by C. Gockel
They passed a couple of lovers walking hand-in-hand. There were rules about plastic surgery before the age of twenty-one. The slight asymmetry of their faces, the lack of fairy wings, or obsidian black eyes, testified to their youth—so did the glow in their cheeks and the way their eyes locked on one another as though they were the only people in the universe, as though time would stand still for their love. She and Sixty did stand aside on the narrow path for them. Watching them pass, Volka remembered loving like that and didn’t know if she should feel envy or pity. She looked to her friend and found him gazing after them, one hand on the ashes she knew were in his inside coat pocket.
She put a hand on his arm and his gaze dropped to her fingers, expression inscrutable. She pulled her hand away, and then felt sorry she had.
Crawling up out of the pack, Carl said aloud, “Does Volka need a hammer to knock out whatever is lodged in your gears?”
Sixty glared at the werfle. For once, Volka couldn’t be mad at the little beast. “We’re worried about you,” she said.
Bowing his head, Sixty resumed walking. They’d crossed another happy stream and passed a playground before he spoke again. “You’ve probably noticed that fashions change rapidly in the Republic.”
Volka’s ears came forward at his words and she nodded. Just as she was leaving her latest client, she’d heard from two passing strangers that the “Lizard Look”—achieved with plastic surgery, and “all the rage and yet ‘timeless’” two weeks ago—was now passé.
“Everything changes quickly in the Republic,” Sixty said. “Including recreational drugs. They evolve so quickly that before they can be regulated, they do a lot of damage.”
“Oh,” said Volka, getting a sinking feeling. Not Walker, surely…she was a doctor, and she was in the Republic’s Special Forces, too. Volka swallowed. But hadn’t she read in the Luddeccean newspapers that root and alcohol addiction was very high among doctors? Why would it be different here?
Head sinking lower, Sixty kicked a stone from the path. “When I arrived at the hotel Zhen was staying at, she already had another male guest,” he said, referring to Dr. Walker by her first name.
Volka almost said, “Oh, I am so sorry,” but then realized Sixty probably would not have minded a male at Walker’s hotel. In fact, he might have appreciated it. “Mmmm…” she said instead.
“I thought I was in for a really good tune-up, as you can imagine,” he said, confirming her thoughts.
“Mmmm…” Volka said again.
“But then I realized the strange chemical signature in the air was the Fenten2548. The latest synthetic opioid. The man was smoking it. There were two pipes laid out on the coffee table...two.”
“Burnt sugar and burnt rubber,” Volka murmured.
Sixty’s head turned to her with inhuman speed. “The chemicals in the smoke do resemble those. How do you—?”
Carl said softly, “We can smell it on your clothing.”
Shoulders falling, Sixty looked away. “It isn’t illegal to smoke it here on S5O4, not yet. It won’t affect her performance on duty…at first. One of its allures is that it leaves the smoker’s mind ‘clear as a bell.’ It won’t show up on drug tests with blockers.” He sighed. “It will destroy their livers, kidneys, and pancreas within five years.” Gazing at the horizon, he said, “I said I couldn’t stay there while they did that to themselves. She asked me to leave.” He laughed mirthlessly. “So, I tried begging her not to use the drug, and she threatened to call security. I left. The end.”
“Oh, Sixty…” Volka whispered.
On her shoulder, Carl’s necklace crackled. “I’m sorry, Hatchling. It wasn’t about you, though. She is in a lot of pain. I sensed that during our adventure on S33O4.”
Rubbing the back of his neck, Sixty said, “Her arms and legs—she needs new prostheses.”
Volka gulped, remembering Dr. Walker’s metal limbs.
Sixty said, “I’ve told her she should get new ones, but the recovery for so many augments that have to function so well together can take years. She doesn’t want to leave her team. Especially not now, with the danger of the Dark.”
A twig cracked beneath Sixty’s foot, and Volka glanced down. His footprints in the dirt were so much deeper than hers. He was much heavier than a human. He had no heart, and his blood was only so he could bleed realistically for humans who fetishized that sort of thing. He was, in many ways, further from human than Carl, yet he was so human—and she didn’t know what to say.
