by Steve Perry
“You do that.”
Simmons left the office.
Annabelle took another sip of her drink, set it on her desk, looked toward St. Joan for divine guidance, and answered the phone. “Yes?”
“It’s ‘Come-and-Get-Me Time,’” said Janus.
21
* * *
Something was wrong.
She could sense it.
Smell it.
Feel it.
But if anyone had asked, she would not have been able to say exactly what was setting her nerves on end.
Killaine thought, This doesn’t make sense, being this paranoid so soon.
She was having a hard time keeping pace with Zac as they made their way through the maze of alleyways toward the Scrapper camp.
It amazed her how quickly her creator moved, considering how heavy the duffel bag slung over his shoulder was.
The backs of the buildings here ran to three stories of dirty brick. Near the rear stoops were Dumpsters and garbage cans with all the attendant scrawny dogs and starving cats prowling for sustenance.
The air carried the smell of decay; rotting food and motor oil and animal waste and old sweat mixed with the rich, loamy scent of mud and the sharp, stinging odor of—
—metal.
Most human beings would probably mistake it for the smell of ozone, this scent, but Killaine knew the scent of metal well. She inhaled it every time she undressed for bed at night.
She’d always thought that a bit odd; even though she was covered in synthetic flesh from head to toe, she could still smell the metal underneath the skin.
And it wasn’t just her; on more than one occasion, Itazura and even the vain Radiant had confided the same thing to her.
She took one last deep breath, nearly gagged on the cumulative stench of the dank alleyways, and decided to power-down her olfactory system until they were well away from this awful place.
Still, she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling.
Something was wrong.
She knew it.
To make matters worse, rain was pounding down from the black morning sky, hitting the iron overhangs, each drop sounding like a bullet fired from a high-powered weapon.
Rain puddled at their feet, deepening the mud, making each step more precarious than the one before.
Rain flowed from the roof gutters, creating blurry waterfalls that obscured their vision.
Rain slid along the railings of the fire escapes like shiny pin-balls in the tracks of arcade machines, pooling on the mesh landings, dribbling down like tears.
There was no way it could have been any more oppressive.
Or depressing.
Or potentially unnerving.
And it wasn’t even ten A.M. yet.
Killaine hated days that started off like this.
A few yards ahead of her and Zac, their silent guide turned and gestured for them to hurry.
Bloody Scrapper, she thought, fisting both her hands.
Not that she had any intention of doing the Scrapper harm; for one thing, it wasn’t in her nature; for another, she thought it a waste of effort.
As if he’d read her mind, Zac suddenly slowed his pace in order to speak with her. “I know your feelings about the Scrappers, Killaine, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do or say anything to offend them.”
“I’ll not be lying to you, Zachary, I’ve never cared for their type.”
Zac shook his head. “You sure didn’t get that from me.”
“Maybe it’s my inherent Irish clannishness.” She smiled.
Zac did not return her smile. “You know, don’t you, that I vehemently detest that particular characteristic in you?”
“You could always erase it from my—”
“—never! Don’t even joke about something like that.”
Killaine immediately felt ashamed of herself. She’d only been trying to win the argument by any means necessary—a characteristic that none of the I-Bots found particularly endearing—and thought she could gain the upper hand by making an absurd suggestion.
She could see how deeply she’d hurt Zac’s feelings.
And after their talk earlier this morning, she’d felt as if the two of them had grown a bit closer.
Maybe she could fix things.
Make them better, at least.
“I’m sorry, Zachary,” she said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I truly am.”
Of all the I-Bots, only Killaine called Zac by his full name. She hoped this displayed the proper amounts of both respect and affection.
Zac nodded his head as their silent guide rounded a corner ahead of them into another maze of alleyways. “I detest prejudice of any kind, Killaine. I just wish to God that—”
His words were cut off as they rounded the corner and saw their guide standing stock-still, arms raised to the level of his waist.
A few feet in front of their guide stood a young man in a long, dark, leather duster coat, his shaved head glistening with either rain or perspiration.
His left hand hung at his side.
His right hand came up quickly.
Holding a gun.
“Well, well,” he said. “Looks like I’m gonna make my quota, after all.”
Killaine began to make her move.
Zac grabbed her arm, stopping her.
“No,” he whispered.
“Why?”
“He’s got an electron gun.”
Killaine felt something in her center go suddenly cold.
With fear . . .
An hour earlier, a little after eight A.M., Killaine had gotten out of bed, feeling quite refreshed from last night’s PosiTrance Time, and decided to make breakfast for everyone.
Killaine was glad that Zac had decided to program them for PosiTrance Time—the equivalent of human sleep—because it gave their neuro-programming an opportunity to more fully collate, absorb, and apply the myriad bits of information they accumulated. When to power-down into a PosiTrance state was a matter of personal choice for each of them—they were, after all, more machine than human, so “sleep” wasn’t necessary—but Killaine chose to “sleep” at least three times a week.
It made her feel more like a human.
Zac took great care to program them with as many human characteristics as possible.
