by C. Gockel
Volka took a deep breath, steeled herself…and realized that was not the way to go about it. She let the steel bleed from her frame and folded her ears submissively…just in time for Alexis to barge in the door. “What are you doing here, in my home, dog?”
And there it was. All the hatred and bile Volka had expected. She reminded herself that she wouldn’t get much better from any human woman…in fact, she wouldn’t get anywhere with any other human woman. She’d be turned away at the door. For better or worse, she and Alexis were connected through who they knew and by their history together. Scrunching her eyes shut and biting her lip to keep from snarling, Volka remembered the stakes and remembered what a Luddeccean lady would consider her place—the place she’d tried so hard to unlearn and forget. Hands meekly clasped before her, head bowed, Volka whispered, “I am here, ma’am, to beg you for your help.”
3
Where Angels Fear to Tread
Galactic Republic: Asteroid S1O27.234935
There was a red light blinking in the periphery of 6T9’s vision, alerting him that the gravity in this quadrant of the asteroid was not optimal for human life or for machine power reserves. Staring down at James, hand still around the other android’s neck, 6T9 ignored it. The gravity draining him was doing worse to James. Crushed under 6T9’s weight, James’s face was turning red—a clever bit of engineering. It was quite human-like, as was James’s grimace. One of James’s hands was trying to remove 6T9’s from his neck, and the other was barely keeping 6T9’s other fist from plowing into his face.
6T9’s Q-comm was hot in the back of his skull. Did 6T9 want Volka to live—did he want to be able to save her—or did he want her to regard him as an angel? James had stolen his entire identity, wiped it out with a few code changes, enabling him to hurt, maim, and kill.
His Q-comm hummed, sparked, and reminded 6T9 he’d never been an angel or even worthy of Volka’s regard. He’d hurt Volka by not understanding that sometimes, doing the most good meant causing pain.
With a shout, 6T9 pulled back from James, tumbled backward in the heavy G, and sat beside the other android in the grass flattened by their battle. James lay gasping and staring at the sky, the flush fading from his pale face.
“I still want to hurt you,” 6T9 growled. And why did he want to? James teasing him over a hundred years ago? Or not letting him reboot a few months back? 6T9’s rage was disproportionate…Especially since 6T9 could change his programming back, if he wanted, with the key.
Sounding tired, James said, “It’s all right, Sixty. You probably have more reason for anger than anyone.”
6T9’s processor sparked in frustration. “What do you mean by that?”
James rolled his head so his gaze was on 6T9. “Of all the androids and ‘bots with Q-comms, you are the kindest. You have given the most and gotten the least back.”
6T9 felt the flare of rage beneath his skin again. “It certainly didn’t get me a threesome with you and Noa.”
James looked away and wiped his eyes. “Have you ever considered why you might be so fixated on that threesome?”
There was an old Earth adage that went, “There are no stupid questions.” It was wrong. “I’m a sex ‘bot, James. I’m fixated on sex with everyone.”
“Lizzar dung you are.”
6T9 opened his mouth to protest, but James sat up abruptly. “If you’d been so fixated on sex, you wouldn’t have holed yourself up on an asteroid with Bernadette and been celibate for years. You wouldn’t live now with a woman who is genetically predisposed to true monogamy.”
“I haven’t been celibate lately, James.” He’d had Celeste and Bart, and Dr. Warren, before he’d insisted she get help for her drug habit.
James huffed. “And you’ve kept all those relationships off the asteroid. Why not just turn the place into a bed and breakfast again? I bet you’d be a lot less celibate then.”
6T9 thought of the time the Galactic Marines had spent their vacation here and the mess they’d made, fun as it had been. “It takes a lot of effort running a resort, and customers can get rowdy. I don’t want anyone bothering Volka while she works.”
