Brain Recyclers (Robot Geneticists Book 2) Read online

  Every time the subject of their conversation had shifted to Eve’s Creator and the awful upbringing the ungrateful clone had suffered, Gemini had been tempted to stick her with the impact syringe.

  The only thing stopping Gemini was the fact that the ten-kilo EMP rifle felt like an anvil strapped across her shoulder. The idea of carrying Eve, despite weighing a mere forty-five kilograms, struck her as preposterous. Dragging the limp, bound girl back would almost certainly result in injuries Gemini didn’t want to inherit.

  “Which way?” Gemini asked. So long as Eve felt she was in charge, the rascal wouldn’t suspect the deck was stacked against her. The only risk was that they actually found a second way out of these labyrinthine catacombs.

  Eve strode off at a quickened pace. “No change in plans. We’re still following basic maze-escape protocol.”

  Gemini bit back a laugh. The little idiot was treating this like a puzzle game. Didn’t she understand that the two of them weren’t trapped in a computer simulation? She should be listening for the blowing wind or comparing aerial views of the Great Ghost City to the routes they were tracing. Simply following each and every potential route was an exhaustive—and exhausting—method, devoid of creativity or insight.

  “Blast it,” Gemini swore. “I hear them now, too. If those robots have half a working crystal shared between them, they’ll have their audio receptors tuned to maximum gain with background filtration and dynamic noise reduction active.”

  Eve fixed Gemini with an incredulous stare. The former robot took a moment to work out reading Eve’s lips as she mouthed, “If you think their hearing is so good, why are you still talking?”

  Gemini leveled a finger at Eve as if to reply, “Right. Good point.”

  On their way down the next tunnel of Eve’s brute-force search pattern, they balanced on the center ridge as Gemini had on the way in. While a bit of practice had made her second attempt easier, the neophyte human was amazed at how effortless Eve made it look to walk a six-centimeter span.

  The grimy hunks of dog biscuit loitered in Gemini’s stomach, rejecting all efforts at digestion. She took a sip of water, rationing the limited supply against an unknown wait to replenish their canteen.

  Wobbling along, Gemini struggled to keep up with Eve’s punishing pace and gyroscopic innate balance. Her stomach clenched. A cold sweat broke out across her face.

  When the sensation of nausea grew too intense, Gemini reached out and tapped Eve on the back.

  The acrobat drill sergeant spun on their concrete balance beam and put a finger to her lips, then waved for Gemini to follow.

  Gemini tried.

  Two steps after Eve restarted, the combination of unpalatable food an unaccustomed exertion took their toll.

  Gemini stumbled from the center rail and fell to her hands and knees. She vomited up everything she’d eaten since arriving in the Great Ghost City.

  A pair of impractical yellow shoes crunched the gravel beside the contents of Gemini’s stomach. “They probably heard that,” Eve barked. “Get up. We need to move.”

  When did little Eve14 become this creature of action? Evelyn11’s little puzzle expert offered a hand up, and Gemini took it.

  But as soon as she tried to run, Gemini realized she was in no shape. A little time to recover, perhaps. “Can’t,” she said between panting breaths to regain control of her gut.

  “I won’t leave you,” Eve promised.

  That was when Gemini realized the gut had more than one way to hurt. This sweet creature was willing to risk her safety for Gemini’s. Perhaps Charlie25 could upload her mind in such a way that there would be no memory of Gemini’s interaction with the girl.

  “Don’t. Have to.” Gemini patted the EMP rifle.

  “We can’t just kill people because they’re inconvenient.”

  Why not? Evelyn11 had done it enough times.

  Gemini let the rifle dangle by the strap as she took a shuddering breath, hands on knees. “It’s them or us.”

  Eve tried to argue. “You’re presupposing that they—”

  “That they know we’re here and might report that information Heisenberg-knows-where. Listen. If they were friendly, they’d have called out and identified themselves. Stated their intentions.”

  Eve was still having none of it. “We’re friendly, and we haven’t done any of that.”

