The Artificial Kid Page 11

  Armitrage looked at me seriously. “Here, try these,” he said, handing me a pair of red plastic binoculars.

  “Where did you find these?” I said.

  “Under my bunk. Go ahead and look. You won’t like it, though.”

  I looked at him sharply and then used the binoculars. I caught the long-winged sailplane just as she banked and I saw the white skull motif stenciled on her black wings. “It’s the Kite,” I said, lowering the binoculars. “Instant Death’s sailplane.”

  “Yes, I recognized her, too,” Armitrage said simply. “He’s a very good pilot, isn’t he?”

  “He’s the best,” I said. “The best on Telset.” I handed the binoculars to Moses Moses, who had joined us, his beard still half-crushed from the pillow. Moses watched the plane briefly, then turned to focus on the pale, white gasbag of a flying island, shrunken with distance, trailing its rooted burden of mud. His composure calmed us all.

  “What do you think?” Armitrage asked me.

  “He’s come to kill us,” I said. “I’d guess a bomb. That would be instant enough for his taste, don’t you think?”

  Armitrage nodded. “Yeah. We’re about forty miles out. If he sank the boat, we’d drown for sure.”

  “He’ll have to make a bombing run,” I said. I hefted my nunchuck. “Maybe he’ll come within range of my scatter gun.” I tried to color my voice with a hopeful vindictiveness, but I failed. The gun had a very short range.

  “Let me try for him with the pistol,” Armitrage said. “I might be lucky. The rest of you should stay in the cabin, in case he’s using a rifle. Maybe he is. It would be much better theater that way. More elegant.”

  “I imagine that this tape is for a very exclusive audience,” Moses Moses said drily. “I imagine that the Cabal favors efficiency over aesthetics.”

  “Let me fire at him, Armitrage,” I said. “Why should you have the best role?”

  “Ha,” said Armitrage. “I’ve seen you fire this thing before. You couldn’t hit a holothurian. Besides, I’m not smuffed.”

  “Well, I’m staying out here,” I said. “If he swoops in low enough, I’ll blast him.”

  Armitrage checked the gun. “Three bullets left. Not an overly generous allowance.” He looked down at me, his eyes shining. “There are a lot of things I haven’t expressed. Things I haven’t accomplished. Projects I haven’t tried.” He looked up at the sailplane. “My brain teems with them.”

  With sincerity, almost with morbid gaiety, Saint Anne said, “The universe is kind to those who die in righteousness. I’m not afraid.”

  “Look,” Armitrage said. Instant Death had gained all the height he wanted. Now he peeled away from the long spiral of his thermal climb and came toward us from the south. Briefly, he dipped his wings. “He’s saluting us.”

  “A nice gesture,” I said. Two of my cameras had already switched to telephoto, and they followed him in as he began his sleek and lethal dive.

  “You should get into the cabin,” Armitrage said. “Or better yet, into the holds. They’ve got that ceramic sheathing, you know. That would be some protection.”

  “No,” said Saint Anne. “I want to see. It’s rather pretty, really.”

  “Yes,” said Moses Moses. “If this is death, let’s savor it, as we savor all forms of experience.” No one moved. The smell of the Gulf wind was sharp and briny and vital. It seemed to me that I had never really smelled it before. A small school of shiny fish skipped frantically across the ocean’s surface, evading a predator. The sails flapped twice. No one said anything.

  The Kite was beautiful. She had a wingspread of at least sixty feet. She was extremely lightweight, but perfectly rigid. It was almost a pleasure to be killed by a craft so elegantly engineered.

  She came toward us, toward our stern, as if sliding down a chute. Armitrage braced his legs and lifted both arms, his left hand gripping his right wrist. I heard the pistol go pop … pop … pop. I threw myself overboard.

  The explosion was jarring and I felt more than saw a chunk of wooden shrapnel tear into the water beside me, trailing sizzling bubbles. I held my breath. The weight of my metallic pants, my jacket, and nunchuck was slowly dragging me down. I heard pieces of the Albatross pancaking down into the sea all around me; then everything turned dark. For a moment I thought I was hit, but then I saw that the Albatross’s tattered mainsail had settled directly over me. I put my ’chuck around my neck and frogkicked my way out from under the sail. I came up for a welcome breath.

