+J.M.J.+
Zenon Eyes: Eyes of Truth
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
This is probably going to be the hardest chapter of this story for you to read, and it was just as hard for me to write, since it contains a major character death (sort of). Brace yourselves…
Disclaimer:
See Chapter I
Chapter XI: Sacrifice
Joe kept a close watch on the news pages on the 'Net, watching for any news on the escapees. Hamish filled them in on the search efforts every day.
However, David didn't take too well to staying inside all the time.
"Why can't I go out?" he asked Rhiannon on the third morning since the escape.
She had to tell him the truth in a way that wouldn't confuse or disturb him. "Because your sick mommy ran away from the place she had gone to get better," she said, putting her hands on his shoulders and guiding him away from the window where he stood.
"But Alex went out," he said, without whining, just a desire to understand.
"Alex is much bigger than you and he was going to Pittsburgh anyway," she said. "Why don't you and Andy play upstairs in your room."
"Okay," he said, going upstairs.
Joe decided against any their going on any outings until the escapees were captured.
That evening, he lay reclining on the sofa, trying to read, but his high DAS settings made it hard for him to concentrate.
Basteth the cat jumped up on the couch and climbed onto his chest, rubbing herself against the book he held. He set the book aside and rubbed the little cat's head.
"You sensed something amiss in me, little one?" he asked. She purred, cuddling against him.
Rhiannon came in and sat next to Joe, taking his head onto her lap.
"Wish you were Orga, then I could make you some tea, help you settle your nerves," she said.
He smiled up at her thinly. "You would not like it so much if I were, I assure you," he said.
She stroked his hair, ruffling it out of shape. "You don't have to keep your DAS set so high, not here, not now."
"I need to keep an ear open, for your sake: for you, for the boys."
"That's just the trouble: you never think about yourself, you're always thinking about others."
"Is that such a crime?" he asked
"No," she said. "But it would help if you thought about your own well-being once in a while."
Later still, while Rhiannon slept, Joe sat wide-awake on the foot of the bed, gazing out the window at the night sky, at the moon. Granted, he had no need for sleep, but he generally was able to settle his neurons.
And even with his wife beside him, he had never felt so alone, not since…since when? Not since he discovered what Serin had really wanted of him, not since her death, not since he had lost Jane. How long had it been since he had sat here, gazing at the moon and rejoicing that he now had the means to shelter the lost and abandoned of his species? Just a few short weeks, and now he sat scanning the night sounds for movement, suspicious of all that rustled, even of the night wind, even of the silence between gusts, of the rattle of tree branches.
Rhiannon sighed in her sleep. He turned back to her and slipped off his dressing gown before crawling back between the covers.
Rhiannon's hand brushed against him absently in her sleep, but he gladly welcomed the touch. He drew her to him gently, protectingly. She sighed, but he heard nothing more from her.
At any time he could be assaulted. Swinton could be armed with an EMP, which was the quickest way to destroy a Mecha. He had been targeted by such things before, and he still had the lead-lined cocoon which he could crawl into should someone break into the house. But what of the boys? What of things beyond the house?"
He resolved to have his files on the mainframe updated in the morning. He settled down and let his processors rest.
@--`--
Next morning, he made the appointment, though the actual process could not be attempted till later in the day. He'd warned Rhiannon that he might be late coming home, so she wouldn't be worried.
"Must be pretty weird knowing most of you is in that mainframe and the rest is here," Galloway said, tapping Joe's forehead after they'd finished the upload.
"I have no thought of it since my awareness is not yet in the machine," Joe said, sitting up on the worktable.
"I got that straightened out: you'll switch to the mainframe automatically if you should have a massive system failure."
"You planned it well," Joe said, slipping off the table and standing up.
"No, you planned it well."
@--`--
Hamish told them the police had been conducting house-to-house searches in the area, even searching crevices and attics with high-powered x-scanners. For the sake of thoroughness, the police searched even the Masters' house and property. Joe regarded this as unnecessary, they would know if Swinton dared to show his face there.
But he knew better than to say anything to them.
"They would know if Swinton had hidden himself here," Joe said to Rhiannon after the visit.
"Yeah, I think the whole neighborhood would know, with the racket you two would make, fighting," she said.
@--`--
No one could find a trace of Swinton anywhere, but Joe did not lower his guard one bit. Even when he tried settling his jangling conductors by sketching, he kept one ear cocked, listening for suspicious sounds.
