by Marie Dry
“They’re monsters.”
If they’d kept her from her child, Aurora would feel the same. “How did they take you?”
Marysol shuddered “I don’t know. They appeared in my apartment. They just walked out of this flaming triangle. They said they’d take me because they needed good food for their human.”
Aurora planted her face in her palms. “I’m so sorry, Marysol. I complained about the food and joked that they should’ve abducted a human cook along with the food. These guys tend to be very literal.”
Marysol’s smile was wry. “I’ve noticed that.”
Aurora smiled at the little girl who held an equally fierce grip on her mother and her ragged teddy bear. “How long was she alone in your apartment?”
“Two weeks.”
Aurora was tempted to go and scream in Balthazar’s face again. “How did she survive?”
Marysol spoke softly, and the child answered then cried into her teddy bear. Aurora glared at Balthazar and then, for good measure, at the other cyborgs. Most of them got up and left.
“She survived by drinking water and eating what little I had in the kitchen. She’d been scared to go out and ask for help because I impressed upon her the dangers of talking to strangers.”
If she’d left, they might never have found her. Remembering her own experiences, Aurora shuddered. In spite of the way he made love to her last night, him separating a mother and child, without any discernible emotion, was difficult to accept.
“Explain to me why you are angry at us,” Balthazar said from right next to her.
Aurora turned and glared at him again, seeing Marysol and the little girl shrinking from him. “Because you’re a monster who would separate a mother and her child. Go away.”
“No, you are my human, not theirs. You will come with me now.”
“Until you can understand the importance of nourishing a child, of never harming one, and never separating it from its mother, you will always be a monster to me. And I won’t give you a soul.”
He leaned down and, with his nostrils flaring and his eyes blazing yellow, looked like the monster she’d called him. “Do not call me a monster, Aurora. I may decide to show you what real monsters do.”
She stood up and got into his face. “You will let her go.” This was something she’d fought for since the day she joined the foundation. No child would be harmed if she could help it.
“No.”
“Can’t you see she doesn’t want to be here?”
Marysol cleared her throat, and Aurora turned to her. Marysol’s smile was almost apologetic. “Now that I have Tansyn with me, I don’t mind being here so much.”
Aurora carefully patted her braided hair. She had to calm down, or she might just start pummeling him, and that wouldn’t end well for any of them. “Do you mean that?”
She could understand why Tansyn wanted to stay. Even when she and Ter still lived with her parents, this would’ve been a sweet setup. Enough food and the temperature set to be comfortable. It was definitely safer than the places they lived as children. Judging by their clothes, Marysol and Tansyn had had a hard time. Aurora had dealt with desperate women before. Something about Marysol shouted that she was hiding from something. Or someone.
“Yes, if they allow Tansyn to stay with me, it wouldn’t be so bad. I had to work three jobs, and we still lived in a bad neighborhood, and I never got to spend enough time with Tansyn.”
Aurora narrowed her eyes at Balthazar. “You will send some of your cyborgs down to collect all their belongings.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why would I do that?”
“Because that is what a decent person would do.” She smiled at him, a sweet smile with lots of teeth. “And if you don’t, the three of us will start screaming, and we won’t stop until all your tiny little Bunrika robots spin in your bloodstream.”
“They cannot do that from you screaming.”
Aurora opened her mouth, and Marysol and Tansyn followed suit.
Balthazar held up a hand and stepped back from them. She noticed the cook moved back as well. “I will have their belongings brought here,” he said so fast she had to suppress the superior smile that wanted to curl her lips.
“I want to see where they live on this ship,” she told him.
“It’s all right,” Marisol said. “They gave me a huge cabin with more than enough space for me and Tansyn.”
Aurora nodded. She turned to Balthazar. “I’d like to chat to Marysol for a bit. Alone.”
“You have fifteen minutes. Remember, you are my human.”
Aurora rolled her eyes at Marysol who hid her face in Tansyn’s neck. “How could I forget with you reminding me all the time?”
“That is why you will not forget.”
She and Marysol chatted, and Aurora knew they’d become fast friends.
“Why does the cyborg who took me keep asking me to give him a soul?” Marysol asked.
“That’s a long story. Whatever you do, don’t let him know you can’t do it.”
***
Balthazar escorted Aurora back to their quarters and then called all his cyborgs to assemble in the briefing room. They marched in and stood at attention in front of him. He looked them over, these people who had gone through so much with him.
“We will live differently from now on. Each cyborg will be assigned quarters by Nebuchadnezzar.”
“Why?” Amelagar asked.
“You are people, not machines. People have their own quarters and sleep in beds.”
“What will we do with quarters?” one asked
“I do not like to sleep lying down. It would make me vulnerable,” another said.
“Tonight at dinner, you men each have five minutes to talk to my human. She will explain what you do with your own quarters.” Even observing Aurora, he hadn’t figured out why anyone would want to have a whole room to themselves where they did not eat or work. “We do not have to be like the Tunrians or the humans. We will find our own way.” He locked gazes with each of them. “You will sleep in the beds in the cabins and eat in the mess hall. We will not consume the food paste from the tubes anymore. It will be kept for emergencies. We are people. We will sit at a table and sleep in beds like people.”
