Bodyguard

11

“If you take care of the city, it will take care of you.”

One of countless morale holos set free to roam Roller Three’s corridors

Your average corpie may be a money-sucking, power-crazed jerk, but they aren’t necessarily stupid, and Roller Three proved it. After all, why build cities near natural resources, only to have the resources play out? Forcing the very ground travel you sought to avoid? Especially on a planet where travel consumed time, money, and lives? No, a mobile city made a lot of sense.

But, sensible though it may have been, Roller Three took some getting used to. It was on the lowest level referred to as “Deck One” where fusion-derived power fed gigantic drive wheels and steel blades funneled ore onto high-capacity conveyor belts.

Deck two was home to the massive crushers, sorters, mixers, and furnaces, where humans and androids worked to convert ore to finished metal.

Deck Three housed the multiplicity of machine shops, electronics labs, hydroponics equipment, and computer gear required to keep the whole complex running.

Deck Four was split between living quarters, office space, recreational facilities, cafeterias, a communications center, hospital, and the ever-so-pleasant jail.

And Deck Five, the topmost level, was given over to the landing strip, cranes, and other gear I had seen in the documentary. Or so our guide said, and I believed him.

He was tall by normal standards and came all the way up to my shoulder. His name was Burns. He had carefully combed hair, expensive clothes, and the sort of eager-beaver attitude that bosses love. He was a glorified gofer but hoped to be a lifer some day and never stopped trying. That’s why Burns put all doubts aside and led two rather dubious VIP’s down into the bowels of the beast, where the eccentric Colonel Wamba had taken up residence.

Conditions deteriorated as we journeyed downwards. Deck Three was first. I noticed the overhead was lower, the wood-grained plastic had given way to painted steel, and the temperature had risen. Tool heads conferred, androids hurried, and an atmosphere of frantic activity held sway. The feeling was reinforced by the chatter of power wrenches, the whine of lathes, the screech of saws, and the incessant smell of ozone. Burns mouthed words, but they were inaudible over the din.

Steel shook as we descended a flight of circular stairs. We were halfway down when someone yelled “Gangway!” and a man in a pressure suit pushed past. “Move, god damn it…we’ve got a stretcher coming through!”

I looked downwards and saw three men and a droid hoist a stretcher over their heads and start up the stairs. It wasn’t easy. The stretcher cradled what looked like a load of raw meat with a hole where its mouth should have been. Pieces of bone stuck out of the meat, along with rock fragments and chunks of pressure suit. Tubes ran every which way and kept the thing alive. Words popped out of my mouth. “What happened?”

“The silly bastard dropped a wrench into the rock crusher and went in after it,” the man said grimly. “He won’t make that mistake again.”

“But why?” I asked stupidly. “Wouldn’t it have been better to let it go?”

The man shrugged. “Sure, except for the five grand the corpies would deduct from his pay.”

“Five grand for a wrench?”

The smile was bitter. “Wrenches are expensive on Mars.”

I looked at the stretcher. It was closer now. “But why come this way? An elevator would be faster.”

“It sure would,” the man agreed, “if they worked. The mining gear is repaired first. Lift tubes are towards the bottom of the list.”

The stretcher party approached. The man motioned us to the rail. Bodies rubbed as the workers shuffled by.

The man turned, spit against the wall, and looked me in the eye. “Watch your step.” He took the stairs two at a time.

I turned to Burns. “He says the elevators are broken. Is that true?”

Burns shrugged. “Sure, but so what? The exercise will do them good. Come on. Time’s a-wasting.”

I started to reply but found myself addressing the back of his head. That was when Sasha caught my eye and frowned. The message was clear. “Don’t make waves.” I swallowed my anger and followed Burns downwards.

If Deck Three was bad, Two was horrible. It was a short trip from the bottom of the stairs to the unisex locker room, where a heavily dented droid gave me a bright yellow pressure suit size XXXL.

Like most locker rooms, this one contained row after row of lockers and smelled like a jockstrap. A steady stream of workers entered. Their suits dripped water from the high-pressure spray room and left trails across the deck. Most stripped to their skivvies, checked their suits for wear, and headed for the showers. Others, more modest perhaps, got into their clothes and left. No one looked at us or said anything to us. The yellow suits marked us for what we were: tourists who, if not corpies themselves, were the next worst thing.

