Engineman Part 34

"I was never married."

"Then the mother of your daughter?"

He had adopted his daughter when she was two years old, in an attempt to bring something into his life that he might love.

He told her all this now.

She was unable to make an adequate response, as Fuller had suspected. He wondered if this was the reason he had opened up to her; he had experienced the catharsis of confession without an adverse reaction, without the questions that would have accused him - which, he realised, was no catharsis at all. Through replying to criticism, attempting however futilely to defend himself, he might have come to understand more about the person who was Jonathon Fuller: he would have undergone the process of sharing personal pain and anguish which was all part of the exchange of human love but which he, in his cowardice, had never experienced.

She reached out and touched his cheek in a gesture so empty of affection that it was almost brutal.

"I think we are very much alike, Jonathon."

He told her that they were very much different. He thought that, despite the injuries that had left her unable to exhibit the regular run of emotions, she could perhaps feel them - whereas he had the ability to do neither.

"But you said earlier that you loved me," her vocal-a.s.sist p.r.o.nounced through smiling lips.

She lay still beside him as darkness gathered, then closed her eyes and slept.

"Words," he murmured to himself.

In the morning she was gone.

At dawn he left the chalet and attempted to find her; he needed her acceptance, and rationalised that anything other than her refusal to tolerate his presence he could count as that acceptance. She was the only person to whom he had ever admitted the truth, and he could not bear the thought of her rejection.

She was not in her chalet, or anywhere else in the grounds. He spent the rest of the day performing an extended version of his morning walk, but the woman was nowhere to be found.

That evening, as darkness gathered and the patients began another of their interminable soirees, Fuller crossed the greensward to the fireside group and sought the Captain. He knelt beside the carriage and regarded the nub of flesh that, despite its appearance, was nevertheless human.

"Have you seen her?" he asked.

The party noise around him stopped abruptly. Their dialogue became the centre of attention. "Is she missing?" the Captain asked.

"She left this morning. I haven't seen her since."

The Captain seemed to vent a weary sigh. "Fuller... Fuller. Stop this idiocy, man! Don't you see that nothing can come of it?"

"I need her," he said, and the silence around him deepened.

"Oh, Christ... Fuller, please listen to me. Don't you realise - she's dead."

It was as if the Captain had physically a.s.saulted him; for a second he was breathless, incredulous. "She can't be! She was with me just last night-"

"I'm sorry, Fuller. I'm very sorry. We thought you knew. She died six months ago in the shuttle accident. The woman you know is nothing more than programming."

He could feel the weight of their silent pity as he turned and ran.

The following morning he found her on the beach.

She stood in the wet sand, staring out across the ocean. Her shorts and tee-shirt were soaked, clasping her body. Fuller sank into a siting position on a nearby rock.

"The Captain told me about the accident," he said.

She turned to him from the waist and stared. Her face, as ever, was empty of expression.

"Biologically," she said, "she is dead. She died in the accident and all that survived was her body. She was brain-dead, so they manufactured a digital a.n.a.logue of her mind and re-vitalised the remains of her body. Over a period, here on Earth, they rebuilt her... me me."

Fuller stood and held the woman. "But you're still her her - you have all her memories, her knowledge." - you have all her memories, her knowledge."

She avoided his eyes. "I am a continuation of her."

He sensed her doubt, her reservation.

He shook her. "But you're still human!"

Her eyes found his, accusing. "I tried to drown myself today... I failed, of course. I am programmed to save myself. I am a valuable a.s.set to the Phoenix Line."

He looked into the vacancy of her expression, which he had thought of until now as merely distant. He recalled his own aborted suicide attempt, and he had the first stirrings of an awful premonition.

"Why...?" he released her and took one step back. "Why did you try to kill yourself?"

"I have her memories. She knew love before she died. Yesterday, with you, she would have been able to feel feel. I knew then for the first time that I could no longer pretend to be her. I am no longer human, and the part of me that was her cannot bear the thought."

A silver ambulance, with Phoenix Line Phoenix Line emblazoned along its flank, drew up on the cliff-top. Two uniformed men climbed from the cab and came down the steps, and the woman allowed herself to be walked away without so much as a backward glance. emblazoned along its flank, drew up on the cliff-top. Two uniformed men climbed from the cab and came down the steps, and the woman allowed herself to be walked away without so much as a backward glance.