“It’s hard to watch someone you love in pain,” Carl said. “Harder still to watch them bring it on themselves.” As the werfle spoke, she felt as though she’d grown heavier and knew it was because Carl knew what he was speaking about.
Volka’s ear swiveled down, trying to catch any sigh or squeak that might convey more wisdom from his thousands of years of living than could be expressed in words.
“You did the right thing in leaving, Sixty,” Carl said. “If you’d stayed, you’d have been tacitly approving.”
They reached the bridge that led back over the West River and to the central square. Pausing before crossing, Sixty looked down at the werfle. His eyebrow lifted. “Weasel, you look like you could use a belly rub.”
Squeaking, Carl threw up his four forward paw pairs. “Always.”
Taking him from Volka’s shoulders, Sixty cradled Carl on his arm and walked across the bridge, rubbing Carl’s belly. Fur drifted everywhere, and Sixty grumbled, “You’re shedding all over me,” but didn’t stop. Carl purred with such vigor it tickled Volka’s ears. The moment sparkled clear and bright like a crystal. Volka’s heart lifted. The centimeters between Sixty, Carl, and her did not exist, and even the kilometers between Sundancer and her were not real. The starship was as close as her heart—as were her two friends on the bridge. Dapples of sunlight danced in her vision—Sundancer’s emotional closeness or real sunlight, Volka couldn’t tell.
But then they entered the shadows of the buildings, and the moment, like the fragile crystal she’d imagined it to be, cracked. Her smile faded. She had a deep feeling of unease in her stomach, like it was filled with furious pterys. Pausing, her ears flicked madly. She heard nothing but distant hovers, footsteps, and wind whistling softly through the towers. She sniffed the air, half convinced she’d smell the dank, rotting odors of swamp that followed the Dark, but she smelled hovers above, flowers, and green things closer to Earth, and the scent of a wet dog who’d taken a swim in the West River just across the street. “Sundancer?” her heart whispered. “Are you all right?” She closed her eyes, and Sundancer filled her mind with a vision of a bumblebee bobbing after one of the jewel birds.
Sundancer was fine. She opened her eyes.
Walking ahead of her, Sixty said, “Carl, that purr’s obscene. If this body gets blown up, I’m getting a Q-comm installed in a werfle ‘bot next.”
Carl squeaked. “Ten legs good, two legs bad, Android!”…and purred up another storm.
Volka tried to shrug off the feeling. Perhaps she’d caught a telepathic breeze, a sense of someone else’s unease? She could hear Carl purring from here; if something was really wrong, he’d know.
The street, Volka noted, was east-west and wasn’t actually in shadow, but it felt like storm clouds were rolling over.
10
Gang Aft Agley (Often Go Awry)
Galactic Republic Planet S5O4
6T9 could feel Carl’s purrs as vibration beneath his fingers. The werfle’s fur was exceptionally soft and warm, and although he hadn’t been programmed to find satisfaction in massaging non-human mammals, it did make him feel somewhat better to do so. When Volka had put her hand on his arm, he’d looked down and realized he could picture exactly what those fingers would look like sixty years from now. And he’d realized that as hard as it was to watch Walker destroy herself, to lose Volka would be worse. He’d wanted to catch her in his arms and demand that she never do something like what Walker was doing. Failing demanding, he would stoop t
o begging. Volka’s lifetime was already too short.
But he and Volka weren’t affectionate. So, he’d transferred that impulse to Carl, who was appreciating it loudly. “Behind the ears, now!” the werfle said, rolling onto his stomach, letting his legs hang limply over either side of 6T9’s arm.
“Ahhhh…yes,” Carl said as 6T9 adjusted the scratch.
The little creature was thousands of years old…older than any machine. Maybe when Carl said, “It’s hard to watch someone you love die,” it wasn’t just conjecture, and perhaps his words affirming 6T9’s choice to leave were well informed? 6T9 hated the choice. Hated being here instead of there. He was programmed not to let humans come to harm.
Carl’s necklace crackled, barely audible over his ferocious purring. “Keep this up and you’ll give better scratches than Volka.”
