The Dark Side (15 page)

“I was apologizing for the misunderstanding, sir—not for the deception itself.”

For a moment Justus looks at the view outside the window: the glowing neon, the hypnotically slow-falling rain. Then he refocuses on Grey, as if to refresh the whole scene. As if to make sure he's not dreaming. “How long has this been going on?” he asks.

“How long has what been going on, sir?”

“How long has this actor been filling in for Fletcher Brass?”

“It has been going on for over three years now. The arrangement is well understood here in Purgatory, and it is a matter of some regret that you did not know about it.”

Justus thinks about it. “The rocket hasn't been under construction for three years.”

“That is true, sir.”

“Then why has the deception been going on for so long?”

“For security reasons, sir.”

“Fletcher Brass fears for his safety?”

“I'm afraid so, sir.”

“Why? Why does he fear for his safety?”

“Mr. Brass is the ultimate authority in Purgatory, and as such he is sometimes forced to make decisions that are not well received.”

“What sort of decisions?”

“Decisions that make him seem ruthless, sir, but which are best for the territory as a whole.”

“Decisions that might provoke a violent response?”

“I am not in a position to comment on that, sir.”

“You do realize that a terrorist group has now claimed responsibility for the bombing?”

“I did not know that, sir.”

“Well, I'm telling you now. What do you make of it?”

Leonardo Grey sits silent and unmoving for several seconds, face blank, eyes unblinking, as if indulging in some relayed communication. Which, if radio communication is truly prohibited in Purgatory, Justus knows is impossible—or at the very least illegal. And finally the droid says, “There has certainly been much systematic agitation of volatile sensibilities, sir.”

He sounds like he's reciting lines from a script. “Agitation?” Justus says. “By whom?”

“Irresponsible persons. People who foment rebellion for their own purposes.”

“Terrorists?”

“I am not in a position to say that, sir.”

“QT Brass?”

“I am not in a position to say that, sir.”

“Nevertheless, you must see that what you're talking about is the very reason I need to speak to Fletcher Brass personally.”

“That is not possible, as I have said, sir.”

“Why? He's not dead, is he?”

“He is not dead.”

“He's not ill?”

“He is only, as I have said, preoccupied.”

“No one is so preoccupied that they can't spare a few minutes.”

“Mr. Brass is so preoccupied, sir, that even if he were able to spare a few minutes he would not be very accommodating to you.”

“You're saying he's got a powerful temper?”

“Mr. Brass is a passionate man.”

Justus snorts. “Well, I know all about powerful and passionate men. I've dealt with plenty of them before. And I can deal with them again.”

“I'm not sure you understand, sir. Mr. Brass is under such stress that the man you meet would not be the—”

“No, I'm not sure
you
understand.” Justus has had experience with androids before too—on Earth he once instructed one in detective procedures—and he knows you have to be as firm with them as you might be with a stubborn child. “The Brass I met this morning—the actor—assured me of his full cooperation. He
said he encouraged me to rummage through his drawers. And if what you say is true, then I'm satisfied that those are the sentiments of the genuine Fletcher Brass. So I not only
prefer
to speak to the real Brass, I
insist
upon it. It's my
duty
as an investigating officer. And it's
crucial
to the integrity of the investigation. It's in
everyone's
best interests, and may, in fact, be the difference between life and death. So it's simply not negotiable. Do you understand that?”

Leonardo Grey sits in silence for a few seconds, again as if engaged in some secret communication. And eventually he says, “I understand, sir.”

“Very good,” says Justus. “Then please arrange a meeting as soon as possible. You know how to contact me.”

“I do, sir.”

For a few moments Grey continues staring—Justus knows it's a stretch to read any malevolence into the look—and then gets to his feet in one fluent movement.

“It was a pleasure meeting you, sir,” the droid says. “I apologize again for my unannounced intrusion. And for any misunderstanding.”

“Perfectly okay.” Justus ushers him to the door. “But one last question before you go.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“You're the same model as Leonardo Brown, are you not?”

“That is correct, sir. We all are.”

“All?”

“Myself, Leonardo Brown, Leonardo White, and Leonardo Black.”

“Uh-huh,” says Justus. “What happened to Leonardo Green?”

“There is no Leonardo Green, sir.”

“Then why ‘Leonardo,' may I ask?”

“We were named in honor of Leonardo da Vinci, who in 1495 designed the first known android.”

“Fascinating. So you're sort of like brothers?”

“We were all constructed as part of the Daedalus Project, sir.”

“I see.”

Justus makes a mental note to check it out as soon as possible, and lets Leonardo Grey out the door.

