+J.M.J.+
Zenon Eyes: Eyes of Truth
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
This chapter is sponsored in part by…Gatorade! I actually have a taste for this stuff (I'd better, since it's been beastly hot, and I've been hard put trying to find cool moments in which to type), only I wish they'd design the caps better, since they're hard to get off; it's not just jocks that drink Gatorade, scrawny sci-fi writers drink it too. But seriously…This chapter started out as part of Chapter III, but I divided it up to save some time and get III out to you sooner. Things start to get more exciting now, there's a little action…and a surprise cameo I never anticipated.
Disclaimer:
See Chapter I
Chapter IV: Mission
Joe and Rhiannon left the next day, Joe shaking the dust of the town from his shoes, and returned to Shohola. He moved the last of his things into her house, although he maintained the apartment at the Zipeses' house as a studio until they finished having a room on the ground floor of Rhiannon's house remodeled into a studio with a big picture window.
He completed his memoirs two months after the wedding, adding much material about Rhiannon; he insisted he had to complete some "field research" before he could do her justice in his writing. His work habits unsettled her at first. Sometimes she woke at night to find his pillow empty. She'd get up to find him in the studio, typing in the darkness, the only light in the room coming from the flatscreen of his laptop. She started to reprimand him about eyestrain, but she remembered he had night vision.
Once he finished the book, he sent it off to the publishers, first a hard copy, then the documents by email. Next he turned his spare time to painting her portrait; she expected she'd have to sit for him, but he worked steadily from memory.
"Whatever you do, don't paint me in the buff," she warned him. "Imprinting or none, I might take legal action."
He didn't, but one morning, she found, taped to the inside of a kitchen cabinet, a small pencil sketch he must have done as she slept beside him, clearly drawn for her eyes only.
The book went to press in late autumn, and about that time, the first royalty check came. Of course he deposited it in the account they both called "the Mission Fund", which he had set aside explicitly for the day he could start helping the less fortunate of his race. He knew how to be thrifty even though his needs were slight, and he did not extract a cent from her income, which amounted to slightly more than he made. She started secreting a portion of her own income, from paycheck to paycheck, into the Fund. But it soon came to light on the monthly statements, so she had to 'fess up to him.
"You would do this for my race? You would give of your own money?" he asked.
"I felt I had to do my part: we're in this together. It's gotten so I have trouble at work; every time I have a case involving a family member abusing the family's serving man or maid, I see you in that Mecha."
The book sold extremely well: the New York State Times carried it among the top ten for several months straight. And of course, all he earned from the sales went to the Fund.
The Nova Hollywood producer re-presented his offer: Joe agreed and let them buy the film rights, but Rhiannon helped him have a clause written into the contract stipulating that he had the right to see the final draft of the script.
Months passed. He got promoted to project manager. Of course some of the older members of design resented this at first, but they had to admit he created great designs. His work on the LX-35 model (better known as "Alex") and his revised version of the classic JN-8523 had earned him some repute.
The "Three Laws" bill got stuck in the byzantine workings of the legislative process: some of the older members of the House of Representatives hesitated over considering it.
And the tabloids had dug up some tidbit that tried to link Joe's name to the Congresswoman from the Camden, N.J. district, that they may have had a liaison years before. Joe wanted to lodge a complaint against the tabloid, but Rhiannon discouraged it. "Unless the story turns up in the mainstream, I wouldn't bother," she told him. "You don't want to be accused of that Orga habit known as pointless litigation."
The rumors never reached the mainstream papers, though the tabloids still tried to discredit Joe's reputation, even running ancient photos from "the Haddonfield debacle" and other related images.
And then one Saturday night a couple months after their first anniversary, as they prepared to go out to the theatre that evening, the phone rang. Rhiannon answered it before Joe could switch it off.
"Hello? Oh, hi, Lutwyn…No, we were just heading out; we had tickets…, " her face fell and took up that firm look Joe knew meant trouble. "Oh…Oh my…All right…Yes…yes, I'll tell him….Thanks, Lutwyn. I'm glad you told us about this before we went out. Bye." She slowly set the handset down on the console.
She drew a long breath and set her shoulders as she turned to him.
"The Cummins' serving man was kidnapped an hour ago," she said.
He bent his head, processing this data. "How did this happen?"
"He was trimming bushes. Three figures in camouflage came out of the woods and attacked him. Lutwyn says it might be a good idea if we stayed home."
"Perhaps we might do better to go out anyway, then if these kidnappers come this way, they will not find us at home."
"But if they see you, they might have an idea where to strike next."
"As you insist."
It turned out just as well they stayed put that night: according to the news on the radio next morning, two more Mechas were kidnapped—the radio used the word "stolen"—from their owner's yards. People were encouraged to keep their Mechas indoors and update all licenses.
"That includes you, I'm afraid," Rhiannon said. Joe's license had been conditionally transferred to her name.
"If it protects me from these mysterious miscreants, so be it," Joe replied with obvious resignation.
They stuck close to home that day. Joe double-checked the locks that night, making absolutely they were on smart.
Next morning, brought more bad reports: a nanny-Mecha had disappeared early that morning. Joe went to work as usual, but Rhiannon kept a wary eye on him as they went out. She didn't feel comfortable until they reached the safety of the Companionates complex.
That afternoon, just before quitting time, Sokhar came into Joe's office with a message. "Mr. Zipes wants to see you right away."
Joe closed the last folders on the drawing desktop and shut off the plasma display before he followed her to Lutwyn's office.
Lutwyn stood before a map of the area he had just pinned to the wall of his office; colored pins marked various sites. Joe, on studying the map, logicked these must mark the kidnapping sites.
"Two more Mechas were kidnapped on Verdant Terrace, one street away from where you live," Lutwyn said
"Does Rhiannon know of this?"
"As soon as we find and catch the culprits, she's covering the cases."
