My first realization came the next evening, at the gathering of the Stand-Up Gang, even before Richter started into his agenda. Looking around at the faces of everyone present, I suddenly understood what Doc had meant. I felt dizzy, as if my internal gyros had just gone barmy.
I took a few moments to get myself under control. Richter was still in his opening remarks, introducing a new Stand-Up department head, Malibu. “He’ll be in charge of community planning for the Nest, the habitat that will house the ComFab.”
Malibu, who was as bronzed and handsome as his name suggested, took over. “Obviously, security is of paramount concern. The population of the Nest will be the minimum necessary to operate and protect the ComFab. Deadwood will be trimmed away without sentiment. Traffic into and out of the Nest will be minimal. Many of our members will inhabit a different community, code-named Swift, that will, potentially, serve as a decoy—if humans attack Swift, we’ll know that the Nest is possibly on the verge of being discovered.”
That’s about the point I tuned out. The words “Deadwood will be trimmed away without sentiment” triggered my second life-changing realization.
I’d heard those words on many occasions over the years, but not from Malibu. From Pothole Charlie. Charlie was a great planner but not much of a public speaker, and I’d never heard anyone but good friends of his repeat his phrasing. So far as I knew, Malibu wasn’t in his circle of intimates.
So far as I knew.
When the meeting was done, Lina, this time in a peasant blouse and a skirt of broad horizontal stripes in warm colors, a panda painted in the hollow of her neck, sidled up to me. “Care for a walk?” She affected cheerfulness, but in her eyes was the slightly haunted look I was seeing a lot with the ’gangers who were experiencing combat training, myself included.
“Sure.” I know I sounded vague. “Might as well.”
We ascended to Finest Kind Park. I’d helped build it long ago. It was a patch of green belt kept that way by full-spectrum overhead lights. A stream, a flow of water diverted from the humans’ nearest water treatment plant, pure and clean, ran through the park. On a stony bank, Lina sat and dangled her bare feet into the water. “Come on, give it a try.”
I sat on a low concrete fence, scavenged curb from a human street. “No.”
She affected unconcern. “You got kind of wide-eyed during the meeting. I was wondering if anything was wrong.”
I shrugged. “Depends on your definition of ‘wrong.’ I’d say everything is going according to plan. Not necessarily my plan.”
“Whose?”
“Doc’s. And yours.”
She frowned. “I don’t understand.”
I sighed and looked out to where the water ran over an uneven portion of culvert and pebbles. There it broke and tumble, a pretty display, almost natural. “I thought I knew why Doc scrubbed my memory after the shuttle repair—to protect me—but at the start of the meeting, I realized I was wrong, I figured it out.”
“Why did he do it?”
“To shove a wedge between us. To make me think. To make it impossible for me to ask him for advice. Lina, he figured out that Punch was with the independence movement and he hoped I’d join it.”
“Then why didn’t he just tell you to?”
“Because he wants me to be free. He can never admit it to the other meats, but he wants … all his descendants to be free.” I gave Lina a somber look. “But he can’t help. He’d be imprisoned. Maybe executed. He’s an old, old man, and he wants whatever time he has left.”
She looked down into the water, to where little black fish were now congregating to nibble at her toes. “And that’s what took you by surprise at the meeting.”
“That was just the first thing. The second was the realization that Doc is going to outlive me. The realization that you plan to kill me.”
Her head whipped around and she looked at me again, unable to conceal her surprise. She shook her head, denying it.
“Oh, please, Lina. It took me a while, in the absence of sufficient data, but today I got it. The Stand-Up Gang. I thought the name was because we were representing ourselves as ‘stand-up guys.’ But it’s not. We’re cardboard stand-ups, concealing the existence of the real planners of this operation. We’re here to be knocked down—destroyed—if the operation is a failure. Pothole Charlie and maybe some of his close friends are actually in charge.”
