“How do you think you could hide your involvement in this?” Laughton said.
Sysigns jumped in to the same boat with Laughton. “Involvement in what? Finding the cure?” he said, grabbing at Laughton’s gun hand as the chief raised it. He was able to slap it away, but Laughton was able to maintain his grip on the weapon, and pull his hand back so that the robot didn’t have a hold on him.
Then Sysigns jumped, which caused the boat to shoot toward the dock, landing Laughton on his back, the edge of the boat catching him in the shoulder blade, tingles shooting down his arm. The robot was on top of him, the damn machine heavy, making it hard to breathe. Laughton tried to hold back Sysigns’s hands with his empty one, but his strength was no match for the soldier robot. Sysigns’s hand closed around his throat, while his other hand reached for the gun.
Laughton was choking, and not even able to cough. His eyes rolled up in their sockets, and he strained to aim the gun. He shot once into the side of the boat as Sysigns slammed his hand against the boat bottom. Laughton tried to roll, and the motion threw Sysigns off just enough that the chief was able to raise his arm, rotate his wrist, and take a shot.
This time the bullet grazed Sysigns, the electric charge causing a short, but not a shutdown. Still, the few seconds were enough for Laughton to get out from under him, choking, gasping, coughing, his free hand around his own neck, as though holding it would somehow prevent the pain.
He blinked, his vision turning black for a moment before coming back into focus. The boat wobbled. Sysigns was rising. Laughton turned his head, raised his gun, and shot as the robot leapt at him. This bullet hit him square in the chest, and the charge dropped him like it had dropped his men.
Laughton fell onto his side, coughing. At one point it felt like he was going to cough out his insides, and he was almost wishing to vomit while struggling to get enough air. A sound, out of place, was coming from somewhere nearby, mechanical, no, electric.
He was able to stop coughing, but still had all of his attention focused on breathing. The stars up above were calming, comforting. He pulled himself up into a sitting position, leaning his back against the side of the boat. Sysigns was slumped in an odd pile. As always, Laughton noted how a robot, when shut down, became a thing. When people slept, they were still people, breathing, moving, living. Robots were just things, things that ruled the world.
The sound was coming again, and Laughton realized it was his phone. He was far enough from the building’s jamming signal. He put the gun down beside him, and pulled it out. It was Mathews.
“Chief? Chief? Are you okay? You there?”
Laughton tried to say yes, but all he was able to do was cough again.
“Chief!” Mathews was almost in a panic. “They’re on their way,” he said. “They’re on their way.”
Laughton took a stuttered, gasping breath, filling his chest. “Good,” he said, a croak. “Good.”
The cleanup was messy. Mathews had gotten in touch with the commissioner, and the commissioner had known enough to send a human force, so, despite the scene being off the preserve, it was the preserve that got to control the scene. They brought inhibitors, which kept all of the robots shut down. Two young men helped Laughton get Sysigns out of the boat and back to the resort. Titanium was gone. She must have had another way off the island. She had left the antivirus in Kir’s hand—a white stick to counter the red one that was causing so much damage—and she must have shot the robots again, Laughton realized; otherwise they would have come after him. In any case, it seemed like a deal was a deal, so Laughton thought it was easier to not mention that she had ever been there. The only way this was going to go their way was if it could be all tied up. Once the scene was under control, the commissioner called the army. Laughton figured Brandis would probably love tearing down one of his counterparts almost as much as tearing down humans.
Laughton and Kir snuck back to the boat they had commandeered from the yacht club. They would have to face the colonel and the rest of the robot panel from the day before soon enough—in fact, they received a message not long after leaving the island demanding their presence at police headquarters that afternoon—so they took the opportunity to slip away even if it was only delaying the inevitable. After all, they needed to return the boat and retrieve the truck.
The wind from the speed of the boat made Laughton’s eyes water, little rivulets of tears flowing from the outside corners of his eyes back along his temples. It was chilly, but in a way that was refreshing instead of discomforting. The groan of the motor made conversation difficult. Instead, the chief detached his mind, letting the wind and the water and the landscape that had been invisible to him on their night journey wash over his thoughts, suppressing them.
“Look!” Kir yelled, pointing ahead of them, taking the boat down to a whine and then to a grumble.
Laughton tried to follow Kir’s sight line, seeing nothing but the oscillating water. Then he saw one, two dorsal fins crest about seventy yards away, describing a gentle arc as they slipped once more beneath the waves. Dolphins. Waiting in anticipation, he kept his eyes on the spot where they had disappeared. Kir cut the engine and joined the chief at the front of the boat. “Breathe,” the robot said, but before Laughton could follow his advice, the two fins appeared again, much closer than he had expected them. They were two different sizes and very close together.
“I think one of them’s a baby,” Laughton said.
The dolphins were just feet away then, and one was definitely a juvenile. They circled, and sped under the boat, appearing on the other side, rising and falling again and again as they explored this novelty.
“Erica will be so jealous,” Laughton said.
“Watching you watch them means more to me than they do,” Kir said.
