by Steve Perry
“You can defeat anything, Killaine—I made sure of that when I designed you. Each one of you has nearly one hundred thousand terabytes of memory in your heads—the ability to store enough knowledge to fill over a quarter million human brains. But it’s not just the ability to store that knowledge that makes you so special, but how you can apply that knowledge. Within or without, there’s no challenge you can’t meet. You just have to want to bad enough.”
“Now you’re sounding like Itazura.”
Zac almost grinned.
Almost.
“I suppose, of all of you, Itzy’s the one who’s got the most of me in him. Not the Me-Now, or even the Me-Then, but the Me-I-Wish-I’d-Been. Strong, witty, playful, formidable . . . and questioning.”
“But you are all those things and more.”
“And you’re just trying to earn some extra brownie points.”
“No, I mean it, Zachary. You denigrate yourself far too much and far too often.”
“Everybody needs a hobby.”
Killaine was getting irritated. “You really do think of yourself as something of a failure, don’t you?”
“Shouldn’t I be lying on a couch or something when you ask those kinds of questions?”
“Would it help me to get an actual answer?”
“Fine. What if I do feel that I’ve failed in many areas of my life? Who doesn’t feel that way from time to time? Or don’t you ever listen to Itazura when he goes off on one of his tangents, questioning the point of everyone and everything?”
“In his own way, I do think Itzy’s the most spiritual of us.”
“‘Spiritual.’ Nice way to put it. If you believe in the soul.”
“Don’t you?”
“Not so much anymore, because that would involve believing in a god who instilled you with one.” He glanced back over his shoulder in the direction of the Scrapper camp.
“Do you not believe in God, Zachary?” asked Killaine.
“Depends on what day of the week you ask that question. Yesterday, sure. Today—” He shrugged. “Today, not so much. I used to, in the traditional sense. Said my prayers at night when I was a child, went to church on Sundays, the whole nine yards. Then I grew up into a scientist, and decided that God was a psychological transcendent symbol expressing unconscious forces.”
“And now?”
Zac cast one last glance back toward the Scrapper camp. “Now I think it’s quite possible that God is a sadist . . . and doesn’t even know it.”
24
* * *
“So . . . you’re actually answering your phone this morning.” Annabelle’s voice was drier than the Sahara.
“Hello, Annabelle.”
“Imagine my surprise, when the corporate helicopter came back last night and you weren’t on it.”
“I had the chopper dump me just outside the city.”
“Why?”
“I have a doctor here that I trust.” Janus moved a little—his abused muscles registered a strong protest.
“But I told you that I would have a medical team standing—”
“I decided I didn’t want to owe you any favors.”
“Funny you should mention owing, Janus. Do you know what I’m holding in my hands?”
“Someone’s balls that you’re having for breakfast?”
“My, you are in a mood this morning, aren’t you?”
“I took two bullets and needed seventeen stitches in my hand. I’m a little groggy from the happy pills the doctor gave me.”
“Poor boy.”
“I’m touched by your sympathy.” Janus wondered how much longer he should put up with this—but was still curious enough about where it was leading to let it go on. Besides, he had a few issues of his own to put on the table.
“My hands?” Annabelle asked.
“What?”
“We were discussing what I’m holding in my hands.”
“You know, Annabelle, I’m sure this penchant you have for drawing out nonexistent suspense probably leaves most of your underlings peeing in their pants. I find it simply irritating.”
“Fine. Where’s the third disk, Janus?”
“With me.” Janus smiled.
“That isn’t a lot of help to me, now, is it?”
“About as useful as an envelope with only seventy percent of my fee is to me.”
“Ah.”
Silence.
“You never used to be this heavy-handed, Annabelle,” Janus said. “I never much liked you but I could always trust you to be straight with me when we did business together.”
“You sound as if I’ve hurt your widdle feelings.”
“You’ve insulted my integrity, Annabelle. If we are going to continue to do business together, I have a right to know why.”