Narrowing his eyes at 6T9, James said, “Or maybe you just don’t want one of them falling for her and—”
6T9’s vision went white. Pain shot from his knuckles, cutting through the blindness. He could see again. James was below him, wrestling to hold off 6T9’s fists. The hairline scar that revealed James’s polymer skull had widened, and a piece of James’s synth skin was hanging in an ugly flap on his cheek. 6T9 blinked; his chronometer told him 23.25 seconds had passed. What had happened, and why was he doing this? Jerking his wrists out of James’s grasp, he staggered up, took a few steps back, and fell to his knees. “What is happening to me?”
James gasped. “The thought of losing Volka makes you unstable.”
Static rippled beneath 6T9’s skin. Shivering, 6T9 put his head in his hands. “That’s…that’s…jealousy. I am not programmed to be jealous.”
A bird cheeped, and something rustled in the forest nearby.
Touching his battered face, James sighed. “There are a lot of things you weren’t programmed to feel or not to feel…but you feel them because you’re more than a dumb ‘bot, 6T9, and even dumb ‘bots can learn. You’ve learned more than most. I’ve seen your code. You can’t favor one human over another sexually, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t favor one human over another in other ways. Some humans’ and bots’ company is more beneficial than others—intellectually and physically.”
“Physically—”
James dropped a hand into the dirt. “Don’t give me any lizzar dropping quip about Volka, Noa, or I not being there for you physically. We’d all save your neck even if we won’t fuck you, 6T9.”
The expletive caught 6T9 off guard. The quip he had been prepared to make never came. He put his right hand on his left shoulder. His left arm was held together with duct tape—it had been severed from his body during a protest in New Grande. Volka had been the one who’d applied the tape. It was so neatly done it looked like a pauldron—the shoulder piece of a medieval knight’s armor. He touched the edges of the tape through his shirt.
“Dare I say,” James said, “in the human emotional shorthand for someone who is extremely beneficial to you intellectually and physically, you love Volka, 6T9, even if you are not lovers. Losing her would be painful.”
6T9 wanted to protest—to say that he loved everyone—but by James’s definition, he didn’t love everyone. He wasn’t even sure he liked fucking everyone anymore. He enjoyed the act, but not the actors. He’d rather be with Volka even without the sex…his Q-comm sparked…could he be with Volka in all ways now? He owned himself. He could reject anyone, coldly and cruelly.
But would Volka want him as he was now, no longer an angel, a machine capable of causing pain? His hands clenched into fists in front of his eyes, and power surged through him. Not just capable of it, wanting to cause pain…Dropping his hands, he shook his head violently. Where was this fury coming from?
Maybe he should change his programming back. He could do that…although before he’d been altered, he couldn’t have even asked James to make the changes or even thought that he’d want these abilities—it would have been against his programming to want to hurt anyone for any reason, and by extension to make himself capable of it. If he changed back, he wouldn’t have this inexplicable rage. But James was right. The Galactic Republic would be at war soon—was at war already, really, in all but name. 6T9 could lose Volka to the Dark or to any other millions of deadly chances that had nothing to do with the alien entity set on expanding through the universe. He could lose her regard for him—misplaced as it was—if he kept these new abilities to maim, hurt, and kill. But death was forever. As long as she was alive, there was hope that he could keep something of their friendship—or love, as James called it.
It was logical to remain this way. And maybe there could be more between Volka and himself now.
6T9’s hands made fists at his sides. “I want to rip your limbs out just because you won’t have sex with me?” It was sadistic, immoral, and wrong according to all his primary programming, but also repellant to his higher reasoning. If every human responded to rejections of unwanted advances with life-ending force, humans wouldn’t survive as a race. He still wanted humans as a species to survive…His brow furrowed. James hadn’t altered that essential part of his programming.
“I don’t know,” said James, “but I suspect you have other reasons to be angry with me and with everyone.”
“You wouldn’t let me reboot aboard the Merkabah,” 6T9 blurted out. “You made me into a fool in front of Volka and Darmadi.” He’d been a fool in front of everyone, he supposed, but those two mattered.
