Kalifornia (19 page)

Several Mechanics were at work in the inner sanctum, even at this
late hour. For a moment their bodies obscured the object of their attentions,
but then they noticed Sandy and, smiling and nodding, moved aside to let the
machine stand naked and majestic before him.

It stood upright like a person, headless but otherwise human,
except for the fact that it had four arms. It was beyond doubt the most
beautiful machine he had ever seen. The body was tall, the shoulders half a
foot higher than his own. It was a three-dimensional webwork of wires and polished
struts, a spider sculpture. His eyes traced the trails of nerve and sinew,
muscle and organ fiber, all of it replaced or rendered in metal, flexible
plastic, and ceramic. In place of the heart and lungs was an opaque cocoon, a
hollow region that looked like the arachnid master of that android web.

“A robot?” he asked.

“Yes and no. It’s entirely dependent on human will. It will have a
polynerve link to its operator, but its own nerves are superconductors. It will
amplify the human will, allowing performance of the most delicate operations—as
well as those requiring great strength. This is the ultimate aim of technology,
as we see it now—to extend and refine human creativity, not to replace it.”

Sandy
stepped closer to the gleaming headless figure.
One of the legs was encased in a transparent sheath. The Mechanics were in the
process of covering the entire skeletal body in this same tough, invisible
stuff. Except for that and the head it was apparently almost finished.

“None of us here need wires for what we do,” “Bob” went on, rapt
in the presence of the construct. “Others, outside the Holy City, have become overly dependent on them. But someday a balance will be struck—that’s
evolution for you. And this machine, or others to come, will certainly play a role
in that progression.”

“It looks almost finished,” he said.

“It lacks only a few days of work. That’s why I thought you should
see it. Soon it will be out of our hands, delivered to its owners. As an
acolyte, you should be aware of this beautiful machine. You may never see
another like it. Or . . . you may be building other
versions of it someday.”

“It is beautiful,” Sandy said. But it frightened him as well,
reminding him of the polynerves that pierced every part of his anatomy. This
thing of metal made a mockery of flesh. The hands alone were so intricate, so
precisely machined, that his own fingers looked clumsy and crude by comparison . . . except
perhaps for the perfect wires living inside his flesh.

“I see the wires as a tremendous force for democracy someday,
after the bumps and kinks are ironed out. I prefer to hold off on wires of my
own until—well, probably for my lifetime.”

“In other words, all of us are like test pilots right now.”

“Yes, that’s right. And especially the ones who control this.”

The other Mechanics couldn’t seem to keep their hands off the
body. They eyed Sandy jealously. When he stepped away they closed in again with
their tools, busily shaping the crystal skin to fit the robot form, constantly
touching the body, touching it, touching—as if it were a holy relic.

“What do you think?” “Bob” asked as they left the inner sanctum.

“Very nice,” he said. But he hoped he wouldn’t have to see it
again.

“My secret dream,” “Bob” confided as Sandy once more lowered
himself into the sleeping pit. “Do you want to hear it?”

“Sure. But if you tell it, will it come true?”

“Bob” grinned down at him. “Once there was a great man—not a
mechanic, but still a great man—named Martin Luther King. He noticed that
mankind had built machines that could carry us into the deep-sea trenches, or
all the way out into space, but for all our advances, we still couldn’t treat
each other decently as human beings. And this gave me an idea. What if we could
build vehicles for ourselves, suits or special bodies, that would help us
travel through the social realm, the world of human relationships, that most
treacherous of all frontiers . . . carry us safely and
humanely, with collision avoidance and emotional guidance controls. Imagine?
Machines that allowed us to be real human beings? Maybe, between the wires and
computers and body augmentation and gene tailoring, some combination of all
these things, we can create a new technology to do this. Of course, the
programming would be tricky at first, but I believe it could be done. And then
maybe, someday far beyond that, when it’s all become second nature, we could
shed the machinery and just . . . just be ourselves. Not
that one can ever shed a submarine or a space suit and expect to survive. Who
knows what interpersonal realms we might have entered by then: strange places
we can hardly picture now.

“Anyway, that’s my dream, Sandy. Sandy? Oh . . . well . . . you
sleep then. And Cog bless you.”

***

An alarm woke Cornelius in his rented sleeping box. He roused
himself, gulped down the last few prawns that swam in an aerated saltwater
Thermos, then let himself out onto the catwalk. The airy, ten-story sleeping
garage lacked walls, floors, or ceilings; it was nothing but girders and beams
with cubbies bolted to them, joined by meshwork ramps and stairs.

It was nearly dusk. Clarence would be hungry. He stopped at a
stand to buy jambalaya and Cajun popcorn. The smell of spicy food turned his
stomach, so he held the bag out to one side as he hurried to work. Waste of
good shellfish . . .

The van was parked on a corner in a desolate neighborhood, at the
edge of a nightmarish landscape where the earth, poisoned by industrial waste,
had been treated with soil cleaners that had reacted unpredictably with the
toxins, forming huge billowing mushroom and elephant shapes, all gray-green,
soft and slimy looking, though they were dry, slippery, and solid as polished
marble. This eerie jungle separated the nonsectarian Frange from the Holy City.

As soon as he spotted the van, Cornelius hesitated. It was moving,
rocking violently. Only one thing could account for such activity. Cornelius
sank back into the shadows out of sight, setting the food aside, prepared to
wait. He must have dialed up a satisfaction service. Clarence was only human, after
all, and like most humans, he talked about sex constantly but did nothing
about it. Cornelius supposed he had finally worked himself into a passion.
Maybe now he would stop talking about it for a while.

