Six (16 page)

“No, Adam has a point,” Shannon interjects. “All the Army can do is send radio transmissions to Sigma, and the AI is ignoring them. But the Pioneers have a better chance of communicating with it. We have the same kind of circuits that Sigma has, and we can think just as fast. We can get its attention.”

I'm glad Shannon is backing me up. I was a little worried she'd side with Zia and Marshall. “Yeah, exactly,” I say. “Remember how I communicated with Jenny when I was inside her circuits? If we can make contact with Sigma that way, we might learn something. We'd see how Sigma thinks and how its programming has changed since it was created. And once we get enough information, we can figure out how to handle the AI. Maybe we can work out a compromise with Sigma instead of fighting it.”

“HA!” The blast from Zia's speakers echoes across the gym. It's not really a laugh; it's a roar of disdain. “You think Sigma is gonna let you get close to his circuits? You think he's gonna just sit there while you plug your cable into his computer?”

Marshall chuckles again. “You have to admit that it's a bit far-fetched.”

“Hey, I never said I had all the answers.” I keep gesturing with the football, focusing on Marshall rather than Zia. Although the guy's a weasel, I feel like I have a better shot at convincing him. “I'm just saying it should be an option. Hawke should be training us for that kind of mission too, instead of concentrating only on combat.”

Zia suddenly extends one of her arms and knocks the football out of my grasp. It goes rolling across the gym's concrete floor. “You know nothing, Armstrong. General Hawke is our commander. He makes the decisions for the Pioneers. That's the way the Army works.”

Now I'm angry. I clench my mechanical hands into fists. “Then the Army's not for me, I guess. If I'm going to be a soldier, I want a say in the decisions.”

Zia takes another step toward me. Her acetylene torch clanks against my torso. If she fires it up, it'll slice right through my armor. “You're not a soldier. You're just a frightened little boy.”

Shannon steps forward and raises her arms. She's within striking distance of Zia's turret. “Back off, Zia. I don't want to hurt you.”

My mind starts doing a million things at once. I'm observing the positions of Zia, Marshall, and Shannon. I'm calculating the probabilities of several possible scenarios, trying to determine which Pioneer is most likely to strike first. I'm planning a complex maneuver for my left arm that will swing it between me and Zia, knocking aside her circular saw and acetylene torch. And at the same time, I'm trying to figure out why this happened. It's half an hour before the start of our first training session, and we're already threatening to kill each other. For a bunch of robots, it isn't very logical.

Luckily, at that moment I hear more clanging. Pioneer 6—DeShawn—marches into the gym. Waving both arms in greeting, he booms, “Good morning, sports fans!” and comes straight toward us. Then he stops and points his camera at the football lying on the floor. “Whoa, whose ball is this?” He picks it up and points a mechanical finger at the football's Super Bowl XLVI logo. “We got a Giants fan in the house?”

Zia steps backward, and so does Shannon. As our murderous huddle breaks up, I turn my turret toward DeShawn and raise my right hand. “Yeah, that's me.”

“Aw, man, I hate you. I'm a Lions fan. We've never won a Super Bowl.” DeShawn deftly spins the ball on one of his fingers, then drops back and cocks his arm. “Go long, Armstrong. I want to see how far I can throw this thing.”

I say, “Okay,” and sprint to the other side of the gym. I'd much rather toss the football with DeShawn than get into a fight with Zia and Marshall. After I've run fifty yards, DeShawn fires a perfect spiral at me. Out of curiosity, I turn on my Pioneer's radar system, which measures the speed and direction of incoming objects. The football is whizzing toward me at seventy-five miles per hour. A second later it slams into my torso. My armor plating vibrates from the impact, but I manage to trap the ball against my midsection and make the catch.

“Oh yeah!” DeShawn yells. He pumps one of his robotic arms and does a little dance. “I got the moves!”

