Inside Ankyl was the urge to protect those who were drowning. Maybe they were only millionaires or five-year-olds, but he saved all of them. He wouldn’t bother dragging soggy meat off the bottom of the pool. He saved people. The instinct wasn’t something that Ankyl wanted, but he had it nonetheless. Empathy. Empathy was a distraction that had bothered him throughout his months and months of life. But then one day, as the creature patrolled the surface of blood-warm Lake Ames, an obvious and quite simple idea occurred to that old Gen Prime warrior:
Someone had to be the biggest, most impressive beast in the world.
Devon happened to be that beast today, and that man would remain so long after Ankyl was turned into compost and flowers. But the trillionaire would eventually find himself under someone else’s feet, and suddenly, with great clarity, he realized who would own the important feet.
Those feet were standing nearby.
Just thinking about them caused a new set of calculations about worth and worthiness.
Like a dancer, Ankyl turned in a tight circle. He made a swift, adrenalin-fueled assessment of options and likelihoods. The second richest creature in the world was lying behind the minister’s corpse, sobbing. A smart camouflaging fog was finally beginning to rise, but blind pulses of laser and ballistic were still flying overhead, and in this maelstrom, exactly one human being remained on her feet—a solitary, defiant creature whose rage was pushing aside all of her reasonable terrors.
The decision was made.
Ankyl’s four legs decided to run, and he was their passenger, watching the sprint toward the bride who damn well refused to give up this day without a good fight.
THE FEUD
Just once, Warren pressed his father about the feud.
That was several years before the wedding. Harry Pinchit never needed encouragement to insult his enemies, and just mentioning Devon’s name triggered a reliable fury from the old man. But Warren didn’t care about recent crimes and old injustices. Warren was a twenty-year-old with a few crimes and injustices in his own past, but he had been acting good of late. No lawyers, no bribes. No talk about building a special home where his urges could be contained. No, Warren had become a very reliable son, and what’s more, he finally came to appreciate his particular genius. Harry’s only child had a rare capacity to understand human needs. Warren knew exactly what to say and exactly when to smile, and when it was necessary, the young man could shape people like pliers weaving soft copper wire.
With one name, Warren ignited the tirade. That set the mood. Then the young man interrupted his father, saying, “I know, Dad. I know. The man is a prick with a pretty face, and he keeps screwing us with the AI Commission, and you’re sure he sabotaged our Tycho project, and he’s a prick with a pretty face. I know it all, thank you.”
The world’s richest man didn’t appreciate interruptions. But not long ago, when his son was in several kinds of trouble, Harry Pinchit was told that good parents listen to their children. So when this child spoke, he offered a pretend smile and a small amount of interest.
“What do you want to talk about?” he asked.
“The two of you had a meeting,” said Warren.
Harry nodded, his attentions already faltering.
“The only time you were face to face, nearly thirty years ago.”
“I remember that, yes.”
“Something was said.”
“Was it?”
“That’s the legend,” said the young man.
“Legend,” the man repeated. Metacarbon fingers scratched the slick graphene scalp, and then he rubbed the bright porcelain nose that never felt ticklish and never needed to be cleaned. “Is that what it is now? A legend?”
“The world claims that you and Devon had a fight.”
“I do hate that name,” the man warned.
“Devon. Devon, Devon.”
The gray hand dropped, and Father said nothing.
“Did you say something to Devon?”
“Quite a few words. Nothing ugly.”
“So he said something ugly to you.”
“And why are you asking?”
“Because people want to know what started this war.”
“There is no war,” said the cyborg. “This is personal. I hate the man because he is a cold, manipulative monster. That’s a good enough reason, isn’t it? And because that blood-filled son-of-a-bitch is trying to destroy us at every turn.”
“That’s not what you thought then,” Warren said. “The two of you talked. You decided that the solar system was plenty big enough for both of you. Wasn’t that the verdict?”
