by Allen Steele
“He got you there,” Curt said, running a hand through his hair as he gave Otho an amused wink.
“And if she’d discovered the hangar doors?” Simon asked. “Or the stairs leading down to the airlock?”
“That’s easy. She would have met me, and I would have broken her neck.”
Curt’s eyes widened, and Otho scowled. “You’re heartless, Tin Man.”
“And you don’t have a brain, Scarecrow.” As always, Grag’s voice lacked any emotive quality.
Despite what Grag had said about Inspector Randall, Curt tried not to smile. This sort of exchange had been going on since he was a kid. Both beings had never determined which of them was the better creation, but at least they agreed on one thing: they were superior to humans, and therefore it fell to them to help Simon Wright raise and protect the orphaned child of the two people who’d been murdered here.
“Oh no you don’t,” Curt said. “We’re not going to kill anyone who finds this place, and that most especially includes IPF cops. I’m just glad the fantome works, because—”
He stopped, gazing down at the floor as he contemplated that which he had learned only a couple of hours ago. “What troubles you, Curtis?” Simon asked.
Curt didn’t answer him. Instead, he looked at Otho. “If you will, find out everything you can about where Senator Corvo lives.”
“I can answer that,” the Brain said. “When he’s on Earth and the Coalition Senate is in session, he has a small apartment in New York about three blocks from Government Tower. But when the Senate is in recess—as it is now—he lives in a crater estate on Mare Tranquillitatis, not far from the Apollo 11 memorial.”
“Then he should presently be on the Moon?”
“Yes, most likely he is … particularly since he’s hosting President Carthew during his state visit.”
“Good. Find out all you can about Corvo’s residence. Particularly about ways to get in.” He turned to Otho again. “While he’s doing that, I’d like for you and Grag to disassemble the fantome generator from the hopper and transfer it to the Comet.”
Otho sat up a little straighter. “The Comet? Why?”
“The hopper doesn’t have the range to get to Mare Tranquillitatis and back without refueling. The Comet does. If necessary, rig a separate generator to give it adequate power to cloak the entire ship. But I want it done soon.”
“Sure, but why…?” Otho began.
Curt didn’t respond, but instead walked toward an unmarked door on the other side of the main room. “I’ll be resting in my quarters, if you don’t mind.”
“Curtis, what do you have in mind?” Simon’s voice was quietly insistent. “I think we have the right to know.”
Curt stopped. He turned to look first at the Brain, then at Grag, and finally at Otho.
“You know what I’m going to do,” he said. “I’m going to kill Victor Corvo.”
IX
Alone in his quarters, Curt stripped off his bodysuit and stepped into the bathroom shower. He gave himself the luxury of five minutes under the scalding spray, but while the water relaxed his muscles it couldn’t ease his mind.
Toweling off, he put on a robe, then carefully selected an outfit from his closet and laid it out on his bed: a dark, close-fitting tunic and trousers, faux-leather knee boots, a utility belt with an attached sidearm holster. Clothes that could be worn beneath space gear but were more durable than a bodysuit. The pistol he intended to use was in another room, waiting for his hand on this day.
He didn’t immediately get dressed, but instead spent a half hour in tai chi and karate exercises, working out in the middle of the large, rock-walled room that had once been his parents’ bedroom; he didn’t move into it from the smaller room where he’d lived as a child until his eighteenth birthday a couple of years ago, when Simon had finally given him permission to do so. He sought to put his thoughts aside as he physically prepared for the task ahead, but even so it seemed as if a hundred thoughts were going through his mind, and Corvo was at the center of every one of them.
He wondered where the rage he felt came from. He had no memories of his parents, other than a vague sense of emotional warmth when he thought of his mother. They were killed when he was still an infant; in a sense, the only family he’d ever really known was a cyborg, an android, and a robot. Nonetheless, he’d been raised knowing that Roger and Elaine Newton were murdered in cold blood and that there were still forces extant who’d extinguish his own life if they knew that he’d survived. And now those forces had a name and a face.
