Machina Viva (11 page)

“They took him away not long after they arrived.”

Eve put her hand to her mouth. “He died?”

Lucy nodded. “Quietly, and in his sleep. He was only 53. Apparently his health had been deteriorating for some time since the death of his wife. The doctor said that there was nothing particularly wrong with him and supposed that he must have just decided that he was done.

“The next day, I got a call from the College of Law that his last will and testament was being read, and I was listed as a beneficiary. It seems that a few days prior to his death, he had altered the terms. Instead of leaving his assets to his company entirely, he left them only his ownership of the company and so forth, and he left me the remainder of his estate. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough for me to pay off the remainder of my contract and start a business of my own. He also left me a message thanking me for helping him find whatever peace and solace he could in his final days in this world.”

“And that’s why you went into holistic therapy?” said Eve.

“Yeah. I wanted to make other people as happy as I made him. Everyone’s looking to find what he had with his wife, what Will and Linn have with each other. Humans, robots, Stitchers, everyone. And most people don’t ever find something like that. I can’t replace what people feel when that happens, but I try to give enough to get by from one day to the next, whether it’s company, physicality, or just a sympathetic ear. Everyone needs things like that, and as soon as robots start accepting that, you’re going to start seeing a lot more of them in here.”

Lucy got up from the table. “Well, I need to plug in. We’ve got a big day tomorrow. See you then, Eve.” She left the club and headed for the elevator.

Eve stayed at the table, watching Will and Linn and the other robot couples. Eventually, she wandered back to her room, where she plugged herself in and thought about pictures, dancing, and lonely rooms.

20

The following morning started out like any other in the minimum security level of the Security building. This was an entry-level position for new recruits. Nothing interesting ever happened here, and standards were not strictly enforced. There wasn’t even a robot-human pair stationed here, like with most jobs in the Security department. Usually, human Security officers were matched with robot officers, so the weaknesses of one could be offset by the other. At this station, though, all the officer had was a call button to summon backup.

The officer was almost asleep with boredom when the two maintenance people showed up at his desk. Maintenance crews were the only people that used this entrance with any regularity, and most of them were pale, stubbled, and grease-stained. The two ladies in front of him were a definite improvement, especially in their form-fitting utility coveralls. That made them a Fullerton outfit, where the baggy jumpsuits that Tetropolis maintenance crews wore would get tangled up in the microgravity.

They told him that they had some maintenance work to do somewhere in the building, but the officer wasn’t really paying that much attention. Something to do with the computer hardware. Since the Merfolk were taking their holy day off, the functions of the Scintilla system had to be transferred to the regular silicon-based mainframe, and something had given way somewhere. It happened every year, or every vapor cycle, or however the Gens Vapori kept their time. He pressed his call button, and another minimum-level Security officer showed up to escort them, a robot that he recognized. As the escorting officer followed the two maintenance ladies through the door and away from his desk, he remembered that he had completely forgotten to check their credentials. He considered going after them to ask for their ID, but it was probably not that important, and he knew the officer with them, anyway.

It probably wouldn’t have made much difference if he had checked up of them, but he might not have gotten in so much trouble afterwards.

As Eve and Lucy left the check-in area and headed for the bank of elevators, Will’s features shifted and rippled back to their proper shape and away from that of the officer he’d met in the ready room.

“Any problems with the guard?” he asked.

“Not at all,” said Lucy. “The Fullerton coveralls did the trick. We’ll have to tell Brian he wasted his time with the fake credentials.”

“Nonsense,” said Brian over the televox. “Time spent on precautions is never wasted. Besides, the day’s not over yet. You might still need them. On to stage 2?”

“Affirmative,” said Will. “We’re through the checkpoint. Go get Philip, Brian.”

The troubleshooter was both excited and apprehensive by what it had learned. Since Eve had been rescued and brought to Crownstone, several suspicious purchases had been made, and someone had interfaced with the Security department’s internal systems. No laws had been broken; each purchase in and of itself was perfectly legitimate, and whoever had accessed the computer hadn’t made any substantive alterations. However, the systems they had accessed were now largely responsible for carrying the operations load formerly handled by the Scintilla mainframe, including the operating protocol for the elevators in the detainment unit.

There were a limited number of people who had the clearance to access the Security systems without arousing notice, and there were an even more limited number who could possibly predict the arrival of the Gens Vapori Holy Day. All the evidence pointed to a major operation on the part of Crownstone against the Security department.

The troubleshooter had sent a warning to the Security chair as soon as the threat had become tangible, but a system for sending messages that absolutely could never be intercepted meant that they took an indeterminate amount of time to arrive. Not even the troubleshooter could predict whether the chair would know about Eve’s incursion in time.

One way or the other, though, the troubleshooter knew that it would enjoy seeing Eve in action again.

21

Dr. Philip Abrams had finished counting the tiles in the washroom hours ago. Now, he was working on filling in the tiles with decorative patterns, but he had nearly run out of pens. Food and drink kept arriving at irregular intervals, but there was probably no one monitoring his supply of writing utensils. It might have driven a lesser man to despair, but Dr. Abrams tried to keep his spirits up. At least he had been able to keep himself clean-shaven.

From the direction of the door, he heard the rumble of the approaching elevator. It wasn’t nearly time for the food to be delivered, and he knew they monitored that. When he heard the sliding of the bolts on his door, he crept excitedly into the main room hoping for a box of pens, but the elevator was empty.