  What was left of the Albatross’s deck was already awash. The explosion had dismasted her. Both hulls were shattered and shipping water. I saw a wicker hamper bob out of one hull, puffed out by a big rush of dirty bubbles. Quickly, I kicked off my metallic trousers, leaving myself in my padded combat groin-brace. After that I was able to tread water.

  Wiping salt water from my eyes, I looked around and spotted Saint Anne. Her baggy white saint’s garb was sealed by elastic at wrists and ankles; the air trapped inside was keeping her afloat. I swam over to her. “Are you all right?” She looked very strange with her blunt-cut hair plastered to her oval skull.

  “Yes,” she said. “But my legs. Something hit me across the backs of my knees. I can’t feel much.”

  “Do you want some smuff?” I gasped out. A few yards away, Manies’ shattered clothes chest sank, belching wet blobs of fabric.

  “No,” she said loudly. The explosion had apparently partly deafened her. “Where are the others?” She lifted her voice. “Mr. Chairman! Mr. Armitrage!”

  There was no answer. I looked up. Instant Death had already caught another thermal and was gaining height for the long glide back to Telset and success. “Blood feud,” I murmured to myself, but I felt disgust at my own dumb bravado. He had finished us.

  I swam back to the wreckage of the Albatross and climbed onto the slippery top of the cabin, still a foot or two above sea level.

  I was already numb with smuff, so I looked myself over quickly to make sure that I had no further injury. I was not worse off than I had already been.

  Looking around, I saw the welcome sight of Moses Moses and Armitrage, both clinging to a splintery, ripped-up chunk of wooden deck. I signaled to Saint Anne and then dived off the cabin top to join them. Even as I left her, the Albatross blew air with a slurping, sucking sound, and began to glide easily, prow-first, to the bottom of the sea.

  I swam to their chunk of wreckage. It barely kept them afloat, so I stayed away, treading water. They both looked severely shaken. Moses Moses started when I touched him. “I can’t hear anything!” he shouted. “I think it deafened me!”

  “Are you all right?” I shouted back. He read my lips and nodded. “It knocked the breath out of me! But I’m better now!”

  I nodded and swam to Armitrage. I was alarmed when I saw the greenish, bloodless tint of his skin and his eyes, half-closed. I grabbed his cold, wet shoulder. “Armitrage!”

  “I’m smuffed,” he said. “I can barely hear, too. I took all the smuff I had. It was waterlogged.”

  “Where are you hurt?” I said. “Let me get skinseal over it.”

  He shook his head weakly, moving waterlogged black curls. “I didn’t get him, did I?”

  I glanced at the retreating sailplane. “No,” I said. “But I think you scared him, ’Trage.”

  “I lost the gun,” he said. “Couldn’t hold on to it.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. I looked up. “Look, we still have all our cameras.” It was true. Their tough casings had resisted the blast and they had come floating back to their masters, respecting their programming. For some reason it cheered me. I felt that I had not yet lost all my resources.

  “I didn’t want this to happen,” Armitrage muttered. “There was supposed to be time. Time to win you to me.” He looked at me, his green eyes stung with sea water and tears. “I have to tell you now. I love you, Kid. I always have. And you would have loved me back. I had plans. I would have been patient. It wouldn’t have hurt
you a bit, to love me back. It doesn’t hurt to love. It just feels wonderful.” A gout of blood filled his mouth and he spat it out, choking. In pity and horror I shouted, “No!” and tried to embrace him, to hold him up; and my right hand sank wrist-deep into the warm tangle of his guts. Bloody scum rose to the ocean’s surface.

  “You’re dying,” I said.

  He said again, “It doesn’t hurt. It just feels wonderful.” He closed his eyes. His hands slipped from the broken deck and he started to sink; I caught his head in the crook of my elbow and held his face above the water. He said nothing. In a moment I heard his death rattle. Sobbing, I begged him not to die: “Armitrage, Armitrage, don’t!”

  Moses Moses swam up to help me. He looked into Armitrage’s face and saw the blood on his mouth. “Is he dead?” he shouted.

  I nodded, already raw-throated and racked with sobs. “I’m sorry,” Moses yelled. “Let’s get him onto the deck!”

