He held his pose for several minutes before stepping down to join his congregation in staring toward the graveyard and the mound of yellow soil that marked where Frederick Suida’s remains now lay at rest.
Lois McAlois and Renny Schafer slumped on opposite sides of the table in their small kitchen. Before them rested tumblers, empty except for eroded ice. The man held a bottle of amber liquor, the best the Gypsies could produce by way of scotch.
“Did you know?” he asked. “When I first met him, I was just a genned-up dog. A big-headed shepherd.”
She nodded. She knew. She had met her husband well before he had become a human being.
“They wanted to put me down. My makers hadn’t got a license for me. No genetic impact statement. So PETA sued. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Making me smart wasn’t ethical, they said. An insult to animalkind. Human genetic imperialism.”
He refilled their glasses carefully. “And Freddy saved me. He was working for BRA, the Bioform Regulatory Administration. That’s who PETA was suing. But he sneaked me out of their jurisdiction. Into space. And I met you.”
She lifted her glass to him. “No regrets.”
“Hell, no. They’ve been good years. For Freddy too, though the last few…” He shook his head. “They say my new genes are holding together okay. I won’t go the way he did.”
“But you’ll go,” she said. “We both will.”
“He had a good run, didn’t he?”
She was nodding when the apartment’s door scanner squawked, “To arms, to arms! Prepare to repel boarders! You got callers, folks!”
She set her drink down and climbed wearily to her feet. “We should reprogram that mechin’ thing.”
He answered as he always had. “One of these days.” Then he too was standing. “Shall we?”
When they opened the door, they found themselves facing three bots who were obviously near the ends of their lifetimes. Two had fading blossoms. The fronds of all three were browning and frayed at their edges, and their faces were lined.
“Boston Lemon,” said one as they entered the apartment.
“Titian Thyme.”
“Crimson Orchis,” said the one with the bright red petals.
“I know who you are,” said Renny. “I’ve heard those names. Some sort of governing council for the bots.”
Their nods were simultaneous. “Once our people would have called us ‘Eldest,’” said Crimson Orchis. “But your niece is so much older than us that…” She shrugged. “We have all been waiting for her to seem as old as she is.”
“To gain wisdom,” said Boston Lemon.
“To fulfill her potential,” said Lois McAlois, and Renny laughed. “You don’t know how much she hates being told to do that.”
“Even so,” said the bots together. “But we need a leader, and she has been the best candidate for many years.”
“The most potential,” said Titian Thyme.
“Vast potential,” said Boston Lemon.
“I quite agree,” said Lois.
“You have to get her back,” said Crimson Orchis.
“We can’t,” said Renny.
“We understand,” said Boston Lemon. “It would be suicide to pay the ransom the Engineers demand.”
“We need an army,” said Titian Thyme. “Humans and bots and even Racs.”
“We have fought when we had to,” said Lois. “We surely will again. But the Quebecis too small to carry troops, even with the help of her sisters. And the Engineers have railguns and heavy lasers and missiles.”
“Rescuing Pearl Angelica,” said her husband. “It could not possibly be worth the losses we would have to take. No matter how much we want her back.”
There were tears in his eyes as he turned back toward the bottle in the other room.
“Would you believe they asked me to come up to the Gypsy? And only partly to wash bottles in the greenhouse lab?”
Lucas Ribbentrop snorted agreeably. “Why you?”
“I was her friend. And I’ve had a bit of experience in the lab. ‘Good hands,’ they said, and all the better for having something of a personal interest. I said that wouldn’t really make much difference. They’d be growing new bots, not old ones. Even if the cells did come from…”
“I told them no,” Caledonia Emerald added. Then she kicked the pile of sacks toward her coworker. They had never thought they would have to haul so much away from the Racs’ “cathedral.” “You don’t have any fronds to get in the way. You clean it out this time.”
The man laughed. “I did it last night. We take turns, remember? Even if we are running late.”
The bot pointed forward, through the windshield of the Bioblimp’s cabin. The view had the eerie sheen of infrared, and in the distance a line of Racs, the last of the congregation to depart, glowed brightly. “But this time they packed it full.”
“And then some. Food galore.” Ribbentrop smacked his lips loudly. The pyramid of steps at the base of the symbolic Tower was nearly invisible beneath the heap of offerings. He stroked the controls. The Bioblimp’s tentacles snaked into view ahead, grasped tufts of moss and stray blocks of stone, and pulled. “Maybe it’ll catch on.”
“You heard the tape. It’s for Frederick. One time only.”
“I wish it would.” A tentacle lost its grip as wind rocked the genimal, and they lurched backward on their path. He swore. “Then we won’t have to…Why we can’t use the engine…He knows we’re here. He waits for us!”
Caledonia Emerald leaned toward the glass. “I don’t see him yet.”
Ribbentrop grunted as the Bioblimp regained the ground it had lost. “If it does, no more Lost and Found.”
“We’d still have to come. If we didn’t, the basket would fill up and they’d think we didn’t love them anymore. They’d feel rejected.”
