Chapter 28

Xen got up feeling somewhat better the next night, but the crash site produced no new information. It was evident from visible clues that the xenoorganic race were bipeds with three digits, saw things in a different visual range than humans, and were physically small.

All of which I've known since I was two, Xen thought in some frustration. There was no possibility of getting anything from the machine's computer. The inputs were half-destroyed, and the monitor's glass analogue completely shattered. She found something that seemed to be an audio pickup, but it wouldn't respond to her voice. Very likely it was keyed to the voiceprint of the craft's long-dead operator. And, though both tried, neither Changeling nor Bell had a good enough voice modulator to accurately mimic the voice from the radio transmission.

"With ten years, a fully stocked laboratory, and several more people, I might be able to learn something," she said to the others at nearly dawn, after the night's work was done. Even the boots from the containment suit didn't fit her. Her feet were apparently shorter and wider than her third contributor's. "I'm wasting my time." She poked disconsolately at her Blamco Mac 'N Cheese with a plastic fork as she sat on a tree root. "There's no clue to where he came from, or why he was here, or if anyone will come back for him. There could be another ship in geosynchronous orbit watching everything we're doing here, and I'd never know."

"The more reason not to remain," Changeling said. "It has been a long journey. We should return to the Lab."

"I'm not ready to go back yet," Xen said. "I'm not going to say the trip has been a waste so far, but I think there's more to learn yet before I go back to living underground." She thought for a while as she ate. Eventually she said, "Changeling. You've been recording whenever we're down at the craft, right?"

"As per your instructions," said Changeling.

"So you've got a fairly good print for its energy signature. Right?"

"Affirmative," said the packbot.

"Is there anything in common between it and the ammunition for the blaster?" She realized she had not used the word before, but it seemed right. To call the alien weapon a gun seemed somehow inadequate.

"There is a signature in common, but it is very faint in the case of the canisters. The craft's signature is almost certainly a result of a failure in one or more internal containment fields."

"So there's no possibility you could pick it up at any distance," Xen said. She wasn't really disappointed. It had seemed an unlikely chance to begin with.

"Negative," said Changeling. "The largest radius of detection would be ten miles. And that would require a large source."

"What's the maximum on something like the canisters?" Xen asked.

"I would approximate three hundred yards, assuming they were not inside an insulated container."

"And that's better than I could do," Bell said. "I've got some sensor suites she doesn't have, and I can pick up a live human body or a radiation leak through three concrete walls, but not if it's more than two hundred yards away." She shrugged, almost apologetically. "I was built for laboratory use."

"Don't worry about it," Xen said, surprised and touched by the assumption implicit in this. "Let's think about it logically. Right after the ship crashed, if there were people anywhere nearby, they would probably wander over to look at it. I didn't get my curiosity from my alien thirty percent."

"Right," said Bell. Charon nodded, although a less curious person could hardly be imagined by the inquisitive Xen.

"And, the world being like it is, they'd probably see if there was anything they could use or sell," Xen said. "I'm not surprised they left the containment suit alone, since there was a dead alien inside it at the time. And if the gun was under the body, they might have missed that, too. Charon, the ammunition you found – was it out in the open?"

"No," said Charon. "Most of it was under one edge of t'craft, near t'cockpit."

"If I were doing reconnaissance of an alien world full of people bigger than me, and only bringing one weapon, I'd have more than seven rounds for it," Xen said. "I'll bet if we find the nearest people, we'll find the rest of the ammunition."

"But why do you want more ammunition?" Bell asked. "If you found a hundred of them, they'd still run out too fast."

"I like the blaster," Xen said. "It fits my hand. You know what the odds are that I'll ever find a human weapon I can fire comfortably?"

"Slim and none?" Bell said.

"Exactly," said Xen, although she'd never heard the phrase before. "I want to keep it. If I can, I want to build another one like it. That means I'll have to either learn to make the rounds, or figure out how to modify it to use conventional ones. For that, I need more canisters to study back at the Lab. If I get enough that I can afford to fire off one or two in the cause of staying alive, that would be even better."

"Dere is a house visible from t'crash site," Charon said. "Damage to t'roof suggests the craft probably impacted dere on its way past."