He followed, burdened with grief for the woman. He crossed the greensward towards his chalet and, as the vehicle started up, he recalled her words of yesterday, when she had said that they were very much alike. Fuller realised that, of course, they were. He also realised their difference: the woman was condemned to existence with the full and terrible knowledge of her inhumanity, denied release by her programming and unable to regain that which she once had been.

Fuller thought of the city, of the life and the energy there. He turned and watched the silver vehicle drive from the estate, carrying away the woman who was no longer human.

//Big Trouble Upstairs I'm on the Barrier Reef pleasure 'plex, looking for a year-wife. Someone small and dark this time - Oriental maybe. The jacuzzi lagoon is foaming around me and my lover, a cute Kampuchean fluxer, when my handset goes ber-leep ber-leep. I wade into the shallows, the kid big-eyed on my hip, and take the call.

"Sorry to come between you and your fun, Isabella." Ma.s.singberd stares up from the back of my hand, playing the chaperone. "But you're on."

The s.p.a.cer senses the goodbye and lays a soft cheek against my breast. I enter her head, tone down the love I've been promoting thus far, damp her synaptic fires.

"Give it me, Ma.s.s," I sigh.

"You're gonna love this one," he begins, and gives me a big wink.

There's a laser-slayer loose on the Carnival Sat, wasting innocents like mad-crazy. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d zero'd the security team first, along with the mechanical defences - and he has a dozen workers imprisoned on the satellite, to pick off at his leisure.

"It's your kind of job, Is. You're going in there alone."

"Say, thanks..."

"A shuttle's on its way," he says, and signs off.

Soo-Lee clutches me. "Isabella..."

"There'll be other times," I say. But not with me... Why do I do it - why why? It was love at first sight. I felt that yearning, gut pang the second I set eyes on Soo-Lee a week back. She was picking scabs from her new hand-jack on the beach outside my villa. Of course, she wouldn't have given me a second glance, but I have ability ability.

Ten years ago I tested psi-positive and had the cut - but the operation went wrong. It was too too successful. Instead of coming out plain telepathic, I emerged successful. Instead of coming out plain telepathic, I emerged mega mega-telepathic. Which meant that, as well as being able to read minds, I had the power to control a subject's thoughts, make them do just whatever the h.e.l.l I wanted. Pretty neat, okay.

I was the first of a new line.

We're a dozen now, closely supervised.

And I have this thing about kids. Whenever I see one I like I get in there and tamper, fix, and soon they're all gooey-eyed, eager.

This past week on the 'plex we made a striking couple: an anorexic, slit-eyed Enginegirl and a six-six eighteen-year-old Rwandan Watusi with scarified cheeks and dreads. That's me.

The love I promote is doomed, of course. I can't sustain that degree of adoration in a subject for long. The past few years I've instilled ersatz-love for the period of a six-month or one-year marriage contract - then withdrawn. It's kinder that way, to both parties. A year is long enough to live a lie, even when you're in love.

I dump Soo-Lee on the golden sand and sluice apathy around her frontal lobe, and by the time I step into my villa she's beginning to wonder what she ever saw in me. Soon Isabella Manchester will be nothing more than a pleasant event in the memory of her youth, and then not even that.

Ma.s.singberd knows. He was the only person I could bring myself to tell. He once asked me why I didn't turn my ability on myself. "Why don't you cure yourself, Is? Fix your head so you don't l.u.s.t after these kids..."

It's no longer illegal, but oldsters like Ma.s.s have throwback morality.

"'Cos if it wasn't kids it'd be women or men. I'd be no better off, just the same. I need love, okay? I guess I'm insecure. I can't change what I am because of why why I am-" And stopped there. I am-" And stopped there.

I didn't even know Ma.s.singberd well enough to tell him why I am.

"I need love and it's so easy for me to get it," I'd often say. "But how can that be love?"

Skip six hours and I'm aboard the shutt on autopilot, heading away from the plane of the ecliptic towards the Carnival Sat. And mine's the only vessel going thisaway: all the other traffic is streaming Earthwards, sunlit specks corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g down the gravity-well like gene-data on a DNA helix.

