by Mel Odom
“It’s getting stuffy in here,” Hayim said. “The suit’s cautions haven’t lit up, but I can tell the difference.”
I checked Hayim’s oxygen supply and discovered that it was getting low again. Even with only using a little more than half the oxygen a normal human needed due to his reduced circulatory system, the trip to Podkayne colony had exhausted the suit’s reserves.
I knelt down and checked through the bodies, finding one that had expired quickly from a piece of shrapnel that had ripped through the heart. The envirosuit’s onboard limited AI had shut down the suit’s air supply immediately after discovering the injury had been unrecoverable.
Using a set of tools I had liberated from the train, I drained that suit’s oxygen into Hayim’s suit. He started breathing easier immediately.
“Thanks,” he said. “Are you sure there’s enough oxygen to get me to Podkayne?”
Thirty-seven corpses had been laid to rest in the cargo container. Not all of them had oxygen intact, but enough of them did.
“Yes.”
Hayim took another long, slow breath. “When we get to Podkayne, there’ll be an investigation. We can’t go through that.”
“We won’t. I’m accessing the GPS through the train’s Net connection. Nine kilometers from Podkayne, it will be dark. We’ll take our leave then.”
“From a moving train?” A concerned look bit deeply into Hayim’s features.
“The train will be breaking at that point. I can manage the dismount at the speed we’ll be going.”
Hayim took a moment to consider his options, and I knew he was thinking about risking his identification rather than jumping from the train. In the end, he nodded. “We don’t have a choice.”
“No.”
“No matter what happens, you’re going to be fine.” He sounded grudging about the fact.
“I need you to find the Chimeras, and I can’t let you come to any harm. You know that.” Still, those protocols that protected Hayim while he was under my control warred against my decision. I decided to take his mind off of that difficulty and focus it on another to distract him. “Once we’re inside Podkayne colony, security will still be strict. The present identification we have will not hold up under close scrutiny. Getting stopped on the street could impact us negatively as well.”
“Once we’re in Podkayne, I can fix that.”
“How?”
“I know where a forger does business, and I know my way around forging equipment.”
* * *
Three hours and forty-one minutes later, just after sunset and when the moons were racing across the sky, I sliced into the container car wall with my cutting laser, bypassed the security wiring, and opened the side loading door. The hard landscape looked ochre in the darkness.
“How fast are we going?” Hayim stood beside me, rocking from the slight motion of the train along the mag-lev rail.
I accessed the GPS information. “Seventy-eight kilometers per mile.”
“You realize jumping from this train at this speed could kill me.”
I did. In fact I was uncertain if I could leap with him from the train. My human safety primary routines had kicked in and almost locked me down. I ran through the scenarios, trying to find play in the programming, struggling to convince that concrete foundation of Drake self that not attempting to escape with Hayim would be even more detrimental to him than jumping.
I became paralyzed at the door, staring out and knowing that transit authority security would lock Hayim down. At the least, they would kick him off Mars. But they could lock him down for the rest of his natural life.
That would be a death sentence, I told myself. I was further incapacitated because I knew I had put Hayim on that train. By saving him, I had condemned him to this eventual confrontation with Podkayne Immigration.
But I had saved him from the attack…
The scenarios chased themselves around in my logic center, extrapolating mirrors of conflict that I couldn’t resolve. The neural channeling I had been created from wasn’t supposed to permit this kind of mental lockdown. Most bioroids would never have reached such an impasse.
The problem solution software I had been programmed with had been developed to disentangle complications. I had been designed to draw conclusions that would lead to truths, to people who committed wrongdoings, to eventual retribution for murder or crimes against persons and corps.
I was mired in pi, repeating confluence of failure to protect Hayim.
“Norris.” Hayim touched my shoulder. “I’m not eager to leave what’s left of my body scattered across that inhospitable landscape, but we’re only minutes out of Podkayne. If we’re going to jump, we’d best get to it.”
Instead of helping, his announcement stepped up the confusion running rampant within me.
“Drake.” Shelly was suddenly beside me. “You can do this.”
“No,” I replied. “I can’t. Logic dictates that I can’t allow Hayim to arrive in Podkayne colony. Logic also dictates that I can’t risk his life by jumping from the train with him. Logic further dictates that I can’t pull the emergency stop because railroad secmen will deploy and capture us before we can escape.”
“You’re not alone,” she said.
“There’s nothing you can do.”
“Not me. Simon Blake.”
“Simon Blake is dead.”
“Simon Blake still lives within you. Access that part of you. See what Simon Blake would do.”
Her words echoed within my logic centers. I tried to touch that part of me that had been Simon Blake, and I was surprised to find him there and waiting.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I lay on my back and stared up at the distant sun through the red sky and the small portable transplas dome. My body hurt and my lungs cried out for a breath I couldn’t take. Finally the paroxysm that had locked down my chest relaxed and I could breathe again. I sucked in air and pain exploded inside my head.
“Have you had enough? Or do you still want a shot at the title?” The tone was only slightly mocking, and a little winded. I took pride in that. My opponent was the toughest I’d ever faced.
