The Credulity Nexus

by Graham Storrs

  Rik almost reached out a comforting hand. “I was just with Cordell. Jesus, that guy's one sinner short of a prayer meeting!”

  “Cordell? I knew it must be him! I haven't seen a soul since they brought me here.”

  “You didn't miss much.”

  “Do you know where we are?”

  “Not a clue. South-Western US, maybe. Arizona? Nevada? Possibly farther south. Look, if no-one's been to see you...”

  “Yeah, I know. I'm here for leverage. And now you've arrived, I guess it's showtime.”

  He looked at her for a long time. She looked like someone who'd worn the same dress for four days, and spent half that time trying to dig through a concrete wall with a spoon and fork. Her big Persian eyes looked back at him steadily. She was ready to face whatever was coming, but she was tired, and he could see anxiety moving like a shark beneath the calm surface.

  Before he knew why, he was on his feet and holding her again, apologising for being the reason she was there in that room, telling her she'd be all right, he'd take care of her. For a moment, she let him. She put her arms around him and buried her face in his chest. Then she pushed herself away, roughly, and walked across the room.

  “I'm sorry,” he said. “I just wanted to...”

  She dismissed whatever he was going to say with a wave. “You're a nice guy, Rik. Really nice. But you're the kind of man who likes to look after people. Especially women. Am I right?”

  Rik blinked back at her in confusion.

  “Well, I don't need that, and I don't want it. I'm here to do a job. Well, I would be if they hadn't suspended me.” She gave a wry grin, and Rik realised she wasn't actually mad at him.

  “I wasn't coming on,” he said, but if he wasn't, he didn't know quite what he had been doing. “I just...”

  “You just saw a damsel in distress and rode to the rescue, right? Couldn't help yourself.” She was smiling now. “It's nice. Cute. There should be more guys like you. Tell you the truth? It scares me how easy it would be to just let you take the whole thing on those hulking great shoulders of yours. But that just ain't me, honey.”

  He still couldn't understand what she was saying, but he got the message that he should stop trying to comfort her. Despite the slender build and the doe eyes, this was one tough cookie. He raised his hands in surrender.

  She seemed to sense his bewilderment. “Look, Rik, I've met you twice. What do I know? So I read your file once. It doesn't make me an expert, right?”

  He decided to change the subject. “So what's the food like around here?”

  Freymann looked relieved. “It used to be OK, until I broke their toy.” She kicked at the carcass of the robot. “That was a day or two ago. Now room service won't call any more.”

  Rik fished around in his pocket and pulled out a couple of bags of peanuts. He tossed them over. “I stole those on the plane. Didn't know when I might get a meal again.”

  Freymann looked like she might run over and hug him again, despite all she'd just said. She pulled a bag open, then remembered her manners. “We'll share them.”

  Rik shook his head. “I already ate. Knock yourself out.”

  She wolfed down both packets. “All right,” she said, still chewing the last mouthful. “Why don't you fill me in on what you've been up to, remembering the monitors, of course.”

  Chapter 28

  Rik lay awake, Freymann asleep beside him. A shower and a brisk workout, which involved throwing furniture at the window and slamming himself against the door, were all he’d had the energy for. So he'd negotiated a non-intimate bed-sharing scheme with Freymann and fallen onto the mattress, assuming he'd be asleep in seconds.

  He wasn't. He was wide awake and staring into the darkness, listening to the steady breathing next to him and thinking, thinking.

  He thought about what would happen in the morning. He and Freymann had discussed it briefly, but the only likely scenario was that Cordell's people would torture Freymann and make Rik watch. There was no other reason for her to be there. There was no way out of the room they were in, and their only chance of escape would be when the robots came for them in the morning. After that, there seemed no point in talking any more. If they could get some sleep, they might at least be better prepared to take whatever chances might present themselves.

  He thought about Maria: where she was, what she was doing, whether she was scared, whether she was safe.

  He thought about the Drew sisters, murdered by Lanham's people, about Veb and the Mistress, about the Turgu, who had once seemed to loom so large in his life and who were almost nothing now.

