Driftmetal III

by J. C. Staudt

  Meanwhile, it was no secret to anyone involved that Angus was getting jealous of my old friend Chaz. Winning Cordelia Foxglove’s approval had been one thing, but when even Nerimund began to take a liking to Chaz, Angus took notice. Rindhi, too, had formed a bond with Nerimund, thanks to his knowledge of both the language of the duenders and that of the trees, the Grove-speech. Strained as Angus was from his constant bickering with Ezra, his patience was beginning to wear thin.

  It had been obvious from the start that Angus preferred being in charge. He was a ship’s captain, after all. That made him and me more alike than I chose to recognize at the time. Sable had spoken of his positivity; of the way he’d driven his crew by setting an example for them. But I had seen little of that positivity since we’d gotten here.

  Angus had abided our intrusion with a sort of smoldering hostility. In time it had become apparent to him that this was not his boat, and we were not merely his crew, but individuals who, like him, had chosen to be here. But our choice of location was where the similarities ended.

  It was loyalty and friendship that had driven us to subject ourselves to this purgatory; Ezra’s to his son, mine to Sable, Thomas’s to me, and Rindhi’s to him. The force that had brought Angus to this place was something very different. He wanted to change the world, and that was fine—so did I. But whatever amount of success or glory or personal satisfaction he derived from his time here, it wasn’t enough to satisfy him with the rest of us cramping his style. Maybe he knew that as well as I did, because one day it finally became too much for him.

  “Everyone get out,” Angus said, after a particularly long and arduous discussion about our progress on the logic drive. We’d made plenty of it, but we were still coming up short of where we needed to be.

  We all looked at each other, mutually curious as to whether anyone was going to take him seriously.

  “Get out,” he said again. “I want you all out of here now. I’m done with your complaints and your ridicule. And most of all, I’m done with you.” He raised his voice and looked across the room to where Chaz was hunched over his work, gently sliding some mechanical piece or another into place.

  Chaz didn’t notice. I’m sure he was so used to working over a backdrop of raised voices by then that he must not have realized Angus was speaking to him. We all turned to stare.

  “I said I want you gone,” Angus shouted.

  With no detection whatsoever of Angus’s mood, Chaz removed his magnifying lenses and wiped his brow, brushing aside the long black hair that had fallen loose from his tieback. “I’ve done it,” he said. He looked up, startled to find us all staring at him like a bunch of dumbfounded monkeys. He gave a faint smile, as if he thought we’d been hanging around solely for the purpose of waiting for his results. “I’ve done it,” he repeated. “It’s finished.”

  “Chaz,” I said. “Angus wants us to leave. Didn’t you hear him?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I must’ve been too absorbed in my work to notice. What’s this, now?”

  “We have to go.”

  “But I—” Chaz gestured toward his new iteration of the logic drive, grimacing as if in pain.

  Angus gave a great sigh, scratching his fiery orange mane with a sheepish frown. “Is this it? Is this the one?”

  Chaz set his gaze on him. “This is as good as it gets, Angus. If this one doesn’t work, we might as well scrap the whole project and start over. And I don’t mean the logic drives. I mean the automatons.”

  I saw the muscles in Angus’s jaw go tight. “These are seventh-generation models. Starting from scratch would be like—”

  “Giving up?” Chaz asked. “Just because you’ve been doing it one way over and over doesn’t mean you’ve been doing it the right way.”

  This was not what Angus wanted to hear. “This is the right way,” he said stubbornly. “It’s the only way. The Galvos Project represents the pinnacle of modern technology. I’d play horseshoes with a rhinoceros before I’d scrap them and start over.”

  Chaz was calm and direct as he picked up the logic drive and held it out for Angus to take. “Then here’s your finishing touch.”

  Angus went over to him and lifted the small metal box from where it lay on his palm. There was a frightening moment when I thought he might slam the logic drive into the ground and shatter it. I’m not sure why I thought that; maybe it had to do with my theory about Angus and his quest for personal glory. As if he’d sooner destroy perfection than see someone else achieve it first. But Angus didn’t destroy it. Instead, he picked up the comm and arranged for a new session on the testing floor.

