Steelheart (3 page)

Then it was the bounty hunter's turn to punish the creature who had ended his existence, and what the synthetic felt was no less painful than all the lives the Junkman had taken, or the one he had wasted.

It was the same price
all
synthetics paid if they took a human life—even if they killed in self-defense, or to protect another. Some said it was the Creator's idea, a way of ensuring that his creatures remained subservient. Others claimed he had opposed it, and been forced to agree. Not that it made much difference to Doon.

The synthetic watched the Junkman die for the tenth time, felt pain lance through his electronic nervous system, and clutched the arm to his chest. Darkness was his only friend.

 

 

 

 

2

 

an' gel
/ n / a ministering or guiding spirit

 

 

The sentient spy sat SS-4A, also known as Michael, looked down from the heavens via a relatively old fashioned optical imaging system. Not because he didn't have more sophisticated options, but because it pleased him to do so. Clouds covered most of the planet's surface, 76.2% of it to be exact, but that did nothing to lessen its beauty. Zuul looked like a lustrous gray pearl floating on a pool of jet-black ink.

Michael gave the mental equivalent of a sigh, checked his side scanners for any sign of danger, and made his daily journal entry.

"Some might consider it ironic that I can do little more for my creators than document their slow, inexorable deaths. Still, I have studied their history, and understand them as well as any machine can. I will maintain this journal for as long as possible, but evil roams the sky, and my days are numbered."

The satellite read the last line over again. Was it too dramatic? Too filled with self-pity? Not that it mattered much, since there was very little chance that anyone else would have the opportunity to read it. Not unless his favorite fantasy came true.

Michael allowed himself to drift, to imagine how the ship would drop into orbit, how they would find his badly battered body, and retrieve his memory mod. That's when the captain, a female android of exquisite taste, would read his journal and weep. Well, not weep perhaps, but wish she had known him.

An alarm went off and sent fear-bearing electrons racing through the satellite's fiber-optic nervous system. A pair of micro sats, both manufactured by the self-styled Eye of God, were closing on his position. There had been four Angel sats to begin with... and Michael was the only one who had managed to survive. He armed himself for battle.

 

 

 

 

3

 

Sa mar' i tan
/ n / a person who comes to the aid of another

 

 

Mary Maras awoke to the sound of rapidly clacking teeth. She reached out, ran her fingers over the smooth metal skull, found the button, and pushed it down. The noise stopped. The cranial unit, long separated from the spiderlike body for which it had been fabricated, blinked, and the numbers 0645 appeared where the droid's scanner unit should have been.

The roboticist groaned, lay back, and felt the computer-controlled work surface conform to the shape of her body. She didn't want to leave the confines of the warm sleeping bag but knew it was necessary. A column of Zid had arrived two days before—and that meant information from beyond the mountains. Information that would be weeks or even months old, but could contain some hint, some mention of her daughter and ex-husband.
How
were they?
Where
were they? She thought of little else.

The last time Mary had spoken with her family was two days before the quakes, when George called to say that Corley had arrived, and while home sick, was otherwise fine.

Of course, both of them might have been killed during the quakes, or in the unrest that followed. Mary
knew
that, but didn't
believe
it, and was determined to find them, no matter what the cost. The repair shop, and the activities that it screened, were the means to that end.

The roboticist sat up, broke the bag's seal, and shivered as the air hit her skin. She swung long, skinny legs over the side, squinted against the motion-controlled lights, and waited for her pupils to adjust. Unlike the intentionally spartan room where business was conducted, the workshop was filled to overflowing with makeshift shelving, junked robots, and the large, somewhat bulky nano farm. So much stuff that it was hard to move.

The security system's scanners had been stripped from a wrecked land crawler, and the CPU had been cobbled together from reconditioned spares. A portable heater clicked on as she entered the bathroom. The roboticist addressed the mirror: "Security ... the last seven hours, please."

The voice was male and reassuringly crisp. "There were two class one intrusion attempts—both unsuccessful."