Moving gingerly, I rolled over and discovered I was on a familiar grey square exercise mat that was seven meters to a side. A group of men and women ringed the sides, all of whom seemed to be greatly amused by my predicament.
Several cheers and jeers reached my ears. “Come on, Blake.”
“You can’t give up that easily.”
“Get back in there and take your beating.”
Clad in a skintight black singlet, John Rath stood a few meters away. Headgear with ear protectors wrapped his head. His skin was flushed red with exertion and I saw a few bruises on his arm and one on his right check. His right eye was slightly swollen too and a bead of blood collected on his eyebrow. Martial arts gloves covered his hands and boots covered his feet. They weren’t there to protect him. They were there to protect me.
I tasted blood as I pushed myself up on hands that were likewise covered with the special gloves. Blood dripped from my nose and I wiped at it with my arm, smearing a thin film of crimson from my wrist to my elbow.
My mind recalled the recent battle. Rath hadn’t been gentle. He never was.
Grinning around his black mouthpiece, Rath opened his arms wide. “We can stop this any time you’re ready.”
“I’m not ready to stop,” I replied. But I knew I didn’t have much in reserve. I was all but spent. I set myself in my stance, legs spread to shoulder width, left foot slightly in front of the right, my clenched fists raised to just below my eyes.
Rath nodded, then he started his advance, moving with sinuous grace in one of the kung fu styles he favored. I mirrored him, giving ground and moving as deftly as he did. He had taught me quickly because learning the fighting skill was like picking up an old proficiency.
Other than the death of my parents and sister, my memory still hadn’t returned. The doctors were convinced that it had b
een jumbled as a result of the head injury I’d suffered. I knew more about myself from reading the file Rath had given me about Simon Blake than I did on my own. But there was a lot my body remembered, like fighting and military engagements. Some days I felt like a ghost of the man I’d been.
For a time, we sparred like shadows, equally matched as we delivered blow after blow, kick after kick. I felt the impact at both ends: when he made contact with me and when I made contact with him. Instinctively, I knew every move he was going to make, and he read me like he’d written the programming.
Then, coming out of a defensive posture, he shifted, dropping his left shoulder and lifting his right leg like he was going to deliver a roundhouse kick. I set myself for that, then his left snap-kick came off the ground a split-second later and slammed into my chest. The impact caused my heart to skip a beat and I experienced a moment of disorientation as my body and mind tried to come together again.
Before I could recover, Rath shifted to his right and drove his right fist into the left side of my face. My jaw clenched spasmodically as white-hot agony flared through my mind. I brought my arms up to defend myself, managing to block his next blow, but he hadn’t been intending to land that one. It was just a distraction that set me up for the spinning back kick that caught me in the right side of my head.
My knees turned to jelly and I went down. No longer able to hold my arms up, I sat there defenselessly as he faced me. For a moment I thought I would be struck again. Sometimes Rath had trouble stopping a fight once he started. He had a killer mentality, a singular focus. But that was on the exercise mat during personal combat. When he was operating on the battlefield, his scope was wider. He saw things that other people didn’t. His touch there was gentle—a surgeon’s scalpel teasing flesh from bone.
He stopped a follow-up kick to my face by centimeters. Then, as easy as water flowing, Rath sank to his knees in front of me. He was breathing harder, but he had it under control. I sucked in air greedily and struggled to hang onto my senses.
“Had enough now?” he asked.
I nodded, unable to speak.
Around me, the other men and women of the Chimeras applauded and yelled cheerful obscenities.
Rath smiled at me, and I saw that flicker of pride in his dark eyes that I relished. Whatever he asked me to do, whenever he asked me to do it, I was his, heart, body, and soul. It had been that way since he had visited me in the hospital seven months ago. My memory might still be sketchy, still blurred in most areas, but I was certain I had never followed a man better than John Rath.
“You’re good, Blake,” Rath said. “Almost as good as me.”
“I’ll get better,” I said through my aching jaw.
“Better than me?” Rath grinned and shook his head.
I’d meant better than I was, but I didn’t bother to correct him. The challenge felt right.
“You’ll never be better than me. I taught you everything you know, but I didn’t teach you everything I know.” Rath called for a towel and caught one when it was thrown to him. He put it over my shoulders like it was a trophy mantle, and I felt like it was.
* * *
Back on the train in the cargo container, the rushing wind buffeted me. I was also free to choose among my options again. Something in that passing wisp of a memory tilted the balance and freed me to move. I turned to Hayim and dropped to my knees. “Climb onto my back.”
On the other side of the face shield, he looked tired and worried. “You’re sure you can do this?”
“Yes.” I wasn’t sure about the landing, but I knew I could now put us through the door.
Awkwardly, Hayim threw his arms around my neck and wrapped his bionic legs around my chest. The fact that I was taller than he was helped with his positioning.
Almost effortlessly in spite of Hayim’s additional weight, I stood. I was a lot stronger than a human, and the gravity differential on Mars worked in our favor. The mass remained a problem, though, and that would affect the landing.