Very slowly, James rose so he was in a sitting position. “I was wrong. Please forgive me.”
6T9 couldn’t meet his gaze. His Q-comm was sparking with the knowledge that James had probably ordered 6T9 not to shut down because of James’s own hard-earned learning—chiefly that the Luddecceans had no compunction against torturing androids. He’d wanted 6T9 to stay aware aboard the Merkabah so that they could escape at a moment’s notice. James had been trying to protect himself, but also 6T9. James could claim that as his defense, but he was not doing that. 6T9’s Q-comm whirred with that last observation.
“Is there anything else, 6T9?” James asked.
Somewhere a vent cut on. Birds trilled in the forest behind them.
“I teased you mercilessly before you had a Q-comm,” James admitted.
6T9 nodded dumbly.
“I’m sorry,” James said.
Picking up a pebble, 6T9 idly tossed it aside, watching its abbreviated flight in the higher G. James had to have violated more than a few laws to get hold of his access key. “It was over a century ago. Don’t think about it.” Even if 6T9 had thought of it earlier. James hadn’t revealed his true nature during the first desperate escape from Luddeccea. He hadn’t needed to; James’s Q-comm tied him to a larger server that gave him human-like intelligence. He’d passed for human. It seemed unfair that intelligence was the measure of worth, and that without it, a machine became just spare parts and an animal became a pet if it was lucky, and dinner if it wasn’t.
6T9’s Q-comm sparked. He was a machine. He was built on logic. At the end of the day, all his thoughts were ones and zeroes, and he knew it wasn’t logical to expect the universe to be fair. But humans always talked about justice. Was justice fair?
His Q-comm sparked again. Why had his thoughts boarded this particular magni-train? He looked down at his fist with its battered synth skin and scabs of artificial blood. His thoughts were running on this track because he could mete out justice now. Could one android or man ever really be an arbiter of justice? He looked back the way they’d come at the shattered trees. The dead tree that James had knocked over had knocked down another tree as it fell. Branches were everywhere, and clods of earth kicked up by falling landscape ‘bots, as well as the deactivated ‘bots themselves.
“6T9?” James said.
What had he become? Could he really protect anyone like this? “If I don’t revert to my previous programming, how do I control this?”
James sighed. “I had to change my original operating software—”
6T9 looked at him sharply—he had not known that. James gave no indication he noticed 6T9’s alarm. His eyes were focused on nothing. “If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have survived. I became the monster—machine—I needed to be…” His brow furrowed. “Becoming something between who I was and the machine I had become wasn’t easy. I had to change my code line by line, test, and update.” Shaking his head, he turned to 6T9. “Update yourself as you need to, but don’t do anything quickly. What you think are bugs might be features.”
6T9 surveyed the destruction, wondering if there was any feature, any positive from the mess, and then another thought occurred to him. If James had altered his programming in the house... “Did you know this would happen?” he demanded. Why else would James have taken him out to the forest?
“Noa suspected it might,” James said, referring to his human wife of over a century. “She’s better at emotional matters than I am.”
“Noa…” 6T9 murmured. When you knew her, Admiral Noa Sato was as expressive as James was inscrutable.
6T9 wouldn’t deny he or any other android had emotions. As James said, emotions were just human shorthand for more complex processes, some very logical. But 6T9 would have denied that he was jealous. He would have denied he possessed rage. And although he knew he had emotions, he wouldn’t have said that his emotions were human.
“How did she know?” he wondered aloud.
James shrugged. “You were never allowed to express rage before. She suspected you’d have a lot of anger ‘bottled up.’ Your stint with the independent tra—” His eyes dropped to 6T9’s hands, widened, and he didn’t finish the sentence.
Which was when 6T9 realized that he was growling, and he’d ripped the grasses on either side of him out of the ground. He wanted to beat the gears out of James again and didn’t know why. He did know it was illogical. The ones and zeroes did not add up. “I think I need to be alone,” 6T9 gritted out, dropping the grass and looking away.