  But mostly, he thought about what Freymann had said, about him being the kind of man who likes to look after women. What’s wrong with that? he wanted to know. After his father died, it was damned lucky he did look after his mother and sister. There wasn't anybody else around to do it.

  Then the inevitable happened; he remembered the crash. His mother was laughing when that big robot semi jumped the barrier and came towards them. He turned once more to look at her in that moment of icy certainty, just as she turned to him, the smile still not quite gone from her face. And on his tongue was the apology he never got to speak. “I'm sorry, Mom.” That's what he had wanted to say in that last instant. Sorry he couldn't save her. Sorry he had let her down. Sorry his love hadn't been enough.

  Tears ran down his cheeks in the dark. And he understood, for the first time, the fear that had driven him so crazy in that last year with Maria. He saw how he had stormed into her life and taken on all her problems, made himself the bulwark of her emotional life, pushed aside any independence she might have wanted, and insisted that she should depend on him for everything. Not just for money or anything material; he was only a cop, for God's sake, although he did what he could. No, it was her emotional dependency he wanted, and worked so hard to get.

  And she gave it to him, cautiously at first, but then more and more, until she leaned on him with her full emotional weight, gladly surrendering the entirety of her happiness to his care.

  And that's when the fear set in. The fear that, sooner or later, he would fail. The fear – the knowledge – that one day that truck, or something like it, would come bouncing over the central reservation to smash straight into them. That whatever he did, however hard he tried, he could never protect anybody. Not in the long run.

  He swung his legs out of the bed and sat up. He wanted to get up and do something – anything but lie there thinking.

  And maybe he was wrong, anyway. All that stuff he was thinking about fear and failure. It hadn't felt like that at the time. Not really. All he had felt then was a restlessness, a need to be out of the house, away from Maria. When he was with her, it felt like there were heavy weights on his chest, like black clouds in his head. He couldn't talk to her. He couldn't look her in the eye without vague, unnamed anxieties that made his stomach turn over. So he stayed out. He hung out with the guys in bars. And that meant he drank too much. And the worse he behaved, the worse he felt. The more he saw the worry in Maria's eyes, the more it reminded him of how he was letting her down.

  He was on his feet. He didn't remember standing up.

  “Rik?”

  “It's OK. I just couldn't sleep.”

  “What's up?”

  “It's...” Something about the sound of Freymann's voice made him pause. She sounded worried, but worried about him, not for herself. “I was thinking,” he said. “Something you said about me...”

  “What?”

  Her voice was gentle. An invitation. There, in the dark and the quiet, her voice invited him to open up, to share whatever was troubling him, to let her carry some of his load. He thought he could make out the vague shape of her on the bed, propped up on one elbow.

  “Fariba, I think–”

  An explosion rocked the building. The flash of brightness from the window quickly turned to a red glow. For a moment, each of them saw the other's astonished face.

  Another bright flash, a
nd then another explosion rattled the building. Closer this time.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Freymann jumped off the bed and cautiously took a look through the window. Just as she did, there was the clatter of rotors as a helicopter swooped low outside.

  “It's a helicopter gunship!” she called out to Rik, ducking back out of view. “A Comanche, Type 3 or 4, maybe. No markings I could see.”

  “Someone's attacking Cordell's house?”

  “Looks like it. It's nothing to do with my guys. We might run the odd covert op over here, but shooting missiles into a trillionaire's mansion isn't our style, whatever you might see in the Bond movies.”

  “So it's either the FBI or–”

  There was another explosion. This one seemed to come from the corridor outside. They heard shouting from beyond the door.

  With a yell, Rik launched himself across the room. He grabbed Freymann and dragged her down beside the bed, heaving the mattress over them. Barely a second later, the door blew inwards on a cloud of flame. Even dampened by the mattress, the concussion slammed them to the ground.

  Without bothering to check that his head hadn't cracked open, Rik tossed the mattress aside and leapt up, ready to face whoever came through the door.