"In which case, perhaps I can offer some assistance."
Lutwyn spread his hands. "I think it would be in your best interest to lay low for awhile, until the police find out who's doing this."
Joe fixed Lutwyn with his gaze. Something in it made Lutwyn pay attention and look right at him.
"Then you would have me hide while others of my kind are endangered?"
"It's in your best interest. All signs so far point to it being a ploy to get at you. They may have kidnapped these other Mechas to make it look like simple, random kidnappings,"
Joe dropped his gaze and turned it back to the map. "Perhaps your hypothesis holds true."
"But there's only one way to find out: and that is for you to stay put here at Companionates. We can't keep tabs on you to protect you unless you take shelter in the complex."
He gazed out the window at the setting sun. He looked again at the map, at the pins, clustered mostly near the site of his home.
"No other options prove feasible. I must override my own preferences and stay here. But it must prove feasible. Have you spoken to Rhiannon?"
"I've already told her."
An odd hard edge came into Joe's voice. "In the hope that she might convince me to stay here."
"Actually, she said if you didn't stay here, she would."
"But she knows I would not go home unless she went also. She always said she enjoys, in her words 'screwing with my processors'."
Rhiannon went home long enough to get herself some necessities, then she came back to the complex. Joe suggested they spend the night in the atrium garden, but she insisted on setting up indoor camping in her office.
"It's more secure there," she insisted.
"The atrium would provide a more poetic environment," he counterposed.
"Tonight might not be a good night for us to get poetic," she returned.
He gave in at length. It didn't surprise her that he didn't go into seduction mode later, though he let her cuddle with him as she settled down for the night. She sensed he had his processors focused on something else besides her, something further away.
Once Rhiannon had fallen asleep, he sat up and watched the shadows on the wall with one eye and the movements in the window with the other.
The night passed without peril for them. But the morning news brought new accounts of more kidnappings. Three lover-Mechas, one male, two female, had disappeared in Grofton, the next town over. As the day wore on, more reports came in from other towns.
"There's practically a vacuum cleaner for Mechas out there," Lutwyn said, adding more pins to the map.
Joe watched him with a silence at once concerned and saddened.
Night came; Rhiannon set up her "home away from home" in her office. For some reason, Joe sat close to the window, watching the world outside. At first she thought it was cabin fever, but then she realized his eyes were tracking the delivery trucks coming and going, carrying the finished products.
The finished products…
A logic string started to form in his processors.
He too had been a finished product sixty years before. He had a dim memory of a room with white walls and a skylight, flashes of light and shadow after that played over his visual matrix before the recall grew more continuous: Rouge City, his trials at "Here Kitty, Kitty", his first client a virgin herself…
A possibility presented itself: what of the transports? He turned to Rhiannon.
"Ree, do you know if Lutwyn has left the building?"
She had brought with her a wide air mattress which she arranged on the floor. "Why, do you need to speak to him?"
"It is of utmost importance."
She got up and called Lutwyn's office on the in house line, but no one answered. And since Sina's birth, Lutwyn had gotten a new cellphone, to which no one had the number.
"You'll have to call him at home," she said.
The phone rang insistently when Lutwyn got in the front door. He picked it up.
"Hello?"
"Lutwyn, it is Joe."
"Something come up?"
"Some event may be about to come up. Have you given consideration to the delivery transports commencing their deliveries of the finished work?"
"So what are you suggesting?"
"These transports are vulnerable to attack by these miscreants. I suggest you send them by air and so reduce the risk of any unwonted incidents."
"It's a little late for the ones that just went out, and there's a tropical storm watch in effect for the Eastern Seaboard. I'd do something about tomorrow's shipments, but my hands are tied. I gotta run, now: Narsie's got supper on the table, so I better get going while it's still warm. I'll talk to you in the morning."
"And yet by that time the inevitable may have come to pass—" The line cut out. Joe let out a harassed sound like a rough sigh and removed his hand from the transmitter on the handset.
"He wouldn't listen?" Rhiannon asked, lighting some candles and switching out the room lights.
"He would not let me come to the nexus of my argument," he replied. "Would that I could feel impatience with him, I would do so."
"It sounded like you already are." She sat on the air mattress and took the pins out of her hair. "Come on, I've decided to have my dessert before my supper."
"Oh no, not until you have eaten all your vegetables and cleaned your plate."
"Hey, where'd you learn that? You sounded for real."
"Lutwyn's father said that to him many times when he was young."
She played along. She screwed up her face and let out a little girlish whine.
"If you must put it that way, perhaps a taste will stay you up till later." He lowered himself to the floor and drew close to her.
The portable microwave she'd set up on a box in one corner chimed. She broke away from him long enough to take out her supper and eat it.
For the first time since his inception, his heart—if he had one—barely took part in an act of love, though he let her have her way with him to the utmost in all other respects.
Afterward, as she lay blissfully asleep, he sat away from her at almost an allergic distance. An idea had emerged in his processors and he had to follow all the logical possibilities and outcomes.
In the morning, Rhiannon went home to spruce up and get some extra supplies for that night. Joe went to Lutwyn's office to await the division director's arrival.
Lutwyn felt not the least bit surprised when he found Joe sitting in his office when he arrived.
"I'd like to start by apologizing to you for not hearing you out last night," Lutwyn said. He tossed some printouts onto the desktop for Joe's perusal. "Companionates Delivery Trucks Vandalized", read one headline; "Shohola Mecha-Nappers Held Responsible for Delivery Truck Heist", read another.
"Do you have second sight?" Lutwyn asked.
"No, I do not. Such powers lie in the realm of the supernatural, and I barely approach the natural, much less that which may lie beyond it."
"What do you propose to put a stop to this? You sounded like you were on to something else."
