But that was no longer his life.
This new thing was something so completely “other” to what he was trained for. He didn’t want it.
But his mind and body were like separate entities now. In this moment, upon this stage, as he tried again to find words to deny, to protest, to negate the proceedings, nothing happened but a few twitches in the sleek, round muscles beneath his henna skin. His voice was cramped down low in his throat, unwilling or unable to come out, and he was turned upon the dais as if he were a doll for all those out there in the shadows to ogle and critique and assess.
If there were conversations about his viability, his virility, his beauty, they were silent, through private systems and digital conveyances. He was privy to none of it, and Khim abhorred that even more.
The groom who’d led him into this dark area leaned away, put a hand up to his ear as if listening. Right after that, the groom made a motion and touched Khim on the wrist. He forced him to lift his right hand up and turn it, showing off the silver gleam of the metal that had replaced the flesh-and-bone hand he had lost in the explosion on Doom in Shadow.
It all took just under a minute. Then the grooms led Khim off by the glowing leash into a dark corridor beyond the little stage, where he was able to overhear just the barest of harsh whisperings.
“…You can never outbid them. They have money to burn.”
“Damn Damicos. They’ll just sell him over and over and over again.”
Khim was led away before he could hear more, having no idea what any of that meant.
Later, he was allowed to dress, though the makeup stayed. Then he was bustled alone into a flier the size of a small shuttlecraft and shipped off to his new owners.
KHIM WAS led by several different people, all human and all fairly well dressed, through at least four different systems of doorways, which branched off toward varying corridors, steps, and elevators. These were not well-lit, public places, but more like taking a roundabout journey backstage, behind main floors and through hidden passageways.
Khim wore plain black cotton slacks and a pullover blue shirt. His shoes were more like slippers, also black. No one told him anything about where he was or what might be expected of him. But his eyes still worked perfectly, and his perceptions still fed his mind in alarmingly straightforward analyses, all from leftover battle programming that he’d been able to maintain for ten years even in the most panic-stricken of situations. Though for the time being he could not talk due to whatever drugs they’d given him, he could readily observe. And absorb.
The flier had brought him to a large city, a floating city that overlooked a world like a blue jewel. Khim had never seen anything like it and knew none of the names for where he was—city, planet, or even system. He only saw that the city was huge. Set down in the middle of it, he was told to hurry from the door of the flier to a side door of a tall silver building topped with three dark spires that pointed to the stars.
Once inside, he had expected to go up. Instead the people who ordered him to follow them took him downward into the underbelly of the city where, through hard, rocky walls, he could hear the chugging and churning of unseen alien machinery, probably part of the vast engine that kept the huge city afloat in the clouds.
His journey ended in a dark room with no windows and only one door, the walls lined with pipes and grills. A single fan chattered from the ceiling. Along the far wall he could see, through the dimness, a row of five cages with vertical gold bars. Two were occupied. Three were not.
His handlers led him to one cage. Inside he saw a single cot, a toilet, and a sink. They opened the cage door and pushed him inside.
Immediately he turned, though his body was sluggish, and without thinking tried to push his way out, but the barred door slammed against his side. One of the men yelled at him. “Step back!”
His body obeyed as his left foot slid along the smooth flooring of his prison so that the door could close all the way. His mind reeled.
“You’ll have food brought to you three times a day,” one of the handlers said.
Nothing else was said. They turned and left.
Khim stood looking toward the shadowed entrance imploringly, as if that action alone might bring them back. He felt as if he hadn’t taken a breath since he’d been drawn off the stage, bought and sold, and placed into the flier.
Now he filled his lungs. The place smelled of old dampness, gritty and sharp and sad.
He blinked quickly against a sudden warmth. Swallowed hard. He never cried. Not even when the blood of battles sprayed through the air and ran thick into his eyes.
But now. This.
His breathing began to catch in his throat. To distract himself, he glanced around. The walls of the cage to his left and right were solid cement. He could not see the other five cells. But he had seen two occupied cages. Two people were in there with him. Two others locked up as he was. He had only seen their forms long enough to determine by their physical imperfections that they were human and alive. He listened to see if he could hear them, but all was silent.
He opened his mouth to make a sound. Nothing but a choking reflex came out. The zotic drug still ruled his veins.
A second later a voice whispered from one of the cages to his left. “The drug takes three or four hours to pass. But it doesn’t matter. They’ll just dose you again before they take you back out. Every night it’s the same. Every night.”
He wanted to ask For what? But he knew already. He hadn’t been sold naked to a roomful of dark customers for anything but what his body might be able to provide.
He had other questions, but the voice seemed to predict them. “My name’s Valo. There’s one other person in here, Tabor. He never talks, on or off the zotic. You’re in the basement of the Rainspeer Hotel. The private and secret underfloor. They call it the House of Xavier. It’s an elite all-male club. There are more of us in a second room next door. Seven at last count. You make eight. I guess business is booming. But don’t worry, you won’t remember much of what happens there. They give us all the drugs we want. The worst part is the boredom. The waiting. Like right now. And, of course, never being free.”
