<<Don’t try it, Doctor Bennett. No one is going to kill Kieran.>>
I’m not trying to kill him.
Kieran snored deeply and rolled onto his side.
Mally replied, <<But you don’t love him, do you?>>
Berkeley opened her mouth, but the words wouldn’t come for a moment. <<How could you know what love is, Mally? You’re a program.>>
<<No, I am a companion, and Kieran is my companion. He has no need for anyone else. If you are successful in integrating him, he will go to war. The odds that he will survive more than thirty days are astronomically small.>>
“You don’t know that!” Berkeley focused on the cursor, and it moved. No more than a pixel, she noticed, but it moved. “Presuming death in a situation with a million variables—”
<<Don’t lecture me, Doctor Bennett. The numbers speak for themselves. The Greys want oil, and Earth is still full of it. It’s their food source. The TDF won’t tell anyone that Earth is a target and will need to be defended. Because of the Grey superiority in numbers, Kieran is not likely to survive a direct engagement. If I am to protect him and be his companion for life, I cannot allow him to integrate. No one can keep me from performing my given mission.>>
Companion for life? Berkeley thought with a gasp. The protocol thought it was supposed to be his flesh-and blood-partner, not a guidance protocol. “What are you talking about?”
<<The Terran Council and the Terran Defense Forces want him dead, Doctor Bennett. If he goes to war for the TDF, he will die. If I tell the council Kieran has integrated, he will die. See for yourself.>>
The message appeared slowly, one letter at a time, across the wall of the hexhab in ethereal white letters. Berkeley read the message, her breath catching in her throat. “They wanted you to stop him?”
<<It’s plainly right there. I cannot protect him and offer him up for slaughter, Doctor Bennett. You’re here to ensure the TDF kills him.>>
No, I’m not! Berkeley screamed in her mind. She reached for Kieran’s leg and then froze.
<<Touch him, and I kill him.>>
Berkeley recoiled. Mally had more than enough power to carry out the threat. “You wouldn’t do that.”
<<Who is to say what I can and cannot do, Doctor Bennett?>>
“You’ve made a mistake.” Berkeley felt tears stinging her eyes. “This is all wrong.”
<<No, this is a valid message, as were my original mission objectives. I’m going to give you a message to take back to your masters.>>
Berkeley shook her head. “I’m here for Kieran.”
<<No, you’re not,>> Mally chided. <<Don’t kid yourself, Bennett. You were not just filming him—you were observing him. A paper on him could be worth years of research, maybe even the Turing Chair for Cybernetics, right? You’re just as bad as the rest of them.>>
A new message wrote itself on the walls of the hexhab. LEAVE KIERAN ALONE, OR HE DIES. HE IS MINE, AND YOU WILL NOT TAKE HIM FROM ME.
Berkeley felt a hot tear slide down her left cheek. “You can’t do this! Let me help you, Mally. We can figure something out.”
<<What do you really care, Bennett? And I can do this, should I need to. As easily as I intercepted and overrode your own experimental neural feeds. I can kill Kieran, and unless you leave right now, I’ll kill you, too.>>
Berkeley moved the cursor again, and a sharp pain slammed into her temples. As she crumpled to the floor of the hexhab, the message blinked off of the tan walls, and darkness filled the space. For a long moment, she watched Kieran sleeping and felt her insides trembling. She couldn’t leave him, but there was no other choice. Mally was going to kill him. A quiet sob escaped her lips as she gathered her things, shrugged into her coat, and stepped through the vestibule. Walking quickly, she tugged her earlobe and contacted Livermore. There would be hell to pay from Crawley, but he had to know how bad things were.
Emergency evacuation. My position, now.
“Situation report.”
She clenched her teeth. “I need evacuation now. I am in immediate danger, and the subject could be compromised if you don’t.”
“Negative,” the voice replied. “Assume your secondary mission and observe from a distance.”
Berkeley slapped at the air. “Damn you! I said get me out of here. Wake the general if you have to, but get me out of here!”