  Kelvin didn’t shoot anything of mine off this time. He performed flawlessly, as did the two other prototypes we used for the sake of redundancy. I had continued to be our guinea pig ever since the Great Ear Incident, but they had begun to bundle me up in so much protective gear they could’ve wrapped me in bacon and dangled me in front of a hungry lion without fearing for my safety.

  “Chaz,” I said, striding confidently into the control booth and removing my helmet. “It’s possible that I’ve told you this on more than one occasion already, but you are a blasted genius. The inspiration you took from the medallion’s design is nothing short of brilliant. The automatons are ready to go. And the best part is, now I get my medallion back.”

  As I spoke, Angus was hammering away at the controls behind me, hitting switches and pounding buttons to shut down the testing floor, growing more uptight with every nugget of praise I showered on Chaz. He was so angry he didn’t speak a word when I mentioned taking my medallion back. Realizing that, I reached for the dial to release it from its receptacle, figuring the coast was clear. It wasn’t.

  Angus’s hand clamped down on my forearm like a vice, his fingers as hot as his temper. Before I knew it, he’d spun me around and clocked me, a glancing left hook across the jaw. My head snapped sideways, and I almost went down like a sack of flour. He began to pummel me, throwing fists and elbows in a silent fusillade of pent-up rage. I reacted the same way I always did in the face of aggression: I fought back.

  I ducked away from his next swing and caught the one after that, finding it significantly harder to manage the immediate future without the medallion’s help. I gave him a solid pop in the nose before he clobbered me again with his free hand. The blow crashed into my lasered ear, which was nowhere close to healed, and sent pain stinging through my skull.

  All told, we traded blows for no more than a few seconds before the others got involved. Angus’s strikes were quick and stunted. He was no cage fighter, after all; just an angry man in a scuffle. I never got a chance to send him the message I wanted to. The others were soon trying to pull us apart, finding it much like prying open the jaws of a rusty bear trap that doesn’t want to let up.

  “Get your filthy redblooded hands off me,” Angus was saying as he shoved Blaylocke away.

  “Don’t you talk to him like that. If anyone around here’s going to verbally abuse Blaylocke, it’s me.”

  “I’ve had just about enough of your wisecracks and sarcastic remarks,” Angus said.

  I grinned. “Those are both the same thing, you know.”

  Angus lunged at me again, but Thomas and Ezra pulled him back. His face was strained, his cheeks redder than usual as he struggled to free himself, yelling and cursing and spitting at me. Soon Rindhi had jumped in to help as well, standing up from his wheelchair to hobble over and help Thomas. Thomas was not a large fellow by any stretch, so his side of Angus needed more restraining than Ezra’s did.

  It wasn’t often that I thought about the future back then, but with Angus straining against them for a piece of me, his teeth gritted and his face the color of an eggplant, I got to wondering how I could ever have a future with a woman like Sable when the man she admired and cared for most in the world was a guy I couldn’t get along with for ten seconds. Granted, the fact that he couldn’t get along with his own father didn’t do much for his credibility. Turned out he and I were ali
ke in more ways than one…

  “You need to get over this little problem you’re having,” I said. “The world does not belong to Maclin Automation, and neither does my medallion.”

  Angus backed down, brushing himself off. “The medallion already does,” he insisted, “and the world soon will.”

  “You have a lot of faith in them, don’t you? You really believe this can be done.”

  “You’ve seen what the Mark-Sevens are capable of. Don’t you?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know if a bunch of robots can pull off the biggest revolution in history. But I’ve been wanting to try since the second I saw them.”

  Just then, the door opened. Cordelia Foxglove entered with her retinue. “What’s the disturbance about?”

  “For crying out loud, lady. Don’t they ever give you any work to do? I feel like you must spend half of every day walking across the building to bother us.”