  Gemini raised the EMP rifle and pointed at Eve’s head. “We’re not friendly. We’re fugitives.”

  Despite the weapon trained at her forehead, Eve merely scowled. “We can be both.”

  “Not if we want to live out the day,” Gemini countered.

  Grabbing Eve by the arm, she hauled the lighter girl through a maintenance door that was just a rectangular cutout marred by rusty splotches where hinges rusted away to nothingness. Beyond lay a cramped room pocked with circular holes where pipes and conduits once ran.

  Shushing Eve before the blabbermouth could speak another word against her plan, Gemini took up a position in the doorway. She lobbed her lamp across to the far side of the tunnel, its light spilling out at a weird angle.

  If it wouldn’t give away their position, this would have been the perfect opportunity to jab a needle in Eve’s neck. The smooth, vulnerable skin tantalized Gemini as they huddled together.

  Eve caught on without being told and extinguished her own lamp.

  With only their ragged breathing to mar the silence in their stopgap bunker, the footsteps of two approaching robots ticked like a doomsday clock.

  Gemini wondered whether she’d be able to identify them without giving away the element of surprise. Few robots were distinctive enough in either chassis modifications or manner of dress to be recognizable in an instant. Evelyn11 could have picked an individual designation out of a crowd by minutiae of voice and mannerism. Without an internal computer to fall back on, Gemini knew she couldn’t pull off that same trick.

  Eve’s hand tightened on Gemini’s thigh. Strong grip for such slender fingers. Must have been the climbing walls on the lab’s obstacle course. Still, Gemini couldn’t have anything interfere with her aim, so she shook free of Eve’s grip.

  The crunches grew louder. Gemini knew the robots were there in the darkness. Creeping forward in a vain attempt at stealth, they still made noise enough to carry for half a kilometer in the bare-walled tunnels.

  Neither spoke.

  Was it worth reclaiming the UV goggles from Eve? The robots would pick up on the emitter’s glow, but at least she would have a clear view of her targets.

  Targets? It seemed that, subconsciously, Gemini had already made up her mind. What good were instincts if one ignored them?

  Gemini fired as soon as both robots came into the lamp’s spotlight. With the first shot, the lamp winked out. A chassis hit the gravel like a shovel’s blade.

  “No! Please!” the second robot shouted from the darkness.

  Gemini could envision the raised hands, the wide eyes. Most importantly, she could zero in on its position by the sound of the pleading voice.

  “Wait!” Eve cried out and rose in front of her.

  But Gemini fired before the naive girl could spoil the shot. The second robot’s body fell somewhere out of view, crashing sprawled atop the central ridge of the tram line by the sound of it.

  “Why?” Eve pleaded.

  Gemini took custody of the remaining lamp and checked the tunnel. “Because now we’re safe. They didn’t see humans until the last second, if they noticed us at all. But in the event that they spent their last fraction of a second of existence transmitting our location, we need to move.”

  Eve hung her head. “James187 parked his just inside the entrance.”

  “Good,” Gemini replied, thankful that pragmatism was going to win the day. The last thing she needed was a philosophical argument. “If we don’t get out of here before the next team comes to investigate, we’re as good as dead.”

  Gemini knew that the Human Committee was as dangerous to her as the upl
oader conspiracy was to Eve. Stick close. Get to transportation. Sedate Eve once she was in the passenger’s seat. Even if she could drag Eve’s dead weight to a skyroamer, she hadn’t the time to waste.

  “Or uploaded over,” Eve muttered.

  When Gemini met the girl’s eyes, there was an accusation there. Did she know? According to Charlie25, if Eve figured out Gemini’s secret, the girl would make quick work of her Creator.

  No.

  Eve hadn’t figured out that Gemini had once been Evelyn11. She had merely discovered that her traveling companion was a cold-blooded killer.

  And yet, when they reached James187’s skyroamer, Eve raced ahead and jumped into the pilot’s seat. Gemini climbed into the passenger’s seat. Another opportunity lost. But there would be other chances, so long as they stayed clear of the Human Committee.