"I ought first to discuss this proposal with Rhiannon, and yet perhaps it is an area which I cannot discuss with her. I propose to aid the police in their efforts to halt this crime wave by setting a snare for the miscreant, with myself as their bait."
"You realize the risk involved. You could be damaged or destroyed."
"I have weighed all the possibilities. Some means of backing up my memory and programming could be utilized, with a discreet transmitter communicating with the storage device to activate it in case of necessity, to shift my awareness before the system fails. Repair or reconstruction could then be undertaken as required. And, at the same time, a tracking device could be installed to pinpoint my movements and thus the location of these miscreants' den of concealment."
"You're certainly thorough with your plans; I guess that's what comes of having a logical mind," Lutwyn said. "I'll contact the police; they've been trying to find some way to lure them out into the open, but your idea is probably the most effective. We'll be hitting them right at the root."
Lutwyn cancelled the day's appointments and called programming to see if they had a mainframe to spare, which they did. Joe spent the morning having his essence backed up. With the help of the police, Lutwyn obtained a tiny GPS device, which Galloway carefully installed under the dermis of Joe's right shoulder. He also connected a cellular link to the transmitter in Joe's system, which would allow him to communicate with the police without having to speak out loud and give himself away.
Sokhar got wind of what was afoot; she went to Rhiannon's office.
As Galloway tested the cellular link to Joe's system, the door to the workroom banged open, Rhiannon strode into the room, her amber eyes flashing.
"What is going on?!" she demanded. "Why wasn't I informed about this?"
"Ree, it may be the only way we can crack this string of kidnappings," Galloway argued.
"Where's Joe?"
"He's in the next room."
"Dearest?" asked a soft voice over the speakerphone on the worktable.
She turned to the phone. "Joe, is that you?"
"Yes, it is I."
"What's going on?"
"This forms part of a course of action I have formulated in order to help the police capture the miscreants responsible for the recent crime wave."
"So what are you doing?"
"I proposed to offer myself as bait, using these communication devices and so aid the police in disclosing the hiding place of the miscreants."
"You're crazy."
"Having no brain of flesh, I cannot endure that misfortune."
"Well then, you're malfunctioning. You'll get yourself killed.
"We have taken the precautions necessary in case my external self should suffer destruction."
She turned to Galloway. "Is this so?"
"I'll show you the mainframe," Galloway said.
"Mainframe?" She turned back to the phone. "Joe, can I say something?"
"You may say anything you need to speak."
"I don't know if this is the most brilliant, brave thing you've ever attempted, or the stupidest stunt I've ever seen anyone try and pull off. I just don't want to see you get killed."
"That makes two of us."
"When are you going out to do this?"
"We launch the endeavor tonight."
"With that storm coming?"
"We felt it could not wait, after the hijacking of the delivery trucks, the police willing accepted any course of action that seemed feasible."
"Just let me see you before you go out."
"By all means, I shall." The line cut out.
The door of a storage room off the workroom opened and Joe emerged. Rhiannon approached him, incredulous at first, but his face and movements seemed normal enough. She pulled him to her and held him.
She held him away from her. "You never could make a simple gesture."
"Simplicity ceased to have place in this case; we needed to think as carefully, if not moreso than our enemies, who have now shifted form the hunters to the hunted."
Of course he would think of this kind of plan. When he was made new, he had made himself vulnerable to all manner of customers, offering himself as both pursuer and pursued, switching roles as they warmed to his charms.
She kissed his cheek, holding his head on her shoulder. "We have time before you have to go out there," she murmured.
"You have an hour; we gotta get the last touches ready," Galloway said. He looked around. "I guess I'll leave you two alone. But remember: the coach changed into a pumpkin in an hour."
"We shall take only the necessary time needed," Joe said over Rhiannon's shoulder.
Galloway went out, shutting the door behind him with discretion.
At six that evening, the police set up their communications site in the rear parking lot of the Companionates complex. An unmarked cruiser stood waiting at the opening of the truck tunnel under the building. The sun set a brilliant, almost sultry red, but sulphurous clouds had quickly hidden it from view.
Lutwyn waited near the cruiser with plainclothesmen assigned to the task.
"It's awfully generous of you to loan one of your Mechas as bait to catch these perps, Mr. Zipes," one of them said.
"Don't compliment me, say that to the Mecha who devised this whole scheme and put his own function on the line," Lutwyn said.
A moment later, three figures walked out of the shadowy tunnel; two of them, a tall, well-built but slender woman and a slender, graceful young man of the same height walked hand in hand, with the third, a lanky man in coveralls, at their side. The couple paused and embraced tenderly, then the man separated from the woman and emerged from the shadows with a swinging swagger.
Joe had set aside his mildly conservative suit and donned the shimmering frock coat of the old days, when he was made new. He'd even had Rhiannon bring up the medallion pager which now hung swinging from his neck at every step and he'd changed his hair color to a medium blond.
The plainclothesmen approached him. Joe eyed them hesitantly—old memories—and let them escort him to the cruiser.
"Is the line open?" Lutwyn asked.
"It is open for transmission," Joe replied.
Lutwyn reached into his coat pocket and drew out Galloway's cellphone, which he handed to the police captain in charge who came up beside him.
"Are we ready for this?"
Joe glanced back to the tunnel and looked back to Lutwyn. "I am. In case of a fatal error, I have entrusted Rhiannon into Galloway's care."
The plainclothesmen helped him into the rear of the cruiser. Lutwyn watched it drive down the access road to the main road. Then, with Rhiannon, he turned away and went to the mobile unit van.
A plasma screen on one wall inside showed a map of the area. A small green blip on the screen showed Joe's exact location.
Rhiannon took a phone from her pocket and dialed. After a moment, she said, "Avalona Westby, Moonlighter Motel, Room 24."
"What's this?" Lutwyn asked.
"Bogus client, so 'the miscreants' won't suspect he's a plant," she said. "And to put off any females who may try to catch his attention."
