Robogenesis (7 page)

For better or worse, the fear is why I learn his secret.

It’s the full moon. Midnight on the scrub prairie and the campfires have burned down to cinders. Even the Cotton patrol has fallen asleep in the dull whispering cold. When I see the flash of light in the sky, I move. Will my legs into motion and lurch alone through the darkness of a rutted meadow. Years ago this was a cornfield, but now it’s damp earth sprouting thousands of stiff, rotting stalks. That flickering light in the sky is some kind of radio talk. It flares every now and then through the darkness like somebody with a hand half covering a flashlight.

I’ve been seeing flashes of blue smoke to the south for a few weeks now, like a lightning storm just over the horizon. Every now and then, I catch snatches of formal communication protocols. Query this. Assertion that. It reminds me of my old friend Nine Oh Two. Reminds me that I kind of miss him. It strikes me that, at this point, I may have more in common with that walking scrap pile than I do with my old squad.

The freeborn talk in blue wisps, but this here is an altogether different light.

Chen watches me go, saying nothing, but turning slow in the field like a broken mannequin. She watches me until I’m out of view. We may be dead, but she still has feeling enough to be protective of me in a way the other parasites are not.

Before long, I see a weather-beaten farmhouse.

In the final march of the New War, when the parasite claimed me and forced me to take the lives of my comrades in a nightmare haze, ribbons of evil light poured out of the sky and into my skull, controlling me. It was an orange haze, sick and cold. And now I’m seeing that same fearsome light.

It’s sputtering like a candle in a jack-o’-lantern from the broken-out window of the farmhouse.

I creep slow through an overgrown lawn, pushing through dead, knee-high grass toward that gaping window. The orange light calls to me. I can feel it, pulsing like radiation. It’s Rob-made and I keep thinking maybe it’s speaking, whispering something secret that makes my ears ring.

At the window, I see. Something is real wrong with Hank Cotton.

The big Osage man is on his knees in the pitch-black living room of the abandoned farmhouse. He’s in blue jeans and a flannel shirt, wearing some kind of pale white helmet, the toes of his work boots propped against the dust-coated hardwood floor. In his hands, he holds what looks like a cube made of black glass.

“Praise be to you,” he says, whispering hoarsely. “Praises upon praises.”

This man hardly looks like Hank. In the last weeks, pounds of muscle and fat have slithered off his bulky frame. He’s getting downright skinny, his skin fading like an old photograph and hanging slack and loose. Those high cheekbones that used to anchor a chubby face have started jutting out in a gaunt, skeletal kind of way.

Something dark is running from his temple down the side of his face. It drips onto the floor quietly, like a clock ticking.

Tap. Tap. Tap
.

It’s not a helmet that he’s wearing. Old Hank has hauled an autodoc out here into the woods. Just the head-trauma unit. Running on one of those portable Rob batteries. Here in this hollow wooden living room, he’s got it set up and it’s working hard.

“Praise be to you,” he whispers again, clutching the black cube against his chest. Orange sparkles of light are prickling the air in a line between the cube and the autodoc. That thinker must be controlling the surgical machine, guiding its sharp fingers.

The autodoc has got the skin of Hank’s forehead peeled up. Two forceps holding the small wound open. A chunk of his pale white skull has been sawed away. Inside, his brain is a gray smile. Black claws pry and prod, building something. Taking instructions from the cube of metal he holds tight in his fingers.

Hank chuckles, still whispering his praises.

Then, the man stops speaking midsentence. Sniffs the air and closes his eyes. For a moment, all is still and quiet save for the quick grinds of the autodoc motors and the tapping of blood on hardwood. Then, real slow, Hank turns his head to face me. It is too dark for him to see me, but I feel his eyes settle on my face.

The dagger fingers of the machine keep operating, flickering, caressing that glistening gray pinch of meat over his eyes.

Hank smiles in the dark, lips peeling away from his teeth in a skull’s grimace. Orange wisps of communication rise up off the cube, and I get the feeling that they’re searching for me, threatening. Rising like cobras and swaying in the air.

