Machines of Eden (33 page)

Rounding a clump of trees,
the rare
arborvitae
specimen came into view
. The
waxy leaves
of
this
Thuja plicata
relative
sh
o
n
e
in the sun. Her biometric sensory receptors
immediately analyzed the health of the tree, and she was horrified
to note that its precious seed, the blue melon-like fruit that was
borne only once in a century, was broken off and lying on the
ground among the roots.

Shock and disbelief gave
way to pure hatred. The old Janice would have trembled, but this
god-like new form moved forward with purpose. She would take the
seed and plant it, immature as it was, in hopes that a
second
Thuja
specimen could be preserved. Her rage she kept simmering in a
back corner of her calm, meticulous new brain.

The tree’s defenses should
have prevented the man from desecrating it, and she could not
understand how he had gotten close enough to vandalize the
melon-seed without dying. If Eve had helped him
...
but no. As unstable as Eve was,
even she would never allow the
Thuja
to come to harm. It had been
one of Glenn’s prized accomplishments.

Perhaps the man
had
died. She looked
eagerly around the foot of the tree and along the stream bank for
charred human remains, but saw nothing, nor did her sensors detect
smoke traces. However he had done it, it was a wanton destruction
of something beautiful and rare, exactly the kind of
earth-mutilation that led to the wars, the way the Grays were so
completely blind to the planet’s health. The man would scream long
before she let him die. She would pull his arms from their sockets
slowly, savoring every wretched –

Something
wrapp
ed
tightly
around her ankle, and she was pulled off balance.

If you’re not going to go
for that electrode field, then we’ll play tug of war.

John hauled on his end of
the cable as hard as he could, ensuring that it wouldn’t slip off
the cyborg’s smooth leg. The loop he had
concealed in the grass
needed to be
large enough t
hat the gynoid could hardly
step elsewhere
, so it took an agonizing
moment to close the slipknot all the way
.
But close it did, right before
Gaia reacted, and he leaned
backward with
all his weight.

T
he ten-foot gynoid
was
in a half-squat as she leaned toward the fallen
fruit
, and i
t
made his bodyweight
just enough
so that
he
felt the line give as his enemy tumbled
over sideways. Gaia crashed to the ground in an ungainly mess,
right arm pinned beneath her long torso.

Scooping up the hefty rock
he had set aside, he
rushed at the cyborg
with it. Gaia was thrashing her limbs back and forth, trying to
disentangle her leg as she pushed herself up. He brought the rock
down on the smooth head as hard as he could.

The rock split in half and
fell to the ground. The skull was
not even
scraped
. His arms ached from the
impact.

Sitting on her skeletal
haunches, the gynoid threw out one arm and dealt
John
a stunning blow to
his hip. He was flung three meters to the side, crashing into some
bamboo.

“
Is it frightening to be
killed? Is it painful?” Her loud voice echoed around the grove.
There wasn’t much emotion in it, just a complacent certainty. “I
wo
uld
n’t know.
Now that I am
an
immortal
goddess
,
the prospect of
death is a mere abstract.”

“
I’m not dead yet.”
John
grit
ted
his
teeth
, shaking the fog from his
head
. She’d hit him harder than he
thought. He scrambled to his feet, noting as he did that the gynoid
was following suit.

“
There is nowhere to run.
And as you discovered, I am indestructible.”

“
Nothing is
indestructible.” He looked desperately around for a pointed
s
t
ick
he could use as a weapon
. While she was still on the ground he had a chance to take
out an eye
, even if the rock had failed to
crack her head
.

“
I am. I am Gaia!” She got
to her feet.

“
You’re a psychopathic
loner and you don’t even understand t
he
natural world
you claim to love!
For life there must be
balance
,
both
the yin and the
yang
. They figured that out millennia
ago
.”

The cyborg took a step
toward him.
“
Life!
You know so little
about
it.
All
you’ve done is take life, destroy
ing
and
burn
ing
it
.
”
She pulled the cable from her leg and dropped
it.
“This world will not miss you, I
promise.”

“
It won’t miss you
either
, once I find a way to take you
down
. You aren’t
a g
od, and you aren’t even a woman
anymore. You’re an aberration.”

The cyborg
picked up the massive tree
-
branch club and
advanc
ed
at
him. “M
en and women have
outlived
their
purpose in the
world, and
they’re
about to become extinct
, beginning
with this island
.
I got rid of
Glenn
first. You and Nut are next in
line
.”

John
backed away, never taking his eyes from her. Her carapace was
too hard to break through and he could detect no soft spots in the
body except the eyes, but they were
two
meters
above his head
now. S
he wasn’t going to hold still
for him.

Now for Plan
C
. It leaves me no place to run, but it
looks like gu
ns are the only thing
that
will
bring
her down.

