CHAPTER 49
The operation is a
success.
For a moment, I just
watch 245 taking her first steps. Her movements are jerky and
unsure, but she’s doing it. The way she moves her head strikes me
as unnatural, too, scanning rather than looking, but at least she’s
ambulatory. I’m so proud.
“This is very
interesting,” she says in the voice I chose for her.
“Great job,
Dina.”
She shrugs like it’s
no big deal, but I can see that she wants to smile. “It wasn’t too
bad once you left me alone. We should get out of here,
though.”
“Agreed. Shall we,
245?”
“I have given that a
considerable amount of thought,” she tells me. “And I believe a
numeric designation is no longer appropriate.”
“What did you pick?”
I fiddle with the controls, but I can’t get the door open.
“Constance,” she
answers. “It means constant or steadfast. I will take the surname
Riddle because of my nature.”
I like it, actually,
not that my approval is paramount. “Good choice. Can you get us out
of here, Constance?”
“Let me try.” She
pauses, head tilted. “This unit possesses basic clearances. Let’s
see if these codes still work.”
They do, and the door
slides open. We step out into the dark hallway, so different from
the ivory elegance of the upper stories. Keller comes around a
corner and heads right for us.
Too late to run. My heart races. By his expression,
he isn’t sure what we’re doing down here. Well, that makes two of
us. I hope 245, er, Constance keeps quiet. If she speaks, he’s
going to know she isn’t programmed to simulate sexual
arousal.
“That unit is
broken,” he says by way of greeting. “The boys got a little rough
with her one night.”
Ew. It explains why she was in storage, though.
“Dina repaired her,” I answer, trying to project the old Jax, the
party girl people saw on the vids. “It’s pretty quiet around here.
So we’re going to have a little party. You want to come?”
Keller seems
undecided. My skin crawls. If he says yes, we’ll have to kill him.
It won’t be as quick and elegant as Hit could manage, but we’ll get
the job done.
Making matters worse,
I’ll have to play the femme fatale. Dina doesn’t have the hetero
skill set, and Constance can’t pass as a pleasure droid. I try on
what I hope is a flirtatious smile, and run my fingertips down the
front of his shirt.
He steps back. “I’m
afraid I can’t mix business with pleasure. I need to find Grubb and
Boyle. But don’t let me get in the way of your good time.”
Thank Mary, he’s
going to let us take the bot without questioning the repair. If he
knew anything about the damage to this model, he’d realize there
was no way to fix her without a new personality chip. We brush past
him, heading for the lift, but my pulse doesn’t slow until we put a
floor between us.
“He’s not going to
find Grubb and Boyle, is he?” I need a minute to figure out our
next move.
We should’ve gotten a
message out by now, and apart from having found a body for 245,
which wasn’t exactly urgent, we’re no better off. I lead the way
down the hall, away from this part of the house at least. The other
two follow.
“I don’t think so. We
didn’t send a kind, gentle team to take care of them, did we? When
Keller finds them—”
“We become Venice
Minor’s Most Wanted,” I finish.
“Would you really
have fucked him?” Dina raises a brow at me.
“I was going to
distract him so you could hit him in the head.”
She grins. “Good
thinking.”
“His heart raced in
an unusual manner,” Constance observes. Hearing 245’s voice come
out of this gorgeous woman gives me a little start. “That signifies
excitement, nervousness, or anxiety, does it not?”
“You could tell
that?” I realize I have no idea what this Pretty Robotics model is
capable of. I always preferred my companions with a pulse.
“I am able to monitor
physiological reactions,” she confirms. “Pulse, respiration, body
temperature. I believe my predecessor may have used it to gauge
reactions to her overtures.”
“But with some
adaptation, you could use it as a lie detector,” Dina says. “That
could come in handy.”
In my role as
ambassador, assuming I ever get there, it would prove invaluable.
Constance apparently agrees because she answers, “I need more data
regarding the normal spectrum for nonhumans, but yes. I could
utilize my sensors in that manner.”
“My secret weapon,” I
say.
“Will I be a secret?”
the droid asks. “Do you plan to pass me as human?”
