Human Phase Page 16

  “It may surprise you to learn that I’d assist you in whatever ways possible, regardless of my personal circumstances,” Gemini replied. “If you’d arrived and realized that the horrors of captivity were foremost on your mind, I’d have scanned your brain and sent you off with an excellent recommendation for a therapist.”

  “But you’ll take a robotic body if it’s available, won’t you?”

  Gemini shrugged.

  Megan was finished loading the scanning rig into the back of the spacero—the spot most recently occupied by the G-shielded transport pod—by the time Kaylee and Gemini arrived.

  Climbing into the cockpit, Kaylee paused halfway. “Anything I should know about how to work it?”

  “Don’t,” Gemini advised. “You’ll need help from Kanto to find her some chassis or another. Charlie13 ought to have no trouble operating it.”

  “What about Charlie7?” Kaylee asked. There was always the chance that Kanto might prove unhelpful. There were agendas and hidden politics galore within the cavernous factory. It had a higher population than Mars all by itself.

  “Charlie7 knows what every person on this planet had for breakfast this morning,” Gemini said in a gravelly snarl unmistakable even in synthetic mimicry.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Kaylee said as she closed the canopy.

  Hitting the throttle, she set a course for Human Era Japan, home of the ancient factory that grew to become Kanto. Once comfortably airborne, she sent a message to Charlie7.

  “I don’t care how. Get Eve to Kanto. Figure something out.”

  The last thing she sent him was an image from the spacero’s cargo cubby. But if Charlie7 was the robot everyone claimed, she suspected…

  ALREADY HALFWAY THERE.

  …he already knew.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Shortly after Kaylee departed from Philadelphia in his spaceroamer, Charlie7 found himself commiserating with the generation wedged in between. Wendy and Lucas had shipped their grandchildren back to Oxford but remained in the city out of familial duty. Charlie7 caught up with them in a coffee shop just a block from the hospital.

  “Hey, Gramps,” Lucas had greeted him upon entry, toasting with a steaming ceramic cup in hand.

  “Charlie7, come on over. Share a table,” Wendy had added.

  He indulged them in stories about a younger Eve’s exploits, regaling them with tales told and retold in fiction and performances on stage and screen. No human of the current age was so well documented, but they couldn’t get enough of Charlie7’s perspective.

  Lucas shook his head, looking down into his cup. “I can’t imagine this world without her. It’s like a continent is dying.”

  “A monument, at least,” Wendy said. “You almost get the feeling that the second she breathes her last, the Earth’s going to sag on one side for lack of her holding it up.”

  He thought back to the video he’d just watched with Eve. It was a series of videos, actually, recorded over the years, in which Abby began by apologizing—time after time—for the stupid thing she’d presumably done to get herself killed. Eve had cried through the whole of it, realizing that for every precautionary recording Abby had made over the years, this time she truly believed she wasn’t going to see her mother again.

  After that, Eve had wanted to be alone. The hospital had orders to alert the family if her condition deteriorated. If Charlie7 wanted the latest news—without hacking into the hospital staff’s accounts—sitting around telling stories to her granddaughter and his own grandson seemed like the way to pass the time.

  Kaylee hadn’t given him everything. The data crystal had been altered—quite expertly, to his dismay—to excise Abby’s instructions to the girl.

  He couldn’t leave Kaylee and whatever plans lay between her and Abby to meander unsupervised. If there was one thing that Earth had shown him, time and again, it was that the planet couldn’t get by without him. Mars wasn’t looking to do much better.

  He accessed the root-level override codes for his spaceroamer and checked its heading.

  Easter Island.

  Abby had sent Kaylee to Easter Island for some reason. Charlie7 was well acquainted with the work that went on at the facility—far better acquainted than the regulators who dropped in for periodic inspections. Only two humans lived there, and one of those two barely fit the most liberal definition.

  As Charlie7 blathered on about Eve’s brief time as honorary starter of the Paris Marathon, the bulk of his quantum gate operations went to solving the mystery of why.

  Gemini was the foremost expert on the human mind. Her illicit study of the Eve clones was still the most in-depth study of cognitive mapping, and she’d developed her scanning methods into a non-invasive version that satisfied the Human Welfare Committee’s strict guidelines for testing and study of the human brain.