“Do you love him?” asks Hank, eyes half closed.

I only stare, horrified.

“Lonnie is the closest thing you got to a father,” says Hank. A little smile darts around his open mouth. He looks like a man who is dreaming. “You love him like you would love your own daddy. If you had one.”

Without a face, I can’t speak. My voice is only over local radio and I don’t remember responding, but I do. The cube hears me. It can hear me and because of that, so can Hank.

“I do,” I say.

“Then don’t tell him,” says Hank, head still tilted to the side. The skin sags from his face and that dark line of blood moves down his temple. “I’m his best friend. Don’t tell him about the spooklight. Leave his troubled mind be.”

Spooklight?

Hank’s eyes are pulsing with an orange glint.

Those gleaming wisps are floating over Hank’s face and seeping into the dark open wound on his forehead. The black cube is in his hands. It’s glowing now, forming complicated patterns. A brain box. And whatever is inside it is doing something to Hank. Putting some bad medicine on him.

Hank keeps smiling at me, his big head hitched sideways and teeth crooked and gleaming. He looks like a hanged man. Another corpse walking in the night.

“Sssshhh,”
he says.

I stagger away quick.

Back through the rutted field and on to my home spot.

The Chinese soldier is waiting for me, pale as a mummy in the moonlight. Her eyeballs are white-frosted but she sees perfectly well in the night. All of us do.

“Where did you travel?” asks Chen.

“Nowhere,” I respond.

“The soldiers do not want us here,” she says. “The living and the dead should not mix. We spirits are meant to walk alone in Dìyù. Only after we are judged can we move on—”

“Stop it,” I hiss.

Saying nothing, I finally notice: Our moonlit clearing is empty. It’s just Chen and me. There are a few low, martial silhouettes of sleeping spider tanks a couple of hundred yards away among the embers of dying fires.

“Where are the others?” I ask.

“Our kindred spirits were afraid. They have gone walking into the woods.”

“You stayed with me?”

The small woman stands tall, not moving. Head up and blind eyes wide. I sense that she is smiling.

“Why?” I ask.

“This is our path. We must wander the courts of Dìyù until we are allowed to move on,” she says. “Perhaps I will see your tallgrass prairie after all.”

NEURONAL ID: VASILY ZAYTSEV

From deep in the twilight stacks, I think I hear the seashell roar of the freight elevator. I crouch in place, listening, the hair on my arms standing up. Someone is coming down the shaft.

This is the first time in two weeks.

I throw down my bolt cutter and struggle to stand on cramping knees. Holding my sore back, I hobble down the narrow aisle to the elevator anteroom. I shield my eyes against the overhead fluorescents as I emerge from the stacks.

“How long?” I ask.

“Thirty seconds,” replies Maxim, his soft voice echoing over the distributed speaker system.

“I thought we disabled the shaft?”

“They found a way to enable it.”

I push greasy hair from my eyes and glance around the anteroom. It doesn’t look good. Itching my thick beard with one hand, I tut-tut over the state of this place.

“They will be worried,” I say.

The anteroom is filthy. Littered with the empty carcasses of military individual food rations. Each brick of plastic is packed tightly with metal tins of porridge with
tushonka, gobies
, sprats in tomato sauce. Dozens of flimsy metal trivets glint from the floor, charred from the fuel pellets I use to heat my tea. My own waste is in tall PVC buckets pushed against the wall. Flat boards are placed over top, but they do little to reduce the stench.

And, of course, there are the heaps of cables, panels, and computer components that I have been tearing from the guts of this machine. For months, I have been frantically trying to lobotomize this invader that calls itself Archos R-14.

Trying and failing.

“Ten seconds,” says Maxim.

