Mind of a Child_ Sentient Serpents

by Dean C. Moore

  “We both know she’s safer in that case than out. Why didn’t you just stow away Natty in the same manner?”

  “I needed him, and one of them to protect at a time is enough. Besides if…”

  “If he got into trouble, you’d need the sister to get him out. She’s the only one that understands his work well enough and the only one smart enough. Again, sound thinking. Not sure what you’re beating yourself up for.”

  “Because now I’ve fed into the enemy’s hands, magnified her vulnerability, not mitigated it.” He stared at the robot opening its midsection to insert the case that once held her into one of the gyro-stabilized labs inside the robot that could carry on its field work even while the robot was lumbering about. Evidently the scientists inside were interested in plumbing more than just her secrets. Laney, meanwhile, was occupying yet another gyro-stabilized lab inside the robot, the nature of her cryogenic suspension being subjected to analysis.

  “One thing I know about Laney, she’s very good at turning negatives into positives. Take that man-child husband of hers. I suppose you don’t see any more than that.”

  Though he held his tongue, he supposed his face said it all.

  She snorted. “He’s the most emotionally and morally mature of us all.”

  Leon hit her with an expression that no doubt conveyed more disbelief than he thought he had in him.

  “All she’s doing is helping him to embrace what he really is. That childlike quality of his isn’t something that’s passed through on the way to adulthood; it’s something you find on the other side.”

  “The self-actualized man?” He said the words with a sneer.

  “Sometimes he stops seeing himself as he is and starts seeing himself as others see him. That’s why you missed it.”

  “I suppose in your profession you have to read people even better than I do. So I’ll give you that, for now.”

  He returned his attention to the robot and sighed. “Too much talk, too little action, makes Leon a dull boy. Let’s get going.”

  “Spoken like a man after my own heart,” she said, trailing after him.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Cassandra had broken away from Leon when he made his way through the jungle for his sniper rifle. As he rooted it out of the case and assembled it, he imagined he could track her from the sounds in the vicinity. But he knew his mind was just playing tricks on him. He had the components of the weapon fitted together in under a minute, and was on the move again. With the nextgen scope Natty designed attached, he had all the computerization power and telemetry he needed for his planned long-distance shots.

  In the woods a short while later, in the vicinity of the robot, Leon watched through the scope as they examined Laney's body within the gyroscopically stabilized lab inside the chest cavity of the giant robot. She was still in the block of ice. “I suppose that's what I get for taking her out of play in the first place.”

  Crumley, lying in hiding beside him, lowered the spy-glasses from his face. “I don't think your sense of chivalry quite jives with contemporary feminist mores.” Leon regarded him impatiently. “No need for guilt. This way they get to revive her, stuff her full of tech-enhancements, and send her out after you to kick your ass as Robo-demon-possessed-chick.” Leon threw him another wary look. “Or not.”

  “Give me a read.”

  “You’ve got your nextgen scope. What do you need me for?”

  “Don’t entirely trust it with this many variables. I could use a second opinion.”

  “Oh, now he needs a second opinion.”

  The mission called for Crumley to use his spotting glasses to correct the sighting for Leon's gun. The robot was nearly a mile out. Any closer and it could outpace any retreat they’d care to make in a few strides. The thing was a hundred feet tall, easy. Far too many changing wind currents and thermal variations between it and them for Leon’s liking. Crumley, taking too long with his side of things, caused Leon to snap, “A read, I said!”

  “Keep your knickers on. There’s another storm blowing in. You have any idea how many wind shear forces to be accounted for between us and them?”

  “Yes!” With less of a bark and more of a growl, he said, “The older you get, the more excuses you make.”

  Crumley keyed his readings into the laptop computer, which would calculate the trajectory for the shot. “Three clicks to the left.”

  Leon’s scope suggested one click to the right. He went with Crumley’s intel, fired and missed. The bullet ricocheted off the robot like a fly flicked off a bull's ass.