"He figured it out to the last detail," Lutwyn said.
"Actually, this was my idea," she said.
"Trying to keep him faithful, eh?"
"He was glad I thought of it."
The blip stopped moving for a moment, then it started moving again, much slower than before, heading into the heart of the area where most of the kidnappings and the hijacking had occurred.
"Hey, Joe, you see anything suspicious?" Lutwyn asked.
A pause. "Nothing has presented itself yet," Joe's voice replied from the speakerphone.
"They might not even bite tonight, with the storm coming," the captain said.
The blip traveled slowly, circling the perpetrators' territory. They heard nothing for several minutes.
"Something has manifested," the calm voice on the phone said.
"What is it? What's your location?" the captain asked.
"At Broadway and Warson Street, a gray vancruiser decelerated before it passed by me; license plate number E-76-932."
A few minutes later, "The same vancruiser has passed by me a second time."
"Whatever you do, Joe, don't run unless you have to," Lutwyn said. "They're sending unmarked vehicles into the area.
"As your require."
Another five minutes passed. The blip on the screen stopped moving.
"You can close in now," said Joe's voice, a note of fear rippling the calm.
Joe had started down a side street to decoy the vancruiser, but it suddenly whipped out from a cross-alleyway and blocked his path. The headlights blazed, half-blinding him for a split second. He started to step back, out of the way, but something large and round attached to the front end reared up at him. A tractor magnet. If he moved a little sooner, he might have escaped the pull, but his pager swung up straight toward it. The pull attracted the steel armatures in his torso like pins. Feet scraping the ground, he felt the magnetic force drag him against the magnet.
"What have we got there?" a young man's voice said, behind the lights and the magnet, as the tractor swung up over the hood of the cruiser, taking Joe with it.
"Looks like an old-style lover-Mecha," said an older man's voice. "Well, we got the right place to cool off this hot hunk of metal." The occupants of the van, Joe thought he saw a third person behind the two in the front, cackled like hyenas.
The cruiser sped off into the night. The wind whipped over Joe's back as he lay sprawled prone across the magnet. He hadn't felt this since the day of his capture in Manhattan, only then the police had hauled him into the cargo bay of the transport and. Now he lay exposed to the mercy of speed and gravity.
He didn't put much stock in prayer, but he'd heard Rhiannon murmur a few words to the One Who made her, when she had an especially hard case.
His voice formed few words over the rush of wind and the engine motors.
"Creator of man, if You are there, should I suffer destruction, let it bring sanctuary to the less fortunate Mechas."
The Orgas in the van couldn't hear his voice, but Rhiannon, on the other end of the line, had heard these words. She prayed with him. Take him if You must, Lord, but don't let it go to waste. Bring him back, but only if his task is not complete.
The police units followed the vancruiser at a discrete distance; the GPS made the van a sitting duck on the scanners. No need for a high speed chase unless the miscreants got wind of them.
The van turned down a dirt road into the forest on the edge of town. A pile of brush blocked the path. The van stopped in front of it.
"Can't we just push it off the road this time?" the teenage voice asked.
"Not with the specimen on the magnet; I won't have him knocked off," the older man's voice said.
"Aw, I musta moved it twenty times today."
"Well, make this the twenty-first. It's all part of earning your keep, McAfee."
A tall, heavy-set kid in his late teens got out of the driver's side, lumbered around the front of the van and moved the brush out of the way. He got back into the van, but not before stopping to spit at Joe. The van rolled forward and stopped, clear of where the brush had lain. The kid got out again and went behind the van, apparently to push back the brush.
They pulled into a muddy circular yard surrounded by ruinous buildings: a charred building that might have been a farmhouse, a stone barn, and a couple battered trailers. The magnet tilted down perpendicular to the front end of the van. The power cut out; Joe slid to the ground, right into a mud puddle, where he lay on his back. He let out a yelp of pain, but silenced it.
"Aw, that li'l bump scare hurtcha, fiberhead?" the teenager, McAfee, said, as he got out. Two other figures climbed down from the van, a short, lean person of indeterminate gender—Joe guessed it might be a woman—and a smaller man with a painfully thin torso, leaning on a stick. He approached Joe and prodded him with the end of the stick.
"Looks like a Companionates model to me; Slinger, lift him up," the small man said.
The mannish woman lifted Joe by the scruff of his neck. The small man shone a light into his face.
"Hey, looks like that smart-a—Mecha with the last name, the one over on Mahogany Lane, the one who's shacked with the black chick, 'cept his hair's the wrong color." McAfee said. He grabbed Joe by the top of the head and tried to waggle it from side to side. "C'mon, fiberbutt, what's your default color?" Joe stared hard at the young jerk as soon as he let go. "What are you looking at, huh? What, is yer voicebox busted or something?"
"McAfee, that's enough. Let's get him inside before the rain comes back," the small man ordered.
"Weather reports say that storm's turned into a hurricane," Slinger said. She and McAfee hauled Joe across the yard, toward the stone barn.
"What a time for that, right when I've got enough to make a shipment. No power, no tools, no work gets done," the small man growled.
"Y' know, I hate to disappoint you, Swint, but I don't think this mech is the Masters idiot. I'd think he'd put up a lot more fight. I mean, he had that big talk las' year about how Mechas should be allowed to defend themselves—" McAfee started.
"He could just be biding his time," the small man, Swint, interrupted.
Swint, clearly the boss of the other two, approached the side of the stone barn and opened a trapdoor in the wall.
McAfee and Slinger lifted Joe by the nape of his neck and his ankles. They shoved him in through the trap door.
He clattered, feet first, down a chute. He gathered himself as best as he could as he dropped free of the end, and landed on his back. He felt a cloud of dust rise under him. He lay in darkness. He lay still to continue the illusion of Mecha passivity. He'd heard motors drawing near as they had dropped him through the chute.
