Earth

by Ben Bova

  “Loris,” he said, reaching out to her.

  “I’m all right,” she told her father, brushing at her clothes.

  Tray blinked and felt hot blood trickling down from his brow.

  “You’re hurt!” Loris cried out.

  He brushed at his forehead with the back of his hand. It came away bloody.

  “It’s nothing,” Tray said. Then he stared at the smoldering hedge. “Para!” he shouted, and ran toward the edge of the bushes.

  The ground was blackened by the blast. No trace of the android, except for bits of metal and plastic scattered across the garden path.

  Tray dropped to his knees in the middle of the carnage, his eyes filling with tears.

  “Para,” he sobbed. “Para.”

  De Mayne wheeled up beside him. “The machine destroyed itself.”

  “No, he couldn’t,” Tray sobbed.

  “It did.”

  Loris sank to her knees beside Tray. Servants—human and robotic—began spraying the smoldering bushes. One of them carried an alloy hand, bent and blackened, to Tray.

  De Mayne reached out and gripped Tray’s shoulder. “Come, let us get inside.”

  * * *

  Numb, shocked, Tray clung to Loris’s arm as they made their way to the chateau’s first-floor sitting room. Slowly, warily, Tray lowered his body onto one of the sofas. Very carefully, reverently, he placed Para’s blackened hand on the end table next to him. Loris sat beside him while De Mayne maneuvered his chair to face them both.

  A maid entered the sunny room with a bowl of water and an armful of medications and bandages. While she fussed with Tray’s cut forehead, De Mayne asked the empty air, “What happened?”

  Tray knew.

  “Para killed himself.”

  “Suicide?” De Mayne barked. “A machine cannot commit suicide.”

  “Para did.”

  “But—”

  His mind clearing, Tray asked, “What was the last thing he said to us?”

  “It, not he,” De Mayne corrected.

  “He,” Tray insisted. “What was the last thing he said to us?”

  Loris’s beautiful face contorted, trying to remember. “Something about Spartans, I think.”

  “It made no sense.” De Mayne scowled.

  Tray quoted, “Go, tell the Spartans.”

  Shrugging, De Mayne said, “No sense to it.”

  “Perfect sense,” said Tray, his voice low but steady. “It’s what Leonidas said at Thermopylae, when his three hundred Spartans were about to be slaughtered by the Persian army: ‘Go, tell the Spartans that here we lie, faithful to their command.’”

  “I don’t understand,” Loris said.

  “I do,” said Tray.

  ASSASSINS

  Through the long afternoon Tray explained the ancient battle of Thermopylae to Loris. The baron knew the history.

  “Standing by your duty, even against hopeless odds,” De Mayne muttered.

  “Especially against hopeless odds,” Tray said. “Three hundred Spartans and maybe a thousand other Greeks against an army of a million men.”

  “Not that many,” said De Mayne.

  “Enough.”

  “They saved ancient Greece from being swallowed up by the Persian Empire,” Loris said.

  “Yes.”

  “But what did Para mean by saying that?”

  “He saved our lives.”

  “Our lives?”

  Tray nodded wearily. “When I visited Balsam’s office, he had Para deactivated so we could talk in complete privacy. While he was deactivated, Balsam’s experts planted that bomb inside him.”

  “That bomb was meant to kill us,” said De Mayne. “All of us.”

  Loris was speechless.

  “Para’s programming was conflicted,” Tray said grimly. “Its original duty was to take care of me. Its new directive was to destroy the three of us.”

  “And itself,” De Mayne said tightly.

  “So it activated the bomb only when it was safely away from us.”

  “And killed itself,” Loris breathed.

  De Mayne shook his head. “It was not a living creature, not alive.”

  “But Para destroyed itself rather than harm us,” Tray said, holding a hand against his bandaged forehead. “That sounds human to me.”

  “It was a machine,” De Mayne insisted.

  “With human feelings,” Tray countered. “Human instincts.”

  “And now it’s dead,” said Loris.

  Tray let his hand drop tiredly to the sofa’s cushion. “This is Balsam’s doing.”