Watching him cheers me up. I know exactly what he's feeling. Before he became a Pioneer, DeShawn had the same kind of muscular dystrophy I had, and probably the same frustrations too. Both of us spent years in wheelchairs while our muscles slowly weakened. We had to watch our legs and arms turn stiff and useless, deteriorating a little more every day. So it's no mystery to me why he's so happy now.

I extend my right arm and signal him to start running to his left. He takes off like a shot, but I have more than enough time to calculate his speed and aim the football at him. DeShawn makes a leaping catch and lets out another synthesized whoop.

After a few more throws, Shannon jumps into the game. At first I play quarterback and Shannon tries to block my passes to DeShawn. Then we trade places and Shannon plays quarterback. Meanwhile, Zia and Marshall withdraw to the corner of the room. Feeling suspicious, I increase the sensitivity of my acoustic sensors so I can pick up what they're saying to each other, but I don't hear a word. They're communicating by radio, using their antennas. I turn on my own antenna and try to intercept their signals, but I still can't listen in—they've put their messages in code.

Then Jenny Harris, the last Pioneer to arrive, steps into the gym. She moves as quietly as she can and stays close to the wall, keeping her distance from everyone.

I raise my arm and wave to her, but she doesn't acknowledge me. We haven't talked since her procedure, and as the days go by, it's getting more and more awkward. During the half-minute when we shared the same circuits we were as close as two people can get, and now it feels weird to see her and say nothing. So I tell Shannon and DeShawn that I'll be right back, and I stride toward Jenny.

“Hey, Jen, want to toss the ball with us?”

I know she likes football. When I was inside her circuits and viewing her memories I saw images of her playing the game with her friends. But as I approach her, she steps backward and turns her turret away from me.

I stop in my tracks. “Something wrong, Jen? You okay?”

She doesn't respond. Her Pioneer just stands there, perfectly still. She wants me to go away; that's clear. But instead I extend one of my arms, pointing it at Shannon and DeShawn. “We could use another player. Then we could get a game going. You know, two on two.”

Nothing. She stays silent and motionless. I know Jenny about as well as you can know anyone, but I'm still not sure what's going on. Although I removed the most traumatic memory from her circuits, I guess there's plenty of fear and anxiety left inside her. And sadness too. We had to give up so much to stay alive.

I try to think of something to say, something that might make her feel better.
We
can
get
through
this? We should look forward, not back?
But before I can come up with anything decent, I hear a voice blaring from a dozen loudspeakers scattered across the gym. General Hawke's voice.

“
Attention, Pioneers. May I have your attention
?
”

We all stop what we're doing. Shannon, who just threw another pass to DeShawn, retracts her arms and spins her turret around, trying to see if Hawke's in the gym. DeShawn does the same thing, letting the football bounce against his torso and skitter across the floor. I aim my camera at the gym's entrance, but Hawke is nowhere in sight. He must be in another part of the base, speaking to us over the intercom.

“
I
scheduled
the
training
exercise
for
twelve
hundred
hours, but I see that you're all here early, so we might as well start now. No time like the present.
”

I feel a jolt of surprise. How does Hawke know that all of us are here? Tilting backward, I train my camera at the high, vaulted ceiling and spot three small surveillance cameras hidden in the shadows. Hawke's been watching us the whole time. He must've seen my big showdown with Zia and Marshall. This worries me a bit—I said some harsh things about the general. But at least it's out in the open now. If he heard what I said, maybe he'll do something about it.

“
Please
go
to
the
end
of
the
gymnasium
that's farthest from the entrance. I'll open the doors.
”

My acoustic sensors pick up the sound of electrical motors opening a pair of oversized doors at the far end of the gym. Behind them is a large, steel-walled compartment, about fifteen feet wide and thirty feet long. It's a freight elevator, big enough to hold a truck.

Zia is the first to head for the elevator. “Sir!” she booms as she crosses the gym. “Where are we going?”

“
The
conditions
are
ideal, Pioneers. Over the next three hours, none of Sigma's surveillance satellites will pass over Colorado, and no aircraft is within thirty miles of our base.
”

The rest of us follow Zia. As we stride into the elevator, my circuits crackle with anticipation. If I had a heart, it would be pounding.