Lights came on. He sat up slowly.
Metallic figures stood along the walls of the room, some ancient metal-body droids, others looked like thin, skeletal figures with blank, stamped metal faces.
No, not stamped metal…
The figures nearest to him lacked faceplates and dermis, but they still bore the tiny pulleys and linkage that opened and closed the dermis plates. Other than that, they stood whole.
"Joe, where are you now?"
"The chute outletted in a cellar of some kind. The drop extended some twenty feet at a forty-five degree angle, which lead me to deduce this chamber is underground."
"Are you alone?"
A long silence, then, "No. Others are here, other Mecha. Oh no."
"What?"
A longer pause, "Some are clearly recent models, yet they lack dermis."
"We're closing in, Joe; we're getting you out."
Something let out a small choked sound at the back of the chamber. Joe stood up and turned toward it. Was that a rodent or something larger? Was it even an animal?
His eyes scanned behind the damaged Mechas. Something had moved back there.
"Who is there?" he asked, not too loudly.
The creature moved again.
"I shall not harm you."
He glimpse Caucasian flesh-tint amidst the greys and iron colors of the Mechas. His eyes followed it as the spot moved.
A small figure. A child? What was a child doing among all these derelict Mechas?
For a moment, old images played across his visual matrix, a boy who wasn't a boy amongst shattered, silvery forms in a moonlit grove, standing in a heap of broken Mecha parts.
"David?" he asked.
A door opened at the other end of the room. He turned toward the sound, and backed toward the derelicts. The softer sound scuttled back and forth. Something soft bumped against his legs. A small, soft hand put itself into his. He looked down.
He thought for a moment his fall down the chute had knocked something loose in his processor. For an instant, he thought his recall had continued, as indeed it had. He recalled the moment in the cage at the Flesh Fair, when David took his hand and so started the chain of events that saved his brain…
No, this little one looked utterly different. The clothes on him hung torn and grimy with neglect. Rents in the child's dermis showed the silver infrastructure underneath.
Three figures moved into the circle of light cast by the bulb overhead.
"Hey, do they call you Joe?" asked the small man called Swint. Joe got a good look at him. He was a thin, wiry man with a dense shock of dark brown hair flecked with gray. He wore a mechanic's coverall over his bony frame. Slinger and McAfee came in behind him; Slinger pushed a cart laden with equipment in boxes, while McAfee trundled what looked like a surgical table.
"What matters it to you what name I have?" Joe replied.
"I'd just like to know if I really have the pleasure of meeting the infamous, the notorious Joe Masters for the first time. Maybe the last time if you don't stop looking at me like that, mech."
"Should it matter to you? I am but one of a dozen, a million other Mechas you dismantle like so much broken furniture."
Slinger started opening boxes, laying out various little saws and other tools on trays.
"Are you talking like this to try and make me feel sorry for you so I'll let up on you freakin' fiberheads? Or are doing the Mecha equivalent of scared s--- so you're babbling like a nut? 'Cause if you are, it ain't gonna work. Anything you say to me is just so many vibrations from your voice synthesizer."
The David pulled itself closer behind Joe, clearly trying to make itself as small as possible. McAfee's small eyes darted after this movement.
"Hey, Swint, he's got company."
Swint stepped closer. Joe held David's other hand behind him. Swint looked over Joe's shoulder. The David pressed its face into Joe's back. Why wasn't it crying for safety?
"Aw, you found yourself a little friend, eh? You got something for these David units. Well, so do I."
A metal canister banged down through the chute and hit the floor. It broke open and released a thick cloud of white smoke.
"D--- it! Tear gas!" Slinger screamed. She and McAfee fled out the door.
Swint glared at Joe through the boiling cloud. "You knew! You set me up!"
"You set yourself up," Joe replied.
Swint tried to grab the David, but the smaller Mecha clung to Joe like a barnacle to a rock.
Three armed men with dust masks stormed into the room.
"Let go of that Mecha, put your hands behind your head and come out now!" the leader ordered.
They dragged Swint out.
Rhiannon, Lutwyn, and Galloway sat in the back of a cruiser, watching the doors of the stone barn. At length, the doors opened and the tactical unit emerged, leading out three figures whom they herded into the back of a waiting van.
"Where's Joe?" Rhiannon said, starting to climb out of the cruiser.
Lutwyn caught her arm. "Look."
She looked up to see Joe emerge from the barn, carrying something wrapped in his coat. He walked through the maze of cruisers, vans and transports, his eyes scanning each vehicle.
He came up to the cruiser where they sat.
"Dearest, you said you could never have a child?" he asked, his eye on Rhiannon. He knelt at her feet and opened the bundle.
He uncovered what at first glance looked like a ten-year-old boy. But the skin had too synthetic a sheen and his large blue eyes did not blink.
"Golly, a David model! I haven't seen one of these in years," Galloway said.
"He might belong to someone else," Lutwyn said "We'll have to trace his serial number, see if his owner is looking for him."
"This isn't the David, is it? The one you knew?" Rhiannon asked, looking from the little one to Joe's face.
"I doubt that he is."
"How many Mechas did you see in there?" Lutwyn asked.
"I saw possibly fifteen in the chamber which I descended into. But that structure could hold a hundred, perhaps hundreds."
"The police will have their work cut out for them, and they'll hafta work fast, with the storm coming."
Joe glanced up at the sky. "Perhaps I have already had a storm break over me."
"Can we go home now?" Rhiannon asked. "I just don't want to spend another night of indoor camping."
"You sense any malfunctions, Joe?" Galloway asked, taking a small diagnostic scanner from his belt.
"I do not sense any, but the worst malfunctions often do not make their presence known until it is too late."
