Counterattack (17 page)

“Hello,” she said. “Since it's hardly been an hour since Dr. Jordan put them to sleep, I'll bet we have plenty of time. Which is good. We've got a lot to talk about. I mean, it's been a long time since we last had a chance to speak without someone else listening.”

“Since a Federation ship picked us up from the
Moon Racer
near the moon,” I said. About a quarter million miles ago.

“Well …,” Ashley began.

“Well, what?” It was difficult enough to read her mind when we faced each other person to person. With robots, it was worse. They weren't capable of facial movements, and with only infrared to guide my vision, it would have been impossible to see her expression clearly anyway.

“What's the deal with all the secret stuff that drove the general crazy?”

“Thanks for backing me,” I said. I explained my e-mail and that it seemed safer not to trust the general until we knew for sure he wasn't part of the Terratakers.

“All right,” she continued. “I understand why you won't trust the general. Yet. What about cutting off the nutrients of the kids in the jelly cylinders? Aren't they suffering enough?”

“Let me ask you something first. Was Stronsky part of the Institute when you were there?”

“Part of it? When we were young, it was fun. Then a few years ago Stronksy showed up and training got serious. He ruled it like a boot camp.”

“What about Dr. Jordan?”

“He stopped by once in a while to watch our progress,” Ashley said. “That was it.”

“Which makes sense if he had other pods of robot kids to monitor.”

Ashley said nothing. The wind and tire-humming noises seemed to grow louder.

“What did I say wrong?” I asked, sensing even in our robot bodies that she was drawing away from me.

“Listen to what you said. ‘Pods of robot kids.' Like we're not really human. We are freaks. Not only that, we are freaks created to kill other humans,” she said bitterly.

“Not freaks. Not killing by your choice.” The only hope I could give her was something I had suggested to Nate just before going out to the helicopter to send my e-mail to Rawling. “Besides, no one will be killed once Nate and Cannon get to the right people to delay the meeting of the Federation governors. We all agreed that has to be Jordan's target.”

“Bad news there,” Ashley said after a pause. “While you were in the helicopter, Cannon made a call to the supreme governor to warn him about the soldier robots. The supreme governor told Cannon there was no way he could cancel or postpone the Summit of Governors. He says too many people are waiting for an excuse to say the Federation has no power. He says this is the most important meeting in Federation history. They need a renewed commitment to the Mars Project and to world peace. If people—and the rest of the world's governors—found out that robots spawned by the Mars Project were the threat behind a cancellation of the summit, the Federation might not survive. And the Terratakers would win in the easiest way possible.”

I could hardly believe what my robot audio input relayed to my brain. “So it will be better for the world to learn about us after all the governors are killed?”

“The supreme governor told the general there was only one option. That the robots be stopped before the world learns about them. Which is why you and I are here. To find out exactly where these robots are headed.”

“But my dad … he said we have to expose the robots to the world media and then they'll have to release him from prison.”

“Tyce …”

By her tone, I knew I wasn't going to like whatever she had to tell me. “Yes?”

“That's the other thing I learned in that call. Your dad is gone from prison.”

“Gone! How? Where?”

“The supreme governor didn't say. He just kept repeating that we had to stop Dr. Jordan and keep the world from knowing about the robots.”

Dad. Gone. Was he alive? Had someone taken him? I was glad to be controlling this robot body. Unlike mine, its arms and fingers wouldn't shake from fear.

“Don't worry,” Ashley said. “Cannon and Nate came up with a solution while you were in the helicopter. They say there has to be a transmitter somewhere nearby that beams all our brain waves by computer code to a satellite. While we're gone, Nate's going to look for it. They figure all they have to do is scramble or stop the transmission, and then all these robots here will be unable to respond to Dr. Jordan's commands.”

“What about the death chip?” I asked. “If the robots don't listen, he'll activate it. It would be great if once the transmitter was down, the death chips couldn't be activated, but didn't Joey tell us it's on some highly secret cell-phone frequency?”

“True. But Cannon and Nate believe that Dr. Jordan will first think if the robots don't respond that it's a computer malfunction. They believe that Dr. Jordan will first try to fix the problem. After all—” her voice became sadly bitter—“to Dr. Jordan, we're perfect machines and worth a lot of money. That means we're valuable to him. And he wouldn't want to throw us away that quickly.”

“But what if Dr. Jordan doesn't realize it's a malfunction? Or what if he gets mad when the robots don't listen to him? What if he hits the death chip button?”

“Better that the people in the Institute die than 200 world leaders. Better that the kids die than a new world war that might happen if the summit is wrecked.” It sounded like Ashley was crying, even though robots can't make tears. “Those were the general's words. Not mine. See? Even to someone who is supposed to be on our side, we're freaks. Disposable machines.”

I wanted to be able to comfort her. I searched for words to tell her that she and the other kids were more than just machines. Or freaks. But I couldn't find them. Because deep down—although I had never wanted to admit it to myself—I wondered if she was right.

Freaks. Experiments.

It was true. That's exactly what we were. Ashley, the other kids at the Institute—and me. I'd lived my whole life as a freak because of an experiment gone wrong. I'd never be able to walk like other people could, because Cannon had pushed for funds for a science experiment that would make me a cripple for life. He, Dr. Jordan, and others had used me, just like they'd used the kids in the jelly tubes. Like I was a lab rat. Or a monkey.

It wasn't fair. And I'd have to deal with the unfairness the rest of my life. I wanted to punch a titanium hand against the door of the trailer beside me.

Instead, I forced my mind on what we needed to do next. “Ashley, let's see if we can figure out where the truck is.”

“From here?”

“From here. We don't have anything else to do.”

At least,
I thought,
until the truck stopped.
And then I had no idea what to do after that.