“I don’t … I don’t …”
“When Malibu began using Pothole Charlie’s pet phrases, it became clear that Malibu had been training with him. Malibu’s just not as good at hiding it as the rest of you. And like Swift is going to be the decoy for the Nest, the Stand-Ups are decoys, there to be killed in case I betray you.”
When she spoke again, her voice was a whisper. “What are you going to do, Bow?”
“I’m going to keep my mouth shut, and do my part in this operation, and I guess I’ll die when you kill me.”
She stood up, her feet dripping. She moved to stand over me. “I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?” I gave her what I knew was a bleak look. “I could live among the meats forever. I’d be happy. That was my choice. But I want the operation to succeed. Because if I hadn’t had my choice, I’d have been in hell all these years. Which is obviously where you are. You and everyone else who’s willing to die to pull this off. The ComFab offers you that choice.” I looked back into the water. “But I know, because I know him, that Pothole Charlie can’t accept a ’ganger civilization that has me in it. Do you think the Stand-Ups can be persuaded not to kill me? With him in charge?”
She took a while considering how to answer. “No.”
“That’s what I thought.” It was one thing to have grasped it intellectually. Learning I was right from the lips of one of the people planning my death made it real. I felt as though my muscles had suddenly degraded past the point of functionality. “It wouldn’t be so hard, except for the last few weeks thinking that I was actually one of you. The most disliked one, but a member. Realizing I was still Big Plush, that’s … hard.”
“Bow …”
“Quiet. No, I’ll do my job, but I want something from you. From you specifically.”
Her face went blank, but she gulped. That’s another physical reflex handed down in our deep coding. She squared her shoulders and looked me in the eye. “What?”
I don’t know what she thought I was going to demand. A night of sex, maybe, or servile behavior. But I just stood up and leaned in close. “I want you to stop pretending to be my friend.”
Her lower lip quivered. But all she said was, “All right.”
–6–
Elzoc
Things actually became easier for me after that. I didn’t want to die, but knowing I was going to, the assurance of it, took a lot of strain off me.
Lina kept her distance, dealing with me only when our respective duties demanded. I was certain she hadn’t told the other Stand-Ups what I’d told her; their behavior toward me didn’t change. I actually began to appreciate BeeBee, whose stance toward me had remained hostile but honest throughout the whole operation.
As the operation day neared, I knew I’d be doing some difficult climbing—on factory walls and megas at least. So I asked BeeBee for a set of multi-mode climbing gear, the same sort she had used when she was with her military demolitions team. She delivered it within a day, no questions asked.
Despite my newfound peace of mind, I made my murder as difficult as I could for my killers. I meticulously checked and re-checked my piloting mega, my climbing gear, the chopper-hauler I’d be flying. I found no sabotage.
The night before the operation, on my way home from Harringen, I stopped in at a pastry shop and picked up something I’d ordered—it was sometimes useful to be entrusted with a portion of the household account. With the strawberry cream cake, Doc’s favorite, strapped to the back of my buggy, I crept home at a human walking pace but got the cake there intact.
After Doc’s dinner, I brought the cak
e out and sat down with him for a game or two of Elzoc.
Do humans still play Elzoc? Doc’s dedicated tablet for the game was a century old at that time and I don’t recall ever seeing another human play it. Elzoc used a square-grid board, user-selectable in size. Each square represented a type of terrain that facilitated or slowed unit movement. Each player had a force of mixed military units—armored cavalry, infantry, artillery, air support, supply, command posts, and so on. Each piece exerted a certain amount of control against adjacent and diagonal squares, and enough pieces acting in concert could slow an enemy piece’s movement to nothing. Plus most of them could project force at a distance—close for infantry, far for air support or heavy artillery, for example.
We hadn’t played in a while. I creamed Doc in the first game that night, and he hit the reset button for another scenario, randomly picked by the tablet.
He gave me a cheerful look. “You’re thinking more tactically.”
“Am I? I guess I have to. Coordinating all those motor pool assignments.”