"I
know
that," Mary responded irritably. "I'm alive, aren't I? Tell me something useful." A class one attempt amounted to someone trying the doorknob—a frequent occurrence, given the number of homeless people who roamed the streets.

The security system waited through the irrelevant vocalizations and continued its report. "The being previously designated as 'Clamface' continues to watch from the other side of the street."

Mary winced as she wiped herself with page 47 of the Pro Loader 8700 Tech Manual, stood, and flushed the toilet. The water swirled, albeit reluctantly, and disappeared. "Now? He's still out there?"

"Affirmative."

She stepped out of the John. "Video, please."

The system obliged, and a monitor flickered to life. A greenish blob appeared. Clamface had positioned himself well inside the burned-out storefront on the far side of the street. There was no mistaking his staff or the characteristic IR signature. Like the rest of his race, Clamface packed a higher core body temperature than a human would have, which, combined with an extremely efficient circulatory system, gave him a cold-weather advantage.

Mary sighed. She'd have to move. Clamface, along with a pair of Zid she called Gimpy and Fatso, had been watching her place for more than a week now. Everyone knew how the system worked. Clamface, or another of the Church's agents, would identify a "sinner," place the subject's residence under surveillance, follow him or her around, and interview the neighbors.

Then, having intimidated the neighborhood, and accumulated the evidence of "crimes against God," the agent would share it with his superiors, a judgment would be rendered, and a punishment assigned. "Dispossession" meant that a residence or business would be trashed or destroyed in an unexplained fire—and "expiation" translated to a sentence of death.

Whatever punishment was deemed appropriate would be meted out by a "mob," which appeared to form spontaneously but was actually organized in advance, and led by Agents of the Church. Scientists, mechanics, and technicians were favorite targets and frequently slated for "expiation"— a fact that was at least partially responsible for the fact that most things didn't work any more.

All of which was made even worse by the fact that so many of her own kind had joined the Antitechnic Church that seventy or eighty percent of the mob would be human. The thought of their blank stares and hate-distorted faces sent a shudder down Mary's spine. She turned toward the bathroom. "Keep me informed."

The security system processed the request, realized that it was redundant to basic programming, and made no reply.

The roboticist opened the tap, waited for the brownish flow to begin, and squeezed toothpaste onto her brush. Not much, just a smidge, since it was hard to come by. The face in the water-specked mirror stared back as she worked the brush back and forth. She had black hair, mocha-colored skin, large, some said intense eyes, slightly flared nostrils, generous lips, and a softly rounded chin.

It was the kind of face that went from pretty to beautiful when she put on makeup—something she rarely did, except for faculty parties when George insisted. "Give 'em something to look at," he used to say. "When they see how pretty
you
are, they'll know how smart
I
am."

Mary knew George didn't mean it the way it sounded, but resented the implication. Just one of the things that led to the separation. She frowned and spit toothpaste into the sink. The water caught the stuff and pulled it down. Mary used a sweatshirt as a towel, closed the tap, and considered a shower.

Nothing could beat the pure comfort of being both warm and clean at the same moment. The problem was that it took lots of power to heat the requisite amount of water, and that, combined with the rest of her activities, could attract the wrong sort of attention. Still, why protect something she was about to abandon? That, plus a whiff of her own body odor, forced a decision.

The shower didn't take long, not with only five gallons of water to draw from, but made Mary warm. After that it was a simple matter to don three layers of reasonably clean clothes, and feed the nano farm.

The ritual required the roboticist to pour carefully measured amounts of powdered manganese, tungsten, chromium, carbon, nickel, cobalt, vanadium, molybdenum, aluminum, sodium, and titanium into the correct intake ports. Those were some, but not all, of the basic materials that enabled the tiny robots to replicate themselves and—if she ordered them to do so—to create custom strains.