  “Okay, three clicks to the right,” Crumley said.

  Leon tried three clicks to the right with better success. He managed to hit a crucial wire-junction box on the robot.

  The short-circuiting robot had trouble balancing itself, and flailed about at imaginary attackers until it crashed to the ground.

  ***

  Inside the head of the robot, Truman’s expression soured as he peeled himself off the floor. He put his hand to the gash in his forehead, then eyed the blood on his fingers. “So much for the four-star room service.”

  ***

  Just beyond the perimeter of the clearing, Leon eyed the fallen robot with satisfaction as he and Crumley disappeared into the forest.

  ***

  Moments later, from outside the collapsed Erectus, Truman studied the fallen gargantuan. “Get reparations under way. Whatever loophole Leon managed to find and exploit - make sure it's closed.”

  “Yes, sir,” Panno said.

  Truman had paid for Panno’s and Mudra’s education abroad too. He wasn’t all that well-informed about their specialties. But he knew Panno was the electronics wizard of the two of them, and Mudra’s thing had to do more with biochemistry.

  Truman watched Panno deploy his men, issuing orders of his own in the dialect of the Ubuku. Rumor had it that their language facilitated trance state. Simply uttering the words, perfectly calibrated to resonate inside the skull, turning it into the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Cathedral… contributed to all sorts of things: enhanced concentration and endurance; increased tolerance to pain; mitigation of the fear response. And that was before the old man tweaked things further with his herbal interventions.

  To Jacko Panno said, “I'm sorry. Who's he again?” Gesturing to Truman.

  “God, son.”

  “You vouch for him?” Truman said to Jacko in deference to Panno.

  “Well, he and his sister went to Princeton. So, anybody's guess.”

  Truman grunted. “Here’s where you and your kids get to pay me back for your fancy educations. I’ll be damned if I can figure out what you expected to get out of your end of the bargain.”

  Jacko just smiled vaguely at him.

  “Heard you offered yourself up as a guinea pig at Harvard’s Neuroscience program. Something to do with brainwave studies?”

  Another vague smile came his way from Jacko’s lips.

  Realizing he wasn’t going to get anywhere with him, Truman let the subject go. “Well, then, let round two of the war games begin. God, I love these team builders, don’t you?”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  On his way to rendezvousing with Leon, Natty crossed paths with Cassandra wearing nothing but her camouflage created by the nano-infused into her skin. There were other tells it was her. Laney’s saunter was more deer-like. Cassandra’s more jaguar-like. He didn’t get the feeling it was a chance encounter. That this woman did anything by chance. The sight was shocking, jolting enough for the obvious revelation to come to him that should have come to him a lot sooner. “You played me.”

  He could taste the bile in his mouth. The anger so complete the cells lining his tongue forgetting what tissue they belonged to. “I should have known when we had a moment that I hadn’t earned my way back into my wife’s arms again.”

  “And I hadn’t earned my way into yours.”

  All prepared to give her a piece of his mind, he actually took a step back. Here was a woman who didn’t do
apologies and didn’t do humility, for that matter. Sounding contrite despite the deadpan tone. It was all the conciliation he was likely to get from her. He decided to take it for what it was and let the matter go; he figured the rest was on him.

  He brushed right past her the way roller derby players brushed past one another.

  ***

  Leon and Natty, concealed by the foliage just beyond the clearing, and the darkness itself, observed the repairs of the robot going on in the dead of night. Panno seemed to be directing a troop of mercs for once instead of his own people. Truman must have figured army-trained engineers would be needed to handle what the Ubuku, for all their advanced nature conservancy skills couldn’t handle. Smart, Leon thought.

  In addition to the floodlights which swept the area, the robot was lit up from inside. Its own radiance serving as warning enough to stay away. Far away. Whoever had carved its design had spared no amount of thought in getting the enemy to surrender even before someone hit the on-button. Metal musculature, even stuttering, issued forth the kinds of sounds that suggested it could uproot skyscrapers from their foundations, like pulling weeds in the garden.

