Tin Men

by Christopher Golden

  Felix breathed as he watched Chapel step out beside Bingham. All he could think about were rocket launchers and explosives, things that could damage or even destroy Tin Men. Without Chapel and Bingham, they were as good as dead.

  “Mister President,” Felix said, stepping up beside Matheson, who seemed to have aged a decade over the course of this day. “You can’t afford to risk them both.”

  Syd put a hand on Felix’s chest and shoved him back. “Not now, Professor.”

  “No, listen,” Felix said, grabbing Matheson’s arm. “These killers were waiting for us. For you. We don’t know the extent of the ambush out there. If both Tin Men are destroyed, we’ll never—“

  President Matheson yanked his arm away, eyes narrowed. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? The bastards smart enough to plan all of this…did you honestly think they wouldn’t realize some of the world leaders might escape and make their way to the sea? They’ve likely been planning this for years and you think that didn’t occur to them? We don’t know how many there are. The ambush is likely on the ground as well, more killers waiting to shoot anyone who doesn’t look local. Could be they have photographs of the leaders. If I’d planned this, I’d have made sure they all did. These snipers…maybe they know who we are and maybe they don’t—“

  “Or maybe,” President Rostov interrupted, “they weren’t here at all. Maybe your aides—the ones who left us in the tunnel—maybe they were captured and revealed our intentions.”

  Matheson spun on him. Syd and the other Secret Service agent watched warily.

  “My people?” Matheson barked. “Why would it have to be my people? It could’ve been any of the folks we helped down in the tunnels. Hell, your bodyguard pledged to give his life for you, didn’t he? Where is he now?”

  Rostov sniffed. “Grigori would say nothing. He is a man of honor.”

  “But he’s not here, is he? You want to see a man of honor? Right here in front of you.” President Matheson pointed at Felix.

  “Mister President,” Felix said, holding his hands up. “You should know—“

  “That you’ve stuck with me because you want to reach your daughter in Germany,” Matheson said. “Of course you have. That’s honor, Felix. You care more for her than you do for yourself. And I’m putting my country first right now. It’s all or nothing for me. The best way I can serve is by surviving, by fighting, by showing my people that we can get through this. The longer we stay in this goddamn doorway, the more time we give the killers out there to round up their friends. That means Chapel and Bingham blow the hell out of however many they can and then we make a break for it.”

  Matheson fell silent, glancing around at those few who had made it to Piraeus with him. With Chapel and Bingham outside—gunshots echoing off into the night sky—that left only Rostov, Felix, Syd and Kirkham.

  “Well?” Matheson asked after a moment.

  “You’re asking our opinions, sir?” Syd said, tucking a lock of blond hair behind her ear.

  Matheson gave her shoulder a fatherly pat. “Yes, Sydney. Now’s the time.”

  Syd frowned. “All due respect, Mister President, but it’s not my job to have opinions. I go where you go.”

  Rostov grunted, his craggy features grimmer than ever. He stood between Matheson and Syd, and he studied his American counterpart for long seconds, his eyes half-lidded with generations of suspicion and animosity.

  “Four snipers down!” Bingham called from beyond the subway exit.

  Chapel shouted her name. “Move your ass!”

  “President Rostov,” Felix said. “Kazimir.” Again he drew Rostov’s intense gaze. “The old world has been burned away. The old rules? The old enmities? They don’t matter now.”

  Felix glanced at Matheson, who nodded for him to continue.

  “In a moment or two, we’re going out that door,” Felix said. “With or without you. Peter has a role to play in the world and I just want to live to be a better father than I’ve been. What we make of this new world is going to be up to us.”

  Matheson looked hard at Rostov. “Help me, Kazimir. Help me build whatever comes next.”

  Rostov exhaled loudly, and his whole body seemed to ease. “I have never liked you, Peter. Your arrogance has made you no friends. But you are a man of determination. Yes, my survival will send a message to my people—one that will need to be passed along by the written word or by human voices—but there is a greater message to be conveyed if we survive together.”

