Bodyguard

by William C. Dietz

  The doors opened as the platform stopped on D Deck. The stewards got off and I followed. Europa’s gravity was a good deal lighter than the Earth-normal conditions maintained while the ship was in space. I moved carefully and used the slide step I’d learned on Mars.

  The wood paneling had disappeared. Steel bulkheads, liberally sprinkled with safety slogans, morale boosters, and other corporate propaganda passed to either side. I noticed that androids and crew people alike had the ability to look right through me. I found the lock, joined a load of palletized cargo, and cycled through.

  The corpies grabbed me as I stepped off the ship. There were four of them, all heavily armed and clearly expecting me. I considered giving them a tussle but it seemed pointless. They located my weapon within a matter of seconds. Joy bailed out of my pocket and was halfway to the deck when a man grabbed her. She struggled, but it was useless. Their leader, a skinny woman with a pink crewcut, glanced at her hand term and nodded. “Yup, he’s the one. And right on time too. Put the zappers on him and get a move on. The doc’s extra pissy today.”

  Even I could figure out who “the doc” was. I should have been afraid but was ashamed instead. The fact that they had taken me so easily was worse than whatever lay ahead. It struck at the little bit of pride I had left.

  The zappers were shaped like fat bracelets and felt slimy as they wrapped themselves around my wrists. The woman with the crewcut held a control unit in front of my face. I nodded my understanding. The yellow button would “zap” my nervous system, the amber button would induce temporary paralysis, and the red button would stop my heart. I wondered if the woman had orders to stop short of that. I figured she did. Casad would have a hard time getting any information out of a refried brain. That gave me an edge, but a damned thin one.

  Crewcut gestured for me to move, and I obeyed. My escorts walked two ahead and two behind. I didn’t see much of the habitat at first. Just a bunch of maintenance ways, freight tubes, and high-gloss corridors. After all, why march a prisoner through the station’s public areas if they didn’t have to? Still, they were forced to lead me across an enormous observation deck about halfway through the trip. It was packed with people just off the Queen. Most stared open-mouthed at the enormous Jupiter that hung overhead. It was beautiful, and there were lots of “oohs” and “aahs” as people struggled to look up through the triple-thick duraplast.

  I scanned the crowd for people I knew, came eyeball to eyeball with Bey, and was about to say something when crewcut jammed something hard into the middle of my back. Bey looked surprised, alarmed, and agitated all at once. He pushed an elderly woman out of the way and burrowed into the crowd. A pair of doors marked “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY” swung open to admit us, and the open area disappeared behind.

  The first hint of our destination was a passing glimpse of a laboratory packed with esoteric equipment and staffed by a crew of lab-coated techies. That signaled me that we had moved from the outer world into Doctor Casad’s private domain, a place populated by facts and figures.

  We passed a room filled with light so intense that some of it leaked through the plastifiber walls, heard a rhythmic thumping sound, and smelled something so foul it made crewcut swear out loud. Then we passed through an emergency lock and entered an area that screamed “executive offices” with every inch of its deeply carpeted floor, art-covered walls, and wood-accented, fiber-formed furniture. The reception area was large and rectangular. Everything was spotless and arranged with the same precision that a staff sergeant admires in a footlocker. The reception desk was circular, stood about chest-high, and had been designed to accommodate the four-armed android mounted at the center of it. He, she, or it had paisley-covered skin, four arms, and a no-nonsense attitude. “Dr. Casad is waiting. Take him in.”

  I felt my heart beat faster as I was led through double doors and into the presence of the person who had stolen my life. Marsha Casad was smaller that I had expected, and the similarities between her appearance and Sasha’s were made all the more obvious by the fact that they were standing next to each other. I should have been surprised, but wasn’t. Nothing else had gone properly…why would this?

  The elder Casad was prettier than the woman who haunted my dreams and had the same brown eyes, pretty face, and shapely body that her daughter did. A fact that the primitive male part of me noticed and reacted to in spite of the fact that to do so was stupid—proof positive that I’m at least three rounds short of a full magazine. But the mother was harder than the daughter, her flesh closer to the bone, her eyes like lasers. Power surrounded her like a cloak and was so much a part of her that it was taken for granted.