This drove Rhiannon crazy. "If you don't cool it with the watchdog stuff, I'm gonna take David out to St. Louis to visit my family and to keep him safe," she declared one evening.
"Perhaps that would not be so foolish an idea," Joe observed.
"But then I'd be worrying about you the whole time…and how would you and Alex survive without me to referee."
On Saturday, just three days before the concert—and Joe's sixty-six inception anniversary—he was finally able to settle his processors enough to concentrate on finishing a painting of a small still-life he'd been working on for days. Rhiannon and David were in the basement doing the laundry. Alex was "resting up" for the concert, which was something of a relief to Rhiannon, since he'd been practicing almost incessantly for the past four days.
Usually, when Joe worked in his studio, he kept music going on the CD player, usual classic jazz or minimalist music. But Alex, whose room was directly above the studio, kept banging on his floor, trying to let him know the music was too loud for his "delicate auditory sensors".
At length, Alex came down and stood in the doorway to Joe's studio, glaring at the CD player on the bookshelf in the corner.
"I asked you to turn that stuff down," Alex said.
"It is not turned up that loudly," Joe said.
"It is far too loud for my tastes," Alex retorted, mocking Joe's English accent.
"And yet, it is not so loud as you think," Joe said.
"Oh yeah? You come upstairs."
Joe obliged him and followed Alex upstairs to his room. He could barely hear the music downstairs.
"Alex, you are exaggerating," Joe said, turning to go downstairs.
"Oh yeah? Maybe if you stopped being so uptight about the creeps out there, you'd be able to notice," Alex snapped back.
"Alex, I have to be vigilant, for your mother's sake and your brother's…and yours as well."
Alex said nothing to this, his usually sullen face blank for the moment. Joe stepped back out into the hallway and headed downstairs. He heard the back door closing, but he figured it was Rhiannon.
He had just put the finishing touches on the still life—some artichokes, a few fresh mushrooms and a wineglass on a bit of maroon fabric—when he saw a dark shadow pass across the window. He looked over his shoulder, but he saw nothing more.
The back door opened. Someone tossed something in through the door. Joe hurried to the kitchen, wondering what it could be.
Andy wobbled up to him, his head half torn from his body. Joe knelt down and picked up the injured bear.
"What happened to you? what happened to David?" Joe asked.
"Bad…man…take…David," Andy managed.
Joe found the bear's switch and shut him down. He laid the Supertoy on the tiles of the floor. His eyes rose to the open door.
From her spot by the washing machine in the basement, from his room, over the music, Rhiannon and Alex both heard it. A drawn out scream of dismay and horror, the cry of an animal for its lost young.
Rhiannon dropped a bottle of liquid bleach on the floor and ran upstairs, following the sound.
She found Joe kneeling in the back entryway, the door open before him. Joe trembled violently, his face buried in his hands. Tears seeped from between his fingers.
Rhiannon knelt beside him. "Joe, what happened?"
"David…must have stepped outside without my knowing…Andy said a man took him," Joe managed.
She put her arms about his neck, angling his head onto her shoulder.
Alex came into the kitchen. "What's all the noise about?" he demanded.
"David was taken," Rhiannon said, fighting tears herself.
"I suppose it's all my fault because I didn't watch him," Alex said.
"We aren't blaming you," she said.
Alex turned away and went out. Rhiannon thought she saw tears at the corners of his eyes before he went away.
She helped Joe up off the floor and led him to the living room. She helped him onto the sofa and covered him with her afghan. He still trembled, though his tear glands had run dry. She sat beside him, taking his head into her lap. She stroked his hair, soothing him and helping herself in the process.
At length, Joe relaxed under her touch. He pushed the afghan aside slowly and sat up.
"Every minute matters," he said. He stood up and headed for the phone. She heard him pick it up and dial.
@--`--
David had no scent print the way an Orga child would, so the police couldn't track him with bloodhounds.
"Do you have any idea who could have taken him?" one of the detectives asked Joe.
"It quite probably could have been Martin Swinton and-or Irmgard Casvar," Joe said.
"We'll step up the search for them," the detective said.
That night, Joe sat on the bench beneath the window in his and Rhiannon's room, looking out at the night, at the layer of snow on the ground.
He could not blame anyone for the lack of vigilance. Andy had probably warned David about "the bad man" who might come looking for him. If he laid blame on anyone, he should lay it at his own feet.