I struggled with the final seal on my suit, traded safety checks with Sasha, and lumbered after Burns. The inside of my suit smelled better than I did. I had caught a little bit of sleep after our interview with Norton but hadn’t managed a shower.

Steam drifted away from the spray room. We followed Burns through the vapor and into a parallel corridor. It was lined with safety slogans and multilayered graffiti. The passageway ended in front of a tractor-sized lock. Five humans, two androids, and a utility bot waited to enter. They looked, then turned away. Burns spoke in my ear. “Ms. Casad, Mr. Maxon, how’s it going?”

The words were out before I could stop them. “If we assume normal dreeble, and gardunk aterbers, the resulting krepper would be 2678.33.”

Burns was as mystified as I was. “What was that?”

Sasha hurried to cover up. “We’re fine, thank you. What comes next?”

As if to answer Sasha’s question, a beacon flashed and a buzzer sounded in my helmet. It took a full minute for the lock to iris open. Six filth-covered androids and two equally dirty humans stumbled out. Even the droids looked tired. They headed for a washdown while we entered the lock and watched the hatch close behind us. When it opened, it was into a hellish world of never-ending conveyor belts, huge sorters, massive crushers, gas-injected furnaces, and molten metal. All operating in what seemed like silence at the speeds made possible by computers and low-gravity refining techniques. It seemed as if the entire complex was on eternal fast forward.

Burns led us through a canyon of sealed machinery, past a river of pulverized rock, and out into a valley of man-made lava. It moved snakelike through the artificial gullies provided for its use and caused the atmosphere to shimmer with radiated heat. Burns spent a lot of time waving at workers who didn’t wave back.

Then the vast bay was behind us, and the deck vibrated in sympathy to the nearest engine room. We entered an alcove. It was empty except for the layer of soil that covered everything and an empty cable spool. “This is as far as I go,” Burns said happily. “The colonel owns sixty thousand shares of company stock. He can live anywhere he wants and chose this. Nobody knows why. Be careful, and watch for snakes.”

“Snakes?” What the hell did that mean? I looked to see if he was kidding, but the visor obstructed his face. Sasha moved towards the stairs and I hurried to get there first. The stairs turned in on themselves and trembled under our weight. Darkness engulfed us.

Then, just as I fumbled with my helmet light, a pair of ruby-red eyes appeared. They blinked and moved closer. I reached for a weapon that wasn’t there and found the switch. A cone of hard, white light located the snake and pinned it in place. The creature had a triangular head, flared hood, and long, sinuous body. It looked like a snake but was actually robotic. Its mouth opened, fangs gleamed, and a man spoke in my helmet.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes, Maxon…welcome to Mars.” Things happened in my head. Dreams flickered, voices spoke, and pain lanced the center of my brain. The voice spoke again. “Follow Kaa. He’ll bring you to my quarters.”

I looked at Sasha. She shrugged. We followed the snake. Light gleamed off metallic scales as the robo-serpent turned and slithered downwards. It wove in and out of the rail like a shuttle on a loom. I stayed well back, taking my time and feeling my way. A pair of luminescent eyes peered down from a ledge, blinked, and disappeared. Dirt rained down on my helmet.

The stairs ended, and a matrix of crisscrossed laser beams materialized around us. It was part of a security system, and we must have passed the test, because a blastproof door slid open. Kaa reared back, hissed through my helmet speakers, and swayed as we passed. The hatch closed and we found ourselves in a lock. It had been spacious at some point in the past but was now half filled with junk.

A robotic mouse scurried across my boots, squeaked, and scooted under a box of mother boards. The lock cycled open. I looked at Sasha, shrugged, and made my way down the tunnel. There were alcoves to the right and left. All were full.