“Like our oppressors,” one of them said.
“No. Like people. We are cyborgs, but we will never be machines.”
Nebuchadnezzar stamped his boot on the deck and slowly, one by one, the others followed suit until the deafening sound echoed around the room.
Balthazar stamped down with his boot along with his fellow cyborgs. Never again would they be machines.
***
In their quarters, Aurora paced. She was still so angry at him. And mostly her anger was directed at herself. She’d been hurt when the president used her for the greater good, and she’d turned around and done exactly the same to Marysol. Maybe unknowing, but it didn’t lessen her guilt.
Balthazar left her in their room until he came to get her for dinner. They walked in silence for a while then he said, “You will explain to my cyborgs how to live in decadent quarters.”
The cyborgs came and sat opposite her, each one taking exactly five minutes. Their questions broke her heart, leached the anger out of her.
When they, at last, returned to their room and Balthazar took her in his arms, she kissed him back. Made love with him, tried to share her soul with this being who was trying so hard to be a person--a person she couldn’t imagine betraying anymore. The picos would release a chemical that would reset his mind, make him into a blank slate for her to write on. And she couldn’t bear the thought of him like that.
The next morning, they got up and dressed in comfortable silence. If he didn’t have something relevant to say or ask, Balthazar didn’t waste time talking.
They walked silently to the mess hall, entered, and Aurora looked around. It was the same group as the day before that sat at the table. He steered them toward their spot. The cook b
rought in the food. Everyone was quiet, as if dealing with the answers she’d given them the previous night. For a while, they all ate in silence. Every now and then, she would glance up and see one of them staring at her surreptitiously.
Something Balthazar had said the day before nagged at her. “You said souls were scattered among three planets. Have the Tunrians always known where we were? Why didn’t they try to make contact with us?”
“The Tunrians knew about you but didn’t know where your planet was. They found one of your probes and downloaded the instructions to Earth. It contained precise coordinates.”
There’d been a lot of speculation about the wisdom of sending out more voyager probes with information on Earth. It seemed like the nay-sayers had been right. She nodded. “They built the spaceships to come to Earth, but you stole it and came to Earth instead?”
“We destroyed several other probes to ensure they did not reach other habitable planets. Earth is ours. We did not want to be followed, but we had no way to know how many probes were sent,” he said.
“Many, way too many.” Aurora closed her eyes and shuddered. “I don’t want to think what other aliens we’ve unwittingly invited.”
“We destroyed most of the Tunrians’ records of Earth. It will take time, but they will find the information on their backup systems.”
“Do you think they’ll try to claim Earth, too?”
“Earth belongs to us. No one will take it.”
“Please tell me you have a way of detecting if anyone else is coming.”
“We have prepared for that. Long before they can deploy weapons, we will be aware of them.”
“How exactly did you do that?” She hadn’t known a cyborg could give you a “get-real” look.
“I will take you to the observation desk.” He helped her up and ignored her obvious reluctance. She’d thought he’d forgotten about her daily torture session.
“You know, it’s the most amazing thing, but I don’t miss Earth yet.” Actually, she did, but not enough to stand on a glass deck and stare down at through a fragile glass and a thousand mile drop behind her.
“You will observe it,” he insisted.
A few minutes later, she stood staring down at Earth and couldn’t help but wonder if, in a hundred years, she’d still be staring down at an Earth that had humans as the dominant species.
“I have read your Isaac Asimov.”
She turned to him, her lips twitching. She’d told him about the twentieth-century writer who had such an influence on robotics. She’d been fed up at the time, wishing there was three rules to keep him in check. “So what did you think?”
“No one will program those three laws into us,” he grated.
Aurora put her hands, palm down, on his chest. “Balthazar, you’re not a machine, you’re a person.” Abruptly, her grief over Ter receded. Her anger at the way they took Marysol and left her daughter lessened. All she could think of was their lovemaking the previous night.
“I have rewritten the laws.”
“You have?”
“The Tunrians called us machines without souls.” He covered her hands with his, his tattoo moving there, as if seeking their hands. It covered the area under their hands with about two inches showing around.
“If you were merely a machine, you wouldn’t have made it to Earth. You made decisions that saved your fellow cyborgs. Balthazar, you’re a person. You do things that are wrong, but you learn from your mistakes. That’s what people do.”
“Like leaving their small humans behind?”
“Yes.” She cupped his jaw. “Balthazar, it doesn’t matter what I do or don’t give you. I can tell you a million times that you’re a person. But until you believe that, it won’t be true.”
“I do not understand your words.”
She’d noticed sometimes he struggled with abstract concepts. Real belief must seem like some eerie concept he can’t touch or see. “You have perfect recall, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then think about what I said. Think about it really hard. About what you believe deep inside your heart.”
