Machina Viva (12 page)

The four of them ran along the shaft as Brian began calling out directions.

22

After some running and a certain amount of crawling, the four of them emerged from a maintenance hatch somewhere in the middle of the Security building. Will walked out ahead of the group to deflect attention in case anyone asked questions, and Philip tried to look like a person who hadn’t just broken out of anyone’s custody.

“All right,” said Brian over the televox, “a taspar team just went past that hatch, so no one should be concerned about you for a while. They won’t worry about something they just searched. Now, down this hallway is a stairwell. It should take you down to surface level.”

They reached the stairwell and headed downward. After they had gone a few floors, though, they could hear guards enter the stairwell above and below them. They were getting closer.

“Brian?” said Lucy. “I think they know we’re here.”

“What?” said Brian. “Hold on, I . . . oh, blast it, they’ve broken through my lockout. They’ve got you on their internal sensors. Get out of that stairwell. They’re trying to funnel you to a few floors. We’ve got to get you more mobile.”

They left the stairwell and headed through what turned out to be a large room full of desks. Security personnel were grinding away at their workstations. People turned in shock at the four of them as they ran down the rows of desks toward the main hallway.

As they left the large workroom, they saw a taspar team at one end of the hallway. One of them raised his weapon, and the four of them just managed to round the corner before the electrical beam scorched the wall. They started turning corners at random in an attempt to evade pursuit, ignoring Brian’s attempts to guide them. If they took any time at all to listen to advice, it would have cost them valuable ground as the Security teams caught up. Any time they found a staircase leading down, they took it, no matter where it led them. Occasionally they even leapt the handrails when following the actual stairs seemed to take too long.

Eventually, they had to stop so that Philip could catch his breath. As he leaned panting against a wall, they could hear Brian trying to reach them over the televox.

“Lucy? Will? Can anyone hear me?”

“I think we’ve lost them for now,” said Will.

“We’ve certainly lost ourselves,” said Lucy. “I have no idea where we are now. All these hallways look the same.”

“Did you happen to notice warning signs on any of the doors you just blew through?” said Brian.

“Not really,” said Will.

“I saw a few brightly-colored signs,” said Eve, “but I didn’t see what they said.”

“Well, kudos for you, then,” said Brian, “because you’ve managed to stumble into the ECM wing.”

“The what?” wheezed Philip.

“Enhanced Countermeasures,” said Brian. “That’s where they bring their most dangerous detainees. All of Security’s most advanced technology and personnel gets used there. You’ve got to get out of there mach schnell.”

Almost prophetically, the door through which they entered slammed shut, and the bolts slid home.

“Brian, they’ve locked us in,” said Will. “Can you override it?”

“Maybe,” said Brian, “but it’s a magnetic lock. It’ll take me some time. You might as well make for the prisoner entrance. By the time you get there, I should be able to override the locks and let you out.”

Will led the way through the corridors of the ECM wing, twice taking a wrong turn and having to loop back. It wasn’t easy navigating the maze of hallways without Brian telling them where to turn. There didn’t seem to be as many people in this part of the building, though.

No sooner had they had that thought, though, than they turned a corner and ran right into a team of guards. It wasn’t one of the usual teams, however. They weren’t burdened by such bulky equipment as taspars or dazzlers. Instead, each one carried a simple baton, along with the usual binding foam canisters. As soon as one of them began to raise his arm, though, Will, Lucy, Eve, and Philip turned and ran like rabbits.

The weapons carried by law enforcement personnel are meant to impair criminals and enable them to be arrested. To this end, they are designed to avoid causing lethal harm, requiring fairly sophisticated technology. However, when a particularly violent criminal displays the intention to cause as much harm as he can with an irrational disregard for his own safety, more simplistic and primitive weapons are used. Likewise, when a private citizen wishes to discourage attackers in the least ambiguous way possible, there is little more viscerally effective than a long blade at one’s hip.

A citizen who wishes a sufficient amount of protection for the minimum of cost can acquire a fairly basic sword, essentially an enlarged knife made from stamped polycarbonate resin, prone to the same problems as any factory product. The more discerning customer can have a weapon made to order by a skilled craftsperson, often from more durable and reliable acrylics or even metal-reinforced ceramic. The highest-quality, most versatile, and most strictly regulated blades, though, are to be found in the Ikosian
Schwertknüppel
, the standard sidearm of the guard force of the Ikosian Mining Consortium, who do not believe in the niceties of arrest and prosecution where the integrity of their ore and ingot shipments is concerned. The
Schwertknüppel
when sheathed is about three feet long, and the scabbard can be used as a baton whether the blade has been drawn or not. The cross-guard folds against the blade and serves to lock the scabbard in place. Its unique feature, however, is the thread around the pommel that allows the hilt to be reversed and screwed into the scabbard to turn the weapon into a spear at least as tall as the wielder. Anyone who has ever attempted to assault a Consortium cargo shipment can attest to the weapon’s startling efficacy in a wide variety of combat situations, although anyone capable of so attesting would have to have survived the attempt, which would make them a rare specimen indeed.