"So we'll check there first," Xen said. She had never noticed the distant house, and Changeling had been down in the pit with her, making recordings. It was a good thing she'd had that pair of tireless eyes up on the rim, scanning everything with a very mechanical persistence. "First thing tomorrow night."

And so they did. Xen took one last look at the downed recon craft on their way past it, though she had to spend another of her small supply of Rad-X to do so. The night was cloudless, the stars winking cold and distant overhead. Was there someone watching from above and far away, Xen wondered? Had they left her alone because they could tell she was a hybrid, neither fully human nor fully theirs? The fact that they hadn't picked her up to dissect or annihilate seemed to speak well for their racial toleration, if that was the case. Or maybe they held their own genes sacred enough that even her seventy percent humanity was not enough reason to destroy her. Perhaps to them she would be loathsome, but morally indestructible.

That wouldn't surprise me, Xen thought. Perhaps she had begun to osmose some of Changeling's Tori-like qualities, sucking up cynicism through her pores. Or maybe it was Bell. She would never forget the sound the android had made when her collar came off for the first time.

And now I've got four days of gang rape to process, and why the fuck did they do that? Bell had demanded, hysterical and indignant and unable to understand.

The more I learn about people, the less I like them, Xen thought. The very fact that they made Bell like she is – that's damning. The fact that the Doctors made me like I am, just as much so. I'm not liking me so well lately, either. I only know one human, and sometimes I think the only reason I even trust Charon is because I control him.

But, she thought as she turned to follow Changeling down the hill toward the distant house, that ugly little thought was neither fair nor true. She trusted Changeling less than she did the big Ghoul, though one was her possession and the other, her employee. Perhaps it was because she didn't like Changeling. She knew she could cause the robot harm with just a few words. Every time the bot annoyed her, she was tempted to do it, and she hated herself for that. Her relationship to Charon, on the other hand, was bounded by the rules of the contract. Those rules applied to her as much as to him. Physical violence on your part will invalidate our contract was one of the first things he'd ever said to her.

So part of the reason I don't like Changeling is because she reminds me that I'm not any better than anybody else, Xen thought. My motives aren't any purer. And the fact that she does it in the course of trying to keep me alive in the only way she knows how – that just makes it worse. Charon was right about my ego.

But then, Changeling was incapable of caring personally about Xen. She would follow her primary directives right up until the instant her chassis was destroyed or her processor damaged beyond repair. Without her personality files, Tori would be the same way. Xen had always been able to ignore that inconvenient fact because of those same files. Changeling could never ruffle the hair of a worried child, as Tori had once done.

Whereas Charon had his contract. Always that. But there was something beyond that, Xen was willing to swear. Maybe it was only because she reminded him of someone from a long time ago, to whom something very bad had happened. But even if it was only that, it was personal. It was something particular to her and to Charon, not to the contract. Not to the rules.

Not to the programming.

Maybe that was the closest to personal affection she would ever be able to receive. For some reason, that thought did not depress her particularly. But then, Xen's entire short life to date was borrowed time. If there really was any such thing as fate – and Xen was very wary of any concept so supernatural - she had been meant to die when she was four years old. Every impact she made on the world, however small, was a victory.

And now they were almost to the house. Xen looked doubtfully at the ramshackle wooden structure. It had been one story and an attic, before the ship had crashed through the roof and destroyed most of it. If anybody had survived that, would they really have come back here? Well, perhaps. Somebody had taken the time to build the house, after all, and that was a lot of work to just give up.

"I don't see any heat signatures," Xen said. The thermal mass of the structure wasn't enough to hide them, not with boards sticking up at random from the foundation among the patches of intact wall.

"Negative for movement," said Changeling. Bell nodded her agreement. And Charon, most tellingly, had no weapon drawn and was looking around in an entirely disinterested way.

"I guess we probably won't find anything," Xen said, but started forward anyway.

"Some of the debris may be unstable," Changeling said. "I suggest you send Charon instead."

Xen stopped.

"Let me," said Bell. "I'm not going to worry about splinters, and you might want Charon out here with the big gun."

