Steelheart (2 page)

Doon liked the look of the other synthetic's arms. He could imagine how the right one would hang. Long and comfortable, like the original had, before the jackers blew it off.

Sojo turned to the right and disappeared behind a prefab store. Doon hurried to catch up, peeked around the corner, and saw his target halfway down the block. His destination, and the reason for his trip, were obvious now. The com booth, one of hundreds established during the Committee's reign, was intact. Many—hell,
most
—pay sets had been damaged in the quakes or destroyed during the machine riots. All of which meant that communication with outposts such as Riftwall, Norley's Knob, and Mound City were uncertain at the best. The only
sure
way to deliver a message was to hire a runner—or take it yourself, which was not an option for someone like Sojo.

Doon had slowed to a walk by then, and was a hundred feet away when Sojo approached the com booth. The synthetic took one look at the attendant and sped away. The guard yelled, "Stop!" and the droid went faster. Two figures in black raincoats materialized out of the shadows and took up the chase. The attendant followed.

Doon saw the
real
attendant's body slumped in a doorway, swore, and started to run. Just his frigging luck! Wait all day only to have some good-for-nothing bio bods salvage his mark. Besides, who the hell were they to pick on the robotic equivalent of a nerd?

Doon knew his thinking was inconsistent but didn't care. He followed Sojo's pursuers down another ruler-straight street toward the point where it ran into the
Pilgrim's
frosty white hull.

Sojo had a lead on them by then—but paused as one of the Guild's heavily armed convoys approached. It was similar to an Earth-style train in that an enormous tractor unit supplied the motive power, while a long string of trailers followed behind.

Doon knew that a steady stream of such convoys crossed High Hand Pass every week carrying tools, weapons, and ammo to those brave enough to live outside the HZ, and bringing whatever food the subsurface farmers could spare back across the mountains. The train bristled with pod-mounted automatic weapons. Many of them tracked Sojo and his pursuers as they drew near.

The synthetic looked back over his shoulder, realized his pursuers were gaining, and launched himself into the street. Doon wanted to warn him, wanted to help, but knew it was too late. The half-man skittered toward the convoy and disappeared under a trailer.

Doon assumed Sojo was dead, as did his pursuers, until the last trailer rattled by. The droid nearly made it, nearly escaped, but wasn't fast enough. His silhouette showed as he entered the ship. The scavs followed at a trot. Doon brought up the rear.

 

The Junkman paused just long enough to let his assistants take the lead. The bounty hunter had employed more than a dozen of them over the last couple of years. He had a preference for those who were young and had something to prove.

The boy named Jak fit the profile to a T. He stepped in front of the girl and slipped through the gap.

Old lady Cramby was waiting inside the ship. She had only one shell in the black-market smoothbore, but that was enough. She squeezed the trigger, staggered under the recoil, and cackled as the ball bearings tore Jak apart.

The girl stepped forward, sprayed the woman with 9mm bullets, and waited for backup. None appeared.

The Junkman shook his head, bent over, and got blood on his hands as he sorted through Jak's possessions. Those worth keeping went into the pockets that lined the inside of his raincoat. Girls lasted longer than boys did, or so the Junkman had concluded, because they placed a higher priority on survival. All of which explained why he hired boys.

The girl kept her back to the walls as she moved up the corridor, painfully aware of how thin they were, and the fact that it would be easy to fire through them.

Unlike the Junkman, who had been born on the dole, she came from privileged circumstances. After six years of dance lessons, she still moved on the balls of her feet. That, plus the fact that she had refused to sell her body, would have pleased her mother.

Wood splintered as the Junkman kicked a section of wall. A man sheltered his family with his body. He held his arms up as if in supplication, and the Junkman nodded politely. Not because he had any compunctions about killing innocent people, but because ammo was expensive and best reserved for serious threats.

It took the bounty hunter and his assistant less than three minutes to investigate the shabby little cubicles that branched to either side of the hallway, establish the fact that Sojo hadn't hid in one of them, and hit what appeared to be a blank wall. But the Junkman had been hunting androids for a long time now, and he knew what they were capable of. He donned a pair of wire rimmed glasses, selected a stylus-sized flashlight from the inside of his raincoat, and pushed a button. The light wobbled over grimy metal.

