Robogenesis (19 page)

The drop was hidden by a snowbank. I was moving too fast. Just like this dead soldier.

His face is smooth and alabaster white. Once, he had the olive skin and black hair of a native Osage fighter from Gray Horse, Oklahoma. It reminds me of another face, Lark Iron Cloud’s, his mutilated body animated by perverse technology. My classification routines came back confused and I did not allow the soldier to see his superior, Cormac Wallace. I wonder now if that was a correct decision.

What path did I set Lark on when I stood in his way that morning?

Enhanced visual damage diagnostics. Peering down at the straight lines of my legs, I contemplate their machined perfection. Nature does
not create straight lines. Only men do that. All around me are fractal spirals hidden in the patterns of leaves, the swirl of falling snow, and even the placement of debris on the ground. I have names for the patterns I see in nature: Normal distributions. Beta. Gamma. Poisson. Dirichlet.

Diagnostic scan complete. Cleared for safe movement. Gross motor threads online.

I rise to my feet and look down at the corpse one last time. The dead soldier’s lips are brittle and cracked. His hair moves stiffly in the wind, attached to a peeling scalp. The snarl on his face indicates that he died in extreme agony. Limbs shattered from the fall, the tall-walker machine that was his life support became his cage when he was impaled upon its struts.

Pain.

I send a minor thought thread to diagnose the odd grind in my left knee joint. It does not hurt, of course. Harsh wind rips at my casing and I do not feel its bite. Abrasions from my fall down the rock face mar my outer casing and I do not bleed. I’m alone in this natural world of rocks and trees and corpses. It is a strange feeling and I allow myself another second to experience it. I look again at the boy in the snow. Try to change my face to match his snarl.

I wonder if I am becoming odd.

Stepping around the corpse, I see the hump of the man’s shoulder. His jacket is torn, the marbled meat of his shoulder ripped open. Crimson blood is smeared onto the ice. Inconsistent with injuries from the fall. Maxprob indicates the boy in the snow has been partially eaten. Recently, and by something big. I pause to consider, put my face back to its normal impassive state.

And then the thing hits me from behind.

Kinetic energy transfer indicates a weight of around four hundred pounds. The impact throws me stumbling forward, head snapping back. My drives lock for safety and my mind skips a beat. I stagger forward and turn.

The shaggy quadruped mammal that hit me roars and lowers its head. It raises its haunches, eyes low, bunching muscles to charge again. I stand still and cold as an ice statue. With the current damage to my frame it
is unclear whether I can fight off this threat. Baring four-inch fangs, it appears capable of ripping through my exposed strutwork, disabling me physically and then leaving my aware corpse to rot in the snow.

Well, not rot. Not exactly. My body was not made by nature and it will not return to nature anytime soon.

It registers that I need help, which is uncommon. In my mind, I see a small dark face. She wears a crooked smile, her blank black eyes glinting. She is beautiful by human standards and by mine. Her name is Mathilda Perez.

This juvenile human female once saved my life. When the sky was raining fire and my squad was dying around me, she guided me to victory. After it was over, and Archos R-14 burned and buried, she instructed me how to repair myself—helped me make new eyes. When satellite orbits allowed, we spoke in our own way.

And then she was gone.

“Mathilda,” I radio. “Can you assist?”

I open my sensory input to her. The little girl can see what I see. She knows that my military samples don’t contain wildlife—certainly not North American wildlife. My original mission was to patrol dusty streets of occupied war zones in the Middle East. My mission was interrupted by the end of the world. Now I am very far from fulfilling the operational guidelines I was designed for.

Everyone is, these days.

“Repeat. Urgent request—”

It’s a grizzly bear
. I hear her voice in my head. A strange feeling settles over me. I am glad to hear her voice. I missed her over the last weeks. Missed the curious mind of this little girl who is still a decade older than me.

A burst of naturalist information hits my database over the radio, relayed via the local satellites that the girl seems to be able to hack by second nature. I learn about a variety of bear species. Other megafauna that live in this region. Temperature norms and topographical maps. A torrent of useful survival information.

It’s not a threat to you. End transmission
.

Ursus arctos horribilis
. A big male. A species of solitary omnivores
whose territory can range up to four hundred miles. Not aggressive to humanoids except in defense of its young. Or in defense of a kill.

I glance at the bloodied, partially eaten corpse.

The bear shakes its head and growls, almost plaintive. The creature is fat and healthy and loaded with muscle that ripples under windblown fur. Long yellow fangs flash at me under an expressive, quivering muzzle. That growl drops octaves until it dips below my frequency range and becomes only a vibration in the ground detected by my seismic sensors.

“Mathilda?” I transmit.

Nothing. She is gone. The grizzly bear advances a step, a steady growl rumbling deep within its chest, small brown eyes aimed up through two patches of black fur around its eye sockets.

“Request assistance,” I radio. “Proper evasion response.”

I can’t keep doing this, Niner. It’s weird, okay? The war is over and you’re going to have to survive on your own
.

“Urgent,” I repeat.

Look at its eyes. It isn’t after you
.

Mathilda is right. The bear is looking over my shoulder. My maxprob was based on incomplete behavioral information. That whining growl sounds again from deep inside the bear’s chest. This bear is not exhibiting aggression.

This bear is exhibiting a fear response.

The war is over. I need my life to go back to normal. You have to find your own kind, Niner. Leave me alone. I’m sorry
.

Something crashes in the woods behind me. Something big. Frequency of impacts indicate footsteps. Probable stride length over four meters. Speed approximately eight meters per second through dense, uneven terrain. A rogue walker.

I turn my head in time to see it peek over the crest of the rock face. The hull plate thrusts out, silhouetted against gray skies, forelimbs pawing the air before the bulk of it plunges down the cliff. The modified quadruped tank falls in an avalanche of plated armor and synthetic muscle.