“Ah, yes, motor pool.” He touched each of his pieces in turn, sliding them to different squares on the board. No piece actually moved until the last one had been repositioned, then they all appeared on their new squares at once. I saw he was putting together three blocks of firepower, each almost at optimal distance to unload their destructive power on my main concentration of armored cavalry.
He watched me considering my moves. “Bow, did you ever think you might be destined for greater things than a motor pool?”
I blithely left the formation he was targeting where it was. I amped up its defensive power at the expense of offense. I also scattered other pieces in a loose formation off at an angle from his forces. “I’m a Dollganger, Doc. For me to be destined for bigger things, you would have had to promote that destiny.”
“I suppose that’s true.” He set all his pieces into motion, moving them to optimal firing range. Then he unloaded their firepower. My armored cav formation took a pounding. In spite of their increased defensive capability. Piece after piece vanished from the board, about half the formation.
I responded. The remaining armored cav marched doggedly on the enemy infantry. I also sent all my remaining pieces into coordinated motion. Suddenly his forces were faced off individually with fast-moving air support pieces that couldn’t really hurt them but could lock them in place while other pieces obliterated the tail end of his supply line.
He stared at the damage I had wrought, which was minimal, and calculated the damage that was to come, which would be impressive. “I should resign now.”
“And deny me the pleasure of driving you from the board? No fair, Doc.”
“You’re right. You deserve the endgame. We both do.” He smiled at me.
I smiled back. It was clear to me that he had a sense of what I was up to with the ’gangers.
And the fact that after I left the house tomorrow morning, however things played out, I would never see him again raised a lump in my throat. But at least my last memory of him would be of Doc smiling, his favorite game in front of him, his favorite cake at hand, his closest surviving descendant planning for something grander than a future of motor pool duty.
* * *
And then there we were, the day of the operation.
Before I reached Harringen that morning, I received a brief, coded message confirming that Tink was in orbit and her part of the operation was well underway.
At the motor pool, I told the human manager on duty, Fil, that I had the case load well in hand. As I knew he would, he took this as an excuse to goof off. He left to find a place to nap. I did some scrambling of security codes so I could lock him out at a moment’s notice.
BeeBee arrived an hour after noon. I’d told her which tool compartment of which personal transport to hide in, and when it stopped in for a battery recharge, she popped out of the compartment and sneaked straight into Fil’s office.
I suppressed the urge to laugh. She had on a blue Harringen jumpsuit and a big-hair blond wig whose bangs drooped over her eyes and hid their color. There was a pink scarf around her throat.
She saw my struggle and her expression reverted to its familiar, comforting hostility. “Don’t laugh.”
“Whatever you say.” I sent a radio command to slide the office door shut and lock it. “Come on up.”
Hefting her backpack, which was as pink as her scarf, she bounded up to the chair. “Tink has reported in. She’s on the ground and headed for cover.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
BeeBee made it to the desktop without effort. She shucked her wig and scarf, then unsealed her backpack and began pulling out gear—her sunglasses, which she put on, then climbing gear, a ’ganger surgical probe, skin fuser. “Shirt off, plush.”
I shucked my jumpsuit down to the waist.
With what was probably unnecessary roughness, BeeBee inserted the probe in my left side, down where floating ribs would be on a human. I felt sharp stings as the probe went through my neural net and more as she dug around with it. But she found what she was looking for. She tugged, and my transponder, a little silver cylinder, emerged from the incision, still trailing its combined power/data/antenna cable. In moments, BeeBee attached the transponder to an external battery, then snipped it free of my body. Her last step was to insert some fuser paste in the incision to speed the repairs my body would make to that little injury.
“All done. You were a good boy. You didn’t cry.” She handed me the transponder. “Consider yourself free.”
I dropped it over the edge of the desk into a wastecan. I wriggled back into the top of my jumpsuit and sealed it.
From a satchel atop the desk, I extracted my climbing rig and donned it. Special boots, knee pads, broad strap-on cuffs for the wrists, all in black. BeeBee got to work putting on a similar set.