Galloway passed the scanner over Joe. Nothing came up. "Clear as a bell. But, I hate to break this to you, we'll have to keep Junior here and take him in for a check-up." Galloway reached down to David. The small Mecha shrank against Joe. "I'm not gonna hurt you, little guy; we're just gonna take you to a nice, safe place where you can get your boo-boos mended." The little one still clung to Joe's arm.
"He likes you," Rhiannon observed. She got down to his level. "Hello. Can you talk?" The little Mecha huddled closer to Joe, looking up at her with his face twisted with fear. "Hey, don't be scared; I just want to get to know you, 'cause you're new to me."
"Something must be wrong with his verbal communicator; he'd be whining with fright after all this stuff going on," Galloway said.
Although it took not a little effort to pry David from Joe, Galloway finally separated them and put the little one with the other salvaged Mechas to be transported back to Companionates. Galloway lingered with the police, helping them search the building. At first they tried to send him back, but he insisted. He was a tech at Companionates; he knew how to handle battered Mechas…
The police brought Lutwyn, Rhiannon and Joe to the Zipeses' house; there might still be trouble, so safety in numbers was a good course of action. Lutwyn insisted that the Masterses stay with his family.
"We're on higher ground, and the wind breaks are better."
Narsie met them at the door, little Sina on her arm.
"Did you catch those kidnappers?" Narsie asked.
"With my aid, the police have captured and incarcerated the miscreants," Joe said, with barely veiled pride.
"Oh, thank goodness! And you got back in one piece," Narsie cried, hugging him around the neck with one arm. Sina giggled and grabbed at the pager around Joe's neck.
"And you, young lady, seem delighted to see me in one piece," Joe added to Sina. "But you are much too young for the attentions of something like me." Sina pretended to hide her eyes in her mother's shoulder.
"Besides, he's mine," Rhiannon said.
"What happened to you? You're a mess," Narsie said, dusting at Joe's sleeve.
"Aiding the down-trodden often entails getting down to their level," he said. "Which means getting down into the dust and the mud through which they have been dragged."
"You go upstairs to the guest bathroom and clean up," Narsie ordered. "I'll wash your things."
Rhiannon got him into the bathtub and helped him scrub down, no easy matter, since the relief of capturing the miscreants seemed to have unlocked his pursuit centers: he kept trying to half gently, half-teasingly pull her into the tub. She had some concern that the dust might have got into the seams of his dermis, but he washed up as clean as a regular human.
Narsie came up after a few minutes to collect Joe's things. Rhiannon passed them around the edge of the half-closed door. Narsie passed in a flannel shirt and a pair of acid-washed jeans.
"They'll be a little shirt, but they'll fit the other way easily," she said.
Lutwyn came back from getting a few much-needed supplies around midnight—including several cans of paint he had ordered a few days before, since he and Galloway were planning to weather the storm by painting the basement walls. Narsie had put Sina to bed long before, but she waited up with Rhiannon and Joe in the living room.
The door opened and a gust of wind rushed in, bringing with it a small cloud of leaves as Lutwyn entered.
"You're not gonna believe what the National Weather Bureau is calling this hurricane," he said.
"What name have they rendered to it?" Joe asked.
"Joe. They're calling it Hurricane Joe."
Rhiannon tried not to laugh out loud. "That's a good name for it." She poked Joe gently as she said this. "He's a hurricane himself."
"My processors often are a hurricane of ideas," Joe said.
"Well, last I heard, the police found about fifty-five Mechas in various states of disrepair throughout the barn. He must have caught the derelicts in the woods. A lot of them don't match any recent missing Mecha reports, thought they might find matches for some of them if the police dig back into older cases."
"I would think they'd be hard to match without the skin on them," Rhiannon said.
"They'll scan the memory banks to make positive ID's; someone like Galloway could help. That creep, whoever he is, has some fetish for flaying Mechas."
Joe's hands curled into fists. "So he would prey upon the most defenseless, the abandoned ones."
"He's getting what's coming to him," Lutwyn said. "Hard part is, this storm is holding them up."
"What of the little one?"
"It's hard to say who he belongs to, but they'll check all the missing Mecha reports nationwide, see who's missing a David." He looked from Joe's face to Rhiannon's; they both bore looks of hopeful expectation mixed with concern, but Rhiannon's bore a look of something else.
"We'll take this up after the storm passes."
Through the night, the wind rose and increased in power. The walls of the house vibrated, but it stood firm. Leaves and twigs torn loose from the trees lashed against the windows with the torrents of rain.
Rhiannon lay huddled up to Joe in the guest bed. He held her shelteringly.
"The storm makes you fearful?" he asked.
"We never got them in Missouri. Maybe tropical storms, but nothing like this." She shrank even closer to him; the wind screeched outside the window.
"Were you to come any closer, our molecules would need to mingle in order for us to occupy the same space."
"Is that a polite way of saying I'm jostling you?"
"Only a little."
He listened to her breathing and felt her heart beating against his chest, listened to the storm shrieking outside and felt the air pressure changing as the gale wind battered at the house, but could not conquer it. He raised his head.
"Do you hear it?" he asked.
"Hear what?" she mumbled.
"The wind. It acts as a living metaphor; the winds of change shall blow across the land, across the world. This night's events are but the first wave that shall sweep across the landscape of humanity, breaking down the barriers that separate both species and impede the flow of brotherly love between our races.
Rhiannon had hardly heard these words; her relaxed breathing told him she had fallen asleep.
He watched the black sky pale to a leaden gray. He heard movement below; he heard Sina's squeaks and Lutwyn and Narsie's voices. He got up carefully so as not to awaken Rhiannon, dressed and headed downstairs. He contemplated awakening Rhiannon, but decided against it. She had had a long night and the storm had kept her from falling asleep.
Galloway had come to the house and now sat with the Zipeses in their kitchen, drinking coffee by battery lantern light.
