The Android and the Thief

by Wendy Rathbone

  Trev knew his father was under stress. He’d heard him yelling on his comm for hours that night to various parties. Trev did not hear actual words or details, just the raised voice, and he kept doing his own list of jobs as quickly and efficiently as he could.

  That efficiency had not gone unnoticed.

  Dante said, “There will be a substantial bonus for you this month.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Trev’s cheeks heated a bit at the praise. He tried not to think of what Dante would do once he noticed, after today, that Trev was gone.

  Though Trev would have been justified in hating his father, he did not. It was the family business he hated. Dante himself was actually very conscientious, even caring, loving. He might be a bad man, but not completely evil. In Trev’s mind there was a difference. Or so he told himself. This man had legally adopted him as a favor to a friend of a friend. That was all Trev knew or cared to know. Dante had given Trev everything, and Trev was not ungrateful. He was just done with this life and needed to make himself a new one. That was all.

  This time at early breakfast, Trev had more to eat than cake, though he was nervous and not hungry. He looked around at his family, all present, back from their nightly meetings and depravities, and felt not one ripple of remorse or grief that he’d not be seeing them again.

  Except for Dante. A part of him would miss his father.

  Everything was in order. His Bradbury was tucked in his secret safe. After he was gone, Trev knew Dante would never let him go in his mind. His room would not be touched or changed. The staff and his siblings would be ordered to stay away from it. Maybe someday Trev could reclaim his things, but that was the least of what was on his mind now.

  He barely heard the dinner conversation, which focused for a while on how something had gone wrong at one of the brothels. Someone had been injured. Or killed.

  It was a big deal, a probable lawsuit. And a loss for the company that held that business in trust. Dante was pissed, and Trev figured it was what he’d been shouting about during the night. He did not want to know anything about it, and closed his mind off to any details his brothers were complaining about. It wasn’t good dinner conversation anyway, and quite soon Dante put a stop to discussing the subject during the meal’s first course.

  Dante was pissed about the money, of course, and his shelter company’s reputation. He didn’t care that there were injuries or possible deaths.

  But Trev heard Breq say, in a sly tone, “It could’ve been the best draw ever. If Torrel hadn’t had such a big mouth, we could’ve covered all the evidence, all trace, and whacked that zotic supplier for inferior grade. No one would have had to know. The police—”

  Dante slammed his hand on the table. “Enough. No more! It’s done. We lost this one. And I hold you accountable, Breq.”

  “Not Torrel?”

  “He’ll be taken care of, as will the supplier. But on my order and when I say. Not you!”

  Trev took a deep breath. Taken care of. Those were not words you wanted to hear come out of Dante’s mouth.

  “Well, it’s too late. We lost him for good now, and our investment with it.”

  “I said no more!” Dante’s voice came slow and even. That was the tone he used when he meant it. If Breq said one more word about it, he’d go to the punishment room for sure.

  Trev would be so glad after today to never return. He took a deep breath and faked being hungry after a long night of family business.

  BY NINE in the morning, everyone was in bed. It was as if the Damico family were allergic to the gentle spread of cream-frosted sunlight down the halls and corridors of the floating mansion. They were shadow dwellers, dealers in the dangers and thrills that occupied the landscapes of darker hours.

  Trev remained wide-awake. When he left his room for the last time, he took nothing with him but the clothes on his back and the fake chip ID his private client had provided.

  All the backstory work, which he’d helped create, had been done now. By the time he left the Damico mansion, he would no longer be Trevor Damico, but Trevor Varain from the Omicron system. His palm print, retina scan, and brain pattern would all now match that name.

  He walked through the family great room, seeing little of it except that it was ornate and grand, decorated with so much original art and sculpture that it crowded the vast checkerboard floor space and hovered over fancy couches and pillow-backed chairs. A fountain with two eight-foot embracing angels splashed noisily in the foyer. Aside from a couple of circular, humming robot cleaners, there was no other sound.

  Trev took the elevator to the underground garage. The security system recognized him, and all the doors opened soundlessly. He got into his flier and started it up. Later it would be found abandoned in Fire Town. He’d already made plans for that.

  As he drove away from the mansion, Trev circled it once for a last view of the trees, the waterfall cascading over the land’s edge, and the house itself, a triangle-shaped work of art that glowed in the early light. As he was about to turn the flier, he looked toward the upper story and thought he saw a curtain move and then a ghostly face framed in black hair. That window opened to his father’s rooms.

  A chill washed over his skin.

  The sight of his father’s face watching him pull away was one final dig at his confidence. As if his father were somehow saying Trev would never have the last word. But that was paranoia talking, and guilt, for he and his brothers and sisters had freedom to come and go at will for hours, even for a day. Trev, at twenty-three, was not required to account for every trip he made in the very flier Dante had given him when Trev turned sixteen.

  Trev put all thought of his father behind him, took the tracking system off-line, and hand-piloted his flier up into the sky.

  He drove to the city of Mooncast, twenty miles from the mansion. The floating metropolis was bigger and more beautiful than Fire Town, except for the underside with its jagged edges of land dripping vines and pipes all around its forty square miles of buildings and roads.

