Final Battle (9 page)

“Yes,” Armitage said with an impatient wave. “General McNamee explained this situation. Something about the speed of light and trying to have you in two places at the same time. Still, the ethics committee is not to be trifled with.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “It is necessary that I also control a robot on the Moon. It is a quarter million miles from the Earth to the Moon. So if I were on Earth, the signals would have to travel to the Moon and back. That would mean too much of a time lag, because even at the speed of light that half million miles takes a little over a second. Ideally, I should be orbiting the Moon so the signal would be almost instant. As it was, we settled on a halfway point. From that place in orbit, I can control robots on Earth. And also, later, on the Moon.”

I didn't add that being on a small space station was also the safest spot possible. Terratakers would not be able to reach me. The 125,000 miles of outer space served much better than any moat around any castle. At least that was the way Nate had put it.

“Anyway,” I finished, “there is a slight lag between sending a signal and the robot reacting, but it is workable.”

“Sending a signal.” Calvin peered at me with some suspicion. “Am I to understand this robot responds to your brain commands?”

“It was in the report,” Patterson snapped. “Must you always waste our time like this?”

“I want to hear it directly from the boy.” Calvin didn't seem disturbed in the least by Patterson's outburst. He must have been used to it.

I explained. All of it. With plenty of stops for more questions and interruptions. An hour later all of them finally understood the concept. The delays were driving me crazy. All I could think about was Ashley and how I needed to get my committee meeting, interview, and Moon mission over and get back to finding her as soon as possible. This wasn't like juggling balls, something I'd taught myself to do on Mars. I mean, drop a ball and no big deal. But could I live with myself if I made a mistake with what I was juggling now?

“Please,” Patterson said with a sigh, “may we get to the important ethical questions?”

“Certainly,” Calvin said calmly. “We're not here to waste time.”

“Ahem.” Michaels faked a cough. “Explain to us how it was that you asked for this operation that allowed bioplastic fibers to grow into your nervous system. I understand you were just starting to walk at the time.”

“Yes, sir,” I said through the robot. “But I did not ask for the operation.”

Michaels made a note on his comp-board.

“Who authorized the operation?” Patterson asked.

“I believe it was the World United Federation, sir. The operation was very expensive, but it did get full approval.”

“Let me rephrase,” Patterson said. “Who allowed you to be operated on?”

“My mother,” I said.

“So you had no choice in the matter.”

“No, sir. But if they had waited until I was old enough to make the choice, I would have been too old for the operation. It has to be done at a very young age to allow the nervous system and bioplastic fibers to grow together properly.”

“In other words,” Michaels said to Patterson, “we have over 200 children who all had the operation done without their consent. And if we want to take advantage of this new technology, we will have to continue operating on children who have no choice. The world may be a better place with this new technology, but they'll pay the price.”

“Sir,” I said.

All eyes turned to the robot.

I continued. “Since I have been this way all of my life— at least as far back as I can remember—I have never thought of it as paying a price. Being able to explore outer space and Mars through the body of a robot has been something so great I can hardly describe it—”

“Really,” Michaels said, cutting me off. His eyes turned flinty. “Because of the operation, you've spent your whole life in a wheelchair. You might know what it is like to walk on Mars or on the Moon, but you don't know what it's like to walk on Earth. So let me ask you this. If I could guarantee an operation that would allow you to walk but take away your ability to control robots, would you have it done?”

“That is an unfair question,” I said, stunned. “I was the only one out of all the kids who suffered spinal-cord damage because of the operation.”

“In the future, mistakes will happen again. Would you trade your robot control to be fully human?”

“Are you suggesting that because I need a wheelchair, I am not fully human?” I insisted as hotly as I could through my robot voice.

Michaels blushed. “Let me rephrase that. Would you trade your robot control to be able to walk? Would you allow us to operate on another child, knowing that this child, too, might suffer the same nerve damage you did?”

I couldn't answer. That would be like playing God with someone else's life.

After long seconds, Michaels sat back in his chair. “As I thought. I don't think we need to ask any further questions.”

CHAPTER 16

Half an hour later my robot rolled in the low gravity and zero atmosphere of the Moon. In orbit, where my body was hooked to computers, I wasn't tired yet. I'd just been in New York through one robot body, and now I was back on the Moon through another.

Here, in the Moon dust, my robot couldn't show emotion, of course, but my own excitement was nearly enough that it bounced forward.

The plan had succeeded!

During my time with the ethics committee in New York, someone here on the Moon had moved the platform buggy inside the low flat building above the mining operation.

That meant they had also moved my robot inside. When I had entered robot control, my robot was already past whatever security system was guarding this warehouse. Amid all the activity inside, no one had noticed as I'd lowered the robot onto the ground and out from beneath the buggy.

There were probably two dozen men working in space suits. I assumed they came in daily from the closest sector of the Moon dome—the Manchurian Sector. The men were working at various tasks, but most were moving pallets of boxes from one end of the building to the other.

