Proxy (21 page)

The face did not look pleased and its voice was not the usual kindly burble of the Carebot model.

It zipped past them with a whirr and stopped in front of two children, a boy and girl, siblings it looked like, who had somehow tossed a toy of theirs into the polar bear exhibit. The bears were chewing up the toy, its processors and batteries and all. One of them had a piece of it stuck on its nose. Its giant paws wiped at its snout, but the bear couldn’t tear the piece off and the kids laughed hysterically.

They stopped laughing when the bot reached them.

“Oliver! Celia! What did we discuss at home? You two know better,” the bot scolded. The children stood rigid before it. “Now we’ll see what your misbehavior has cost. Follow me.”

The bot moved off and the children followed glumly behind. Syd watched them line up by a wall where there were other misbehaving children. Each stood with his or her bot, or even, Syd noticed, a few actual humans—Upper City teens who wanted to earn some extra cred as nannies—and projections popped up in front of them as the proxies arrived and the punishments were administered.

Syd swallowed hard as the two children received a lecture about responsibility for the rare wildlife and the destruction of expensive toys. He grimaced as projections appeared in front of the children, revealing two sickly Valve kids, looking frightened with anticipation.

Marie nudged Syd to turn away before the punishments started.

“Don’t look,” Knox whispered. “It’s considered rude.”

“Just shut up,” Marie hissed. “Can’t you see this is hard on him?”

“Don’t treat him like a baby.” Knox rolled his eyes at her.

“I’m treating him like a person.” She clenched her fists. “More than you ever did.”

“Syd can stick up for himself,” Knox said. “He makes his own choices.”

“Is that what you think?” said Marie. “You don’t have any idea how the system works, do you? You don’t know anything about people like Syd. You don’t even care.”

“And you do?” said Knox. “I’m the one helping him get away. I don’t even know what you’re trying to do. You started all this to begin with. If you hadn’t set me up, Syd would still be in that little shop, I’d be with some chick who wasn’t a psycho and your friend Beatrice would still be alive!”

Marie tried to form a response. “I’m trying to change things,” she said. “I’m trying to make the world better . . . for everyone.”

Knox crossed his arms. “Don’t act like you’re better than me because you feel guilty for being born rich.”

“Both of you, quiet.” Syd cut off their argument. “We’ve got an audience.”

He nodded his head back toward the entrance at a woman in a fashionable green jumpsuit, expertly tailored, with expensive red hair falling in curls over her shoulders. She could have just been a normal patron visiting the zoo, except that the woman was walking straight for them.

“Guardian?” Syd asked, ready to run.

“Guardians don’t look like that,” Knox told Syd. “They’re perfect.”

“Everyone up here looks perfect,” Syd answered.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Knox squeezed Syd’s shoulder and Marie glared at him.

“Knock it off,” she grunted.

The woman walked right up to them. As she passed by, she whispered and moved on toward the café.

“Yovel,” she said, without slowing down. “Café.”

“She’s our contact,” said Syd. He took a deep breath. On the ceiling, a giant RePet advo appeared, happy children running to greet their animal friends with smiles and tears.

“Animals brought to you by RePet and Xelon Corporation,” a cheerful voice announced for all to hear. “Financing available.”

Syd turned to face Marie. “You should go home.”

“I should . . . what?” She looked startled, pained even.

“This isn’t your problem,” Syd told her. “Mr. Baram’s people will take care of me now and I’ve got Knox for a hostage. Too many people have already gotten hurt because of me.”

Knox nodded. He’d be glad to see Marie go.

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Marie. “The only way for Beatrice’s death to matter is to tear the system down. If you can do that, then I am sticking with you.”

“I can’t change the system,” said Syd. “I don’t want to.”

“I think you can,” said Marie. “I heard the old man say it.”

“And just like that, you believe it?” Knox groaned. “That’s all it takes?”

“I believe we have to try,” she said.

“No matter what?” Knox said. “Even though your proxy died? Even if you have to die . . . again?”

“Some things are more important than any one person,” said Marie.

“You’re insane,” said Knox.

“And you’re a shallow piece of—”

“Quiet!” Syd said. “Something’s wrong.”