That made Laughton miss Erica all the more. That’s what he’d have felt if she’d been there. Did that mean Kir saw him as a child? He didn’t like that. “I’m not a child,” he said.
“I only meant I like to see you happy. Haven’t seen that in a while. Betty will be jealous.”
The robot meant that he loved him. And Laughton loved Kir too. If he stopped and reflected that Kir was a machine, and that this fact had created the preserve to separate them, he began to wonder if the whole project was a mistake. What was that teaching Erica? That segregation was the only answer to differences? There was ample evidence of hate between robots and humans, which presupposed there could be love, and killing went in all directions.
The dolphins made another pass, and he wondered what the dolphin mother was thinking, showing them to her calf. They dove.
Laughton waited and waited, and when he finally caught sight of them, they were already sixty yards away. He looked at Kir. The robot was watching him.
“You can’t plan for this,” Laughton said, trying to put his feelings into words. “Even if you go looking for it, you can’t plan.”
“Like humans,” Kir said.
Laughton thought back over the last few days. “Humans are too predictable,” he said.
“Less than dolphins,” Kir said. “Less than any other organic being.”
“Because we kill each other over ideas? Over nothing?”
“Because you can think your way beyond your nature.”
“Robots do that,” Laughton said.
“We have no nature,” Kir said.
That fell on Laughton like a weight. All of his life robots had been people to him. That was perhaps the key difference between his thinking and Smythe’s. It was about living with them and judging how they would react. Hell, Kir was his best friend. But he was, at base, a machine.
“I recorded the dolphins for Erica,” Kir said. “I’ll send it to you.”
“Thank you,” Laughton said, wanting to say more but not sure what that was.
Kir returned to the engine, and their speed picked up again. Laughton now scanned the horizon for the telltale appearance of more fins, but they didn’t see any more.
> * * *
That afternoon, Laughton and Kir were back in the same room they had stood in the day before, in front of the same panel of robots from all of the different branches of the robot government minus Sysigns. He remained decommissioned in some army stronghold.
“The antivirus patch works,” Pattermann said to the room. “We expect all robot forces to be removed from the preserve by the end of the day.”
“What about the fact that the virus originated from a human terrorist,” Brandis said. “We’re supposed to just leave ourselves open to further attack?”
“One extremist does not make the entire human population culpable,” Pattermann said. “And the fact that a high-ranking robot in the military had access to the antivirus but had not released it doesn’t sound too good.”
Brandis’s face remained impassive, but Laughton knew he must have been seething. At last, Brandis shook his head. “No. A single human extremist released the virus as a terrorist attack, and Chief Laughton here neutralized the hostile and delivered the antivirus as a good citizen.”
“And who was this hostile?” the commissioner said.
“The hacker. What’s his name? Who started it all.”
“You want to claim someone killed days ago only just now produced the antivirus?” Kir said. “I’m sorry, the HHS isn’t going to go along with this. It still makes this a human security breach. Popular sentiment for the preserve will still take a blow.”
“And what do you think happens if popular sentiment turned on the military?” Brandis said. “You need us to be able to protect the preserve, don’t you?”
There was a moment of silence while everyone made their own calculations. At last, Laughton said, “Why make it complicated? McCardy killed Smythe. We got McCardy. Simple.”
“And the antivirus?”
“McCardy’s a hero. Tried to stop Smythe and then turned out to have the antivirus.”
Silence again.
The commissioner said, “I don’t like it.”
“It’s the truth,” Pattermann said.
“But not the whole truth,” the commissioner said.
“Good enough.”
The robots stood. Laughton wasn’t sure what he felt about any of this. Was it really what was best for humans? Having the military owe them could be more valuable than anything. He rolled his shoulders, wincing at the bruise from where he had fallen back during his fight with Sysigns. He was just tired. So tired. He wanted to go to bed.
But the press conference came first. When the commissioner called him forth to receive a medal, he smiled, and said thank you, and left it at that. After the ceremony, he found his truck in the police department’s lot. Kir walked him out.
“I’ve got to go back to Washington,” Kir said.
“You going to come see Betty and Erica? Say goodbye. You need to show Erica the dolphins.”
Kir shook his head. “I’ve got to make sure that everyone stays on script. I don’t trust any of those bastards. I need to be on hand.”
“The whole thing sucks,” Laughton said. “Fucking make an orgo the sole bad guy.”
“And an orgo the good guy,” Kir said.
“Because that’s what robots are going to hear,” Laughton said, sarcastic.
“Listen. Come back to Washington with me. Now you’re a hero. You’ll have a lot of clout. You want to protect people? This will protect people.”
“I wanted away from all of this. The preserve is supposed to be a safe haven.”
“Then make it that for others.”
“Betty would never leave. She’s doing important work here. Work that can’t be done anywhere else, that’s much more essential than me being a politician. You’ve got that handled.”
“You’re exhausted,” Kir said. “You look like hell. Rest, and think about it. It feels too good to have you by my side. I miss it.”