  “Together, with neither of us bargaining?” Matheson said. “No posturing? No exchange of favors, what you need and what I need, to show our people we are the ones in charge?”

  “It seems to me,” Rostov said in his thick accent, “that right now we both need the same thing. I have been following along in your wake, no different from the train passengers we led to safety. I propose that we change that.”

  Matheson cocked his head. He winced at the pain in his head but then uttered a small chuckle as he extended his hand.

  “Here’s a moment I never imagined I’d see,” he said.

  Rostov shook his hand.

  “Allies,” Matheson said.

  “Not as nations,” Rostov replied. “As men.”

  The gunfire outside subsided for a moment and then picked up again.

  Chapel stepped back into the station. “Mister President, we may not be alone.”

  “What do you mean?” Matheson asked.

  “Of course we’re not alone,” Rostov said, glancing at Felix. “We are under attack.”

  Chapel shook his head, taking a step down toward them. “Not the anarchists, sir. Bingham and I…we just got a signal.”

  Matheson pressed the edge of his palm against his right eye. “A signal?”

  “An emergency signal, sir. From another tin man. Original tech, built in case satcomm went down—though I don’t figure anyone thought it would be like this. I’d forgotten all about it. Bingham had to remind me what the hell it was.”

  “Could be from your other man,” Matheson said. “He went down back in Athens. Maybe he’s still functional and signaling for help.”

  “No, sir,” Chapel replied. “This signal is coming from due east.”

  “That’s impossible,” Syd said. “There are no other Tin Men in Greece, only the ones tasked to the President. It must be some kind of trick.”

  “Maybe, but a damned obscure one, if so,” Matheson replied.

  Rostov frowned. “There is nothing to the east but a few blocks leading to marina, and then the Mediterranean.”

  “The sea,” Matheson said, his eyes widening. “Maybe it’s not a distress signal at all. Maybe it’s a beacon.”

  “A rescue?” Felix said. “A ship, do you think?”

  The two presidents were staring at one another.

  “We go,” Rostov said.

  “Hell, yes,” Matheson replied. “As fast as we can.”

  Danny had moved to the prow of the hydroptere’s central float. There, with only open water ahead, the illusion of flying was complete. He soared more than fifteen feet above the water, speeding toward Athens as fast as the trimaran would carry them. Sea spray spattered his face and chest, coated his entire chassis. A chill had begun to seep inside of him and he could not explain it. Kate wanted to remain inside her bot forever but Danny wanted to scream, needed to escape from this prison. If he could have peeled it off he would have done so. He wondered how long he had to remain inside his bot before he began to forget that he was human.

  He put his hands on either side of his head. In his own body, he’d have pushed his fingers through the scruff of his hair, something he did when he was frustrated or trying to sort out a problem. The smoothness of his robot skull revolted him. He could feel himself nearly vibrating with the need to act. Whatever the future held, he wanted to run toward it, to scream his throat ragged as he knocked aside anyone or anything that stood in the way of him putting an end to his purgatorial imprisonment inside this
fucking machine.

  Danny roared. Wordless and senseless, he unleashed his frustration. The wind carried his shout back to the others on the hydroptere. The scream had broken the wave of his tension, easing it slightly, and he turned to see many faces watching him. Trav and Torres were at the wheel, keeping them flying under Birnbaum’s supervision. Kate remained aft, too far away or perhaps too occupied with her restored arm to have heard him. Hawkins sat with Alexa on the left wing, both of them studying Danny worriedly. Zuzu and Broaddus were guarding Hanif Khan.

  Zuzu moved up to join Danny at the prow of the ship, breaking the vitriolic current. “Hey, man. It’s Kelso, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Sorry, man. Still trying to learn everyone’s markings. Guess I should remember that target on your chest.”

  Danny smiled. “Easier for me. Not a lot of Tin Men with painted flowers.”

  Zuzu shook his head. “I’m just hoping I get a chance for payback.” He glanced westward, into the wind. “You all right up here? Sounded like you were freaking out a little.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  Zuzu laughed. “Fuck, yeah. But Birnbaum says we should hit this port city, Piraeus, in thirty, maybe forty minutes. Once we make landfall it’s four miles to Athens proper. We scout the place, try to find POTUS, and we get the hell out, right?”