  Both women stood with their backs to a steel-framed Jupiter. Its storm-lashed surface moved with dreamlike slowness. Sasha spoke first. She was apologetic. “I’m sorry, Max, I really am, but you forgot to disable the com set.”

  I swore softly. Of course! The com set had been voice-activated. It had been a simple matter to call a steward, have herself released, and contact her mother. Damn. All that energy, all that effort, only to have it end like this. I shrugged. “Don’t worry, kid. You did what you had to do.”

  Sasha nodded, but her chin trembled, and I saw a tear trickle down her cheek. Not so her mother. She was brisk and rather cheerful. Her eyes glittered like those of the robo-snake outside Wamba’s quarters. There was no understanding or mercy in them, just her unrelenting will. The voice was cold and distant. “You are no longer equipped to appreciate the importance of this, Maxon, but thanks to the information stored in your head, a new era is about to begin.”

  I saw the ego in her eyes, the pride in what she had accomplished, and took advantage of it. “A new era? What does that mean?”

  The elder Casad smiled. “It means freedom! Freedom to travel beyond the limits of our solar system!”

  Sasha got it first, confirming that she hadn’t known the reason behind her mission, and cementing my affection for her. “Beyond our solar system? A star drive?”

  Her mother nodded. “Yes. It will be known as the Casad Drive, and it will carry millions, even billions of human beings to distant stars. “Imagine,” she said, momentarily caught up in a glory of her own making, “a new beginning! A breakthrough so important, so liberating, that it will change the course of history. And I made it happen!”

  The way Dr. Casad said it called for applause, and judging from her expression, I think she actually heard it thunder across a thousand years of immortality.

  But the rest of us were silent. Shasha looked uncomfortable. The guards shuffled their feet. Metal pinged in response to a temperature fluctuation. Finally, after what seemed like minutes, but was actually seconds, the scientist’s eyes rolled into focus and she returned from fantasy land. Her words were precise and to the point. “Take him to Lab 16. Tell Sanchez to wire him up. I’ll be along in fifteen minutes or so.”

  Sasha tried to move in my direction, but her mother grabbed an arm. Crewcut nudged me towards the door, and there seemed to be little point in resisting. What with zappers on my wrists and four able-bodied guards, there was no chance of escape.

  That being the case, I tried to come up with a suitably nonchalant response and failed. The four-armed android didn’t even bother to look up as they marched me down the hall. I heard the same thumping I’d heard before, saw light leak through plastifiber walls, and was ordered down a side corridor. The air smelled of ozone. An equipment-laden autocart whirred by. I assumed these were among the last sounds, sights, and smells that I would experience. Everything seemed hyper-real, the way it always does when adrenaline pours into the bloodstream and death looms near.

  A door marked “Lab 16” appeared in front of me, sensed my presence, and slid open. A worried-looking lab tech hurried forward. She wore a severe pageboy, no jewelry, and an immaculate lab coat. An I.D. badge hung from her breast pocket and identified her as Carla Sanchez. She gave me the same sort of look a butcher gives a side of beef and pointed over her shoulder. “Place
him on the table and strap him down.”

  The table looked like the kind you find in well-equipped operating rooms. It was backed by a wall full of vid screens and banks of computer equipment. The autosurgeon stood crouched over the table. Its arms whirred as servos were tested and found to be in working order.

  I remembered the dreams that weren’t dreams and tried to escape. The zappers clamped down on my wrists and pain lanced through my nervous system. I screamed and kept on screaming as the guards lifted me onto the table, applied the straps, and removed the zappers. The pain disappeared and left me sobbing for breath.

  Sanchez appeared between me and the ceiling, waved a scanner in front of my eyes, and squinted at the reading. She smelled of soap, and the fragrance remained even after she had disappeared. I liked the smell, even though I knew it was stupid, and marveled at how the male part of me never quit. I whimpered pitifully and nobody came.