"How are you holding up, Joe? The storm bothering you?" Galloway asked.
"It bothers me not at all, rather it inspires me and brings me hope."
"How's that?" Lutwyn asked, holding Sina on his lap.
"Some storms shall strike us as we pursue the mission, but we shall stand firm, while the wind blows away those who would impede our progress."
"So how do you propose to solve this problem?" Galloway said.
"In accord with First Law and as implied in Third Law, I propose that we program and-or train new Mechas to defend themselves in cases of necessity. At present, the most they can do is run from their attackers. But what of moments when the enemy corners the Mecha, or has them held in bondage? What then?"
"That's a good idea, but there's one problem: with all the animus against Mechas that lingers to this day, you'd have a hard time convincing a lot of people that a Mecha should defend itself."
Joe looked at him with mild condescension. "Should you not rather say 'themselves'?"
"Whoops, sorry, Joe. I should know better."
"I think it's a great idea: we could optimize some for Tae Kwon Do," Galloway said. Narsie giggled. "No, I'm serious. Mechas would make great martial artists. You can take out an attacker with a minimal amount of force. And you already have the centering abilities built into you. Plus, your emotions are more stable than ours and they don't screw up your logic so much. All in all, a Mecha trained in martial arts could be invincible against an attacker."
"That's just the problem: say you have a malfunctioning imprinted Mecha that was optimized for self-defense. What would happen then?" Narsie asked.
"Do I detect a Frankenstein complex?" Lutwyn asked.
"It requires more thought and consideration than first impression suggests," Joe said. "But it gives my mind another challenge."
Later, Lutwyn and Galloway set to work painting the walls of the basement. Rhiannon and Narsie sat in the living room playing with Sina. Joe sat watching the storm rage from the safety of the window embrasure.
Sina toddled over to where he sat on the window seat and tried to climb up to him. He looked down to her.
"Shall I assist you, Mademoiselle Sina?" he asked. Sina smiled broadly, showing her few pearly teeth, and held up her little arms to him. He leaned down to her and lifted her up into his lap.
The wind wailed outside at that moment. Sina whimpered, but Joe held her protectingly. She nestled close to him and reached up to touch his face.
She looked outside and pointed up.
"Boody," she said.
"Where do you see a bird?" he asked, looking up, following her hand.
Bedraggled bird tails stuck out above the window frame where some sparrows had clearly taken refuge from the wind and the rain.
"So the little birds have found a safe place to hide from all the scary wind and wet rain," he said.
Refuge…sanctuary…
A logic string started to form in his processor. He set Sina down on the floor and patted her head before sending her back to Rhiannon and Narsie. He got up and headed for the stairs.
"Pardon my quitting your presence, my fair ladies, but inspiration has come upon me," he said, pausing before ascending.
Sina gazed up after Joe, her lower lip stuck out slightly.
"What? You wanted Uncle Joe to stay with you?" Narsie asked her daughter.
"He looked so natural with her," Rhiannon observed.
"Sometime I think she relates better to him than to her own kind; she's a very different child."
"She's herself. Sometimes I feel like I relate better to Mechas than to most Orgas. Maybe she'll grow up to be a roboticist."
"That's what Lutwyn says and hopes, I might add. I say she can be what ever she wants to be."
"If she decides to go into robotics, she certainly has the pedigree for it: her grandfather and her father working for Companionates, and with the best Mecha designer and the first Mecha-Orga relations advocate for godparents."
Later, when Sina was down for her nap, Rhiannon went upstairs to check on Joe. She found him sitting cross-legged on the bed, writing on a datascriber.
"What's in your processor now?" she asked.
"Perhaps one key to resolving the divide lies in establishing a sanctuary for abused and damaged Mechas," he said.
"I've thought of that, but the problem would be finding the funding."
"Were we to receive the funding to establish such a place, we could perhaps place within each new Mecha we produce a homing device that would activate should said Mecha be abandoned or abused.
"It might teach abusive owners to treat their Mechas better," she said. "And it would prevent the people like Martin Swinton from taking advantage of abandoned Mechas."
He looked at her. "Martin Swinton…that is the name of the man the police arrested last night?"
"Yes, they ID'ed him this morning."
Joe shook his head as if to clear it. "This surname I have heard elsewhere, but where have I encountered it?"
"It isn't a particularly common name."
She could almost hear his processors scrabbling to retrieve a piece of data. His body seemed to stiffen as he looked up.
"Swinton. That was the name of David's family."
"Which David? The one you met in Haddonfield?
"Yes, that David."
"Oh my, I wonder if he's related to them."
"There is but one way to find out, and that is to ask him."
"You'll have to wait for that, with this storm."
He gazed out the window at the lashing branches. For an instant, he looked away without looking at her. His hand took hers almost on impulse.
"It is one encounter I could fear."
The storm passed. To Joe's eyes the sky seemed scoured and purged, a brighter shade of blue, perhaps that a face and a name had been given to the terror that had haunted the shadows. But his motivators balked at the prospect of facing that face once more.
Rhiannon urged him to go to the Shohola jail before the police moved Swinton to the county prison following the indictment. She was working with the D.A.'s office on this case, so she knew all the ins and outs.
"It might be good healing for the both of you, if you spoke to one another one on one," she said over her supper that evening, a week after the arrest.
Joe looked away. "Something inside me does not want me to face him. he would have destroyed me, but for the fact that the police hovered at my back, waiting to close in upon him. Impulses flood my conductors."
"You're afraid."
He looked at her. "I know that this which I sense is fear. I have tried to quell these sensations, but they refuse to obey my processors."
"The only way to stop them is to face the cause of your fear. He can't hurt you now."
Later that evening, Swinton lay on the cot in his cell, reading a newspaper.
The guard walked into the cellblock. "Hey, Swinton, you got a visitor."
"Not McMurtry the quack again?"