Laughton sighed, and held out his hand. “Me too.”
Kir took Laughton’s hand and pulled him into a hug. The robot squeezed him tight, just short of hurting him. “Hero,” Kir said, releasing him.
“Partner,” Laughton said.
Kir opened the door to the truck, and Laughton climbed in. He pushed the on button, and once the GPS came online, he tapped “Home.”
* * *
It was dark when Laughton arrived home, just past Erica’s bedtime. The whole left side of his face tingled, like pins and needles, and it made his eyelids heavy. He had to imagine falling into bed in order to gather enough energy to leave the truck. He got out, then remembered the medal, and reached over the driver’s seat to retrieve it from the passenger side. He wondered if they had a box of them at headquarters that they were able to produce one on such short notice. It had a Charleston Police Department seal on one side, an elongated octagon with a large double-masted clipper ship, which was the logo the city used before the creation of the preserve, so, yeah, they were probably working their way through back stock. They’d engraved the flat side with his name, the date, and the phrase “For service to robot and human safety.” Had to get that “robot” in there.
The door to the house unlocked at his touch, and he let himself in. Betty was nestled in one corner of the couch, her feet curled up beneath her, her phone in hand held ten inches from her face. She dropped it into her lap to greet him. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
“She wanted you to come in when you got home,” Betty said. She held both arms out to him without getting up.
He crossed to the couch and collapsed next to her, leaning back so she could wrap her arms around his chest and hold him. All of his muscles relaxed, sinking into her. It made the fight he’d had on the boat feel impossible, unreal. How could he have almost lost all of this? He knew he should probably have felt angry, but all he felt was anxious, like a delayed reaction, all of the fear that he must have been carrying for the last few days flooding him now.
“Crisis averted,” Betty said.
He held up the medal and she took it. She read it, and said, “What, do they just have these lying around?”
He grinned. “That’s what I thought.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, dropping it on the couch next to them. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
“And I’m sorry for freaking out on you.”
“It’s okay to be scared,” Laughton said.
“Yeah, well…”
The indelicate thump, thump of feet coming down the stairs made Laughton roll his eyes, and Betty said, “Shit.”
“Daddy, are you coming?” Erica said. She had come down just far enough that she could peek through the top of the banister to look at them.
“He’s coming,” Betty said. “Get back in bed.”
“When is he coming?”
“Get back to bed,” Betty said, exasperated. Guess he had missed a normal bedtime, i.e., frustration hour.
But this was the point, Erica was the point, the thing that made them human, that made the preserve imperative, that was both the recipient of his legacy and his legacy itself. “No,” he said, raising his legs to use them as a counterweight, lifting him off the couch as he dropped them to stand. “I’m coming now.”
“I told her you’d come in when you got home,” Betty said.
“I’m coming,” he said, halfway to the stairs.
“She was supposed to wait.”
Erica was in her panda pajamas, her white torso floating over black legs halfway up the stairs.
“Go on,” Laughton said. “Up.”
Erica turned, and trotted back upstairs, running ahead of him. Her bed hit the wall with a crack as she leapt into it, laughing.
“Settle down,” he said, coming into her darkened room.
She threw the covers off her face and yelled, “Boo,” and then laughed and rolled back and forth on the bed.
“Erica.” She kept laughing. “Erica. Erica, stop!” And she always made it so difficult. He knew that she was excited to see him, that
she knew enough about what had been going on to have been scared as well, but knowing that was what was causing the behavior didn’t make it easier to handle. The discomfort in his face tightened. “If you want me to tuck you in, then stop.”
She settled, curling up, allowing him to cover her. “Will you sit with me in the dark for five minutes?”
Laughton sat down on the edge of her bed, and then leaned over her, kissing the top of her head, and then allowing the weight of his upper body to rest on her. She liked feeling the two of them squished together. He had to struggle to not fall asleep.
“Mom said everything’s okay now. You fixed it,” she said.
“And Uncle Kir,” Laughton said. “And others. Not just me.”
“But mostly you,” she said.
The hero worship felt better than any medal, and Laughton smiled in the dark. They were both quiet for half a minute. Then it occurred to Laughton to make sure if Erica knew what had happened at all. “You know what happened?” he said.
“You found the antivirus that’s going to stop robots from dying, so they’re going to leave the preserve alone,” she said.
Of course she knew exactly what was going on. She was Erica. “Yes,” he said.
“Will they really leave the preserve alone?” she said.
“Yes,” Laughton said. “For now.” Betty would have been annoyed at him for adding the “for now,” but he didn’t believe in shielding Erica too much. Not knowing could be worse than knowing. “Probably for good,” he said. “There are enough robots who support it. It’s convenient to have us out of the way. If that’s a good thing.”
“Why wouldn’t it be a good thing?” Erica said.
“I don’t know,” he said, not wanting to get into the thoughts he’d had on the boat, about the importance of learning how to live together and share. It made him remember the dolphins. “We saw dolphins today,” he said.
“Eeeeee,” she squealed.
The Preserve Page 21