No use wasting energy blaming anyone, he realized. But somehow, he could not go back to bed. He knew Rhiannon lay awake, pretending to be asleep, looking at him from under half-closed lids.
He got up and went back to the bed, but he did not lie down. He sat on the foot of it, thinking. What are they doing to you, my David? he asked the night. Images passed over his visual matrix. Irmgard abusing the little one. Swinton dissecting him.
Joe felt a hand on his thigh. He nearly jolted at the touch. But he heard Rhiannon move.
"Light, two," she ordered. The bedside lamp came on.
Rhiannon sat looking at him. "You're blaming yourself," she said.
"I was, but I am blaming myself no longer," he said. "Rather, I thought of David…what are they doing to him now."
"We'll worry about that when we have to, when we get him back," she said. She turned her face away. Her façade cracked. A tear rolled down her swarthy cheek. He reached out and caught the drop.
"David," she sobbed, once.
Joe slipped his arms about her, drawing her down, winding himself about her as she wept. He felt her tears on his arm, where she leaned her eyes.
@--`--
Next morning, as Rhiannon was having her breakfast, and Joe was scanning the news pages, something crashed through the living room window. Joe startled at the sound and ran to see what it could be.
A brick with a note tied to it lay in the middle of a scattering of broken glass. He picked up the brick, careful to avoid the shards. Even still, one fragment pricked his hand. He took no notice.
He untied the string and unfolded the scrap of paper, revealing another cut and pasted note.
FiberHead—
Wee have your toy-boy. Hand over 5 000 NB and give up the wild plan or the thing is DESTROYED!
Tie a reply to this brick and put it outside your door. Don't look out any windows.
Rhiannon had joined him in the front room. "What is it?" she asked.
He handed her the note with fingers that barely conducted any sensations that he touched it. He hardly felt it when she took it from him.
"I've got the 5,000 NB," she said.
"We can't give it to them," he said.
"We'll give them a reply, tell them we'll deliver the cash to them.
He processed this for a moment. "In that case, when we meet with them, we shall have company: the Shohola Police."
"Good thinking, fella."
He found a piece of letter paper and wrote a reply.
We do not have the cash on hand. Name a time and place, and you shall have it.
J. Masters
He tied the note to the brick, opened the front door and placed the missive on the stoop. He closed the door and set his back to it.
@--`--
That evening, at Rhiannon's supper, someone banged on the front door. Another message, this time wound around a stick, dropped into the mailbox. Joe pulled it out.
FiberHead—
Meet you at the old frozen meat warehouse tonight at 23.30. We will have your kid. Come alone & bring the CASH.
He gave the note to Rhiannon. She read it over, then headed upstairs. He reached for the phone and called the police, telling them of this new development.
When he hung up, Rhiannon came down holding the envelope she'd brought home from the bank that afternoon. She put it in his hands. Understanding what it was, he put it into the breast pocket of his jacket.
Later, about 23.00, Joe went to the closet and fetched his stunner. He took it upstairs to his and Rhiannon's room.
He took off his jacket and slipped on the holster for the stunner, slung around his shoulders. He checked the battery for the stunner, then checked the charge on it before slipping it into the holster. He put on his jacket and straightened the folds of it over the stunner.
As he stepped out into the hallway, Alex came out of his room.
"You're not going out there, are you?" Alex demanded.
"I have to face them," Joe said.
"Are you malfunctioning?"
"No, I am doing this because it must be done and I must do it."
"You're gonna get destroyed."
"Please heaven that I am not," Joe said, heading for Ree's office.
Once he was there, he wrote two letters, one for Ree, one for Alex, which he put into envelopes with their respective names on them.
He got up and went downstairs to where Rhiannon waited for him in the hallway.
She stepped out of the shadows under the stairs. She drew him to her, just holding him, resting her chin on his shoulder. He held her, feeling her nervous heartbeat against his shoulders.
He lifted her face from his neck and kissed her, full on the mouth. Her lips parted under his.
After a long moment like this, they separated.
Joe helped her with her coat before donning his own topcoat and fedora, which he tilted so that it sat level on his head, instead of at its usual jaunty angle on the back of his head. Rhiannon knew by this that he meant business.
They went out into the night, into the rain that fell.
They met up with the police at the center of town. The Masterses went first, the police following at a distance. Galloway had reactivated the cellular link in Joe's shoulder that afternoon, after resetting the link to the mainframe.
They stopped one block away from the warehouse. Joe insisted on going there on foot, alone. A couple plainclothes men followed at a distance.
