“I have a planet to clean up,” Maya said defiantly.
“You have a multiverse to populate ahead of the competition if you want to make life sustainable no matter what gets thrown at it,” Robin said, refusing to yield. “I suggest you leave garbage detail to the robots or to biological organisms with a little less brain power, certainly no more than is commensurate with the task.”
Maya levitated, sprouted “wings” with the webbing connecting her arms and legs to her torso, which she scarcely needed inside the magnetic fields to help her glide through the atmosphere. Her high-tech bodysuit was delicately tuned to the magnetic fields. But the posture was undeniably more intimidating. “I won’t—”
Robin didn’t give Maya a chance to finish the sentence, waved her off dismissively. “Words make for poor rhetoric at times like this. I thought you might like to look out your viewports at the future. This tour of things to come will end when I’ve cracked your resistance. Let’s hope that comes before the hull gives way.”
Monitor, staring at the viewport, said, “Ah, guys. I must admit, port-viewing is definitely getting more interesting.”
The others turned their attention to Seril on the “movie screen.” They watched him surface to walk on water, which, as attention getters went, Robin had to admit, wasn’t half bad.
***
Seril hiked up the rocky embankment towards the beacon he’d set at the top of the hill a few months before. There were so few landfalls on this world, it was worth marking them, if not for his benefit, then for anyone unlucky enough to land here. The Fukards darted about in his peripheral vision. Their principal claim to fame was they could move faster than he could put his hands on them. And they lived to try out their latest death-dealing technologies on him, primitive though they were.
One of them lunged, grabbed him by the arm, and repeatedly banged him against the ground, chiefly aiming to split his head against the sharply edged rocks. He weighed less than a newborn baby in one Earth gravity; that made him a virtual feather in their hands. Imagine their dismay when size and strength didn’t prove to be much of an advantage. When Seril opened his eyes and smiled at the Fukard, he darted off lest Seril get any ideas about returning the favor.
Seril returned to tinkering with the beacon in hopes of getting it lit again. He doubted the Fukards had messed with it. The device scared them more than he did. It made clicking and buzzing sounds, like an old halogen street lamp back on Earth on its last leg, which probably made it seem alive in their eyes.
The Fukards rushed him in numbers, like a pack of wolves. They tore at him with fangs and claws and bony-ridged spines and elbows, and scaly epidermises that could just as easily have been warming a dragon in winter.
When that didn’t work, they backed off.
Standing in a circle, they kicked him from one to the other, as if playing a game of kickball with him as the ball. Perhaps they hoped that through taunting him they could at least get a rise out of him, maybe get him to do something revealing. When physical abuse wasn’t enough, they turned to emotional abuse. Seril felt he could make out what sounded like jeers and taunting verbalizations.
One Fukard caught Seril’s body, propelled into his arms by the kicking action of a teammate, in a bear hug, only to shoot him like a missile into the sky when Seril changed the surface coefficient of his skin, making himself virtually friction-free.
When he landed on his feet unfazed, those in the circle gasped, and stepped back, temporarily at a loss for ideas on what death-dealing ploy to try next.
Seril watched as his dream date materialized before his eyes, in a red body suit with genuine action hero potential. Maybe they had gotten to him, knocked him in the head so much, he was hallucinating. If so, he’d just found a new activity to engage in with the locals he didn’t mind. Though her form was every bit as lithe as his and she was evidently of conventional Earth biology, sans obvious upgrades, save for the suit, she held the Fukards down one by one, using pressure points to gain compliance.
She marked them the way a field biologist marks game to track their migratory patterns. Using their thirst for attacking her rather than fleeing, she tagged each of them in turn.
Seril couldn’t help notice they were growing more docile as if her touch had a tranquilizing, not just a pain-inducing effect.
When she was finished, she approached him.
“You’re from the sub. Maya’s upgrades, I see, are as efficient as ever. I wasn’t expecting you guys for another month.”
“I’m Robin Wakefield.” She held out the monitoring device.
Seril checked the bleeps on the radar. “So this will allow me to track their whereabouts, learn more about them.”
“And when they’re near you, so long as you’re wearing this,” she said, draping the pendant around his neck on a chain, “they’ll be as docile and as cooperative as you just saw them.”
Seril chose to ignore the fact that she kept materializing these tools out of the void. “With time,” he said, “I can use what I learn about them to control the ones without any tags. Thanks.”
Robin turned her back on him, presumably headed for the sub.
“Don’t go, please.”
She turned and beheld him, evidently translating more from his whiny tone than he cared to relate. “Your life here is very visceral.” She regarded the methane crystals forming on him, which he shook off, like a dog hopping out of a bathtub. “The challenge of survival keeps you fully engaged. There’s no time to get lost up in your head.” He caught a lance hurtled at him from some point far off by one of the superhumanly strong Fukards, hiding out of sight. “There’s peace in that,” she said. “So, your hard life is a blessing in disguise. I imagine once you’ve mastered inner calm under the most trying of circumstances, it will be time to move on.”
“Time for us then, you’re saying?”
“Time for whatever comes next for you; that, only you can decide.”
“You’re one aloof guardian angel.” He realized, acting childishly, he’d just bitten the hand that fed him.