Killaine was always the first one to rise in the morning, earning the annoying cloying nickname of “Sunshine” from Itazura—a nickname that the other I-Bots, seeing how much it grated on her nerves, quickly took to.
She knew they meant no harm, that it was all only in good humor but, still, there were times she wanted to clap any or all of them upside the head.
You’ve got to learn to rein in that temper of yours, Zac had told her on more than one occasion. If you don’t, you’re going to get us all in a lot of trouble someday.
So, well aware that someone was just dying to irritate her, Sunshine rose from her bed, donned her terry-cloth robe, and started downstairs to make a good old-fashioned Irish breakfast for her friends.
The ingrates.
She was approaching the end of the hall when she noticed that Zac’s door was open.
Killaine knew right away that Zac hadn’t slept well, if at all; his door being left open was a sure sign that he’d been up during the night, wandering the warehouse that served as both their place of business and their home.
For now, anyway.
The warehouse that housed Invasion Prevention Systems resembled a kind of prison from outside. All the windows were covered with wire mesh. All the doors were slabs of reinforced steel. All the abandoned, stripped cars that squatted along the curb had smears of blood on the backseats.
Home Sweet, as the saying went.
The building was located in a section of the city called Cemetery Ridge by everyone except the people who lived there; the residents of this area probably didn’t know that their street was unofficially named after one of the Civil Wars bloodiest battles, and even if they had kn
own, odds were they wouldn’t care. What they did know was that their neighborhood was the dividing line between one of the city’s richest areas—Cinnamon Road—and one of its poorest. Depending on which side of the street you were standing on, you could either walk up the steps that entered the Taft Hotel—far and away the most expensive and exclusive of the city’s hotels—or you could be dragged into an alley by any number of drug addicts, thieves, deviants, and murderers who preyed Shiloh Street. On several occasions, Killaine had watched as exquisitely dressed patrons of the Taft—with their jewels and furs and obscenely priced dinner jackets—stood along the large windows and stared at the shabby homeless people who roamed the other side of the street.
It always seemed to Killaine that the Taft people were smiling at the less fortunate ones only a few dozens yards away from them.
That made her angry.
Angry as hell.
It also made her feel both grateful and sad that she wasn’t wholly human—but she never wished to be wholly robotic.
Human beings with their petty squabbles, their greed and avarice, their duplicities and lusts and perversions and—
—stop it, she thought.
This was a burden all of the I-Bots had to contend with, each in their own time, in their own way.
Neither wholly human nor wholly mechanical.
Outsiders, wherever they went.
Outsiders, forever.
But sometimes, when she watched the privileged at the Taft laugh at the hopeless denizens on Cemetery Ridge, Killaine thought that maybe, just maybe, being forever an outsider wasn’t so bad, after all.
She was pulled from her thoughts by a sound coming from the morning shadows behind Zac’s door.
A soft, sad sound.
Wet, full of grief.
She stepped up to Zac’s door and gently, silently, pushed it open.
Just a tad.
Zac was sitting in an old kitchen chair, looking out the side window of his room.
He was crying.
Very quietly.
Killaine felt something stir deep in her core, and she suddenly thought about a line that the Tin Man had said in The Wizard of Oz: “I know I’ve got a heart now, because I can feel it breaking.”
He looked so alone and lonely.
And Killaine didn’t quite know what to do.
Psy–4 had once told her: “I always know what his mood will be by where I find his chair in the morning. Front is good. The side . . . isn’t.”
She never really understood that until now.
If he had been facing the front window—which looked out on the beautiful architecture of the glittering buildings of Cinnamon Road—then Zac had been thinking about the future, about Possibilities, Newness.
Even Hope.
But if he was looking out the side window—down onto the dirty, shabby, ruined Cemetery Ridge—then he’d been lost in the past, in Loss, Regret, Sadness, and—worst of all—Guilt.
“Zachary?” she whispered.
Zac started, nearly jumping to his feet.
“I’m sorry,” she said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t,” he croaked hoarsely. “Well, not too much, anyway.”
He made no attempt to wipe his tear-streaked face.
After hesitating a moment, Killaine walked over, stood behind his chair, and softly placed her hands on his shoulders.
His muscles were rock-solid with tension.
“How long have you been awake?” she asked.
“Oh, I . . . I don’t know. A while.”
She gave a small, melancholy laugh. “Perhaps I’d best rephrase the question then: Have you been to sleep at all?”
“Yes. For a little while.” He reached over to rub the back of his neck, but Killaine pushed his hand away and began to massage his shoulders.
“What wakened you?”
“A dream.”
“Was it a very bad one?”
Silence.
She felt his muscles tense under her fingers.
Then: “Yes, it was. I dreamed about Grandpa, and Dad . . . and Jean.”
“Jean,” repeated Killaine.
Jean Severn, the only woman Zac Robillard had ever loved.