"Are you sure?" Xen asked, turning to look up at the android.

"First concrete decision I've made since the collar came off," Bell said. "Let me do this for you." The statement was notable for its lack of obscenity, and the light in Bell's left eye was bright and unblinking.

"All right," Xen said. "Thank you, Bell."

"I haven't found anything yet," said the android, and went forward with short, solid steps. She was behind a piece of the house's front wall in the next moment, but Xen watched her heat signature moving purposefully about. It was only a little off what was normal for a human, a difference you would have to be looking for. And even then, you'd have to be someone who was used to seeing in the infrared, Xen thought dryly. You'd have to be able to say:

Orange is more common than red. Bell has too much red, just a degree or so low, and it's too neatly distributed. She should have a white spot around her brain and there isn't much of one, probably because whatever she has there doesn't generate the same heat as an organ. And, since the first time her collar came off, Xen had never seen a change in Bell's temperature. She should be heating up a little with muscle exertion, and she's not. I guess whatever she has for servos doesn't generate much heat, either, or else it's insulated by the DCUVRAP.

Heat signature or no, Bell's choice of search methods was very inhuman. She started at the front of the structure and went straight back and forth, making sure she didn't miss anything. Xen was quite sure that she personally would have gone straight to any interesting object, say a cupboard or a chair, and searched there first. Even Charon probably would go to the most likely hiding places before anything else. Not Bell.

Xen waited impatiently, shifting from foot to foot. Bell was about three-quarters of the way across the main floor when there was a splintering crash, and her heat signature jerked downward three feet.

"Bell?" Xen called. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," said the android's voice. "Just fell through the floor, is all."

"Do you need help?"

A short laugh was the only response. Xen listened to the sound of more wood splintering as Bell freed herself.

"Anyway, I found something," she said. "Looks like somebody left a cache here, under the floorboards. Although unless you want some cheap whiskey, I don't think that's likely to be much use."

"Oh," Xen said.

"And there's an ammo box," Bell went on. "Hang on a second, I'll open it."

Xen listened impatiently to the loud click that followed.

"Huh," said Bell. "Five frag grenades... A leather belt... A couple of boxes of 10mm ammunition... Two stimpaks..."

"Bring those," Xen said. "Charon?"

"I will want t'grenades," said Charon.

"Did you hear that, Bell?" Xen asked.

"Yep. Grenades and stims. And hey, look what we have here. Five alien blaster rounds."

"Really?" Xen asked.

"Really," said Bell. "Hang on, I'm coming back."

Xen watched her come tramping out of the ruined house, pockets bulging with grenades. She had a handful of little canisters in one hand and the two stimpaks in the other. There was a large tear in one of her pant legs that had not been there before. Under it, Xen glimpsed a thick, taut thigh with a sharp piece of wood as large as her hand sticking out of it. There was no blood.

"You're hurt," Xen said.

"Not hardly," Bell said calmly. She held out the handful of canisters to Xen, who caught them in her cupped hands. "Who gets the stimpaks?"

"Charon," Xen said. "Changeling's already carrying a lot of them."

"Here you go," Bell said, and offered the little syringe units to Charon. He stowed them somewhere about his person, then began to do the same with the grenades as she dug them out.

"That's all of it," Bell said finally.

"What about your leg?" Xen asked.

"Oh. No big deal." Bell seized the offending piece of wood with one hand and jerked it loose. Xen winced. Bell looked at her with raised eyebrows as she tossed it aside. "Watch."

There was a deep flesh-colored pit left behind, bloodless and uninflamed. As Xen watched, it crept slowly closed. The flesh sealed shut with no sign of any puncture.

"See?" said Bell. "I wish I had a bottle cap for every time some joker with a scalpel had to try that trick. It doesn't hurt. Well, not much. What are you going to do now?"

"What's the nearest human settlement on the map, Changeling?" Xen asked. Changeling glided over to the nearest intact wall and projected the map.

"Here is our current location," said the packbot, and a glowing red dot appeared far to the North of the map's center. The image zoomed in on the area, although not much more detail appeared. "My data shows the nearest town as Old Olney."

"We'll try there next," said Xen.