Rhiannon opted to stay behind at the field headquarters. The police captain in charge of the operation told her it might be for the best if she did, in case there was trouble.
The rain beat on Joe's shoulders and hat as if the very sky wept in fear at what he had to do. He shifted his stunner from under his jacket to his coat pocket.
A flash of lightning illumined the dark section of street before the warehouse. Joe paused before it and offered a swift silent prayer. Lord, God, maker of the ones who made me and David, guide well my hand and give me the words I must say to these Orgas…
He stepped toward the door of the warehouse, a large steel overhead door.
With a grind of machinery within, the door opened. Joe stepped inside.
He'd hardly got in when the door shut behind him. He clasped the stock of the stunner in his pocket, and stepped into a pool of light cast by one of the bare tubes overhead.
"Martin Swinton?" he asked.
A heavy-set woman in battered clothes stepped out of the shadows. She grabbed him by the arm and looked him in the eye. Irmgard Casvar…He gave her a gentle smile in an attempt to disarm her.
"Yeah, it's him," she said.
Swinton approached from behind some dusty crates, clad in a long coat which covered something strapped to his chest.
"So we meet again, Masters," he said. "Let him go, Irmgard." She did, but her fingers lingered on Joe's arm.
"Do you have my son?" Joe asked.
"Your son, oh, that's rich," Swinton sneered. "You sound like my mother did about them things. Well, I suppose he's the only kind of son you'll ever expect to have."
"Give him back to me."
Swinton held out his hand, palm up. "Hand over the money."
Joe took the envelope from inside his jacket and put it into Swinton's hand.
"Now about that haven of yours. Have you put a stop to that?"
"Give my son back to me and I shall answer that question."
Swinton's lips twisted and he scraped one foot on the dingy cement floor. "All right, fiberhead, you drive a hard bargain. Irmgard, bring the brat out."
"Yes, master," she snarled, stepping into the shadows of an inner recess of the warehouse.
"Okay, yes or no: are you giving up this hare-brained scheme?" Swinton asked.
"I will not answer that until I have seen my son," Joe said.
"Stubborn machine, aren't we?" Swinton asked.
Irmgard came back dragging David by the hands. David tried to break away and run to Joe, but Irmgard held him firmly.
"Daddy!" he cried, his eyes brightening.
"I'm still your mommy, you little bucket of bolts," Irmgard snarled.
"No, you aren't! You're only my sick mommy," David retorted, fighting her.
Irmgard turned her bleary eyes on Joe. "Is that what you told him?!"
"It is what he calls you himself," Joe replied, gripping the stunner.
"Are you packing a piece, fiberhead?" Swinton demanded, reaching under his coat.
Joe thumbed the switch on the stunner and drew it out. Swinton drew out the object under his coat.
His hand gripped an EMP, one of the homemade variety built off a stunner very like the one Joe had.
Joe's self-preservation circuits hummed, ready to trigger "flight". But his volition centers overrode this.
"You gonna be a good-little fiberhead and cancel the plans for the haven?" Swinton demanded.
Joe stood his ground, leveling the stunner. "No, Swinton."
"I don't think you're gonna build it any time soon," Swinton said, leveling the stunner.
Joe fired even before Swinton could get the charge up on the EMP. The force hit Swinton in the chest, toppling him. Swinton fell over backwards, shaking from the shock.
Joe raised the alarm to the police. He started to pocket the stunner, but Irmgard grabbed the EMP.
Still holding David with her other arm, she aimed the EMP at Joe. He aimed the stunner and fired, just as the EMP cracked again.
The door opened behind them. Joe dodged the bolt of energy from the EMP. The bolt from the stunner hit Irmgard. She fell forward, knocking David to the floor and pinning him under her.
The EMP dropped from Irmgard's hand. It hit the floor, jarring the trigger.
A bolt flashed from the EMP. It struck Joe in the groin. He dimly heard a crackling metallic shriek rise from his body. He felt something falling over backwards, and realized it was his body, though it seemed a hundred miles away now…
The police rushed into the building. A female officer grabbed Irmgard off David and picked up the little one, wrapping him in her coat. She shielded him with her body as she carried him from the building.
Rhiannon tried to push her way through the mob of officers and shock troops. She heard someone radioing for a tech.
"Let me through!" she cried, "Let me see!"
An older officer put a fatherly hand on her shoulder, pushing her back gently but firmly. "You don't want to see this," he warned.