Cornelius was ready to walk off in the other direction when the
motion ceased and the side panel opened.

Two dogs got out, a male Lab mix and some sort of Spaniel with her
hair done up in a beehive. The male carried a large metal case slung over his
shoulder, something electronic.

The dogs looked both ways but missed Cornelius, who felt an
increased need for invisibility. He didn’t even peek for a moment. When he
convinced himself to look again, they were walking down the sidewalk in the
other direction. Turning a corner, they vanished.

It was nearly dark, the shadows offering plenty of protection in
the deserted street. Still, a terror of exposure filled his limbs with ice.
When he finally roused himself, he moved toward the van with a stiff, rapid
gait, his whole body trembling.

The door was ajar. He pulled it open and crept in.

Clarence slumped over the console. The needles flickered wildly;
Cornelius had never seen them like that. Some had actually fallen dead.

Dead . . .

Blood pooled around Clarence Starko. It ran out from under his
cheek, over the deck, trickled down his arms, and pattered on the garbage that
littered the floor. His eyes were open but he didn’t blink. He didn’t see
Cornelius or anything else. Redundantly, his murderers had wound the baccorish
rope several times tightly around Clarry’s neck; one end was still clenched
between his bloodied teeth.

But what mattered more to Cornelius was the behavior of the
needles. The Sens8 was out of action. Sandy had been cut off.

Unless—

He hunted around the interior, finally spotting and snatching up
a small plastic case that looked like a hand computer. It had been kicked under
a cabinet. On the screen, a luminous map showed a blinking dot—the seeker they
used to follow Sandy’s progress. Happily, it was intact.

Cornelius felt nothing but gratitude.

Then it occurred to him that whoever had done this to Clarence
might be coming back.

Or . . .

They might be going after Sandy, now that they knew what he was up
to.

Cornelius hopped out of the van, locked the door from the inside,
and slid it shut. Tinted windows hid the massacre from sight. He tucked the
seeker in his pocket, looking both ways to make sure that he was unobserved.

Across the street, the forest of slick deformities loomed up like
something vomited from the floor of the sea.

Despite his fear of the ocean, Cornelius hurried into it.

***

As it turned out, Sandy did see the robot again, and not too long
after his first view of it. “Bob” decided to bring him along with the delivery
and installation crew.

A team of five embarked on a cold night through the Holy City. It was the first time that he had been out of the temple of the Celestial
Mechanics since his initiation.

“It’s time you got out into the world, Santiago. This is going to
be a big part of your practice—lending your support to customers. Hand
holding.”

The robot was covered in shrouds and padding and strapped to a
cart, which it was chiefly Sandy’s responsibility to haul on foot through ever
more decrepit sections of the Holy City. “Bob” and one of the other Mechanics
carried weapons for reasons that weren’t clear to Sandy until he heard the
howling of the Holy Rollers, far away in the ruins.

“Okay,” “Bob” said at last, motioning to Sandy. “You and I have to
stay back here for the moment.” He nodded to the other three, all women, and they
went into a dark, recessed entryway in the face of one decrepit building.
“Better they go ahead of us,” he told his acolyte. “That way there’s no
confusion.”

After a minute the Mechanics returned, followed by three figures
entirely swathed in black. “Bob” tugged Sandy away from the cart, giving the
others room to untie the bundled robot. The Mechanics lifted it onto their
shoulders and headed into the shadows. As the three black figures started to
follow, “Bob” cleared his throat and stopped them with a soft, “Excuse me?”
They turned to stare at “Bob” and Sandy; their faces were hidden but their
hostility was not.

“Might we come in?” “Bob” said tentatively. “I am the head
Mechanic. I should make a few adjustments as part of the installation.”

The three stared at him for a moment, a long moment, until one
said, “What about him?” A woman’s voice, fiery with mistrust.

Sandy
touched his breast. “
Moi?”

“He’s my acolyte, an excellent pupil. This is part of his
education, meaning no offense to any of your sect.”

The three turned inward, conferred briefly, then the first one
spoke again: “You, ‘Bob,’ may come inside if it is absolutely necessary for
proper functioning of the construct. But your acolyte stays out here.”

“Fine,” Sandy muttered.

“Please, it’s a cold night—he’ll be no trouble.”

Sandy
said softly, “Hey, ‘Bob,’ I’m fine.”

“If he could just wait in your lobby,” “Bob” pleaded.

Half a minute passed in silence, the Mechanics waiting with their
burden, the three in black seeming anxious to get inside. Finally, impatiently,
two hurried back into the shadows. The third snapped, “He waits in the lobby
then. No further.”

“If it’s not too much trouble,” Sandy said under his breath. “Bob”
silenced him with a look.

“Thank you very much,” “Bob” called to the woman as she turned to
go in. He caught Sandy by the elbow and whispered, “Careful here, Santiago. They’re very easily offended by our kind.”

“What kind might that be?”

“. . . Men.”

The lobby was a large chamber carpeted in ancient maroon pile,
its darkness only slightly relieved by a few small candles. Stairs rose off
into black heights, and the mouths of corridors yawned on either side. Sandy took a seat on a cement bench. The four Mechanics and the black-robed women vanished
into one of the corridors. He heard their footsteps fading, then came a lull,
and then a sudden, muffled commotion: voices and scuffling feet and whispers
mixed together. Then, as if a door had fallen shut, this sound ended as
abruptly as it had begun. He leaned against the wall and cleaned his
fingernails.