Whatever else Wamba was, or had been, he was someone with an affinity for junk. Not just any junk, but robotic junk, of every conceivable shape and size. Walking through the passageway was like touring the android equivalent of a meat packing plant. Robotic cadavers were piled every which way, their arms, legs and torsos all akimbo, their long-dead sensors staring blankly from the shadows. One of them sat up, tilted its head to one side, and opened its eyes. The voice grated in my helmet. “Stop. Remove your suits. Leave them here. Have a nice day. Stop. Remove your suits. Leave them here. Have a nice day…”

We did as the cadaver ordered and continued on our way. The tunnel came to an end and opened into a large chamber. It, like the alcoves before it, was nearly filled with robo parts. Only these had been sorted into hundreds of carefully labeled bins and were stored in the racks that lined three of the four walls. An enormous drive gear obscured most of the fourth wall. It moved an inch at a time. The “Lube Here” sign was self-explanatory. Less understandable were the things that hopped, walked, crawled, slid, and flew about the room.

Some, like Kaa, and the mouse I’d had seen earlier, looked like Earth animals. Others, like the foot-high pogo stick that bounced across the deck in front of me, or the gossamer-winged flyer that lit on my shoulder, were entirely fanciful. And there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of them, all moving around the compartment in concert with whatever propulsion system and programing they’d been given.

And at the center of all this movement, on a dais that was part control console and part throne, sat something that made me seem normal by comparison.

It had been human once; evidence of that could be seen in the kinky black hair, the brown, almost black skin, and the eyes that glowed like coals in deeply shadowed sockets.

But the machinery that had been built around it came close to obscuring the thing’s human origins, and it was only through an act of will that I was able to think of it as a “he.” It was, I decided, only right and proper that the one person in the universe who considered himself to be my friend qualified as a freak as well.

He regarded me silently, as if aware of my emotions and waiting for me to deal with them. His head, or what was left of it, was surrounded by a metal cowling. A variety of lenses had been mounted on the sides of the cowling and could be moved by means of servo-controlled arms. His neck, shoulders, and arms were his own, but surgical steel had replaced most of his chest. A metal housing stood in for his hips, and tracks replaced his legs. They whirred and threw up roostertails of reddish soil as he came down the ramp to meet me.

Dozens of small robots hopped, scurried, and jumped out of the way. Something the size and shape of a centipede squeaked and was crushed under Wamba’s tracks. The colonel’s eyes locked onto mine like laser beams, and his grip was strong. His voice was identical to the one that spoke through Kaa. “Damn, you look good. I missed you.”

Suddenly, and much to my surprise, I was overcome by emotion. It was as if something deep inside me recognized the cyborg and felt a kinship for him. I stepped between his tracks, put my arms around his shoulders, and gave him a hug. He hugged me back, and it felt good. Good to be valued, good to be welcome, good to be missed. Even if I couldn’t remember who the hell he was. I released him and took three steps backwards.

Machinery whined as Wamba turned towards Sasha. “Hello, Ms. Casad, and welcome to my humble abode.”

I had never seen the kid look shy, but she did now. “Thank you. It’s nice to be here.”

Wamba smiled. “I doubt that, but it’s nice of you to say so. Now, tell me about the ambush, who staged it, and why.”

I looked at Sasha. She managed to avoid my eyes. It was as if something kept her from talking about what we’d been through. Something she knew and I didn’t. It made me angry, so I started at the beginning and spilled my guts. Wamba listened without comment. Finally, when all the words had been said, he nodded.

“You are, as my daddy liked to say, standing in deep weeds. And, while I don’t know what’s going on any more than you do, I might be able to offer some clues.”

The cyborg paused for a moment and looked me in the eye. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

I hung my head in shame. “No, I don’t.”

Machinery whined as his head nodded up and down. “I thought not. You were one of the craziest and most insubordinate officers I ever had the pleasure to command. And you’re, well, different somehow. Changed in ways I can’t quite put a finger on. What do you remember?”

I looked to Sasha for help, but her one good eye was focused on a spot three feet over Wamba’s head. She made no attempt to help or interfere. “Nothing. Nothing prior to my discharge, anyway.”

Wamba nodded as though he had expected as much. “Let me tell you a story. A story about the last time I saw you. We drew a mission, one with lots of hair on it, and were headed for a research station known as T-12. It was right in the middle of the asteroid belt and very well defended. There were three boats in all. We drew straws. You pulled the first, Captain Daw drew the second, and I came last. You led us in…”

My head began to throb, a door creaked open, and the dreams returned. Wamba’s voice droned on, but I was somewhere in the past, living it, feeling it, being it.

