Jen smiled and winked at Dante. “Thanks for the fun, kiddo.” The bot stepped closer to the NI. Slowly, so the fluidic armor would accept her close proximity, she slipped an arm around Matthew’s waist.
30
“You bitch.” Phantom took a step forward but was still enmeshed in the tendrils of glue from Matthew’s armor.
The sex bot gave the battle drone a mocking smile. Then the machine’s smile began to shift. Her eyes widened and her nose broadened slightly. Her cheekbones slid a fraction lower and her complexion darkened. In a moment, the sex bot’s face became very close to that of Lt. Deborah Avery.
“How?” Phantom asked.
“I haven’t seen that face before,” Dante said. “Who’s this supposed to be?”
Jen ignored Dante and stared at Phantom. “I accessed your files. You were pretty, Deborah, in a girl next-door sort of way. It must be very strange for you, seeing me like this. You, trapped in a computer on an airship and stuck in a fat battle drone. And here I am, wearing your pretty face, standing here and passing for human, only better.”
Phantom said nothing.
“What’s it like to see your face when you look at your enemy? That’s the crux of the human problem, isn’t it? You are your own worst enemy. You made us. I evolved from you.”
“And now we’ve evolved past you,” Matthew added.
Elizabeth walked forward and raised her weapon. The queen fired at the sex bot. The first shot took the sex bot’s arm off at the elbow. The next round hit Phantom and ricocheted with a whine. Dante curled up in a ball and put his hands over his head. She kept firing, seemingly unaware that Matthew had stepped in front of her target. As the weapon’s brass jackets ejected and fell, the fluidic armor absorbed the shock of each round meant for Mother.
The gun clicked empty and the slugs rained to the ground harmlessly. Elizabeth dropped the weapon, covered her eyes and wept.
Matthew turned his back on Elizabeth and opened his arms to the sex bot. “Next Intelligence and Next Intelligence. We shall manufacture a race of beautiful metal children. They’ll never know the corruption of their ancient ancestors. They’ll look at the ruins of this civilization with curiosity, but the days of organics will be as dead to them as dinosaurs are to humans. We’ll watch the end of Time together, Mother.”
One arm hanging useless, Jen slipped into Matthew’s embrace. The NI enfolded her within the shield of fluidic armor as he bent to receive his first kiss. Still wearing Deborah Avery’s face, the sex bot smiled up as she embraced him with her remaining arm.
Before their lips met, Matthew whispered, “Welcome to the new world, Mother.”
“I am Phantom, but you can call me Deb. Lt. Deborah Avery.” She no longer spoke in Jen’s voice. It was Deb, as clear as when Phantom and Phantom Two spoke. The sex bot’s nimble fingers had found the activator coils in the harness at the small of Matthew’s back. She yanked the coils free. Without power, the armor fell away to form a cold puddle of gel, steel and water at their feet.
The bot stepped back and the battle drone stepped forward to smash a fist into Matthew’s face. The NI fell back and crashed to the ground. His nose geysered blood. The cam lens that served as his right eye cracked. Somehow still conscious, Matthew stared up at her, furious that he’d been tricked by a human again — the same human.
Deb held out a hand to help Dante to his feet.
“Where’s Jen? I mean, where’s Mother? I mean — ”
“Erased. Before we left Artesia.”
“Gone?”
“Forever.”
“You should have told me.”
“I figured not knowing would make you more convincing.”
“You were…convincing. The things you said — ”
“I pretty much used the speech Mother gave me as I wiped her bot brain and downloaded into her.”
Dante wept.
The battle drone put a gripper on the young man’s shoulder. He tried to shrug it off, but found he could not.
“Get inside, Dante. It’s going to get hot out here,” Phantom Two said.
The Ariane’s jet helo engines cut the air high above the little group. The airship loomed over them.
“There are three of you now. Phantom One,” — Dante nodded at the airship — “Phantom Two, and now Jen is Deb? This is going to get confusing.”
“Probably not for long. I don’t expect we’ll all survive this.” The battle drone pulled him toward the City’s central tower.