  The repair crew had the flood lights on it as it stood fully erect again, even if it was having mobility problems.

  “Hey, I think I just saw it do the moon walk,” Natty said.

  “So, what did you do to this guy?”

  Natty regarded Leon testily. “Not like I made a move on his wife or anything.”

  Leon realized for the first time that Natty had seen him and Laney together when he put the moves on her and she had to fend him off with a poisoned dart. “I thought my boys taught you to focus - no matter what's going on.”

  “Was that what that was? Focus training?”

  Leon sighed. “Look. I'll make it up to you when we get out of here. But let's just get out of here, okay?”

  Natty reined himself in. They continued to lie in wait, Leon viewing things through his scoped rifle, Natty through the binoculars.

  “I swear I don't remember designing that thing,” Natty said.

  “Can we hold out hope that somewhere - there's somebody else with half a brain?”

  “Well we can hold out hope, for what good it'll do ya.”

  Natty gave the robot one last look through the glasses. Its reparations were coming along nicely, and it was suddenly balancing and walking a hell of a lot better. “You can take it out of commission again, right?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  The robot, fully restored, did the monster mash on one of his LAV-25 armored vehicles, which it had unwittingly exposed in learning to walk again, reducing it to a pancake with its foot. It was incentive enough to advance his position; Leon signaled his men.

  The robot was sprayed with flame-throwers tweaked to squirt a corrosive liquid at the robot's joints. Leon's men, hidden and dispersed in the trees at all levels, hit all of the robot's joints at once.

  The giant of a robot literally rusted in place.

  Natty cheered. “You seized it up pretty good. Mere lubricant won't be enough to free it. They'll have to retool the parts by hand.”

  “Still, it's a Mexican stand off - no matter how you look at it. His people and mine go to the same training camps. Hell, I think some of the swingers swap wives from time to time.”

  Natty glared at him. “That's a bit of a sore subject, if you don't mind.”

  “Sorry.”

  Leon gave the matter some thought. “What we need is something to tip the scales.”

  “Permit me,” Cassandra said, slipping in alongside them. She was wearing her camouflage skin.

  “Oh, hey,” Natty said. “Meet the sister I nearly slept with by accident, but she was too busy being in character. God knows my real wife is too busy trying to sleep with everyone else.”

  “Give it a rest already,” Leon and Cassandra said simultaneously, with virtually the same tone.

  “You have something for me?” Leon said to Cassandra.

  She grimaced. “Just don’t kill the messenger.”

  Cassandra led them off in the direction she’d come from.

  ***

  “F-me.” Leon surveyed the field of giant robots, each one as tall as the trees forming the canopy.

  “Look, hotshot,” Cassandra said, turning to Natty. “Leon and I and the rest of his people will play our David and Goliath games with these things, bring as many of them down as we can. But there are too many of the bad guys to man the robots and too few of us. So here’s what I need you to do.”

  “Hey, you feme-Nazi, I only take orders from the mountain in the form of a man, over here.” He turned to Leon. “Are you standing for this?”

  “I’ll be sure and interrupt her as soon as she says something stupid. The same way I’m cutting you off now.”

  Natty ground his teeth.

  Cassandra said to him, “You’re going to make as many of those robots self-piloting as you can. So we can set them against one another.”

  Natty nodded, the lights going on in his head. “Their reflexes will be faster because there’ll be no delays waiting for a human nervous system to intervene. But we’ll have to make sure they aren’t hacked.”

  “I’ll have Satellite help you,” Leon said. “He can keep a lid on anyone trying to take over the robots.”

  “Yeah, maybe if I had more time I wouldn’t need his help, but as it is, wouldn’t hurt to try some humility for a change.”

  “Satellite, get up here. Got a little mission for you,” Leon said into his earbud mike.

  “You see?!” Natty gestured. “This is what I mean about revealing strategic thinking over an unsecured line.”