Every time Curt reconsidered, even for a moment, the vow he’d made to the others—I’m going to kill Victor Corvo—he found himself remembering the senator’s smug, self-assured face. If Simon and Otho were correct—and they must be; they’d witnessed everything that had happened here twenty years ago—then Corvo had not only gotten away with murder, but had even risen to a high place in society.
But why hadn’t he been told any of this until now?
Curt had just finished his workout and was resting on his bed when there was a knock at the door. Otho walked in, datapad in hand. “Sorry to bother you. Were you napping?” Curt shook his head. “Just wanted to let you know that Grag and I successfully disconnected the generator from the hopper, and Grag is now installing it in the Comet.” He held out the pad. “Here’s the status report if you want to see it. We should be ready to go in a few hours.”
Sitting up, Curt took the pad from him. He gave it only a cursory glance, though, before putting it aside. “Sit down. I want to talk to you.”
“Figured you might.” Otho took the chair at the small, cluttered desk on the other side of the room. “What’s on your mind? As if I can’t guess.”
“Why didn’t you, Grag, and the Brain tell me about Corvo until now?” Curt sat cross-legged on the bed, resting his forearms on his knees. “Why did you make me wait all my life to tell me the truth about how my parents died?”
“We did tell you the truth … just not all of it.” Otho shook his head. “Remember that while I may have been present, I was an adult in form only. I’d been decanted only a couple of months earlier, so I still had the mind of a child. Grag wasn’t much better”—a disgusted upward flicker of his catlike eyes—“and probably never will be. So, really, Simon knows better than anyone else here what happened that day. You’re going to have to ask him—”
“I’m asking you.”
Otho nodded, understanding that which Curt was leaving unsaid. For all of his incorporeal strangeness, Simon Wright had always been a paternal figure to them both. He’d taken Roger Newton’s place as Curt’s father, and by extension Otho’s as well. And although Otho had matured much more quickly than Curt due to the accelerated education his bionic mind had received, nonetheless the Brain remained his mentor. So while they both respected and obeyed Simon, they were also aware that, like any parent, he didn’t always tell them everything. The Brain had his secrets, and this was one of them.
“Long ago,” Otho went on, “Simon and I agreed to wait until you were old enough not only to understand what happened, but also to decide for yourself what action you wanted to take. Victor Corvo escaped justice that day. Since then, he has become a powerful individual, even more than he was. If he’d known that any of use—even you, only a baby—were still alive, he could have effortlessly destroyed us all. So it would have done no good to have you hungering for revenge at the same time that we were trying to remain hidden.”
Curt was quiet for a moment, gazing down at the woven bedspread that he absently tugged at with his fingers. “You could have taken me back to Earth…”
“No. You were dead. In fact, all four of you—Simon, your father, your mother, and you yourself—had been declared dead even before you arrived here. If you’d shown up on Earth, with or without the rest of us, it would have raised questions that Corvo couldn’t allow to be answered. Again, he would have stopped at nothing to have you killed, even though you were only a baby. As
to my fate…” Otho shrugged. “If I were allowed to live, then I probably would’ve had my mind scrubbed so that I’d become nothing more than a stupid slave. Or worse, the prototype of a stupid slave.”
“What do you mean?” Curt shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“No, of course not … because you haven’t been told everything. But when you said you wanted to attend the dedication ceremony at the Straight Wall and the Brain found out that Corvo would be in attendance, he and I realized that an opportunity had come for you to see your parents’ killer, not as a face on a screen but in the flesh.”
“And now, you’re going to let me go out and kill him?”
Otho didn’t respond at once. Instead he gazed at the mirror above Curt’s dresser, as if assessing himself and his place in things. “We all lost something the day your parents were killed,” he said at last. “I lost my creators. Simon lost the only chance he had to become a living person again, albeit an artificial one like myself. Even Grag, dumb as it is, gained not only intelligence but even emotions because Elaine saw potential in it and raised its sapience to human levels.” He looked at Curt askance. “Don’t let it know I said that, okay?”