“What?” said Knox.

“What?” said Marie.

Syd pointed up to the holo for RePet on the ceiling. It was gone. His eyes darted to the kiosks throughout the zoo plaza. Their projections had vanished too. No advertisements.

He’d once been to a NeoBuddhist center in the Valve where you could pay by the minute for the advos in the meditation room to disappear. You’d get your quiet, but only if you could afford it. But that wasn’t it, not here.

Living in a place like the Valve you learned quickly when something was about to step off. The air crackled with the electricity of impending violence. Everyone growing up there had some ability to feel it and the better your feeling for it, the safer you were. The Slum Sixth Sense, they called it. Syd’s sixth sense was firing.

“Where are the advos?” Marie wondered.

“What are you—” Knox said, but his question was cut off.

“Ahhhh!”

A boy’s scream.

Syd looked toward the polar bear exhibit as one of the great white beasts leapt into the main plaza and reared up to attack the kid. The invisible fence was down. The polar bears were free. And a little boy was about to die.

[30]

SYD RAN STRAIGHT TOWARD the polar bear exhibit.

It took Knox a moment to realize what was happening. A bear had stepped off the ice and reared up over a little boy. Syd dove at the boy, tackling him out of the way and covering him with his body.

Marie moved next, rushing to them as the bear prepared to come down on both Syd and the boy. Knox stood dumbfounded.

Marie pulled out her EMD stick and shot a pulse into the bear, who recoiled and charged away into the plaza to find easier prey.

Panic ran through the crowd at the zoo like a flash flood in the wastelands. There were far too many children and far too few adults. The robotic nannies tried to lead the children in their care to safety, but their programming was woefully inadequate to face dangers the programmers hadn’t imagined. They fired off EMD pulses at the escaped animals, but just as often were kicked aside by other children running scared. Children screamed and cried as the rest of the animals broke from their invisible cages.

Knox was mesmerized by the madness. The zoo had unraveled like everything else in his life. He started to wonder whether he had died in the accident after all and this was the afterlife all those religious nuts were on about all the time. No rules. No fences. No control. This was his hell.

A bot had reached Syd and was zapping him on the ankle to free the boy beneath him. Syd’s muscles spasmed with each zap.

“Release him!” the bot commanded, and Syd couldn’t even get control of himself to obey. The pulses were as hard as any he’d felt before. The nannies packed a punch.

Knox rushed over. The big vein on the side of Syd’s dark neck bulged and his head smacked back against the floor. Knox wondered if all the pulses Syd had been hit with in the last twenty-four hours would do permanent damage to him. His brain might just burst right there on the floor of the zoo.

Knox wondered what the punishment for getting your proxy killed while trying to set him free would be? And who would be punished for it? Knox could picture his father’s face. He imagined the scolding: “You can’t even defy me successfully! You’re no son of mine!”

While Knox stood there thinking about his father, Marie smashed her foot into the side of the fuzzy pink bot and sent it sailing onto the polar ice.

One of the zookeepers rushed toward a howling monkey, trying to scoop it into his arms, when a jet-black panther leapt down on his back, sinking long fangs into the man’s neck. He never even had the chance to scream. Knox turned away, gasping.

Marie reached down to help Syd up onto shaky legs and they both nearly collapsed under him. Knox knocked her out of the way and grabbed Syd under the shoulders and held him up.

“I got him,” he told her. He felt a little foolish that he’d stood there doing nothing while Marie saved Syd’s life.

“Let me down,” Syd grunted, and Knox let him down onto his feet. On the ground, the little boy sobbed. Marie helped the boy up with an angry glance in Knox’s direction.

“See those other bots?” Marie pointed. The boy nodded. “You have to follow them. Stay close to them and you won’t get hurt, understand?”

“But . . . but . . .” The boy wiped his nose. “They aren’t mine.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Just run.”

Marie shoved him toward the little bot that was leading the mischievous brother and sister they’d seen getting in trouble through the chaos. The boy ran after them, his little legs pumping as fast they could.

A lion charged across the plaza behind him, chasing a column of frightened penguins that were waddling toward the exit. The lion caught the slowest one, which let out a bloodcurdling screech.