Khim went to the bars and put both his hands—the flesh and the metal—on them, gripping. The voice kept talking.
“We get medical attention every morning. We get three squares.”
A strange thumping sound began in another one of the cells.
“That’s Tabor. Sometimes he likes to hit the wall. They repair his knuckles with synthiskin, and he’s good to go.”
Khim closed his eyes and tried to think, but his mind was fogged.
The voice again. “It’s not like they are completely thoughtless. Go to the wall of your cell on the right. See the recessed square? Touch it. It’s holovision. The list of plays is endless. A hundred lifetimes aren’t enough to see it all. I’ll give you a list of my favorites. We can watch together. Tabor’s not been much company. It’s good to see someone new.”
Khim did not want to watch plays. He wanted to think, but couldn’t. But when he could think, he knew what he’d be doing. He’d be making weapons out of anything he could. He’d be planning and scheming. He was an android with nowhere to go, no papers, programmed to obey, but also programmed to fight. His whole life was about fighting. But always on orders. This would be different. He’d have to get around to the idea that his actions would need to be under his own orders. It was a new way of thinking, but he would embrace it. He had no choice.
But right now he was so tired. The drug, no doubt. He went to the cot and lay down. The voice that called itself Valo continued to drone. He turned to face the wall, put the pillow over his head, and the voice faded.
Sometime later he woke, and for a moment he was back in his sleeping berth on Doom in Shadow. He could hear the gentle breathing of his crewmates, two hundred of them, and smell the dry, faint sweetness of the processors. Hear the faint mutterings of machinery in the bulkheads.
All that
was instantly replaced with another reality, less known but all too real. Sounds of rhythmic thumping. Low voices conferring. And air danker than he was used to. He sat up and saw the cot he had slept on, saw the cell and the shadowy room beyond it. The bars. The locked door.
He cleared his throat, and it was a tangle. He coughed twice. His throat finally made a sound.
The voice from the other cell began again. “You can talk now. It’s been long enough. Did you have a nap? How do you feel? What’s your name?”
The interrogation annoyed him, but he answered with one word. “Khim.”
“Well, Khim. You slept about three hours. It’s late afternoon now. Do you remember coming here? Do you remember me telling you my name?”
His mind was vat grown to be superior. He might have been trained mainly for the handling of weapons, but he was not simple. “Valo. And Tabor’s the one wrecking his knuckles.”
“Good! You’re not as bad off as you seemed to be when you first arrived.”
How had he seemed? Khim couldn’t know. He hadn’t seen himself. And he’d been drugged.
Wordlessly he went to the toilet and relieved himself. Then he examined the sink, seeing what might be stored there. He found nothing but a cardboard toothbrush with tiny white bristles, a red bar of soap shaped like a heart, and a thin linen towel. A roll of toilet paper sat on a recessed ledge.
He turned to view the cot. On it sat one pillow, fairly large; a single mattress, surprisingly soft; and one black blanket. There was no change of clothes, no other furniture, not even a dust ball in the corner. He went to the square on the wall Valo had mentioned before he’d gone to sleep. He pressed it, and a tri-D screen flickered to life. It was built deep into the cement. Only the screen showed, but he could control it by touching it. Images flickered of laughing people, chattering characters. And a thousand channels to choose from.
He felt the screen, assessing that it seemed to be made of diamond alloy; not even his metal hand, with all his force behind it, would be able to break it.
He turned to survey the room. Turned again. The feeling of being trapped closed around his heart like a thorn-gloved fist. He went to the edge of his cot and sat, elbows on his thighs, and rested his head in his hands.
Valo was still talking, but Khim heard none of it. Finally he found his own voice. It came out strange and airy at first, then rumbled to full-fledged volume. “Valo, have you ever tried to get out of here?”
He heard the other man sigh. “It’s funny. Everyone asks that as their first question. But it’s impossible, you see.”
Khim pressed the heels of his hands—the metal one like cold fire—to his eyes. Nothing was impossible, his mind told him, and yet in his life every choice had been taken from him, for he’d done nothing for ten long years but what he was told to do. Nothing had really changed. He simply had new commanders now. New bosses.
He said, “Valo, when do they come?”
“They bring dinner in about an hour. After that the grooms prepare us. Sometimes the parties last all night.”
Khim took a deep breath, his mind sinking back in on itself at those words. He could fight, but not while drugged.
Valo said, “If you’re thinking you could fight them off after dinner, the food’s drugged, my friend. If they see you haven’t eaten, it doesn’t matter. They douse you with it in the mist of the showers, in the oils they use on us, in the scents. And a final dose with the wands. You can’t avoid it. Here in our cells, during the day, it’s allowed to wear off so we don’t get too sick, so we can recover for the next night. It sounds terrible, I know. But there’s no escape.”
