The Android and the Thief

by Wendy Rathbone

  “I’m hungry,” Khim said.

  “Good.” Aric ran the towel down his waist, soft and gentle.

  Khim had liked it at first, but now he knew what he was, and that tenderness would prolong his discomfort. So he said, tonelessly, “You may stop now. I’ll finish drying myself. Will I be given clothing?”

  Aric stood back, head tilting. “Are you all right? Honestly, if you need more time or anything. Like I said, most of you take an hour or more to get it together.”

  “Clothing?” Khim repeated, taking the towel from Aric’s stilled hand.

  “Of course.”

  Khim finished drying his body, assessing it to be perfect in every way—the skin shining with a bronze tint, the muscles well-rounded and hard.

  Aric brought him a thin white cotton jumpsuit and a tube of protein that, when Khim put it to his lips, had the awful consistency of sludge. He drank it all, tasting a mild sweetness. Then he dressed.

  Aric put a hand on Khim’s upper arm. “You look much better. Are you ready to get out of here?”

  Khim looked down at where the hand touched him. He did not want it. No more softness. No coddling. “Yes.” He stepped away.

  Aric dropped his hand and moved back.

  Maybe he should thank Aric a second time for being there for him, so attentive and maybe even a little worried. But the man was only doing a job and felt nothing real for him. Khim owed him no thanks.

  KHIM ADJUSTED his body on the bunk, waking briefly to see a bare beige wall before his eyes and a black metal ceiling. He reaffirmed where he was by the sounds and scents of the prison. One hand was fisted, clenched against his chest. The other, the metal hand he could not feel, had moved down and gripped a handful of sheet by his thigh, responding to a command in the mind to hold tight.

  Khim was shaking. Just a little.

  He closed his eyes, still so tired from all he’d been through. The auction. The dungeon at the Rainspeer Hotel. The high-powered party at the House of Xavier. The men all over him, on him, in him for their own decadent pleasures. And now he’d dreamed his birth. That had not helped him at all in regaining his peace of mind.

  His heart beat more rapidly than he was used to. It felt as if his chest had been sliced open and the blood-filled, pulsing organ that was his life force were exposed to the degradation of air, of life, of reality. His soldier personality and all his armor had been peeled away.

  Who was he? Khim 18367. A soldier. A fighter. But he wasn’t even that anymore. He was left with nothing but himself, an ex-soldier now, a being made of anger and resentment and pain with a few leftover memories of a boy in the grass, a boy on the beach, and an uncle in the shadows who’d told him it was noble to enlist to fight a war. Khim was educated, but he couldn’t even remember anymore how that had come to pass.

  As his muscles stretched, he felt the persistent ache from the rape deep inside, felt the men on him again, the velvet of the couch, and he struggled to squelch the memory. But it was too recent. He realized he must still be in some shock.

  Not acceptable.

  He had twin pains: his birth, and now what was left of his life.

  He shut his eyes tighter, turned his face into the pillow. There were exercises he had learned for control back in the vat warehouses, the indoctrination rooms. Systems for entering alpha states to calm the nerves, keep off-duty aggression at bay. Meditations for building barriers—like the glass wall Khim had constructed—against the core self. An out-of-control android was a dangerous android. Androids were always threatened with being “put down.”

  All androids, first and foremost, were taught to be submissive, their brains trained to back down, back off, give way. Even the soldier androids, trained in combat, were submissive to all superiors, and they learned to bow heads, turn away, take a step back, even kneel and bend their torsos tight over their laps if the situation warranted it. They were stronger than natural-born humans and needed to remember that their strengths did not define their stature. They were the lower class, the inferior-though-perfect models of humanity. They were never to be the light in life, only mirrored light. Only an echo of the spirit that drove men to greatness.

  From the warehouse classes, Khim remembered the wires, the lit-up sparkling helmets hooked to machines that rewarded calmness and encouraged the mind in the art of riding the alpha waves in a serenity of tolerance and acceptance. Tiny shocks stabbed at the brain to punish any hint of rage, impertinence, jealousy, even competition. Sexual response was allowed but given no erotic or romantic encouragement. It was a function of the body, like eating, sleeping, pissing, breathing.

