The Phoenix Code (18 page)

"Stop it!" Straining to look over her shoulder at him, she swung her fist back and hit him in the knee.

Ander ignored the punch. Instead, he gave Raj a malicious look. "You can watch me do her."

Raj cursed at him. He was bracing his feet against the table leg, pushing hard, trying to snap the wood.

Megan clenched her fists. "Get off me."

"Such honeyed words." Ander lifted himself up, but only enough to flip her onto her back. Then he pushed her down into the bed.

"Why are you doing this?" Megan shoved at his shoulders.

"Why are you afraid? Are you a virgin? No, don't answer. I know you aren't. I've seen your medical records."

She froze. Did that mean he was the one who had searched her files at the Pentagon?

"What do you want from us?" Raj asked. "Your freedom? You have it. Just let her go."

"I'm doing what I want." Ander regarded Megan. "I am one. A virgin, I mean. Sure, they tested my plumbing. I've never had sex with anyone, though."

"Ander, listen," she said. "You're trapped in a truncated response space—"

"Oh, stop. Truncated space indeed. I want to fuck."

"Input your crosslight codes," Raj said.

Ander went so still that for a moment Megan thought his rnind had frozen again. He stayed that way for one second, like a statue. Then he deliberately set his hand on Megan's breast and turned to Raj. "I cut out the crosslight code, asshole."

No. Megan stiffened with sudden understanding. The crosslight code was the rewrite she had done to strengthen his conscience. Without it, he had neither caps on his behavior nor a significant sense of moral responsibility.

"Put it back in." Raj watched Ander with a probing intensity. "It will solve your looping problem."

"You need your conscience," Megan said. "To widen the gene pool for your code." She wasn't sure if that was true, but it only mattered that he believed it.

Ander turned to her. "I don't want a conscience."

"It's why your mind feels unstable," she said.

"Maybe." He started to unbutton her nightshirt. "Maybe not."

Megan tried to twist out from under him. "Ander, don't do this. Don't prove the detractors right who claimed an android could never develop morals."

He grabbed her wrists, holding them in front of her body with one hand. "Why do you act like this sex thing matters? It's nothing. A little rubbing and then it will be over."

"It matters. Believe me."

He began working her out of the nightshirt. She fought in his hold, trying to stop him, but she only succeeded in ripping a side seam of the shirt, splitting it up to her hip. He finished taking it off and dropped it on the bed, leaving her naked beneath him.

"Ander, don't be a bloody fool!" Raj said. "Do this and you'll never recover her goodwill."

"Why?" Ander pinned Megan's wrists to the bed by her shoulders. "Humans do this all the time." He jerked his head toward Raj. "You want him. Why not me? We're about the same size and shape. And I'm younger."

"None of that matters." Megan shot Raj a frantic glance and he tilted his head, trying to tell her something, but she had no idea what.

"Come on, Megan." Still holding her hands, Ander stretched out on top of her. He pushed apart her legs with his knees and fit his hips into the cradle of her pelvis. "I want to know what it's like."

"Stop it!" She could feel his erection through his jeans. "No
more
."

"Why is it such a big deal?" He slid his hands up her sides, scraping his thumbs over her breasts. "Rubbing you this way—I don't understand the context. I know men consider your body beautiful. But this pleasure thing—I'm missing it." He rubbed against her. "If I do this enough, I'll have an orgasm, especially if I go inside you. But it's just plumbing. The faucet goes on for a few seconds and that's it. In fact, this whole reproduction thing doesn't usually last long. So why the big fuss?"

Megan struggled to keep her voice calm. "The damage is emotional as well as physical." She remembered now where she had seen Raj tilt his head that way; he did it in the NEV-5 lab when he was about to leave for his rooms, the library, or the Solarium. But she didn't see how it could help now.

Ander rolled her nipple between his fingers. "It's only friction. If I washed your face when you didn't want it washed, it would be irritating, sure, but you wouldn't act as if I were subjecting you to some horrible trauma."

"This isn't washing your face." She pushed at his shoulders. "It's a violent act with consequences far beyond the time it takes."

He slid his hands down and gripped her around the waist. "You always acted as if you found me pleasant enough."

"Sex involves far more than 'pleasant enough.' You
know
that." Suddenly she realized what Raj was trying to tell her. "You have a library on sexual crime, Ander. It's probably in the portion of your code you've isolated. You have to read it again." Ander was far more likely to respond to the advice from her than from Raj.