I used the rig to clamber down the side of the wooden desk rather than bounding down to the chair and then the floor as was my habit. The rig handled the climb as well as it had during my previous tests.
Multi-mode climbing gear is pretty useful. The cuffs, pads, and boots extrude gripping extensions suited to the climbing environment, any of three different types: magnetic couplers for ship’s hulls and other ferrous surfaces, tufts of “gecko monofilaments” for other sheer surfaces like glass or stone, and sharp claw-and-hook assemblies for organic surfaces like trees. The gear responds to ’ganger radio or microwave pulses.
When BeeBee joined me on the floor, I issued wireless commands setting in motion the last elements of our part of the operation. I opened a series of drainage flues between the Harringen’s exterior, Loading Bay 4, where my stolen vehicles waited, and Loading Bay 16, where the ComFab would be. I broadcast the go-ahead to ’gangers waiting outside Harringen. I uploaded all Fil’s personal and biometric data to Harringen Security, identifying him as an industrial spy. He’d be grabbed the first time any device scanned his ID, and until Security confirmed his true identity they wouldn’t believe a thing he said.
Then BeeBee and I left the motor pool operations center. Its door slid shut behind us with an authoritative thump, leaving us out in the sunlight.
We went over the concrete wall separating the motor pool service yard from Bay 4. As we arrived, our crews were in the process of trickling in from outside. Many of the ’gangers were already in the cockpits of their megas or other vehicles. Some of those megas waited at the big doors leading into the access tunnels that would take them to Bay 16. Others rolled up the ramp into the main compartment of the chopper-hauler, the biggest vehicle I had misappropriated.
In ten minutes, I was in my piloting mega in the chopper-hauler’s cockpit, doing my pre-flight checklist. BeeBee, in her own forklift mega, took up position in the crowded main compartment and began receiving feeds from the engines.
Helicopters are ancient technology. The originals were prone to breakdowns and were comparatively dangerous to fly, but very, very useful. Their modern descendants, bu
ilt with improved materials and engineering, are more rugged, so sturdy and dependable that humans considered them dull. The one I’d benched for imaginary engine problems was a two-rotor freight hauler, painted in Harringen blue, the corporation’s interlocked-gears symbol in white on both sides.
I set up one of the cockpit monitors to receive a feed showing Bay 16.
The ComFab cargo container was already in position. Harringen Security operatives wearing innocuous worker clothes stood around like they were goofing off. I felt my nonexistent heart pound in my chest.
If I or any of the other Stand-Ups issued the scrub command right now, we could erase all sign that we’d had an operation in progress. We could all go home and pretend it never happened.
I toggled the chopper intercom. “Pilot to crew. Prepare to lift.” And I brought the rotors up to speed.
* * *
As soon as we lifted, Richter, from his observation post within Bay 16, triggered the explosions. I saw the results on my monitor.
From positions all over Bay 16, devices—designed by BeeBee and planted by members of my crew, looking like lunch pails and discarded monitoring tablets—detonated. I heard the dull “crump” noise as they blew. In moments, Bay 16 was full from wall to wall, ground to wall-top with roiling black smoke. Some of the smoke rose above the wall-tops, was grabbed by breezes, and began flowing southward like a transparent serpent crawling toward Zhou City.
Shrill alarms sounded. People shouted. Sudden squawk traffic erupted over the radio.
Methodically, I took the chopper up a few meters above the wall tops and the corrugated-metal building roofs, then eased forward until Bay 16 was in sight ahead. As the chopper neared the bay, wash from my rotors stirred the smoke, making an evil-looking rough sea of the surface. As I moved over the bay, the rotor wash blew the smoke all over the place; it rose in plumes, poured out of the bay in waves, obscured the sky.
But below me I could see the ComFab container. Atop it were ’gangers, Richter’s crew. I positioned the chopper directly above the container. BeeBee operated the winches to lower cables. On my monitor, I could see the rotor wash hammering the ’gangers below, nearly blowing some of them off the container roof as they hooked the cables to the container’s frame.
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