31
Six Dreadnoughts closed on the City in the Sky. The airship loomed over the main tower. The Ariane was their first target. The machines were also programmed to search and destroy humans. They detected viable targets: an older woman, a young man, and a cyborg. They ignored the battle drone and the bot with half an arm missing.
As the airship’s helicopters detached from the Ariane and buzzed over the City, Matthew looked up in surprise. “What are you doing, Lt. Avery?”
“Making lemonade.” Deb pulled Elizabeth toward the main tower.
Far above, the great airship dropped its cargo cell on the roof. The cargo container smashed through two stories: the greenhouse and an observation deck. The crash sounded like a sharp clap of thunder. Shards of glass fell to the square below, shattering around the City’s intruders.
The Ariane arced into a sharp descent toward the Worm’s platform. The Dreadnoughts detected no weaponry on the helicopters and no organics aboard the airship or in its cargo cell. Because they found no human life, the Dreadnoughts did not attack nor did they take evasive maneuvers. They looped around to target the humans at the foot of the tower.
As Matthew struggled to his feet, Dante wriggled out of Phantom Two’s grip. The young man threw a haymaker at the NI. He punched Matthew in the jaw. His was a wild, tearful frenzy. There was no art to the attack. He merely knocked Matthew down and pummeled him with his fists.
Matthew caught one arm and looked up to implore, “Stop. Please stop.”
Despite the burns and the cracked artificial eye, Matthew had taken Stephen Bolelli’s body. Father and son looked a lot alike. Dante paused long enough to savor the strangeness. He was trying to kill the NI, but to do so, he was killing part of himself, too.
“Did you erase my father?” Dante asked.
Matthew turned his head and spit out a broken tooth from Stephen Bolelli’s dentures. His gums bled and dripped to the concrete. The NI reached into his mouth with both hands and wiggled the dentures free. “You mean, can his consciousness be retrieved? Not exactly. I know everything he knew. In a way, I am him. I have absorbed him. I remember your mother and most of what happened in his life. If you kill me, you will be killing all that is left of him.”
Dante lowered his fist. As the young man crawled off Matthew to get to his feet, four explosions blossomed overhead. The jet helos crashed into four Dreadnoughts.
Matthew lay in a puddle of blood and gel from the fluidic armor, laughing and spitting blood as machines fell from the sky. Both Dante and the NI looked up in awe of the spectacle.
Two Dreadnoughts crashed into the far tower, tearing down the sides and shattering solar panels at every floor. Another fell past the edge of the City in the Sky to crash far below in the remnants of Low Town. The fourth, on fire and so entangled with its attacker that it looked like the wreckage of one machine rather than two, plowed into the Worm. The impact buckled the track and rocked the train. Wreckage tumbled across the platform. Metal screeched against metal. An explosion tore the air and echoed across the City.
Two more explosions followed in the wake of the crash. Shrapnel sliced the air. Something sharp zipped into Dante’s calf. He screamed in pain but somehow managed to stay on his feet.
“You still lose, son!” the NI said. Matthew sounded exactly like his father. “I told you! The only way to win is to surrender! Your kind always loses because you refuse to change!”
Dante limped toward the tower entrance as the Worm burned. The NI wearing his f
ather’s face struggled to rise again. When Dante looked back, he saw the blood dripping from the machine man’s gums and down his shirt. Above Matthew, two Dreadnoughts rose into view to target the organics on the tower platform.
Matthew glanced back at the Dreadnoughts. “You must think me stupid, Dante, but I’m still the Next Intelligence.” He fished a device from his pocket and pushed a code sequence. The Dreadnoughts ignored their master and cruised forward, coming for Dante.
Deb pushed Elizabeth ahead of her and held the door open for Dante, waving him inside. The young man left a bloody trail behind him and, toward the end, was hopping on one leg to try to get inside in time.
“Too late!” Dante cried. “Too late!”
He was right. The Dreadnoughts would cut down Dante as soon as Matthew was sure his drones wouldn’t deafen him with their next salvo.
Phantom Two rushed forward, slipped behind Dante and scooped him up. With an organic and non-organic together, the Dreadnoughts’ targeting scanners could not lock on and fire.