It took a full minute of patient inspection to find the parallel cracks, verify the existence of the door, and place the demo charge. The Junkman motioned to the girl, and she backed away.

 

Sojo was surprised when the charge detonated. A hole appeared where the hatch and a sizeable section of wall had been. Smoke billowed, and a man stepped through. He was at least six feet tall and had ice-blue eyes and a three-day growth of beard. His hand cannon carried fourteen "robot rounds," each formulated to puncture metal but cause minimal damage.

The android forced a smile. "The name is Sojo."

The Junkman nodded. "Yeah, I know."

Video supplied by the android's pickups was fed to a dedicated subprocessor, where it was analyzed. Sophisticated algorithms were used to compute the changes in distance between facial features and compare them to a static model. The result was expressed as a nonverbal content quotient. The scav came up zeros.

"Can you be bought?"

The bounty hunter shrugged. "Sure, if you have something I want."

The synthetic gestured to the room. "How 'bout this?"

The Junkman shook his head. "You're worth more than all this junk put together."

Sojo made one last attempt. "What if I told you that I'm a scientist—working on something that could bring summer back. What would you say then?"

The Junkman raised an eyebrow. "I'd say you were a lying, no-good pile of shit."

"Could I send some data before I die?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't have time for this bullshit." The girl had heard the noise before, but it still made her ears hurt. A hole appeared between Sojo's eyes ... and castors rattled as the impact pushed him across the room.

 

Doon slid his hand under the duster, felt the Skorp .44 leap into the palm of his hand, and watched the low-light target grid appear. The boy glowed green as he stepped over the body. The synthetic made his way around the old woman, checked her jugular, and slid along the wall.

A woman with a baby in her arms stepped out into the hallway. She saw him and backed into her cubicle. The android heard three bolts slide into place—and hoped she had something more substantial than locks to defend herself with.

Smoke from the explosion eddied down the hall, found its way into Doon's nostrils, and was automatically analyzed. The demo charge had contained Guild-manufactured Hiplex 4.2. Good stuff. .. and the sign of a pro.

Doon didn't know what human fear was like—only that it was unpleasant. His fear stemmed from the tension between his survival programming and the dictates of his conscious mind. All of which was rather interesting, given that the original sequence of activities stemmed from a desire to replace his missing arm, and thereby improve the odds of survival. He eased his way forward.

Sparks fanned the air and a blade/screeched as Sojo's head wobbled, hung from a handful of cables, and fell free. It bounced and rolled until the plastiflesh nose got in the way. The Junkman hated this part of the job. Not because of the butchery, but because of the time it took, and the fact that he was vulnerable. Damn Jak anyway ... it was just like the miserable little bastard to get himself killed and leave someone else holding the bag. The Junkman glanced at the girl, assured himself that she was looking out into the hall, and returned to his work.

Doon heard the saw, knew what it meant, and eased his way forward. The girl couldn't possibly have heard him, not with all the screeching, but turned anyway, as if warned by some sixth sense. A strange concept from the synthetic's point of view, since he had eight senses, and considered humans to be somewhat handicapped. He rounded a corner.

The girl didn't match his files. Identity screened? It hardly mattered. Her eyes widened with fear, her finger tightened on the trigger, and Doon wished he still had the nonlethal stun gun that went with his missing arm. But that was gone now ... broken down for its component parts, or on display in an Antitechnic church. There was no choice.

Doon squeezed the trigger slowly, regretfully, knowing he couldn't miss. He saw the first slug hit the center of her scrawny chest—and the second take her between the eyes. Half her torso disappeared, followed by the top of her head. Blood fanned the wall.

The Junkman saw the girl die out of the corner of his eye and turned to meet the threat. Most people would have taken Doon for human—but the Junkman wasn't most people. He recognized the synthetic for what he was and tried to beat the machine's computer-fast reflexes.

