had no business being there. But, during the technologist’s long, painful childhood, he had learned to suffer even the cruelest beatings without revealing the emotions that his tormentors so wanted to see. And that capacity still came in handy from time to time. “It isn’t nice to skulk about,”
Tepho commented without turning his head. “You might as well come out where I can see you.”
The request caught Kane by surprise, but the spirit entity was quick to adjust and forced Dyson’s body to approach the copper tub. Tepho saw the knife, wished the raptor was present, and made a note to tighten his personal security. He could call for help of course, but had serious doubts about whether it would arrive in time and resolved to deal with the situation himself. “So,” Tepho said, as Dyson/Kane took up a position next to Logos. “It’s the AI that you’re after.”
Kane tried to say, “Yes,” but found Dyson was blocking him. That forced the disincarnate to clamp down on the sensitive and start all over again. “Yes. But more than that—I came for you. I think the time has come to bring your current incarnation to its logical conclusion.”
Tepho allowed his right hand to slide down into the water. “So you can take over.”
Dyson’s once-handsome face bore a number of open sores, which when combined with his hollow eyes and unshaven countenance, combined to make the variant look like a recently exhumed corpse. Kane sought to make the sensitive nod, encountered a moment of resistance, and struggled to overcome it. “That’s the plan,” the dead man agreed stiffl?y.
“So, as long as we understand each other, we might as well get the unpleasant part of the transition over with. Who knows? You might be grateful! That’s an extremely ugly body that you’ve been forced to live in.”
“Look who’s talking,” Tepho replied, as the handgun came up out of the bath. Water ran out of the barrel, but the technologist knew it would fi?re. “Hold it right there,”
Tepho ordered evenly. “And drop the knife.”
Kane looked at the pistol and swore silently. Tepho had him dead to rights, and there was no reason to proceed. So the spirit entity ordered Dyson to release the knife, but the sensitive refused, and worked to muster every bit of life energy he had left. Gradually, like a man carrying a signifi?cant weight, Dyson took a tottering step forward. Tepho, who was unaware of the battle raging within the noxious creature before him, shook his head in disgust.
“You really are one stupid son of a bitch.” Then, having taken careful aim, the technologist fi?red three rounds. Both Kane and Dyson felt the heavy slugs tear through their mutual body and heard the gunshots, but their reactions were quite different. Kane was forced to exit the sensitive’s body and immediately fl?ew into a towering rage because his ability to infl?uence events on the physical plane had been terminated.
But Dyson, who had fi?nally been able to escape months of enslavement, was overjoyed. And having long since given up any hope of reclaiming his physical body, had already exited the corpse before it hit the fl?oor. Logos couldn’t speak without being worn, so it was left to Tepho to provide an epitaph for the recently vacated body.
“Some things were just never meant to be,” the administrator commented, as two heavily armed robots entered the room. “There’s some garbage on the fl?oor,” Tepho added.
“Remove it.”
The interior of Surface Ramp-47 was like a scene from hell as Rebo and Norr fought to make their way back up to the surface. Because, as the clock continued to tick, and groups of heavily burdened tomb raiders emerged from the city of Kahoun, the on-again, off-again carnage continued. Insults were exchanged, the wounded lay in moaning heaps, hard-eyed overseers cracked their whips, a disabled metal man screeched pitifully, a woman accidentally shot one of her companions in the leg, metal grated on duracrete as an enterprising tomb raider towed his loot up the ramp on a solar panel, and the air crackled with a cacophony of radio traffi?c as those on the surface issued dozens of confl?icting orders. Thanks to the fact that they were relatively unencumbered, the twosome made good time at fi?rst. But then, as they neared the top of the ramp, the situation changed as incoming extraction teams ran into outgoing extraction teams and created a very contentious traffi?c jam. And it was then, while caught in the backwash of all the confusion, that Rebo spotted the blue-clad combat variant and a face he had never expected to see again. “Look!” the runner said, as he elbowed Norr. “It’s Phan! Wearing Techno Society blue!”
The sensitive looked, saw that Rebo was correct, and watched as the assassin sent a brace of heavies in to clear the traffi?c jam. “We’d better pull back,” the variant advised, “or they’ll spot us for sure.”
The runner regretted allowing Phan to live, knew he would bring all sorts of hell down on them if he were to shoot the scheming bitch, and allowed Norr to pull him back. “So, what are we going to do?” Rebo wanted to know.
“We can’t stay in here forever, and they’ll spot us if we try to leave.”
“True,” the sensitive agreed thoughtfully, “so let’s change the way we look. See those bodies over there? The ones in green? Let’s strip them.”
In any other circumstance the sight of a man and a woman stripping dead bodies of their clothing would have been the subject of comment if not outrage, but there, within the amoral free-for-all of Ramp-47, the act was little more than a grisly sideshow.
It took a concerted effort to remove the tops and pull the simple garments up over their heads, but eventually the task got done. And though less than enthusiastic about the bullet holes in his newly acquired jerkin and the large bloodstain on the back of it, Rebo was thankful that the garment had a hood. And, judging from the extent to which Norr’s cowl hid her face, the runner fi?gured that his would function the same way.
Then, as if to validate the effectiveness of the disguises, a man dressed in Menkur green yelled at them from farther down the ramp. “Hey, you two! Give us a hand with this thing!” Rebo, who was eager to blend in, hurried to comply. Norr followed. The “thing” that the man referred to turned out to be one of the Techno Society’s metal men, which King Menkur’s technologists wanted to study up close so they could create their own army of robotic servants. That was the sort of thing Sogol intended.
The android, which had been tied hand and foot, was still very much “alive,” and hung suspended below a pair of long poles. But the weight was too much for just two men, which was why the man in green was happy to recruit two ostensible allies, even if they were strangers to him. “Grab a handle!” the tomb raider ordered cheerfully. “And keep your weapons handy. . . . The blues won’t like this—so we may have to shoot our way out.”
Rebo swore. Now, rather than slip past the technos unnoticed, they were almost certain to be challenged! But it was too late to choose another course of action, so the off-worlders took hold of the poles, and hoisted them onto their shoulders. Shaz was the fi?rst to notice Menkur’s tomb raiders and the burden that the foursome carried as they pushed up toward the top of the ramp, but no sooner had he dispatched a squad of metal men to deal with the android nappers, than a trio of green-clad wings attacked from above. And it was then, while the combat variant and the assassin were busy defending themselves, that Rebo fi?red the Sokov. The fi?rst projectile exploded against the lead robot’s chest and blew a palm-sized hole through the metal man’s torso. A second machine went off-line as a result of its wounds—and two additional androids were destroyed as more darts hit home. Then the litter bearers were free of the crowd and out in the desert. A wall of green-clad warriors opened to enfold them, and Shaz was left to fume, still ignorant of the true gravity of his loss. Because not only had a robot been spirited away, the sensitive named Norr had slipped past him as well, along with the AI originally called Logos 1.2. That meant two AIs were on the loose. The question, and a rather important one at that, was which Logos would arrive on Socket fi?rst.