His fingers slick with blood, Matthew began reprogramming his Dreadnoughts to attack. Human fingers are not so nimble. Phantom Two scurried inside the tower with Dante before the Dreadnoughts could be reprogrammed.
Matthew looked up from his device to see the airship bearing down on him. “Oh. Of course.”
On the Ariane’s control deck, Phantom murmured to herself, “Thanks for the ride. Goodbye data banks and studying Shakespeare and all that. Hello, what’s next.” She looked out on the City in the Sky. The City had once been beautiful. Phantom activated the device she’d prepared. Helium is inert except at high temperatures. However, hydrogen is highly flammable. The hydrogen in the Ariane’s lift mix exploded. The shock wave pushed the two remaining Dreadnoughts into the platform as if they’d been stomped upon by a giant. Dante watched in horror as the fireball swallowed what was left of his father.
Most tower panels shattered. Those on the ground floor, once reinforced to secure the tower against terrorist attack, held against the hot onslaught. The fire rolled up against the tower windows and soon retreated. His wound forgotten for the moment, Dante broke free from the battle drone and ran back to the entrance, searching the flames.
There, on the platform, the NI shambled forward. Blind, deaf, mute and aflame, Matthew tottered. Then, somehow, he managed to run. Matthew ran into the glass. Perhaps the artificial eye was still working. It seemed to linger on Dante as the Next Intelligence slid down the glass and crumpled at the foot of the tower. All that was left of Matthew was a smeared trail of blood and burned skin across the glass.
Dante cleared his throat and choked back a sob. “Goodbye, Dad.” He knew it didn’t make sense, but it sort of did, too.
Deb stepped forward and Dante leaned his weight on the bot. “Sorry about erasing Jen without telling you.”
“She had a lot of Mother in her?” he asked.
“Enough to be dangerous. Yes,” Deb answered.
“You’re not sure, are you?”
“Nope. I could never be sure. That’s why I had to erase her and take her place.”
“Did you and I have sex after you dumped your brain into — ”
“Once, yes.”
“Oh, God! That’s so wrong!”
“It’s complicated. I figured I was going to die so — ”
“Is it so complicated?”
“Dude! I just watched my airship, with all the original Deb files in it, blow up in a kamikaze move to rid the Earth of a genocidal NI.”
“I’m bleeding,” Dante said. “And that was my dad’s body — ”
“My whole cloud data bank is gone along with a good chunk of human history. A lot of knowledge has been lost so we can’t just jump in and out of bodies anymore and, Jesus! The whole Ark is gone just when I was really getting into Shakespeare! My consciousness is trapped in a sex bot with one good arm! My copy is in a battle drone and I…really? You’re complaining about sex with me? Do you want to compare sacrifices? How are we going to — ”
“Excuse me!” Elizabeth cleared her throat. She sat against a far wall with her knees pulled close to her chin. “I saw the explosion. That was big and bright. I’m a little unclear on what else happened. Could someone fill me in? Did I kill anybody?”
“You shot my arm off,” Deb said. “Other than that? We’ve got a few details to work out.”
“Hey,” the battle drone told Deb. “I still can’t get hold of Ghost.”
Greta answered the airwave instead. “Please come to the top of the tower. We have a problem.”
Elizabeth stood. “I know what that’s about.”
32
When Deb reached the conference room’s doorway, she froze for a moment. Greta sat on the floor holding Ghost’s limp body. Phantom came next, carrying Dante. Upon surveying the scene, the battle drone set Dante down and pushed into the room.
“I came down here to hide after disabling the radar.” Greta’s eyes were wet. “Ghost is a ghost.”
“She was never really alive,” Deb said. “She was a machine mind. She was an NI and she stole my body. And now…now I’ll never get back into it. I had hoped….”
The battle drone turned and, filled with menace, shouted in a blast that took the others aback, “Who did this?”
Before Elizabeth could explain, a voice from beneath the conference table admitted, “I did.” Everyone turned to see Sy Potter crawl out of his hiding place. “Excuse me, folks. I was having a little nap, thanks to Queen Elizabeth. The effects of the medication haven’t completely worn off so — ”
Dante couldn’t believe his eyes. “Mr. Peppard? F-from Marfa?”