  “Have you flown one of these before?” Gemini asked. She knew that none of Eve14’s training had included flight lessons.

  “I’ve seen it done bunches of times,” Eve assured her as the craft lifted off to a deafening whine of ion engines, echoing back from the tunnels.

  Seconds later, the skyroamer shot out into the sky above the Great Ghost City as Gemini gripped her seat white-knuckled.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  One video screen displayed a public news feed of the search for Eve Fourteen. Another showed a replay of a recent Martian mining expedition using Kanto’s latest Type 997 automaton. Two other screens broadcast views of nature preserves, one in the Philippines, the other in the Amazon basin. The remaining screens were devoted to Charlie25’s day job.

  No conspiracy puppet master could get by in this day and age without some excuse for existing in robotic society.

  Kanto had been slipping of late. Automaton production was fine, but new crystalline matrices weren’t keeping up with the demand for chassis upgrades.

  It was the older population’s fault. Charlie13 could slap a new mix into a five-petabyte matrix. Charlie25 was forced to deal with transfers of irritable clients who demanded ever larger minds. The success rate on the manufacture of three-hundred-petabyte crystals was under a hundredth of a percent. A few might get reconditioned into lesser models but not enough to make up for the losses.

  The new exabyte crystal that Jason9 and Charlie16 had cooked up was yet to see a single production-ready mind.

  Charlie25 shut off his optical feeds. He squelched his data connection to the Social. Lastly, he turned down the gain on his audio receptors to zero.

  Silence. Blessed silence.

  The human mind wasn’t designed for constant exposure to a worldwide spectrum of stimuli. Shutting down offered the old robot a chance to exist within himself for a moment. As a late first-generation model, he had centuries of clutter built up but never lost track of the fact that his was still a human consciousness at its core.

  Time to check on his most promising ticket back to humanity.

  Charlie25 left the feeds running as he headed out. If anyone stopped by the office in his absence, he’d look exceptionally busy.

  The uploader ducked through manual doors and climbed down stairwells. No part of his visit to the factory underworld would show up on security feeds or show in lift operations logs. Charlie25 could have made the trip in a quarter of the time if he hadn’t cared about keeping his travels under wraps.

  Evelyn11’s new quarters were a long-term hostel that Charlie25 maintained for refugees among the upload conspiracy. New chassis didn’t come along every day. On occasion, it was years before the right opportunity came along to slip a conspirator back into society.

  The irascible geneticist didn’t seem like the type to tolerate so long a wait.

  “Oh, Charles,” Evelyn11 cooed. “Good of you to remember me down here.”

  The decor suggested a fondness for the early days of powered flight. Plastic replicas of old propellers and Protofabbed gears and sprockets hung from the walls instead of picture frames. A mannequin discarded in a corner wore a full First World War flight suit, complete with goggles.

  Within the antique furnishings, like a secondary hull, was a slightly dated genetics lab.

  “Have you brought me any of the equipment on my list?” Evelyn11 asked. She peered past Charlie25 for delivery automatons on his heels. “Oh dear, I see that you haven’t. What a pity.”

  Evelyn11 fixed her attention pointedly on the desktop centrifuge as it spun up to speed.

  “The Human Committee is watching genetics supplies like an anti-virus scan. This was the best I could get you on short notice.”

  Evelyn11 didn’t look up. “Did you know that the ancient pagan Greeks used to offer up sacrifices to their gods? If they imagined that Zeus or Hera were angry, they’d gild the horns of some hapless bull and toss it on a pyre. They made a whole ritual of it.”

  Charlie25 zoomed his optical sensors to check Evelyn11 for subtler signs of mental distress—tics, micro-scale damage to the cranium, anything really. “I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”

  “I’m just glad you think so highly of me, Charles. That hapless girl you fried in the upload rig to placate me. Just like the ancient priests of Hera. I commend you.”

  This was troubling. Charlie13 was the expert in abnormal cybernetic psychology, not Charlie25. If Evelyn11 was verging on self-termination, these might be classic signs of dissociative cognition.