  “Who else?” De Mayne agreed.

  “He’s got to pay for this. We’ve got to bring him to justice.”

  “For destroying an android?”

  “For attempted murder. And for the actual murder of Jordan Kell and that poor little Lieutenant Sheshardi.”

  “Yes,” De Mayne said. “I agree. But how do we accomplish that?”

  Tray stared at his prospective father-in-law. At last he answered, “Carefully.”

  * * *

  Tray spent the next two days going over the recording of the files that Para had left in his computer. He sat in ice-cold fury as he watched three young engineers install the bomb in the android’s midsection while Para was deactivated. They wore plain coveralls, no emblems or insignias that might identify them. But they worked—swiftly and efficiently—in Balsam’s outer office while Tray was in the Council president’s private office, speaking with Balsam.

  And standing by Balsam’s luscious blond assistant was Mance Bricknell, watching the engineers at their deadly work, looking halfway between satisfied and terrified.

  “Villain,” Tray muttered to himself. “Damned, damned, damned villain.”

  Loris came to his room from time to time, once with a tray of lunch, then empty-handed to sit beside him and watch Para’s files marching past on the wall screen. Tray sat rigidly as he watched, his hand clutching hers tightly enough to hurt. She bore the pain in silence.

  At the end of the second day Tray came down to dinner, unshaved, his pullover shirt and creaseless slacks baggy and smelly.

  As he sat at the dinner table, opposite Loris, he asked, “Does anyone outside the chateau know about the explosion?”

  De Mayne, at the head of the table, shook his head. “I had my chief butler report to the local police that we had an accident. They haven’t seen fit to investigate.”

  “Good,” said Tray.

  “Good?” Loris echoed.

  “You two were killed … or at least badly injured. I was hurt also, but not so badly.”

  Loris asked, “And Para?”

  His expression hardening, Tray replied, “Para was completely destroyed, of course.”

  De Mayne looked puzzled. “What do you have in mind?”

  “A way to nail Balsam to the wall. And Mance Bricknell is going to help us, whether he wants to or not.”

  CONFRONTATION

  Promptly at nine the next morning, Tray phoned Bricknell. Mance’s recorded voice said he was asleep (it was three a.m. in the Denver area) but he would return the call once he arose.

  “Please answer as soon as you can, Mance,” Tray said to the recording device. “There’s been a terrible accident here at the De Mayne chateau.”

  Then Tray went down to breakfast with Loris and the baron.

  “So I am to be dead?” De Mayne asked as the robots served a delightfully airy quiche.

  Before Tray could answer, the baron cocked an eye at his plate and muttered, “Eggs again.”

  Tray said, “I think it’ll be best if you are badly injured.”

  “And me?” Loris asked.

  “The explosion killed you, I’m afraid.”

  She half-smiled. “And how long must I be dead?”

  “Until we get Mance to cooperate with us.”

  * * *

  Bricknell’s call from Denver came late in the Normandy afternoon.

  “Your message sounde
d urgent,” he said.

  Sitting in one of the chateau’s sunny parlors, Tray said to Bricknell’s image on the wall screen, “There’s been an explosion here. Loris was killed, her father badly hurt.”

  “Loris?” Bricknell gasped. “Dead?”

  “You’d better get over here as quickly as you can.”

  A welter of emotions played over Bricknell’s lean, angular face. “What … why … why do I have to come there?”

  “For her funeral,” Tray lied. “It’s set for tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Yes. The baron expects you to be here.”

  Obviously flustered, confused, Bricknell stammered, “Yes … yes, of course. I’ll be there. I’ll take the first plane to Paris.”

  “Good,” said Tray. “I’ll have one of De Mayne’s servants meet your plane.”

  The wall screen went blank. Tray nodded to himself. “Step one,” he said.

  * * *

  Tray paced anxiously across the chateau’s main hall, glancing at his wrist every few minutes.

