"Possibly." She wished they had more choices. "But driving makes us vulnerable." She started to reach out to him, then realized what she was doing and withdrew her hand. "I promised to take you to a safe place, but I'm not sure now that I can without help."
He watched her hand, his gaze lingering. "It's only a few more hours to San Francisco."
"That's a few more hours Charon has to locate us." It flustered Sam when he watched her that way, with his lashes half lowered.
"If Charon picks up your call, it will be like a great big arrow pointing to us."
"We'll be at risk no matter what," she said.
"You think a call is better?"
"I think so."
He had the look of a man about to dive off a cliff. "I hope you're right."
So do I, Sam thought.
* * *
Sam had known Thomas Wharington most of her life. He and her father had attended the Air Force Academy together and both had become career officers. As a small child, Sam had found Thomas's calm manner reassuring. Over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a well-built physique, he had looked every bit the hero to her, especially in his blue uniform. His deep voice had made her think of movie superheroes. As she matured, she had come to appreciate his straightforward manner. He had never talked down to her, but always treated her like an adult. In her teen years, she had imitated his taciturn style, answering her parents in clipped, no-nonsense tones until her exasperated mother told her to cut it out.
As an adult, Sam had seen a different side of Thomas. His worldview had a hardness she hadn't understood in her childhood. She admired his integrity and would always love him for his kindness, but the ease she had felt with him as an adoring child vanished the day she realized "Uncle Thomas" could kill without the flick of an eyelash if he believed it necessary to defend his country. But the steel of his character was also why she trusted him. Thomas was a tough man, but he was also one of the finest people she knew.
At the moment, however, he looked like a man who didn't appreciate her waking him up. Sam could see him on the screen of the dashboard. He was sitting behind the desk in his office at home, but he otherwise looked thoroughly unofficial. His usually impeccable gray hair was mussed, and he had on a rumpled blue sweater. Dark circles ringed his gray eyes. Sam's mother had referred to him as a "silver fox," in honor of his luxuriant hair and finely chiseled features, but right now he looked like a half-asleep pit bull.
"Sam." He scowled. "This had better be good."
"I'm afraid," Sam said, "that it could be very bad."
His frown vanished. "Go on."
"Do you want to catch Charon?"
Although Thomas barely moved, Sam knew she had hit big. She could read him almost as well as she had read her father. That subtle set of his jaw, the wariness in his gaze—yes, she knew the signs. He recognized the name, and it wasn't from some mythological tale.
He said only, "Who is Charon?"
"Someone who might be trouble," Sam said. "I have his latest creation."
Thomas sat up straight, no longer trying to hide his response. "What creation?"
Turner shifted in the passenger's seat, moving closer to the door so Thomas couldn't see him.
"A man," Sam said. "He claims Charon made him. He says he ran away and Charon is searching for him." Sam grimaced. "A few hours ago an armed car chased us down the coast highway and almost blasted us off the road."
"Good Lord, Sam." Thomas leaned forward. "What have you got yourself involved in?"
"Hell if I know. He came to me."
"Where is this man?"
Sam glanced at Turner, asking a silent question.
He looked uncomfortable, but he said, "It's okay. Tell him."
"You can talk to Thomas," she offered.
"I don't want him to see me."
"Sam?" Thomas asked. "Who are you speaking to?"
"His name is Turner." She took a moment to collect her thoughts. Then she told him everything. By the time she finished, he no longer looked the least bit tired.
"Stay where you are," Thomas said. "I can have a chopper there in twenty minutes."
"That fast?"
"Maximum."
"No!" Turner said. "It will lead Charon to us."
"Is that him?" Thomas asked.
"Yes," Sam said. "He says Charon will find us."
"We won't let that happen." He paused, concern on his face. "If you're on the stretch of coastal road where I think, the Bird may not be able to put down. You'll have to climb a ladder."
"What bird?"
"Redbird. The chopper. It's a scout, designed for fast travel. Will you be all right with it, Sam? We can send a medical crew on this one."