By the time Philip and company had managed to reach the next bend in the hallway, all four of the guards had drawn their blades and given chase. Lucy fumbled with the televox a bit before she managed to reach Brian.

“I’ve almost deactivated the magnetic locks,” said Brian. “What do you need?”

“We’re being chased by guards with
Schwertknüppeln
!” said Lucy. “We need some help!”

“Well, get away from them!”

“Way ahead of you!”

Brian scrambled to locate them on his layout of the building. “Oh, good. Take the next left, and then the second right after that. That should put you on the last straightaway toward the exit.”

The four of them hustled for the door, with the guards close behind them and gaining. Will took off his uniform jacket and threw it at the feet of the lead guard, who stumbled and fell to the floor. The other three guards dodged around him, losing a little time, but they recovered quickly.

As the chase neared the exit door, they could see the signs on the walls that they ran past. “Brian,” said Lucy. “We’re heading towards a lockdown corridor.”

“Yes, I know,” said Brian.

“It says they’ve got utility fog in there.”

“Yes, I know! That’s the idea!”

“Are you kidding me?” said Will.

“The utility fog is complex enough that they have to route control for it through the central computer. I should be able to hijack it and use it to stop the guards. Just keep running, whatever happens.”

As they rounded the last corner, the door to the outside world beckoned to them. The hallway began to get hazy, but no barriers took shape. Behind them, the furthest of the three remaining guards came to a sudden halt as a wall coalesced around him.

As Philip fought to keep up with the others, Eve reached back to grab his wrist, urging him to keep pressing on. He had spent too much of his life in a lab to be able to outrun a trained Security team for long.

“Come on, Philip!” said Eve. “Not much farther now!”

“I’m going as fast as I can!” said Philip.

One of the guards threw his scabbard at Eve’s ankles. She nearly went flying, but she managed to turn the fall into a controlled tumble and was just able to keep moving forward.

As Will got within ten feet of the door, the bolts clanged open. Will charged into the door and slammed it open, and Lucy was close behind him. Another wall of fog appeared behind the guards, but they just made it through before it solidified.

As Eve half-dragged Philip toward the door, she could see fog begin to form in front of her, poised to solidify as soon as they were through it. Behind her, she could see another wall begin to form as the other guard, his sword screwed into the scabbard, raised his arm to throw.

Philip and Eve ran as fast as they could. Philip couldn’t remember ever pushing himself so hard in his life.

The guard threw. The spear pierced the fog just before it closed in front of him. Eve raised her arm to try to deflect the blow.

In an absolute freak coincidence of timing, the blade sliced a deep furrow in Eve’s arm and barely slowed down before it pierced Philip’s abdomen, slowing them down just enough to allow the utility fog to coalesce in front of them. The spear ran into the solidified wall and pinned Philip in place.

Brian deactivated the wall as quickly as he could. Will and Lucy rushed back through the door. Will scanned Philip subdermally, and amazingly, the blade had managed to avoid completely destroying any vital organs. As Will gently removed the blade from Philip and tore a strip from his trouser leg to help stanch the bleeding, Lucy watched Eve hold her own wound closed as the silvery discharge oozed over the cut. Before her very eyes, the goo began to subside and absorb into Eve’s skin, and she stood up a few seconds later fully repaired.

Lucy looked at Will, and Will looked back. Both of them turned to look at Philip, as Eve checked over Philip’s wounds.

“He needs medical attention right away,” said Eve. “Does Crownstone have a clinic nearby?”

“I know a doctor,” said Lucy. “I’ll call him and ask him to meet us there.” She raised Brian on the televox. “Brian, we got Philip out, but he’s badly wounded. Disconnect yourself, or whatever you have to do, and get back to Crownstone.”

“Sure thing,” said Brian. “Good work, everyone, all things considered.” He signed off. Eve and Will improvised an emergency carry for Philip, and the four of them made their careful way back home.

23

As the troubleshooter rode the transit tubes watching the display screen, it saw the familiar flashing square in the lower corner. The Security chair was upset, and he had new orders for it. When the message had concluded, a bulletin came on screen about two fugitives that had escaped from secure custody at Security headquarters. All citizens were to be on the lookout for the escapees. Their pictures were put on display. A male human, whom the troubleshooter recognized from his Cabinet file, and a female robot that was immediately familiar.