  Things got complicated after that. More people entered the room. Needles entered my veins, wires were hooked to various parts of my anatomy, and people talked as though I wasn’t there. Their voices seemed to float on an ocean of drug-induced happiness.

  “Is this the one?”

  “Yup, that’s him.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happens next?”

  “The doc comes, we pump him dry, and break for lunch.”

  “Just like that.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “No.”

  “Then shut the hell up and align this equipment. One glitch, one error, and everyone pays.”

  There was more of the same, but I lost interest and drifted away. That’s where I was when I heard someone shout, heard the steady thump, thump, thump of an automatic flechette gun, and felt something heavy land on my chest. It smelled of soap.

  Then I heard someone call my name, struggled to respond, and discovered that I couldn’t. I heard more thumping as someone fired back. A man yelled, “Hit the switch! Start the transfer!” and data rose around me like a suffocating tide. Words, images, and numbers filled my throat, mouth, nose, and ears. And then, just when I seemed certain to drown in a flood of information, something powerful started to suck the data away, pulling me along with it. I fought the sensation for a while, determined to save what remained of my personhood, but the effort was pointless. The suction was too powerful for me to resist. I let go and was removed from my body.

  19

  “Unauthorized use of this equipment can result in permanent brain damage.”

  A warning sticker posted on the control panel in Lab 16

  Someone flicked a switch, and I came into existence. I opened my eyes. Nothing. I moved an arm. Nothing. I attempted to speak. Nothing. Words arrived from somewhere and echoed slowly through my brain. “Hi-i-i-i-i boss-s-s-s-s! Order-r-r-r-r the-e-e-e-e computer-r-r-r-r to-o-o-o-o provide-d-d-d-d an-n-n-n-n interface-s-s-s-s.”

  The voice was gender-neutral and could have belonged to anyone, except for one thing: Joy was the only person in the solar system that called me “boss.” I had formed the words in my mind and was about to speak them through a nonexistent mouth when the computer obeyed. A fuzzy-looking picture appeared. It was shaped like a rectangle. I thought the word “focus,” and the view became crystal clear. I was looking down from the corner of a large room. I saw an autosurgeon, an operating table, and a body. My body, or what had been my body, until the techies sucked it dry. Wires ran into and around it like worms feeding on a corpse.

  I screamed. The computer took the thought and turned it into a high-pitched squeal. There were ten or fifteen people in the room. They winced and covered their ears.

  A feeling of warmth and happiness flooded around me. A giggle came out of nowhere and rippled through my mind. “Joy?”

  Her voice seemed closer now, and the echo had disappeared. “Hi, boss. Sorry about that…it took a moment to find you. This computer has an incredible amount of memory. They stashed you in a file called “‘Project Freedom.’”

  I was happy, confused, and worried all at the same time. “I’m in a computer file? Then where are you?”

  Joy giggled. “Pan right and you can see my body. I left my operating system out there…but most of my personality program is here with you.”

  I thought the words “pan right,” and the picture moved accordingly. A camera! I was looking through one of the many security cameras placed throughout the habitat. Joy appeared. It seemed as if she was too far away. The camera zoomed in. I ordered it to stop and saw that she was naked again. Pieces of duct tape still clung to her arms and legs. Always dramatic, the diminutive android had struck a pose prior to sticking her finger into an interface socket. “There you are…showing off as usual. Thanks for riding to the rescue. But why would a Protech computer obey my commands?”

  Joy laughed. The sound had a wonderful bubbly quality that made me want to smile. “Because I told it to… that’s why.”

  I was still marveling at the gift Wamba had given me when a voice came from what seemed like a thousand miles away. “Max-x-x-x-x? Can-n-n-n-n you-u-u-u-u hear-r-r-r-r me-e-e-e-e?”