  He could see only two reasons for Abby to ship Kaylee off to Easter Island in such a rush. Both of them required Eve’s brain. Both of them would require a robotic chassis. The only variance between the two plans would be whether Abby intended for Kaylee to get Eve to Mars as a robot or as a robotic impostor.

  Kaylee was heading to Easter Island to pick up a scanning rig.

  “What made her think she could win one at age sixty?” Lucas asked, shaking his head.

  “You know grandma,” Wendy said with a chuckle. “Never thinks she’s going to lose. Came in eighth out of ten runners, and she called it a moral victory.”

  Charlie7 chuckled along at the right point to imply they had his full attention.

  A key piece of the puzzle was missing. Why would Eve go along with it?

  Oh, dear.

  She hadn’t.

  Had she?

  Had Abby thrown herself on the tracks of a runaway train just to force Eve into action? Fond as she might have been of Kaylee, Athena, Stephen, or any number of nieces, nephews, and assorted relations by marriage, she only had one daughter. Plato was long dead. Eve had outlived her sisters one by one. With her own life dangling by a thread of modern medical science, could Eve knowingly let Abby remain in the hands of a madman?

  The irrational, impetuous actions of a playwright out of her league now suddenly made perfect—if still crazed—sense. Abby could write plays about hostage negotiations from now until the heat death of the universe, but that wouldn’t qualify her to do the job when lives were on the line. Eve was built for hard decisions, for dealing with stubborn, pig-headed robots.

  “Excuse me,” Charlie7 said, pushing back his chair. “I have something to take care of.”

  Wendy waved. “Don’t go far. We’ll let you know if we hear anything.”

  “Don’t be a stranger,” Lucas admonished.

  As soon as he was out of the coffee shop’s line of sight, Charlie7 burst into a run. Fleet as he was afoot, he was faster worming his way into Franklin Hospital’s computer systems. A quick shift of duty assignments cleared a path. A false feedback loop kept the security systems from recording his passage. He recorded Eve’s vital signs, designed an algorithm to simulate natural variance, and fed it back into the monitors hooked to her.

  On the hospital roof, a medevac skyroamer powered up its engines unattended.

  Charlie7 stalked down a deserted hallway on the hospital’s third floor, making a beeline for Eve’s room. Her eyelids fluttered at his entry.

  “Don’t mind me,” Charlie7 said. “Get some sleep. We’re just going for a little ride.”

  “A ride?” the voice box on her bedside table squawked. “Where?”

  Charlie7 unplugged the box.

  “You’ve got more old friends to see,” he told her. “Text if you need to talk. It doesn’t bother me the way it does the humans.”

  He pushed Eve’s bed down the hall, breathing pump slung over his shoulder with an umbilical drawing power from a port in his abdomen.

  A quick lift ride to the roof and Charlie7 enacted a reverse sort of medical evac flight. He loaded his patient gingerly into the s
ecure pod on the side, reconnecting the life support apparatus to the vessel’s power.

  THIS HAD BETTER NOT BE ANOTHER OF YOUR CRAZY SCHEMES.

  “It’s not,” Charlie7 reassured her aloud. That much was true, if not plainly so. This was clearly either Abby or Kaylee’s crazy plan; he was just going along with it.

  DESPITE THE CLICHÉ, I FEEL COMPELLED TO POINT OUT THAT I’M TOO OLD FOR THIS.

  “I’ve never found age to be a limiting factor.”

  EASY FOR A ROBOT TO SAY.

  Charlie7 bit his tongue. “C’mon. Take it easy. Hey, I can promise you there won’t be any annoying doctor’s visits the whole ride.”

  FINE. LAST ONE. TOO TIRED TO ARGUE RIGHT NOW. BETTER MAKE IT GOOD.

  By the time Kaylee’s message arrived, Charlie7 was already over the Pacific Ocean.

  I DON’T CARE HOW. GET EVE TO KANTO. FIGURE SOMETHING OUT.

  “Already halfway there,” he text messaged back with a smug grin on his face.

  He wondered whether anyone would ever make a documentary about his life. No one ever seemed to appreciate how much more smoothly the world worked with him in it.