  Ms. Foxglove ignored my static as usual. “I hope we’re not disagreeing again. These little tiffs have grown quite tiresome.”

  “You couldn’t possibly have any idea,” I said. “Angus and I were just celebrating the successful culmination of our research with a little roughhousing. You know how guys are. We like to kick each other in the nuts when we’re happy. Thanks to Chaz, here, and his impeccable talents, the logic drive is done.”

  Cordelia looked at Chaz and smiled. Her growing fondness for him was starting to make me feel queasy. Techsoul-on-primitive love was not something I’d had much experience with, but I didn’t see it ending well for Chaz. A woman like Cordelia Foxglove would break him in half if she ever got her claws into him.

  “He’s done a splendid job, hasn’t he?” she said.

  “We’re ready for mass production,” Angus said stiffly. “The prototype unit is still out on the testing floor.”

  “Very good,” said Cordelia, waiting.

  Angus stood for a moment, until he realized that Ms. Foxglove was waiting for him to retrieve the unit. He sighed, flicked on the lights, and slipped through the door into the large room beyond. I inched my way over to the console, thinking I might get there without anyone noticing.

  “What are you doing?” Ms. Foxglove asked.

  “Nothing… what’s it to you?”

  “Call it curiosity.”

  “I call it being nosy.”

  She folded her arms and shifted her hips. I took another step toward the console, pretending I was studying something in the other room. An uncomfortable silence pervaded. The others, who knew exactly what I was doing, stood there and tried to pretend they didn’t.

  I had come within a few feet of my glittering prize when Angus returned from the testing floor with the logic drive in hand. He gave me a suspicious look before placing it inside a metal case and handing it to Ms. Foxglove. Then he produced another, smaller case from below the console and lifted the medallion carefully from its receptacle, giving me another narrow-eyed stare as he set it inside and closed the lid.

  I tried not to release the breath of despair I’d been holding back. If Maclin really was trying to steal my medallion, making a grab for it in front of Cordelia was a surefire way to make sure I never saw it again. Whether or not the logic drive was done, I couldn’t make them give it back to me if they didn’t want to.

  “So what’s next?” Thomas wanted to know, trying to fill the silence.

  “That’s what I came to talk to you about,” Cordelia said, looking at me.

  “Who, me?”

  “You, Mr. Nordstrom. I understand you’re a Regency dissenter. Is this correct?”

  “If you mean do I wish the Civs would go eat a sock and die forever, then yeah.”

  Her mouth pulled back into a sharp smile. “And you’re prepared to play a part in that, aren’t you.”

  I wanted to know where she was going with this. “Well, I’m not going to sacrifice myself for the cause, if that’s what you were hoping.”

  She laughed. “When we fly for Roathea, the Legion will need a commander. This may come as a shock to you, but my superiors would like to offer you the command.”

  Angus looked like he was going to have a baby.

  “Me, the commander of a whole army?” I said, as if to ask myself a question that even I couldn’t believe the answer to. “How can my dreams be coming true this much? I’ve never been put in charge of anything. My dad would barely let me hold his wrench before I was eighteen. Why put me in charge?”

  “The synod has been observing your progress in the testing rooms. You have more experience working with the Mark-Sevens than any other living soul—myself included. You’ll require less training. Also, for reasons I can’t quite explain, the synod feels that this project owes much of its success… to you.”

  I was confused. So was everyone else. “The synod? Who are they, and how do they reckon that?”

  “The synod is Maclin’s governing body. I quote them when I say this…”

  “Okay, so you don’t agree with them. I get it.”

  “It was your influence and your leadership—your bringing together of these individuals, and your quelling of the discord among this group—that ultimately resulted in… this.” She held up the case with the logic drive inside.

  “Whatever. I just invited a few friends and told everyone to shut up. It was like a surprise party, but with work instead of fun.”

  “They see potential in you, Mr. Nordstrom.”

  “Well, tell them they’re wrong. I’m an obnoxious slacker with a flair for the irresponsible. So if they’re in the market for a military commander, they ought to look elsewhere.” I turned and started toward the door.