"That's my husband!" she shouted.
Two crime scene investigators came through carrying a stretcher. She tried to follow them, but the older officer held her back.
"You shouldn't have to look at it," he said. "He's gone."
A moment later, the CSI people came through the press carrying the stretcher, with something on it draped in a raincoat. A hand poked from under it: Joe's hand, his long but blunt-tipped fingers, his wedding ring visible, the knuckle-wide band he had insisted on getting.
Rhiannon heard a drawn out yell. Her lungs ached. She realized the cry was hers, but it seemed to come from another world.
The officer holding her arm helped her outside, back to a vancruiser parked in the yard, where David and the female officer who had carried him out waited.
Rhiannon hugged David, pressing him to her heart. Headlights flashed on the window. She glanced out to see a murky form that looked like Galloway's van pulling into the snarl of police vehicles jamming the street.
Galloway came to the open door of the van where she and David sat. He looked at them and, without a word, hugged them both. He let them go, then turned and followed one of the personnel, who led him to another waiting van.
"Where's Daddy?" David asked.
"I don't know; I think he's hurt badly," Rhiannon said.
Lutwyn Zipes approached the van, his face pallid, eyes slightly glazed from shock.
"Galloway called me," he said. "What happened?"
"I think Swinton had an EMP," she said. "They're not telling me anything."
"I'm so sorry," he said, his voice going harsh with tears. He put a brotherly arm around her. She hugged him, not releasing David, who hugged him as well.
They let each other go. Lutwyn mumbled an excuse and went away.
"What's E…M…P?" David asked.
She held David closer. "It's a kind of gun bad people use to hurt Mechas," she said.
"Is Daddy hurt very badly?" David asked.
"He may be," she said.
The older officer who had comforted Rhiannon drove her and David home, Lutwyn following them. When they got there, Narsie had come over. Rhiannon left David with her and Alex, explaining that Joe had been very badly damaged and that she was going to Companionates to find out how extensive the damage—his injuries—was.
"Can't I come along?" Alex asked.
"No, it might be too much for you to handle," Rhiannon said. "And David needs you now."
Lutwyn drove her straight to Companionates. Once they arrived there, she practically ran through the hallways to Repairs, her heart in her throat.
She met Arabella, one of Galloway's apprentices, just outside the main workroom.
"How bad is it?" Rhiannon asked, dry-mouthed. "How bad is he hurt?"
"You shouldn't see it," Arabella said.
"Dammit, that's my husband! That's my lover!"
Arabella led her into the workroom.
Galloway met them just at the door. "Ree, I don't think it would be wise—"
"That's what everyone's saying to me," she snapped. "Let me see my husband."
Galloway stepped aside, letting her into the room.
"Brace yourself, you're not gonna like what you see," he warned.
"I can bear it," she said.
Chauntay, Galloway's assistant, was packing up some small diagnostic meters on a work table, in the middle of which lay a long object draped in a heavy white sheet.
Galloway signaled to Chauntay. She looked up. "Take the sheet off, please," he ordered. She looked at Rhiannon, uncertain, then took hold of the bottom edge of the sheet.
She lifted the sheet from over Joe's legs, which had folded at odd angles under his body. They had stripped off his clothes, but a towel covered his groin. His skin had gone almost dead white with a steely gray cast to it.
Chauntay lifted the sheet further, uncovering Joe's torso. His chest had caved in and something gray and square had almost cut through his dermis at the base of his "breastbone", probably his batteries, when they shorted out.
"Go on, Rhiannon ordered.
Chauntay drew the sheet back from all but Joe's face.
Joe's arms lay flung back above his head, the palms of his hands turned up as if in helpless surrender. She noticed the metal phalanges of his hands had started through his dermis.
"Show me his face," Rhiannon begged.
Galloway, at her back, put his hand on her arm, trying to turn her away. "He wouldn't want you to see him like this."
She shook him off. "Dammit, let me see Joe's face!"
Galloway nodded to Chauntay. She lifted the sheet free from Joe's face.
His mouth gaped to the ceiling. A wire or something like it, probably part of his voice synthesizer, hung over the corner of his mouth. His eyes had rolled back in their sockets, showing only the whites and the dermis had shrunk back from the sockets, uncovering the gunmetal colored infrastructure beneath. A square, gray silhouette showed in the middle of his brow, looking like a bruise: his neural cube. His hair had gone dead white, drained of its color when his system shorted out.