From this far out the satellite is an oblate spheroid, a yuletide bauble set against the Pleiades. The lower hemisphere is in darkness - the maintenance section that keeps the whole show ticking. Above, the working end of the Sat is a fuzzy golden blur. Closer proximity provides resolution: I see avenues and arcades, rides and sideshows. One big fun city down there.

Ma.s.singberd's saying: "... carved up two hundred j.a.panese and American tourists before the emergency shuttles could get the rest out. There's around a dozen workers still in there, plus the killer."

"You sure he didn't sneak out on a shuttle?"

"I had a 'head screening every ship that left, Is." He looks up at me solicitously. "Hey, you be careful, okay?"

The sentimental old b.a.s.t.a.r.d. "I'll be fine, Ma.s.s."

"I'm putting you through to the Director who's still in there-"

But he's cut off by a screenful of static. I shake my hand impatiently and the screen clears. Now another mugshot regards me - the big cartoon head, all ribbons and grin, of Minnie Mouse.

"I'm fouled up with an entertainment channel, Ma.s.s!" I yell. I'm approaching the Satellite fast and I need the Director's talk-down. I can't hit destination cold. I'd be easy meat for the laser-slayer.

"Ma.s.singberd!" I cry again.

"Manchester?" Minnie Mouse asks.

"Huh?" I goggle.

"Are you reading, Manchester?" Minnie's fatuous grin belies the impatient tone.

"Reading," I say. "Who the h.e.l.l...?"

"Director Maria Da Cruz," Minnie says, a girl's voice m.u.f.fled by latex.

"Why the fancy dress, Director?"

"You'll find out when you get here. Frankly, your surprise cannot equal mine. I was expecting a combat squad, at least. We have a maniac rampant up here, and they send me a..." She subvocalizes the rest, not for my ears, but I make out what might be, "... a witch-doctor."

I smile. "What's the score, Minnie?"

"I'll meet you at rim-lock twelve. The killer's somewhere on the far side of the complex. Could be anywhere within an area of twenty square kilometres. My workers are in the central plaza, in the dorms. They fled there when the shooting began." As Minnie prattles I have the weird sensation of watching a kids' video crossed with the soundtrack of a cop show. "They're pinned down and can't get out."

"Have they tried?"

"You're joking, of course. The fire came from the far rim, and the dorms open onto the central concourse. It'd be an automatic death sentence for the first person who shows their face. You've got to get these people out."

"My job is to get the killer," I tell her. "Then they're safe."

"In that case I hope you're well armed," Minnie says condescendingly.

I have the last laugh. "As a matter of fact I don't believe in the things."

The Minnie head deprives me the satisfaction of seeing her face drop. She grins idiotically until I cut the link.

The shutt makes one hi-alt.i.tude orbit of the satellite and glides towards the docking rig in the underbelly, blindside of the killer. We contact with the delicacy of balloons kissing.

Seconds later I float out, cycle myself through the airlock and peer cautiously into the long, curving corridor. I scan for the killer's manic brainvibes, but the coast is clear. I move inside.

Minnie stands arms akimbo, awaiting me.

Maria Da Cruz is tense and afraid, of course, but beneath this I access her ident.i.ty. She's an intelligent, lonely kid, twenty-one in a week, and in any other circ.u.mstances I'd like to get to know her better.

As it is- "So here you are at last!" She kicks something towards me, a black rubber puddle sprouting ears.

"What the h.e.l.l?"

"Get into it. Don't argue." She looks me up and down, appraising. "You're tall, but you'll fit at a stretch."

I pick it up. A Mickey suit. I step into the booties and pull up the clinging rubber leggings over those of my onepiece. "Now, if you don't mind telling me what all this is about?" I could take time off scanning for the killer and read her, but I'm jumpy at the thought of being fried alive.

"This allows us greater freedom," Da Cruz says. "The killer isn't potting cartoon characters - they're all robots. I was in the storeroom when the killing began. I saw what was going on and dug these out. They're the last we have in stock, from the days before actors were superseded by 'bots."

I stretch the torso over each shoulder and let go with a snap. Then I pull on the zippered head; my own bulges between the ears like a big egg. Mickey's never been so tall.

"You weren't kidding, were you?"