  Somehow he had lost the sense of all of that now, forgotten the programming completely, because what he felt was anger. Rage. He had killed a man. He had jumped onto Trev’s bunk and threatened to punch him. Something inside him was broken, and he was having a lot of trouble calling on those alpha waves now.

  When he was aboard Doom in Shadow, he had been able to put his mind in that state at will. His off-duty hours were calm. He slept without nightmares. He did not take lovers, as some androids did with each other, because he did not like to be touched. But that was his only flaw, created from a moment during his birth experience when he’d made a promise to himself not to be coddled for his own sake. To prevent pain, to never suffer.

  He lay very still in his bunk, heard the murmurs of men outside the cell through the quiet hum of the force field and Trev in the bunk above him breathing in deep, even rhythms. Trev still slept.

  For both of them, sleeping was the only escape from a brand-new setting they had not yet become accustomed to.

  Khim wanted only to sleep again, and he attempted to push his thoughts in that direction.

  It took a long time before his mind finally responded to his efforts at achieving an alpha state. After that, he sank into a more restful slumber, his beaten and abused body welcoming the chance to rest more, to heal.

  Chapter Nine

  TREV WOKE from a dream of rain. On the acreage of his childhood home, floating among the clouds, it often rained, and flowers with sugared scents bloomed in the earth suspended upon giant antigrav devices underneath the estate.

  A loud clanging, like an alarm, had startled him from sleep. Sitting up, he thought for a moment he was back home in his bedroom surrounded by his books, his computers, all his childhood belongings.

  Then he glanced around and saw the beige walls, the glowing ceiling, the metal deck outside the force field of the prison cell. With a jolt, he reoriented.

  Khim was up already, a bit disheveled. His dark blond hair glistened in the harsh light and lay in disarray about his shoulders and head, strands pushed messily against his forehead. He couldn’t have been awake for long. They had both slept away the afternoon, exhausted, wrung out.

  Outside their cell, men lined up in the plaza. It must have been the dinner hour. But neither Trev nor Khim could go anywhere until their force field was unlocked.

  Trev pushed his own thick hair from his forehead. It was shorter than Khim’s, but heavier, and sometimes stuck up from his forehead in annoying spikes.

  Trev lifted his legs over the edge of the bunk. He hopped effortlessly to the floor, landing as gentle as a cat. He had to pee but was nervous about that. The cell was so small. Khim was so close. He’d never lived this close to anyone in his life. He stood leaning with his back against the frame of the bunk beds.

  Trev felt nervous about everything to do with this place. He wasn’t sure how he would bear it, but a voice in the back of his head coached him.

  One step at a time. Forward.

  It was the same calm voice that he’d learned to listen to when he broke into buildings, evaded complex security systems. The voice kept panic down, created a coolness in his mind. It had saved his life on more than one occasion.

  For what seemed like an eternity, Trev waited by the edge of the bunk. Khim stood forward and to his right, staring at the side wall, hands limp at his hips. Unobserved, Trev was f
ree to look at him—at the straight line of his back; the way tendrils of his hair were caught under the collar of his gray shirt; how the metal of his right hand mirrored the white light, the beige walls, and the hard, dark floor in a glancing abstract of quivering curves and spinning portals. The other hand looked so ordinary in comparison, so bare.

  Trev wondered again what had happened to this man. Certainly a hard life, being an android, which to Trev was very unfair. He had already surmised, from their very nonprivate medical scans, that Khim had been sexually assaulted, a secret Trev would not reveal and which, he hoped, the other new inmates had not picked up on during their orientation. But how had Khim lost the hand? Why had a new one not been grown for him?

  The voices from outside their cell, on the decks and in the plaza, had changed from an uneven humming and occasional shouts to a low rumble. Promise of food gave hungry men focus.