  Hours later, as they neared their destination, Eve’s vital signs sped. Charlie7 had been monitoring them the whole way. She’d dozed off somewhere over the Rocky Mountains. Now, she’d awakened.

  WHERE ARE WE?

  “Can’t you tell by the constellations?” Charlie7 asked.

  I WAS ATTEMPTING TO BE POLITE. WHY THE HELL ARE WE HEADING TO KANTO? AND WHY ARE LONG-RANGE COMMUNICATIONS JAMMED?

  “I apologize for everything,” Charlie7 messaged back.

  THAT DIDN’T ANSWER A SINGLE QUESTION.

  “You are correct. It didn’t.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Kaylee paced the rooftop landing zone of Kanto’s Southeast Region-5 like a bank robber waiting for her getaway driver to show up. That the skyro she’d flown clearly belonged to someone else and the scanning rig in the back of it was at best a morally gray piece of contraband weren’t helping her peace of mind.

  Charlie7 had declined to provide an arrival time—or any follow-ups to her queries at all.

  On her portable, Kaylee checked the news feeds. There was a minor uproar in committee circles over the Neddite hostage takers getting access codes for a pair of mining ships working the Kuiper Belt. Questions swirled over who authorized the transfer of command, why the negotiating team made the deal, and whether the Neddites would even honor it.

  But there was no sign that anyone on Mars had been hurt—robot or human—and there was no manhunt for a missing Eve. Kaylee didn’t even want to know how Charlie7 had managed that.

  No one had contacted Kaylee about her presence on the roof. She’d chosen a low-traffic landing zone on purpose. Workers inside the factory seemed either oblivious to or dismissive of her being there.

  “Come on, you rusted pile of ancient circuitry,” Kaylee muttered to herself. “Where are you?”

  As she scanned the horizon to the east, she saw a blip. At first, she worried it might just be another bird, but this bird grew too fast, its approach too obviously rapid, for it to be any creature.

  The skyro with Charlie7 and Eve drew near. Kaylee rushed to the spacero to relay her landing coordinates before pulling up short. Of course, Charlie7 knew where she was. It was his spacero. No doubt he’d been tracking her since she left.

  At times, Kaylee wondered what it must be like to have that duality of existence, living and yet being so tied into technology that it became second nature. She made a mental note to ask her great-grandmother if this all came together.

  When the medevac skyro with its white and red exterior came in for its final approach, Kaylee shielded her face against the blowback from the engines. As soon as the engines powered down, she rushed to the occupied patient transport pod.

  Kaylee popped the canopy of the pod. “Eve? Grammy? Are you all right?”

  Eve opened her eyes a squint. There was no response.

  Then Kaylee heard a chime from her portable.

  KAYLEE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? DID ALL OF PHILADELPHIA RELOCATE?

  She wiped worried tears from her eyes. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell it on the way.”

  Charlie7 came around and took custody of both the portable upload rig and Eve’s gurney—including the portable life support pump. Kaylee fell in behind as the robot navigated their way into the labyrinthine depths of the factory. She kept her portable out to converse with Eve.

  “Alan got caught up trying to be a hero, working to stamp out the Human First movement on Mars. He infiltrated the Chain Breakers and got himself caught as a spy. When I went to visit my Unity Keeper friends, I—”

  NEWS FEEDS COVERED THIS. SKIP TO WHY WE’RE HERE.

  “I’m explaining!” Kaylee protested, though she could hardly begrudge a dying woman her impatience. There was still a chance that she wouldn’t even survive the trip through the factory.

  THIS PLACE BRINGS BACK SO MANY MEMORIES…

  “Well, since you weren’t available to negotiate the hostage standoff—which everyone agreed you were the only one qualified for—Grammy Abby decided to give it a try. Turns out, she never figured on brokering a deal. She was there to buy time… and one other thing.”

  WHAT OTHER THING?

  Kaylee choked up before she could force the word out. “She’s there to die instead of me. Trading places with me was the best she thought she could do. She had a backup plan and only one backup plan that might save her and the others.”

  DAMN YOU BOTH. I SHOULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF AN OLD WOMAN’S FEEBLEMINDEDNESS, WHY DON’T YOU?