For a long time, he sat, letting the holovision play softly but not looking at it. Valo kept trying to engage him again, but Khim ignored him.
His mind recoiled, came up sputtering as if it had been drowning, looked at this new reality, and recoiled again. He tried to make sense of it. He knew what was happening, or about to happen, to him, but that was not the question. This was more about what it felt like, because he was having new feelings he’d never experienced before. Strange fears. Flights of wings in his chest. Dread like bile in the back of his throat. It made him feel too vulnerable, like the kid he’d never been, though he did have a few programmed memories of blurred childhood scenes. He had rarely accessed any deep feelings about killing because that was all he knew. It didn’t require him to feel. Perhaps this new life wouldn’t either. Why, then, was he experiencing so many new sensations? A discomfort at the audacity of men? Why had he never considered it before?
Another hour passed, and Khim had not moved more than to breathe or flex the muscles in his arms and legs, which ached slightly as if weakened by the zotic. Finally a door at the far end of the basement clanged open. Two men, dressed in all black with holstered lasers at their hips, entered. Trays floated in front of them.
The men were of average height and weight, both with short dark hair and not overly muscular. Khim decided it wouldn’t require much effort to take them down given half a chance. The thought gave him a small hope, better than nothing.
They delivered the food to the other two cells first. Khim’s dinner came last. It smelled differently from the prepackaged, preheated meals he’d grown used to as a soldier. There were crisp greens on one side of the tray and what looked like a fresh steak shining in its own juices. His stomach rumbled at the sight. He could not remember the last time he’d eaten.
One of the men slid the tray under the bars on the floor and into Khim’s cell. The man looked at him, one eyebrow raised, and said, “Now I see why they paid so much.”
Khim felt his body heat at the statement.
The second man came over to stare. “Androids always make people gawk, but their personalities are for shit. Some of them are viper-mean, I’ve heard. I hope the military obedience chip in his brain still works.”
“They pretty much guaranteed it.”
Khim knew what they were talking about. The chip was for weapons handling, though, and for battle. Part of that was training he’d never consciously fought. But with an understanding of how the chip controlled emotions like fear, dread, and loneliness, he knew it didn’t actually control him. He still had freedom of action and thought. But if they didn’t know that, maybe that could be an advantage.
He took the tray from the floor and brought it over to his cot, ignoring them.
The men stared at him for another few seconds. “He’s big. Remind the grooms to double the zotic dose for him.”
“Definitely.”
They turned and left the room, not lingering.
Khim looked at the good fresh food, inhaling the aromas of meat, buttered broccoli, and a baked potato dripping with all the trimmings. He was hungry, but a tremor of sickness rose up inside him at their words.
He heard sounds from the other cells of the other two men already eating.
Khim lifted a plastic fork and stabbed at the meat, bringing it to his mouth. Taking a bite from the edge, it melted onto his tongue, making him salivate. This place was obviously a wealthy establishment if their kitchens could produce something this fine for their slaves. A carton of wine accompanied the food, as well as small paper packets of salt and pepper and a paper container of fresh water.
Despite the tightness in his chest and stomach, Khim continued to eat. But halfway through the meal, a fog rolled up in his mind and he remembered what Valo had told him.
They drug the food.
Chapter Five
TREV WOKE a little after noon. It was still the same day as the early-morning meeting. He’d spent his last evening with his family controlling computers at a remote location, setting up an illegal power takeover for Dante and assisting Blair with a building map for some meet and greet he had to secure beforehand. Trev paid little attention to the details for meetings and setups and takeovers. He only supplied information or broke into highly secured complexes when hands-on as well as computer skills were needed.
Trev’s brothers, Breq a
nd Vance, had gone off to oversee an important but secret party for the very rich and the very decadent. Trev knew Dante owned underground brothels, and not to be outdone, Dante’s abodes of the night were posh and extreme. There was nothing he would not organize if enough money was involved. Trev stayed out of that end of the business, telling his father he wanted nothing to do with any of it. He had never set foot in one of those places and never would, didn’t even want to know their names or where they existed. He refused any work concerning them, which had almost garnered him a whipping. But then Dante had taken him aside and said, “Your drives are different from your brothers. I respect that. These matters that feed the appetites are different for everyone. If you want to read books instead of fuck with the rich boys all night long, that’s your right.”
It had seemed an almost underhanded acquiescence on Dante’s part, dismissive and yet nonjudgmental.
Trev was not a virgin by choice, merely by circumstance. He simply hated people. The fact that he was physically beautiful made his brothers and sisters joke about his love life, but if Dante overheard them, he frowned on that. Dante never required Trev to work the underground, human-trafficking end of the business, and after that day, he’d never mentioned Trev’s love life again.
The morning finally came.
Dante approached Trev just outside the dining room and patted him on the back. “Good work tonight, son.” He cupped his hand around the back of Trev’s neck, warm and gentle, pulling him into a brief embrace. “I don’t think I thank you enough for what you do for this family.”
The Android and the Thief Page 3