“What makes you think I want us to do more business together?”
“Because that’s why you didn’t send all the money with the chopper pilot. You knew I’d come over there to your little fortress to ask why, and then you’d offer me another assignment—one that I’m guessing is too delicate or personal for you to describe through the usual channels.”
“And a smart lad, to boot.”
“Watch your tone, Annabelle.”
“What if I were to tell you that I’ve six of my best operatives ready to take you down any second?”
“I’d tell you to go for it.”
“Really?”
“Why do you think I chose to live out here in the boonies, as you call it?”
“Do tell.”
“Because I knew that someday I’d end up doing business with someone just crazy enough to try and have me taken out on my home turf. Go ahead, Annabelle, send in your goon squad. One button. I press one button and this cabin and everything else within a six-mile radius goes up with a bang.”
“Including you?”
“Including me. This freak show called life long ago lost most of its appeal for me. It’s no skin off my nose if I buy it right now or in ten years. So go on, Annie—”
“—don’t call me that, you—”
“—give your boys the word. The way I feel this morning, you’ll be doing me a favor.”
Silence.
“Would it do any good if I apologized to you, Janus?”
“Not really.”
“We shouldn’t treat one another like this.”
“Keep going.”
“I shouldn’t have tried something as amateurish as I did with the money.”
“Go on.”
“What? I’ve apologized.”
“No, you haven’t. An apology usually includes two very important words.”
Silence.
“Well?”
“Fuck you.”
Janus laughed loudly. “There’s my Annabelle. I’ll be catching a flight at one-thirty this afternoon. I’ll be at your office with the disk around four.”
“I’ll have the rest of your money.”
“Fine,” he said.
“Friends again?”
“We were never friends, Annabelle. But I’ll consider your next assignment.”
“Good.”
“Annabelle?”
“Yes?”
“You ever try anything like this again, and I’ll kill you and as many people around you as I can.”
“Well, at least the chopper pilot will be glad to know it wasn’t personal.”
“I’m sorry about his nose and shoulder.”
“And left eye.”
“Ooops. Clumsy me.”
“Now, Janus—”
Click.
25
* * *
In the cellar of the warehouse, Psy–4 watched in silence as Itazura walked his labyrinth.
The only light in the cellar came from a bare bulb that hung from the ceiling. Its too-bright glow cast deformed shadows on the cinder-block walls and made the already cramped space seem all the more claustrophobic. Psy–4 could never understand why Itazura had chosen to build his earth-ma
ze down here instead of on the roof where Zac and Killaine kept a lovely garden.
But judging from the impatient manner in which Itazura stomped through the maze, Psy–4 wasn’t about to broach that subject this morning.
“What’s wrong?” he finally asked.
“Nothing,” snapped Itazura.
Psy–4 sighed. “Look, I realize I don’t possess Radiant’s sensitivity to body temperature and blood pressure, but it doesn’t take an Einsteinian leap of the imagination to figure out that you’re not being truthful with me.”
“So you’re calling me a liar?”
“Let’s just say I get the feeling you’re not telling me everything and leave it at that.”
Itazura stopped midway through the maze, stomped his foot like a petulant child, then made his way back out before starting over.
In a far corner of the cellar, just out of the range of the circle of light, Stonewall stood very still, very silent, watching.
Itazura’s earth-maze—or “labyrinth,” as he insisted on calling it—was a long, uninterrupted path painstakingly drawn into the soil in the shape of an ancient “magic hierogram,” modeled after that found in the Egyptian temple of Amenemhet III. The exercise—or meditation—that Itazura performed twice every day seemed, on the surface, simple enough: He began on the outskirts of the maze, slowly winding his way inward (toward death, symbolically), then, once reaching the center, knelt for a few minutes (a gesture of transmigration from one plane of existence to the next) before rising to his feet, turning three times, and following the path back to the outside of the maze (toward life, rebirth), exiting at a spot parallel to where he’d begun. The points of entrance and exit were marked by three small spirals drawn into the soil.