"I don't want to." He pushed his hand between their hips and unzipped his jeans.

"No!" Megan hit at him with her fists. He was opening his jeans now. "Ander,
stop
!"

He paused, his hand still between them. Then he said, "Damn it all," and blew out a gust of air, stirring tendrils of her hair. With a grunt, he rolled off her body onto his back and zipped up his jeans with an angry jerk. Then he put his arm over his forehead and clenched his fist.

Megan grabbed her nightshirt as she slid off the bed. She backed up to the bungalow entrance, then pulled the shirt on over her head. If Ander came after her, she would lock herself in the bathroom. He had secured the front door, linking his mind to its computer chip so she and Raj couldn't open it. Fortunately, the motel was so cheap that the bathroom had an old-style lock with no chip. Ander could probably break the door down, but it was better than nothing.

So they stayed, Ander on his back, Raj watching him, and Megan against the wall with her arms folded around herself.

Finally Ander sat up and took the rifle from the nightstand. "Now what?"

"Let Megan go," Raj said. "You only need one hostage. Then you won't have to worry so much about keeping us under control."

"I want you both. You belong to me now." Ander looked back and forth between the two of them. "I really have it by the tail, don't I? I can't control both of you unless I keep at least one tied up. What if your fragile human bodies can't take this treatment, or you attack me and I have to shoot?"

"Let us contact someone who can help," Megan said.

"No." He rubbed his eyes in a gesture so human, it made her breath catch. If only they could have come this far without him turning against them.

"What is it you want?" Raj asked.

This time, Ander's face didn't blank as he considered the question. Instead, he appeared thoughtful. "I don't want to be alone. I need others like me. You and Megan can make more of us."

Raj suddenly went rigid. "Why do you think that?"

"You two are the experts."

"Building you took years of research and teams of experts."

"That's right," Ander told him. "And after all that work, you know how to make us and Megan knows how to program us."

"It's not that easy," Raj said. "The cost alone would be millions. At least."

"You're a billionaire. You can afford it."

Raj clenched his fists around the table leg. "I may not have as much money as you think. Even if I did, what you want would bankrupt me. Why should I agree to that?"

"You're mine now," Ander said, as if pointing out the obvious. "So what was yours, as they say, is mine."

"Like hell."

"The Everest team used a lot of your techniques," Ander said. "And I know you were part of the Phoenix group at the Lawrence Las Cruces Lab in New Mexico."
That made Raj pause. "I've never worked at LLCL. The Phoenix Project was at Arizonix."

Ander leaned forward. "You know your name is in that file."

"What file?"

"The one you stole from the Pentagon."

Raj made a frustrated noise. "
You
stole those files."

For the life of her, Megan couldn't tell who was lying. They both sounded genuine. "Raj, could your name be associated with the project without your knowing?"

"It's possible, if they're using my work."

"We need money," Ander said.

Raj's voice turned acerbic. "Fine. Go ahead. Steal mine."

"I will, when I can."

"Why not now?" Raj drawled, dripping sarcasm. "My money cards are in my wallet."

Ander didn't rise to the bait. "I'm not stupid."

Megan suppressed her disappointment. It had been worth a try. If Ander used Raj's money card without Raj's permission, it could set off a multitude of alarms. But eventually Ander would figure out how to use them without getting caught.

Right now, the android was rifling through Raj's wallet. "You've only a hundred dollars left in cash."

"Tough luck," Raj said.

"Not at all." Ander grinned. "Who better to take on Las Vegas than a computer who can count cards and calculate odds?"

Oh, Lord
, Megan thought. Just what they needed, Ander loose in the casinos.

Ander slid off the bed. "I'll be right back."

Megan tensed as he walked past her, but he left her alone. The lock clicked open as he approached the door. Then he went outside. As soon as he was gone, she tried the door, but it wouldn't open. She spun around and started toward Raj.

"Leave me here." He jerked his head toward the windows. "Get help. I'll deal with him."

Megan wanted to free him, but they had almost no time. She ran across the room and swept open the curtains. The lock on the sliding doors refused to release. She wrapped her fists in a curtain and pounded them against the glass.

"Even smashing it with a chair wouldn't work," Ander said. "That's why I picked this place."

Megan whirled around. Ander was standing in the doorway across the room with a black valise in one hand.

"Damn," she said.

"This motel has, shall we say, exuberant guests. So they take pains to keep their rooms intact." Ander showed her the valise. "I forgot to bring this in earlier."

That threw her. He
forgot
? How? He was a computer.

