. “It would be nice if you started making sense.”
“Tyce,” she said, sounding tired, “I’m back with all the other robot-control kids. In the mountains of Arizona.”
“So you’re safe, then.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I remember a story once,” Ashley whispered, as if she was afraid of being overheard. “It was about a woman who was so scared of being robbed that she put bars on all her windows and a dozen locks on her door. Her house caught on fire, and she couldn’t get out.”
“Meaning?” I asked. I was conscious of how little time I had. “Help me out with your riddle.”
“Meaning,” she answered softly, “the perfect place of protection can also be the perfect trap. The Combat Force soldiers are in control of a fortress no one can get into. But no one can get out of it either. The only link is by telephone or computer. Combat Force soldiers at other bases have no way of knowing anything is wrong here if someone on this end of the communications system lies to them.”
I had a horrible feeling. My earlier conversation with Cannon came back to me. The one where I’d asked why Ashley had been kidnapped if there were all the others.
And Cannon’s words echoed through my mind: “But at least all the others are safe. Can you imagine if the Manchurians got the Terratakers to regain control of them too?”
“What you’re saying—” I gulped—“is that the wrong Combat Force people control this. And you’re all prisoners.”
She nodded. “The Terratakers have us again. They’ll blow this place to shreds if anyone tries to take it. With us in it.”
CHAPTER 19
When I left the ant-bot and began controlling the robot in New York City at 10:00, Ms. Borris was not waiting for me as promised.
Instead, when light waves reached my brain through the video lenses of the robot that had been left behind in the television studio, I found the robot alone in a small room. In front of a television.
Final Battle Page 7