  He pulled into a garage, leaving the flier unlocked and the password open so that the vehicle could be taken away by the person he’d hired to abandon it.

  When Trev arrived at the address he’d been given, two men in black suits were waiting for him. One said to him, “Do you have your new ID?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Archimedes is ready for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Trev stepped into a large sunlit office with a back wall made entirely of glass showing a panoramic view of the Mooncast skyline. With its ball-tipped spires and white swirls of sweeping rooflines, it could have been a city made of the foam of ocean waves.

  A small man stepped forward, slimmer even than Trev, with a shock of white hair on top of his head, the sides cleanly shaved. “Mr. Damico, I am Archer Archimedes.”

  Archimedes was flanked by a taller man in a gray suit much like Trev’s father would wear.

  The man held out his hand, and Trev took it. “I remember you.” Trev had met this man once long ago at a private party of Dante’s. Trev had been twelve. The man had talked to him about computers; he had been kind.

  Mr. Archimedes nodded. “You were not followed, were you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. This is my attorney, Mr. Shinn.”

  Trev nodded. The attorney did not hold out his hand, so Trev kept his hands at his sides.

  “The two men outside are police who work for me,” Archimedes explained. “There is already a judge in place on the next floor. After you sign the documents, witnessed by the judge, they will take you to North Star. The confession has already been written out. All the details and why the money you stole cannot be accounted for. You cannot be sued for it since you own nothing. The judge will sentence you to one year. North Star is for nonviolent offenders, practically a resort. The year will go quickly. And in payment, you will have your brand-new identity and a bought-and-paid-for island in the air all your own in the Omicron system on
e hundred light-years from here. Your father will never find you. You will be wealthy and free to live your life as you wish. Is our agreement still standing?”

  “Yes.”

  Mr. Shinn came to Trev with a thin, shining digital paper document. “Please put your thumb print here, and here.” Trev did as instructed. “This contract with Mr. Archimedes is now binding. You may now proceed.”

  Archimedes had pale blue eyes and thin lips, but he lifted the edges of his mouth a little sadly—or maybe that was barely controlled glee. He said, “Thank you. My company’s reputation will remain clean, its assets untouched, and both of us will be wealthier for what you are doing.”

  In truth, Trev knew Archimedes had embezzled, over time, nearly one billion credits from his own firm, leaving investors poorer. He’d finally been caught and needed a quick scapegoat. Trev had learned of the situation online and recognized the name. He carefully queried Archimedes about his predicament, bypassing all security and making sure his message reached the businessman’s personal comm.

  Having recognized him, Archimedes was ready to listen to a deal.

  This man, perhaps one of the only men equal in wealth to Trev’s own father, had the money and connections to help Trev disappear. They came to an agreed-upon plan. Archimedes’s problem was solved. The older man would not go to prison. He would get to keep his company, which provided jobs for hundreds of thousands of workers.

  And Trev, as Trevor Varain, would admit to the crime through his computer-sleuthing expertise and do the time for him. The story was in place, the funds untraceable, the judge paid off.

  All that remained was a year to serve time in a veritable resort, and then he’d be free. “The deal is set,” Trev said quietly.

  “May you live a healthy and long life,” Archimedes said.

  It seemed peculiar to Trev how the biggest criminals in his life—his father, and now this man—could show such politely innocent and charming demeanors. How they lived with themselves and slept through the night, Trev didn’t know. Nor was it his concern.

  Now all he cared about was that he was finally going to be free.

  THE PRISON flier had seats for twelve. Half were empty.

  Trev, hands cuffed in his lap, wearing a gray jumpsuit given to him in the judge’s quarters, sat in a window seat and stared at the passing clouds.

  All the passengers were male. A uniformed guard piloted. Another, armed with a laser in a thigh holster, sat on a bench seat facing the prisoners.

  Trev was not afraid. He’d researched the North Star facility. It had gardens and gymnasiums. Private cells and job opportunities. He actually could have brought some of his belongings with him and been allowed to keep them. Like books. But they were safer left in the Damico household.

  The other prisoners in the flier looked harmless. One man was heavyset and red-cheeked, blinking rapidly. Another looked like he’d barely reached the age of adulthood. Yet another picked at a hangnail, seeming downright bored. These were not dangerous men. Trev’s own brothers and sisters were chillier than this lot. He would do just fine.

  As Trev watched the sky traveling by his window, he saw a black dot on the horizon. Another flier. They were in the middle of nowhere, but it wasn’t unusual to see other air cars in remote patches of sky.

  The driver of the prison flier spoke softly and rapidly into a wrist comm. The car slowed and took a turn toward the approaching dot, which, as it got bigger, looked like another air bus, gray with a red stripe. Prison grade.

  Both fliers slowed until they were side by side, hovering in midair.

  “Hey, why are we stopping?” asked the man with the hangnail.

  No one answered him. The fliers connected in midair, and the door opened.

  A uniformed guard boarded. He glanced over the prisoners, then came down the aisle to stand beside Trev’s seat. “You’re to come with us.”

  Trev looked up. “Me?”

  “Yes. There’s been a change of plan. Your prison assignment has changed.”