  Leon restrained his smirk. “No one outside of Truman and the triple threat even speaks English. And their attitude is, whatever we do, we’re dead in the water. Even if it weren’t, I know why they’re not listening because I know the psychology. I’m a victim of it myself. Our kind likes to be taken by surprise, and likes to fight from the position of the underdog. If the odds weren’t totally impossible, we’d just go home.”

  “So why then don’t they hand over the superior tech to us?” Natty countered.

  “In the minds of the triple threat, that technology is neither here nor there. Truman has tied their hands by limiting them to the weapons at hand, just as he has us. They see it as hamstringing, not as giving them an unfair advantage.”

  Natty groaned. “Fine. But if we survive this, you’re taking me to some theater of operations where I get to say ‘Copy that.’ And I can speak in code to my heart’s content. I didn’t watch all those Mark Wahlberg films for nothing.”

  Leon squeezed his shoulder. “I promise.”

  “Who is this Satellite guy, anyway?”

  “One of my engineers,” Leon explained. “We try to keep them back from the front lines as best we can. But anyone in my outfit has got to get used to not being babied real fast.”

  “So I noticed,” Natty said with a grin. “We’re back to liking one another, right? Because I was kind of enjoying our bonding thing. And now that you have the ninja-chick version of Laney, I don’t have to worry about you putting moves on my Laney.”

  Leon and Cassandra exchanged looks and smiled wryly at one another. “No, kid, you don’t,” Leon said.

  “I’m guessing that’s as close as a proposal as you’re ever going to get from this guy,” Natty said to Cassandra. To both of them he added as an afterthought, “Just don’t get so distracted I find myself fighting this war all by myself.”

  Satellite came running up.

  “You’re with the kid…” Leon said to him.

  Natty made a throat clearing sound at Leon. “Bonding… bonding.”

  “You’re with Natty here,” Leon corrected himself. “He needs you to jam the signals reaching the self-piloting robots.”

  “We have self-piloting robots? Cool! Being as those ones in front of us look pretty damn scary.”

  “Not yet, Junior.” Natty said. He t
urned to Leon. “I’m going to need your quartermaster to scavenge what I need.”

  “Crumley, you’re with Natty,” Leon said into his COM. “You got a problem with that?”

  “Hell, no,” the voice came crackling over the mike. “I could use a challenge. All you deadbeats ever want from me is good coffee.”

  Natty and Satellite disappeared into the woods to hook up with Crumley.

  Leon regarded Cassandra. “Our kind likes surprises?” she said.

  Leon smiled. “The COM line is quantum encoded. Satellite knows his field. In the unlikely event we’re hacked, the sooner we have any indication the better, hence the open communications. But Natty needs to learn that you never have enough intel in this business, and the best laid plans go to shit pretty quick, and there’s no such thing as being fully prepared. And he needs to see that as part of the fun. I suppose I could have just said that, but his kind understands superhero logic better than real hero logic. He’s not the only one. We’ve got an ALPHA UNIT full of guys just like him.

  “As to gathering whatever intel we can on the enemy, there’s nothing on these Goliath-Bots on the RevoCorp satellite network, on the net, not anywhere, or Satellite would have found it. Was the same thing with the Nano Wars. Whatever Truman is up to, war games is the least of it, and he’s keeping his cards very close to his vest. I have reconnaissance drones in the air at all times. Disguised as fireflies. But so far they haven’t turned up anything real interesting.”

  “Not even these robots?” They both returned their eyes to the dormant sentinels.

  “No, which I find interesting,” Leon said.

  “They weren’t seen until someone wanted them to be seen.”

  “I suspect they have invisibility cloaking technology, not so much the Goliath-Bots per se, though I wouldn’t put it past them. I mean Truman has access to it.”

  “There are lots of ways to make something disappear, DiSparta. Nano can edit what you’re seeing, and what you remember seeing on the fly. Neutralizing the value of your drone surveillance pretty quickly.”