Theme Planet (51 page)

“What happens to all the people
here on holiday? The families? Mothers, wives, children?”

“They die,” said SARAH.

“That’s wrong.”

“Collateral damage,” said SARAH,
simply.

“What do you want us to do?”
whispered Dex.

“No,” said Amba. “Stop.” She held
the FRIEND, pointed at Dexter’s head. His face went grim and hard. He’d seen
what the weapon could do, had
spoken
with the FRIEND Zi, and now it was
turned on him. Not a pleasant sensation. He locked eyes with Amba, then turned
back to SARAH.

“What do you want us to do?” he
repeated.

“You must halt your Earth
Masters. Halt the destruction. Turn back the invasion...”

There came a
blam
as the
FRIEND fired, and SARAH was blasted backwards, disintegrating as she hit the
wall and crumpled down and in upon herself, imploding into a small ball of
matter which hit the ground, with a solid
thump.

Dex glanced at Amba.

“She is wrong,” said the Anarchy
Android. “Earth wouldn’t do that. They know the recklessness and foolishness of
invasion; of genocide; of slaughter; they
know
that to try and conquer
the Quad-Gal would be an absolute insanity! Effectively, an act of suicide for
Earth and all humanity!”

“I believe they could be so
foolish,” said Dexter.

Amba turned the FRIEND back on
him. “You retain your humanity,” she said. Dex glanced right, at the fleshy
hole through which Katrina and the girls had vanished. There were flashes and
sparks as Katrina cut them more of a path towards the crystal core of SARAH;
towards the one place where the FRIEND would wreak its intended havoc.

And that was it. Understanding
hit him. Flooded him. It was the
FRIEND,
Zi. She was a terrible,
terrible weapon - integrated with Amba, a
bomb
that had been designed to
take out the Theme Planet and kickstart the invasion, the war, the conquest.
They were all pawns, all being used by Earth’s Oblivion Government in their
dirty, back-hand little offensive.

Earth, and Humanity, wanted to
rule the Quad-Gal.

Earth, and Humanity, were willing
to sacrifice millions of their own people on The Theme Planet as their first
strike, their first move on the Great Gameboard of a Four Galaxy War.

Shit.

“I know why you have Zi,” said
Dexter, tilting his head to one side.

“No you don’t.”

“She’s symbiotic. A part of you.
You protect one another, feed from one another, love one another.”

“How could you know that?” Amba
frowned. She was confused.

“You love Zi, don’t you?”

“She is a sister to me. My own
bone and flesh and blood. I would do anything for her. I would kill for her,
and I would die for her.”

“She’s a bomb,” said Dexter,
nodding. “That’s how we’ll destroy the Heart of SARAH. That’s how Romero
intends for you to destroy Theme Planet. You will sacrifice yourself, all of
us. SARAH is wrong; the SLAM dropships won’t come. Not yet, anyway. First, Oblivion
will let us destroy Theme Planet from
within.
“

“If that is our mission,” said
Amba.

“Think of the millions we will
kill!”

“Everybody has to die sometime,”
said Amba.

“Surely you don’t believe that,”
said Dexter, softly, and he was moving towards her, moving closer. “What’s
wrong with us, Amba? What’s wrong with the androids? Shall I tell you? It’s
engineering.
They
created us
to be like this. They created me and Katrina and the
girls to
be
normal human beings, to act a certain way, and all the time
they tell the general public that androids are inferior and have no emotions
and no empathy; when it was the fucking
engineers
who made us this way.
Because it’s better for the humans to believe they have something special, something
unique - a soul. It gives Humanity a solid spiritual grounding. Amba, can’t you
feel it inside? You
are
human. You have been labelled an android, but I
am living proof that you can be normal.”

“I do not care,” said Amba, but
Dex was close now, the FRIEND to his chest, and he could see the shine of tears
in Amba’s eyes. He moved yet closer, pushing past the FRIEND, until his lips
were only inches from her.

“I don’t believe that,” said Dex.

Amba said nothing.

“What happened?” said Dex.

“It was...”

“Yes?”

“A little girl. At the airport.
And her mother. I... killed them. But it changed me. Something died inside me
that day. Something changed in me. Forever.”

“No. It goes deeper.”

“No...”

“There was something else...”

“No...”

Drifting, drifting down, drifting
back through memories... Memories locked, and lost, the key thrown away...

~ * ~

The small house by
the river had white walls, and at
one corner the brickwork was crumbling and she knew one day she’d have to get
round to that damn repair. The windows were very old-Earth, traditional -
wooden frames with peeling white paint and single panes of glass. The roof of
the house had terracotta tiles, kiln-fired. Several were cracked, but such was
the roof’s construction that no water leaked in. And that was good. Amba walked
up the crushed stone path, her flat shoes crunching, and she breathed the heady
scent from the pine trees surrounding her house. She saw the door. A pale blue
door, battered and a little warped, with peeling paint. Behind the house, the
trees sighed in the wind. Small animals scurried through woodland detritus. To
the right, a river gurgled over rocks. To the left, the forest curved like a
scar and rose up the flanks of another pine-clad hill to a circle of stones,
which sat on the summit, ancient and magical, grey flanks shining.