Knox looked away as the penguin was ripped to pieces, just in time to see the brown bear from the lobby bounding straight at Marie’s back. He swung out his arm and grabbed her by the waist, spinning her out of the way, as he snatched her EMD stick and jammed it into the brown bear’s chest.

The bear yelped and turned, its paws sliding on the tile floor as it collapsed in a heap of fur.

Marie wiggled free of Knox’s grip.

“You’re welcome,” he said and her eyes shot right to the weapon, now in his hands.

“What is going on here?” Syd asked. “Is this your father’s doing?”

“I don’t think so.” Knox shook his head.

“Let’s get to the café,” Syd said.

“This isn’t right,” said Marie. “Something is very wrong.” She looked around. There was blood on the floor, birds flying overhead beneath the enclosed glass dome, and everywhere, frightened children.

“You think?” Knox shook his head at her.

“Enough, both of you!” Syd’s temper flared. “I’m sick of hearing you two.”

“She’s the one who—” Knox started, but Syd stepped right up to his face. Their noses were almost touching. Knox could feel Syd’s breath on his lips.

Syd looked him in the eye, reached out, wrapping his dark hand around Knox’s. Knox tensed as Syd slid the EMD stick from his grip.

“You guys are my hostages, after all,” Syd said with a nod. Then he ran in the direction that their contact had gone, holding the stick up, ready for anything that sprang his way. Knox and Marie ran after him.

Service doors opened and armed security guards rushed in to contain the animals. The zoo café had a wide glass door and beyond it, a scattering of shining steel tables and sleek multicolored chairs. Exotic plants wrapped around columns throughout the room and a large waterfall flowed down a sheet of shining marble against the back wall. Children hid underneath tables and behind the columns, casting frightened glances toward the entrance.

Syd stood still in the middle the room, panting, and Knox ran to his side. He followed Syd’s gaze to the slender red-haired woman. She lay facedown in the corner of the café, her coils of copper hair splayed out all around her. A pool of blood blossomed on the tile below, soaking into the cloth of her shirt.

She was dead.

[31]

SYD COULDN’T TAKE HIS eyes off the body on the floor. It struck him as odd to see a patron’s blood, to see a patron’s body lying just as dead as anyone else’s.

It occurred to him that he’d never really thought of them as human before.

He knew they were human, of course, just like him. That was the idea of the entire system. In theory, everyone was equal.

In primitive times, back in the Holy Land, as Mr. Baram called it, they’d used a goat to pay for all their sins. The high priests would confess all the sins of the community to a goat and then send it off into the wilderness to die, freeing the people of their burdens.

Of course, it made no sense.

The goat couldn’t object or agree. The goat couldn’t forgive. The goat didn’t even know what was happening. Only humans could accept responsibility, and only humans could take on a debt. Only humans could stand in for one another. We all begin as equals, but a contract, like a confession, changes our relationship. One becomes a debtor, one becomes a creditor. One a proxy, the other a patron. The contract defines us until its terms are met. A goat would always be a goat, but humans can change how they define one another and how they define themselves. That was civilization.

But beneath it all, everyone bleeds.

Syd played the thought around in his mind.

Everyone bleeds.

Behind the talk of debts and contracts and obligations, it was all held together by brute force. By blood. And there was something in
his
blood that could unravel it all.

“Well, she was a big help,” said Knox. His sarcasm, even in the face of death, astonished Syd. Sarcasm was the easy expression of an empty mind. It carried no information, nothing he could learn except that Knox was an ass, which he knew already. The knowledge wasn’t useful.

Suddenly, there was a scream and all their heads turned to the café entrance. A panther stalked into the room and landed without a sound on top of a table. Its sleek black head scanned from side to side, its tail swished just in front of the terrified children crouched beneath the tabletop. Its mouth shone wet with blood.

Syd’s grip tightened around the EMD stick, but he didn’t raise it at the giant cat. He watched it prowl.

The polar bears had impressed him with their size, but this animal simply captivated him. All its muscles rippled; its eyes glimmered with graceful danger. The man-made perfection of the Guardians was nothing compared with the panther, returned from a long-gone world. The imagination that had conceived this creature was bigger than any Syd could comprehend.