Usually it soothed him, but Psy–4 could tell it wasn’t working this morning.
“I really think you ought to talk about what’s bothering you before trying this again,” he said.
“I really think you ought to mind your own freakin’ business.”
“Itzy,” said Stonewall from the shadows.
It was a warning.
Itazura turned away from the labyrinth. “All right! I guess I’m just angry about what happened with Killaine and Singer this morning.”
“Tell me about it,” said Psy–4.
Itazura recounted the entire incident, from Singer’s complimenting Killaine, to Killaine’s obvious disgust at the Scrapper’s presence, to Singer’s at last asking Itazura why Killaine didn’t like him.
“It’s almost as if she thinks that because Singer’s a Scrapper he doesn’t have any feelings, you know?”
“Killaine prefers to think of herself in terms of human as much as possible,” said Psy–4. “She was programmed that way. We all were.”
“So what?” said Itazura. “We can delude ourselves all we want, Psy–4, it doesn’t change the fact that we aren’t human. Oh, sure, we have all the outward appearances of humans, we perform many of the same functions—eat, sleep, go to the can, enjoy music, movies, cha-cha-cha—but we’re still outsiders . . . no, scratch that. At least an outsider can blend in with the passing throngs—”
“—we can blend in—”
“—let me finish? An outsider can blend in not only physically, but emotionally and psychically, as well. Even the homeless people that we pass every day have an advantage over us—they at least know they’re part of humanity, even if that humanity prefers not to see them. The Have-Nots are invisible to the Haves, but at least they know that the world exists for them. Don’t you get it? All we have is each other, Psy–4, and that’s all we’ll ever have. The world outside these walls isn’t really there for us. We’re not just outsiders, we’re ghosts.”
“You are in a state, aren’t you?”
“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare sit there with that quietly amused smile on your face and shake your head at me like I’m some slow-witted third-grader trying to grasp the intricacies of short division.”
“I’m not smiling.”
“Maybe not, but you want to. I can hear it in your voice.”
“Some would call that ‘paranoid,’” said Stonewall.
Itazura turned toward the shadows. “Whoa, dig that—Garbo talks.”
“You’re not just angry about what happened this morning,” continued Stonewall. “You’re angry because what happened has reminded you of things you’d rather not think about.”
“Shouldn’t I be lying on a couch for this, Herr Doktor?”
“You’re begging the question.”
“There was no question, Stoner.”
“Stop it,” said Psy–4. “Right now. Your biggest problem, Itazura, is that you can never focus when you get like this. Why is that? In preparations for an assignment, in battle, in even the most mundane of tasks, you have the most astounding concentration, yet when you get upset you’ve the attention span of a two-year-old.”
Itazura cocked his head to the side. “And why do you suppose that is? Couldn’t be because, technically, I’m only five, could it?”
“All of us are only five,” replied Stonewall. “But I have the emotional maturity of someone four times that age.”
“Barely out of your teens, then!” Itazura shook his head. “You two really take the cake.” He stomped over to Psy–4. “You want to know what’s bothering me? I’ll tell you what’s bothering me—we have no place in the natural order of things, understand? We don’t belong with human beings, but we don’t fit in with those like Singer, either. Remember all those times you’ve asked me why I choose to build my labyrinths in the cellars of wherever in the hell it is we end up for a while?”
“Yes.”
“It’s my church, buddy. My temple of worship. Human beings can look upward and tell themselves that God is looking down. We don’t have that luxury. That’s why I let the rooftop gardeners of this motley crew have their space up there. No, give me the dank, lower depths every time.”
“Why?”