Then one man noticed my robot. He gestured at it from beneath his helmet, then moved it into an elevator. A short ride took me down. When the doors opened, I was in a gigantic vault. And ahead, I saw about 20 robots like the one I operated. They held equipment that looked like giant torches and were cutting out blocks of material. It was obvious that their work had expanded this giant vault to the size it was. I couldn't imagine how many months they had already been doing this.

It only took a couple of seconds to move beside the nearest robot.

“Hello,” I said. “We need to talk.”

The robot kept pointing the giant welding torch into the rock face.

“Hello!” I shouted. “We need to talk!”

Still it ignored me.

Then I remembered.

We were on the Moon. No air. Which meant no sound waves.

They couldn't hear me. I couldn't hear them. Was this rescue attempt over before it could begin?

“Nate!”

Almost immediately he removed my blindfold and headset.

“Back from the Moon already?” he asked. He unstrapped my arms and legs.

I sat up and rubbed my wrists. “I'm back.” The familiar walls of the small space station loomed above me. Or below me. Or beside me. It was hard to guess. In space, there's no up or down or sideways.

“What did you find out?” Nate asked.

“We couldn't talk.” I grinned. “But we could scratch in the Moon dirt.”

It had taken a while, but I'd finally learned from one robot what I needed.

The kids weren't staying on the Moon. They were on a space station somewhere. In orbit around the Moon. The rest I could guess. It was just like the pod of kids we discovered in Parker, Arizona, where Ashley was before she came to Mars. They were hooked up on permanent life support, unable to move out of their jelly tubes, living only through their robots.

“So,” I said, after I explained that to Nate, “let's go rescue them.”

“Sounds good to me. I'll call Cannon and tell him what we found out.”

“Just one little thing,” I said. “Down on Earth where I'm headed next. That dumb interview with Ms. Borris.”

CHAPTER 17

That evening, through the video lens of my robot, I stared directly into a television camera. Behind the camera was the operator, a skinny man with a ponytail who had only been introduced to me as Ben.

The robot was in a television studio. The backdrop behind it was of New York City at night. In front of my robot was a coffee table with magazines. In a chair beside the robot was the legendary Ms. Borris. She wore black again, and I overheard her joking to the cameraman that it was her favorite color because it helped her look slim. Her natural hair was curly and cropped short. It looked far better than the platinum wig had when she pretended to be a nurse.

I thought of the mysterious phone call. How I believed it had been my father telling me I could trust Ms. Borris. And how, if it
had
been my father, he knew the interview would be taking place.

“Remember,” Ms. Borris told me, interrupting my thoughts, “normally this is taped. But there has been such a demand for this exclusive interview that we are going live tonight to our worldwide audience.”

“How is my hair?” I asked. With my robot arms, I pretended to smooth out imaginary hair on the robot's head.

Ms. Borris smiled. It took away much of her fierceness. “Nice touch,” she said. “I wish the camera had been rolling when you did that. It would be a great opening shot to this news documentary.”

Live to a worldwide audience. I reminded myself to be careful of what I did and said through the robot.

“Ready?” she asked.

“I have a bunch of questions for you.” I lowered the robot's voice. “When are we going to be able to talk about—?”

“Camera's rolling,” Ben said. “Live in five … four …”

“Ready,” I said. Cannon had insisted that favorable and immediate television exposure was probably more important to the future of robot control than the recommendations of the ethics committee of the World United Federation. If people saw that robots were nothing to be afraid of and if they saw good use for robot control, their mass opinion would force vice governors all across the world to allow more tax money to be spent on robotics.

The only trouble was the questions in the back of my mind I couldn't escape. Would I trade my robot control to be able to walk again? Would I allow an operation on another child, knowing that this child, too, might suffer the same nerve damage I had? I sure hoped Ms. Borris wouldn't ask those questions.

“Three … ,” Ben continued to count down.

Ms. Borris calmly sipped from a glass of water and set it down.

“Two … and—”

Ms. Borris spoke directly at the camera, reading from a teleprompter that scrolled words on a screen in front of her. “I'd like to introduce to you Tyce Sanders. Well, not Tyce himself, but a robot that he controls. Later in our show, we'll give you some of the technical details that make it possible for a human to control robots. You may, however, already know some of this. As I'm sure you're aware, very recently it was the robot Tyce controlled that prevented a nuclear meltdown just outside Los Angeles.”

Ms. Borris turned to me. “First of all, let's talk about the situation you're in right now. It will give our viewers a sense of the potential of robot control. As I understand it, because of threats upon your life, you currently control this robot from a space station that's in orbit between the Moon and Earth.”

“Yes,” I said. I explained that in the afternoon I had answered questions via robot for the ethics committee. I didn't tell her, of course, about my brief time on the Moon and what I had learned there.

“Let's get back to the ethics committee later,” she said. “I'm fascinated by the fact that you can almost be in two places at once. Are you telling me that if you had access to 20 robots all across the world, you could go from one to another to another?”