  I wished the echo away and wondered if there were other cameras besides the one I was looking through. The thought was still in the process of being born when my vision was routed through three additional lenses in the lab, out into the hall, and into spaces I hadn’t seen before. I ordered the computer to return my vision to the lab. It took conscious effort to ignore my own circumstances and focus on the outside world.

  Crewcut and two of her subordinates lay sprawled on the deck. Sanchez lay draped over my body, and Linda, impeccable as always, stood with a gun in her hand. It was gold-chromed and matched her earrings.

  Trask was there, as was Bey, and a woman I had never seen before. She was dressed in Protech overalls, which suggested a spy of some sort. All three had their weapons aimed at a group of terrified technicians. You had to give the greenies credit. Subsequent to spotting me on the observation deck, Bey had wasted little time finding reinforcements and tracking me down. I realized Linda had spoken, and thought my reply. It boomed through the PA system. “Yes, I can hear you.”

  Linda frowned and looked around the room. I panned a tiny bit. A motor whirred, and she looked into the proper camera. Judging from her expression, she either cared about me or was one hell of an actress. I suspected some of both. “You’ve seen what Dr. Casad is like. She wants to destroy you. Joy can bring you back. Order her to do so.”

  I laughed. The electronic translation had a maniacal quality. “Get serious. You tried to kill me. Why would I place myself in your hands?”

  “Because we represent the lesser of two evils,” Linda said calmly. “Because you have my word that we will protect you.”

  I had just started to consider Linda’s offer when the door burst open. An assistant entered, followed by Dr. Casad and Sasha. The scientist took a quick look around, understood the situation, and shoved the technician towards Linda. He stumbled, collided with Linda, and jerked as she fired two darts into his abdomen. He fell, Linda tried to catch him, and Casad turned. She took two steps and stopped when she found herself staring down the business end of her daughter’s gun.

  The older woman was furious. “Sasha! What are you doing?”

  Sasha’s face was pale and drawn. “You can’t do this. It isn’t right.”

  I switched to another camera and watched the scientist marshal her considerable will and focus it on her daughter. Lightning flashed in Marsha Casad’s eyes, and her hands were clenched at her sides. “How dare you interfere with my work! Don’t you understand? Life isn’t easy. Sacrifices have to be made. I worked for it. The knowledge belongs to me. Now put that gun away, or better yet, shoot the greenies.”

  The people in question didn’t like that idea and aimed their weapons at Sasha. She didn’t even look in their direction. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “No! The decision belongs to Max. The knowledge is stored in his brain, and
it belongs to him.”

  Her mother’s eyes bulged with emotion. “Have you lost your mind? The man’s an idiot! You traveled with him…you know how limited his capabilities are. I worked ten long years to gather and analyze the information stored in his head. The data is mine. Think about it, Sasha…Project Freedom could put billions of unemployed people to work. It could launch a thousand ships to distant star systems and save the human race from slow suffocation!”

  The words had a rehearsed sound, as if they had been said countless times before and long since reduced to a catechism. I watched Linda take the information in, process it, and come up with a greenie-style response. “She’s lying. A star drive won’t solve humanity’s problems. Androids will build the ships, Earth will be stripped of the few resources she has left, and the corpies will leave us to die.”

  Marsha Casad walked towards her daughter with outstretched hand. Her voice was calm and soothing. “Give me the gun. Everything will be fine. Protech has wonderful doctors. They can replace your missing eye. How ‘bout one of Maxon’s? The tissues will match. You know why? Because Maxon is your biological father, that’s why. I needed a warrior, someone who could bring him back, so I used his sperm to make you. That’s why this is so symmetrical, so perfect, so right. I stored the knowledge in his head, I created you to get it back, I…”

  I was still in the process of absorbing the part about my sperm when Sasha fired a tox dart into her mother’s throat. The older woman looked surprised, removed the projectile from her flesh, and held it up to the light. She was still in the process of examining it when she slumped to the floor.

  A klaxon started to beep. Joy was worried. “Uh-oh. It looks like the doctor was wearing a biomonitor. Security was notified the moment her vital signs dropped below normal. They’re online now, trying to regain control of the computer.”