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  “Has anyone confirmed the identities of the hostages?” Ruby asked.

  “By process of elimination, Curiosity colonial authorities have narrowed down who is in Arthur Miller Theater. We’ve visually confirmed some on camera, but we can’t be 100 percent certain who’s a hostage and who’s a hostage taker. Not conclusively. From Social use, however, we’ve got a pretty damn good idea. Eight hostage takers. A dozen hostages, even. They haven’t set a timetable for their demands yet, but somewhere, in the head of one of those Neddites, is a ticking clock.”

  “We’d be lucky if there’s that much in there,” Eve said with gallows humor.

  “Neddites?” Jennifer81 asked. “The news feeds are calling them Chain Breakers.”

  “They don’t get to give themselves an aggrandizing name on my watch,” Charlie7 said. “Any press releases from our end will refer to them as Neddites. That Lund character wants to put his neck on the line, we’ll hang this movement on him.”

  A tentative hand raised from the table. Serena Jones asked, “Can you list their demands? I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the video.”

  Inwardly, Charlie7 rolled his eyes. There was one who didn’t belong in a position of this magnitude. Doing right by the welfare of humankind meant facing the evils of society head on. If those evils went without rearing their ugly heads for decades at a time, all the better, but when the time came, limp dishcloths like Serena Jones had to be ready to take a stand and do the job they’d wheedled their way into.

  “Ned Lund has set a series of demands for the release of the hostages,” Charlie7 said. “He has promised no releases until all demands are met. He wants the following: the return of the Truman-Effect reactor originally designated for Curiosity Terraforming Site-2, a laundry list of processed ores, the repatriation of all Martian-born children attending Oxford, five seats on the Human Welfare Committee to be voted on and filled by Martian natives, and Martian control of two asteroid mining vessels.”

  “Why doesn’t he ask for his own private colony dome on Phobos while he’s at it,” Eve said bitterly. “He knows we can’t deliver all that.”

  “We could,” Charlie7 said with a shrug. “We have all that on Earth.”

  “We don’t bargain with terrorists,” Eve stated firmly.

  Again, Charlie7 shrugged. “An old doctrine, dredged up from the archives.”

  Eve’s chest heaved. “This is an outrage! I will not buy back stolen lives at the profit of the thieves. I want better options, Charlie. Give me something better.”

  “There are three tried-and-true methods,” Charlie7 said easily. Allowing Eve her righteous anger permitted him to ignore his own for the moment. “We can bait-and-switch them… promise the moon and stars but deliver a hoax.”

  “Keep trying,” Eve muttered, wheezing with each breath.

  “We could stage an assault. Hit them hard and fast, maybe gradually introduce a breathable sedative to the air to dull their reactions. Maybe we disable them in time to stop the Neddites from detonating the bomb collars. Risky but decisive. We’d have to accept a high probability of casualties, potentially up to 100 percent.”

  “Go… on… still not…” Eve said, gasping for breath now.

  Charlie7 burst into motion, scattering bystanders and sending committee members diving onto the table to get out of his way. He was just in time to catch Eve as she toppled over the side of her chair, struggling to breathe.

  “Get a doctor in here!” Charlie7 shouted. The stress had gotten to her. Veins normally filled with engine coolant weren’t running so cold as they used to. Teetering on the brink of collapse to begin with, Charlie7’s casual talk of the potential death of her great granddaughter—and genetic twin—had been too much.

  As the emergency medical staff swooped in, Charlie7 backed off and let them work. He didn’t have time to explain the final option, the one with the best chance of a favorable outcome: send in a negotiator.

  But now, mankind’s greatest and most influential voice was sidelined. As Eve was whisked off to nearby Franklin Hospital, he wondered who could fill that enormous void.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The acoustics of Notre Dame were simply divine. The robots attending services had no ear for music. They could replicate the sounds of song but some element of passion was lost along the way. Abby Fourteen sat among them, one of just a handful of humans mixed in among the pews.