I accessed the GPS and ascertained the train’s present speed—seventy-one KPH—then threw us from the train. We dropped four meters to the ground, still accelerating forward. I turned my hips in a way no human could do, putting my legs at a ninety degree angle to my body, landed on my left foot and immediately kicked upward into a jump that carried me thirty meters across the broken ground. Some of my speed began to drop away naturally but I knew better than to try to force it.
I touched down with my right foot and still didn’t try to decelerate, but I did manage to hold onto enough friction while touching the ground to spin my torso into the proper alignment so I could swing my arms to help keep my balance.
I sailed another twenty meters this time, but then I had the rhythm. I was no longer skipping like a rock across a lake surface. I was running, taking superhumanly long strides, but in control of the speed and direction. Hayim bounced against me for a moment, then he wrapped his arms and legs more tightly around me. He was screaming inside the envirosuit. I’d damped his comm, but I could still hear him with the helmet to head contact I had.
I ran, keeping the rhythm for a moment, avoiding the craters and pitfalls that appeared before us. Occasionally my feet skidded against bare stone, other times they sank in the powdery ochre sand. Through it all, I kept my footing, and I kept Hayim on my back. He thumped against me and became a variable I had to deal with.
Two point four kilometers from Podkayne colony, which gleamed in the distance under the moonlight, I came to a halt next to a large ag-bubble that was dark and thick with wheat fields. I stayed outside of the sec radius.
Hayim groaned as he unlocked his arms, then stepped down onto the ground. His leg squealed in protest.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“I never want to do that again.”
“Sit down and catch your breath for a moment.” I searched my thigh pockets for a comprehensive tool kit. I opened the kit as Hayim sat, then gave him an energy drink laced with electrolytes.
While he attached the drink to the tube in his face shield, I sorted through the tools, taking out what I thought I would need.
“What are you doing?” Hayim asked.
“I’m going to repair your leg.”
Hayim hesitated. “Have you done work like that before?”
“No, but I pulled down schematics from the Net while we were aboard the train. I know what I’m doing, Hayim. Trust me. Where we are, with the things against us, the last thing you need is for that leg to fail you.”
After another moment of hesitation, Hayim extended his leg, which squealed louder than it had before, making me wonder if it had been injured while I’d carried him across the empty desert or during the train wreck.
“Getting the leg repaired was too expensive for me to have done, and Reena didn’t know her way around it. She does a lot of work on mechanical things, but mostly she parts them out. Repairing something like this is above her pay grade.”
Using an Allen wrench, I opened the cover over his knee and started there. I cleared debris with a brush, located a ball joint that had been pitted from continued excessive wear, and removed it. I took out another because that one was no longer salvageable.
“Where did you get that?” Hayim asked, eyeing the new ball joint.
“From one of the server bioroids that was damaged during the wreck. Her torso and hips were separated, and the destruction to her chest cavity where her brain is was too severe for her to stay online.”
“She’s dead?”
“Dead is a human condition. That unit was rendered inoperable. Her consciousness was backed up through weekly visits to Haas-Bioroid. She can be reactivated and only have lost a few days’ of memory.”
“Has that ever happened to you?”
I carefully reinstalled the replacement ball joint. “I have been offline a few times.”
“How?”
“As a result of damage.”
“But you’re all right now?”
“I am.”
“And you know what you’re doing?”
“I do.”
Hayim finally relaxed and lay back, seeking a more comfortable position.
After I replaced the knee joint, I opened the ankle and the hip and cleaned those parts as well. Debris from the degrading ball joint had gathered in both areas. When Hayim stood after I put everything back together, the leg no longer made noise.
He stamped around with the limb experimentally, then looked over at me and grinned. “It feels really good. Better than the other one, in fact.”
I put my tools away. “I’m glad. Maybe after we get to Podkayne colony I can take a look at the other leg.”
“I’d appreciate it. How far out are we?”
“Two point four miles.”
He checked his chronometer. “Almost 2100 local time. The crews from the ag-bubbles should be showing up for the nightly tour of the megapolis.”
* * *
Five minutes later, we found a well-worn path headed for Podkayne colony, which was visible in the distance. The megapolis stood tall, filled with multicolored lights that shone out from the domescrapers and minihoppers flitting from rooftop to rooftop.
“It’s beautiful,” Shelly said as she walked at my side. Hayim walked on the other side. “It looks like a bouquet of gemstones sparkling under glass.”
“The megapolis has its secrets and dangers.”
“Every city does, Drake. I know I taught you that.”
“You did.” Shelly had had a much gentler hand for me than John Rath had had for Simon Blake. But ultimately, both of them had striven to keep us alive, safe, and functional.
Less than a kilometer from the colony’s gates, Hayim and I were overtaken by a crew ATV, pinned in the bright headlights as it careened down toward us. Hayim and I stepped off the narrow road. The crew ATV hissed to a stop only a few meters in front of us, creating a cloud of powdery dust to roil out around it.
The crew ATV stood four meters tall and crept along on eight legs that moved with blinding speed. The boxy shape allowed for a sizeable cargo area that was at the moment mostly occupied by several men and women in envirosuits.