  “You can’t make the plane arrive any sooner than it’s scheduled,” Loris said to him. She was sitting on a comfortable sofa by the wall hanging, a tapestry showing an ancient hunting scene, men on horseback and sleek tracking dogs surrounding a snarling wide-eyed wolf in a leafy glade.

  “You’re wearing out the carpet,” she said to Tray, smiling mischievously.

  Peering at his wristwatch again, Tray came across the spacious room and sat next to her.

  “He should be landing right about now.”

  “That’s fine,” Loris said. “Gervais is already at the airport waiting for him. They’ll be here before midnight.”

  Tray nodded, wondering how she could remain so cool when so much depended on this meeting. So much.

  * * *

  At eleven thirty-three Tray saw the sweep of a car’s headlights swing across the courtyard outside. He jumped to his feet.

  “There he is.”

  Loris smiled at him. “Good hunting.”

  He blew her a kiss and headed for the chateau’s main entrance. Bricknell was coming through the tall front door as Tray arrived in the entryway.

  “You’ve been hurt!” Bricknell exclaimed, noticing the bandage over Tray’s brow.

  “Para destroyed himself,” Tray said, grasping Bricknell by the arm. To the driver he said, “Thank you, Gervais. You can go to bed now, we won’t need you any longer.”

  The servant dipped his chin in acknowledgment and left through the front doorway while Tray led Bricknell through the entry and toward the main hall. Their footsteps echoed off the chateau’s stone walls.

  “What happened?” Bricknell asked. “You said your android exploded?”

  “Yes. It was an attempt to kill me.”

  “And Loris was killed?” Bricknell’s face was twisted with anxiety.

  As he opened the door to the main hall, Tray answered, “Not quite.”

  Loris was standing before the sofa, looking almost imperial in a floor-length gown of glowing green.

  “Loris!” Bricknell’s knees sagged.

  Tray yanked Mance erect as he said, “She’s alive, no thanks to you.”

  Wide-eyed, Bricknell stared at Tray, then turned his focus back to Loris. From a far doorway in the spacious hall, Baron De Mayne wheeled in.

  “I too am alive and well,” said the baron. Then he added, “No thanks to you.”

  Bricknell looked stunned, unable to process in his mind what his eyes were showing him.

  He whirled on Tray, “But you told me—”

  “A pack of lies,” Tray finished for him. “We wanted to get you here and that was the quickest way to do it.”

  Bricknell’s eyes blinked rapidly several times. He looked from Loris to De Mayne and finally to Tray.

  “I don’t understand … what do you mean?”

  Tray hauled him to the sofa and pushed him down onto its cushions. “You were in Balsam’s office when his engineers rigged Para with the bomb.”

  “No!”

  Tray smacked him on the cheek. “Don’t lie, Mance. We’ve got it all on Para’s memory file.”

  “But the android was deactivated!” Bricknell actually cupped both hands over his mouth, realizing that he had just confirmed what Tray had said.

  “You were there, in Balsam’s outer office, while they turned Para into a killing machine,” said Tray, his voice murderously low, cold. “Why?”

  Bricknell looked up at his three accusers. He tried to sit up straighter, failed. His head sunk to his chest.

  “Balsam offered to cut me in on the profits from his interstellar colonies—”

  “Colonies?” De Mayne snapped. “We have not made any of the worlds we have discovered into colonies!”

  With a shake of his head, Bricknell replied, “Not officially. But that’s what they’ll be. We’ll reap enormous profits from those worlds. Wealth beyond measure.”

  “Mon Dieu,” the baron muttered. “Have we learned nothing from the past?”

  “The bomb wasn’t meant to harm you, Loris!” Bricknell burst. “Or you, Baron.”

  “It was meant for me, then,” said Tray.

  “Yes. For you. You and your passion for linking Balsam to Jordan Kell’s death.”

  “His murder,” Tray growled.

  Strangely, Bricknell smiled. A twisted, ironic smile. “You have no idea of what you’re dealing with, Tray. The biggest fortunes on Earth are involved in this. They’re going to create an interstellar empire. They’re going to become richer than any human beings have ever been!”