Jean Severn, whose parents, along with James Creed and Benjamin Robillard, Zac’s grandfather, had helped to lay the foundations for the science of Fundamental Robotics that eventually led to the creation of the robotic brain and, ultimately, the I-Bots themselves.
Jean Severn, killed in Bolivia by the same fanatics who had also killed Zac’s grandfather.
Jean Severn, who was resurrected by her killers when her brain was placed in the body of the Iron Man, a robot programmed for destruction by those who still held to the twisted principles of the Third Reich; Iron Man, a robot Zac had helped destroy. And with Iron Man, he’d destroyed the last essence of the woman he’d loved.
I killed her again, he’d once said to Killaine. They killed her once; I killed her again.
But she asked you to, she always told him. She couldn’t live that way.
And you think that makes it any easier to live with? Zac would reply.
Jean.
So much history in that name, spoken so softly, so sadly: Jean . . .
“What did you dream of her?” asked Killaine.
Zac took a deep breath, held it, tensed slightly, then released the breath slowly. “We were in Paris during some kind of festival. We were sitting at one of those little cafés where coffee is served at small wooden tables under colorful canopies. Somewhere nearby a band of street musicians began to play, and she asked me to dance with her. ‘It’s almost midnight,’ she said. ‘Dance the new day in with me.’” He leaned forward, rubbed his eyes, and sighed.
“Sit back,” said Killaine, her tone of voice making it clear she would hear no argument.
Zac did as he was told, and Killaine resumed her massaging of his back.
“So she asked that you dance the new day in with her . . .” Killaine prompted.
“I kept telling her that I was a klutz, a lousy dancer, but she didn’t care. She jumped up from the table and grabbed my hand and dragged my fat butt out into the street, and we danced—oh, how we danced! She was so graceful, so beautiful. I felt like Fred Astaire his first time with Ginger Rogers. The music kept growing louder, more joyful, you know? And the other people who had been dancing, they saw us and slowly began to move away, forming a circle around us, watching, applauding. Jean was so . . . luminous under the streetlights.
“Then it began to rain, but she wouldn’t stop dancing, and the band wouldn’t stop playing, and the people surrounding us began to sing, and I realized then how very much I loved her, how very much I admired her, how much she completed me, and I remember thinking, Please don’t laugh, if you laugh, then I’ll lose my heart forever; don’t laugh or I’m done for.
“She laughed. It was the sound of bells, it was one of the most beautiful, purest things I’d ever heard. And then I was laughing with her and not giving a damn about our getting soaked. I was just lost—in her, in the music, in the singing, all of it. It was the most perfect moment of my life, dancing with the woman I loved under the glistening lights and the crystal rains at midnight in Paris.”
Killaine rubbed the sides of his neck. “What a wonderful memory to dream of. Why did it disturb you so?”
“That’s just it,” said Zac, reaching back to stop her hands. “It wasn’t a memory. It never happened. I always wanted to do that with her, but we never . . . never had the chance. And now”—his voice cracked—“we never will. And I hate it. I hate this—pulling up stakes every few months and running to another city before Annabelle can get to us, the constant worry, the tension, the uncertainty . . . but most of all, I hate waking up at three in the morning because I was dreaming about a memory of something that never happened.” He turned and looked over his shoulder at Killaine. “Does that make sense t
o you?”
“Indeed, it does, Zachary.” She touched his face, her thumb gently brushing away a fresh tear just now sliding slowly down his cheek. “From the little you’ve spoken of her, and from the little I actually know about her, I know that she must have been quite a remarkable person in order to capture your heart and bind its wings.”
“She was,” whispered Zac. “Remarkable. I . . . I didn’t know her for very long, you know?”
“I know.”
He stared out the window. “Strange, isn’t it? How you can spend years around some people and never feel close to them, and yet you meet another person who you know for only a few weeks and . . . and . . .”
“’Tisn’t at all strange,” said Killaine.
“How so?”
She smiled at him. “Sometimes you see the soul and just fall in love and can’t do anything about it.”
He stared at her.
For several long, silent moments.
It began to make her nervous.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Just odd to hear you mention the soul. That’s something none of us have ever spoken about.”
“And for good reason.”
“What reason is that?”
“Itazura. You don’t want to broach the subject with him.”
“Why?”
“Because he becomes a different being when he speaks of the soul and—and you’re deliberately changing the subject. I’ll not have it, Zachary Robillard.”
A slight grin. “You won’t, eh?”
“No.”
He took both her hands in his. “Do you know how lovely you are, Killaine?”
“I’m aware that I’ve a certain appeal, yes.”
“Do you know why that is?”
She hesitated a moment. “I’m not sure I—”
Zac released her hands, then crossed to his dresser, opening a drawer.
He removed an old, small shoebox, then lifted its lid and rooted around the contents until he found a photograph.
“Look at this,” he said.
Killaine joined him and looked at the photo of Jean Severn.
She was one of the most beautiful women Killaine had ever seen—not just outwardly, but from within, as well. Her inner beauty shone in her eyes, in the curve of her smile, in the sharpness of her cheek and—
