Metal Fatigue

by Sean Williams

  "Jules was a sadist, high on a power trip," she went on. "Occasionally he'd get paranoid and freak out for a day. We — I wasn't the only one working for him — we knew when to avoid him if things looked like they were going bad. Still, he'd sometimes catch us off-guard. He'd beat the shit out of anyone handy until they confessed to whatever it was that had him in a spin. He'd make it up later — with real doctors, real sympathy — but we all knew he'd killed a girl once, and kept out of his way as much as we could.

  "Late one night, I was almost home when he caught me by surprise. I hadn't even made it through the front door when he was suddenly there, waving a knife, threatening to kill me. I tried to run, but he was too fast. He hit me and I fell down. He kicked me a couple of times, just to hear me scream, and went to cut my throat with the knife.

  "Then this guy appeared out of nowhere: it was Cati, although I didn't know him then. He grabbed Jules and threw him to one side like a rag doll, then came back to see if I was okay. I was more afraid of Cati than Jules, and tried to crawl away. His eyes were like nothing I'd ever seen before. But he wouldn't let me go. Jules went for him with the knife — I guess he'd only been stunned — and Cati knocked him out. Didn't kill him, just put him down with one punch. I'd seen Jules fight three men and win when he went crazy, but Cati was so much stronger ... he knew exactly where to hit..."

  She hesitated for a second to clear her throat. Roads waited patiently, guessing that she was unused to talking at such lengths, especially about the life that she had kept secret for so long.

  "I was hurt," she went on. "Jules had broken a rib where he'd kicked me, and must have cut me at some stage without me noticing. Cati took me to his hideout in a wrecked Rosette cab and fixed me up — wouldn't let me go, wouldn't answer any of my questions. Just looked after me until I was better."

  Her eyes clouded over, and Roads knew what she was remembering. How long had Cati held her? Long enough for her ribs to knit, at least, and for withdrawal symptoms to begin; long enough, perhaps, for them to pass. Depending on the particular drug she had been addicted to, her physical distress may well have been acute.

  Until she was better, she had said. In more ways than one.

  "I don't know how long he looked after me; maybe a week or more. In all that time he didn't say a word. I soon worked out that he was mute, that he couldn't speak. When I was able to, I tried to write questions on paper, but he couldn't read either. He could only understand a little speech, and make himself understood in return with his hands. When I was well, he made it clear that I was free to go.

  "But I didn't want to. He didn't frighten me any more. He had healed me, freed me, saved my life. I think I loved him even then, although all I understood was sex. I wanted to thank him that way, to know him better, but he wouldn't. He wouldn't touch me.

  "I cried when he showed me why. I thought that it had been ... taken away from him. That he had been castrated. It wasn't fair, for either of us.

  "But I stayed anyway. He didn't really want me to go, and I eventually got used to the idea. He looked after me, and I looked after him. I was the only person in the world that hadn't run away from him and didn't want to turn him in. I was the only one who had loved him in all his life."

  She cried then, letting free the emotion that had been accumulating during the days alone. He watched her silently, building a mental picture of their relationship. She needed someone non-threatening and strong, he someone who could accept what he was. Without communication, without even a sexual bridge, it was hard to imagine any relationship succeeding; yet theirs obviously had, cemented by needs that transcended the everyday.

  And was it so strange? She had never had a normal relationship. If one could accept the idea of sex without love, why was love without sex so unimaginable?

  "We lived in the hideout for a month until Jules tracked us down and tried to get me back," Katiya went on, wiping her eyes with the back of a hand. "We moved elsewhere to avoid a scene. Cati doesn't like to hurt people. Jules kept coming for over a year, until one of his rivals killed him in a fight. Only then could we really settle down." She looked around her, reliving her life in the apartment. When her eyes returned to him, they were sad, but composed.

  "He's been gone over three days now," she said. "The only reason why he wouldn't come back would be because it's dangerous for me somehow; he's like that, very protective. But if he's in trouble, then it's not something he caused. He's the most gentle man I've ever met, almost a child. He wouldn't hurt anyone ... would he?"

  Roads thought carefully before saying anything: "He may not have wanted to, but I think he has."

  She wiped her hands on her nightshirt and met his stare. "I'm sorry. I'll answer any questions you want to ask. Anything to help bring him back. Life without him just wouldn't be worth living."

  "When we first met," Roads began, "you said that Cati occasionally left during the night."

  "Only recently. In the last month or so."

  "Could you tell me exactly when?"

  She nodded and went to get something from another room. When she returned, she flicked through the pages of a small, bound diary and called out dates.

  Roads committed them to memory. At least two of the dates matched with his recollection of Roger Wiggs' file.

  On these two nights that Cati had disappeared, a supporter of the Reassimilation Bill had been killed elsewhere in Kennedy.

  It wasn't proof, but it was enough to convince him. With a sinking feeling, he continued his interrogation of Katiya:

  How did Cati occupy his time? What did he do?

  Nothing. Before she had met him, he had lived by stealing food at night — usually after curfew, when the chance of detection was small. During one such raid, he had come across Katiya. She didn't like stealing, and neither did he, so she had ultimately found conventional employment. He stayed home during her shifts; they kept each other company at other times.