Itazura stomped his foot down, hard, raising a cloud of soil. “Because down here I am closest to the Earth! Look at me, look at us! Everything that makes us what we are—the alloys, the silicon, the ceramic and steel, the copper of the wires that run through us like veins, even the carbon-based chemistry of our biological components—all of it came from the Earth. Gaea gave us the structure of life, Gaea truly formed our components. Any god that we might have isn’t up there with the clouds and birds and radio towers and smog—it’s down here, miles beneath the soil, beneath the worms and roots and shales and limestone. Our god is in the shifting of tectonic plates, the rumbles of aftershocks, the glory of a root pushing through the surface and giving birth to a leaf. For human beings, all that ‘Earth to Earth, Ashes to Ashes’ stuff is a lie—we’re the ones who truly came from the Earth, and we’re the ones who’ll return to that state someday. In rust, in decay, in the sweet, sickly song of decomposition. Just us, Psy–4. Because we came from the womb of Gaea, and only She will accept us when all is said and done. In the meantime, we go through the motions, we try to convince ourselves that our lives have meaning when the truth is the only meaning they have is the one we convince ourselves it does! Think about it, we don’t even have the basic genetic right of race memory! Every memory that’s in our head was programmed by Zac—”
“Really?” said Psy–4. “I seem to remember the Italian food last night quite well, and all Zac did was pay for it.”
“Don’t mock me!” Itazura’s fury was nearing its peak, and both Psy–4 and Stonewall readied themselves to restrain him, if the need arose.
Itazura, for all his joking, was perhaps the most dangerous of all the I-Bots when he lost control. Many times in battle he’d shifted into overload and become a berserker to end all berserkers.
Itazura was pacing back and forth, his voice rising, his expression intense. “Every sentence in my head, someone else has already said! And—don’t give me that look, I know what you’re going to say: ‘But we have the potential for achieving
knowledge that human beings do not.’ So what? A computer can amass knowledge. Any nerd who knows how to maneuver the InfoBahn can log on and download all the information he wants. Sure, we can assimilate and apply that information at levels far beyond human abilities, but big deal! It’s still just a function any sophisticated mainframe system could fulfill. Argue all you want, me droogies, but in the end that’s all we really are—sophisticated mechanical systems.
“And Killaine has the nerve, the gall, the arrogant temerity to think herself superior to Singer. I once heard Zac say that there were times he was ashamed to be a human being. Well, today, I’m ashamed to be one of us. So . . . now you know what’s bothering me. Aren’t you glad you asked?”
“Yes, actually, I am,” said Psy–4.
“Feel better now?” asked Stonewall.
“You weren’t really listening, were you? Of course not. You never listen to me.”
“Not true,” said Psy–4, walking over to the labyrinth. “I listened very well when you first explained the labyrinth to me.” He pointed down at the first set of three spirals. “These are the Wheels of Confusion, symbolizing the struggle to reconcile the heart, mind, and spirit. When you walk the path of the Wheels of Confusion, you open yourself wholly to the problem that troubles you, you surrender to the problem, let it overwhelm and consume you, so that by the time you reach the center, you have explored the ramifications of inaction, every consequence of all possible solutions, and the price you would have to pay for the choice you make.”
Itazura said nothing.
Stonewall came out of the shadows and pointed to the center of the labyrinth. “At the center of the labyrinth lies Emptiness, where either triumph or defeat waits. In the heart of Emptiness you kneel and meditate, clearing your mind of all static, every stray thought. You become a hollow vessel who is One with the Earth. When you stand, the power of Gaea fills you, and in thanks you turn around three times, creating underfoot the three Wheels of Illumination—Possibility, Probability, and Meaning.”
“Then,” said Psy–4, “you make your way out of the center, heading toward the three Wheels of Fire, and with every step you take, your strength returns to you as more than it was before; you are stronger of heart, mind, and spirit, because they have become reconciled, and as a Reconciled Being you are unstoppable, there is no problem that is bigger than you, no challenge you cannot meet, no adversity over which you cannot triumph. From the moment you step from the labyrinth, you are what you were meant to be, and nothing can touch you.”
