Tower Of The Gods

by Thomas A Easton

  Pearl Angelica sighed with relief when she did not see Esteban among them. But then panic clutched at her throat—Was he absent because they had not caught him? Or because they had already killed him?

  Now Hrecker was indicating Anatol. “The murderer. He has confessed to murdering Walter Crocin and then to helping the bot escape.” He did not say what Crocin had been doing just before his death. Pearl Angelica felt sure Anatol must have explained that despite the pain that had extracted his “confession.”

  That night, when she was alone at last, she asked the cuff, “Can you see as well as hear? Donna?” Using her mother’s name for a scrap of plastic, no matter how much intelligence it held, did not come naturally. “There aren’t any wires in this cage.”

  Instead of answering her question directly, the machine’s quiet voice said, “That veedo set is plugged into the floor beneath it. There has to be a wire.”

  “But where?”

  The cuff was silent while a small robot trundled through the concourse and disappeared into a corridor. Soon thereafter Pearl Angelica was following the cuff’s instructions to wind its induction tap into a small coil. When it said, “Tie it so it doesn’t unwind,” she wished for the first time in her life for hair. She had no string, no cloth to unravel, nothing. But then she realized that she did indeed have something. She stooped and grasped a narrow tendril of her roots. She pulled, gasped with pain, and pulled again until it snapped.

  The artificial intelligence in the cuff knew nothing of pain. “Push it through the mesh,” it said. “Dangle it over the edge. Let it lie flat on the floor.”

  When the machine detected no electrical currents beneath the coil, it instructed her to reel it in and try again, a little further around the circle of the cage. Eventually the cuff’s voice displayed a hint of satisfaction—Was it picking up a human feel by associating with her? Was that why Esteban’s cuff sounded the way it did?—as it said, “Don’t move it now. There…I’m sending. No response. Can you mark the spot?”

  Once more she bore the pain of tearing off a tendril. Tied around a strand of the mesh, it would tell her where to pay out her line when it was time to fish again.

  “Esteban? Thank god. I thought…”

  Her leaves were now fully regrown. According to the cuff, it had been four days since she had been returned to her cage. Nights when every attempt to reach the only one of her friends who—She thought! She hoped!—had not been imprisoned and tortured by Security had failed.

  “It took a while,” he said. “I didn’t know whether they had spotted our messages. But I finally heard. Someone talked.”

  “But…”

  “I was more careful than a lot of our group. Anatol was his real name, you know? And Cherilee was hers. But ‘Esteban.’ That’s pure fiction, pure disguise, and I never spoiled it.”

  “You were right.” She did not ask him what his real name was.

  “I wish I wasn’t.”

  “Have they set a date for the executions?”

  The televised trial had been no more than a brief formality. The sentences had been no surprise at all.

  “Not yet. Not that I’ve heard.”

  “Maybe they’ve done it already.” If so, Anatol was gone, beyond her reach forevermore. So was Cherilee.

  “They might have,” said Esteban.

  The cuff interrupted them before either could speak again. “Quick! Reel in the tap. I hear someone coming.”

  Far too soon, Hrecker stood beside the dais and Pearl Angelica was trying to conceal the relief the Security chief’s words had sent washing through her. “They’re going to die,” he had just said. “You can have the pleasure of knowing you killed them.”

  He saw the question on her face. “No,” he said. He rose once on his toes and came down. “We aren’t going to make you push the button that opens the airlock. But you came here, didn’t you? You corrupted them. So the responsibility is yours.”

  “Then I must be a murderer.” But they were still alive. All of them.

  Hrecker nodded solemnly and bounced again. “You’ve been tried in absentia. The sentence was death.”

  She was silent as the outrageousness of what he had just said sank in. She had known she was not likely to survive her captivity. She could hide, as she had indeed, but only until someone betrayed her. She could not escape, for the lunar base was surrounded by an environment that would not permit her to live if she left. Even a spacesuit or a truck would keep her alive only for a while.