  How?

  Just by being together. Sometimes she'd talk to him, irrespective of how much he actually understood. Other times she'd teach him how to cook, or to use his strength productively. Recently, they had discovered Tai Chi in an old book; Cati had a natural affinity for the ancient discipline.

  Did he ever seem to drift off, as though he was listening to voices she could not hear?

  No.

  Was she aware of the existence of the control-code?

  No. She didn't know what he was talking about.

  Had he ever acted irrationally? Harmed her in any way?

  No. The only time she had seen him use physical force was against Jules.

  Did Cati know anything about the Reassimilation? Had he expressed an opinion regarding it?

  No. She didn't think he truly understood what was going on. He saw the world on an interpersonal level, and had difficulty with the more abstract concepts of governments and governmental departments.

  Did she know when he had first come to Kennedy, or how?

  No. She assumed that he had crept past the automatic machine-gun emplacements somehow. They were supposed to be impenetrable — and Roads assured her that this was more or less the case — but she didn't put anything past Cati's superhuman abilities.

  Had Cati told her anything at all about his past?

  No. He was unable to speak.

  "But I guessed a little," she added, "from the way he is. I heard stories about people like him when I was younger, before I skipped school and hitched with Jules. He must have been in the army at one stage, or something. To be honest, I try not to think about it, just accept him the way he is."

  "So he can only communicate with you by hand signals and gestures?"

  "Yes. Except for when he has something really important to tell or show me."

  "And what does he do then?"

  "He'll draw me pictures."

  "Can I see them?"

  She hesitated for a second, then went to get them. She returned with a cardboard box two-thirds full of sheets of paper
torn from notebooks. On every one was a hand-drawn picture, usually in black and white.

  The drawings were crude — minimalist in a child-like way — but competent. Cati conveyed information, not detail. People were outlines possessing few features. Only Katiya herself was drawn with care, as though she was the one real person in the world. Kennedy was portrayed as a series of empty boxes with blank spaces between them.

  All in all, the pictures concerned events that Cati had seen and did not understand, or things that were important to him. There were a lot of pages to glance through, although less than might have been expected for ten years' work. Roads browsed through them all, hoping there might be something useful among the mass of detail:

  Katiya in their home on Old North Street; the bent span of Patriot Bridge; two men arguing, one holding a gun; a woman with a small child in a pram; two dogs mating; an object that he did not at first recognise, then realised was the necklace around Katiya's neck.

  "He gave me that when we first moved here," she said, noticing the picture in his hands. Without embarrassment, she added: "He doesn't understand the idea of bond contracts, so this is the closest I'll get to a wedding ring. I never take it off."

  Roads continued browsing. The further he went through the box, the more yellow the pictures became. The last fifty were especially brittle, and obviously drawn as a series — telling a story of sorts, perhaps. There were images from Cati's life before Kennedy: the War, the Dissolution, other dark-skinned men that could only have been his fellow CATIs, things that Katiya would not have understood without knowing more about his background. Detail was especially sparse in this sequence, and Roads remembered with a shock that Cati must have been no more than five years old at the time these events took place.

  Five years old, and already a killer. Roads found it hard to imagine what Cati's thought processes must have been like. Human? Mechanical? Or alien — different in an entirely new way? Certainly the things that he had been compelled to record in his pictures were atypical of the everyday person's concerns: no friends, no scenery, no joy. Just facts, one after the other, as interminable and impersonal as the pages of a calendar.

  And yet, strangely, Cati was human enough to feel love.

  Then Roads reached the final picture in the box. Not the first picture drawn, for it was clear the box had been rearranged over the years. Expecting it to be just another in the series, he turned it over ...

  And froze.

  Katiya noticed the abrupt change in his expression. "What is it?"

  Roads held it up to the light so she could see. "Do you know who this is?"

  "No. Someone Cati met, I guess. Is he important?"

  "I think so." He turned the picture around to study it again. The sudden sinking feeling in his stomach was matched only by annoyance at not suspecting sooner.

  It was a portrait of a man — someone Cati had obviously known well, for it was drawn with surprising detail. The man's features were irregular, twisted; his head and face were completely bald. Most telling of all, however: the man was portrayed only from the neck up.

  And in the picture, Keith Morrow was smiling.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  2:45 p.m.

  "Keep them out!"

  The cry rang out across the crowd like a profanity at a wedding. Barney studiously ignored it as she patrolled the perimeter of her allocated area — nodding at fellow officers, smiling at children, making her presence felt in a dozen small ways. The best way, she knew, to prevent sticky situations was simply to be there. Not only would it have been impossible to silence every dissenting voice, but it might even have been counter-productive. Many a gathering had inflamed into riot as a result of over-zealous policing.

  She only hoped that being there would be enough.

  The crowd had begun showing signs of restlessness half an hour earlier, as three o'clock drew near. Bunched against the Gate, it spilled along the main road into the city like water behind a dam. All in all, perhaps twenty thousand people had turned up to watch the arrival of the RUSAMC. The straight, grey line of the eastern arterial freeway split the mass of heads in two, aimed like an arrow for the centre of the Rosette. The road was lined with RSD officers, plus several squads of MSA troops, conspicuous in their black uniforms.

