Theme Planet (53 page)

“How do you feel?” he said, not
taking his eyes off the machine. Various limbs had started to flex and move,
and Dex realised it had eight metal arms - like a giant spider. He shivered;
felt chilled to ice inside.

“I feel great, Dex! The drugs are
doing their job!”

“Yeah. Well.”

There came various buzzes and
spinning blade sounds as the machine tested its various implements. The doctors
and nurses were all standing around, beaming with big white teeth as if they
were on some TV or filmy advertising Whiter Than White Teeth toothpaste.

“Now vatch carefully, Meester
Colls!’’ said a funny looking doctor with a big brown quiff.

The machine suddenly sprang into
life, and Dex nearly drew his fucking pistol, it made him jump so much. All
eight arms slammed into action, and it was like Katrina was being attacked by a
metal hybrid of car and octopus. Kat squeezed his hand again and he forced
himself to look into her eyes, and he realised he was crying, and the moment
was beautiful (except for the whirring and drilling and sounds of a circular
saw cutting flesh).

Everything flowed into honey, and
then there came a squawk, and the metal arms lifted a new-born babe into the
air. A midwife took the child, and cut the umbilical, and carried the babe to
the weighing scales, which shuffled around on little legs to accept this, The
Prize.

The midwife gestured to Dex and
he sidled over, looking down in awe at his new child.

“Do you have a name for her?”

“It’s a her?”

“She’s a she, yes. “

“Wow!”

“Do you have a name?”

“We said we’d call her Toffee. “

“She’s beautiful. She has her
mother’s eyes.“

“Wow,” agreed Dexter, mouth open,
as he quickly counted arms and legs and fingers and toes. “Is she okay? Is she
healthy? Is she fine?”

“She’s a fine little girl,” said
the midwife.

There came a massive clanking as
the machine crossed the birthing suite, and extended a metal linkage to Dex.
Dex stared at the greased ball-joint. “Yes?” he enquired politely.

“Dr
Jojo Brunstfield
III, +7,
at
your service,
Mr
Colls. We hope
this is
a
pleasant memory for you. We
HOPE
YOU HAD A GREAT TIME.
If
YOU HAVE
ANY PROBLEMS WITH YOUR BABY UNIT, PLEASE
BRING
IT BACK TO THE HOSPITAL
AND WE WILL INVESTIGATE IT. THANK. YOU.”

All the time it was shaking Dex’s
hand.

The midwife wrapped the child in
a blanket and handed her to Dex. It’d been a few years since he’d held a
newborn, and he remembered how delicate they felt, how tiny their fingers and
toes, how totally vulnerable they were.

“Hello little Toffee,” he said,
grinning like an idiot and stroking her silky soft baby skin. He toyed gently
with her fingers as he carried her to Katrina, and together they cooed over the
baby as the giant clanking machine sewed Katrina’s body back together again.

“She’s beautiful!“ said Katrina.

“She’s a little star,” said Dex. “Well
done, Toffee, fighting your way to freedom like that! I just know you’re going
to be Daddy’s little girl, and I’m going to spoil you rotten, and you’ll never
want for anything, and I’m going protect you and nurture you and love you with
all my heart until the stars go out and die...”

~ * ~

Toffee stood in
the
corridor up ahead, waiting for him. Her head was lowered, eyes narrowed, stance
aggressive but patient. In her hands she carried the fizzing, sparking wand.
The wand used to put androids down and out of the game...

Dex had followed Katrina’s trail
of destruction; it hadn’t been difficult. She’d left a path like an Industrial
Chainsaw FukTruk through protected jungle. Dex had pounded down the white,
glowing corridors, and dropped down through the holes in the floor, wincing at
the fleshy feel to the wounds she’d cut or blasted into existence. It looked to
Dex like Kat was using the FRIEND for speed, now, blowing vast holes in the
very living flesh of SARAH just to progress; to get to her target.

When the surroundings suddenly
changed, shifting from glowing white to a dark, moody blue, that was when Dex
came across Toffee. He stopped dead, and his chin wobbled, and his knees
knocked. Here was his pretty little girl. His beautiful girl cub whom he’d
nurtured and cared for and loved with so much love his heart could have burst.
And she was waiting for him. Waiting to kill him...

“Daddy,” she said, and her head
lifted, and Dex could not read her eyes, nor her intentions. A flower sparkled
in his heart; sparkled with
hope.

“Toffee, my sweet little
princess. Sweet as toffee.” It was his bedtime invocation, the words he always
used when tucking her beneath the sheets and kissing her one last time before
she drifted off to sleep. The words that always brought a cheeky imp smile and
a gleam of love in her eyes.

Now, it brought a snort.

“I’m not your little princess any
longer.”

“Toffee!”

“You did a bad thing, Daddy.”

“What bad thing?”

“You should have become a proper
android, like us. You’re being a bad man. You’re breaking up the family.”