Doon stepped through the jagged hole, raised the .44, and saw his vision split in two. The left side of the display showed a perp with weapon in hand, and a partially dismembered corpse lying at his feet.

The other half of the frame clicked through a series of digitally reproduced stills. There were twenty-six mug shots altogether, each a little older than the one before it, culminating in a picture taken two weeks prior to the Cleansing. Thanks to the disparity in reaction times, there was plenty of opportunity for a warning. Doon heard himself give one. "Police! Hold it right there!"

The Junkman fired, saw a hole appear in front of the synthetic's boots, and knew the next shot would hit his opponent's left knee. That would bring the sonofabitch down— and the rest would be easy. Maybe he could hire some locals to carry the body parts ... maybe he could...

The first shot hit the Junkman's chest with the force of a sledgehammer. It flattened itself on his body armor, threw the bounty hunter backwards, and drove the air from his lungs. He was processing that, attempting to breathe, when the second bullet exited through the back of his head. The body smashed into some shelving, fell and was buried under an avalanche of printouts. The Junkman was dead.

Doon shook his head sadly, looked around, and marveled at Sojo's quarters. All that stuff... and for what? Knowledge for the sake of knowledge? Or something more? There was no way to tell.

The synthetic spotted Sojo's blood-spattered right arm, considered taking the torso as well, and decided against it. It was too much to carry, especially in a fight, and there was something more as well. A vague sense of guilt—as if he were at fault.

Doon took the arm, wiped most of the bounty hunter's blood off it, and left the way he had come. Eyes watched through holes in the walls, and ears tracked his progress. The residents would miss Sojo, but that wouldn't stop them from looting his apartment, or selling what remained of his body. They wanted to survive—and so did Doon.

The boy, and the woman who had killed him, were just the way Doon had left them. The smoothbore had disappeared. The synthetic stepped over the bodies, peered out into the night, and scanned for heat. He saw three small blobs, rats most likely, scurry along a wall. Warmth, the product of a well-hidden campfire, leaked through an upstairs window. He stepped out into the sleet. The temperature registered on his sensors but caused no discomfort. His boots left marks in the slush.

Home—if that word could be used to describe the cold, half-flooded utilities vault where he passed his nights—was about a mile away. The arm made a bulge under his duster. A bulge that street thieves might find interesting. No one bothered him, though—which was just as well.

Doon slowed as he approached his temporary home, checked to ensure that none of his carefully arranged telltales had been disturbed, and lifted the cover. Metal squealed as the lid swung upward—and squealed again as darkness closed over his head. The hinges could have been oiled— but why bother? Especially when they functioned as a burglar alarm.

The crypt—for that was how Doon thought of it—was little more than a precast cable vault. He found the battery-powered lamp and turned it on. Heavily armored three-inch fiber-optic cables squirmed in from the sides, mated within the privacy of a connector box, and went their separate ways.

The space was dark, cold, and damp. Not uncomfortable really, but depressing, since the parameters that provided Doon with a sense of well-being had been set to match those common to humans. Why? To help synthetics fit into human-dominated society? Or to limit their ability to compete? As with so many other things, there was no way to know.

Doon sat on a ledge, his back to a corner, and arranged the arm across his thighs. He stroked the limb lovingly, thought about the pleasure it would bring, and felt guilty about the manner in which it had been obtained. What if the bounty hunters had missed Sojo? Would he have committed the same crime that they had? The synthetic winced internally and reached for the lamp. Darkness would do little to lessen the pain—but there was no reason to watch.

Doon had experienced the subroutine twenty-three times before and felt nothing but dread. The first sensation was similar to what a bio bod might have described as an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. That was followed by a distinct lurch as his thought processes locked up, his body became rigid, and the video started to play.

Doon saw the girl, saw his bullets hit her, and wanted to scream as the robotic equivalent of pain racked his body. The girl died, fell, and died again, over and over until the synthetic knew her features by heart, and would dream about them for years to come. Because androids
do
dream—at least the Creator's did, according to algorithms he had devised.