Medical crew? She didn't understand why he was so worried about her. "I'll be fine." She vaguely recalled the Redbird. It had come into military use over the past decade, an aircraft that flew itself but could take a small crew if desired. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she remembered the saying about Charon that had popped into her mind earlier. He can only take you across once.
"I hope it reaches us in time," she said.
He checked his desk. "It's been in route for about fifteen minutes, since you mentioned the name Charon."
"We're dead," Turner muttered.
Sam glanced at him. "What makes you so sure?"
"If your friend's people sent help the minute they heard Charon's name," Turner said, "they know we're in trouble."
"Was that the forma?" Thomas asked.
Turner went rigid, anger flashing on his face.
"He's a man," Sam told Thomas.
"Is he picking up the signal from Charon now?" Thomas asked.
Turner spoke into the comm. "I can't find it now, General Wharington. He could have changed it. Maybe he knows we picked it up. He might be listening to us."
"This is a secured channel," Thomas said.
"He's probably bouncing lasers off our windshield right now," Turner said.
"Not my windshield," Madrigal said. "It absorbs the electromagnetic radiation."
"He'll find a way around that," Turner said. "You don't know Charon."
Thomas didn't answer. His neutral expression made Sam suspect he knew Charon a lot better than he intended to reveal.
Sam became aware of a rumble overhead. "I think our ride is here early."
Thomas exhaled. "God's speed, Sam."
"Thanks." Sam took control of the car and guided it to the side of the road. "No one better bother my car."
"Don't worry," Madrigal said. "I'm armed." The doors unlocked with a click.
Sam glanced at Turner. "Ready to go?"
He nodded, his jaw set. When they opened their doors, the roar jumped in volume. Sam stepped out into a gale produced by—nothing. An engine growled in the sky, along with the chop-chop-chop of blades, yet she saw nothing. Trees covered the bluff rising up on their left, and on the right, rocky cliffs dropped to the ocean. A small helicopter might have landed on the narrow road, but the blades would have hit the trees or the mountain.
Turner stood across the car from her, his hands braced on the open door as he stared upward. "Where is it?"
"Near the trees." She used her hand to shield her eyes against the wind as she looked up. She could make out a dark shape hovering above them now. A line dropped down from it, long and supple. It hit the side of the car, then swung away, into the hillside.
A voice called out above them. "Climb the ladder."
Sam slammed the door and ran around the car. The wind threw her hair into her face as she grabbed the ladder, which was made of supple rope or cables. Next to her, Turner was clutching his car door, his face a pale oval in the night.
Sam thrust the ladder at him. "You go first." She wasn't sure how much his EI could handle yet; he might freeze up and not follow if she went ahead of him.
Turner grabbed the ladder, his motions jerky. As he climbed, her pulse raced. She kept imagining another craft lowering out of the night, and she fo
ught the urge to scramble up and over him. As soon as he had gone a few yards up, she started climbing. The ladder swung back and forth, weighted by their bodies. It gave her vertigo. She felt certain she should remember something about this, something important, but it escaped her.
Sam kept climbing, clutching the ladder. Then she hit Turner's foot. She stopped and looked up. Turner was hanging on the ladder with his eyes squeezed shut and his arms hooked over one rung.
"Keep going," she called.
No answer.
She inched her way up, reaching around him, her front against his back. He was gripping the rope so hard, his knuckles felt like iron under her palms. Fighting her own dizziness, she pressed against him. Wind tore around them, cold and sharp.
"You can do this," Sam said.
"I can't," he whispered.
She couldn't tell if his EI brain was simulating a terror Turner Pascal would have felt or if a problem in the matrix had caused him to freeze. She hung on, clenching the ladder, her arms around him, trying to offer reassurance with her presence. Peering upward, she could make out the Redbird, sleek and dark. "Can you pull us up?" she called.
The ladder began rising. As they came closer, she saw a person in the entrance of the Bird, a man or a woman in dark clothes. Hands grabbed her and Turner and heaved them inside. With relief, Sam sprawled across the deck.