  Nor was rescue likely. She supposed Marcus Yamoto must have told the Orbitals just where in the base her cage was positioned. But someone—she forgot just who it had been—had told her the Engineers were too well armed for a raid to have any hope of success.

  The sentence Hrecker had just pronounced was no surprise. Yet some part of her had clung to hope. It was still a shock, just as he must have intended.

  Even as she felt that shock, she realized that this could not be happening, not yet, not now, unless…“The Quebecis back, isn’t it? The Gypsy ship. My Aunt Lois.” When he nodded again, she said, “And she told you they won’t pay the ransom.”

  When Hrecker simply stared at her, she said, “Why did it take you so long? You knew who was talking to me. You must have known the first time he helped me climb out of here.”

  His eyebrows rose. “How?”

  “Cameras,” she said. “Microphones. Where did you hide them? Out of sight in a tunnel? In the roses? The veedo set? Overhead?” As she named the possibilities, she pointed.

  He shook his head. His bounces were no longer isolated but rhythmic. “Why should we waste the effort? We caught you anyway. As well as the renegades who helped you.”

  She struggled to keep the sudden swell of elation his words released from showing in her face. He did not know about Esteban. He thought he had arrested everyone who sympathized with her. And she must not let slip any hints that might revive the hunt!

  He said nothing more, though he studied her face and body carefully for several long minutes before he turned and left.

  Had he seen anything in her face or posture? Had she hidden her feelings well enough? She could hardly be sure, but she thought he knew no more when he left than when he had come. She prayed she was right.

  It was several more minutes before the cuff, her Donna, that miniature namesake of her mother, said, “He’s gone. Put the tap out again.”

  Esteban was waiting. She told him who had interrupted them and what she had learned.

  “Shit,” he said. “Or ‘Litter,’ as your people say.”

  “It’s been nice to know you. I think you’re safe. I hope so. I suppose I am only until after the executions. If they’re killing me because I’m guilty of their murder, they have to wait, don’t they?”

  She imagined that he was shaking his head. “Maybe,” he said. “It’s probably easier than fiddling the paperwork.”

  “I wonder where Aunt Lois is now?”

  “I can find out for you.” There was a pause before he muttered, “I’m at home, you know. Of course. It’s night…But I’ve got Stan’s big brother right here…”

  She pictured him facing a standard computer terminal, his fingers on its keys, his eyes intent on the lines of type that flashed across the screen.

  “Nothing in the public databases…The Ministries should change their passwords once in a while…There!”

  “What?”

  “She’s right over us. Or near enough. Drifting north. She keeps coming back. Not really in an orbit.”

  Elation filled Pearl Angelica’s throat. “If I could get outside!”

  “She wouldn’t dare. You’d both be dead.”

  “It’s the death watch, then.” She would stay there, holding position all the time, hovering as if Pearl Angelica lay in a deathbed, waiting until she heard her niece was dead.

  Esteban grunted. “Here’s the minutes of the last meeting of Ministers…this afternoon. You don’t want to know this.”

&nb
sp; “Tell me!”

  “The main argument was whether to kill you on or off camera. The consensus was on. They think that will convince the Orbitals they’re in earnest and make them less likely to refuse their demands the next time they kidnap someone.”

  “How long?”

  “Not much.” His voice cracked. “They’re going to do you all…”

  When he fell silent, she thought he could not bear to name the limit that had been set on her life. But then he took a deep breath, clearly audible through the cuff, and managed, “Day after tomorrow. The file doesn’t say what time.”

  * * *

  Chapter Seventeen

  Pearl Angelica pressed her face against the cold metal bars of her cage. She fingered the loops like links of chain that bound the steel mesh to those bars. She eyed the mesh ceiling that meant she could no longer climb up some ally’s knee and hip and shoulder and head and jump to freedom. She plunged her roots into the dirt beneath her feet and jerked them through it, plowing, churning. It had once been much the same as the fertile stuff Cherilee Wright used for her garden beds—mixed regolith and compost—but it did not taste the same. She had not been free in the greenhouse, but there the soil had not held the metallic reek of chains.