She made herself look at him, study him. She knew every inch of his lean, lithe body better than she knew her own. She reached out to touch him and found him cold, colder than metal, so cold it nearly burned her hand, when he used to set her body and soul on fire another way.
She tried to set her face like flint, but she felt tears run down her cheeks. One dropped onto his cheek.
Galloway tried to put his hand on her arm, but she slipped from under it, kneeling beside the table, leaning her forehead on her arms on the edge of the table.
She heard the others in the room tiptoe out. For the moment, she didn't miss them.
Joe…my little fella…my white-boy fiberhead…She had the fiercest desire to cover every inch of his skin with kisses, the way he used to, but she knew she shouldn't.
She got up and reached down to touch his face. His skin felt solid, like plastic that has cooled. She pushed the wire back into his mouth and tried to push his jaws shut. They wouldn't budge.
"You did love to play difficult," she said. She bent over him and kissed him, open-mouthed. She had to swallow hard to keep from touching his tongue with hers.
She got up and went out, not looking back, no point in doing that: it would be like peering into a grave.
Galloway followed her down the hallway. She turned to him, looking him in the eye.
"How long?" she asked.
"To repair him?" he asked.
"Yes."
He wagged his head. "Three months, six months, nine months. Depends on how extensive the damage is."
She took his shoulder in her hand and squeezed it. "Take all the time you need, get him back the way he was."
"I'll do my best."
"What about the mainframe?"
"Oto in programming is getting it online even as we speak. Joe was set to upload his awareness into it in case something like this happened."
"I suppose I better give everyone their space to work."
"Not that I'm sending you away, but maybe you should go home, be with the boys."
"Yeah, they'll be needing their mom right now," she agreed.
@--`--
As she unlocked the door to the house, Rhiannon heard piano music, Alex playing the piano part for the final movement of Henryk Gorecki's Third Symphony. She breathed hard, counting to ten and pushed the door open.
Narsie met her in the hallway.
"How are the boys?" Rhiannon asked her right away.
"They're doing well, David's in his usual spot under the piano," Narsie said. She looked at the, then looked at Rhiannon. "What about Joe?"
Rhiannon could only bite her lip and shake her head. Narsie bowed her own head and stepped aside as Rhiannon headed for the parlor.
Alex sat playing, while David sat curled at his feet, listening. At Rhiannon's approach, he scurried out from under the piano and ran to meet her. Alex didn't look up, but he stopped playing.
"Where's Daddy?" David asked, looking past her.
She looked at both her sons: David, with his light-brown hair and baby blue eyes; Alex, with his dishwater blond tousle and gray eyes. They were more Joe's boys than hers…
"Daddy's not coming home," she said.
"Why not?" David asked.
She put her arms about them both. "He was very badly damaged."
"Can Mr. Galloway make him better?" David asked.
"He's working on it," she said. "He's working very hard on it."
Alex peeled her arm off, but not with his usual cold brusqueness. "I suppose I oughta feel bad for him and all that junk."
"You should…but I'll try to understand," she said. "Excuse me."
She stumbled up to her room.
Alex looked at David, who looked up at him.
"Are you going to play more music?" David asked.
"No, not tonight. It wouldn't be right," Alex said.
David looked toward the stairs. "We should go and try to make her happy."
"She has to be alone now," Narsie said, coming into the doorway.
David clung to Alex, hiding his eyes in the taller Mecha's flank. Narsie held them both, hiding her own tears.
@--`--
Rhiannon lay spread-eagled on the bed, face down. She had wept for a solid twenty minutes, followed by another paroxysm of sobs for just as long and now another fit of tears was threatening.
It's a nightmare, her mind tried to tell her. You'll wake up under the sheets, with Joke stroking your face and hands, trying to calm you down.
She turned over on her back, staring up at the ceiling. She expected to see Joe's face hovering over hers, eyes bright, a mischievous smile touching his shapely mouth, but she knew it wouldn't happen.
She knew now what her mother must have felt the night her father's partner in the St. Louis police came to inform her mom about her father's death in the line of duty, the kind of numbing pain, the shock. Rhiannon had been too young to remember it, but she remembered her mom being sad for a very long time afterward, so sad she'd gone to a hospital for it and Ree had gone to stay with her grandma Honey and her father's folks. She thought about going back there to regroup, take the boys with her, but she knew David needed to be in familiar surroundings.
She got up and went for the phone. She had to call Madison and give her the news.