The Lady in Red smiled. “I’m working on it.”
“I guess everybody’s got something to work on, and don’t you forget it!” He didn’t know why he felt he had to get in the last dig. Yes, he did. He was already missing her and regretted her decision not to spend the rest of her life in his arms—which made her entirely heartless to his way of thinking.
Seril couldn’t be sure if the mists of Creepton had swallowed her whole, or if she had simply dematerialized.
***
The computer-chip-enhanced metal-glass afforded the sub’s crew close-up views of the action at hand involving Seril and the locals. The images were brought to them, also, courtesy of the vessel’s innumerable portable sensors. They flew about Creepton like buzzing insects, as readily as they would any other planet, protected by the womblike shield of their magnetic fields. The fields exerted an anti-gravity effect, offsetting the otherwise crushing gravitational forces.
Maya watched the exchange between Robin and Seril on the viewport. Robin’s bodysuit acted much as hers would to offset the planet’s gravity; otherwise, Robin would weigh over a thousand pounds in this environment, and couldn’t stand without breaking her legs and her spine. “How many more of his kind are there?” Maya asked.
“He’s the only one, as far as I can tell.” Monitor checked his scanners. “Not to worry, though. He appears to be self-reproducing. One of the probes extracted a DNA-sample. He’s capable of spreading enough genetic diversity around to father a planet full of his kind, single-handed.”
Trotsky stepped forward, disturbingly intrigued by Seril, as if yearning for a similar fate; his face lit up brighter than that beacon Seril had finally ignited. “I must say, Maya, if this is your handiwork in the near future, you definitely haven’t lost your touch.”
Maya scowled for the crew’s benefit, but she was secretly quite pleased. It just pissed her off to no end that Robin’s rhetoric
was getting through to her better than ever, sliding past her best defenses.
When Robin materialized on deck wearing an outfit that made her look like one of the crew, despite the red color, as if she, and not Maya was the rooster protecting the hen house, her charisma ratcheted up further with the crew, for however galling the moment felt to Maya.
Trotsky attacked Robin with his kung fu, meaning to draw her into a playful tussle based on how well she handled herself with the planet’s locals. At least unconsciously, he was testing her qualifications to replace the “aging” rooster as their protector. Robin seemed pleasantly amused. The crew whistled and emitted cat calls, already rooting for one or the other.
Maya felt she was watching a future-version of herself she might grow into, wondered if this too was calculated rhetoric on Robin’s part. But scanning her mind with the aid of the magnetic fields revealed no such double-dealing treachery, more of a when-in-Rome vibe.
Robin seemed eager to explore her body and her physicality in ways she was unaccustomed to in her romp with Trotsky. She took as much pleasure in wiping blood from her lip as in feeling the lower back pain of being slammed against a railing. It was as if she’d been born into an entirely new sensual universe. Through Robin’s shape-shifting, Maya seemed to better understand the appeal of genetically morphing her own people, to give them a chance to explore life entirely anew. Was that more calculated rhetoric on Robin’s part, which she’d learned to conceal from Maya’s mind scans, or was that serendipity inserting itself into the equation?
The fight between Robin and Trotsky continued, even as the deck gave way to the latest alien world.
***
Maya and her crew found themselves outside their sub, eying it, dry-docked against a grove of trees.
The forest seemed tropical, and they seemed very far inland.
Maya reflexively reached for a weapon, a sword with a laser beam for a blade. “What’s going on?”
Robin explained, after catching Trotsky in a nerve pinch, “On this world, during low tide, the ocean withdraws into the core of the planet, which explains why your sub was so rudely dry-docked. In another six hours, this becomes a water-world again; no solid land broaches the surface of the ocean.”
“Is that one of our guys?” Trotsky said, squirming free of Robin’s hold.
A human sea-urchin, surrounded by purple spines, bit into a flying fish he caught in mid-air. Monitor grimaced at the act, said, “I intended to go as that once as a Mardi Gras costume.”
His stomach filled, Purple Porcupine must have decided he could afford the distraction of the bigger picture. He looked up to spy Maya and her crew, and the sub off in the distance. “You bring what I asked you to?” he said.
“What’s that?” Maya asked. She killed the beam on her sword and returned the handle to her belt.
“Ah, some way to survive another day on this world? I’m the last of my kind.”
“You look well-adapted,” Maya said, curious.
“Yeah—for the bottom of the food chain. Everything, but everything here is far more lethal than I am.” He threw her the fish head, having ravaged the rest of the body. It was the first time any of them noticed the teeth.
“Now there’s a mouth that would give a piranha a complex,” Monitor said.
“Cool.” Trotsky seemed suddenly more enchanted by the world than ever. The rest of the crew seemed to share his sentiments; they brightened, drew their weapons, and tuned in their surroundings far better.
“Great.” Purple Porcupine seemed unnerved by their enthusiasm. “And me wondering why you didn’t make us like you guys. I guess you must have figured a death wish doesn’t take you far.”
***
Some number of teleportations later, Robin brought the sub with Maya and her people back to Earth. The giant tuna out the window, and the occasional monster octopus and hammerhead shark seemed to trigger ennui among the crew where before they triggered vitality.