The ejection tube worked the way it was supposed to and blasted us away from the ship. Stars whirled, then stabilized as I brought the battle suit under control and oriented myself to the target. It looked like a mountain that had been plucked from the Himalayas and set free in space. Sunlight rippled across the planetoid’s surface as it tumbled end over end. I saw light glint off metal and felt something heavy fall into my stomach. Even the best suits leak heat, and I could damned near feel their missile launchers swivel in my direction. I triggered the command freq and gave the command.

“Go!”

The team arrowed in like sharks in search of fresh meat. I was vaguely aware that Daw and Wamba had cleared their ships and were headed in the same direction. It made damned little difference, though, since we were committed. The Loot would extract us if she lived long enough to do so, or we’d wait for relief. Not a pleasant thought.

A fire requires oxygen, and a battle suit contains damned little thanks to the endless vacuum around it. So the fireball that consumed Private Naglie lasted less than a second. I swore, but gave thanks too, knowing his death would give the team another surge of adrenaline. Adrenaline they needed to survive.

A buzzer buzzed, and my heads-up display (HUD) indicated the tool heads were coming out to meet us. The gunny confirmed it.

“M-dog two to M-dog one. We have four-zero, repeat, four-zero T-heads outbound our sector. Over.”

Wamba had a command freq that could override the rest of us. He used it. “B-dog one to M-dog one. Team two owns twenty right. You take twenty left. Team three will cover. Over.”

I switched to the team freq. “M-dog one to M-dog team. Twenty right belong to us. Three will cover. Mark ’em and take ’em. Over.”

Though not supposed to take an active role, I had no desire to watch while my team fought. I picked a blip, marked it as my own, and checked to make sure that the rest were accounted for.

The tracking tone went off. A missile was headed my way. I dumped chaff, hit the electronic countermeasures (ECM) booster switch, and did a backward flip.

Bodmods Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics, makes one helluva battle suit, but Krupp “We arm business so they can do business” Industries makes some top-of-the-line antipersonnel missiles. One of them followed me down. I spent a fraction of a second wishing I had a suit with more offensive weaponry, realized it was a waste of time, and launched a decoy.

The decoy was the size and shape of a pocket stylus and had been programed to radiate heat, radio, and radar signals identical to those emitted by my battle suit. My onboard computer dumped ninety per cent power and waited to see what would happen. The missile bought it, chased the decoy, and exploded.

Thus freed, I entered the battle sim, checked to make sure that my team had held its own, and searched for my target. He or she was busy pushing a deactivated M-dog suit up the seam between Daw’s team and mine. They might have been trying to fool us, or shield themselves from attack, or who knows what. My battle sim informed me that the suit belonged to Private Kim, a tough little troop who’d been brought up in the lower levels of the London Urboplex, and played folk songs on the harmonica.

Using Kim’s body as a shield pissed me off, and I fed the T-head’s coordinates to one of our free-floating missile racks. They had been ejected at the same time we were, and mounted four missiles each. I knew the rack would draw fire the moment I launched, so there was no point in conserving ordnance. I put two missiles on the tool head, one on a blip I wasn’t sure of, and one on T-12’s antenna farm. I knew the strikers would destroy the fourth missile long before it reached the asteroid’s surface, but knew the effort would cost them two or three missiles. Missiles they wouldn’t be able to launch at me or my team.

I gave the order to fire. The missiles left the launcher and made dotted lines across my sim. Both the tool head and what remained of Kim’s body vanished in a cartoonlike ball of flame. The enemy suit, a ridiculous-looking stick figure, disappeared a fraction of a second later. The launch rack, plus the last two missiles it had fired, were destroyed moments after that.

I switched to the big picture. The first thing that jumped out at me was that most of the strikers were dead. They were pretty good for amateurs, but we were pros, and that makes a difference. Or so the company hopes. Most of their suits, or what was left of their suits, had started the long, slow drift to nowhere. But five or six of the bastards had taken refuge behind a large chunk of free-floating rock. I saw a missile explode against the boulder’s outer surface and push it towards the asteroid beyond. The tool heads answered with a crew-served laser cannon, and the battle continued.