"Got them," a woman said.
Sam lay on her stomach, breathing hard. Her heart pounded as if she had run a marathon.
"Dr. Bryton?" a man asked. "Are you all right?"
Sam raised her head. The Redbird had just enough light to reveal several men and women in uniform. The man leaning over her wore a jumpsuit with a medical patch on the shoulder.
"I'm okay," Sam said, sitting up. She was more concerned about Turner. He lay nearby, curled in a fetal position, his eyes closed. Another medic was leaning over him, a woman in the uniform of an Air Force major. A third officer knelt on Turner's other side, a man doing checks with a scanner.
"Is my friend all right?" Sam asked.
The man next to Sam spoke to the woman by Turner. "How is he, Major Parsons?"
Parsons looked over at them. "We aren't sure what happened. He's in a coma."
Sam wondered if he had shut down his matrix. The last time he had "turned off," he had keyed his wake-up to her. She scooted across the deck to Turner, and Parsons moved aside. The Redbird rumbled all around them.
Sam laid her hand on Turner's shoulder, offering comfort. "It's all right. We're safe." She felt an urge to stroke his hair, even to press her lips against his cheek, but she held back.
His eyes opened enough for him to look at her, his pupils dilated. He spoke in a barely audible voice. "I'm afraid of heights. And closed spaces."
She squeezed his shoulder. "We'll be all right." His fears probably came from Turner Pascal. It was hard to imagine someone programming phobias into an EI, though she supposed it wasn't impossible.
He rolled onto his back, looking up at the man who was scanning him. "What—?"
"I'm doing some tests," the medic said. "To make sure you're all right."
Turner closed his eyes as they took his blood pressure.
His terror tugged at Sam. It seemed real. It could be simulated, but if the emotions felt real to him, who was to say they weren't?
While the medics checked over Turner, and herself as well, Sam pondered. To be an EI, Turner had to pass demanding forms of the Turing test, which essentially said that if a person communicated with a machine and another human without knowing which was which—and couldn't tell them apart—then the machine had intelligence. Older tests used sentences typed at terminals, but nowadays many versions existed. The verbal Turing helped distinguish an EI from an AI. The EI's speech had to be convincing, not only its content but also its tone and nuance. If she asked, "Do you like the beach by my house?" he needed more than knowledge about oceans, he also had to interpret "like" and describe how he felt.
Turner had no problem with the verbal test. As far as Sam was concerned, he also passed the visual, which required the EI be visually indistinguishable from a person. He needed human expressions, mannerisms, and body language. He had to interpret and respond to visual cues humans gave one another. His portrayal of fear, love, anger, joy, and all the rest had to convince even an EI architect he was human. When Sam had first met Turner, she had realized he was part biomech, but she wouldn't have guessed he was an EI.
Some researchers thought human brains were wired for more processing than an EI matrix could handle, even "simple" tasks such as recognizing another person. They considered the visual Turing impossible. Sam didn't agree. It was true, though, that few EIs existed. Most never developed beyond AIs. The others she had known were contained within computers, including Madrigal. The few androids she had worked with didn't come close to passing the visual. She had never interacted with an EI as intensely human as Turner. But his personality, his intellect, all those intangibles that formed a person—they resided in a synthetic matrix. Had Turner Pascal been the blueprint for a remarkably effective android or was he a man? Perhaps it came down to a question none of them could truly answer: did he have a soul?
While the medics worked, Sam brushed a lock of hair off Turner's face. He opened his eyes and spoke in a low voice. "We aren't falling."
She smiled. "Definitely not."
Turner looked at the doctor, who was reading a monitor display. "Who are you?"
"Lieutenant Hollander." The medic nodded to him. "How do you feel?"
"All right." Turner slowly sat up, looking around. Seats lined the Redbird's hull, facing toward them. The crew consisted of these three officers, perhaps a pilot and copilot in the cockpit, though a Redbird didn't need human guidance after a pilot programmed its AI brain.