  She sat near the back. Her voice was quiet and weak but still well trained. Range and volume eluded her, but she still had an ear to measure her harmony as she accompanied the surrounding robots in their hymns. She’d liked to hear another 127-year-old sing so well.

  All too soon, the hymns ended. There were readings and blessings and rituals of all manner that followed, but Abby’s mind wandered. She had read and memorized so many literary works of the Human Age in an effort to evoke the souls of her forbearers in her songs and plays. Among those esteemed works were every major holy book, and she’d learned to read eleven languages in order to experience as many as possible in their original tongue. The Old and New Testaments she had read in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, in addition to canonical English translations. Every word John316 spoke in front of the altar, Abby knew by rote.

  When it came time for communion, Abby kept to her seat. Keeping her eyes respectfully downcast, she waited while the congregation took their share of the wafers and wine—even the robots. Abby didn’t pretend to understand the metaphysics at work there.

  Patience was a virtue that came easily to the aged, and Abby was no exception. Before too long had passed, John316 bid his flock a final, “Go in peace.”

  “Thanks be to God,” the congregation replied before dispersing to the exits.

  Abby kept her seat.

  When the cathedral had cleared, Abby made her way to the confessionals and took a seat inside. It was dark and cozy with a musty scent of incense and wood polish evoking the Human Era. Few places on Earth could transport her back there so vividly.

  After a moment, the door to the other side of the confessional opened, and John316 sat down across the wooden screen partition from her. “How long has it been since your last confession?”

  Abby scowled for a moment. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been 8,572 days since my last confession. On the whole, I think I’ve been pretty well behaved in the meantime. All the sins of not going to church, sure… maybe more than a fair share of pride. But that’s not why I’m here.”

  “It might do you good to unburden your soul,” John316 suggested, as mild a rebuke as Abby could recall receiving.

  “I’m really thinking that confession was a one-time affair for me. What I’m really looking for is insight into a mass existential crisis on Mars,” Abby said.

  “Indeed.”

  “I need to understand… well, you,” Abby said. “Every year, it seems, I get a new organ replaced by cybernetics. Ten years back, it was my knees. Twenty back, it was my eyes—and I wish now I’d gotten them swapped out when I was seventy. I’ve had one piece of me or another mechanical since I was in my twenties. But no one has ever suggested that I don’t have a soul.”

  “And you’re questioning exactly when that separation might take place?” John316 asked. “My dear, there is no medical procedure that can excise the soul from the body. So long as you live, it resides within you.”

  “And robots,” Abby said. “How or why do you have a soul?”

  John316 sighed. “Despite our detractors, I believe that God imbues every robot with an immortal soul at upload. Each creature that evolved upon the Earth was new at some point and, great and small, He has graced us.”

  “What about going the other direction?” Abby asked. “Gemini, for example?”

  “I would not speculate on the grace of that one’s soul,” John316 said primly. “But, strictly theologically speaking, she ought to have kept her soul at upload.”

  “What about the robotic copy that still believed it was Evelyn11?�
�� Abby pressed.

  “I don’t see how this relates to your initial claim that this was about a spiritual crisis on Mars.”

  That was as good as admitting he didn’t know, in Abby’s book. There was a whir of servos as she put a hand to the screen. “There’s a temporal crisis on Mars right now.”

  “I am aware of the regrettable incident,” John316 stated. “I will be praying for a safe resolution.”

  An alarm chimed in Abby’s ear—a reminder.

  “Thanks,” Abby said, though the robotic priest hadn’t been much help. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Are you sure you’re well?” John316 asked. “Spiritual conundrums often crop up when one is feeling their mortality creep in.”

  “Me and my mortality aren’t on speaking terms,” Abby replied brusquely. “Any time it rears its ugly head, I replace whatever’s broken. I’ve just got to get home. I’m expecting company.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Charlie7 found himself, more and more, the bearer of bad news. It was a peculiar burden he carried, willing to shoulder the unpleasantness of conversations that robots and humans alike shied from, all because he’d seen and been through so much worse.

  No one had a zero day as bad as Charlie7’s.