“Lovely,” Trotsky exclaimed acidly. “I get to live out the rest of my life in the safe ride that’s supposed to give me a sense of what it’s truly like at the edge of the universe.”
“Maybe not,” Maya said, eying Robin every bit as acidly as before, but clearly sharing the same feeling of let down as the rest of the crew.
Her work done here, Robin blipped out of their reality.
EIGHT
Abah took the envelope stuffed with money Lawren slid him across the desk, and tucked it into his briefcase. He smiled briefly at the idea of a corrupt politician greasing his wheels. But keeping Nigeria at the forefront of oil exportation in Africa was no easy feat with the ascent of offshore drilling along the West Coast. Someone had to make sure São Tomé and Principe—part of a string of island countries in New Guinea—remained poor, and that no drilling proceeded there despite the islands allegedly sitting on billions of gallons of oil. Someone had to guarantee with the ongoing test drills that the ratio between risk and reward leaned in Lawren’s favor.
***
Robin monitored the handoff from Lawren to Abah through the hidden security cameras embedded in Abuja’s Ship House, Nigeria’s Ministry of Defense building. Her consciousness was, in effect, piggybacking on Mother’s—the now sentient Internet—displaying awareness in pockets of Africa as part of Seriana’s bold experiment to eradicate political corruption from the landscape.
She would remain married to Mother long enough to determine if this Big Brother “with heart” concept held merit.
Abah rose, using body language every bit as crisp as his nattily pressed and tailored suit. He bowed in an ostensibly obsequious fashion, but the gesture did little to detract from the condescension in his smile. He strolled out of the room following a purposefully straight line that reminded Robin of a torpedo fired from a sub at a destroyer.
The cameras tracked him down a hall lined by generous windows that showcased the landscaping outside. Abah seemed to enjoy just how well he fit with the pristinely manicured lawn, the sculpted gardens, and the rest of the eye candy. The precision with which he kept himself, adjusting his handcuffs on the fly, and the delight he took in the ordered comings and goings of bureaucrats, suggested as much.
He ducked into the cafeteria, where he grabbed a tray and assembled a lunch for himself from the a la carte items displayed at the various designer food kiosks featuring international cuisine. The pre-packaged items somehow telecast “upscale” as opposed to “processed.”
After paying for the items at the checkout line, Abah sauntered to the nearest free table, took a seat, unwrapped his chopsticks, and dug into his sushi. He popped the top on his bottled Thai tea, and his eight ounce carton of milk, which he drank separately.
The table quickly filled with three other diners. Each sported ear buds attached to various model iPods and iPads. Robin noticed the three surrounding Abah at the table were male and not nearly as sharp in appearance. His response was predictable—he tuned them out in favor of the well-manicured ladies in evidence; the instant any turned their heads his way, he flirted with them with a wink.
He should have paid more attention to the three homely men.
The instant his eyes went to one of the girls, one of them slipped him something in his milk, one in his thai tea, and one dusted the sushi.
Halfway through his meal, Abah collapsed face down into his lunch tray.
By then, the three seated at his side were long gone.
So much for Mother monitoring from a distance and posting evidence of malfeasance to the Internet to out the perpetrators. That just wasn’t her style. Robin wasn’t yet sure what to make of it. Mother may well have been making a play to shift the distribution of power in Africa away from Nigeria to less corrupt regions. Or perhaps working for the greater good in the most expedient manner possible, with an endgame of a more equitable distribution of wealth across the continent. She may have opted for draconian measures over traditional ones due to a pressured timeline meant to avert even-worse disasters onl
y she could perceive. It was too early to tell.
One thing for certain, the naturals might be out ahead of the pack for the moment, but artificial intelligence was coming on strong with the advent of Mother. And that robot Thor was chaperoning was another troubling sign of AI’s ascension. The dog had a sixth sense for the major players as she did. Someone somewhere had graduated the state of the art beyond maidbots and politely declined to tell anyone about it. Moreover, Robin couldn’t get Ardel’s ominous remarks out of her mind that all this was heading towards a showdown between the artificials and the naturals. She had downloaded all the details of the Gretchen, Mort, and Santini story thread to her mind, courtesy of the obelisk, and now had access to information they didn’t even know. Maybe Ardel had witnessed such a showdown in related timelines. Maybe by the time such an eventuality was poised to break out in this timeline the point would be mute, as both sides would be so infected and interbred with the other, there’d be virtually no way of drawing battle lines.
For now, it was just more uncertainty Robin had to live with amidst making power plays that would dizzy nation-states. One more reason to consider backing out of the game until her own prescience was a lot greater, and she was more purified in the manner of the saints and sages who’d come before her. Many had displayed similar powers so as to better act as the hands of God, with less risk of human ego interceding to make an even bigger muddle of things. Or maybe she should withdraw from the game altogether, admit she just didn’t like playing in the majors, stick to minor league stuff in her hometown of Berkeley.
Like Odysseus, so far had she traveled from home, and maybe it was just time to get back. That nagging voice in back of her head, which had echoed this sentiment for some time now, was getting louder by the day.
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 181