“Offhand comments, polite and short-sighted.”
Warren responded with silence and feigned disinterest.
Father’s patience quickly failed. “So why are you pestering me about one long-ago meeting?”
“Because I know you, Dad.”
“Maybe. Or maybe you don’t know me at all.” The man laughed loudly, which was remarkable in its own right. “Explain this to me, son. Exactly what kind of person do you think I am?”
“I think you are a person, the same as everyone.”
That insight earned a weary sigh. “And that means what?”
“Devon hurt you. Inside the hotel suite, something happened, or something should have happened but didn’t.”
The man and his body shrugged, muscles of carbon and boron humming with power. “He talked about the hotel.”
“The hotel?”
“The building was broad and ugly and it stood on stilts, waiting for the next flood.”
Warren nodded.
“Then he laughed at me. He cackles like pretty men always do, full of themselves, and he told me that I looked a little like that building.”
“Squat and strong?”
“And waiting for the next flood,” said Father.
“That was the insult?”
“It sounded insulting to me, yes.”
“And that’s why you took offense?”
“I didn’t then. Not that minute. But later, thinking things over … I realized just what kind of person I’d been dealing with.”
The old face remained, glowering beneath the slick gray scalp. But the bulk of the emotions were inside the bright diamond eyes and the clenched fists. Harry Pinchit had always been powerfully built, but those new legs and that broad back might well hold up an entire building.
Warren cleared his throat, and he said, “No, Father.”
“No what?”
“Devon didn’t insult you. He threw a few careless words at you, and afterwards, when you needed it, you invented the feud.”
The fists clenched tighter, fingers squeaking against the palms.
“Every man needs one great enemy,” said Warren. “And for you, who else but Devon Ames could fill that role?”
The new eyes were unhappy, guarded and dismissive. But Harry had the good sense to attack the deeper issue.
“You came here to tell me something, son. What is it?”
“This world and the solar system are divided. Two opposing camps, yours and theirs. And that’s because you decided to make a war based on the most offhand words available.”
“There is no war,” Harry repeated.
“Not yet,” said Warren.
“I don’t like this topic,” his father said. Then for the first time in a long while, the bright eyes blinked. “‘Yours and theirs,’” he quoted.
“Yes.”
“Why not “ours and theirs’? Don’t you belong to my cause?”
That was a sharp observation, an excellent question, and the young man spent the next several years preparing his response.
GLORY
Many people were smarter than Glory. She was told that when she was little, and she was never so stupid as to deny the verdict of others. Long before her wedding day, Devon’s daughter had mapped her limits as well as her strengths, and better than most, she accepted what she wasn’t. The Ames clan and the family business spent
an inordinate amount of time worshipping genius. But being a cognitive giant didn’t appeal to Glory, and there was a blessing here: Nobody expected her to generate a single great thought. That’s why she could sleep through the night every night, and that’s why she happily spent her days working on a body that would never be perfect. But at least the flesh gave her pleasure. Plus she had security and a place at the family table. Siblings and stepmothers and particularly her poor father never stopped conjuring. Fierce brains ruled their lives. She could sit and do nothing and do it very well, but the others never had a moment free from contemplations and deadlines, and each mind was always full of itself, pinched busy and mostly unhappy faces hostage to all that clever electricity.
Glory was free to be exceptional in her own realm.
“Goddess of the New Earth.”
That was intended as a joke. A few offhand words spouted by her older brother, taking a moment from his busy-busy work. His little sister needed to be teased, and maybe he meant to injure her. But Glory liked the image. She loved the consequences. Considering all the possibilities, wasn’t being the goddess of anything better than being anything else?
The young woman never hid behind made-up kindnesses. Like any respectable god, she had a clear sense about what truly mattered. The wedding was for the Goddess of the New Earth, and all of the pageantry was meant to be hers. The pinnacle of her life, at least until now, was staged on the crest of a beautiful island. The world was watching her and only her, and there was a rocket yacht moored in the bay below, and her father had claimed and terraformed an asteroid just for her honeymoon. What mattered was her husband-to-be and the long luxurious life. That was quite a lot to think about, particularly for someone who was a genius at keeping her mind empty of distractions and nagging doubts.