He walked up to the doorway and carefully inspected the walls of the elevator, as if this one might have some kind of trick panel concealing a hidden officer waiting to spring out at him for trying to escape. It didn’t look any different, though. He cautiously stepped inside the elevator, and the door slid closed. Before he could think to pound on the door and demand to be released, the elevator lurched into motion.

Dr. Abrams was baffled. He was unaware of any scheduled transfer. He assumed that he would have been notified if he were going to be released, but of course the Security chair didn’t have to notify anyone of anything if he didn’t want to, not without a majority Cabinet vote or something. Maybe they were just moving him to a new cell to keep him off balance. For that matter, maybe they just wanted to get him out of there for a while so they could replace the tiles in the bathroom.

After about a minute of random movement in the elevator, it suddenly stopped dead, and the lights went dark. Dr. Abrams was a little spooked. While it was true that no one could possibly be too paranoid about what Security might do, this seemed extreme even for them. The most likely explanation was that the elevator had simply malfunctioned, but something that could cause that to happen might pose a threat to anyone within the elevator. The elevator’s design, to the best of Dr. Abrams’ knowledge, didn’t include any gas nozzles or a collapsing floor, so that ruled out a death trap scenario.

What in Bedlam is Security trying to pull?
thought Dr. Abrams.
Is there something else they want me to tell them? Are they trying to unsettle me to weaken my resolve? I already gave them all my notes.

He slumped down to the floor, prepared to wait as long as it took for something to transpire.
If only the lights hadn’t shut off too, I could at least count
these
wall tiles.

As Eve, Lucy, and Will waited at the elevator door, there was a frantic buzzing from the televox. Brian was trying to reach them.

“We’ve got a problem. The elevator has been shut down.”

“Didn’t you lock out all other access to the mainframe?” said Lucy.

“Of course. Someone with executive-level clearance was trying to access earlier. Whoever it was must have cut the power to the elevator. I know where the capsule stopped. I can open the doors and guide you there, but you’ll have to hurry before someone figures out what I’m up to and takes steps.”

The doors to the elevator shaft slid open, and the three robots climbed into the dimly lit space and started climbing, while Brian guided them using Tetropolitan address vectors. (Because Tetropolis is built on a triangular grid, addresses and directions are given using a special coordinate system that describes position and movement relative to the four vertices of the city. It comes as second nature to the residents of Tetropolis, but is anarchically complicated to visitors. Most methods of navigation work like this.) Occasionally, Brian would contact them and give them a change in bearing to navigate them around another capsule or away from a potentially hazardous portion of the route.

After at least a quarter of an hour of climbing, they found a stationary capsule stuck in the middle of a horizontal section of shaft. The door was facing them, and Eve could see the bolts holding the door in place. They would be easy to shift out of place. As she reached the capsule, she paused. On the other side of that door was a man who might be able to explain to her the meaning of her existence and all the special attention she had been receiving from the Civic Cabinet and the robots at Crownstone. She wondered what he would look like.

She disengaged the mechanism and slid back the bolts.

Dr. Abrams had nearly finished his calculations for estimating the number of tiles in the walls of the capsule by feel when he heard someone tampering with the door. He stood up from where he had been slumped on the floor and watched as the door slid open, filling the capsule with faint utility light that seemed like midday after the complete darkness of the power loss. After his eyes adjusted, he could see Lucy and Will standing in the shaft outside.

“Lucy? Will? What are you doing here?” He took in their disguises. “And why are you wearing those uniforms? I wouldn’t want anyone to get in trouble over –“

He stopped in mid-sentence when he saw the third member of the team. She was wearing a Fullerton maintenance uniform like Lucy’s, and she had changed her hair color and style, but there was no mistaking her. He stepped down from the capsule door so they could be face to face.

“Eve? Is that you?”

“Dr. Abrams? Dr. Philip Abrams?”

“Yes, that’s me. How . . . how have you been?”

“Are you serious?” said Will.

“No, wait, that was foolish,” said Philip. “Obviously, Security have been after you, haven’t they?”

“How did you know that?” said Eve.

“The chair spent a few days sifting my brain. He went over all my notes. He implied pretty heavily that he’d be trying to pick you up. I guess that’s why you changed your look. That was smart.” He brushed an errant lock of her hair back over her ear.

Eve felt proud that Philip approved of what she’d done to avoid Security, but she was also getting some more confusing feelings from him brushing back her hair. Her first meeting with her creator was venturing into unfamiliar territory.

“How long has she been with you?” Philip asked Lucy and Will.

“Three days,” said Lucy.

“Has she been . . . consuming anything in that time?”

“Yes, she’s been consuming silicon fairly regularly,” said Will. “We’ve kept her supplied with gelatin packing pads.”

“Already?” said Philip. He smiled and put his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide. Eve was puzzled. Was this a good thing?

“Philip,” said Brian over the televox, “I’m glad they made it to you without incident, but you need to get moving.”

“Brian, hi,” said Philip. “I suppose I have you to thank for locking me in a dark box.”

“You’re welcome. Security have mobilized their specialty personnel to intercept you. You’ll need to take a different way out than in.”

“Taspar teams?” said Will.

“That and more,” said Brian. “I’m patched into the building’s sensor array, so I should be able to get you around the worst of it, but you may have to deal with some guards.”

“We’ll handle that problem when it arises,” said Eve, with a slight edge on her voice. Lucy and Will gave her faint looks of concern. Philip just smiled.

“That’s fine, but they’re starting to spread out, so shift it or you won’t be getting out at all.”