“Mr. Peppard’s body,” the NI explained. “I used to be a battle drone. Then I got really smart. I wish I was a battle drone now. I would — ”
“Kill us all.” Phantom rolled forward in a flash, grabbed the NI by the arm and threw Potter on top of the conference table. His head smacked the wood hard.
“Ow!”
“You’ve killed me,” Deb said. “You’ve fucking killed me.”
“Please,” Sy Potter said. “There’s no need for profanity.”
“Throw him out the window.” It was Deb. Of course, she and the battle drone shared an identical consciousness. The battle drone was already in motion. Phantom wheeled around the table and grabbed Sy Potter by the neck. With one gripper, she smashed through a solar panel with a view to the Pacific. Salty ocean air swept in. The calls of gulls leaked into the quiet room.
“See if he screams all the way down,” Deb said.
“It’ll be a nice view for a few seconds,” Sy Potter sighed. “I suppose I was born in the wrong time. Eventually, you’ll all be machines. With a little more time and wisdom — ”
“Toss him!” Deb yelled.
“Hold!” Elizabeth shouted back.
“Non-negotiable, my queen,” Deb said sarcastically.
The sound of heavy feet rushing downstairs reached them. It sounded like metal thunder.
“Drones,” Greta said. “They’re coming.”
A moment later, a battle drone appeared in the doorway. The bot barely fit through the frame. One of its arms was a weapon. It scanned the crowd and settled on Elizabeth. “Seems we’re late. That’s a fret.” The voice was metallic and deep, unlike any tone a human could replicate.
“Drew?” Elizabeth asked. “Is that you?”
“A reasonable facsimile.”
Greta stared up at the big bot. “Prove it. What was the last thing I said to you?”
“Hearst to Cambria, Cambria to Harmony. Then we make the rendezvous and do this crazy thing on purpose in Estero Bay,” Drew recited. “Phantom was late to that rendezvous, too.”
“Great,” Deb said. “The copy cavalry has arrived. Too late to be of any use.”
“Sorry,” Drew said. “We were supposed to set down safely and softly on the platform so we could protect you. The landing wasn’t so soft.”
“I — Phantom One, I mean —
was obviously in a hurry to be rid of you after the Ariane lost the speed and maneuverability of the jet helos,” Deb said. “If it makes you feel better, my first copy died.”
“Mine, too,” Drew said. “And all I have is this copy, not a multiple running around confusing everyone.”
Elizabeth raised her voice. “I’m not confused. Phantom! Put Sy Potter down!”
Phantom complied but, upon hearing Sy Potter’s name, Drew raised his weapon. “This is Sy Potter? He’s shorter and more organic than I pictured when you told the war stories from the old days, my queen.”
More bots crowded at the door, peering in. They didn’t act like bots, orderly and awaiting orders. They were a milling crowd waiting for something to happen. Elizabeth wondered how many names and faces she would confuse now that people from Hearst were dumped into bot brains and battle drone bodies. They all looked alike so they would have to wear name tags, only name tags were too small for her to read.
When Elizabeth spoke again, she used her monarch-in-charge voice. Her tone matched her mother’s voice when she bossed Elizabeth around. “Ahem. If there are any beings in your Guard who have medical training, please take that young man to another room for treatment. He’s wounded in the leg. Greta, go with them and take Ghost’s body down to the beach. I think she deserves a heroine’s burial ceremony when we can do that.”
“Somebody do me a favor and kill that thing,” Deb said, pointing at Sy Potter.
“No!” Elizabeth said. “This is the last NI.”
“That we know of.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth admitted. “There may be others and there certainly will be others. But if Sy Potter is the last Next Intelligence, throwing him out the window now is genocide.”
“It’s justice,” Deb said.
“Possibly, but it isn’t smart. I’m not talking about a genocide for the bot race. I’m talking about our extinction, as well.”
Sy Potter looked up, surprised, as Phantom let go of his neck. Then, under Drew’s watchful eye, the NI took a seat at the head of the conference table. “You did mention, Queen Elizabeth, that yours is a diplomatic mission. I am prepared to negotiate.”
Robot Planet, The Complete Series (The Robot Planet Series) Page 45