“So that’s what you want me to do? Avenge my parents?”
“We’re going to let you decide for yourself what you want to do. But Curt…” Otho paused. “You need to understand that you’re not just talking about taking revenge. You’re also contemplating the assassination of a member of the Solar Coalition Senate, the elected representative of the Lunar Republic. If you fail, you’ll die, and if you’re successful, there’s nothing any of us can do to protect you. You’ll become a hunted man, and the IPF won’t rest until you’re either in custody or dead.”
“I understand.” Even as he said this, though, Curt felt the weight of Otho’s words. Like it or not, the android was correct. Curt was planning the most heinous of crimes. Once committed, there would be no turning back from his deeds … and the rest of his life would probably be measured in seconds.
Otho silently regarded him for a few moments. “Before you commit yourself, perhaps you should hear everything, from the beginning. And not just from me, either.”
Curt nodded and raised his left hand. “Brain, would you come to my room, please?” he asked, speaking to his ring as he’d done for most of his life. It wasn’t necessary for him to communicate with Simon this way, but he’d inherited the ring from his late father; it had been a gift to Roger from Elaine, who’d used it to keep in touch with her husband when Anni nodes weren’t always accessible. Curt had worn it almost constantly ever since the Brain gave it to him on his eighteenth birthday, and in one major way it was superior to an Anni, which could be intercepted by anyone capable of hacking into an individual’s neural-net system.
A minute passed, then the door slid open again and the Brain floated into the room. “Yes, Curt?” he asked, his eyestalks twitching in his direction. “You have a question?”
“What happened the day my parents were killed? I mean, what really happened?” Curt glanced at Otho. “He’s told me a little, but he said that you’re the only one who knows everything.”
“It’s time, Simon,” Otho said quietly. “He’s ready.”
“Very well, I agree. But first”—Simon moved backward, his props reversing to carry him into the main room—“let’s get you some dinner. This will take a while to explain, and you haven’t had anything to eat since—”
“No, Simon.” Curt’s tone was quietly insistent. “I want to hear it now.”
The Brain hesitated, and then moved forward into the bedroom again. “All right,” he said, purring past Curt and Otho to make a soft landing on the desk. “Let’s go back to the beginning…”
PART TWO
Twenty Years Before
I
“I know we have some disagreements,” Victor Corvo told Roger Newton, “but I’m sure you’ll eventually see things my way.”
They stood together on the jetty beneath Roger’s condominium tier and waited for the water taxi. Beyond the banked walls of the New Montauk oceanarcology, the sun was beginning to set. Across the fourteen floors of the horseshoe-shaped artificial island, the lights of condos, restaurants, and nightclubs were starting to come on, reflecting off the placid waters of the enclosed lagoon. An evening breeze, scented with salt, came in fresh and cool from the Long Island Sound. Amid the elms and maples of the nearby municipal park, English sparrows were chirping farewell to another day as, in the courtyard of an outdoor café, a four-piece string ensemble warmed up by rehearsing a few bars of Mozart’s “A Little Night Music.”
A pleasant evening, Roger thought. It would get better once Victor was gone. Or then again, maybe not.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” he replied, but then he caught the look on Corvo’s face and carefully amended himself. “I’ll keep what you’ve said in mind, though. The otho project wasn’t intended for what you have in mind, but I agree there’s potential for … other uses.”
“And profitable ones at that.” Corvo watched as a small catamaran slowly approached the jetty, its pilot keeping at harbor speed as he steered past the pleasure boats moored around them. “Medical applications are fine, Roger, and I appreciate that the major reason you and Elaine are doing this is to save Dr. Wright’s life. But your androids—”
“I prefer the term othos.”
“Sure you do.” A patronizing smile. “But don’t be surprised if the public calls ’em androids. It’s an old term, and one they understand better than”—Corvo peered upward as if trying to drag a difficult term down from the sun-streaked twilight clouds—“‘orthogenetic transhuman organism.’ That’s what it means, yes? Whatever you call it, if you’re successful, there’s going to be money to be made from your work. A lot of money.”