“Sir!” Zia shouts. “Are we—”

“
That's right. We're going outside.
”

• • •

Carrying the weight of all six Pioneers, the elevator takes nearly a minute to ascend to the surface. When the doors open, I see a big, empty, warehouselike room. We must be inside one of the hollow buildings that the Army built aboveground. Dad told me the buildings were erected above Pioneer Base to make it look like a prison camp for terrorists, at least in satellite photos. It's a good cover story, he said, because it has the ring of truth. The U.S. government does have secret prisons in other places.

As we exit the elevator, a soldier lifts a roll-up door to our left. Glorious daylight pours into the building, streaming into my camera and setting off a chain reaction of joy in my circuits. I guess every human brain has an instinctive love of sunlight, and this love is faithfully duplicated in our electronics. I automatically head for the open door, and the other Pioneers do the same.

After stepping outside I turn my turret in a slow circle, panning my camera across the treeless basin that the Army chose as the site for Pioneer Base. The high mountain ridges surrounding the basin are still topped with snow, but meltwater is trickling down the slopes to the basin's muddy floor. When I train my camera at the expanse of mud, I see thousands of tiny green shoots poking through. Spring is coming to Colorado. Soon the basin will be carpeted with grass and wildflowers.

I stride across the mud to get a better view of the snow-covered ridges. I can't see anything past them, and I feel a strong urge to race up the nearest slope so I can gaze at the mountainous landscape that must lie beyond. But thirty-two soldiers stand between me and the foot of the ridge. They're arrayed in a rough circle around the Pioneers.

Most of the soldiers carry M16 assault rifles, but half a dozen hold heavier weapons that I recognize from the files General Hawke ordered us to study. They're M136 anti-tank guns, which shoot high-explosive shells that can rip through a foot of steel armor. Seeing the gun here is sobering—unlike the rifles, the M136 is powerful enough to bring down a Pioneer. The soldiers are clearly ready to stop us from escaping.

A surge of anger runs through me, extinguishing the joy. Although I understand why the Army doesn't want us to leave the basin—just one picture of a Pioneer, taken by a spy satellite overhead, could show Sigma where we live—I still don't like it. As it turns out, Hawke's cover story is partly true: Pioneer Base
is
a prison camp. But the prisoners aren't terrorists. We're far more dangerous.

I turn my turret toward Shannon and DeShawn, wanting to ask what they think of the soldiers. They're scanning the basin with their cameras, just like I did, but they're also holding out their mechanical hands with the fingers splayed. It looks like they're waving to someone on top of the mountain ridge, but nobody's up there.

“Shannon!” I call. “What are you doing?”

“Just try it!”

“What?”

“Open your hands and hold them up!”

I raise my arms and open my hands. The sensors in my fingers measure the velocity of the wind, which is blowing from the west at nine miles per hour. My sensors also show that the air temperature is forty-nine degrees and the humidity is twenty-five percent. But as my circuits put all this information together, something amazing happens. I feel a cool, gentle breeze on my hands.

The sensation is wonderful. I only wish I had more sensors on my arms and torso and turret so I could feel the breeze everywhere. I notice that Zia and Marshall are also holding up their hands, and after a few seconds Jenny raises her arms too. Despite our differences, we all share this pleasure. We're trying to catch the breeze.

We stand there with our arms raised for the next fifteen seconds, looking like a team of robotic outfielders waiting for a fly ball. Then I hear General Hawke's voice again, but this time it's not amplified. He's standing right behind us. “All right, enough fooling around. Form a line, Pioneers.”

Zia reacts first, instantly turning around to salute the general. The rest of us line up beside her. Hawke wears a winter camouflage uniform and mud-caked boots, and his face is ruddy and cheerful. The fresh air has enlivened him. Outdoors, he looks at least ten years younger.

“Glad you could all make it,” he says. “Though I get the feeling that some of you are more eager than others.”