  “I’m sure you’ve made a mistake,” Trev began. But already his heart was speeding up, his throat thickening in fear. Had something gone wrong?

  “No mistake. You’re Trevor Varain, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “New charges have been added to your sentence. New evidence came to light. You’ll have a trial if you want one, but in the meantime, you’re to be remanded to North Star’s sister facility, Steering Star.”

  “That’s maximum security,” Trev said, standing. “That prison’s in space.”

  “I see you know your prisons. Good for you. Then there will be no surprises. Come with me.” The guard grabbed Trev’s upper arm and pulled him up.

  Trev had to concentrate to keep his legs from shaking. In the worst of situations, he’d trained his body not to react in alarm, not to panic. Slithering in and out of buildings, leaping past the grandest of security systems, the ability to keep his cool had saved his life on more than one occasion.

  He took a deep, leveling breath, but it sounded too loud in the small space of the flier. He followed the guard up front and crossed the threshold into the small tunnel that connected the two hovering fliers.

  “What new charges have been filed against me?” he asked.

  “I don’t have that information. You’ll find out soon enough.”

  Trev entered the second flier, which, to his relief, was empty. They’d commandeered it specially for him, then. And that could mean only one thing.

  Dante had found out about his plan.

  Chapter Six

  IN KHIM’S mind was a blue place behind a transparent wall, a place like an ocean cave where treasure might be found, where he stored what he called his forbidden “I am” thoughts. Such as Is this all my life will ever be? and Will I feel my death in my head or my heart?

  Sometimes his questions and answers came to him there, in the glassy blueness, like little poems he should never have had one thought to composing.

  His mind might question, Why are we created to be sad? Answer: Because you are lonely.

  Or How does one set a trap for a dream? Answer: Bait it with candles and red aster incense.

  In that place lay madness. For what did he know of real life, or candles, or red aster incense? When he wasn’t fighting in wars, he played games of war. In his off-hours he watched action-hyped movies or read books about weapons, histories of other wars, encyclopedias of random facts about war. Not fairy tales or poetry. Not fantasy or romance.

  He had those weird questions he stored away, and the weird answers, and he thought he might have liked to taste, just once, the words of a fairy tale on his lips. But he had been trained away from that, convinced it wasn’t for him, that he would not find worth in it and it would waste his time. He believed in everything he’d been taught so he could be the best warrior. He had had no reason to think otherwise.

  Now he found himself grappling for more imagination because the fog, and the drugs, and just the thought of hands on his body were not what he’d trained for, not welcomed, so alien and distasteful that he no longer wished to immerse himself in “real life.”

  He needed escape. He needed to bait a dream.

  When Khim had arrived at the basement of the brothel, he had some clues as to what awaited him. Sex service.

  Of course he knew what sex was. He knew that service would mean submitting his body to another’s demand for pleasure in that way. He’d never liked others of his kind in the barracks, so did not understand the need for a partner in order to achieve a brief release, and he had never shared that with another.

  He would hate it in the brothel. He expected unpleasant things.

  After he ate his dinner and the zotic rushed through his system, he could only blink in dumb wonder as handlers opened his cage and led him through the basement shadows to a tiled room with faucets and hoses and drains in the floor.

  He saw the man who’d spoken to him when he’d first arrived. Valo. And a third captive,
the silent one, Tabor, who thumped the walls with his fists. Khim noted groggily that they, like him, were fairly startling in appearance. Valo was tall and darkly muscled, with wide dark eyes and beautiful, pink-rose lips. Tabor was shorter, with golden skin that shimmered and long brown hair that brushed the edges of his hips. He had flashing green eyes and reminded Khim of a sculpture he’d once seen on an alien world that supposedly depicted an incubus demon from the underworld. Tabor had slanted brows and a strange, alluring glare.

  They were all three stripped down to bare skin in the space of two breaths and shoved forward together under sprays of warm water coming from all angles of the tiled room. The water smelled faintly of lemons.

  The zotic had them pliant, lethargic. Tabor swayed as if he could barely stand on his own. His long hair clung in wet ropes to his chest and back, making him look even wilder.

  Valo kept glancing in Khim’s direction, no longer talkative under the control of the zotic; his pupils were dark, his looks lazy, and he might or might not have even known Khim was there.

  Khim wrestled against the drug with his mind. Trying to stay aware, observe, assert himself. But every time his thoughts crested to form anything more coherent than obeying his handlers’ commands, he would have a sensation, both mental and physical, of falling in endless loops. It made him dizzy to keep trying to think, as if the drug were punishing him for the effort.

  Tabor must have been trying to think too, because he fell in the bath several times as the handlers scrubbed their bodies with brushes and cloths heavy with foaming soap.

  Valo just kept making groaning sounds, almost as if he were laughing, and his large member was very erect.

  Khim felt nothing like that from the zotic, but when he looked down at himself as he was washed, he saw that he, too, was erect from the effects of the drug without even realizing it. As was Tabor, who squirmed now on his hands and knees, all soaped. Khim watched as one handler held that feral-looking guy down with a hand on his back, and a second handler inserted a soft tube into his backside.