  “Chill out, big guy,” Rivers said, strolling through the smoke into the room. “It's only me.”

  She was black again, and naked, and looking very pleased with herself. Rik had never imagined being happy to see the young upload, but right then, he could have kissed her.

  “You got a way out?” Freymann asked, climbing to her feet. “No, don't bother telling me. I'll be deaf for a week.”

  “How did you find us?” Rik asked.

  “I just followed your distress call.”

  “What?”

  Rivers raised her voice. “Your radio signal.”

  “That was me,” Freymann shouted. Then, at Rik's puzzled expression, “What? You thought I smashed up that dombot for fun?”

  Which reminded Rik that the two Barbie-dolls were still out there somewhere. “We've got to go,” he told Rivers.

  Another explosion spoke of Rivers' friends still blowing up the place. Without further debate, they moved out into the corridor, Rivers leading.

  “Where the hell are we?” he asked as they hurried along.

  “Cordell's place in the middle of nowhere, north-east of Monclova, Mexico,” Rivers told him. “The only way in or out is by air. When I saw which way you were headed, it was the obvious destination. I whistled up the scramjet and beat you here by a mile. I even had time to organise the chopper. It's surprising the kind of hardware you can get your hands on in South America, if your boss knows the right drug barons.”

  They reached a stairwell and ran down. Alarms and sirens were sounding all over the building by then. Rik thought he heard the sound of a heavy machine gun giving return fire. They found a locked double-door at the foot of the stairs, and Rivers burst through it as if it were nothing. Outside was one of the big lawns that Rik had seen from the window of his room.

  “This'll do,” Rivers shouted. “The chopper will be here in a moment.” Rik assumed she was in contact with the pilot through her cogplus.

  They moved away from the house, into open space, and for the first time they could see, behind them, the flames and smoke rising from the central part of the sprawling mansion. Rik could clearly hear the helicopter manoeuvring out of sight, and the deep rattle of Cordell's guns up on the roof, trying to take down the gunship.

  “Stay where you are. Do not attempt to escape.”

  They all turned to find the two robot guards standing just three metres away. The girls had changed out of their white catsuits with the bullet-holes, and were now wearing daring cocktail dresses. The happy thought struck Rik that Rivers' attack had interrupted the lovely Peth's night-time fun.

  “We don't have time for this,” Rivers said, almost too quietly for Rik to hear, and rushed straight at the two robots.

  Rik moved to follow her, but Freymann caught his arm with both hands and hung on.

  “Let her get herself killed,” she shouted.

  Rik pulled against her for a moment while the sense of what she had said sank in. The helicopter was on its way. If Rivers could buy them a few moments, fine. And if she didn't make it in the attempt, then that was no great loss. He let Freymann pull him back, increasing their distance from the fight.

  In the uneven red light from the fires, Rik struggled to make out the matte black upload. But he heard her crash into one of the bots, and saw the bot go down. The second one did not stop to assist its companion but came after Rik at a run, long legs pounding, beautiful face set in a neutral expression, skimpy dress clinging to sculptured curves, all revealed in the hellish light of the burning mansion.

  Rik didn't have time to register the strangeness of the sight. He watched the approaching robot carefully, shifting his weight, trying to prepare. In his peripheral vision, he saw Freymann adopt a fighting stance.

  The robot was there, reaching for him with impossible speed. He barely managed to twist out of the way, shooting out a fist, aiming for the shoulder. But the machine was gone before his blow landed, turning and reaching back for his extended arm. If it caught him, he thought, it would all be over. He would never shake its grip, and it could do whatever it liked to him.

  But it didn't catch him. It jerked away at the last moment, knocked off-balance by Freymann's kick to the back of its leg. Rik regained his own balance and tried to punch it again, hoping to keep it reeling, but the machine stepped nimbly away from him. He and Freymann whirled to face it, ready for its next attack, and for a moment it simply watched them, perhaps reassessing its strategy and its opponents.