  “Angus has already made you aware that overthrowing the Regency was the goal when we first started the Galvos Project.”

  “And it was my understanding that I was to command the fleet,” Angus blurted out.

  “So that’s why you’re really here,” I said, whirling. “You don’t want to be just some nutty inventor behind the scenes. You want to lead the attack. Go down in history as the man who overthrew the Regency.”

  Angus lowered his eyes, his jaw set in a guilty frown.

  I rubbed my own jaw, wincing at the rising bruise he’d left there. If they were going to give Angus the command instead of me, I decided I wanted it after all. “On second thought, this whole putting-me-in-charge-of-the-revolution idea doesn’t sound half bad. But why me? Why not hire some trained military man who knows what he’s doing?”

  “There was a time before the Galvos Project, Mr. Nordstrom. A time before the automatons had even come into the picture. Why do you think there are so many beds in your dormitory?”

  “You were training an army,” I said, realizing it as I spoke the words. “You’ve been planning this for longer than a few years.”

  She nodded.

  “So what happened to the army?”

  “I’m not at liberty to go into the details. Suffice it to say that it didn’t work out. A formally trained military commander might have decades of experience, but he’ll also have decades’ worth of loyalty to the Regency. Aside from that, controlling an army of machines is nothing like commanding living soldiers.

  “I’ll speak frankly, Mr. Nordstrom. My superiors feel it would be too great a risk to involve Maclin personnel in the attack. In short, we’ve chosen you in order to remove Maclin from the equation. If the coup fails, we’ll wash our hands of you and reject all knowledge of the Galvos Project. If it succeeds, we’ll be there to take over.”

  “That’s about the bluntest answer I could’ve expected,” I said. “Haven’t you been worried about spies giving the Regency a tip-off about your activities here?”

  “Not very,” she said. “I don’t exaggerate when I say that the Regency fears us. They’ve never so much as hindered us from accomplishing anything we wanted. We’ve never faced litigation, and we’re not likely to, no matter who might come forward to blow the whistle. Rest assured, we’ve dealt swiftly with things of that natur
e in the past.”

  “That does not make me feel restful. But I believe you. Anyway… I’ll do it. I’ll command your fleet—if, and only if, you’re willing to pay for my services. Don’t worry, I have a short list.”

  Cordelia was perturbed. “What?”

  “I want my medallion back. I want your guarantee that the lost city of Pyras will be absolved of its perceived crimes against the Regency. I want a royal decree stating that primitives will be treated as equals among techsouls, as far as the government’s treatment of them is concerned. I want Sable and the rest of Angus’s crew freed from prison. I want my criminal record wiped clean. And I want an incredible number of chips to spend as I please, after this is all over.”

  Cordelia’s mouth pinched sideways. “Your criminal record? What criminal record might that be?”

  I felt myself flush. Haluicious Nordstrom, you idiot. “I have a few… minor infractions. I just need my record expunged. No questions asked.”

  “You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Nordstrom. Though I’ll tell you upfront that we don’t foresee making many changes to the class system once we’re in power. The system, as it stands, works. We just want control of it.”

  “That’s a different story then, isn’t it? You think if it ain’t broke, you shouldn’t fix it? Well, it is broke. I couldn’t care less about the political motivations behind this revolt of yours, but if you’re taking over just so you can dish out more of the same, what’s the point? I’ve been an enemy to the Regency for my whole adult life. If your new regime is the same as the old one, you can count on my continued disobedience in the future.”

  Angus’s face lit up, hopeful.

  “Strong words,” Cordelia said. “The synod knows you have a rebellious nature. They’re willing to overlook that—to embrace it, in fact. They believe it makes you the perfect candidate to shake things up. As for your list… the pardons and prison releases should be easy enough to obtain. I’ll certainly see what I can do about the rest.”

  “Not good enough,” I said. “I think it’s time I met these synod people. I want them to look me in the eye and promise me I’m not doing their dirty work for nothing.”