“So they’d get mad? Attack us? Tear down the Tower?” He snorted. “They’d need a nuke.” He struggled with the controls as wind made the Bioblimp lurch again. “Or mass suicide? I’ve heard the guesses.”
“If they’re going to do that at all, they’ll do it anyway when we leave.”
“Naah.” He shook his head and indicated a hot spot on a pew-stone just inside the entrance to the watching place. “There he is. Blacktop’s a pragmatic fellow. He’ll empty the basket himself if we don’t show up. That’s why he’s there.”
“Do you really think so?” She pointed at three other hot spots toward the back of the stone-walled enclosure. “He’s not alone.”
“He’s bright enough to invent religion, isn’t he?” He touched a control, and the infrared image in the windshield enlarged. “Those visitors.”
“What’s that?” Her finger traced a line of small hot spots off to the right. They were not on one of the trails the Racs and Gypsies had worn through the moss.
“Critters. No problem. Now go on. Do your job, and we’ll get out of here.”
As soon as she opened the cabin’s hatch, a tentacle appeared in the opening, ready to lower her to the basket and then the pile below. Another took the sacks they had brought. Soon she was dangling beside the basket, stuffing pottery jugs of wine and water, strings of dried fruits and fish, small leather bags of nuts and dried berries, and other edibles into a sack. She knew that Blacktop, the Racs’ priest, was watching her. She wondered, did he really think they were gods? That they accepted his people’s offerings as worship? Or did he see her as a thief in the night? As a collaborator in the myths he was constructing for his people? Or was he pragmatic enough to recognize the value of what the Tower promised and of a system of belief that would make the pursuit of knowledge the highest good for his entire species?
Pausing when she came to a flat piece of rock, she used the tiny flashlight that hung from her neck to glance at its surface. She saw the imprint of a partial skeleton, head and backbone and a few of the ribs. Some sort of fish. A fossil. A sign that some Rac had already invented paleontology.
The light was already
out and the rock was stowed in a sack when sudden motion in the cathedral’s mouth warned her that something was about to happen. Blacktop’s scream of rage therefore did not make her drop her sack, and his cries for help only made her hands fly more rapidly in their work. Yet she could not help the startled “Uunnh!” that escaped her when the Bioblimp’s tentacle convulsed around her waist and jerked her into the air once more.
Nor could she help asking, “What’s going on?” as she was unceremoniously deposited in the cabin. But Lucas Ribbentrop was busy with his controls, releasing the Bioblimp’s grip on the altar pole and raising its altitude, letting the wind sweep it silently away. She looked at the windshield. The departing Racs had turned and were running as fast as they could toward their watching place. To the right, the line of smaller glows was much nearer.
She stepped closer to the windshield and touched the controls that would magnify that portion of the image. “Wild Racs,” she murmured.
“He heard them coming even before the bugs picked it up.”
“They must have smelled the food.”
“From the top of the bluff?”
“Why not? Maybe they followed our buddies down, noses twitching all the way.”
There were perhaps two dozen of the smaller, ungengineered cousins of the Racs. When they reached the altar, three confronted Blacktop, their voices singing threats of mayhem while their fellows began to gorge on the food Caledonia Emerald had not removed. Blacktop had a stick in his hands, but his foes dodged his blows as nimbly as the wind. He could do nothing to stop the raid.
As soon as the other Racs arrived, their wild kin knew the balance had changed. They boiled from the heap that still covered the steps. A few erupted from the basket and slid down the pole. All still held sacks and strings and chunks of food in their mouths as they fled. The Racs did not pursue them, and a moment later the bugs transmitted the sound of laughter and Blacktop’s voice, snarling now, saying, “Frederick must have sent them for his lunch.”
“He knows how to put the right spin on things, doesn’t he?” The congregation’s stragglers were already on the trail again. This time, Blacktop and the visiting strangers were with them.
“Hey, he’s a preacher.” Caledonia Emerald once more let the tentacle lift her from the cabin to the edge of the offering basket atop the altar pole. When she found it empty, she descended to the pyramid of steps and sacked the remnants of the offerings the Racs had not been able to fit into the basket. Finally, she faced the windshield behind which her colleague watched, wrapped one arm around the tentacle, and gestured, “Up.”
On the way back to the corral where they would tether the Bioblimp for what remained of the night, she had Ribbentrop stop at Frederick’s grave. “Down,” she said. “Just off the ground.”
“What the hell for?”
She said nothing while she opened the hatch and dropped an empty waterjug and a berry bag on the freshly turned dirt.
“I see,” he said at last. “Now it will look like the wild ones really were just gofers. They fetched, and Frederick’s happy.”
“I wish I was.” She shook her head. “I’d like to have a hand in what they’re doing up there.” She shrugged, but still she sounded troubled. “Should I have gone? Do you think they’ll keep me posted?”
* * *
Chapter Sixteen
“It would drive me crazy.” Cherilee Wright was tugging the vines aside, untangling tendrils from Pearl Angelica’s leaves, careful to leave no broken stems or other signs that something had been hidden in the bed. She sounded excited. “Wrapped up like this for days. I’m glad you’re not claustrophobic.”