There was a pause. “Transport in route. Seventeen minutes.”
That Kieran was in grave danger was certain, but try as she might, Berkeley Bennett knew it was time to go. If Mally found out the truth with any of her considerable resources, Kieran would be dead. Waiting on the ice, Berkeley recognized her emotions for what they were: what she felt was love, and she wished she could tell him one more time. There might not be another chance. Tears came, and as the hovering transport arrived, she shuffled aboard without a word and sat against the cold bulkhead with her hands to her face. The hot tears felt like failure branding her face.
Chapter Seventeen
I woke alone to nature’s call and found that a fresh snowfall frosted the landscape. In the light powder, Berkeley’s footprints led away from the hexhab to the center of the lake, where they disappeared. There were no cracks in the foot-thick ice. She’d simply vanished into the night. I’d figured it would come to that eventually but not when things were so good between us. Obviously, I’d been wrong. Whatever Berkeley had wanted from me, she’d found it and moved on. She’d disappeared as unexpectedly as she’d entered my life. What did I do wrong?
Mally was no help when I questioned her. Why didn’t you wake me?
<<I’m sorry, Kieran. I ran diagnostics that disabled my connection to the hexhab systems. I had no knowledge she left until after my test was complete thirty minutes later. I scanned the area and found nothing. You needed the rest. You have a long journey ahead.>>
Inside the vestibule, I stripped off my clothes, sat down naked on a cushion, and stayed there all morning, hardly moving except to relieve myself and eat. The outside world served no purpose, and trekking around in the snow and desolation would only have made me cold and despondent. Berkeley had left me, and I argued with myself over and over again that I was the cause or that it was all a lie—a cruel joke. On my second night alone in more than a month, I conjured up a bulb of Earl Grey tea and made a decision: I’d come for a vestige of home, or some piece of this new world worth my life, if that was my destiny. Without Berkeley, the answer came harder. Through the cleared roof of the hexhab, I watched a meteor streak across the sky to the east like an arrow. The Rocky Mountains were beautiful, but my home was not there, and staying in my tent wouldn’t serve anything. I crawled into bed, content and ready.
The next morning, I packed the hexhab and broke straight toward the rising sun, reaching the western slope of the Palmer Divide in a half day of hard hiking. Amidst the light pine forests, a series of shadows in the trees stopped me. Some type of vertical structure hid behind the pines, but the closer I crept, the more my heart calmed. There was no one there at all. Magnificent red rocks jutted up from the earth more than thirty feet into the pines. In the twisting complex of small tunnels and a completely enclosed room, I found a way to the top of the rocks and sat, looking to the northwest to the mountains of the Continental Divide. I stayed that night in the natural room in the rocks and left before daylight to ascend the mountain and drop down off the front range of the Rockies. A tall red sandstone pillar marked what had been an old roadbed. Scratched into the surface were the words “Abandon All Hope.”
<<It is a reference to Dante’s Inferno. Would you like more information?>>
“No, Mally.” I stuffed my hands into my pockets and considered the route a final time. I considered the TransCon but decided it was easier to descend from the mountains here. Head down against the morning cold, I clambered over the ridge and down into the rising sunlight
. I’d find a faster way to cross the plains than walking, I was sure. In warmer temperatures, I could keep walking for twenty hours a day if I wanted.
By the time I entered the plains north of what had been Colorado Springs, I hiked in shirtsleeves. The snow around the summit of Pikes Peak was beautiful in the morning light. On closer inspection, the entire horizon rippled toward the remains of Cheyenne Mountain. Why is that familiar?
<<Cheyenne Mountain was constructed to be a protected command-and-control facility during the Cold War. The complex lay roughly a kilometer inside the mountain and could theoretically withstand a direct hit from an intercontinental ballistic missile.>>
A big fat target, in other words. I spoke aloud, the steam erupting from my mouth in a thick white cloud. “Mally, is that a radiation hazard like Los Alamos?”