  We pushed the lax, unresisting body onto the splintered, floating boards. When I saw the way the explosion had ripped open his elegant body, I felt a tearing pain of revulsion and grief.

  Anne approached, swimming clumsily toward us in her enveloping bag. It was easy to spot us now by the cloud of cameras. All four of Armitrage’s cameras hovered around him, sucking up his gory image. Anne stopped at a distance, treading water. She seemed amazed to see me cry.

  A minute passed. I ducked my over-heated face into the cool sea water, and stopped my tears. They I heard Anne shriek. “Something touched my legs!”

  A broad black shadow rippled smoothly by us, just under the surface of the water. Moses Moses screamed, “Rays!” and we swam for our lives.

  I had to turn to look. They were the big mid-ocean rays, dapplebacks, their broad leathery wings almost thirty feet across. There were at least three of them; I heard the explosive puff of air from their blowholes. The concussion and the scent of blood had brought them on us. I saw Armitrage’s dead arms jerk upward as one of them snapped up his feet and dragged him beneath the surface. The water roiled, whipped to froth by their long, venomous tails. Another ray flopped up out of the water and crunched up two of his cameras with a single bite. After that I put my head down and swam after the others.

  We were exhausted after two hundred yards. “My clothes,” Moses gasped. “They’re dragging me down!”

  Anne helped him struggle out of his wet jacket; I pulled off his heavy, clinging trousers. I was about to let them sink when Anne panted, “Kid, wait!” While Moses floated on his back, exhausted, Anne took the trousers and knotted their cuffs. Then she put her head underwater and blew air into the waist. After several breaths, the legs puffed up taut, full of trapped air. By holding the waist underwater, Anne had turned the Chairman’s trousers into a crude pair of water wings. Red-faced and wheezing, we all clung to them for support. The wet fabric held the air quite well, though we could see it slowly hissing out through the cloth in streams of tiny bubbles.

  By floating on our backs and clinging to the air bags, we were able to float comfortably. Moses Moses had a coughing fit that cleared his lungs of sea water. “I can hear myself cough,” he said loudly. “I’m not deaf then. Just stunned. Are you all right, Saint Anne?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I think a broken board hit me across the backs of my legs, but I’m all right. I’m just bruised, not bleeding.”

  “My ribs took a beating,” Moses Moses said. “And I scratched my hands on that wreckage. It hurts, but I’m not bleeding either. How about you, Kid?”

  “Not a linking scratch,” I said bitterly. “If I’d stayed on board with him—”

  Moses Moses laughed quietly. “Why feel guilt, Kid?” he asked gently. “He wouldn’t have grudged us a few more hours of life. I don’t care to spend my last moments in pain. Will you give me some of your drug?”

  I was ashamed that I hadn’t offered it sooner. “Of course,” I said, pulling the watertight packet out of my combat jacket. “Don’t spill any. Just a taste should be enough. You want some, Anne?”

  Her face showed pain warring with taboo. “No,” she said finally. “Not right now. But thank you, anyway.”

  I carefully resealed the packet and tucked it away. After a moment I said, “Do you think it’s worth the effort to try to reach shore?”

  Moses Moses shrugged. “I think I prefer the rays to exhaustion and drowning. But I’m open to suggestion.”

  “Perhaps we should try,” said Anne. “It would be better morally to die fighting.”

  “The current is bearing us northward,” Moses Moses pointed out. “Let’s die comfortably instead. After all, who’s to know?”

  I looked up at my six faithful cameras, still hovering over us. “I wish I had some way to get my last tapes to an audience,” I said. “But the cameras stay with me. What a shame. You know, I almost regret that more than dying. After all, I’ve already died once.”

  “Really?” said Moses Moses. “A personality death?” I nodded. Moses smiled. “I thought so. I thought I recognized your age in the way you walked. It’s hard to disguise.”

  “You’re the first one to notice it,” I said.

  “Possibly,” Moses Moses said. “Perhaps the others simply kept quiet about knowing. After all, it’s your business, not theirs.”

  “Right,” I said. Moses Moses took the hint. He stretched out his arms, his hairy fists loosely clenched. “Look at those clouds!” he said admiringly. “Their incredible height never ceases to astonish me. It’s the depth of the atmosphere, and the length of the day here. So far, far superior to Niwlind. You children can hardly imagine it.”