  “No, they’re not,” said Tray. “We still have laws and the rule of justice. We still have decency and—”

  Bricknell laughed in Tray’s face. “Laws? Decency? Get real, Tray. You’re dealing with real power here! The power to rule whole worlds! The wealth of an empire!”

  “The schemes of a nasty clique of power-mad men who think they can rule an interstellar empire.”

  “Yes!” Bricknell retorted. “Take your murder, for example. They had it all fixed up: The Council would appoint a special investigative commission. It would find that your android’s power system failed catastrophically and you were killed in the blast.”

  “You had it all fixed up, didn’t you?”

  “You bet we did.”

  Tray bent over Bricknell’s slouched form. “But you didn’t take one factor into account. The android had a more powerful sense of honor than you and your whole cabal of empire builders.”

  Bricknell had no answer.

  COUNCIL MEETING

  Tray paced nervously back and forth across the carpeted floor of the Council chamber’s anteroom. Through the mullioned window he could see bright sunshine lighting Copenhagen’s narrow, twisting streets.

  Strange they never rebuilt this part of the city, he thought. Through the centuries, the Danes have kept this section of their capital untouched.

  Except for this capitol structure, he told himself. Right in the middle of Hans Christian Andersen’s old city the politicians have built a soaring monument to themselves—and to Earth’s interplanetary government.

  Immediately he corrected himself. It’s an interstellar government now. Everything that’s happened over the past weeks has been a part of the quiet, secretive program of the bloc on the Council that wants to create an empire out among the stars.

  And I’m trying to stop them. Trying to stop a cabal of the wealthiest people in the solar system from making an empire that they will rule, so that the rich get even richer.

  They killed Jordan Kell. And Sheshardi. And Para. And they tried to kill me.

  The carved wooden door to the anteroom swung open and a Council official stepped in, dressed in her official dark uniform.

  “The Council session is about to begin, sir,” she said softly.

  Tray turned to Loris, who was sitting on a carved wooden high-backed chair.

  “Time to go,” he said.

  Lor
is got to her feet. She looked regal, Tray thought, in her calf-length gown of coral pink, bedecked with jewels. She extended her arm to Tray, who took it in his own and led her out toward the Council’s meeting hall.

  The seats for Council members were filled nearly to capacity. Almost every member of the Council was there, either in person or by a virtual reality presence. Tray recognized the Baron De Mayne. And Council president Harold Balsam, sitting on the stage that fronted the chamber, flanked on either side by several aides.

  The rows of seats behind the Council members were almost entirely empty, Tray saw. This meeting was not open to the general public, only to invited guests.

  He smiled grimly as he thought of Mance Bricknell, being held practically as a prisoner back at the De Mayne chateau. Incommunicado, Tray thought. He’s not going to alert Balsam or anyone else about what we’re going to do.

  He released Loris’s arm and she walked majestically to the single row of pews occupied by guests, just behind the Council members. As she sat down, Tray went to his assigned seat—the seat of the late Jordan Kell—up in the front row of the assembled Council members, next to Baron De Mayne.

  The murmurs and mumbles of the assembly abruptly cut off as President Balsam rose from his seat and walked slowly to the podium. He picked up the gavel there and rapped it once for attention. Everyone in the chamber focused on the president.

  Balsam looked utterly calm, Tray thought. Good. He has no idea what’s in store for him. I’m going to wipe that self-satisfied smile off his face and make him sweat.

  Balsam gazed out at the assembled Council and said, his voice booming with amplification, “Welcome to this plenary session of the Interplanetary Council. I’m delighted that so many of you could be here.”

  The Council members applauded politely.

  Balsam went through the meeting’s agenda swiftly, efficiently:

  A group of miners among the rock rats of the Asteroid Belt was appealing for a lower tax rate for the ores they sold throughout the solar system. The Council appointed a select committee to study the question.

  A new starship was ready to be launched to the double star system Procyon, where a pre-industrial society had been discovered on one of its seven orbiting planets. Members were invited to buy shares in the development corporation that was funding the mission.