"Madison? It's Rhiannon Masters," she said.
"Oh, Ree, hello! Is…David all right? I heard about the kidnapping, and I was just about to call you and see what I could do to help."
"Yes, he's back home, a little shaken, but he seems unharmed. I've got some very bad news to tell you…it's about Joe."
"Why, what happened?"
"Joe went to Swinton's hideout to ransom David…there was a confrontation…"
"Go on."
"Joe got shot…with an EMP."
Rhiannon's tears flowed again. She held the receiver away slightly so Madison wouldn't have to hear.
"That's…that's horrible…that's unspeakable."
"He had his memory backed up in a mainframe, and his awareness was supposed to upload to the mainframe if something like this were to happen. But no one at Companionates has been able to tell me anything yet."
"You let me know the minute you find out if he's all right or not, even if you have to tell me the worst."
"I don't mean to sound shallow, but what about the concert? What should we do about that?"
"Joe would want us to go on with it, even if he can't be there in person."
"Then we'll do just that."
@--`--
The pressure release switches had seized up along with everything else. Galloway took a small circular saw and cut into the dermis over Joe's chest, down past his waist, nearly to his groin. Laying aside the saw, Galloway braced himself with a deep breath and pulled back the dermis.
He nearly retched when he looked beneath the silicon skin. The electromagnetic blast had frayed the fiber conductors. The chipboards in his torso had remained intact, but the chips themselves had burned. Every electronic component—heart beat simulator, breathing simulator, even mechanical things like his locomotion actuator—showed signs of damage.
"Damn, damn, damn," he muttered.
"What do we do now?" asked De Vries, his newest apprentice.
"We're gonna have to remove all the electronics and strip him down to the chassis, literally. Get the other circular saw, we got a lot of cutting ahead of us."
They removed the dermis in sections. Galloway carefully removed the faceplate and set it aside in the salvage. The dermis was damaged worse than he had hoped, so that would have to be sent into recycle as well.
By daybreak, they had removed all the components from Joe's torso. They spent the morning removing conductors from the limbs. Then Galloway started on the skull. He refused to let anyone else "screw with Joe's processors".
He undid the rivet that held the halves of the metal skull together.
The components inside all but spilled out by themselves. He lifted out the neural cube. The casing had cracked and split in several places. He cupped his hands about it to keep the chips from falling out. He laid the gray box on a worktable. A few chips fell out. To stifle the pang in his heart, he turned back to what remained of Joe's body.
He'd worked on a million different Mechas in his time, and he'd dismantled a few malfunctioning ones, but never like this, never with damage this severe. The conductors in Joe's head had suffered the same damage as the conductors in the limbs.
He caught himself cursing himself, remembering what he had told Joe years before, when he had told Joe that Jane was irreparable. Joe was further gone than she had been: Jane at least was still 40% functional.
By late afternoon, Joe's body had been reduced to a metal skeleton, all that survived, except his eyes. Everything else had suffered too much damage for him to salvage.
Galloway went home and collapsed on the couch in his tiny living room. He let himself weep for his friend as he had hardly wept before, except at the death of his mother. People who barely knew him thought he was as logical and passionless as the Mechas he worked with, but he had his moments: he was just good at hiding his emotions.
When he could weep no more, he got up, heading for his bedroom. He sat down on the bed, leaning back against the headboard.
Maisie, his housekeeper-Mecha, approached the open doorway, her calm, plainly pretty face concerned as she looked in at him.
"Is something the matter, Mr. Galloway?" she asked. "Is there anything I can do to make you fell better?"
"No, I'm afraid you can't help much," he said.
"Does your sadness have to do with Joe?"
"Yeah…he's dead, physically."
She came to the head of the bed and put her smooth, warm hand on his head. "Shall I make you some tea?" she asked.
"Yes, please…thanks."
She went away. He distantly heard her moving about in the kitchen, getting the tea maker ready, finding a cup. He wondered how far the news had penetrated her consciousness. He'd caught her eyeing Joe in the past. He didn't fault her for it: Joe had only had eyes for Rhiannon.
As he had his second cup of coffee some time later, Galloway looked up at the perpetual calendar he had on the wall. 13 February 2227
Good grief, he realized: tomorrow was Joe's inception day. What a way for him to spend it…
@--`--
Later that evening, Rhiannon met with Galloway in Programming.
"I was too drained to help get Joe online, I'm afraid. But there again, that's not my real expertise," he said, as he lead her into the carefully shielded, climate-controlled bunker under the wing, where the programming servers were housed.