“I will think on it. It is time for you to talk to the president.” He lifted her face with a hand under her chin. “Remember, you are my runner.”
Aurora rolled her eyes but nodded. He said that every time.
They went back to their room, and the president’s image appeared on the wall.
“Have you found my sister?” She wasn’t going to be put off any longer.
“We’re close.”
“You say that each time we talk.” She should try to tell him she thought there might be very few cyborgs on the ship. She just couldn’t make herself do it.
He tried to look earnest. “I am doing everything I can to get your sister.”
She didn’t know if she could believe him. For now, she had no choice, and she had to tell him about the Tunrians before they were cut off.
“He didn’t say anything to me, but I think he is convinced the people from his home planet are coming.”
“More cyborgs? How many ships?”
“I don’t know how many ships, but they’re not cyborgs. It’s the people who created the cyborgs. Balthazar stole this spaceship from them.”
“Did he say when they’ll get here?”
“Not soon, but they’re coming. He said he had some early warning system set up and that he would know long before anyone reached Earth.”
The president’s image came and went on the wall as he paced. She heard swearing even when she couldn’t see him.
She took a deep breath. “I doubt he would allow them to get as far as Earth before he destroyed them.”
He appeared again. “Let’s hope so. We don’t have the weapons to fight them.”
“There’s more. They come from a planet called Tunria. And they believe souls were scattered to three planets in different galaxies in the universe.”
He swore again.
“I believe we can be sure there is another inhabited planet out there, she signed. “But Balthazar doesn’t know where or if they are aware of our existence.”
The president exhaled in a defeated sigh. “I miss the days when we were merrily looking for signs of alien life.”
CHAPTER 11
Balthazar stared at the human documentary program of the wasp, playing on the wall of his office. But he didn’t see the mechanical motions of the insect realigning the worm and checking its lair. He couldn’t stop thinking about making love to Aurora. Images of what she looked like, naked and aroused for him, kept coming into his mind. She had such unusual skin. He never thought to touch anything that soft. He’d never seen Tunrian females up close, until that day he had to relocate the female and her children. They’d been dirty, their skin and hair coarse. Aurora’s hair was soft, with many subtle colors making up the rich brown.
Maybe he wouldn’t wait until after dinner to have sex with her again. Lately, he’d been thinking about doing sex in other places on the ship. He would ensure their privacy, didn’t want to chance someone seeing her like that. It was for him alone.
Maybe he could lay her down on the observation deck. His heart beat sped up. Like the times he was with Aurora, he couldn’t control it. Or he could be behind her while she stood on her hands and knees. Aurora could look down at her Earth while he reminded her of what he could do for her. That she enjoyed sharing souls with him.
Nebuchadnezzar walked into the room, almost vibrating with emotion. Balthazar had noticed lately that all his cyborgs had changed. As if Aurora had infected them with human emotions.
Balthazar stopped the image of the wasp with a thought.
“Amelagar found the anomaly with the air supply,” Nebuchadnezzar told him.
Balthazar had been curious, but not that concerned about the small problem with the air supply. Rodents were the most obvious reason, but Amelagar had been determined to solve the puzzle. Balthazar remembered well not having any freedom, Bunrika not trusting him, a
nd he decided to give Amelagar space to pursue this. Developing trust in each other and learning to accept their instincts were crucial if they were to thrive. “Rodents?”
“No, we have a stowaway.”
Balthazar snapped his teeth together. He should’ve expected it. They’d killed most of the Tunrians on the ships and threw off the ones on the spaceships still docked on Tunria. Technicians, scientists, and dock workers could’ve been trapped on the ships. Once they came out of hibernation, it had taken triple shifts for the cyborgs to man all six ships. A stowaway could easily avoid detection. His ryhov pulsed, expanding and contracting with his rising emotions. “Which ship?”
“Rising Hope,” Nebuchadnezzar said. “Amelagar brought the stowaway here, and it’s in the infirmary now.”
Balthazar shot to his feet, a rushing noise in his ear while his ryhov pulsed faster. He’d thought it would be decades, even a century before he had to deal with them again. “Let’s go.”
He suppressed the urge to run, needed the time it would take to get to the infirmary to battle the desire to slaughter the Tunrian like an animal. His human wouldn’t approve. Without asking, he knew she’d say a person didn’t do that.
Nebuchadnezzar fell in next to him.
“Have all the ships searched. Calibrate the sensors to detect Tunrians,” Balthazar told his second in command. “There could be more. The bowels of the ships provide a lot of hiding space. And make sure it sent no signals to Tunria.”
“It will be done.” Nebuchadnezzar hesitated.
They entered a lift.
“What is bothering you?” Balthazar asked.
“Your human has much emotion for everyone. She will not understand if we kill it.”
“She is not as soft hearted as you think, and if we kill it, I will make sure she never hears about it.” He sent out a message to that effect to all the cyborgs. He allowed her to walk around if he accompanied her, but she took her meals with all of them.