“And a lot of potential for abuse, too.”
“Not your problem or mine.” Corvo gazed down at the water lapping against the jetty boardwalk; this was, Roger reflected, one of those rare moments when Victor actually appeared to … well, think, for lack of a better word. “I appreciate your ethical considerations, Rog,” he went on, using a nickname that Roger secretly detested, “but I can’t eat ethics. I’ve already invested considerable sums of money into your work, with more in escrow. I expect a return on my investment.”
“You’ll get it, Vic,” Roger said, retaliating with Corvo’s own despised nickname and ignoring the scowl he received for doing so. “You’re not wasting your money, and I promise that you’ll see a healthy return. But as I’ve said all along, sometimes the best profit can’t be measured by a bank statement, but by the gift you’ll have bestowed on the human race—”
“Save it for your Nobel acceptance speech.” Corvo impatiently waved him off. “I want money, not a boon to mankind.” He shot Roger a knowing look and added, “And since I’ll be controlling ownership of the patent, you can bet I’ll get it … no matter what it takes.”
“I’m sure you will.” The chill that went down Roger’s spine didn’t come from the fading of the sun. He’d always known that Victor was interested only in amassing wealth. Corvo was a millionaire with aspirations of becoming a billionaire, but that hadn’t bothered Roger and Elaine when they’d approached him in search of the enormous capital they needed to accomplish their goals. Yet it wasn’t until this afternoon, when Corvo had come out to New Montauk for a private meeting at the lab, that Roger had truly realized that Corvo wasn’t just greedy, but unprincipled as well.
Dangerously unprincipled.
The water taxi bleated its horn as it drew close to the jetty. The pilot cut his engine to coast the rest of the way in. A dockhand extended a boat hook to grab hold of the gunnel. As Corvo bent to pick up the attaché case at his feet, the pilot stepped out of the wheelhouse to help him aboard. “You headed for Port LaGuardia spaceport, mister?” the pilot asked. Corvo nodded, and the pilot reached for his case. “Right this way … I’ll take that.”
“No, you won’t.�
�� Corvo yanked the case away, and the pilot got the idea and backed off. Corvo turned to Roger again. “We’ll have another meeting when I get back from Mars, with you and your wife both. I expect she’ll be able to attend this time.”
“I’m sure she will,” Roger said. “Curt was being a little bit of a problem today. He needed his mother.”
“Yeah, of course.” Again, the humorless smile. “Y’know, that’s another job androids could do … function as babysitters.”
“You’re quite right,” Roger said. “If you study history, you find many children had nannies who were slaves.”
Corvo either didn’t catch the bland sarcasm or simply wasn’t offended. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, turning to carefully step aboard the boat. “Keep me posted on how things work out.”
Roger stood on the jetty and watched as the water taxi pulled away, slowly growling its way across the lagoon to the opening in the oceanarc walls. He allowed a polite interval for the taxi to recede before he started walking back down the jetty. As he did, he raised his left hand. The large jeweled ring he wore on his hand was Elaine’s gift to him last Christmas after doctors told him that he wasn’t a suitable candidate for nanosurgical Anni implants, so the ring was her solution.
“Anni, call Elaine, please,” he said.
A few moments later, he heard his wife’s voice in his ear. —How did it go?
“Not well. Not well at all. Call Simon and ask if he’s feeling up to coming over this evening. We need to discuss something.”
II
Roger and Elaine Newton lived on the top floor of the East Tier. From the fourteenth floor, the view from their condo balcony included the Long Island Archipelago. Beyond New Montauk’s seawall could be seen other oceanarcs floating atop the flooded remains of the Hamptons. The view was one of the reasons why Roger paid for the privilege of living in New Montauk’s highest residential level. Elaine protested the expense when they moved here from upstate New York, but she had to admit that the ocean breeze coming in over the wall was an added bonus. And now, Roger appreciated something else about the place: an added measure of privacy that came from having nothing above their balcony but open sky.