  “Of course,” Evelyn11 continued. “None of those pagan savages had any way of knowing what Hera really wanted. With the benefits of hindsight, I would have to guess that she found them to be wanton, wasteful idiots who could have better spent their time in more productive endeavors. If those priests had any sense, they might have built Hera a gene sequencer that ran faster than an abacus.”

  Or the erudite old hag might be toying with him.

  “I’m doing what I can,” Charlie25 assured her. “You’re just going to need to be patient.”

  “Patient… Oh, that’s a lark. Eight hundred years of preparation, and my host bodies are all either locked up in a flying boarding school or on the run with a mysterious accomplice, murdering searchers.”

  Charlie25 forced a guilty smile. “You… saw that.”

  Evelyn11 hit a button and the motor on the centrifuge cut out. Magnetic bearings kept it from slowing perceptibly. The genetics expert looked up finally. “Unless you fancy your eventual human body to be female, have time bomb genetic defects built in, or take decades for someone else to slop together, I suggest you spend your time in one of two ways.”

  She didn’t elaborate.

  Charlie25 knew the cantankerous old robot wanted Eve Fourteen or a proper lab to clone a new one. In the meantime, she was willing to work on other genomes but merely to placate him. Charlie25 understood that as well.

  “I’ll take my leave, then,” Charlie25 said stiffly.

  One of these days, the uploader pondered as he climbed back to the civilized levels of Kanto, Evelyn11 just might have to suffer an “accident” during upload.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The blanket from James187’s attempt to furnish a hideout now lay in the footwell of Eve’s skyroamer, bundled into a makeshift bag and stuffed with apples.

  Eve and Gemini’s stop at an orchard in subcontinental Asia had been brief and frantic. With Human Committee news feeds bursting with coverage of the hunt, it was only a matter of time before a net of searching robots closed in around them.

  In the passenger’s seat, Gemini held up a green and red mottled apple for closer inspection. By her companion’s drawn face, Eve imagined that either Gemini was feeling too ill to eat or didn’t understand the fruit.

  Just in case it were the latter, Eve chimed in. “Consider a cylinder three centimeters in diameter from the stem indentation to the bottom to be inedible. Hold it transverse, like a grinding wheel, and bite through the skin. The skin’s non-toxic, but I wouldn’t recommend eating it.”

  Gemini bit into the apple, ignoring Eve’s advice and chewing the peel
. “Why ever not?”

  “Well, you’ve upset your stomach, and the disgusting slimy feel—”

  Gemini shot up a hand. “I’ll thank you to hold the commentary on my current mouthful. Clearly the nutrient content is highest in the skin. The inside is mostly a glucose medium rich in water content. Flavor’s in the outside, as well.” She swallowed and took another bite, flashing pearly teeth Eve’s way as they pieced the fruit’s flesh.

  “James has tools in the back. Can you find a knife or blade of some kind and peel me one?” Eve asked.

  “You could always set the autopilot and check for yourself.”

  Eve eyed the larger girl. “Thanks, but I’ll keep it on manual for now. Last thing I need is for the computer to ping a network and report our location. If we’re lucky, the searchers will give up in a few days and leave us in peace. Until then, I think we need to stay as passive as possible on the Earthwide.”

  Gemini finished her apple before tossing the core in the back of the skyroamer and looking through the tool kit. Her derriere stuck up over the seat as she leaned over the passenger’s chair.

  Eve failed at identifying the objects being jostled around as Gemini rummaged. The sounds were a mash of chaos, not to mention hard on the ears.

  “Aha!” Gemini cried out, slipping back into her seat. She held out a stubby, gleaming blade that could have cut molecules in half.

  “Just one for now, please,” Eve requested.

  Gemini dug an apple from the blanket sack and tossed it in the air. “Make you a deal. I’ll slice one up for you, but you need to learn not to mind the peel. It’s good for you.”

  “That’s supposition on your part.” Eve didn’t like the idea of her lunch being held hostage.

  “We can ask the Earthwide,” Gemini replied, reaching for the skyroamer’s computer.