I frowned. The team should have bypassed the rock rats and pushed for the asteroid itself. Daw’s squad was damned near there. I checked, saw the gunny’s light had gone out, and understood what had happened. The gunny was dead, and it was payback time. I chinned the mike.

“M-dog to M-dog team. Break, I repeat, break. You know the objective. Take it. That’s an order. Over.”

Sergeant Habib had filled the gap left by the gunny…or had tried to. He knew things were out of hand and said so.

“M-dog five to M-dog one. Sorry, sir. Breaking now. Over.”

The battle sim took twenty cubic miles of space and compressed it to a single 3-D image. I saw the team break, re-form, and arrow towards the target. It looked as if they were inches apart, but at least a half-mile separated them.

I switched freq’s, called the Loot, and applied full power. The team would land on T-12’s surface in nine, maybe ten, minutes. I wanted to arrive at the same time they did. The Loot had survived, so far anyway, and sounded solid.

“Dodger-one to M-dog one. Shoot.”

“I have five or six bad guys hiding behind a rock. Over.”

“Roger that, M-dog one. Light the rock. Over.”

I checked to make sure my team was clear, “lit” the rock on my sim and knew the Loot had it too. The response came right away.

She came out of the sun, fed the strikers a missile, and pulled out with a pair of surface-to-air (SAM) missiles hot on her tail. I wanted to watch, wanted to see her escape, but kept my eyes focused on the target. The Loot’s ship-to-ship ordnance was a hundred times larger than the little squirts we used, and the explosion was bright enough to darken my visor. The gunny would be happy. It wasn’t much as trade-offs go, but it was better than nothing.

The asteroid was closer now, close enough to fill my vision and block the star field beyond. The rock had some spin, but not a lot, so the landing would be soft.

But staying down, especially during combat, would be more difficult. Just one overenthusiastic leap and I’d be orbiting T-12 like a target balloon. Yeah, I could blast my way down, but that would take time. Time enough to track my ass and blow it clean off. Another unpleasant thought.

The strikers were out in force. Strafing runs by the Loot and a buddy softened the bastards up but antipersonnel missiles, laser beams, and bullets stuttered up to meet us nonetheless.

The major lit a sector and ordered us to converge on it. Daw’s team would arrive first and have the dubious honor of securing the landing zone (LZ).

We were closer now, close enough for an honest-to-god visual, and I didn’t like what I saw. Roughly half my team, about fifteen effectives, had made it through. One of them, a trooper named Raskin, took a hit and spun out of control. A vapor plume outgassed and disappeared as the suit sealed itself. A buddy called him.

“Hey, Raskin! Can you hear me? Pull out, pull out or you’re going to…”

Raskin hit the ground, bounced, and came apart as the strikers hit him with everything they had.

I swore, added my fire to that generated by the rest of the team, and cut power. We drifted in like those puffy things that dandelions produce in the spring. Fountains of dust spurted upwards as our boots hit, paused for a moment, and drifted sideways.

Fire lanced in from three sides, and what was left of Daw’s team did their best to cover us. I slo-moed my way to a crater and resisted the temptation to pull the edges in around me. I had elbowed my way to the rim and was peeking over the edge when something nudged the side of my helmet. A voice filled my ears. “Maxon?”

I damned near jumped out of my skin before I realized Wamba had arrived and placed his helmet next to mine. The sun reflected off his visor and his eyes. “Sorry, sir. You scared the shit out of me.”

I felt Wamba grin. “Serves your ass right for sleeping on duty. Gather your team. We came to take T-12, and we’re going to do it. Capish?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. You lost about fifty per cent of your team, ditto for Daw, but about seventy-five per cent of my people made it through. We’ll attack the dome. You hold the LZ and have the coffee ready when we get back.”

I looked, saw he was serious, and shook my head. “Sorry, Major. No damned way. We’re coming with you.”

Wamba looked me in the eye. “Captain, am I to understand that you’re refusing a direct order?”

I nodded. “Yes, sir. You sure as hell are, sir.”

Wamba grinned. “That’s what I thought. You’re a dumb shit, Maxon, but a brave dumb shit, and what more can the share owners ask? Come on. The dome awaits.”

