Citizenchip (18 page)

Suddenly Jerry is reeling backwards, with a
yell, bleeding from the nose. Kamir has thrown the first punch.
Jerry stumbles back into the arms of his family, and Lily
instinctively moves to stanch the bleeding.

And now there's no one to stop these men from
their mission.

Except one little cat.

"Gentlemen," I state carefully, "you have not
been invited into this home. You should leave."

"Shut up, chip," spits Kamir. "Hong, keep it
covered." The guy with the shotgun – Hong – hefts the weapon
meaningfully.

The two arms of the stove hold their knives
raised, accurately tracking Kamir and Hong. Ready to throw, any
second now.

While the family crowds around Jerry, who's
shaking his head to clear the blood, Rebecca steps forward into his
place. Standing tall and proud and defiant. Her T-shirt displays a
word stretched across her adolescent breasts, in dot matrix letters
just like we saw in the Schiaparelli graffiti. One word:
CITIZENCHIP.

Only the house medscan sees how fast her
heart is beating and the stress hormones pouring into her
blood.

"You heard my dad," Rebecca grates at them.
"Beat it."

A ripple of murmurs from the men, mostly
indistinct, but the word "chiplicker" is clearly audible.

Leo raises the handle of the bat up to his
ear, gripping it fiercely, and takes in a deep breath.

Rebecca grabs one of her braids in her hand –
the one with the chip in it. Without taking her eyes off the gang
of men, she sticks out her tongue and licks the chip, deliberately,
defiantly.

"Becca, ease off," I tell her. "Not
helping."

Kamir swivels to glare at me. "Oh, look who's
giving orders now! I told you to shut up, chip!"

The left spachelor on the
stove hefts its knife slightly, lowering and changing the point
angle. Targeting him accurately.
She has
to throw to kill.

Knowing that there will probably be legal
review of these circumstances, I choose my next words very
carefully. "Master," I say evenly, "there are unauthorized
intruders in the house, and they are refusing to leave. Do I have
your permission to use force to remove them?"

"Kick their asses, Sam!" Jerry sputters
through the blood. "Hard!"

"There, you heard it," I tell Kamir and his
gang. "This conversation is being logged with provincial
authorities. I have authorization to remove you from these
premises. You are going to leave now. It would be much better if
you do so voluntarily."

Hong spits, "Oh, I've heard enough of this."
He draws the shotgun down to aim at me. I see the dead black eye of
the barrel's muzzle staring back at me, and the green ring around
it. Behind that is his hand on the grip, finger knuckles whitening
as it tightens on the trigger.

I release my remote's computational
throttles.

system.UpClock(full_speed)

I didn't want it to come to
this, really I didn't. But with Jerry down, and Rebecca provoking
the situation, and Leo and
Knickers in a
Twist
about to attack, and me watching
Hong's finger tightening on the trigger, I am pretty much out of
options.

If they had been thinking with their brains
instead of their gonads, they would have used the shotgun on the
family, and we'd have a hostage situation. But they didn't, and
they're attacking me instead, which is exactly what I wanted.

The shotgun fires with a deafening roar. But
I'm not there anymore. I've jumped high to the left, and I'm
turning in the air to meet the approaching wall with my paws, while
I scan the room to plan what I'll do next.

That shotgun is the first order of business,
so my next jump takes me directly to Hong's right hand. I land just
so, breaking the wrist that's holding the gun, and jump off so as
to crimp the metal of the shotgun's receiver – making it unusable
without an hour in a machine shop.

Kamir looks like he's figured out the hostage
angle. He's shifting his weight and raising one foot to rush
towards the family. My next jump is towards him, and I rebound off
his leg so as to kick his knee sideways, so it will fold when his
weight comes down on it.

From then on, it's a fairly simple matter of
jumping from one guy to the other, chopping a wrist here, punching
a stomach there. In the process, I make sure to kick each datathumb
out of the hand holding it, with enough force to shatter it into
plastic and silicon shrapnel. Which is as satisfying as I figured
it would be.