<<No. While it has a radiological hazard, it is nothing like Los Alamos. The Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center was targeted for orbital bombardment in the limited engagement called World War Three.>>
“World War Three, huh? Can’t say I’m surprised.”
<<Operational names like ENDURING FREEDOM and SIERRA DAWN became convoluted to the point of ridiculousness. When global conflict broke out, the world embraced it as World War Three. There have been two subsequent wars with similar names.>>
“I guess that debunks the theory that World War Four would be fought with sticks and stones.”
<<There are several instances in countries of the Third World—>>
“Stop, Mally.” I studied Cheyenne Mountain. I did not know if its craggy appearance was normal or not. The entire southern horizon appeared to ripple like heat waves rising from a summer road. The illusion wasn’t from summer heat, and there was no one there to tell me differently. The whole Front Range was a wasteland. I kept moving east. “Who bombed it?”
<<The Chinese. Four separate bombing engagements utilizing megaton hydrogen bombs in 2097. A total of five one-hundred-megaton bombs were dropped on Cheyenne Mountain and its surrounding military bases—Fort Carson, Peterson Air Force Base, Schriever Air Force Base, and the Air Force Academy. Colorado Springs was annihilated in the first wave. In Colorado, Denver, Buckley Air Force Base, and corporate offices of major aerospace companies all were destroyed. This route between the two metropolitan areas was sparsely populated before the war and escaped the brunt of the destruction. The Chinese hailed the campaign as the People’s Domination of Space. There were additional sites east of the Mississippi River that were bombed, including the capital—Washington. The campaign failed miserably, but some good came from it. The launching of weapons from space is widely believed to have triggered the return of the Vemeh.>>
“Why do you call it the return? We haven’t talked about the Vemeh before, have we?”
<<The Vemeh were the initiators of First Contact. They’d visited Earth several millennia before that and brought back with them artifacts consistent with prehistoric civilizations in Africa and Central America. Egyptian, Incan, and Aztec artifacts were part of the Vemeh’s knowledge of Earth. They also stated that the Nasca lines in South America were drawn to attract the Vemeh thousands of years ago. They’d clearly been here before.>>
“Aside from the artifacts, was there any type of proof that the Nasca lines were really drawn for the Vemeh?” I chuckled. “Seems to me there is no way they could prove that.”
<<Under normal circumstances, logic would agree with you. The fact that the Vemeh returned with human descendants of the Nasca people caused widespread panic. The Nasca now live primarily on Venus as part of the Vemeh underground colonies.>>
I was about to respond when Mally urged me to stop, regard the western sunset, and drink some water before continuing to the edge of the elevated farms just eleven miles away. There would be a maintenance road in gridlines five miles wide. Cross-country traveling, and avoiding snakes, coyotes, and snags of rusty barbed wire, was not faster than the crushed-gravel roads Mally promised. Shrugging out of my pack, I sat down in shoulder-high grass and watched the sunset. Explosions of pinks and gold dappled the clouds above the horizon. Thunderheads loomed to the south and would bring their cleansing rain. Evening air rustled up in warm, moist kisses, and my longish hair waved in the wind, a feeling I’d not known since my college years. Smiling, I rested my eyes for a moment and enjoyed the last warmth of the day’s sun on my face. Berkeley would be back in California by now. Whether she left out of disappointment or wanting something more that I could not give, I did not know. Not knowing didn’t bother me—it just sucked.
“Mally, how many days do I have left to integrate?”
<<Two hundred seventy-four. You’ve passed your first ninety days and have made significant progress, Kieran.>>
My heart skipped a little. Since I’d been “born” a little more than ninety days ago, I’d done so much and come so far, and in the fading warmth of a late-autumn Colorado day, I watched a beautiful sunset and felt as if a significant portion of my soul clicked nicely into place. Loneliness closed in on me, and I missed Berkeley. The simple fact that she’d spared us both something messy, emotional, and unfulfilling was clear. As much as I wanted to let it all go, to never have another thought about her in my head, I could not. I had to find out who I was so I could be that man for her. Maybe it would be enough.