There was a reason why the major was a major and not a captain like me. He had smarts, lots of smarts, and knew how to use them. He had analyzed the defensive fire, identified three sectors where it was relatively light, and picked the one that was inside the tool-head perimeter.

Yeah, that meant we had enemy troops on three sides, and T-12’s main dome on the other, but it also meant that about a third of the strikers couldn’t fire without hitting the dome-a dome built to withstand normal wear and tear, but not the rigors of combat.

So, while they spent time trying to readjust their lines of fire, we leapfrogged towards the dome. It was a standard tactic drilled into us from our first days in the crotch. The evolution begins with the formation of dispersed square-dispersed to lessen the casualties caused by modern weapons, and square because squared-off corners place attackers in a crossfire. During large unit actions, such a square might be spread out over five or ten square miles and would have been impossible were it not for the battle sims that allowed each trooper to monitor his or her position relative to everyone else’s.

Then, while the even-numbered troopers provided covering fire, the odd-numbered troopers executed a two-mile jump. Once on the ground, it was their turn to provide covering fire, and so forth, until the entire unit had reached its objective. So that’s how we leapfrogged our way to the dome. Yeah, we lost four troopers, all caught at or near the apex of their jumps, but most of them made it.

The domies did what they could, and sent volunteers out to stop us, but they were like sheep to the slaughter. We went through them like a knife through warm butter, forced the lock, and made our way inside. And that’s when things went black, when the memories disappeared, when the door slammed shut. The nothingness was so sudden, so complete, that it seemed as if I had died in the dome, except that Wamba continued to talk. But what about the darkness? Then I realized that my eyes were closed. I opened them. Light flooded in. I blinked. Wamba smiled and nodded sympathetically.

“You remembered, didn’t you? But the memory ended at the lock. And that makes sense, because that’s where the tool heads cleaned our clocks.”

Machinery whirred, and Wamba shook his head. “It was my fault. I assumed we had neutralized the majority of their forces. That the worst we’d encounter were some poorly trained nerds. What I didn’t know was that a team of commandos had been sent to stiffen T- 12” security and help the tech types evacuate. The only reason they were inside rather than outside was the shortage of battle suits. So they waited until all of us were inside, secured the lock, and let us have it. You charged them, and killed some too, before a man in an exoskeleton pulled you down.”

Wamba shrugged philosophically. “I got mine about thirty seconds later. You can see what it did to me.”

Thoughts burbled through my mind like coffee in an old-fashioned percolator. I felt my hand touch the top of my head and couldn’t remember telling it to do so. The metal felt cold. “So, I was hit in the head?”

Wamba frowned. “No, that’s the weird part. The guy in the exoskeleton peeled you like an orange. I was kinda busy at the time, but it seems to me that you eeled your way out of the battle suit, stood up, and took a slug in the chest. The skull plate doesn’t make sense.”

I opened my shirt and looked down at the patch of scar tissue on the right side of my chest. It was the size of an antique quarter, slightly puckered, and rougher than the surrounding skin. I had spent hours staring at it. wondering what had happened to me, but blocked by the darkness that still obliterated my memories.

I looked at Sasha and had one of those sudden flashes of intuition that come from time to time. None of this was new to her. She had known from the start. I didn’t know how I knew it, or why I knew it, but I did. I could see it in her carefully neutral expression, feel it in the way she looked at me, and hear it in her voice. It was as if she already knew what had happened but wondered about the details. Her voice was filled with wonder. “But how? How could he survive?”

A robot scampered into Wamba’s lap. He stroked it like the cat it resembled. “He survived the same way I did. The tool heads were assholes, but there were compassionate assholes, and had some damned good doctors. I spent the next three years in their hospitals and always assumed Maxon had as well.”

Three years? Had I been in their hands that long? The information had been available to me all along, buried in the records I couldn’t read, and obscured by the darkness that shrouded my thoughts. And what about the metal plate? Where had it come from? And who was responsible? My thoughts whirled and emptiness filled my stomach. All my assumptions, all my beliefs about who and what I was had been torn apart. I wanted answers, and Sasha was the logical place to start. But I had questioned her to no avail. No, it would take time and patience, but it was a long way to Europa Station, and my opportunity would come. I broke the growing silence. “Thanks, Major. You opened some important doors for me.”