  A dark shadow flitted through the air above them, as Rivers somersaulted over their heads and thudded into the waiting robot. She grabbed its head as they went down, twisting and heaving at it, and they rolled across the lawn, struggling in a blur of limbs.

  The helicopter had arrived and was clattering above them as Rik turned to check on the other robot. It was damaged, one arm hanging loosely and deep scars in its skin – black on pink in the garish firelight. Its little frock had been ripped off, and it limped towards them in a g-string and bra. It would not be long before its nanite body had repaired itself enough that it could re-enter the fight.

  He turned to Freymann. “Come on,” he shouted, pointing to the gunship dropping towards them. He meant for them to run farther out onto the lawn so the chopper could land and pick them up. But Freymann shook her head and pointed back along the wall of the building. Half a dozen men carrying machine guns were running towards them.

  “We've got to make a run for it,” Rik bellowed, but the gunship was right over him now, and he couldn't even hear himself. He grabbed her arm and pulled her. If they waited any longer, the damaged robot would reach them, or one of Cordell's men would shoot them.

  A huge roar cut through the noise of the chopper, and the world was lit by brilliant, stuttering light. The gunship was firing. Around Cordell's men, the ground was blasted into the sky. Then the gunner found his mark, and Rik saw body parts flying as the men were torn to pieces in a hail of armour-piercing, explosive bullets.

  The thunder above him stopped, and the world was dark again. Darker than before. A slender hand with painted red nails caught Rik's arm and held it in a grip of iron. He turned to find the face of the damaged robot just inches from his own. It said something to him that he did not hear and began to walk back to the house, dragging Rik helplessly after it. Behind him, the Comanche touched down, the blast from its rotors making his shirt billow and snap.

  He wanted to tell Freymann to get on board and get away, but when he looked back he couldn't see her.

  “That's far enough, bitch!”

  She was in front of him, standing in the robot's path, looking brave and determined, her fists raised and clenched. Rik thought she looked far too small and vulnerable. Beyond her, far off, he saw
more armed men rounding the corner of the building.

  The robot didn't even slow its limping progress. It knocked Freymann aside with a single swipe of its damaged arm, sending her sprawling in the grass.

  Furious, Rik kicked at the robot's legs, trying to trip it. It staggered, but did not fall. It wrenched Rik's arm painfully as it stumbled, keeping him in its unbreakable grip.

  Then Rivers was there, like a deeper darkness in the night, her black shape picked out in dull, ruddy highlights. She grabbed the arm that was holding Rik's and twisted. The robot's other arm shot out at Rivers' head, but the upload dodged the blow, seizing the robot's neck and head-butting it in the face. The hand came free from Rik's arm. Rivers and the scantily-dressed robot whirled away into the night, locked in combat.

  “Get into the fucking chopper,” Rivers shouted.

  Rik looked about him and found Freymann on the ground nearby. She was dazed and trying to get up. He ran to her and helped her, dragging her along towards the open door of the waiting helicopter.

  Machine gun fire flickered from the muzzles of the approaching men, lighting up the gap between them and the grey bulk of the helicopter. Rik heard bullets zipping past in sharp little whispers, like vicious insects. A louder roar of gunfire came from the chopper, and Cordell's gunmen scattered for cover. It gave Rik and Freymann time to get to the door.

  “Give me a gun,” he yelled at the pilot, helping Freymann inside.

  “What?”

  “A gun. Give me a fucking gun!”

  The pilot pulled a pistol out of a holster on his leg.

  Rik shook his head. “Bigger!”

  The pilot reached across and pulled a pump-action shotgun from a rack on the cabin wall. “We've got to get airborne,” the man bellowed. “We're sitting ducks here.”

  “Rev her up then,” Rik shouted, and ran back into the dark. “I'll be back in a sec.”

  Rivers and the Barbie were still trading blows a few metres away. The upload clearly had the upper hand, but the damned robot just wouldn't stay down. Rik pumped a round into the chamber. He ran up close and fired point blank into the Barbie's face.