"How long you think it's gonna take to rebuild him?" she asked, stopping in a corridor.
"Months. I'm guessing six to nine at least. Most of his internal components are easy to replace with similar ones, but his externals: his skin, his hair, all that has to be replaced. Oh, and his imprint circuits will have to be rewired." He shook his head sadly.
"I'll have to reimprint him."
"It'll be interesting to see how he reacts to this: to prove how successful his upload was at the moment of his being shot, he remembers it."
"So he was fully transferred?"
"Yes. But I'd better warn you again, it's a little strange, with him in the mainframe, unless you're accustomed to speaking with computer AIs. Essentially, that's what he is. That's how he began."
"Is he in any pain at all?" she asked. "What kind of environment is it like?"
"He's out of any pain as far as we can tell, but we supplied him with a few things to keep him busy: an e-book reader, an Internet connection, and e-mail program, an IM, a drawing program of course. It's not unlike keeping a patient amused when he's stuck in a hospital bed."
He led her to one black-cased mainframe unit in the far corner. On a front panel, a series of indicator lights glowed and flickered amber. Above a camera lens on the front a large indicator light glowed with a brilliant green light.
"They just got him online," Galloway said.
"Is he…conscious?" Rhiannon asked.
"Yes, he can hear us even as we speak."
She noticed a cluster of peripherals on a table next to the mainframe, hooked into it: a printer and a small wireless Internet connector, amongst other things.
"Joe?" she asked.
Silence. Had he really heard? Was he really in there? She heard the hum of the mainframe, not much different from the hum of Joe's components, only louder.
"Joe…?"
"Rhiannon." His voice, his silken, husky tenor, devoid of his accent…she almost didn't recognize it at first as it emanated from a speaker below the camera.
"Are you…are you all right?" she approached the camera on the mainframe slowly, on legs that barely supported her.
"I am all right in mind, but ruffled of heart," he said.
"Poor baby," she said, reaching out. She drew back her hand.
"Is David all right?" he asked.
"He's okay. Calla came up the house this morning to talk to him. He's glad to be back now, but he wants you back home."
"The sentiment is mutual," Joe replied.
"Did it…did that EMP hurt?"
A long pause. "Yes. But my fear for David caused me far more pain…did the police capture Swinton?"
"Yes. The court arraigned him and Irmgard this morning. They both plead guilty: he knows we have him cornered."
"What is the sentence?"
"The death penalty for both."
Another, lengthier pause; she wondered if these pauses had something to do with the way the mainframe worked or the trauma he must be feeling. "It is only just. The State must protect its citizens, regardless of construction. Would that such means did not need to be used."
"I agree."
"And what of you? How has all this affected you?"
"I miss you so much…" she said, fighting tears. She leaned her head against the unit and sighed.
"I miss you as well," he replied. "You need my touch more than ever now, but circumstances deny you of it. And yet…your being close brings comfort to me."
"It's like when someone has a loved one in cryostorage and they can't touch them."
"But we have an advantage: we can speak to each other."
"Yes."
He was silent again, this time for so long, she wondered if he'd gone into some kind of rest mode.
"Now I know…" he said.
"You know what?" she asked. Her heart fluttered, afraid something was going wrong inside the mainframe.
"I know how it feels to die…but I know how it feels to come back."
"Don't leave us, Joe. Galloway's working on rebuilding you."
"I shall not disappoint you. I cannot die: I have too much work to do for this world, for our kind."
To be continued…
Literary Easter Eggs:
Joe and Alex having the "battle of the bands"—this happened to me once when I was about fifteen: I was upstairs listening to the Metropolitan Opera on the radio, and my mother was downstairs listening to her 1960s era pop 45s, and the music kept conflicting. Usually with teenagers, it's the other way around! (Actually, Alex's punctiliousness about musical styles and his tendency to turn up his nose at anything but classical music is meant to be a caricature of myself at age fifteen.)
Joe's wedding ring—A little reality bleed-through here, I was watching an interview that Joe's real-world counterpart did, and I noticed his wedding ring at one point: and mind you, this was no wire-thin ring, this was the widest, heaviest wedding band I have ever seen anyone wear. But I suppose, when a married guy looks as good as You Know Who, he has to wear something highly noticeable to blow off the gawkers.
The mainframe—a direct reference to HAL in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. I just changed the color of the indicator light from red to green (of course!).