  Trev’s bladder stabbed. Finally, he moved forward and past Khim, looking over his shoulder. “I have to use the—”

  Khim turned away to face the entrance, his bulk casting a shadow over the sink as if he did not hear him.

  Trev stepped up to the toilet and undid the fly of his drawstring pants.

  When he finished, he washed his hands. He turned. Khim stood looking out from their second-floor vantage. Trev moved up alongside him. Khim gave no indication he even knew he was there.

  Men in gray passed by on the deck outside, shoes clanging, moving down the stairways. It was easy to see where the cafeteria was from here by following the two long lines of inmates in the plaza.

  A louder clatter drew Trev’s attention. A silver robot sentry came up the stairs. It moved with a strange alien grace on backward-bent legs like an insect. It came straight for them, stopping at their cell. Its red eyes scanned them from an oblong, almost featureless head. Its right wiry arm snaked out, and its metal fingers danced over a control panel on the frame of their cell.

  The shushing hum of the force field ceased as the invisible electric barrier came down. Through a small hole in the center of its dark metal face, the robot said, “You are to join the end of the dinner line to the right of the plaza. Make no trouble.”

  Trev and Khim stepped forward at the same time.

  Trev was closest to the stairwell. He expected Khim to move around him, ignore him, and stride off. Instead, Khim just stood there. Afraid to say anything, Trev turned and moved forward. He could feel the man at his back, following him, his footfall surprisingly soft on the metal for all his height and muscular bulk.

  Trev took the stairs quickly and walked across the clean plaza floor to the end of the long line. The men in front of him ignored them. But more men came up behind them, talking and chuckling. One came up alongside Khim. Trev turned to look.

  The man, who had several days’ growth of beard but no hair on his head, said, “Hey, new guy. It’s tradition when you’re new that you eat last.”

  Khim did not look at him.

  Trev raised an eyebrow.

  “Hey, did you hear me? End of the line.”

  Still no reaction from Khim.

  The man must have been a head shorter than Khim, but he stood tall and dominant. “So anyway, Hercules, we’re cutting in front of you guys unless you wanna do something about it.”

  The man and his entourage of four scruffy-looking guys of varying heights moved past Khim and Trev and squeezed in front of them.

  Trev didn’t care. The voice in the back of his head was calmly repeating, Stay invisible. Bring no attention to yourself. But he wasn’t sure what Khim might do. He waited.

  Khim never moved. Nor did he meet the man’s eyes. It was as if the man did not exist. This seemed to annoy the loudmouth, even though he’d gotten ahead of them, gotten his way, and neither Trev nor Khim had protested. He shouted back over his shoulder, “Hey, Herc, you should thank me for filling you in on the rules.”

  Khim’s gaze stayed fixed, unmoving. He did not respond.

  The man turned to his friends. “It’s an android, you know. It has to do what you tell it.”

  Another man said, “That could be fun.”

  Horrified, Trev had no idea what to do and hoped they would move on, but they kept talking.

  “They’re programmed not to hurt humans. They won’t fight back,” the first one said.

  “Yeah, Deb,” said another, “but why is he here?”

  It was exactly the question Trev had been asking himself this whole time. And the comment about not fighting back made his skin cold. For Khim had struck out at him in their cell, and it was only his own quick response that had prevented a fist from impacting his face.

  Deb said, “So, why are you here, Herc?”

  Khim ignored him.

  “Guess he’s not talking.”

  Trev wanted to move to the very end of the line as more men came up behind them. But he didn’t know how to make his exit look natural. So he kept standing directly in front of Khim, body tense, skin prickling.

  Suddenly another man with dark hair, who’d come up behind Khim, moved forward and looked at Trev. “I know you.” Trev could only blink in confusion. “We haven’t met, exactly,” the man said. “You were just a little kid. But I’ve seen your face in holos.” Trev shook his head. “You’re a Damico, right?”

  Trev gulped. “My father—”

  “—is Dante Damico. Yeah. I know him.”

  Then something very strange happened. The man came up to Trev and embraced him loosely, then said, “I’m Kant. These men giving you trouble?”

  Trev said, “No. It’s fine.”