An insect trilled.
James nodded, climbed awkwardly to his feet, and left the prairie scape, footsteps heavy, body bowed in the higher gravity. He was gone. But 6T9’s rage was not.
4
Crushed Souls
Luddeccea
The weere kept her eyes carefully downcast—as though that made up for the gall she had in coming here to begin with. She’d just missed Alaric. What would he have done if he’d seen her? How would he have found a way to compound Alexis’s shame? Things were…fine…just fine between Alexis and her husband, and here was this bitch, in her home, proving to Alexis that she could breach her sanctuary whenever she chose, aided by Silas. Alexis’s nails bit into her palms, her skin heated, and her eyes prickled with the betrayal.
“You want my help?” Alexis said incredulously, and almost laughed. Alaric had said that this creature had saved her because it was the right thing to do. But it had not been altruism, it had been…extortion. “You think I owe you something…After all you’ve done to poison my family?”
The weere’s eyes rose briefly; they were as yellow as her dress and lined in black pigment like a common harlot. She gasped, and then lowered her eyes. Snapping her hands behind her back, she said, “No, ma’am.”
“What could ever compel me to help you?” Alexis demanded.
The maid appeared at the door. “Ma’am, would you like me to escort this riff-raff out?”
“Thank you, I would appreciate that, Merta,” Alexis said, raising her chin.
The maid strode toward Volka, and Alexis noted that her weere maid was significantly taller and broader than Alaric’s little tramp.
“The fight against the Dark,” Volka said as the maid put a hand on her shoulder. “I thought the fight against the Dark might unite us.”
The maid gave Volka a shove, and Volka, who’d killed children and pirates, didn’t fight or move her hands from behind her back. Alexis spun toward the window.
“Please, ma’am,” the weere interloper said. “The Republic will fall, and if the Republic falls, Luddeccea will, too.”
It was a warm morning, but staring out at the yard dappled in sunlight, Alexis felt goosebumps rise along her spine. She turned around in time to see the maid give the weere bitch a vicious shove. Hands behind her back and unbalanced, Volka fell onto one knee.
“Get up, you hussy!” the maid snarled, revealing canines too long to be human. She kicked Volka in the s
ide, and the smaller woman toppled. The maid backed up, and Alexis realized she was preparing to kick Volka again.
“Stop!” Alexis said.
The weere maid growled but complied. Volka unclasped her hands from behind her back and raised her head from the ground, but didn’t otherwise rise.
“Why are you here?” Alexis shouted. She’d come to catch Alaric’s eye—that must have been it. Alexis had an understanding with her husband. They might not be in love, but they were allies—in the raising of their children and their fight against the Dark. Because of that, Alexis could only just bear the shame he’d levelled upon her by defending Volka in front of all of Luddeccean high society. He claimed it hadn’t been an act of love—but what did it matter if it wasn’t? Perceptions were everything.
“To fight the Dark, ma’am,” Volka said, not rising or looking at her.
“No, why are you in my home?” Alexis demanded. Volka had defied all the rules and forced Alaric’s hand in public—weere did not come to high society events—at least in no capacity higher than servants. And weere did not come to human homes for any other reason either.
“I did not think you would meet me in any other way,” Volka said.
“Of course I wouldn’t,” Alexis said, feeling herself flush.
Propping herself up on her hands, ears still submissively curled, Volka’s eyes remained on the carpet. “But you are the only Luddeccean lady I know, and Si—Mr. Darmadi said you were dedicated to fighting the Dark. So here I am.” It was possible there was a note of irony in her voice, the hint of a defiantly wry smile.
Lord, Alexis could not hate this woman more than she already did.
Volka’s shoulders rose and fell, and she said, “I suppose, if you hate me, well, I have hated you, and it is fair. But we have to live with the choices we’ve made, and I am here to beg you for your help.”
