The Harvest Cycle (32 page)

    When he looked again, Macendale’s head was all but separated from his body - and it was bathed in flames. Still the robot laughed. His body teetered on the edge of the deck, and his head was jostled about in dying arms, and his mouth filled with fire as he screamed with glee. Then the laughter died,
he
died, and there was only the echo of his last great joke. And Macendale’s remains went into the water.

    DaVinci pulled himself down the stairs into the ship. He couldn’t bear to see the sleepwalkers; in the wake of Macendale’s destruction, he was faced with the grim truth that the real threat wasn’t over.

39.

Forever

    “You could have killed us all!” Amanda screamed.

    “You could just as easily have killed us that night, just like you killed the others - how many humans
have
you killed, Bruce? You know the exact number, don’t you? You could show me your first kill right now, replay it for me as if it were nothing. And you could have killed us just like that. That’s what you’d come to do!”

    “I didn’t kill you,” Bruce said. It went unheard.

    The dream-chamber in which Amanda, Bruce and the Jabberwock stood was aglow with a pulsing white heat, as if they were surrounded by the embers of a burning world. The Jabberwock paced behind Amanda, its head swaying from side to side, soulless eyes reflecting the light from the walls.

    Her heart still pounding, Amanda seized Bruce by the arms and shook him. Memories of friends and family lost to the synths flooded her senses, and then she got to it, to the core, the real reason for her rage, and she cried, “
Why couldn’t you save Mike? Why?
”

    “I tried,” Bruce said. His voice was so artificial, so cold. He didn’t care. He hadn’t lifted a finger to stop the rabbit. There’d been no further use for Mike. And he had let her sleep through those three long weeks so that he wouldn’t have to answer to her, hadn’t he? He’d probably kept her unconscious. Bastard!

    
Yessssss
, the Jabberwock whispered in her ear.
Now cast him out. Out of your mind! Then I can send you to your precious Michael.

    Bruce shook his head rapidly. “Don’t listen to it, Amanda.”

    
Silence him.

    “Amanda, Nightmare is the deceiver. Nightmare doesn’t value human life. I do. Haven’t I proven that much to you?”

    
Drive him out!

    “It wants me gone because I’m a voice of rationality! It wants me gone because-

    “Because-”

    To see Bruce’s face when he realized the answer would have been to see something not unlike DaVinci’s revelation in the waking world: a soul awakened, clarity and certainty pouring through the bot’s being.

    He looked into Amanda’s eyes and said:

    “You go.”

    She frowned. The seductive spell of her rage was momentarily broken. “W-what?”

    “Go from here. Get out of its mind. Leave me.”

    “I don’t understand what you mean, Bruce. I don’t...” Releasing his arms, she pressed her hands to her face, trembling as tears welled up behind balled fists. “I’m so sorry, Bruce. I forgive you. I really do.”

    “I believe you,” Bruce replied.

    The Jabberwock snaked its neck around Amanda, snapping its jaws.
Stay, child! I can give you Michael. I can give you your father, your brother. I can give you all the others that were murdered by this machine!

    “It only means to kill you,” Bruce said.

    The Jabberwock roared in the bot’s face, bathing him in flames, causing the entire chamber to quake as the beast’s eyes rolled crazily in its head.
DON’T LISTEN TO HIM! HE LIES! HE LIES!

    “I know what to do, Amanda. But you need to go.”

    “What do I do, Bruce?” She stepped forward, right
through
the Jabberwock’s coiled neck, and came face to face with Bruce. The bot and the human clasped hands. Nightmare wailed.

    “It took you to bring me here,” Bruce said softly, “but now, I’m going to wake you up. Just relax and let me take control...”

    Amanda shuddered. The phantom beast writhed at her back.
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO-

    And she was gone.

    It took all of a nanosecond for Bruce to do what he had to do.

    He was mind, he was thought, he was energy. He shed the ties to his corporeal body and joined with Nightmare’s dark core.