“No, no, you have to learn not to
be like this, Little One. You have to forget all this rubbish about androids
and killing - that’s not you, that’s not the lovely little girl who rescued the
injured kitten and helped make it a bed and stayed up all night worrying about
its broken leg. You nursed that kitten for four weeks, fed it, gave it milk,
forced me to make a bloody splint for its leg! What happened to you, Toffee?
What happened to that sweet, beautiful, caring child?”

“I became what I was supposed to
become. They flicked my switch, Daddy. Now I understand. I understand
everything - how cold and cruel the world is. How life is worth nothing, and
how we can - and will - kill without mercy. The universe is a terrible
glittering place. It’s filled with emptiness. It is a void. There is no such
thing as God, or the soul, there is only life and death and money.”

Dex walked slowly forward, until
he was in striking distance. He looked down in horror at his youngest child. “By
all that’s Holy, what did they do to you?” he said.

“Nothing Holy,
Daddy,”
she
said, and looked at him with adult eyes.

Dex knelt, slowly, so that he was
on the same level as Toffee.

He stared hard at his little
girl.

“What do I have to do? To get you
back again?”

“That’s easy,” said the little
girl. “You must not pass. If you try, then I will kill you.”

“I cannot fight you,” said Dex.

“Good. Because you will not pass.
Katrina said it must be so.”

“Why not
Mummy?”

“She is Katrina now. She is an
android. We are all androids. Allow them into your mind, Daddy. Allow them to
do the right thing; come back to us, as the father we know and love. We can
hunt together. We can kill together. “

“Those are not your words,” said
Dex, and rocked back fast on his heels - a good thing, for the wand lashed out
in a savage movement, a hateful sudden strike, and slashed before Dex’s face so
close he felt the sparks discharge on his nose...

Dex rolled to one side as the
wand pursued him, slashing left and right like a sword, and he came up, ducked
under a blow, and though it pained him to the very roots of his soul, he hit
Toffee in the chest with a straight right. She flew back, a tangled mess of
limbs, dropping the fizzing wand.

Dex stepped forward and picked it
up.

Toffee was lying on her back,
wheezing, clutching her chest.

Dex strode forward, and looked
down at his daughter, or what was once his daughter, and he felt nothing but
love for her. Nothing but love and joy, mixed with horror and fear at what she
had become. And a doubt. A nagging, nagging feeling tickling the base of his
skull...

“Toffee?”

“What, bastard?”

“You are not Toffee.”

Silence.

“You are not my little girl.”

Silence.

“Where is my little girl?”

Toffee glared up at him, and
suddenly something released in his heart, and he felt a flood of joy and
happiness like nothing he had ever felt. Of course! This was not the real
Toffee - because he, and Katrina, and Amba - they were engineered creations,
created androids. But Molly and Toffee could not be manipulated in the same
way; they were a product of a union of love, not engineering. In which case, at
some point they had been switched with - what? Android recreations of the real
thing? Maybe? Why?

Why, to force his cooperation, of
course.

To buy his loyalty.

To force him to do what he was
told.

Dex brought the fizzing crackling
wand close to the fake Toffee and she recoiled, like a snake before a flaming
brand.

“Where are my children?” he said.

Toffee started to laugh, and it
was almost an adult laugh. Her eyes glittered. “You think it is that easy? That
it would be so simple? Like we’re just fakes, or clones, and your real,
beautiful, angelic little girls are really holed up somewhere nasty, clutching
prison bars and waiting for their sweet Daddy to come and rescue them?” She
laughed again, and it was a nasty sound that made Dex clench his fists. “Well
it isn’t like that,
sweet Daddy,
it isn’t like that at all. The round
shape doesn’t always fit into the round hole, because the hole gets warped, and
twisted, and just because your children were good to you for the last few
years, doesn’t mean they’re not now filled with hate and ready to do the job
for which they were designed. The job of torture. And killing.”

“No,” whispered Dex.

“Oh yes,” said Toffee. “I am your
baby. Your sweet little Toffee. And I want you dead, motherfucker...” She
launched herself at him with a snarl, fingers curled into claws, teeth bared
and drooling like a predator attacking... going for the kill.

~ * ~

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

BAD DADDY

Toffee attacked. His
own daughter attacked! Dex moved fast, the wand
lashing out and touching Toffee’s temple. She was flung sideways, spinning, and
hit the wall, collapsing in a heap.

If this was any other enemy, Dex
would have closed fast for the kill.

But this was his little girl.

How could he do that? How could
he do that to her?

Snarling in frustration, he moved
to the wall, to the neat alloy panels emitting the soothing blue light. Dex
started to kick one, and after several hefty blows the alloy buckled. He got
fingers behind the edge and dragged it free, revealing a mass of ducting and
cables. Dex grabbed a handful of wires and ripped them free with a shower of
sparks, then moved to Toffee, knelt and tied her hands tightly behind her back;
then moved down and bound her ankles.