Hollander spoke quietly. "I've never seen such a sophisticated android."
Turner's face darkened. "I'm a man."
The medic blinked. "You are?"
"My body was smashed in a hover accident. It's rebuilt with biomech."
Hollander looked as if he wanted to argue, but he said only, "You have an unusual brain."
Turner spoke tightly. "Yes, it's an EI. I was dead after the accident. Now I'm not. So what if my brain is a matrix? It doesn't make me a damn android."
"I'm sorry." Hollander seemed at a loss. "I meant no offense."
Major Parsons watched the exchange with interest but no surprise, which led Sam to think Thomas had briefed her.
"It won't take long to reach the airfield," Parsons said.
"Where do we go from there?" Sam asked.
"D.C., I believe," Parsons said. "The crew on your Rex can give you more details."
"Rex?" Sam asked.
The major smiled. "It's a nickname for your transport craft. You'll see why."
Sam noticed that Parsons spoke to both her and Turner. She respected that. People often avoided looking androids in the eye, as if that would somehow violate an unspoken code of humanity.
So they went, into the night.
* * *
Sam and Turner ran across the tarmac with Parsons and Hollander, shielding their faces against the wind. Sam couldn't see much beyond the circle of light on the field, though she could make out mountains around them, possibly the Sierra Nevadas. Their escort had been taciturn about the location of this field, but given that they had only been in the air about fifteen minutes, they were probably still in California.
Their transportation waited on the tarmac. The gorgeous aircraft made Sam's breath catch. It resembled models she had seen for hypersonic aircraft, but complete within itself rather than the venerable X-43. A B-52 had taken the X-43 up and released it on a Pegasus-derivative launch vehicle, which boosted the X-43 up to speeds where it could use its scramjets. Since then, hypersonic technology had been the fastest-advancing field in aviation. This beauty came all in one. Its rounded angles and dark color were reminiscent of her spy car, which was no surprise given that the car
relied on military tech for its shroud. She could see why Parsons called this a Rex; it was surely the king of aircraft. At hypersonic speeds, it could reach anywhere in the world in four hours. It told her a lot about what Thomas thought of "Charon," that he wanted to bring them in as fast as possible in such a state-of-the-art warcraft.
"Wow," Turner said at her side.
Sam grinned. "Thomas has style."
A man waited for them in the hatchway, a military type who wore fatigues Sam didn't recognize. He had a muscular build and the bearing of someone who knew how to use his strength. Sam took the steps up to the Rex two at a time, but she paused at the top while Turner eased past her. Looking back, she saw Parsons and Hollander on the tarmac. Major Parsons lifted her hand in farewell.
The officer in the hatchway spoke to Sam. "You better get settled, Dr. Bryton. We'll be leaving as soon as possible."
Sam turned to the officer. He had brown hair razed in a buzz cut and icy blue eyes. His biceps strained his sleeves. He lifted his hand in an invitation for her to enter the Rex. "Ma'am."
"Thanks." She went into the cabin, a small area with four seats crammed together, two rows of two. Consoles were embedded in the arms of each, with a screen that could swing over a passenger's lap. White and green holicons indicating statistics such as cabin pressure and temperature glowed in the door that separated the cabin from the cockpit.
Sam dropped into a seat next to Turner. "I'll bet this beaut can fly higher and faster than just about anything else."
His face had gone ashen. "For someone who doesn't like heights, Sam, that isn't reassuring."
She laid her hand over his where he was clenching the end of his armrest. "We'll be okay."
He didn't answer, but he turned his hand over and clasped her fingers.
The man in fatigues closed the door and then turned to them. He met Sam's questioning look with a neutral gaze. His careful expression made it impossible to judge his thoughts, and his fatigues had no name or rank. He came toward the seats with controlled movements, as if he rationed each step. He didn't seem hostile, but rather, cautious to an extreme. Did these people know more about Turner than she did? Perhaps her prince in distress wasn't as vulnerable as she had assumed.
"How soon do we go?" Turner asked.
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