As he came inside, Megan tried to figure out what had happened. Their lives could depend on their ability to predict his behavior. She had often imagined his mind as a landscape. Valleys were thoughts important to his current situation. Hills were ideas that took more complex paths to reach. He had been trapped in a valley, so if his memory of the valise had been outside that region, he could have "forgotten" it. Something must have kicked him out of the trap, leaving his mind freer to roll around his thought landscape like a marble sampling new terrain. He was still probably caught, but within a bigger area.

"What would push him out of the valley? Given the way he had released her on the bed, she wondered if he had accessed the crosslight code after all.

"Stay there," Ander told her. Then he went to Raj.

"What are you going to do?" Raj asked.

"Don't worry. It won't hurt you."

Raj stiffened. "Whatever it is, the answer is no."

"I didn't ask permission."

Megan started forward. "Leave him alone."

"I told you to
stay put
." Ander jerked his gun at Megan. "You two keep saying this. 'Leave her alone. Leave him alone.' You need to get out of
your
truncated response space."

Raj gave her a warning look, his meaning clear:
don't anger him.
Clenching her fist, she backed up to the curtains. As Ander knelt by the table, he set his rifle on the ground, away from Raj and Megan, then took an air syringe out of his valise.

Darkness came into Raj's gaze. It frightened Megan. If Ander pushed Raj too far, he would lose the precarious protection he enjoyed now because Raj felt a bond with him.

"Ander, don't," she said.

The android didn't answer. Instead he dialed in a drug on the syringe. "This should put a man your size to sleep until tomorrow morning." He set the syringe against Raj's arm—and Raj kicked him away, hard and fast, with unexpected expertise. Ander flew over backward and slammed onto his back.

Megan started to run toward the gun, but Ander was already scrambling to his knees, his movements clumsy compared to Raj, his face red. She froze as Ander grabbed the rifle.

"That was stupid!" Ander lunged forward with enhanced speed and smacked the air syringe against Raj's arm. As Raj tried to kick him again, the syringe hissed.

"
Damn
you," Raj said. "That had better not be poison."

"It's not." For the first time Ander faltered. "You gave Megan a much lower dose in the Solarium and she was all right."

Raj made an incredulous noise. "And you just
happen
to have the same drug I supposedly used?"

Ander glanced at Megan. "I took the syringe from him. You can believe him if you want, but I'm telling the truth."

A knock came at the door.

Ander's head jerked. He jumped to his feet, then fell against the table. Holding on to it, he straightened up, his face creased with concentration. When he had control of his movements again, he took some money from Raj's wallet. Then he went to the entrance and opened the door, keeping the rifle hidden.

Megan was tempted to call for help. She held back, knowing it would more likely endanger them. If Ander became agitated, he might shoot whoever was outside. Even if his conscience had come into play more strongly, he would still have to choose between what he probably considered the lesser of two evils: lose his freedom or commit murder. If he decided the good of his purposes outweighed the good of humans, she believed he could reconcile killing with his conscience.

Ander paid for their breakfast and came back inside, holding a tray crowded with dishes, juice, cloth napkins, and a vase with a plastic flower. Mercifully, none of it was hot pink. As he set the tray on the bed, Megan came forward slowly, so he wouldn't perceive her as a threat.

"How will Raj eat?" she asked.

"You help him."

She knelt next to Raj and spoke in a low voice. "Any effects from the shot?"

"Nothing yet."

"Here." Ander held out a plate with a fried-egg sandwich. "Feed him."

While Ander watched, Megan set up their meals on the floor. She put a sandwich in Raj's hands and took one for herself. So they sat eating, while Ander stared with unabashed fascination, as if they were his creations rather than the reverse.

About halfway through his meal, Raj nodded off. Megan barely managed to grab his sandwich before his head sagged against the table.

"Raj?" she asked.

He opened his eyes, then closed them again. His thick lashes lay dark against his cheeks. She set down her sandwich, no longer hungry. To Ander, she said, "You better be right that it won't hurt him."

He shifted his weight. "He wouldn't have given you a dose if he thought it would hurt you."

"Is that so? And here I thought he was trying to kill me."

"So I was wrong. It
looked
that way to me. But he obviously likes you a lot."

Megan still couldn't tell if he was lying. She just prayed he hadn't misjudged the dose. She doubted he would risk taking Raj to a hospital.

"We can move him to the bed if you want," Ander said. "He'll be more comfortable."

That
surprised her. "Yes. That would be good."

