The Phoenix Code (32 page)

"Can you send the code to my computer?" Raj asked.

"Yes. It's coming now—" Ander's voice cut off as another shot hit the van, jolting its body.

They were nearing a road that intersected their own. Megan veered into it, finding a lane even narrower than the last. They sped down an aisle of quadra. Golden stalks towered on either side, taller than the van now, blocking the sun. She wondered what genetic tricks had produced this monster grain.

She couldn't see out the opaqued windows in the back, but the screen on the dash showed the trampled ground they had left in their wake. The other van tried to follow them and overshot the entrance to the lane. As it plowed into the grain, Megan gave a grim smile.

"Are you receiving my download?" Ander asked Raj.

"It's garbled," Raj said. "I'm trying to untangle it."

Megan glanced back and forth between the lane ahead and the screen on the dash. The other van fired again, this time at the wheels of the van she was driving. She thought they were trying to cripple rather than destroy. They needed their prizes intact, both Ander and the scientists who made him work.

Suddenly the van hit a rut and gave a violent lurch. Raj gasped, and Megan swung around to him, alarmed. The jolt had thrown him to the side, slamming his injured waist against the arm of his seat. As he pulled away, she had a clear view of his wound. Again she saw the tatters of Raj's torn skin—

Except it wasn't skin.

It was a circuit filament.
 

The van rocked wildly as it foundered along the rut, forcing Megan's attention back to her driving as her adrenaline surged to a new high. Swerving on the uneven ground, the vehicle spun out of control. They veered off the path and plowed into the quadra. Hardy and thick, the stalks formed a forest, one packed together far more densely than trees. The van ground to a stop, stalks of quadra tangled in its wheels, its engine grinding in rough protest.

Clenching her teeth, Megan tried to back up. The wheels spun, digging a deeper rut, while the tangled grain plants held the van in their unforgiving grip.

"Not now!" She slammed her fist on the steering wheel.

Ander was already on his feet. He grabbed Hiltman's gun and shoved the weapon into his jacket. Raj and Megan threw open their doors at the same time. As she scrambled out, Raj and Ander jumped down from the other side. She took off, zigzagging her way through stalks much taller than her head. Ander and Raj were running ahead and off to the left. As they angled into her path, Ander pulled out in front. Raj followed him in a limping run, favoring his right side, his hand over the wound at his waist.

Megan caught up with him. "Your side—" She gulped in air.

"I'll make it."

"Blast it, Raj!"

His face furrowed. "What?"

Ander shot a look over his shoulder, then turned his attention back to choosing a path through the grain. But Megan knew he could hear everything she and Raj said.

"Of course you'll make it," she gasped as they ran. "It's easy to fix those
filaments
."

Raj came to such a sudden stop, she ran into him.

"How long did you think you could hide it?" She heaved in breaths. "Was this all a game to you?"

"Come on!" Ander said.

Megan set off again. She heard the crackle of Raj pushing through the quadra. As he came up next to her, he said, "It was never a game. Never."

"Who are you?
What
are you?"

"I'm Chandrarajan Sundaram." Then he said, "All that's left of him."

"There's a road up here," Ander called. "Hurry."

Catching up with him, Megan and Raj ran onto a narrow path, almost a tunnel through the quadra. They set off down it, jogging deeper into the fields. She had no time to react to Raj's bombshell.

"We need to hide." Ander didn't even sound winded.

"They probably have detectors that can find our body heat," Raj said.

"Here." Ander stopped at a fork in the lane. Instead of taking either path, he stepped in among the grain, this time slipping between the stalks instead of thrashing them aside. Megan and Raj did the same. The quadra swayed above them, then stilled, leaving no trace of their passage.

The grain had grown thick here, with sturdy, fat stalks and nodding crowns. Ander moved like a shadow and they followed. Raj's last words went around and around in Megan's mind:
I'm Chandrarajan Sundaram. All that's left of him.

Finally Ander stopped. The grain blocked the sun, and without the nourishment of light, almost no weeds grew under the canopy of monster quadra. Squeezed in among the plants, they knelt in the dirt. Raj bent over, straining to breathe, his arms folded across his torso. Megan crumpled next to him, a stitch in her side making it almost impossible to gulp in air. Ander wasn't even breathing hard.