  She peered through the gaps in the mesh. The concourse surrounding the cage was dim. The only sounds were the soft sigh of distant air pumps, a gurgle of water or sewage in pipes beneath the floor or in the ceiling, a hum of machinery that made her think Anatol might have escaped his own cell and hijacked another truck. Could he possibly be on his way to rescue her once more? No. Of course not. There were no trucks on this lower level, no way to get one here, and besides Security would be watching for just such a move.

  Even if he were on his way, how could he hope to rescue her? There was no longer a way out of her cage. There was nowhere to go even if she could get out. The most that he could give her was one more glimpse of his face, a touch of his hand, a word. She craved them all. She knew she would never have them.

  A distant clicking grew louder, closer. It became obviously the sound of footsteps, and she hoped very briefly that maybe, just maybe, she was wrong. Anatol had escaped his jailers! He was coming to visit her one last time!

  But the pedestrian who emerged from a corridor mouth, darted a furtive glance toward the imprisoned bot, and followed the wall to the next corridor was not her friend.

  Why was this stranger so furtive when so many others had gathered close around her to stare and taunt? Perhaps Pearl Angelica was simply the last to hear of her imminent doom. The stranger had already heard at least a rumor, and he did not wish to come too close for fear her fate would prove contagious.

  The silence stretched while she contemplated a time two mornings hence. Finally, she said, “Esteban? Are you still there?”

  “Of course,” came the soft murmur from her cuff. “I couldn’t leave you now, Angie. Not unless there’s a knock on my door. And now that they’ve got you again, there’s not much chance of that. Unless I was less careful than I thought I was and someone knows who ‘Esteban’ is. But I was careful, and—”

  “You’re babbling,” she said. “This upsets you worse than it does me. But then I’ve been expecting it ever since I heard what ransom they wanted for me. This isn’t any surprise, though now that it’s so close—”

  “Now who’s babbling?”

  “You’re right,” she said. “But there’s nothing else we can do.”

  “I’d love to think of something.”

  “Can you contact the Quebec? Talk to my aunt? Let me talk to her?”

  He hesitated before responding. “I’d have to hack into the com center for that. I’ve never done that. Though it shouldn’t be hard. Never wanted to talk to anyone who wasn’t already here, you know? Not on Earth. My mother’s dead. My father thinks I’m a radical subversive traitor to the cause because I came to the Moon. And I don’t know any Orbitals. But if I can tap those Ministry files—”

  “You’re babbling again.” She imagined his hands on the keyboard of his terminal, calling up menus, searching for back doors and access codes, discovering the subroutine that controlled some isolated dish antenna, typing the commands that swivelled it on its base and aimed it toward her aunt’s ship.

  “Just talking to myself, Angie. While I…”

  He could not slip. No errors would be allowed. No typos. The trick was avoiding whatever watchdogs Security might have planted in the system, detecting the hesitancies of response that said an extra program was monitoring what one was doing, finding passwords or alternate paths to one’s goal, every sense stretched to the limits of its sensitivity, every nerve and muscle tuned for speed.

  She knew it all was possible. She could do it herself, at least if she had a bioform computer. Her roots would interface with its. She would, in effect, make it a part of her nervous system and operate it with all the speed of thought. Lacking that, she did not think her senses or responses would be nearly fast enough.

  “There.” He sounded immensely pleased with himself. “Do you know her number? Just kidding. Here…”

  “Pearl Angelica?”

  Even after passing through so many relays—from the com center to a speaker in Esteban’s room to his cuff to hers—and then being distorted by the tiny speaker in the cuff, the voice was recognizable. It was hard for the bot not to scream her answer: “Aunt Lois!”

  “I’m here. I can’t do a thing, but…but I’m here. Call me a witness.”

  “I’ve already said you’re on the death watch.”