Wamba smiled and I realized what a handsome man he had been. “You’re welcome, and it’s ‘Colonel.’ A silly distinction unless you earned it the way I did.” He gestured to his surroundings. “That and my kingdom are all I have left.”

I nodded and glanced at Sasha. She used her one remaining eye to gesture towards the entryway. I took the hint. “Well, thanks again. We’ve got a long way to go, so…”

Wamba held up a hand in protest. “You must accept a gift.

Something to remind you of me and help along the way.” He clapped his hands. “Joy! Where are you? Come to Poppa!”

A small door opened towards the front of his undercarriage. A flash of ebony caught my eye as something twirled its way into the light and struck a dancer’s pose. She-for there was no doubt about her sex-was the only android in the room that had been fashioned from black metal. She was perfectly formed and stood twelve inches tall. Her face bore the slightly mischievous expression of an elf come to life. A mane of black hair cascaded down around shapely shoulders and was captured in a pink ribbon. The rest of her obviously female body was smooth and shiny, with no sign of the sensors, joints, and drive units common to less sophisticated androids.

No, this was a work of art, and it showed in the way Wamba looked at her. There was pride in his eyes, and love as well, for this was his finest creation. A surrogate daughter? Lover? It made little difference. Whatever the android was to Wamba, she seemed to know how much he admired her and drank it in.

Music came from somewhere and Joy began to move, running at first, then launching herself into a dizzying series of forward flips, twisting in mid-air, touching the ground, and going airborne again. There were cartwheels, somersaults, and dance steps, all in time with the music, all done with amazing perfection, until one last run in which she executed a series of backward flips, stumbled, and landed on her ass. Mars gravity reduced the impact, but feedback circuits fed her the robotic equivalent of pain. Her disappointment was clear to see. But she picked herself up, bowed in our direction, and scrambled onto Wamba’s lap. The mechanical cat hissed its disapproval, jumped to the floor, and stalked away.

“So,” Wamba inquired eagerly, “what do you think?”

“I think she’s marvelous,” I said honestly. “Absolutely incredible.”

“She’s beautiful,” Sasha added sincerely. “Like a doll come to life.”

The subject of all this praise beamed with obvious pleasure, and so did Wamba. “Thank you. I was an engineer prior to the war and have lots of spare time.” He gestured towards the robots that continued to glide, roll, crawl and hop all over the room. “Joy is different from the rest. Do you know why?”

I took a shot. “She has feelings?”

Wamba shook his head. “No, not in the actual sense anyway, although I’ll be damned if I could tell you how the simulated emotions she feels are any different from the supposedly real ones that we experience.”

I was still working on that when Sasha spoke.

“The difference is that Joy can make mistakes.”

Wamba pointed a finger in Sasha’s direction. “Bingo. And that’s one of the things that makes humans unique, isn’t it? The capacity to make mistakes.”

I thought about T-12, of what had happened there, and knew which mistake Wamba meant. He nodded agreeably, stroked the android’s back, and looked down into her liquid brown eyes. “Go with Maxon, Joy. Make him happy and do what you can to keep him alive.”

Something passed between them at that moment-something that looked a lot like love, but couldn’t have been, since robots don’t feel.

Joy climbed up to Wamba’s shoulder, kissed his cheek, and slid back down. She jumped to the floor, dodged a mechanical dog, and ran in my direction. I felt my trousers slip half an inch downwards as she grabbed a pants leg and pulled herself upwards. Tiny hands fumbled with my jacket pocket, released the snap, and held the flap up. Long black legs flashed as she climbed inside. I looked at Wamba. “I could never accept such a gift, Colonel. Call her back.”

Wamba smiled sadly and shook his head. “What’s done is done, and there’s no going back. Take care of yourself, Max, and let me know how things turn out.”

I considered hugging him but decided on a salute instead. It felt natural, somehow, and very right. He returned it, smiled his broken smile, and turned away. Kaa met us at the lock, and Burns led us up towards Deck Four. Joy felt warm and wiggled in my pocket.