“Hear that?” 6T9 looked over at Volka, lifting his nose in the air and adopting an air of faux arrogance.
Volka wasn’t there.
His fingers stilled.
“Hey!” Carl complained.
6T9 turned around. Volka was nearly ten meters behind. She was walking slowly, ears flicking. Her body was slightly bent forward, her weight on the balls of her feet. She was stalking.
He looked up and down the street. Nothing seemed amiss. They were half a block from the square. He could dimly make out the guards around the statue dedicated to S5O4’s first settlers. There were humans on the street and ‘bots going about their owners’ business.
“Volka?” he asked.
Her attention snapped to him. “Something is…off.”
6T9 cocked an eyebrow and squinted one eye. “Could you be more specific?”
“I could be imagining it,” Volka said.
On his arm, Carl squeaked. “6T9, why did you distract me?”
6T9 blinked.
Hissing, Carl ran up his arm to his shoulder and lashed his tail. “Something is wrong. A storm is brewing.”
6T9 squinted up at the sky. It was clear and blue.
“Metaphorically,” Carl said. “We need to get back to Sundancer. Whatever is coming, I don’t want to be part of it.”
6T9 looked between his two carbon-based friends, feeling locked out of wisdom as much as he had when he hadn’t had a Q-comm. Trusting them, he reached into the ether and felt the hum of connection. “I’m hailing a hover—”
Carl squeaked and lashed his tail.
A common knee-high ‘bot, rolling beside a small dog on a leash a few steps away, stopped, spun, and whistled.
In 6T9’s metal skull, his ether port fizzled out. “My connection died.”
Volka tapped her temple. “Carl can’t control his necklace. He told me telepathically.”
And again, 6T9 felt locked out. He looked back toward the square. A laughing human child ran through a sunbeam, causing a flock of snow-white doves to take to the sky.
“Unit 3269,” 6T9 said, addressing the dog-walking ‘bot near his feet. “Do you have ethernet access?”
“Negative, Android General 1.”
“Another ‘bot who knows you!” Volka said.
6T9’s Q-comm was sparking too brightly to ask what that meant. He looked down the block and saw a round, cheerful-faced Nan’bot with a stroller. She had paused on the street, and her head was slowly rotating 360 degrees.
A human woman with a child on her hip, and a dog on a leash came over to them. “Is your ether down?” she asked 6T9.
“Yes,” he responded.
The woman touched her temple. “This has never happened.” She cocked her head. “Has it?” She smiled sheepishly. “It’s not like I can check the ether and know.”
Looking up, 6T9 saw a messenger drone hovering in the air with a package in its small compartment. It lowered itself to the ground near the square, probably to reboot.
6T9 turned to the woman. “Where is your home?”
She pointed down the street toward the square.
“Go home,” 6T9 said. “Now.”
The woman said, “I don’t think—” Her eyes went past 6T9 and got wide.
Volka’s eyes went in the same direction and narrowed.
Carl twisted himself around 6T9’s neck and hissed.
6T9 looked over his shoulder. Standing in the intersection were four humans. They were dressed in loose fitting black clothes, wore sunglasses and gloves, and two were carrying backpacks. His Q-comm sparked with the 95.6% probability that the sunglasses would deflect retinal scans. He’d just processed that information when more humans appeared behind the first. They didn’t move toward the square, but they milled and looked in that general direction.
“Right,” said the woman and hurried off.
To the dog-walking ‘bot, 6T9 said, “Unit 3269, go home. Immediately.” He did not expect it to work, but the ‘bot said, “Yes, Android General 1,” turned around, and rolled toward a building entrance a few steps away. 6T9’s lips parted in shock. The ‘bot would have its address on its local hard drive, but it shouldn’t listen to just anyone. It should respond to its owners, authorized maintenance workers, and police only.
Volka edged behind him. “Got your back, Android General 1. They’re coming this way.” 6T9’s eyes caught on the Nan‘bot a few paces away, touching up its artificial blonde hair over and over again, a preprogrammed loop designed to make it appear more human when it had to process exceptionally difficult tasks. The baby in her stroller started to fuss.