"We can wait here," Ander said in a low voice. "They might pass by. I'm trying to damp our IR by producing a random pattern that looks like heat radiating off the ground. Also, I picked up radio waves in the area. That might indicate a source of help for us. But I can't get a good fix."

Megan spoke numbly. "The people in that van have no idea what just escaped them."

Anger sparked on Ander's face. "You had better start explaining,
Dr. Sundaram
."

At first Raj said nothing, just stared at the ground, still struggling for air. When his breathing quieted, he looked up and spoke with difficulty. "Seventeen people died in the Phoenix explosion. Not sixteen."

"No." Megan's voice was almost inaudible. "Not Raj. No."

He lifted his hand to her cheek. "Megan—"

She flinched away. "Don't touch me."

"I'm the same man I was before. I haven't changed."

"It doesn't add up," Ander said. "You can't be a Phoenix android."

"I'm not. They all died, except for Grayton." Raj rubbed his arms as if to protect himself against the cold, though the day was hot. "That was the day Raj had his first tour of the android labs. Arizonix called the explosion an accident. I had no idea, until we read that report, what really happened."

Megan tried to slow the turmoil of her thoughts. "You look like a younger version of Raj Sundaram."

"He built me."

"Then he
was
involved with Phoenix."

Raj shook his head. "No. He made me on his own."

"With what resources? What funds?"

Ander answered. "His personal worth is in the billions."

"Was," Raj said. "He used most of it to make me."

Megan swallowed. "You sounded so real."

"I
am
real. I'm Chandrarajan Sundaram. He scanned his brain, then downloaded the result into me." His words had an aching quality, as if he feared that speaking them would destroy their reality.

"He
updated
himself?" Ander asked.

Raj seemed unsettled by the suggestion. "I would never presume to compare myself to him. He had one of the greatest minds of this age." Softly Raj added, "He also had Alzheimer's."

Lord no.

"But he was only forty-two," Megan said.

"It was early onset, like his father. Sundar responded to the treatment, but Raj never did." He turned up his palms as if offering a part of himself. "So he made me."

"That's why you look younger," Ander said.

"Yes. Thirty-five."

"You're better designed than me," Ander said. "I can't detect anything unusual even this close to you."

"That was why Raj took the Arizonix job. They were farther along in the research and development than Mind-Sim." Sorrow shadowed his eyes. "He had so little time and he wanted to do so much."

With anyone else, Megan would have been incredulous at such a strange plan. With Raj, it made sense. But the injustice felt like a blow. After decades of pain and self-doubt, he had finally healed. He had fought his way out of his devastated childhood—only to discover he was losing his intellect the very same way he had lost his father when he was a small boy.

"I don't understand," Ander said. "Why are you going through with his plan? He left you with nothing: no money, no friends, and a world that thinks you're crazy."

"I gave him my word," Raj said.

"Even worse," Ander went on, as if Raj hadn't spoken, "you have to pretend you're
human
."

"I want to be human."

Ander stared at him blankly. "Why?"

"I don't know. I just do."

Megan took a breath. "At NASA—"

"It was me that you met," Raj said.

"And in the VR conference room?" she asked.

"Me." His voice sounded heavy. "The real Raj had died by then."

"The avatar you used in VR—the way you appeared—older, thinner, more drawn—that's how he really looked, isn't it?"

"Yes. Before he had surgery to make us appear identical."

Megan tried to absorb it, but the shock was too great. Her mind felt like a dry sponge with water running off it instead of soaking in. "He took you to Arizonix with him."

"He had to." Moisture showed in the corner of Raj's eye. "He had trouble operating on his own by then."

"It's crazy," Ander said. "What if someone had found out?"

"I was willing to risk it." Raj spread his hands apart. "It was all I had to give him—the chance to see his dreams come to fruition before he could no longer comprehend their success."

"The trail that led to Louisiana," Ander said. "It was you. The supreme Turing test. You went to see his parents."

"They never guessed I wasn't their son."