  “And your friend here?”

  Khim’s eyes slowly slid from their fixed position to look directly at Trev. Trev did not have to say one word as Deb, from the front, said, “Hey, we don’t have any trouble with the Damicos. We were just razzing the ’droid.”

  “Yeah, he’s with me,” Trev said softly.

  Kant looked at Deb. “You heard him. Herc’s with him. So cut it out.”

  Deb said, “How were we to know a Damico was standing right next to us? You old-Earth Italian guys all look alike.”

  Kant said, “Now you know.” He turned his gaze back to Trev. “You’re welcome.”

  Trev nodded, trying not to flush. He’d forgotten the notion that his very name might be the one thing that could protect him, despite the fact that he had no doubt it was Dante’s doing that had brought him here instead of to “the resort.”

  Trev glanced quickly at Khim, whose eyes were almost slits, the blue of the irises glinting from between dark gold lashes. He saw Khim’s upper lip quirk in an almost snarl.

  He turned away. The line moved slowly. Khim did not leave, but he still said nothing. It was very strange to be followed by a guy who seemed to hate him.

  It took about ten minutes before they got to the head of the line where the food was being served. Many were already done eating and were stacking their trays on metal counters marked DISHES.

  Trays laden with food came on a slow conveyer that automatically slid by at table height, coming out of the wall and going back into a space a few feet along. Each man took one tray in order of their lineup as the trays passed by. There were no choices here.

  Trev took a tray and, turning, looked over the room for an empty table. He saw one toward the back and headed in that direction. He did not have to turn around to know that Khim followed. Even here.

  Trev sat at the table’s end, nervous still, and almost flipped his tray while setting it down. His sealed drink tipped over. Khim moved around the table and sat as far away from him as possible at the other end—but it was still the same table. That was interesting, despite the amount of space between them.

  Trev looked at his food. A round roll. Something that looked like meat with a thick brown gravy over it. Green beans. An apple. A thin yellow slice of something that looked like pudding formed into the shape of pie.

  He was used to only the finest of foods, but he didn’t care. He was starving. He pi
cked up a plastic fork. As he did, Kant called to him from behind. “Hey, Damico. You can sit with us.”

  At the sound of the word Damico, several men at nearby tables came to attention.

  Trev looked over his shoulder.

  Dark-haired Kant, who looked about thirty-five but might have been much older, waved him over. “C’mon,” he said. “I’ll introduce ya.”

  It was the last thing Trev wanted—attention, notoriety, befriending anyone who was friends with his father. But if he denied the invitation, he’d look like a snob. If he accepted it, he effectively abandoned Khim. Although Khim had done nothing to ingratiate himself to Trev. They were only cellmates by misfortune, and by accident. He owed Khim nothing.

  With a heaviness in his chest, Trev got up, taking his tray to the table behind him. The men made room for him. He noticed the inmates who’d been bothering Khim were now eating three tables over. They hunched at their trays, but their gazes wandered. They glanced now and again at Khim, and they certainly noticed that Trev had left him alone.

  Kant said, “I was surprised to see you here in the food line. You’re one of the Damico boys, I know, but I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “Trev,” he said.

  “Ah, the youngest. I’ve known your father for almost twenty years.”

  Trev had never heard of Kant. He certainly had not seen him at any of his father’s parties or places of legitimate business. Trev stayed quiet and listened, wondering what Kant was in prison for, wondering why this man, who was definitely serving time, appeared to be so loyal to a Damico. Fear? Debt? Love?

  Certainly not the third.

  Instead of elaborating, Kant introduced Trev to his three companions—Thrash, Macon, Zamora. They were all dark like Kant, like Trev. They did indeed share a distant Earth culture, all descended from the Italian line with thick, dark brown hair and brown or blue eyes. One was dark-eyed but pale like the walls of the cafeteria. The others were caramel or brown, like Trev himself, whose skin had the tint of coffee with cream.

  Trev began to eat. He barely tasted the food, which was unremarkable but at least filling. He asked between bites, “How do you know my father?”