T
HE BLACK-HAIRED, BLACK-SUITED, BLACK-EYED,
and black-tied droid continues traveling at top speed across the lunar Farside. The surface area of the Moon is 38 million square kilometers, roughly equivalent to the combined sizes of North America and Antarctica. When the droid started out on his odyssey, Purgatory—or Oz, or El Dorado—was slightly more than 2,500 kilometers distant. Even now it's just under 1,800 kilometers away. An m-train on Nearside could cover the distance in two hours; a shuttle, a lobber, or a hopper could do it in even less. But on Farside, even traveling 24/7 on hard-packed maintenance roads, the droid calculates he can make such a distance in no less than two and a half days. By which time the day-night terminator will have passed across him, and he will be traveling in complete darkness.

Move. Move. While others sleep, move.

To the droid the darkness itself is of little concern. He has inbuilt night-vision and infrared-reading accessories. He has a digital compass module that keeps him heading north. He has force-sensing and gravitational registers, gyroscopes, proximity sensors, accelerometers, and a visual sensing rate of 1,500 frames a second. He has five hundred pneumatic semi-controls and half a dozen piezoelectric microgenerators running off six glucose-and-alcohol-fueled battery cells. His intelligence center gives him advanced pattern recognition, logic functions, and enough reinforcement capabilities to learn rapidly from his mistakes. And on top of everything else, he now has an LRV.

The droid is capable of steering the vehicle because six years earlier he was loaded with the Zenith's basic operational requirements. He later accrued tactical experience by personally steering a Zenith 13. So he knows how to drive, how to recharge, and how to repair a basic breakdown, assuming parts and energy are available. And he knows too that the rover he is currently driving will run out of battery hours within another two hundred kilometers. But his logic circuits also tell him that there's a very high probability that he will find a replacement vehicle—or a recharging point—by then.

Nonetheless, the lunar surface since he left the uncooperative geologists has been remarkably barren. All he's seen are a few flashing beacons, a couple of broken-down recon robots, some debris from expeditionary teams, and close to the equator the sweeping viaduct of the sun-synchronous harvest train. But no actual humans.

He's not even driving on a maintenance road anymore. That came to an end two hours ago, most mysteriously, at a T-intersection. Since then, having elected to continue bearing north anyway,
he's gone up and down hills, ploughed across dunes, skirted craters, and bounced and juddered over rock-studded plains.

But now he arrives at a giant chain-link fence. It sweeps from horizon to horizon with no visible break. To someone on Earth this would be a familiar sight, but here on the Moon it's virtually unique. And inexplicable. It certainly doesn't appear on Ennis Fields's ragged-edged map. So the droid drives west for five minutes, looking for an entrance or an explanation, and eventually comes to a cracked and blistered sign:

The droid recognizes the international radiation symbol—the trefoil is common on the Moon—but sees no compelling threat. There's a small possibility of damage to his circuits, of course, but the condition of the sign suggests the test zone is many years old, meaning the radiation levels shouldn't be any more hazardous than those experienced during a normal surface expedition. And such doses have had no discernible effect on him so far. So he takes some wire cutters from the toolbox, snips through the fence, rips away some more with his bare hands, gets back on the LRV, and drives through.

Ten minutes later he comes across the first sign of the explosion itself. The surface slowly hardens beneath him and
develops milky turquoise and aquamarine tints. Then the tires start crunching on tiny spherules of pyroclastic glass. Then the surface becomes a sea of blue-tinted crystal and bizarre swirls and ripples. Then curling sea waves, icebergs, and indescribable wonderland shapes.

And everywhere there are those infernal glass beads. The LRV's wheels struggle for traction—it's like crossing a road covered with marbles. The droid steers left and right, trying to maintain control. The controller shudders in his grip. The wheels spit out beads like pellets. The LRV skids and swerves. Like a pinball it glances off crystal walls. It loses buffers and dust-guards from its sides. The droid swings it back on course and slows his speed—it doesn't help. He accelerates—that doesn't help either. The LRV careens around like a suburban car in a field of mud. It threatens to spin out of control and tip over entirely. It blurts and caroms and slaloms and fishtails and ploughs on across the sapphire sea.

On Earth there are some people who would do this for fun. There are certainly people who, forced to cross such difficult terrain, would take pride in their skills at the controls. There are even those who would take great delight, notwithstanding the dangers, in crossing such a bizarrely beautiful terrain. But the droid feels no such pleasure. He only calculates a further disruption to his schedule.

There's more. Very much like a terrestrial glacier, the sea of glass hides dangerous pits and crevasses. And none of the droid's senses, which in a human would be regarded as preternatural, equip him to see all these openings in time. So his decision to speed, though based on all available evidence, is about to bring him undone.