  “You’re not feebleminded,” Charlie7 said, showing for the first time that he was either peeking at Kaylee’s portable or she needed to update her security protocols. “You’re feeble-bodied.”

  “And you could go to Mars and talk sense into those Chain Breaker idiots,” Kaylee added. “But you’d need a body that can survive the trip.”

  I’M NOT A HYPOCRITE.

  “No one would say that you are, given the circumstances,” Charlie7 replied. “I’m also fine with taking the fall for forcing you to go through with it.”

  ARE YOU FORCING ME?

  “Grammy Abby is,” Kaylee said. “It’s still your decision. But how can you not try to save her?”

  Eve closed her eyes.

  IT’S AGAINST COMMITTEE EDICTS. NO HUMAN UPLOAD TO CRYSTALLINE MATRIX BRAINS. NOT VOLUNTARY, NOT OTHERWISE.

  “The vote’s been locked at 8-7 for decades,” Charlie7 countered.

  Kaylee quickly punched up a login screen for the Human Welfare Committee member portal. “Thumb print would be all it takes,” she said. “Change your vote. Go to Mars. You’ll fix everything.”

  Eve remained silent.

  Two sets of footsteps clanged on the metallic floors of the factory catwalks. The breathing pump hissed in and out. Kaylee looked to Charlie7 for reassurance, to check that Eve wasn’t slipping away on them. The robot winked in reply.

  IT WAS THE HEBREWS WHO NAMED THE FIRST WOMAN EVE. IN GREEK MYTH, I WOULD HAVE BEEN CALLED PANDORA. MORE APPROPRIATE, I THINK, GIVEN THE BOX I PONDER OPENING.

  “That box contained death,” Charlie7 pointed out, saving Kaylee from dredging up old school lessons for a counter argument. “This one contains the cure.”

  I WON’T LET ANYONE ELSE BE PRESSURED INTO THIS.

  “You’d still be around to ensure everyone’s rights get looked after,” Kaylee said.

  I HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO SELF-TERMINATE ONCE ABBY AND THE OTHERS ARE SAFE.

  “I haven’t regretted my choice in eleven and a half centuries,” Charlie7 replied.

  I’M ONLY DOING THIS BECAUSE OF DIRE NEED AND THE UTTER INCOMPETENCE OF MY DAUGHTER, THE MARTIAN AUTHORITIES, AND EVERY OTHER WOULD-BE VOICE OF HUMANITY.

  “And we’ll make sure they’re all ashamed of themselves,” Kaylee promised.

  “It’s either that or hope their martyrdom creates a bac
klash that quells the Humans First movement for a few years,” Charlie7 said with a shrug that jostled Eve’s bed.

  FINE. GIVE ME THAT THUMB SCANNER.

  With a few additional touches of the screen, Eve brought up the standing committee vote on voluntary human-to-robot upload. She pressed her thumb to the screen and the header changed from FAILED to PASSED.

  Once done, Eve closed her eyes once more.

  WAKE ME WHEN IT’S TIME.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Abby hummed softly to herself. It wasn’t any tune she knew but rather one she was developing. The minor key melody suited the dreary mood of the prison theater and might form the kernel of a showtune for an eventual stage adaptation.

  She shook her head slightly, laughing silently at her own pretension. Abby wasn’t even certain of escaping this standoff with her life. She’d strung Ned along, and he’d shown a remarkable reluctance to short-circuit the negotiations. The motion of her neck hurt but less than it ought to have.

  Abby suspected that someone had been dosing her food with anti-inflammatory drugs.

  The clop of hard-soled boots, combined with the particular gait she’d come to recognize, signaled the approach of the Chain Breakers’ leader.

  “You talk to them,” Ned said, taking Abby’s hand and pressing a portable into it. “Tell them what you promised me.”

  With a sigh, Abby obliged. “Send the native Martian children back, Dana. Of all the items on the list of demands, that one seems easiest.”

  “We can’t just ship children around the solar system like commodities,” Dana protested. “They’re children.”

  “Get signed permission from the parents. Of the hostages in here, Dawn Cafferty and Fatima Sharif both consent. You handle the rest.”

  “That consent is under duress.”

  “It’s all under duress,” Abby replied. “We’re still doing it.” She fumbled around until she found the spot on the touch screen to shut off the call.