My shadow shivers as the fluorescents vibrate with the approach of the freight elevator. Quickly, I limp around to the incriminating wires and tools and kick them into the stacks. After so much time on my knees crawling over the rock floor, I don’t trust myself even to lean over. My eyes are dim from staring through shadows, but the narrow lanes swallow up the evidence of my tinkering.

My work here is almost done. I cannot allow the scientists from above to interfere. I know they are worried. I stopped talking to them days ago over the radio. They are frightened of what I might do, alone down here with their precious machine.

“Now,” says Maxim, quietly.

The elevator settles into place with a thud. I listen for the sound of army boots on sheet metal. Finger the knife on my hip. If they have sent a squad of soldiers down, then there is no hope to save Maxim. And no hope for Anadyr.

But I hear only the labored breathing of one person. The metal release lever clunks into place and the wooden-slatted inner door rolls up on screaming hinges. Then the steel exterior door rises.

Leonid stands under the elevator light, a lanky silhouette. I say nothing, stand out of the glare. It is too bright for me to look directly at the mathematician.

Slowly, he steps out of the elevator. He holds a plate of steaming food in one hand. Cabbage and sausage. The delicious smell only reminds me of how much I stink. He squints at the small dirty room. There are no surfaces down here. Gingerly, he sets the plate of food on the ground. Notices me.

“Mr. Zaytsev?” he asks. “Is that you? It smells like a sewer down here.”

“Da,”
I say. “I have been working.”

“You’ve been eating field rations,” he says, looking at the mess of torn plastic wrappers and metal containers. He notices the buckets against the wall and hastily steps away from them. Moves into the center of the room, under the light.

“
Suhoi paiok
does the job,” I say.

“But there is no need for it, Mr. Zaytsev. We have plenty of hot food above. The elevator is fixed. You may come back topside now. You are relieved.”

I lower my head and scratch the back of my neck. Step back and let the shadows settle over my shoulders. It is so bright in the anteroom. I prefer the glittering starfields of the stacks. The chatter of the LEDs comforts me in the cold dark.

“I still have much work to do,” I murmur.

“You cannot solve what is wrong with Maxim,” says Leonid, stepping forward. “You’re just a mechanic, my friend. We admire your attention to the practical details, but please, leave this problem to the experts.”

“Only I can fix him.”

Leonid lets out a bark of laughter, then swallows it quickly. But the echo persists. The thin man’s eyes grow cold. “Enough of this. Come now. Your ministry record indicates you were a
troechnik
who barely finished professional technical institute. Come out of those shadows. We are leaving.”

I stride out quickly with a lump of anger in my throat. It pleases me to see the thin man step back in fright. I smile through my beard as he presses his back against the wall.

“Don’t be a fool,” says Leonid, looking down his long nose at me. I find that my hand sweeps out of its own accord and wraps firmly around his throat. I hold his bird neck steady, carefully, feeling the lump of his
Adam’s apple against the web of my thumb. Foul breath pistons in and out of my nostrils.

“Never call me that,” I say. “I am not a fool. You geniuses up there are responsible for this. I am down here cleaning up your messes. As I always have. You would not even be alive if it weren’t for me. Me and Maxim.”

“Of course, of course,” says Leonid, trying to soothe me. He tugs my fingers off his neck with thin, trembling fingers. “We just don’t want to see you overworked. That’s all. We can solve the problem from up top. It is a software issue, Vasily. There is no reason to waste your time in this basement.”

“So you think,” I say, flashing an angry grin.

“Meaning what?” asks Leonid, horrified. “You aren’t touching any of the hardware, are you? Because you don’t know the proper specifications for any of the equipment—”

“Of course not,” I say. “I only maintain. I am the maintenance man, you remember. I would never damage our friend. Never have. And I never will.”

Leonid studies my eyes for a moment. I stare back and he breaks his gaze before he can tell that I am lying to his face.

“I only watch over the enemy.”

“This mysterious boy in the stacks? You keep muttering about this apparition. Nothing registers on our systems, Mr. Zaytsev. You know this. We cannot find even a trace of this … infection. You have been down here too long.”