But after they carried Raj to the bed, Ander made her tie Raj's hands to a projection on the headboard. When she protested, he said, "I can't risk him escaping if he wakes up early."

"You'll be right here."

"You think so?" He went to his valise, which sat on a chair, and pulled out a bundle of clothes: jeans, a white sweater, tennis shoes, underwear.

Megan scowled at him. "What, you just waltzed into my room and stole my clothes?"

He gave her one of his boyish grins. "I don't know how to waltz."

"Ha, ha," she said stonily.

"I borrowed them. Now I'm giving them back." He tossed her the bundle. "Go put them on."

It actually relieved her to have the clothes; she felt vulnerable wearing nothing but a torn nightshirt. After she changed in the bathroom, she washed her nightshirt and hung it up to dry. Then she dampened a washcloth and returned to the main room. Raj lay sleeping, his face relaxed. She had a sudden, aching memory of their time in her bedroom at NEV-5, when neither of them faced possible death and she had no reason to distrust his motives.

Sitting on the bed, she set about cleaning Raj's torn wrists. His struggles had ripped the scabs off the lacerations made by the ropes in the car. In her side vision, she saw Ander tap a panel near the door. Then the lamp on the nightstand went dark.

Megan tensed. "Why did you do that?"

He came over to the nightstand and pulled the lamp's plug out of its wall module. Without hesitation, he yanked the other end of the cord out of the lamp's base.

Then he opened his arm.

"Ander, what are you doing?"

He still didn't answer. Instead, he pulled out a grass-thin blade that lay sheathed inside his arm and used it to strip insulation off the cord. When he finished peeling it, the cord dangled from his hand like a color-coded Christmas garland. He plugged it into the wall, then leaned over Raj.

Megan felt sick. Laying her hand on Ander's arm to stop him, she said, simply, "Please."

"He'll be fine as long as you cooperate." He wrapped the cord around Raj's wrists, looping the bare wires over Raj's gold watch.

"Oh, God," Megan whispered. "Ander, stop."

"You and I are going out." Before she could respond, he went to the console. Although he sat with his back to her, he must have been monitoring her with motion sensors. When she set her hand on Raj's wrists, Ander said, "If you want him to live, don't try to untie him."

She swallowed and withdrew her hand.

He worked on the console for a few moments. Then he said, "Okay," and swiveled his chair around to her. "I can tell this computer to turn on the power to that outlet. It won't go on otherwise, even if someone flips the switch. And I can log into this console from the Internet. Do you understand?"

She understood all right: he could electrocute Raj from almost anywhere. She spoke stiffly. "Yes."

"Good. You're coming with me."

"Where?"

"To the casinos, of course."
 

The Las Vegas Strip stretched out in a multilaned corridor of high-tech glitter. Although the sun had long since set, lights kept the street almost as bright as day. Holographic displays glimmered on buildings, filling the night with color. They morphed in a parade of sparkling scenes, changing from showgirls into exotic landscapes. Cars crammed the street and people thronged the sidewalks.

"Look at that one." Megan motioned at a huge tower coming up just ahead. Aircraft warning lights blinked at its top—and so did a roller coaster. "I can't believe people ride on that." She tried to keep her voice light, to distract Ander from any thoughts he might have of harming Raj.

Ander squinted at the roller coaster. "The practicality of human invention."

"Is that irony?"

"Or surprise, darling."

"Darling?" She made an exasperated noise. "I told you I'm not pretending to be your wife."

He laughed, more relaxed than she had seen him for days. "But we make such a well-programmed couple."

Megan didn't answer. She wasn't sure how to interpret Ander's simulated good spirits. Did it imply relief that he and Megan were free, or a lack of concern for Raj ? She didn't know which would disturb her more, discovering Raj posed so much danger that only now did Ander calculate he could relax, or finding out that Ander had deleted his programmed aversion to hurting people. She hoped it was a third possibility: Ander was bluffing and never intended to hurt them. In the past she would have bet on the third one, but Ander had become too complex to read now.

She couldn't believe Las Vegas. They passed a hotel with a holographic Stardust sign shimmering above its roof. Farther down, traffic inched past a replica of the Eiffel Tower. They went by a cove where pirate ships fought the British. Cannons boomed and sailors struggled, some falling into the water with gusty yells and flailing arms. Then they cruised by a hotel built like the skyline of New York, even with a replica of the Statue of Liberty. Megan could barely absorb it all.