No, thought the bot as she blinked at the flood of light. It felt peaceful to be rooted. Restful and safe and natural. Her roots had felt at home in the soil Cherilee had prepared so carefully for her green pets. The light had been dimmed to that which struck a forest floor by the combination of foliage and the cloth above her eyes. Now that light washed over her, brighter, almost blinding, telling of the wealth of energy expended on the plants around her. She found herself feeling reassured, for if the lunar Engineers were wholly one with those of Earth, they would look to Earth for their lifeline, their supplies. Yet they put so much into food production and self-sufficiency.
“Have you heard anything?”
“He’s okay.”
“He made it, then.” The relief so plain in her voice revealed how much worry Pearl Angelica had been trying not to feel. “When…?”
“No.” The greenhouse manager answered the unfinished question. “If he visited during the day, he wouldn’t be able to see you. If he came at night, when everyone—or almost everyone—is gone, it might look strange. Security doesn’t know who drove that truck, but they’ll grab any opportunity to be suspicious.” She took the bot’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “There. I told him you’re safe. Step over the vines now. And down, to the floor. Now walk and stretch. I know I’d need it after so long in bed.”
Pearl Angelica’s muscles were not as weak as Cherilee’s might be after prolonged inactivity. She was a bot, after all, half plant, designed to stand rooted in the soil for as long as she wished. Yet she did feel the need to move, pacing down the greenhouse’s aisles, slowly at first, then more rapidly. She examined beds of unidentified seedlings, cucumbers, onions, and corn. She ate a tomato. She stood quite close to one of the white, cylindrical beehives, studying the insects that sauntered confidently through the slit-like entrance, preened upon the narrow shelf that rimmed the hive’s base, and launched themselves humming into the air. “Too close,” said her hostess, and a hand gentle on her arm drew her back. “They sting, you know.”
“Oh, yes. I didn’t think.” She watched from a safer distance. She moved on to study bees crawling over the white stars of strawberry blossoms. “They have their little brushes, don’t they? Like our paintbrushes, only smaller.”
Cherilee was nodding her head when noise drew their attention toward the door between the greenhouse and its warehouse. A stand of corn blocked their view. “Down!” she hissed. “Someone’s coming. Right here. On the floor.”
The human woman was already darting to another aisle as Pearl Angelica threw herself flat, putting the wall of a garden bed between herself and anyone who might glimpse her. The stone of the floor was cold against that half of her chest Crocin had stripped of leaves, but…She blinked and focused on the shoulder. The buds were already opening. Soon she would be clothed again.
She thought Cherilee must be intending to draw attention away from where she hid, like a mother bird feigning a broken wing. But then she told herself, “I am not a fledgling.” Lying on the floor was no defense against discovery if it was Security at the door. Nor was lying still any answer to the rush of adrenaline that made her blood sing in her veins.
She had barely stepped among the cornstalks, hoping that her own green leaves would blend with theirs, when Cherilee was back, calling, “It’s okay. They’re friends. Where are you? Oh! There you are.” She laughed. “It might even work, though they searched in there before.”
Pearl Angelica had not recognized Cherilee when she first saw her, but now the party where they had met was fresher in her mind. She realized promptly that the three newcomers had been there too. She could not recall their names, but she felt safer knowing that they were discontented with the Engineers’ status quo. “They will not betray me,” she told herself, hoping that she was right.
“Anatol says hello,” said one as the bot emerged from the corn. Cherilee was not introducing them.
“She told me he made it.” She had not expected the news of that hello to be quite so pleasing.
“But he can’t come,” said another, grinning. Did she think the bot remembered them?
“He will, though,” said the third. Or was she worried that Pearl Angelica would repeat the names if she were caught again?
“As soon as it seems safe. For now he’s sticking to his normal patterns.” What about the “
noms de guerre” “Esteban” had mentioned? Cherilee didn’t seem to use one. Maybe they didn’t either?
“But he told us.”
“And we thought it would be safe enough for us to come.”
“For a little while.”
“We can’t stay long.”
“But we wanted to tell you he was safe.”
“And that we will help if we can.”
“And dare.”
There was an embarrassed ducking of heads at that. These Engineers wanted to help. They were also honest enough to admit that the penalties for treason to their kind frightened them and that if Pearl Angelica’s last hope of remaining free or of escaping depended on their standing between the bot and Security’s forces, then Pearl Angelica would stand alone, be caged again, and die.
Pearl Angelica was an innocent in that she had little experience of life outside her home community. But she had read enough not to be surprised by her visitors’ reservations. She might wish for more commitment from them, she thought, but they were only being realistic. If it came to confrontation, standing before Security’s guns would only add their lives to hers on the pyre. Someday, when Engineer society was more deeply split, there might be people, dissidents, liberals, who would be willing to give their lives for a point of principle. They would then join all those who in the past had fought and died for religious freedom, the abolition of slavery, and an end to discriminations based on race and gender and sexual preference.
The visitors did not linger. When they were gone, Pearl Angelica looked at Cherilee Wright and was surprised to find the same wry smile on both their faces.
Tower Of The Gods Page 21