Then Death arrived, carrying along Panic and Misery.
Yet Glory refused to drop to the ground. Stubbornness. Strength. A deep failure of imagination. All good reasons left her standing tall, staring down at her father. The man was sprawled across the earth, and the dead minister lay in front of Father, and the groom’s remains were still scattering. A fierce pulse of light roared past her ear, but she did not flinch. Alone among the wedding party, Glory could not accept the possibility of being turned to steam and cooked blood. She had enough composure to turn in a majestic circle. Every other head was down, or the heads were missing, yet the Goddess of the New Earth absorbed the chaos with unblinking eyes.
Only at the last instant did she notice the one running body—the one burly guard who managed to survive the onslaught.
Guards were simple creatures. Glory knew that, and that’s why she liked them, and that’s why she believed that she understood and appreciated this brute. He was following his instincts, doubtlessly charging toward Father, intent to save him.
An idea passed through Glory’s head:
“I should step out of his way. I don’t want him hitting me by mistake.”
But the creature was following the wrong line. For no obvious reason, he was ignoring Devon, aiming instead for the Goddess in her full grandeur.
Too late, she said, “No.”
Ankyl struck her with his scales and his muscles and one stone-dense shoulder.
The collision destroyed her perfection.
Then the ground rose up and slapped her. She was roughly thrown flat on her back, parasitic flowers crushed and this ugly creature stretched out across her emerald body. The guard had the face of a hawk and the voice of an opera singer. “Stay the fuck down,” he sang at her. Then from a pocket cut into his living flesh, he withdrew a gun, and he stood up without standing tall, grabbing her by a forest of parasitic dahlias.
Glory was lifted.
She tried to shout, struggling against the pull. But he was powerful and terrified, carrying her toward a bunker hole where he probably hoped to find safety.
In her entire life, Glory had never made any fist worth swinging.
But that’s what she did now.
She tried to break the guard’s concentration. A defiant blow was delivered to that hawk-like face. But nothing was broken and nothing seemed to be noticed.
Ankyl threw her into the abandoned bunker.
“Stay!” he sang.
It was a wonderful voice. But quite a lot more than a voice was necessary to make the Goddess fall in love.
MAKING DUE
Four years of constant training was remarkable, almost unheard of. But the greater blessing was that Ankyl had never experienced combat. Beyond small personal battles, he had suffered nothing worse than bruised flesh and a battered ego. Every morning brought physical preparation, strength and endurance exercises before the marksmanship test taken while exhausted. Then after a four hour stint watching boringly happy children, he returned to his training, enduring simulations and tactical discussions with his superiors, mastering contingencies that would never happen to him.
Perhaps no other creature had invested a greater portion of his life becoming a warrior.
That preparation was what dragged him through the next moments.
The protective fog continued to grow, turning the air to milk. The milk was made from mirrored particles and disruptive mucus, plus a stew of bacteria floating inside the mucus—infinite soldiers carrying the ingredients needed to subvert the enemy’s mechanical parts.
But the fog should be much thicker than it was.
And there never should have been so many casualties. Not this quickly, and not with every other soldier left cooked and dead.
The hilltop had to be defended, but by what?
He had no clue.
With time and the freedom to sit, Ankyl could have remembered every training exercise. But there wouldn’t have been any answers in those lessons. Nothing this awful could ever happen, and in a peculiar way, impossibility offered relief. It promised salvation. He was a creature in a hopeless corner, and without hope, there were no wrong moves. Nobody would live long enough to question his methods. And because he was sure to die, Ankyl was free to do nothing. If he wished. Or he could wage any kind of hopeless defense of a hilltop that wouldn’t be held for another ten minutes.