  Although the occasional anti-Reassimilation cry did nothing to ease the tension, the greatest threat came from small-time agitators eager to create a stir. Groups of teenagers dotted the crowd, jostling people nearby purely for something to do. Easily bored, yet easily impressed by novelty in a city where nothing had changed for decades, they waited just as nervously as the others around them. Occasionally this nervousness betrayed itself in short-lived squabbles that needed to be dealt with quickly before they developed into anything more serious.

  She kept one hand at her side at all times, within easy reach of her radio. If there were serious troublemakers out there, she would be ready. She also kept a close eye out for anyone in an overcoat, sunglasses and hat, half-dreading a glimpse of bright red skin burning under the sunlight. If Cati did appear, she had no idea what she could possibly do to stop him. Neither she nor her squad was armed with anything more deadly than a baton.

  At two fifty-five, a muffled cheer went up from the people closest to the Wall. The cheer echoed through the crowd, returned stronger than before from those further up the road, then died. A false alarm, Barney assumed, noting that the people watching from rooftops nearby — and therefore able to see over the Wall — had failed to take up the cry.

  Yet, regardless, her pulse quickened. She was as human as the rest, just as unsure about what the Reunited States might do to the city in which she had lived her entire life. Stedman's arrival would bring Reassimilation one step closer. Once he was here, there would be no turning back.

  And once the RUSAMC was in the city, Roads' time would be almost up. He had already lost the cases — regardless of his stubborn pursuit of Cati. Given the Reunited States' firm stand on biomodifications, a Humanity Trial would not be far behind.

  She wondered how she would have felt if her father had been in his shoes. No less confused, certainly. Everything she had taken for granted had been turned upside down in less than twenty-four hours.

  Taking a deep breath, and trying not to think about the future, Barney settled back on her heels to wait.

  At exactly three o'clock, a stronger cry went up as the Wall's automatic defence systems were deactivated. Warning lights that had flashed upon its summit for as long as she could remember suddenly died along the arc before her. The background hum of generators gradually ebbed and died.

  Without consciously realising it, Barney inched forward to find a better vantage-point. As she did so, she became aware of a new sensation. Like a subsonic, the faint rumbling eluded her actual hearing, making its presence felt in the bones of her skull instead. Puzzled, she glanced around her, catching the eye of one of her squad.

  "That's something I haven't heard for years," he said, sticking a finger in his ear.

  "What is it?"

  "Heavy machinery, acoustically-dampened." The officer took off his cap and brushed back his grey hair. "And lots of it."

  Barney turned back to the Gate, wishing she was with the MSA guards on top of the Wall. The sound set her teeth on edge. More than anything she wanted to see — and feared — what was waiting Outside to be let in.

  Then, silently beneath the rumble and the buzz of voices, the Gate swung open, sliding on runners still smooth after years of disuse. The gap widened metre by metre until it reached its full twenty-metre extension., And when the way was clear, the vanguard of the RUSAMC convoy entered the city.

  The crowd fell back as one in the face of what appeared before it. First came four pairs of anti-tank missile launchers. Massive, six-wheeled machines painted a dark olive, they crept forward like insects at a slow walking pace, completely automated. The stings of their missiles pointed to the horizon over the heads of the crowd; a variety of optical senso
rs mounted on their curved flanks impassively regarded the sea of people, scanning for possible targets.

  Next came personnel carriers, each carrying fifty foot-soldiers. The RUSAMC troops stood firmly to attention, saluting the crowd. Their uniforms were standard khaki, as they had been a century ago; only a few slight changes, that no doubt meant a great deal, differentiated the soldiers of this army from those of the one that had preceded it.

  There followed an impressive variety of combat craft: ground-effect skimmers mounted with machine-guns; jeeps loaded with anti-aircraft shells; tanks armed with pulse-lasers and sonics; ground-to-air hybrids that looked part-jeep, part-helicopter; and many others outside Barney's experience. Troops rode in the vehicles or marched alongside them, as disciplined as the machinery they accompanied.

  Barney watched in awe as the procession rumbled by. The Reunited States of America Military Corps had arrived in style — she couldn't argue with that. She had expected an army of refurbished left-overs from the old regime, not this bewildering display of newly-minted weaponry. Kennedy Polis wouldn't last a day against the might of such an invading force.

  Of course, she reminded himself, this was exactly the point General Stedman was trying to make.

  Barney noted with surprise that General Stedman himself hadn't appeared. She would have expected the figurehead of a peaceful invasion to ride in an open vehicle at the fore. Perhaps, she thought, his absence implied a lack of confidence, or trust. Either way, it was a slightly ominous sign.

  Gradually, the initial display of brute force mellowed into one more sophisticated. Unarmed troops marched in file, flanked by security androids. Spindly snipers barely as tall as an average person dodged and weaved among the troops, nimble and well-coordinated on two legs, their red "eyes" flickering and darting. Surveillance robots dodged between marching feet like skinny, six-legged rabbits, startling adults and delighting children by occasionally ducking into their midst.