Vehicle identified: Gray Horse Army spider tank model. Heavily modified. Its round intention light glows a hostile yellow as it slides
toward me. Afterburner bright, it saturates my image sensors and blooms into a hazy bonfire that darkens the background to nothing. The color reminds me of the churning orange haze that I have seen floating over the horizon. The color of rabid thoughts.

Low-level reaction diagnostics kick in and my legs actuate. Inertial sensors saturate with G-force as my body launches out of the way. I hit the ground and roll. The spider tank stumbles past, hurdling over the grizzly bear. The bear whimpers and cringes, not even taking a token swipe at the gargantuan machine.

Something is wrong with the spider tank. It has no human riders or squad mates. A dog without its fleas, as the soldiers would say. Its belly net has been sliced open, a few pieces of rope flapping like flayed skin. All the supplies are gone. Twenty yards away, it collapses pathetically onto its knees. Finally stabilizes on the icy rock and goes still. Slowly, it flexes muscled legs and stands up.

Searching.

I lie perfectly still where I have fallen. The grizzly bear is also playing dead. The bulk and dexterity of the spider tank have activated some kind of unspoken survival instinct that we have in common, even though we are both used to being apex predators.

In the fading sunlight, a spotlight activates on the stocky turret of the spider tank. It slowly turns, sweeping illumination across rows of trees like black fingers. Seeing something, it stops. Some coded communication takes place. A query.

No response.

The tank begins to walk away, its spotlight flowing over the ground. Deeper into the trees, it starts to jog. Finally, the spider tank breaks into a wheezing trot. It quickly builds up a solid dense momentum that sends it crashing through the narrow gaps between trees. A lurching beacon, its light fades into the cold empty waste.

All is silent and still under the shroud of frigid dusk. I detect movement a meter away. A dark mound of fur is rising up from the snow. A quarter ton of lean, winter-tested muscle and fang. Clouds of hot breath erupt from its lungs every second. Those two black patches of fur around its eyes lower and level on me again where I lie on my back in the snow.
Moving smoothly, both of us killers, we reach a crouch at the same time. My three eyes trained on its two.

Then, at the same instant, we both back away. Seconds later, we bolt in different directions. Something is hunting these woods tonight. Something foreign to the bear and to me. Neither of us wants to have anything to do with it.

Alone, I chart the maxprob course of the spider tank based on last-known data. I choose a route that will not intersect. Switching to low-light imaging, I select a rate of speed to maximize stealth and distance covered. Adopt a gait that minimizes my audible signature. I introduce occasional fractal course changes to make it harder for an interceptor to interpolate my final intended goal.

The spider tank exhibited a nonstandard transmission pattern. It did not conform entirely to Gray Horse Army standards, yet it was not the same as what I have detected from Archos R-14. It was something else. Each methodical footstep I place punches a neat hole in the crusty snow and propels me away from the wrongness.

Engage radio communication. Maximum power.

“Mathilda,” I radio.

No response. The rhythm of my legs creates a familiar heat that grows in my joints. I jog silently through dark woods, small under an icy sprinkle of stars.

“Mathilda,” I repeat. “Please.”

Nothing. The human child can’t receive me. Or won’t. I play back her last transmission to me.

Find your own kind
.

Very well.

Arbiter-class humanoid safety-and-pacification unit, model Nine Oh Two. Point of origin: Fort Collins, Colorado.

Set point of return …

Plot route …

Execute.

I am going home.

NEURONAL ID: NOLAN PEREZ

We’re running, hand in hand. Mathilda’s fingers are braided into mine. The word
Mommy
is still on my lips, hot tears blurring my eyes. But my big sister is pulling me away, my lungs aching, away from where Mommy is screaming through the fence, away from danger, toward safety. These are the strongest memories that I have of my sister, of my life—memories of running away.

Every night, these are my dreams.

Mathilda and I used to run from machines. Hard bits of metal that waited in the cold night, ready to tear into soft warm children. But lately, things have changed in New York City. Instead of running from crouching lumps of metal and plastic, my sister and I are running from other survivors.

The Tribe is here now.

I don’t know what happened to the gaunt people who left the city for the woods. The war lasted three years. Three scorching summers and three freezing winters. Years of Rob changing, sharpening its new babies into more and more deadly shapes. All the familiar cars and airplanes
I remember from before rusted away slow and then came back fast as clawing walkers and swarms of corkscrew drones.

I’m surprised anybody can still
recognize
New York City.

Vines and weed trees were growing in every dirty crevice of Manhattan by the time Mathilda and I even found the Underground. All the pipes burst forever ago. Without pumps, most subways flooded and a lot of roads caved into sinkholes or turned to creeks. A couple of years later, the creepers and wild grass had taken hold pretty much everywhere you looked. It’s okay. We used the leaves as camouflage. We let the birds and raccoons and feral cats distract the machines with their heat signatures.

And anything that nature didn’t take fast enough we blew up or knocked over ourselves. Those first machines had wheels. Our friends Marcus and Dawn told us to break the roads, buildings, and sidewalks. It slowed the machines down enough so we could survive, and it was fun as hell. Late-war varieties either had legs or they flew, but still, nothing here is flat or clean or even. All the hard edges of brick and steel and glass are rusting or crumbling or mossy. All of it is thick with years of quick-growing vines.

The city has changed. And I guess these people have changed, too.

Like always, I watch from a distance. The Tribe is mostly made up of skinny guys and girls with lean muscles. They wear patched-together clothes, all faded to the same skin-brown color. Brown teeth and leathery skin. They keep watch on each other out of the corners of their eyes. Their dirty hands are always out, tense, fingers ready to turn into fists.