  “The faster the better,” Danny said.

  Ping.

  Zuzu whipped his head around to stare westward again. “Did you get that?”

  Danny nodded. “Sure. Your signal’s still broadcasting. Has been since we left Haifa. I thought you knew that. Sergeant Wade wanted to keep the signal going just in case—“

  “Dude,” Zuzu said, “that wasn’t my signal.”

  Ping.

  Zuzu glanced at him. “That one was mine. Much stronger, right?”

  Ping. Danny could tell the difference now. The other signal was faint, further away, but definitely coming from the west.

  “Kate!” Danny shouted, turning to see Kate rushing forward along the central float. She ducked under the sail and ran at him.

  “Are you getting that?” she asked, shifting her head, trying to see past them. “It’s gotta be the President’s RIC detail, right?”

  She turned to Danny and Zuzu, smiling as fully as her robotic features would allow.

  “It could be,” Danny said.

  “Hell, Kelso, it’s gotta be,” Kate said. She slapped Zuzu on the back. “Take a bow, Zuzu. Every time a bell rings, a tin man gets his wings. If you hadn’t started broadcasting that signal we’d never have found you and we’d have had a hell of a time locating the President. If this ping is one of the Tin Men in his protection detail responding to you, I’m gonna kiss you later.”

  “You’re the boss, Sarge.”

  Danny turned to stare back out across the water, waiting for the darkened skyline of Piraeus to appear in the moonlight.

  Ping.

  Felix crouched behind a boxy little car, a dented green thing that had been abandoned at the curb with its doors still open. The presidents were a car ahead, also taking cover. Chapel and Bingham were out in the open, with Syd and Kirkham backing them up from behind a white box truck that sat dead in the road.

  “In the bookshop!” President Matheson shouted.

  Felix stuck his head up, tracking two people in motion. A pair of anarchists had been hiding in the shadows of an alley and now they came out shooting, ignoring the Tin Men and the Secret Service agents, firing only at the car that Rostov and Matheson were using for cover. Rostov popped his head up, leveled his gun and fired two quick rounds. One of the anarchists took a bullet in the leg and shouted as he went down. The man had a wild thatch of ginger hair and when he rose, half bent, clutching the wound in his leg, he looked wilder than ever.

  Syd stepped out from behind the white box truck and shot him in the head, then put two in the chest of his companion.

  Felix saw Matheson clap Rostov on the back. They had already run a treacherous, moonlit gauntlet. He had thought that this far from the G20 Summit the only anarchists they would encounter would be those who were pursuing them or lying in wait, and there had been those snipers ready to ambush them. But there were other anarchists as well, there to do a different sort of damage. How many of them had come to Athens to begin with? He thought there must have been hundreds, maybe more. Snipers and bombers and thugs attacking soldiers and cops in the street.

  Along blocks where there were no anarchists, they saw people beginning a kind of exodus. Under cover of darkness, those who had realized the enormity of the situation carried backpacks and trundled suitcases along behind them. They led children by the hand or dogs by the leash. Most people moved silently, not wishing to draw attention to themselves. When they saw the Tin Men some quickened their pace, but others stopped to shout at them. A withered old man strode shakily across the street to spit on Chapel.

  None of them seemed to notice the presidents.

  They did see a handful of police officers out in the street, calling to residents, trying to get people to stay in their homes and to conserve food and water. Gunfire came from distant neighborhoods and if they looked to the north they could see fires burning brightly in central Athens, pillars of black smoke painted against the night sky, defying the moonlight.

  “Let’s go, Felix,” Matheson said.

  They hurried along in the shadows of the buildings on the right. Syd and Kirkham took up positions behind and in front of them, while Chapel and Bingham stayed a few yards ahead, out in the street, trying to draw trouble before it could be focused on the presidents.

  “What’s ahead?” Syd shouted to Bingham.