I haven’t begun to
think of that, or the ethical pitfalls involved. “I don’t know. Is
that legal?”
“I can check my data
banks.”
Dina shakes her head
at both of us. “Stay focused, please. You can worry about the AI
precedents later.”
As we move, the villa
seems ominously silent. But if Vel, Jael, and Hit have done their
jobs well, the place might well be devoid of life, except for us. I
haven’t heard the report of weapons, nothing but the soft rasp of
our shoes against the patterned tile floor.
Time runs against us.
Every minute I spend here and not on Ielos works against us. Tarn’s
excuses won’t hold forever.
“We need to expedite
an escape, do we not?” Constance must’ve been running the problem
over from various angles.
I nod. “That’s the
idea.”
“Perhaps my basic
clearances will work on a communication terminal,” Constance
suggests. “They may not have blocked them because prior to my
installation, this unit would never have possessed the impetus to
use such a device.”
I stare at her for a
moment. “That’s an astonishingly simple yet brilliant idea. Your
room is closest,” I add to Dina. “Let’s see if this’ll
work.”
The mechanic’s room
is quite unlike mine, more masculine, done in mahogany and gold.
Our quarters share certain amenities, however, such as the spacious
floor plan and luxurious appointments. Her bed doesn’t have the
intricate netting, however, or the fanciful carvings on the
head-board.
Constance heads for
the terminal and keys in her codes. We share a tense moment, and
then she glances at me, as if in search of approval. I step up
behind her in time to see the screen flash to a new set of
options.
“Security for the
whole house uses the same central computer, which accepts the same
algorithmic sequences,” she explains.
“So what works for
the doors also works on the terminals.” Being mechanically minded,
Dina figures it out much faster. “Don’t just sit there, bounce a
message.”
“I have Chancellor
Tarn’s node address, but I require content.”
With her looking like
a vid actress, it’s harder to remember how literal she can be.
“Tell him we’re being held on Venice Minor by the Syndicate, and we
need help.”
“Can you attach a
worm to the message so he can trace the message to its origin?”
Dina asks. “That’ll help him find us faster. And bury it in the
subsystem logs if you can, so it’s not immediately noticeable if
someone is monitoring communications.”
For several tense,
nerve-wracking moments, we watch her work the terminal with all the
care of a tightrope dancer. She’s clumsy with her fingers at first,
unused to such an imperfect interface. And then columns of symbols
and numbers pour down the display panel, green tinged, yellow
tinged.
So far so good.
“Yes, yes, and done,”
Constance tells us at last. “After sending it, I altered the time
stamp to conceal it from prying eyes. If there is no secondary
screening system, our message should reach the Chancellor within
twelve hours.”
Twelve hours. But we don’t know how long it’ll take
to get somebody out here. Maybe we shouldn’t count on him. But
maybe he can spin things with the truth. I can see the talking
heads now: The New Terran ambassador has been
kidnapped. No ransom demands have been received as yet . .
.
The timing of the
door chime makes me jump, and Dina looks edgy as a chem-head in
search of her next fix. I look around for a weapon. Find nothing.
They confiscated all our hardware before we boarded, and we haven’t
seen any of it since. Jaw clenched, I take up a heavy bronze
statuette on a side table while Dina takes up position on the other
side of the door, beside the control panel.
I nod. It’s her room.
“What?” That’s
classic Dina right there, down to the irascible tone.
“Everything okay?”
Hit asks. “Can I come in?”
“Fine,” Dina answers,
unlocking the door.
The tension drains
out of me as Dina lets the pilot in. Jael strolls in behind her,
but he draws up short when he catches sight of Constance, now
sitting on the sofa. Well away from the terminal. Smart.
This should be fun.
“Well then. I had no
idea you’d made such a charming friend, or I’d have been back long
before now. How’d things go by the way?”
“We got the job
done,” Dina answers briefly. “You?”
Jael smiles. “Us,
too.”
My gaze fixes on a
small splotch of blood on the collar of his pale blue
shirt.
Though they don’t
tell us where they hid the bodies, the Syndicate is down five hired
thugs.