  “I can,” Saint Anne said. “I am a native Niwlindid. But you’re right, Mr. Chairman, they’re beautiful. So pure and white. The clouds on Niwlind are squat and gray. Over the moors, they are torn by the wind, knocked flat, scalloped. Like dark metal beaten flat with hammers. You can hear the wind all the time, the bleak wind. It’s different here.” She shivered and wiped wet bangs away from her forehead with one hand.

  Moses said, “I haven’t seen Niwlind in … let me see … it must be six hundred years now. Six hundred years. Two long lifetimes. Tell me, is it still ruled by the Directorate?”

  “No,” she said. “The Directorship still exists, but now it’s a ceremonial office. Real political power has been taken over by the Director’s First Secretary. The current Secretariat is held by a woman named Janet Decross, but she in turn is just the tool of another woman named Crestillomeem Tanglin.”

  Moses Moses nodded. “No surprises there. There’s always been some power behind the throne, some damned courtier you have to buy off, sleep with, or blackmail. It’s so rotten on Niwlind … rotten with age and inertia … I tried to start over, you know. Start over clean, with a new planet, a new society, a new world view, new morals and assumptions. I wanted to just sweep out all that choking garbage that was laying waste to people’s lives, to give them a chance to find themselves, to express and explore themselves, beholden to no man.…” His words sounded vaguely familiar. I recognized the strains of the Reverid Bill of Incorporation. “But it never works out like you hope. Just when you think you’ve pinned it down, it squirms away again. And people just don’t understand! You point at the sun, and they’ll spend years discussing your index finger! For years you build a monument, and when you lay the last brick the foundation shifts!” For a moment his face showed a titanic anger, but with a mercurial change of mood he laughed, mocking himself. “Listen to me talk! I had my chance. I gave it my best. I owned a planet, I led a people. How many men can say that much? I have no regrets. At least I die on my own world.”

  Impassively, he looked at us. He had an expression one often sees on the faces of the very old: as if they were looking at everything from a vast distance. Finally he said, “I’ve dragged you with me to death. I’m sorry, but frankly I’m glad I don’t have to meet it alone. Since I have a captive audience, why shouldn’t I tell you a story? After all, we may have hours left. We have to amuse
ourselves somehow. If you like, I’ll tell you the story of my life.”

  “I’d be honored to hear it,” Saint Anne said simply. I nodded. “Why not?” I said. “It’s just the three of us. We have no reason to hide anything from one another. If there’s time, I’ll tell my own story.”

  “So will I,” said Anne.

  “Good,” said Moses. “Then I’ll start.”

  7

  “I was born … let me see … eight hundred and ten years ago, on Niwlind. I was probably bottled, but it may have been a natural birth, I don’t know. I know that I was raised in a government crèche, but my earliest memories date back to when I was about nineteen or so.” His heavy brows knotted painfully as he sifted through the detritus of centuries of memory. “This would be a lot easier if I had my computerized memory, but it’s down in the basement with my cryocoffin, of course. Ah, I have it. Louise. Her name was Louise. My name wasn’t Moses Moses then, I had some other name, I forget what. I had a job at the Bureau of Orbital Research and Assessment. We monitored the resources satellites. It was a pretty good job, really, for a nineteen-year-old, but I hated it. I was a bright youngster. Louise was my boss. She was about eighty years old. A child really, but I thought she was the ultimate in sophistication. I knew she slept around a lot, and that seemed very wicked and exciting.

  “I don’t know how I got her attention, I suppose I swaggered around a bit, making up for my height. In those days it bothered me to be short, I forget why. I imagine she thought I was cute. One day she called me into her office, and she gave me a demonstration of her skill, which was considerable. I was shattered, completely stunned. Naturally, I lost my head. I swore eternal constancy, begged her to be mine alone, told her that I loved her desperately, that I’d sacrifice my life to her pleasures, her tiniest whim. I was completely enslaved. It must have amused her.

  “She toyed with me for a little while—two years, maybe. Of course, back then, two years seemed like forever to me. The other bureau workers were sick of my being the office favorite by then; on Niwlind sex was a very political thing, especially when you held a government post. Finally she told me we had to break up for the sake of the bureau.