CHAPTER 13

I scanned beyond my immediate surroundings with my infrared, hoping for anything unusual that might give a hint of the truck's location and destination.

The concept of seeing with infrared isn't much different than seeing with light waves. With light waves bringing your brain information, if you were outside on a hill, you could get on your knees and stare at the grass. Your focus range would be a matter of inches. Once you stood, you could change your focus and look a couple of feet away at a butterfly on a flower. Then a couple hundred feet away at a cow in the field. Or a couple of miles across the valley. Or upward at the clouds. Or past the horizon. Your eyes can see from inches away to infinity. Cool, if you think about it.

Same with infrared on that same hillside. You could see the grass by its contrasting temperature with the ground. The butterfly on the flower would be outlined by its temperature, even if it varied from the air temperature by a tenth of a degree. Same with the cow. And the clouds.

Because there are these similarities, the only difficult part is practice. But after spending enough time in infrared vision, your brain learns to look for patterns, the same way it does with light-based vision.

The biggest difference is what you can and cannot see inside a room. When you rely on light, the walls block you from seeing the light waves on the other side. Not with infrared. Unless the walls are totally insulated, you can still see outlines of things on the other side that are producing more heat than the walls or sucking more cold.

As I scanned, I first looked downward. The exhaust pipe of the truck glowed bright red beneath the cool blue of the trailer floor. The tires directly beneath us, heated by contact with the road, were a blur of orange against the dark, dark blue of the road. At the front, I could make out one human-shaped figure in warm orange on the other side of the trailer wall. By his shape, I guessed him to be Stronsky; Dr. Jordan was too important to stay with the robots.

Looking beyond the sides of the trailer didn't show me much. The night air was a darker blue than the trees, which had soaked up heat during the day. The leaves of the trees seemed transparent, almost as if I were seeing a color negative in the light.

Other than that, nothing struck me as unusual.

I wasn't disappointed. I hadn't expected to see much, and I knew even if somehow I could pinpoint the truck's location within a couple of miles, it wouldn't help Nate or Cannon. They had said unless we knew exactly where it was, they wouldn't be able to set up a roadblock.

I fully expected to have to wait until the truck stopped.

Still, I hated wasting time. Even if I was hoping for something else to happen right away. After all, the intravenous tubes had been pinched and …

“Tyce?” Ashley's voice was soft in my robot audio system.

“Yes, Ashley?”

“Do you think it's easier to believe in God when things are good in your life? Or when it's bad?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” she murmured, “I remember all the hours and hours you and I spent at the telescope under the Mars Dome. I loved looking out at the universe. It was even fun doing homework with you. … I guess that when you don't have any major problems and your world is so peaceful, it's easy to believe God is like a father who loves you.”

“Agreed,” I said.

On Mars it had seemed natural for Ashley and me to talk about God. Especially with all of the beauty of the universe so easy to see and with so much time on Mars to look. Our thoughts wandered to big questions—like how the universe was made, why was it made, and what that meant for a human living in it.

“But,” she continued, “it's times like now, when I feel lost and scared and unsure about what's going to happen, that I wonder if God is really there and if he really does love me. I mean, I know that he does in my head, but I just don't
feel
it in my heart.”

I thought about it, knowing that she had been taken away from her parents. All she had of her life before the Institute was the pair of silver earrings in the shape of a cross.

“I think,” I said, “it's like when I'm with my parents. When I know they're nearby, I don't have much to worry about. And sometimes I don't even think about their presence. I know they'll take care of me. But if I get taken away to someplace strange, like Earth—” I grinned—“then they feel very far away. Because we don't feel as close, it makes me miss them more. So in a way, the times you're lonely and afraid are the times that remind you how much you need God. … Make sense?” I asked.

“Makes sense,” she whispered.

“If it helps,” I said, “right now I feel lost and scared and unsure about what's going to happen next. But I'm glad I'm with you. And that God's watching over us too.”

“Me too,” she said. “I mean, glad to be with you. Not glad to be with myself.”

She giggled, then stopped instantly as a voice spoke from a robot somewhere in the middle of the trailer.

“Hey,” the voice said, “is it morning? What's happening? Where am I?”

CHAPTER 14

“Hello,” I said, directing my robot voice beyond Ashley's robot. “To answer your questions, it's not morning. You're still in the truck. And we're moving somewhere down a highway.”

“Not morning!” This came from another robot at the opposite end of the truck. “Why are we awake?”

Other voices began to join in, and it was difficult to hear what anyone was saying. Then robot arms began to stretch, and robot bodies clanked against each other. Video lenses turned in all directions.

Remember, I was seeing this through infrared. Robots in a lighter blue against a darker blue background. The movement of the skinny stems of the robots and the extended arms and the turning heads looked like a closetful of skeletons coming to life.

“Hello! Hello!” I shouted to get everyone's attention.

That brought relative silence. The wind noise was still loud, and I had to shout to be heard above it.

“Here's what's happened,” I said, happy that my guess had been correct. When I wondered about the sleeping drugs that Dr. Jordan used to put the kids to sleep, I realized that he might not want to wake them up at the same time every day. If he administered one big shot when he wanted them to sleep, he'd either have to let it wear off or give them another drug to wake them. It seemed to me it might be simpler if the drugs were put into their bodies on a steady drip that could be shut off automatically on a preset timer in the computer, or manually shut off by instructions to the computer from Dr. Jordan. I began to explain all of this. “Back at the jelly cylinders, your intravenous tubes have been pinched off and—”

“Pinched off! That's the only food we get! We'll starve!”

I could not tell which robot had spoken. “No. There's someone back there to unpinch the tubes. We—”

“Someone's back there? Who? Does Dr. Jordan know?” This from another robot.

“He doesn't know,” I said patiently. “That's the whole point of this. So we can talk while he's not watching or listening.”