  Today’s onerous errand drew him back to the shadow of his own home beneath the Arc de Triomphe. Paris had taken its global prominence in the Second Human Age thanks to his residence there. A shy, tentative Eve had made it her home to lean on him for advice and protection—better protection than Plato gave her, despite his best intentions.

  But others had settled in the city as well. Phoebe had made it her life’s work to breathe life into the wildflower fields that had overgrown the grand old Roman city of Lutetia. Titus Labienus had conquered it from savage tribes. Saint Denis had died on that hill over yonder. Joan of Arc, Louis XIV, Robespierre, Napoleon, and Charles de Gaulle had all walked these lands.

  It had been a shame to see them reclaimed by uncaring nature.

  It was one of the oldest residents in the city that was the target of today’s errand. Only Charlie7 himself, a scattering of robots, and her own mother could lay claim to more years than Abbigail Fourteen among the locals.

  Charlie7 hated disturbing her.

  At some point, humans crossed a threshold between hale vigor and clinging to the driftwood of a sinking life. Eve was closer to her end than Charlie7 cared to admit. The old bird knew it, too, and fought back every step of the way, plodding forward with her official duties as the Grim Reaper stubbornly clung to her ankles, wishing he’d gone into some other line of work. The humans of the Second Human Era were a resilient lot.

  Eve and Plato had been young—in the early blossoming of that hale stretch of life—when they’d adopted her. In relative terms, Abby wasn’t that much younger. However, at the moment, what Charlie7 needed was a Madison genome body with a few extra years less wear-and-tear. If he couldn’t present the hostage takers with Eve, at least he had the next best thing.

  He left his skyroamer parked in front of the house, strode up to the front door, and rang the chime. “Abby, it’s me, Charlie7, I—”

  The voice came through the door-side speaker. “Just a minute. I’m almost done.”

  Charlie7 pressed the chime again. It wouldn’t alert Abby again so soon but served as a switch to open the mic at the door. “Can I come in? I have an urgent matter to discuss with you.”

  He was tempted to use an override code he wasn’t technically supposed to know and force his way in. This was a matter of life and death, and whatever Abby was in the middle of could certainly wait.

  “I said just a minute, and I meant it. I already know why you’re here.”

  “If you know that, then you also know that timing could be critical.”

  “That’s why I’d prefer if you’d stop yakking at my door and let me finish up. Let yourself in if you must. It’s not locked.”

  Charlie7 scowled but activated the door release. This wasn’t like Abby, who was as jealous of her privacy as any human he’d known since Olivia. ‘Quiet was a writer’s best friend,’ she always said.

  “Is something the matter?” Charlie7 asked as he stepped into the quaint foyer decorated in the style of a Victorian sitting room. Dark, polished wood and ornate embroidery contrasted with modern touches such as a video screen and a cybernetics tuning kit left open beneath the shade of a faux-gas lamp.

  Abby bustled through the foyer, depositing a suitcase at Charlie7’s feet on her way past. “Stow that, if you want to make yourself useful.”

  “Stow it where?”

  “Your skyroamer,” Abby replied gruffly. “I presume you’re here to take me to Mars.”

  “Take you?” Charlie7 asked dubiously. “We have a situation on Mars, but we’re looking for a negotiator, not a rescue.”

  Abby called out from down the hall, voice raised but forcing Charlie7 to up the gain on his audio receptors to hear her. “Well, damn good thing you came here since I’m about ninety years past prime rescue mission age. As for negotiating, that business only gets anything done face to face. I haven’t been on Mars since they added a second colony dome. Hadn’t anticipated ever seeing it again up close and in person. But… well, you know as well as anyone that plans never survive contact with the enemy.”

  “You… think I’m taking you to Mars?” Charlie7 said. His intention had been to bring her to Philadelphia, where a team of advisers could coach her on the situation and work back channel solutions with the Curiosity officials on site at Arthur Miller Theater.