6T9 heard footsteps behind him and strode over to the Nan‘bot. He could hear Volka just a few steps behind; Carl bobbed on his shoulder.
“Nan’bot, where is your home?” he asked.
The ‘bot, modeled on a generously proportioned human, did a very inhuman 180 degree turn of her torso, her rolling wheels staying in place.
“It is just there,” said the ‘bot. She pointed to the building close to the square.
“Go there. Maximum speed,” Sixty commanded.
“Yes, Android General 1,” she said, pulling the stroller around and reversing her direction.
6T9 looked over his shoulder. The crowd was growing and edging closer to the square. A man—or a woman, he couldn’t tell which—met his gaze and spit. None of them appeared armed, but he counted twenty of them, and more were arriving. He looked to the square. There were humans there wearing more typical clothing. They were clutching their neural ports but weren’t panicking. They didn’t seem to see the crowd behind Volka, Carl, and 6T9. The guards around the statue did. They’d been holding their stunner rifles against their shoulders, but now held them in front of their bodies. A stun could kill a small child.
6T9 searched through what he knew of New Grande’s central square and grasped at a line of hope. “I don’t suppose you think it just might be a peaceful protest?”
“Some aren’t here to fight,” Volka said musingly.
6T9 almost sighed in relief; however, then she said, “But too many are ready to kill.”
That cheerful declaration made static surge along his spine, but it confirmed something his Q-comm told him was a 99.93% probability. Jaw hardening, he muttered, “Only military-grade ether jammers could shut down the net like this, and they wouldn’t need one for a peaceful protest.”
Volka’s wide, alarmed eyes made another hope spark in his circuits. “Don’t suppose I could convince you and Carl to follow Nan’bot over there and get inside?” 6T9 asked, walking in the direction the ‘bot had gone.
Carl hissed directly in his ear, and 6T9 winced as static flared through his left auditory apparatus.
“We’re staying with you,” Volka growled. “What’s the plan, General?”
6T9’s eyes fell on the delivery drone that had landed just before the square.
Behind him, he heard footsteps approaching again. Jogging to the downed, little ‘bot, he addressed it by its model number. “HVRDrone4599.”
The messenger ‘bot rose in the air. “Android General 1! How may I assist?”
And that was three ‘bots
who knew him. All different models and manufacturers.
“They all have you programmed locally,” Volka said. 6T9 wanted to rejoice that she seemed to be learning the difference between locally stored data and data stored in the Cloud, but focused on the little ‘bot. “HVR, tell all ‘bots within a half kilometer of the square to get inside. It’s an emergency.”
Whistling, the ‘bot rose higher in the air. An object hit it on the side, and it wavered but then took off. 6T9’s eyes dropped to the object. It was a rock.
Behind him, a man said, “Hey, you going to the protests?”
Volka replied smoothly, “I’m afraid I don’t know what we’re protesting?”
6T9 turned to face the milling group of humans, only they weren’t milling now. They were advancing. Some of them wore normal clothing, but too many wore hats pulled low, glasses, and facial scarves. Even with his eidetic memory he wouldn’t be able to identify them later.
One of the humans pointed at Volka and said, “She’s not going. She’s a rich girl. Look at how expensive her augments are—custom yellow eyes and her ears move!” The man lunged forward, black glasses slipping down his nose. “Did you kill an animal for your wig?” Her gray ‘wig’ was a real wolf’s mane, soft to the eyes and to the touch. Although plastic surgery was common in the Galactic Republic, a lot of it was cheap and reversible. Ears that could move like Volka’s would be expensive, and her yellow eyes were not the flat color of a retinal stain. The misunderstanding was understandable, but static flared under 6T9’s skin. The injustice of Volka being declared “rich” for mutations that had made her a second-class citizen on her home-world made him…His head jerked violently to the side.
“I was born with these,” Volka said, holding her stance. She gave a tight smile. “And I’ve never been rich.”
“She’s telling the truth, Jake,” said a man not wearing glasses, pulling back his friend. “Look, she hasn’t had her age erased.”