The troubleshooter got off at the nearest stop to the center of the city and headed for the Department of Infrastructure to arrange for the release of some blueprints. This assignment was quickly growing very complex.

When Eve and Will carried Philip into the Crownstone building, the doctor Lucy called was waiting for them at the front desk.

“Lucy, I came as quickly as I could.”

“Thank you, Dr. Cavendish. Philip has been stabbed.”

“Oh, no,” said the desk guard. “What happened?”

“The less we tell you, the better,” said Will, “but there might be some people after us about this. Try to hold them off as long as you can.”

“Will do,” said the guard.

Dr. Cavendish examined Philip while Eve and Will held him. “This is a nasty wound. It looks like you’ve done as well as you could for him without a proper medical kit, but we’ll have to get him upstairs to his room. If his GI tract’s been pierced, we need to move quickly before he starts to digest himself.”

They rode the lift to Philip’s room, and Will laid him out on his bed. As Dr. Cavendish started laying in sedatives, Philip grabbed Eve’s arm and tried to pull her closer to him. She could just hear him faintly whispering.

She lowered her ear to his lips. “Check . . . desk . . . important . . . your purpose . . .” she heard him say before his eyes drifted closed.

“Don’t worry,” said Dr. Cavendish. “He’ll be fine, miss. Why don’t you go sit in the front room with Lucy? I’ll take care of Dr. Abrams. He’s in good hands.” Dr. Cavendish gave her a smile as he took an endoscope and a canister of suture gel from his bag.

Eve went out to Philip’s sitting room, where Brian and Will were talking with someone over Philip’s home televox, apparently a friend of Will’s in the College of Law. Lucy was just standing at the window, looking out for nothing in particular.

“Lucy?” said Eve. “Do you know where Philip’s desk is?”

“He has a workstation in his study, through that door,” she said, indicated the door at the other end of the room. “Why? Did he tell you something?”

“He said there was something important there. Something about my purpose.”

“Oh,” said Lucy, somewhat struck with the enormity of the word “purpose.” “Well, let us know what you find. I’m sure we’re all just as curious as you are.”

Eve opened the door to Philip’s study. There wasn’t much more to it than the desk and a chair, without so much as a picture on the wall. She activated the small workstation on the desk, and all the walls lit up; she realized that the reason the walls looked so bare was that they were almost completely occupied with screen space. The walls filled with scribbled notes, pictures, and connecting lines. It was like being inside Philip’s head, seeing what had clearly been occupying his mind for months, if not longer. Fragments of sentences were strung together with arrows and streams of ideas, almost as if he had been arguing with himself, while particularly persistent ideas were labeled with pictures cobbled together from archival imagery and Philip’s own scratchy sketches.

Dominating the whole web of theory was a set of seven clearly captioned blocks at the very center. The first contained a picture of a primitive ape-like creature hunched on the floor of an ancient cave, crafting a crude hand axe from a carefully-shaped wedge of stone. Below it was the caption “
Homo habilis
– The Handy Man.” The next was a slightly more evolved creature holding a spear, but this one was walking along a field of waving grasses. The caption read, “
Homo erectus
– The Upright Man.” The last picture in the row was of a man wearing a tunic and sitting at a potter’s wheel, physiologically indistinguishable from any other human. His caption read, “
Homo sapiens
– The Thinking Man.”

Below each of these was a corresponding, much more recent image. The first was of a mechanical arm in a factory, bolted to the floor and assembling some piece of machinery, labeled “
Machina habilis
– The Handy Machine.” The second was of a roughly humanoid chassis carefully navigating a flight of stairs, with the label “
Machina erecta
– The Upright Machine.” The third was of a robot playing cards with two humans. The caption read, “
Machina sapiens
– The Thinking Machine.”

Beneath them all was a plain human-shaped outline, around which the entire jumble of thoughts seemed to orbit. Whatever or whomever that shape was meant to represent, everything else on the wall referred to it or related to it in some way. This was the nebulous end goal of Philip’s entire tangled snarl of reasoning. Beneath it was another caption, much larger than the others: “
Machina viva
– The Living Machine.”

Eve stood back from the wall, taking in everything at once. This was what Philip had wanted her to see. This was meant to be her purpose. But none of it made sense. Machines weren’t alive. That was what made them different from humans in the first place. Oh, they had ideas and experiences of their own, and they all wore out eventually, but that wasn’t the same thing as life and death, was it? Every robot in Tetropolis, every robot in the whole vapor, knew that they weren’t really alive, not in the way that humans and the other species were. They were built in factories, and they were recycled for parts when they ran down. How could something alive come from a factory?

This was too much for her to process by herself. She needed someone who knew how to think about things like this, and she knew someone who would probably be able to help. She closed the file and removed the small data cartridge from Philip’s workstation, and she went to go see Raymond.