  “Fat lot of good it’ll do me talking to them from Earth,” Abby said. “Those twitchy brats have had about their fill of transmissions from Earth making promises and telling them what to do. You do this for me: get me carte blanche from the Human Welfare Committee to do what needs doing up there, and I’ll leave you in peace to pilot the spaceroamer.”

  “Are you sure you should be traveling interplanetary—?”

  “At my age?” Abby finished for him. “Look here, Charlie7. Those de-evolving apes took my little Kaylee hostage. I’m planning to do whatever it takes to get her out of there safely. She’s got a good eighty to a hundred years left to live, and if I have to trade my last few for her to live them, so be it. But I think I’ll not shatter like porcelain taking a quick hop over to get there.”

  Charlie7 just shook his head and carried Abby’s bags. She was all fire where Eve was calm and deliberate. Even Eve’s anger was less intense than a typical conversation with Earth’s premier playwright and author. Ned Lund and his pals were going to have a public relations disaster on their hands if they harmed this particular negotiator.

  Abby had all Eve’s fame, a way of persuading with words that was as subtle as a tropical breeze, and none of her mother’s political baggage. If it weren’t for that iron will of Eve’s to impose her judgment on others and break their resolve, Abby might have been his first choice to handle negotiations.

  As he slung her bags into the back of his skyroamer, now with a short trip home for a spacefaring model as their destination, he wondered at the possibility that the trip would prove too much. If Abby didn’t survive the trip to Mars, Charlie7 decided he’d conduct the negotiations personally.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The inside of Arthur Miller Theater had become a prison straight out of an archival movie. The doors had all been welded shut except for a single back entrance, which the Chain Breakers kept heavily guarded. Kaylee and the other hostages had been herded into the audience seating and told to stay put.

  Each of the twelve hostages wore a bomb collar around their neck and a freshly woven, form-fitting, plain white jumpsuit without pockets, courtesy of the cloth-o-matic kept backstage for making costumes. They were barefoot, stripped of jewelry and tech, and wiped with an EMP for good measure.

  It hadn’t been until the vision in her left eye went completely blurry that Kaylee even remembered the implanted lens in it. It helped her examine tiny detai
ls without needing a microscope and had become so second-nature over the course of her adult life that it hadn’t occurred to her to worry as Gregor, from turbine control, steadied her in front of the EMP.

  Now, blinded in one eye, she sat sullenly in the third row on a plush velvet seat, feet chilled against the concrete floor. Alan sat two seats over, slouched in his seat with his head lolled back and his eyes shut. His hand dangled across the middle seat, an invitation waiting for Kaylee to accept.

  Up on stage, Ned and a couple of his buddies conversed too softly for the hostages to hear.

  A row behind her, Martha Jameson whispered to Kevin Chang. “You think they’d do it? You think they’d really kill us?”

  Kevin hushed her but not fast enough.

  “Hey!” Ned shouted, storming over to the edge of the stage. “No talking. You’re a bargaining chip, so shut up and act like one.”

  Kaylee held her breath, gaze locked on the remote in Ned’s robot-like grip. Even a slip could kill them all.

  There were whimpers behind her. The offenders didn’t speak a word of apology or contrition. They just shut up as told.

  When Ned turned his attention back to his co-conspirators, she let out a breath.

  Beside her, Alan snored softly. She shot him a look of reproach. He didn’t even have the decency to be properly terrified with her.

  However, in that look, she also noticed the bare line of paler skin where his wedding band had been. She rubbed at the naked spot where her own had been, then at her sore jaw when they’d slugged her for refusing to hand it over. There’d been no need to confiscate them. Kaylee wasn’t some secret agent with a transmitter in her ring—or a dark energy blaster or anything else dangerous. Taking their possessions had been an intimidation tactic.

  Kaylee wanted to refuse to let it work on her, but it had anyway.

  There was a clatter from backstage. Kaylee’s hopes rose along with a shot of fear. Was it a raid? Was someone finally coming to rescue them? The Chain Breakers were obviously in contact with the outside but hadn’t been forthcoming with details of the situation beyond the theater walls.