A soldier always needs more soldiers.
And weapons.
And a plan.
The fog was starved, compromised by unknown means. But Glory was locked inside a bunker, safe as Ankyl could make her. And the oncoming fire had slowed and grown blind, apparently. The wedding guests weren’t sobbing quite so loudly anymore, and a few of them even managed to sit up, nervously watching the milky air and their trembling, empty hands.
Devon Ames had found his feet and a pair of weak legs. Too numb to speak, the great man stepped over the dead minister, and once that obstacle had been conquered, he looked at the final warrior.
Every one of these dead soldiers had been armed.
That simple fact felt like revelation. Ankyl immediately set to work, yanking wedge-rifles from their scabbards and gear-breakers out of their protective pockets. His colleagues had died close together, which was another blessing, and in a matter of moments he had a good start on building an armory.
Devon watched.
Arrogance had a life, a spine and its own urgent needs. The rich man’s arrogance caused him to step over the dead soldiers, and it gave him the voice to ask, “What the hell are you doing?”
Ankyl said nothing.
“How many guns can you carry?” the man demanded to know.
Ankyl threw a pair of gear-breakers at Devon.
The warrior yelled, “Catch.”
Explosives craftier than most people fell to the ground. The great man jumped backward, startled and then embarrassed, which made him even angrier.
With four heavy armfuls of rifles, Ankyl ran. Any face brave enough to look at him deserved a weapon, and in another few moments he returned to the beginning point, hands empty.
Using a tight low voice, Devon asked, “Where’s my daughter?”
“Underground,” Ankyl sa
id.
Devon was puzzled, offended. He was wondering why he wasn’t inside an armored hole.
“Pick up your bombs,” Ankyl said.
The man looked at his bare feet.
Then they heard a thin, almost musical blare of rockets. The cyborgs were descending. Time was scarce or exhausted, and the soldier who had planned for every battle but this one had no choice. Calling to his little army, Ankyl said, “The rifles know how to fight. Hide and wait. Let the guns point themselves, and they’ll fire when the time comes. These monsters think we’re helpless, which is good. They don’t know that your general is alive.”
“Who’s the general?” Devon asked.
“Me,” said Ankyl.
But his army acted tentative, fearful. That’s the way they might have died. But then the groom’s drunken brother delivered the next surprise. The naked and very purple man suddenly stood tall, and with a furious voice, he called to the bride’s father.
“Pick up the damned bombs, Devon. Or I’ll goddamn shoot you myself!”
THE SUITOR
A lot of passion had gone into the question of “self.” The debate began long before this century, but as soon as people began wearing machinery and tailoring their own genetics, it was impossible to escape the issue. When was the flesh too diluted, too weak or hot, to keep the soul alive?
In this argument, biology had the advantage of confusion. Human cells and dandelion cells were remarkably similar to each other, while the most contrived bundle of invented proteins was still just a bag of busy water. But the machines were unliving material clad in blatant, inescapable numbers. The cyborg body could carry a five-percent infiltration rate, which didn’t seem like much. Plenty of people were cyborgs and tailored too. But there were groups where forty percent infiltration was the norm, and as it happened, that halfway mark was where the public usually grew ill-at-ease with mechanical men and women.
Harry Pinchit had pushed past those barriers. As the public champion for cyborgs, he whittled away what had been a stocky, unlovely body, leaving just twenty percent of its original state. But Harry’s son had proven even less sentimental about the tissues he brought from the womb. Only nine percent of Warren’s original body remained, and the young man was proud of every one of his choices. He didn’t miss anything that had ended up in the trash. What remained was thriving inside the shiny capsule, and it was happy, and if people were strong enough to be honest—strong in their souls—then Warren’s new body was exactly as natural as any other complicated mixture of molecules and energy and passion and need.
The Year's Best Science Fiction, Thirty-Second Annual Collection Page 86