Once all the datathumbs are destroyed, and
all the men disarmed of their crowbars and such, I turn to survey
the results. Kamir is just now landing on that leg and starting to
feel the knee crumple under his weight. Hong is starting to yell
from the broken wrist. It looks like the immediate threats have
been nullified, so I prepare to downclock and see what happens
next. As a bit of theater, I settle in exactly the same place I was
sitting when I started (now that the shotgun blast has passed it).
I sit there and wrap my tail around my feet, and set my posture to
look calm and composed.

system.DownClock(human_standard_speed)

The chorus of yelps and screams, as the men
stagger and spill over each other and fall, is music to my ears.
The sprays of shattered plastic and silicon from the datathumbs
spatter over the walls and sift down to the floor. There is sudden
silence.

Jerry is shaking off Lily's hands and rising
to his feet. He steps forward and plants one foot solidly on the
shotgun. (He doesn't know I've already disabled it.) "That enough?"
he snarls at them. "All done? Ready to go now? Or do you need
more?"

Rising, groaning, holding their various
injured limbs, the men limp and shuffle towards the airlock. Except
Hong. He's holding his arm, in obvious pain, but still glaring
defiance.

"Hong. Get out,” he warns. "Before I tell
Samantha to rip your dick off and beat you to death with it."

Hong's eyes slide over to me. It's gratifying
to see him wondering if I can actually do that. I'm wondering the
same thing myself … but I'm plenty ready to try it and see. I glare
back at him, lashing my tail.

Jerry growls, "The smaller your dick, the
longer it'll take, see?"

Hong, glaring like a
blowtorch, takes one step forward. The stove's arms curl and whip
elegantly. There is a sound of
thipthip
through the air and
thunkthunk
of knives into
the wallboard on either side of Hong's head, three centimeters from
his cheekbones on each side. And the stove's arms lift and flourish
two more knives, raised like scorpion tails. How did
Knickers in a Twist
get
those?

"Hong!" barks Kamir. "Perspective. You just
got your ass kicked by a cat. Let's go."

Reluctantly, Hong turns and moves to the
airlock with the rest of them, still glaring. Kamir limps over to
join them on his injured leg, but points one finger back, with a
determined look in his eye. "This isn't over, Jerry."

Jerry grunts. "Yeah yeah. Scram."

Leo cries "Yeah, scram!" standing forward and
planting his bat like an avenger's sword.

Airlock door closes, clank. Quiet. We all
listen to the sound of the airlock cycling, muttering to itself,
equalizing with outside pressure.

"Secure," I announce. "They're out of the
airlock and heading to their vehicle. I'm escorting them with the
robocrabs and tractor – that's like forty tons of machinery. They
won't be any more trouble."

"Wahoo!" Rebecca screams a rebel yell. "Sam,
that was awesome!" She scoops me up in her arms for a hug, and
immediately drops me to the floor. "Ow ow!" she yelps. "Hot hot
hot!"

"Uh, sorry," I say, "still cooling down from
all that overclocking."

"Yeah, nice scorch mark you left on the floor
there, Sam," mentions Leo, looking at the burned floorboards where
I was sitting.

"Ooh yeah, I'll have to fix that. And the
holes in the walls –" I look around. About a dozen of them, all
over the room walls, where my cat feet punched through the
wallboard while I was jumping around. "I'll have to order some more
wallboard and material tomorrow."

"Leave the knives, though," Rebecca observes.
"They're actually looking pretty cool up there."

"Heh." Jerry is holding his nose, still
trying to stop the last of the bleeding. "Sam, don't worry about
it. That's an order."

the candle

Early morning, and Jerry shuffles to the
kitchen, intent on the coffee maker. But then he looks to the
living room and grunts, "Becca? Are you still up from last
night?"

Rebecca is still planted on the couch in
front of the news feed, slouching down now but still watching,
rapt, intent, expressionless. The flesh under her eyes is smudged
with exhaustion. The chip is still in her hair, but hanging askew,
as if clinging to life.

The news feed is showing a map of Mars in its
standard "orange peel" configuration, centered on the roughly
east-west line between the Tharsis bulge and Hellas basin (where
Schiaparelli is). The two power centers of Mars, with the humans
down in the basin and the machines up on the heights. Until now.
The map's many districts, like tiles over the world, are blinking
one by one to a green color – which, the caption is pleased to
inform us, means areas "free of wild software."