Ander let go of the wheel and spread his arms, letting the car drive itself. "Playland!"

"It's Crazyland."

He took the wheel again. "It's wonderful. Just
look
."

Megan couldn't
stop
looking. The holomarquees proclaimed lavish shows, including an extravaganza with Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin, and the wildly popular S. Grant StarKing. Another featured Wayne Newton, who somehow still looked like a kid—a feat that impressed her as much as anything else on the Strip. One marquee displayed RAM-BLAM Brain and the Cyberheads, a rock group with cybernetic outfits that let them program one another's movements so that each of them made the others do really strange things. Ander couldn't stop laughing at the concept of humans entertaining other humans by having computers make them act weird.

Before tonight, the closest she had come to Las Vegas was talking to her cousin Mark, who had been an Optical Corps security guard here. Casinos hired OC personnel to catch players who marked cards with inks visible only in ranges outside normal vision. Mark's augmented eyes let him see in the infrared and ultraviolet. No one in her family gambled, unless she counted her mother's stock market portfolio. She could never be sure about her parents, though. Sure, they had been strict, but her mother, the sober bank executive, also had a mischievous streak a mile wide. Her father, an architect, spent his free time dreaming about fanciful buildings. Their idea of a hot vacation was to go look at "sexy architecture," though what that meant Megan had no idea and had avoided asking.

She wondered if part of her attraction to Raj came from his similarities to her father. Both men had the same creative absorption in their work. Her father had a far sunnier disposition, without Raj's eccentricities, but Raj was more practical. Megan's mother had always dealt with the pragmatic side of life, everything from medical insurance to making sure her husband remembered to eat. Megan found it hard to imagine Raj trusting anyone enough to let them that close.

"Hey!" Ander said. "Look at that."

"Good grief," Megan said. They were passing a hotel shaped like a giant gold sarcophagus standing on its end. The ornate building in front of it looked like a casino-sized treasure chest. A gold and crimson holo-marquee announced this architectural marvel as the Royal Adventure Palace. Lights and lasers flashed all along it, making the coffin radiant with gaudy magnificence.

"A
mummy
?" Megan said. "Who in their right mind would stay in a mummy?"

"It's not a mummy. It's a coffin."

She almost laughed. "Oh, well. That's different. I've always wanted to rent a room in a coffin."

"Here's your chance."

"I can't believe they stay in business. What a perverse theme."

Ander laughed. "What a human theme."

"What? No."

"Sure it is. You humans have entertainment industries devoted to stories about dead people coming out of their graves to pester living people." He waved his hand at the casino. "Come on. Let's go play in the royal coffin. Car, we have a final destination. The Royal Adventure Palace."

"I can park behind the hotel," the car's computer said in pleasant tones, as if it were perfectly natural to visit a hotel-sized box for dead people.

"This is too bizarre," Megan said.

"I
know
." Ander grinned. "It's a scream. I love it."

Megan gave a slight smile. He had a weird sense of humor—but he
did
have one. Simulated or not, it existed.

The car parked on the third level of a structure behind the building, then let them out and locked itself up. Megan walked with Ander to a bridge that arched over to the hotel. Although none of Ander's limbs were jerking now, he had started to limp. She wished he would let them work on his body; if this went on too long, he might break down or hurt someone.

Lights radiated on the bridge. The big glass doors at its end opened into the Royal Adventure Palace. Gilded mosaics tiled the spacious foyer, and shops ringed the area, selling clothes, candy, magazines, jewelry, gifts, and fast food. Holodisplays above marble posts cycled through the adventures available to customers. You could brave a river that thrashed with crocodiles, swing on vines, pilot a craft through flying monsters, and more. The adventures all centered on a search for an ancient pharaoh's tomb and its riches, which somehow consisted of vouchers for Royal Adventure Palace poker chips or slot machine tokens.

Ander drew her to an escalator that descended three levels to the casino. She blinked at the scene spread out below. Lights flashed everywhere. Mirrors paneled the walls, red carpet covered the floor, and a two-story colonnade bordered the casino. Elevators went up into the hotel proper, their mirrored doors letting people look at themselves while they waited for their ride into the colossal coffin.

"I cannot believe this," Megan said.

Ander was laughing again. "It's good for you, Dr. Curmudgeon."

"I am not a curmudgeon. What kind of playland is it when you can lose your shirt?"

He made a show of looking at his sweater, then at her. "I still have it. Unless you'd like to alter that condition." His face had more animation than he had ever shown before. "Come on. Let's go play."