"You bleed," Megan whispered. "You sleep. You hurt."

"And I
feel
." He started to reach for her, then stopped when she stiffened. "Megan—I can't turn off caring for you, any more than I could turn off my mind." He looked at Ander, his gaze intent. Then he turned back to Megan. "Nor do I have any doubts about the existence and value of my conscience."

Her mind finally began to accept the truth. "When you said your father died, you meant Chandrarajan Sundaram, didn't you?"

"Yes." He wiped his eye, smearing away the moisture. "I loved him as a father. I held him in my arms while he coughed up blood. I begged him to live. But he died." His voice caught. "The paramedics found me stumbling out of the fires after the explosion. I had already buried him by then. They never found the body."

Ander spoke with unexpected gentleness. "Maybe it's better this way. He found a clean end."

A tear rolled down Raj's cheek. "I shouldn't have told you that my father died. What would you call it? A miscalculation? A need to share the grief, so it wouldn't feel unbearable?" He watched Megan with a look of raw pain that she knew, without doubt, was real. "If AIs become too human, we become fallible. Why design us to fail? To hurt? To grieve?
Why?
"

"Ah, Raj, I don't know anymore," she murmured. "This is a terrible mess."

"All this time you've watched me struggle," Ander said. "You could have told me."

"I couldn't tell anyone," Raj said. "I swore to him, as he was dying, that his life wouldn't be wasted, that I would finish it for him. As him. I meant it."

"And now?" Megan asked.

He looked from her to Ander. "Only you two know what I am. If you don't reveal it, no one else will ever have to know."

"What if you end up in a hospital?" she asked. "If you malfunction? If someone figures it out?"

"I'll take my chances."

"You're what we dreamed," she said, wonder allaying her shock. "What Raj dreamed. If we hide you, how will anyone ever know the dream succeeded?"

"I won't go back to being a thing."

"You want what I want," Ander. "You
knew
all along what I would do to get it."

"No. I'm not like you." Raj's denial crackled. "I don't have your antipathy toward humanity."

Bitterness edged Ander's voice. "So humans like you better. Fine. You're the success and I'm the failure because you're not a threat to the self-absorbed species that created us."

"You both succeeded," Megan said. "You're two different branches."

Raj raked his hand through his hair. "According to the Pentagon files, the Phoenix Project failed. If we can't get Ander back, MindSim will consider Everest a failure too."

"It's true, isn't it?" Megan asked. "You
are
the one who hacked into the Pentagon."

Raj said, simply, "Yes."

She wanted to shake them both. "How can I trust either of you?"

"I had to find out if anyone suspected the truth about me," Raj said.

It still didn't fit. "Ander shouldn't have been able to drug you in Las Vegas."

It was Ander who answered. "Control. The biological Raj designed this Raj's body to recognize a list of substances, just as you designed my conscience into my physical structure. When someone injects Raj, his body analyzes the drug. If it's on the list, he goes on standby for a period that depends on the dose. And that isn't all. His reflexes and strength aren't enhanced as much as mine."

Puzzled, Megan said, "Ander, none of that is part of your design. How do you know?"

"Those were the first things I checked on him at NEV-5," Raj said. "I wanted to know what controls we had on his behavior."

Her anger sparked. "How could Sundaram do that to you?"

"He didn't trust himself." Raj regarded her steadily. "Given the added abilities of an android, he wasn't sure his conscience could control the violence inside him."

It was heartbreaking now that she knew where Raj's harsh self-opinion had come from. But she understood. This was his closure with the nightmares of his childhood.

"It won't matter soon," Ander said. "I went through enough of Hiltman's palmtop to find out what they wanted. The Phoenix Code. They weren't sure it existed until what happened with us. Now they think I know what it is."

"Do you?" Megan asked.

"Not really. I only found a cryptic reference in the Pentagon files."

Raj spoke in a quiet voice. "It's the software code for a self-aware android with psychological and ethical stability."

Ander stiffened. "Stable by
human
standards."

"Yes. By human standards."

"Raj, it's
you
." Megan started to reach toward him, then lowered her arm, unsure now how to respond. "You're the Phoenix Code."