[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
more climb to its feet. Heavy steel robot feet.
The ice gave way with a snap I could hear even over the alarms. For a
wavering moment, the android managed to catch its arms on the sides of the
hole propping itself with upper body still visible, though ice water came up
to its nipples. Steam poured from cavities in the robot's back, where chilly
Coal Smear Creek met burning acid and the hot circuitry of the machine's guts.
I yelled, "Short out, you bastard! Blow your sodding battery!"
Obliging things, these robots. The android's arms suddenly jerked rigid. Then
the ice under its hands broke into shockle, and the killer machine plunged out
of sight into the creek.
For another moment I stayed on the bank, watching the hole dark water now,
bobbing with ice floes. But a woman my age has watched enough fic-chips to
know how witless it is to relax prematurely. Any second, I expected the
android's hand to smash out of the ice at my feet, grab me by the ankle, pull
me down. I clambered up the bank to solid ground, and was just shifting
Chappalar's weight for another stint of running when the creek exploded.
All the ice in a ten-meter radius simply lifted up, then slammed down hard on
the water beneath. The great banging force fractured the frozen surface into
hundreds of separate slabs; but more dramatic was the geyser of muddy water
that shot from the hole where the android had sunk. The upburst gushed three
stories into the sky, carrying with it scraps of circuit board, metal cables,
and tattered gray overalls. Then the fountain lost strength and collapsed,
spilling robot ragout all over the creek surface.
"Self-destruct," I whispered to myself. "A deadman's switch... in case the
bugger got in over its head. So to speak. Something to destroy the evidence."
What did that say about the female android, back in the pump station? She'd
Page 46
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
taken more damage from the acid bath; I hadn't stayed to watch, but she'd
clearly been on the futz.
And when she'd finally shut down? Shut down = cue for the self-destruct
mechanism to blow her apart.
I shuddered to think what the explosion had done to the water-treatment vats.
By the time the police arrived, I was back swabbing Chappalar with snow...
not the ragged holes in his gliders, but the vicious black pits close to his
spine. The ones where ribs and vital organs showed through. His skin had
turned a color Dads called Terminal Chalk an ashy gray-white with no
responsiveness. The result of catastrophic failure in the glands that control
an Oolom's chameleon shifting.
I'd seen that color a lot during the plague.
The six staff members of Pump Station 3 were found near the building's
delivery bay. All of them had third-degree acid burns. Three were declared DOA
when they reached hospital and one more died later, but two survived.
Chappalar didn't. Ooloms can be fierce tough; they can also be precious
fragile.
Damn.
While I was pacing the rug in hospital, watching Chappalar float lifeless in
a burn tank, I got an emergency call from headquarters. Seven other proctors
on assignments around the planet had been ambushed by androids and killed. A
coordinated attack. No survivors. All at the same time Chappalar and I made
our visit to the pump station.
Someone had declared war on the Vigil.
SNAKE-BELLY
Link-seeds are handy for giving evidence. The world-soul asked my permission,
then downloaded everything I'd witnessed, straight from my brain. Soon,
Protection Central had a VR repro of everything I'd been through the smell of
the acid, the howl of alarms. Might have been a big seller on the
entertainment nets if the Vigil didn't have rules against that sort of thing.
In Cabot Park, the cops dredged Coal Smear Creek for the remains of the male
android, while another team bagged up the soggy mess in Pump Station 3. (When
the female android self-destructed, flying bits of her had perforated five of
the plant's water vats. Much spillage. It was only luck the whole blessed
petting zoo wasn't washed away.)
Similar investigations revved up all over the world everywhere proctors got
killed and by the end of the day, detectives had accumulated enough evidence
to affect continental drift. By then there was an official task force
coordinating the work, trying to avoid pissing contests between federals and
locals. Meanwhile, all levels of government had bitten their nails to the
quick, worrying the Vigil would throw a tantrum demanding Immediate Action
Now.
Page 47
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Of course we didn't. How would that be productive? But you can bet good
money, there were suddenly a lot more proctors exercising their constitutional
responsibility to scrutinize police activities.
The local detectives treated me like velvet. I might have had a few
less-than-friendly run-ins with police in the past, but now I was a member of
the Vigil, and respectable as mother's milk. On the other hand, the appearance
of the tube of light that thing I'd started to call the Peacock's Tail because
of its colors well, a mystery like that set conservative cop nerves on edge.
What was it? Did I have any guesses? Could the investigators maybe I dismiss
it as hallucination, a delusion brought on by terror, stress, and my newly
implanted link-seed?
I could only shrug; I saw what I saw. If they wanted a dissertation on
link-seed side effects, ask a neurologist.
(Of course I could have retrieved some clinical data myself. Reams of it. The
Vigil's databanks were full to bursting with case studies, every possible way
link-seeds could bugger your brain. But I didn't try access the information.
You know why.)
The reports released to the media said nothing about the Peacock's Tail. Not
that the cops wanted to suggest this tube-of-light business was a figment of
my imagination. Three different detectives made a point of telling me it was
Standard Police Procedure to withhold a few details of any crime. Yeah. Sure.
My family wanted me to quit the Vigil. "At least ask for a leave of absence,"
Winston suggested, "till they catch this bastard who's mucking about with
robots."
If I begged off on a leave of absence, I knew I'd never go back. And I'd
still have poison ivy in my brain.
"No," I said.
We were in Winston's private dome all seven of my spouses sitting worried
around the dome's circumference, with me in the middle. Our Faye in the hot
seat. Concern pressing in on me... like the bad old days at sixteen, when my
friends watched me trolling the streets for trouble. Later, age nineteen, as
we kicked around the thought of getting married, all seven of them took me
aside, each by each, to murmur, "You won't be too crazy, will you, Faye?
You've got the angries out of your system? You won't make us all widows?"
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]