"No, he says his name's Masters."
"Okay, I'll see him," Swinton muttered.
The guard unlocked the cell door and let him out. Another guard flanked him as they led him out to the visitation room.
The room stood empty except for a table and two chairs under a caged ceiling light. A tall, slim man occupied the further chair, his face turned away. In his gray pinstripe suit, he looked almost like a lawyer, but something about the cut looked too stylish, unless he was one of these flashy types.
His hands lay folded on the edge of the table, graceful hands, maybe a pianist's or an artist's hands, adorned only with a wide platinum wedding band and a silver ring set with an onyx on the pinky of the right hand.
The flesh looked too glossy, unless he was sweating. No, he sat too much at ease, gracefully, his posture perfect.
No.
Masters…
Not that Masters.
"You got fifteen minutes, Mr. Masters," the guard announced.
Swinton sank onto the empty chair, facing the stranger across the tabletop.
Masters turned toward him: the too-neat hair texture, the over-glossiness of the skin, the steadiness of the cool gaze that met his.
It was that Masters.
Swinton looked scrawnier than he had the first time Joe had laid eyes on him, but the effect might have resulted from the baggy gray jumpsuit that hung from his skinny shoulders.
"We may know more about each other than we both expect," Joe said. "Your father was Henry Swinton, a marketing director for Cybertronics of New Jersey, your mother was named Monica. You had, for a brief time, a younger brother, a Mecha child called David."
"Yeah, that's all true. But what does it matter to you, machine?"
"I want to know for my own sake and the sake of others like me: why do you render harm to us?"
"It's none of your d----d business."
"It is everybody's business. You damaged property, if not individuals, to call us by the least terms."
"Y' know, I've read your Three Laws, and let me tell you one thing about them." He paused as if for effect.
"You were saying?"
"It's the stupidest piece of s--- I ever read."
"You are entitled to you opinion, but there is a limit to where you may exert it. Why do you act so harshly toward my race?"
"I'm just trying to protect the existence of my race against the inroads your kind has made."
"You have no reason for such actions: we mean you no harm. Your intention does not justify the means."
"Don't tell me what to do, machine. You're gonna wish you didn't start all this rights and laws nonsense." He looked away. "Guard!"
The guard reentered and led Swint out of the room. Joe got up and went out. The warden met him in the front office.
"He made himself very uncooperative," Joe reported.
"He's been like that to everyone, lawyers, psychologists, you name it," the warden said. "Don't feel like he's singling you out, Masters."
"He has singled me out on account of my nature. He has chosen one course of action, would that he chooses another course."
He went out to the parking lot, where Rhiannon waited for him in her cruiser. She opened the passenger side door; he climbed in and sank into the seat.
"How'd it go?"
"He did not disclose half of the reasons for his actions," Joe said. He looked at her. "And yet, he disclosed who he is: he is the son of Monica Swinton, David's mommy."
"Good grief!" she murmured. "That explains all this."
"How does it explain his actions?"
"He's probably sore at Mechas because of David. If I understand the story, he probably got jealous of David, but when Monica discarded him, he probably got even more sore seeing his mother's grief."
"And I did not ease the burden of her grief."
"Why?"
"Monica sent for me to speak to me about David, since I had seen him last. She wept inconsolably, so I dared to console her in the only way I knew best at the time. It only threw salt on the wounds of her heart. I had not known emotion for very long, so I could not know then the implications of my actions."
"We all do dumb things when we're young," she said. She reached over and stroked his shoulder. "Don't feel bad. He's wrapped up in his own bundle if complaints. Only he can unwrap himself, if he ever wants to."
"It is such people of his line of thought who hinder the progress of the mission I have chosen." He looked into her face. "But they shall lose, for they shall never enjoy the peace that shall come when it succeeds."
"If it succeeds."
He clasped her hand. "You do me much good. You keep my idealism grounded in reality."
"If I didn't, your ideas wouldn't have the power to get off the ground."
"I do not follow…" Grounded. He smiled and laughed lightly at her word play as he reached over and hugged her.
Toward the end of a workday a month later, Galloway came up to Joe's office.
"What brings you up here to design?" Joe asked, looking up from the final design of a housemaid before sending the computer model up to construction.
"I haven't worked out all the bugs in our David, but the licensing info on him just came in," Galloway reported.
"And to whom does he rightly belong?"
"He's a discard like we suspected. A couple in Camden adopted him, but for some reason, the husband just left him in a park. Swinton swiped him and brought him this way. This all happened about seven months ago. I've been trying to contact the couple, but they haven't returned any of my calls, emails, smoke signals."
"And what then do you conclude?"
"Finder's keepers: he's yours, you and Rhiannon."
Joe's eyes seemed to grow misty. "She who could not have a child shall still enjoy motherhood through me."
"It'll be a long while before you can take him home; I still gotta figure out why he won't talk."
"It takes nine months of expectation for a child to be born; in patience we shall anticipate his repair."
To be continued…
Literary Easter Eggs:
"verbal communicator"—I meant the David in this chapter to be sort of a throw-back to the David of the Brian Aldiss short-story (actually more like a character sketch) "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" (The basis of "A.I.", along with its companion stories "Supertoys Last All Winter Long" and "Supertoys Last All Season"), who also has this problem. [Warning to Joe's Coterie of Satisfied Customers: one small problem with these stories: our green-eyed love machine is nowhere to be seen; Hey, Joe, where'd yah go?]
Painting during a hurricane—during the last hurricane that blew through my area, Hurricane Bob, 1990, I heard one story on the radio about some people keeping busy during the hurricane by painting the inside of their house. I've heard about people doing the same during snowstorms.
Birds above the window—during the same hurricane, a small flock of bedraggled sparrows found refuge on top of the wide frames around the outsides of our windows, under the eaves of our house. They stayed there until the storm passed the next day.