Though classified as robots, nano were different from sentient machines in a number of important ways. The first was size. "Nano" means "billionth," and, as the name would suggest, they were very, very small. Powered by static electricity, micromotors less than .0001 of an inch across drove machines that incorporated gears, shafts, and belts etched into silicon chips using X-ray lithography and were controlled by atom-wide carbon rod "push—pull" computers.

Nano were different in other ways as well, including the fact that unlike their larger sentient cousins they were "modular," "adaptive," and "dynamic," meaning mat while they carried very little onboard intelligence, they were collectively quite smart.

That particular architecture, sometimes referred to as "self-organizing," required minimal computing power and enabled machines that were faster, cheaper, and more reliable than "stand-up" models.

The prospect of shutting the factory down in order to move it, finding the power necessary to sustain it, and rebooting the facility once it was in place made her depressed.

Mary took a Zid food cake from her sparsely stocked larder, filled her pockets with surefire trade items, and took one last look around. Something the size of a hydroponically grown orange rolled out from under some shelves, saw her parka, and uttered a series of joyful squeaks.

Mary had designed the toy during her pregnancy.

George named the device "Hairball," in honor of its ability to sprout thousands of synthetic hair follicles, thereby transforming itself into something cute and cuddly.

Corley had intended to take Hairball with her, but forgot in the last-minute rush, and left the toy behind. Hairball extended a tiny pogo-sticklike appendage and jumped up and down. Its processor had a limited vocabulary. "Me go! Me go! Me go!"

Mary shook her head. "You
not
go. Not today."

The robot grew smaller. "Corley play?"

Mary sighed. "No, for the thousandth time, Corley can't play. She went away ... remember?"

"No," Hairball replied honestly. "Me wait."

"Good," Mary said thankfully. "You wait. I'll be back."

The riot gun had a short barrel, eight-round magazine, and pistol grip. A badly mauled synthetic had given it to her in return for emergency surgery. A good choice for someone small and vulnerable. Slung from a shoulder strap, and ready for use, it kept the riffraff away. Maybe she would fire it one day—to see how it felt.

She fingered the pocket remote, heard the security system buzz in response, and opened the door. The outside air was cold,
damned
cold, and she hurried to seal the opening. No less than three bolts snicked into place as the security system obeyed its programming. She glanced across the street, felt Clamface stare at her, and hoped he froze to death.

The market was only a mile away for those who were strong enough, or crazy enough, to walk through secondary streets. Mary preferred to follow more heavily traveled thoroughfares. They made the trip longer, but were patrolled by the Guild's troops.

During the years immediately after the landing, the power structure established during the long journey had held, and resources had been allocated according to rules and procedures laid down by a seven-person group known as the Committee. An entire prefab city was built under their direction, complete with fusion plant, hydroponics facility, and carefully planned multifamily habitats. Nonsentient robots handled most of the work—but human labor was required as well.

That's when a group called the Merchant's Guild had taken exception to the four-hour-per-day "labor tax" and precipitated a revolt. The Guild won the short but bloody conflict, and free-form, "anything goes" capitalism took the place of the perfectly designed communities envisioned by the Committee.

The communities collectively known as Shipdown burst forth from the
Pilgrim's
twenty-five-mile-long hull like fungus on a fallen tree trunk. Resources were totaled and divided into shares that were hoarded, squandered, bought, sold, combined, and redivided until the merchants controlled just about everything. They'd been ready to consolidate their power, to put an army of subsentient robots to work building their factories, when the planet decided otherwise. Now they provided what order there was, and, like most of the citizens of Shipdown, Mary was grateful.

The sky was the color of worn aluminum and gave birth to occasional snowflakes. They drifted this way and that before hitting the ground. Anonymous scuff marks showed that others were up and about.

More and more noises were heard as the city woke from its slumber. The solid
thump, thump, thump
of a carefully hidden loom, the staccato bark of a unicycle engine, the
pop, pop, pop
of small-caliber gunfire, and the undulating wail of a Zid prayer caller.