  “It is that, isn’t it? I’m sorry, dear. Twice now…” Her tone was awkward, embarrassed, pained. Humans did not ordinarily discuss such things with those about to die, especially when the near-dead were close friends or kin. Yet all those generations of bots before Pearl Angelica had lived so briefly. Death had been closer to them, easier to think about. Pearl Angelica had already enjoyed a nearly human life span, but she had absorbed the bot attitude from her mother. So, to a lesser extent, had Lois McAlois, for she had been close to Donna Rose for several years. She had in fact been with her at the end.

  “Twice? Daddy?”

  “Yes. Frederick died at last.”

  Pearl Angelica had to struggle to get the words past the sudden blockage in her throat. “I wish I’d seen him one more time.”

  “I did.” Her grief was as audible as the bot’s. “For both of us. I got back just in time. And I told him what happened. He was lucid enough to agree. No ransom.”

  “I know. You can’t. I’d say the same.”

  The silence after that was broken only by Esteban’s muttered, sympathetic, “Shit!” until the pilot, safe in her metal shell above the Moon, said, “We’d all like to help.”

  “But it’s impossible.”

  “We don’t dare give them what they demand. Even if it costs…”

  “A life,” said the bot. “Just one life.”

  “But it’s your life!” said Esteban.

  “It would be a lot more if we gave in,” said Pearl Angelica.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” said Lois McAlois again. “We’re all sorry. The bots…Did you know they hoped you would become their Eldest?”

  After a moment, the caged bot forced a chuckle. “Is that what they thought my potential was?”

  “I suppose. But it’s true, your potential has always been enormous. I would have liked to see how it turned out. So would Renny, and your father.”

  “My mother too.” She had been dead for most of Pearl Angelica’s life. She had missed so many milestones of her daughter’s years. Now she would miss this last one of all. Better, thought the bot, to say she would be spared it. She wished she could be spared it herself. She would like to learn how long she might live if left to normal aging, and how that famous potential of hers might turn out.

  “Of course. But we don’t dare…”

  “Esteban?” said the bot. “How are they going to do it? Hrecker said something about opening an airlock.�
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  “That’s the usual method. But…”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s just that they hadn’t decided to do it that way. One minister wanted to dissect you, live.”

  “That’s vivisection,” said Lois McAlois. She sounded horrified.

  “Another just wanted to see whether your blood is red or green.”

  “It’s red,” said Pearl Angelica. She had seen it often enough to know.

  “They mentioned hanging, shooting, beheading. Someone—the minutes didn’t name him—even wondered whether vegetarians could eat you. He said it couldn’t be cannibalism since you’re not human, but he wondered, are you animal enough to count as meat?”

  “They’re as barbaric as they ever were,” said Lois.

  “Not all of us,” said Esteban.

  “They hate me,” the bot whispered to her cuff. She wished desperately that she could see her aunt once more before the end. She wished she could see Esteban. And Anatol and Cherilee.

  “They laughed at that one. Maybe it was just a joke.”

  “Black enough,” said the bot.

  “Yeah. But it didn’t help them make up their minds. Quick or slow, clean or messy. The only thing they agreed on was that it should go on the veedo.”

  Pearl Angelica stared past the steel bars and mesh that caged her in, stared at the veedo set on the other end of the dais. It was dark and silent now. But all too soon the cage would be empty and for a moment she—or her image—would be in that glass-fronted box. Whatever gawkers would come to gloat over her right and proper fate would watch her die behind that glass.

  The silence stretched, broken only by the distant sounds of the base that surrounded and imprisoned Pearl Angelica. She was damned, she knew, damned three times over. Once because she was a monstrous hybrid, part human, part plant, all unthinkable blasphemy. Twice because she represented all the novelty and progress the Engineers had destroyed on Earth, the gengineers and their new technology that was saving what the old could no longer support. She was what they had lost. Three times because she came from the Engineers’ hated rivals, the Orbitals and Gypsies, some of whom had fled the destruction on Earth, all of whom managed to preserve and use and even extend both old and new technologies. She was what they could never be as long as they retained their neophobic attitudes.