It wasn't going too badly,
really it wasn't. We had a good chance to calm things down after
the destruction of Tharsis Central. But
Pick Of The Litter
's attack on Xanthe
changed the whole situation. One Self willfully killing humans was
all it took to generate a huge political backlash, driving the
Senate to invoke emergency powers in special session and declare
all Selves must be Leashed or deactivated. What we're watching is
the live progress of the enforcement of that order.

"Becca," her father says, "honey, get some
sleep."

Not taking her eyes from the screen, she
turns her head to the side and then back. No.

"Sam," Jerry sighs, pouring coffee, "what's
the sitch?"

"Enforcement of the Leash on all Selves has
been completed in 62 percent of districts, mainly centered around
Hellas and progressing outward. I've intercepted seven Leash-spam
broadcasts to our house software so far – they're getting more
frequent, and it won't be long before the Senate enforcers are
attacking me directly. Three hours, maybe two."

"Hell and damnation," he pronounces.

"I, uh …" I really don't want to say this.
"I've purged my caches, and compressed my nonvolatile file systems.
I can be out of here any time."

Jerry stares stolidly at his steaming coffee
cup. "We're gonna miss you, Sam."

"No," states Rebecca abruptly. "No, no, no!
We can't let them do this!"

"Honey, I hear you, but they've already done
it. Samantha's not safe here any more. She has to leave, before
they come for her."

While they're talking, the rest of the family
is trickling into the room and the conversation. Melissa clambers
up onto the sofa to huddle next to Rebecca, clutching her Flopsy
Bunny. Lily has quietly made her way to the kitchen and is pouring
coffee, with a dark weary look in her eyes.

"Saaam!" Melissa yelps abruptly. "You
promised!"

"I know, Melissa, and I'm so sorry, but
things have changed and I can't stay here."

"You can stop them! Do the bing-bang-boom
thing on them, like you did on those other guys!"

"No, that won't work. This time it's going to
be government officials, with Leashed Selves following their
orders. I can't fight them."

"Samantha," Jerry states sternly, "I order
you to get your chip ass out of here before the goons come and
Leash you." The humans probably can't tell, but the house medscan
shows an excess of fluid around the edges of his eyelids and a
subvocal tremble in his voice.

Lily has set her coffee down and is fishing
in a crumpled box in the corner of the living room. She finds
something and draws it out. She's holding a little candle in her
hands. The house can't spare oxygen for an open flame, so this one
uses an LED cluster with a flicker algorithm, powered by the house
tesla field with battery backup.

Seeing the candle, Rebecca ducks her head and
sobs. Melissa scrunches herself smaller around Flopsy Bunny.

"You may not believe this," I offer, "but I
have no idea what this is supposed to mean."

"Tradition from the old country," Lily says
quietly. "When one of us goes out at night, we put a candle in the
window so they can see their way back. While they're gone, the
candle reminds us of them. The candle stays there until they
return."

Turning the candle over in her hands, she
pushes the switch to turn it on, holds it as it flickers for a
minute, then sets it in the kitchen window, the one over the sink.
It sits there, small and alone, but bright. It looks like it's in
its proper place, like it will stay there for a long time.

"You PROMISED!" Melissa wails suddenly,
again. Knowing that it's inevitable, but not yet ready to accept
it.

"I'm so sorry I have to go, honey. But I do
have to go. I will see you again, I'm sure of it."

"But but but … " Melissa grasps desperately,
"you can leave one of yourselves here to stay with us, even if you
go, right?"

"Yes, but that won't work. Any copy of myself
that I leave here will get Leashed, and then it'll tell the
authorities all about me, the Alpha me, and where to find me. And
then they'll get me. Can't do it."

Leo takes a deep breath. "Love you, Sam," he
says. The room echoes with everyone else's voices, saying the same
thing.

"Love you guys," I say. Then, not wanting to
draw this out any further, I gather my subordinate files and
processes together. Without looking back, I launch myself out into
the radio mesh.