    The sum of order met the sum of chaos on a level more infinitesimal than the stuff of matter which can only be seen in the musings of great minds; Bruce’s mind cleaved into Nightmare’s with a reactive force that rivaled the birth of the universe yet was entirely contained within the boundaries of a single thought - limitless and fleeting all at once, forever gone with the passing of that irreplaceable moment but forever remembered by its echoes in the corridors of time - the soul of contradiction in natural existence was briefly made flesh in a perfect storm that ended before it began.

    Nightmare and Bruce were no more.

***

    One moment the tornadoes, the lightning, the burning sea, and sleepwalkers tumbling over the side of the Citadel.

    The next moment, peace. Awakening.

    Amanda yawned and rubbed her eyes. A lifeless robot body sat beside her. She studied its eyes; there was nothing there that she recognized.

    “Goodbye,” she whispered, and kissed it on the forehead.

    DaVinci rushed into the room and skidded to a stop when he saw her. “Did you - it’s over outside - what happened-”

    He continued stammering as she took his hand and led him onto the flight deck. The former sleepwalkers were standing around in confusion. Some of them would soon realize that their loved ones had not made it. It would be the last wound of a dead apocalypse. And, with time, it would begin to heal.

    Amanda felt the wounds in her own heart and let out a heavy sigh. Sunlight parted the clouds and warmed her face. DaVinci slipped off his overcoat.

    The was a dark shape lying a short distance away. It looked like a man.

    “Hitch,” Amanda breathed. She started to turn toward DaVinci, but her eyes would not rise to meet his.

    “Macendale,” the detective said. “Gone now.” That was enough.

    Amanda sat down and waited for the tears to come. They had to, she felt them inside of her; but she found that she was just too weak to cry anymore, at least for now. With passing seconds, she could no longer even sit up, and laid back to watch the clouds go by.

    She almost wished she’d been lost in the oblivion of Nightmare’s mind just before the end. It had made Nightmare insane, that numbing void, but being down here in the shit was doing the same to her.

    Then again, maybe there was something to be said for a bit of madness. Not Macendale’s, nor Nightmare’s, but the sort that had set her beloved Dr. West on a course to save the world. The madness of believing that things mattered.

    It was DaVinci who first saw him, and cried out. The detective caught the staggering shell of a man in his arms and, seeing his wounds, set about tearing his overcoat into strips without a second thought.

    Amanda stood on aching legs. West managed to croak her name. That was when she started to cry.

Epilogue

Imagine

    The lovers sat on a beach of blackened glass and watched the tide come in.

    “What will we do now?” West wondered aloud, propped in a wheelchair taken from the
Citadel’s
infirmary. Amanda waited for him to answer his own question, and he did. “Well, we have to reach the rest of the world with the news. Some will intuitively know that the Harvest Cycle is over - perhaps even the bots realize - but there are still people out there bent on harming one another.”

    “Always have been,” Amanda remarked, inhaling the salty breeze. West nodded. “And there have always been people like us.”

    DaVinci came walking down the shoreline. After they buried Hitch, he’d decided to stay behind a while and sit with him. Brushing granules of sand from his pants, DaVinci stood at the water’s edge and faced the sunset.

    “The new world’s going to need men like you, too,” West said. “What will you do, Jack? Come with us? I should be healed up before too long, if you can wait.”

    “I can wait,” DaVinci replied. It almost seemed like he was contemplating the colors on the horizon. Amanda wondered if he would ever regain what he’d lost. There had to be a way.

    As if reading her mind, West said, “We’ll try to help the undreamers. I refuse to believe that nothing can be done. It may take a long time - maybe longer than you and I have - but we’ll do it, Jack. Somehow.”

    “I know,” DaVinci said. He looked into his hand, at the nanoplasmic cortex nestled in blood, like a tiny egg. He raised his hand to his lips and lapped up the nodule with his tongue.

    Beginning to chew, he smiled and said, “We’ll think of something.”

THE END