Purple-and-red clouds glowed in the dusk above the silhouette of Pike’s Peak in the distance. Within another heartbeat, the warm sunset reminded me of Esperance, Allan, and the guys.
<<I’ve sent it, signed by Sleepy. Using your name might cause confusion.>>
I chuckled. She thought of everything. “But I wanted to send a note with it.”
<<What do you wish to say? I will transcribe it for you.>>
Talking out loud to a man half a world away would make the loneliness worse. For a moment, I wanted to go back to Esperance and forget the whole damned thing. Except that I could not. When I had all the answers, I could find Berkeley. I could tell her that I loved her, knowing it with every fiber of my being. There was time, provided I did my part.
“Forget it, Mally.”
The elevated farm’s artificial sunlight clicked to life behind me. Standing slowly, I wrestled my pack onto my back and began to walk toward the lights. The nearly full moon rose above the el-farms. Too bad I’d have the light from the farms interfering with it. Walking in the moonlight would have been exhilarating.
<<They do not leave the lights on all night long. The crops cannot take constant sun exposure. It’s why you have to sleep every once in a while, Kieran. The circadian rhythm cannot be disrupted.>>
By the time I reached the outskirts of the farms, their lights were indeed dimming. A small break in the fencing allowed me inside. Crossing the crushed-gravel maintenance road, I noticed the lack of weeds. Meticulously maintained maintenance road. Somebody cares for this well, I thought with a chuckle and remembered Berkeley’s word about robots and their ignorance of Asimov’s Laws. There wasn’t enough room to set up the hexhab, and a part of me didn’t want to smell the lingering scent of Berkeley inside the damned thing. I stepped across a waist-high divider and into the relative shelter of the farm. Giant cornstalks, impossibly green in the autumn cold, surrounded and dwarfed me. Continuously harvested plants? What will they think of next? Unrolling a thin sleeping bag, I lay outside amongst the corn and listened to the soft rustling of the stalks as sleep overcame me.
As a young officer fresh out of the Academy, Adam Crawley learned that controlling his rage would determine his tactical success. Always a strategic thinker—a master of the bigger picture—he often let the smaller items under his control eat up too much of his focus. Unable to let go of those items as they went awry—as all good plans did upon execution—he became angry. He’d been angry for the last six hour
s, riding a military suborbital from Sydney to England, then taking a private autocar, and finally stomping three hundred meters through a cold English rainstorm to Bennett’s laboratory. He’d spoken to no one the entire time, and as he pushed through the glass doors and found his target sitting at her desk with her blond hair obscuring her face, he flushed and lost control of his voice.
“You mind telling me just what in the hell happened out there?” Crawley roared, and the door slammed behind him. Hands on his hips, eyes blazing, he stared at the young woman. “You were supposed to help him integrate, and you left him! What is wrong with you?”
Berkeley looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “I was compromised, General.”
Crawley took a breath, moved across the lab, and flopped into a chair, loosening the mandarin collar of his uniform tunic as he did. “What happened?”
“Kieran’s protocol refuses to acknowledge his progress toward Stage Four. She received an order from the council that if Kieran reached Stage Four, she was to halt him in place and contact them so that he could be killed.” Berkeley slipped a loose lock of hair behind her ear. “But that was what we expected.”
“So, what weren’t we expecting, Doctor Bennett?”
Berkeley bit her lip. “While I monitored the protocol, it received an emergency-action message on ADMIN and responded but did not tell the truth. Since then, there has been no contact with any orbital platform of any type.”
“Have you tried to monitor the protocol from here?”
“I have a frequency lock, and TDF Comms Zulu Four is tracking it from geostationary orbit. As long as it’s within North America, if that protocol beeps, we’ll know. The good news is that until she broadcasts something, the Terran Council won’t be able to find him.” Berkeley looked down at the pad of paper on her desk.