What’s behind the blue door, O
little one?

What song will you sing this time
?

What dreams will you savour ?

Amba reached the door and
stopped. The door terrified her. What lay beyond terrified her. She reached
out, took the handle. It had been warmed in the sun. She turned the handle, and
the door swung open. To reveal...

Amba blinked.

A little girl.

“Mommy,’’ said the little girl,
smiling warmly and holding out her hands. “Mommy!’’

~ * ~

“You
had A
child,” said Dex, softly.

Amba nodded.

“And they took your child away,”
said Dex.

“Yes.”

“And you accepted this decision?”

“Yes.”

“The problem now is that you’re
learning your humanity all over again,” said Dexter, and his hand came up and
softly stroked Amba’s cheek.

“There have been... moments. When
I doubted myself. Doubted my decision. But I always pushed them aside. I
had
to push them aside.” She looked at Dex then, and there were tears on her cheeks.
“I shouldn’t have let them take my baby girl,” she said.

“You were engineered to do so,”
smiled Dex, kindly. “But now, you are questioning; now, you are fighting their
creation. Whatever they planned for me, whatever they built into me - it has
not worked. I am still human, and yet I was built an android. There is a
blurring of the boundaries, Amba. Can you see that?”

“I can see that,” she said.

“And it must be the same way for
you. We need to stop Oblivion’s plans to destroy SARAH; to destroy the Theme
Planet.”

“And then I can find my little
girl,” said Amba, voice meek.

“Yes.”

“First, we must stop Katrina,”
said Dexter.

“And how will you do that?” said
Katrina, and she was standing taut, with a snarl on her face. In her
outstretched hand was a FRIEND, identical to Amba’s weapon. To either side of
Katrina stood her girls, Molly, and Toffee, and each of them carried a fizzing,
buzzing dark energy wand, and a pistol. Their eyes were gleaming, and Dex felt
a thrill of fear spark through his system. His own little girls wanted him
dead. That was a situation he could never have foreseen.

“How long have you been
listening?” said Dex.

“Long enough,” said Katrina. “Throw
down your weapon, bitch.”

Amba dropped the FRIEND to the
fleshy ground.

Katrina turned her eyes on Dex. “You
bastard. You betrayed me.”

“I...?” He smiled, easily. “You
betrayed yourself,” he said.

“I am doing what I was built to
do. But you? You are
fighting
it, Dexter, I can see it in your fucking
eyes. In your brain. You are battling against the very thing for which you were
designed; created! You’re a killer, Dexter Colls. You’re an Anarchy Android.
Accept it! Until you relinquish full control, until you give yourself over to
the
joy
and the
purity
of what you can become - you will never
know freedom from the shackles of a weak inferior humanity.”

“You’re wrong, Katrina. You have
not found freedom; you’ve just locked the door to your own cage.”

“No! I am more powerful than I
have ever been! Stronger, faster, more agile! I can kill without remorse! I
have achieved the pinnacle of all creation! I am the perfect human, without all
those pathetic human hang-ups!”

“No,” said Dex, wearily. “You are
diluted, but your vanity precludes you from seeing it.”

“You bastard,” said Katrina.

Dex shrugged.

“You’re
fucking
this
bitch, aren’t you? You two are in this together?”

“
What?”
he snapped. “This
is nothing to do with sex, you idiot. And look at what a fine fucking wife you’ve
become! You’re pointing your weapon at my head! Katrina, you are being a
bad
wife.”

In unscripted cooperation, as if
they were joined by the mind, Amba and Dex rolled apart in blurs and attacked,
launching themselves at Kat and the girls. The FRIEND and the wands spat and
fizzed, and guns blasted holes in the glowing white walls. Amba hit Kat full in
the chest, knocking her back onto the ground, Amba atop her. Dex felt the blast
of Molly’s gun skim his face, blowing a wide hole in the roof. He knocked the
weapon from Molly’s hand, then crashed into the wand, which she dropped. Molly
snarled at him, kicked him in the stomach, punched him in the face, and he
grabbed her arms and tasted blood and stared into the dark eyes of his eldest
daughter. “How can you do this to me?” he yelled. “I’m your father! Your own
flesh and blood!”

“You’re just another android to
be killed,” said Molly, and head-butted him on the nose. He released her arms,
and she was a whirling dervish, delivering punches and kicks that drove Dex
back against the wall. Toffee was waving her wand around madly, and dancing a
little on the spot, unable to get a clear shot at Amba or Dex with her gun.

Katrina had dropped her FRIEND,
and was trading punches with Amba as they rolled around on the floor. Dex,
finally, blocked two blows and delivered a punch that threw Molly right across
the room, where she cannoned into Toffee and both went down in a tangle. He
picked up Zi, and crawled across to the tangled mess of Amba and Katrina.