He spun, darting to one
side to e
s
cape
Gaia’s wicked lunge, and then he ran hard
for the trees
, already winded
and
aching
from the blow he’d taken
. She was close behind him
.
H
e kept dodging from side to side to
prevent her from calculating a trajectory and throwing her club.
He
found
the tree
he had marked and leapt past it.

The ruined battle bot was
there, obscured by some branches he had thrown over it. It was a
modified Higgins VN40, called “the Hedgehog” for its trundling gait
and pointed front end.
John
knew the model like the back of his hand. He had
already torn off the access panels and unhooked its armaments – in
this case a brace of .40 caliber subguns and a flechette launcher.
He doubted the flechettes would penetrate Gaia’s carapace, but the
.40's packed more of a punch. The
y
were not designed for hand-held use and there
hadn't been time to remove their housing or calibration frames. He
had simply ripped the entire apparatus from the disabled
bot
, pulling
out
the electronic firing mechanism and jimm
ying
the wires to fire when crossed
manually
.

He
threw himself
down on the Hedgehog’s
treads
and grabbed the
subgun mounts
as Gaia stormed
through the trees toward him
.
This is it. Only one chance.

“
It doesn’t have to be
this way
,” he shouted as she approached.
“Destroying the rest of the planet with the
nano
bot
s.
You could
spend eternity on this island,
caring for your paradise undisturbed.
”

“
What do you think I am, a
young girl to be lectured?” She strode toward him with long, white
hands outstretched. “I am the most perfect, powerful being ever to
walk the earth, and I choose what happens here now. Maybe a platoon
of your soldier friends could have helped you, but their world is
about to end as surely as yours.
”

“
It only takes
one.”
John
stood,
aiming the subgun mount, and crossed the wires. The mount roared
and bucked in his hands, hot brass cascading out the breech. He
couldn't aim precisely, just held the shuddering contraption in
both hands pointing upward in the general direction of her face. It
took several seconds for the ammo boxes to empty, and by that time
his arms were trembling with the effort. He tossed the hot metal
away and surveyed the damage.

Not a scratch.
T
he
smooth
, sterile
face
seemed to smile at him even
though it was unmoving
.

“
Indestructible. I told
you.”

There was nothing to
say.

“
Even if you had disabled
me,” she went on, “it would have done
you
no good.
There’s a six-meter hole in the crystal observation deck
where I exited the Facility.
M
y nanomachines will spill out into
the world on schedule, and nothing can stop it.
Despair, and die
!”

John
had nowhere to run, and instead of feeling surprise or alarm
when the porcelain hands closed around him, he was conscious only
of a vague reluctance to give her the satisfaction of killing him
before everything was destroyed. He wished he had a way to
self-destruct right in her face.
That’s
the one advantage bots have that I envy.

Gaia lifted him into the
air and put one hand around his throat. It was big and felt cold,
and as it started to crush his windpipe and block out his vision,
he kicked at her with his feet. She said something, but he didn’t
hear it or care what it was. There was an immense roaring in his
ears.

Where’s Ferris and
Monahan?
he asked the Sarge.

Bought it, son.
Everybody.

And the doc? Bridgers?
Radley?

I’m telling you they
bought it. It’s me and you now, and you need to go. That’s an
order.
Sergeant Wiley grimaced and pulled
a three-centimeter grenade shard out of his neck.
Don’t bother to come back for me.
A choking gray fog obscured him.

John
felt a jolt; Gaia was lurching backward. He saw another set
of arms wrapping around Gaia’s shoulders, as large and white as her
own.

He dropped to the ground,
and rolled out of the way.
When he was
finally able to get up to a kneeling position, his brain registered
two white giants
instead of just
one
. They were grappling silently, exuding
a horrendous physical strength all the more emphatic in its
silence. There were no grunts of effort or pain, only a slight
grating sound as plasticized carapace plates rubbed against each
other.

“
Get... off... me!” Gaia
suddenly screamed. The other figure had Gaia in a choke hold from
behind, and although Gaia clearly wasn’t choking, her position
prevented her from exerting any kind of leverage. Long white arms
flailed the air.

She finally
came.

Eve’s
android body
made no answering
sound, but struggled
for traction
against
the soft ground as it forced Gaia
toward the blue-melon tree. With a quick
movement, Eve’s leg wrapped around in front of Gaia’s
struggling figure and tripped it head first into the
tree.

Gaia was trying to say
something more when she triggered the electrode field, and the
sound continued like a glitching audio track as she was engulfed in
a visible hot-orange blast of transparent energy. The burst only
lasted a second, and the sound died away rapidly as Gaia fell to
the earth at the foot of the tree. Her white frame was still
intact, but smoke bled from under the eye panels and out the mouth
slit as she lay there with her head tilted to one side.

“
Her internals are
combusted beyond repair,” Eve said, turning around and facing the
man in front of her on the ground. “I’m so glad I arrived when I
did.”