  Chapel nodded to her and Bingham ran to the end of the block. She looked around the corner and seemed to stare for a second before racing back to them. Chapel joined them all in an alcove in front of a travel agency.

  “It’s a party,” Bingham said.

  They all stared at her. Felix wanted to ask if she was serious but they could all hear it now. Guitars and other instruments—several horns, he thought—were being played nearby, but were nearly drowned out by the sounds of revelry.

  “It’s the university,” Rostov said, glancing at the surrounding buildings as the realization struck him. “I gave a speech here two years ago. We’re not far away.”

  President Matheson turned toward the source of the music and laughter. “Quickly, then. These kids wouldn’t be throwing some kind of end of the world party if the anarchists had been here shooting people. We get through this crowd and we’re only a block or so from the marina. Move your butts!”

  Matheson and Rostov set off together. The Secret Service agents ran with them and Felix did his best to keep up. His skin prickled and he glanced around as he ran, wondering when the bullet would come.

  Up ahead, Bingham had already rounded the corner and the presidents followed suit. As Felix picked up his pace, his right foot came down in a small pothole. He swore as he twisted his ankle and stumbled, sprawling forward onto the sidewalk. He threw his hands out to break his fall. His palms scraped the ground as bits of gravel embedded in his flesh. His left knee banged hard on the sidewalk and he found himself on hands and knees, breathing hard and face flushed.

  “Up, Felix,” Chapel snapped at him. “I can’t wait for you.”

  Felix didn’t have to be told. He scrambled to his feet and hustled toward the corner. His knee stung and he felt a trickle of blood there, but the real pain came from his hands, which he tucked up under his armpits, hugging himself as he ran.

  Chapel had paused at the corner. Now he looked back and beckoned to Felix.

  “Come on,” the bot said. “You’re never going to believe this.”

  Felix reached him, turned the corner, and saw that the presidents had also paused about ten feet away. During Felix’s boyhood, the building that housed Piraeus University might have been called futuristic, but it belonged to a future that had never come to pass. Constructed mostly
of concrete and glass, it managed a certain elegance due to the windows framed in coppery red and the way the heights of the different wings echoed the plateaus of an elaborate wedding cake. Some of its windows were broken and the only lights within came from candles that burned in several of the rooms, but otherwise the university seemed unscathed.

  The anarchists had not attacked the university, but in the streets around it, a different sort of anarchy reigned.

  Matheson gestured for them to keep moving. Felix hurried to keep up with Chapel even as Bingham cleared them a path through the revelry. Students danced in the street as they tilted back bottles of alcohol. On the hood of a dead sedan, a young woman in only a yellow bra straddled a bearded man whose pants were tangled around his ankles. More than a dozen students cheered them on.

  A music circle had sprung up near the university steps, where seven or eight people played guitar and others had brought out violins and various horns. A tall, dangerously thin fellow had even carried a cello into the street and now began to play. Many more students were partially clothed or naked. Some had made torches of items of clothing and set them aflame. A pile of wooden chairs and other items had become a bonfire.

  The arrival of the Tin Men caused a ruckus. As Bingham shouted at them, students began to challenge her, standing in the way. When they recognized Rostov and Matheson the voices broke into furious shouts from several men and a young woman who began to weep. Felix saw the desperation in their eyes and wanted to speak, to say something that would comfort them.

  “The police haven’t even come!” one girl shouted at the presidents, trying to push past Syd. “Why haven’t the police come?”

  Felix went cold. The students might have begun this wildness as a lark when the power went out and the engines died, but now they were becoming frightened, taking comfort in alcohol and the madness of the crowd.

  “Move aside!” Bingham shouted at them, the words coming out in Greek thanks to the bot’s translator.

  Nobody listened.

  Students began to push in toward the presidents. Syd looked at Matheson for instructions, the silent question very clear—do I shoot college kids for getting too close? But the potential for violence spread like an invisible fog in the air, blanketing them all. A bottle sailed overhead and shattered on the ground at Felix’s feet and he moved nearer the presidents, turning his back to them as he realized that they were surrounded now and the students were moving closer, demanding answers.