Once outside the power station, she saw the dead Model Sixes lying on their sides and scarred with crisscrossed torch cuts. A single Model Seven lay in the pileup, its leg trapped underneath one of the overturned Sixes and an ugly molten hole piercing its thorax.
All around the Sixes and Sevens was a hodgepodge of their newly energized cousins. Unlike the mobile models, the assembly building's immobile robots seemed to have no batteries and had simply stopped running when power was lost. That attacking machinery was now awake, but it was confused and running amok.
"This way!" Hoblenz shouted in the confusion. He turned to lead them in a sprint along the assembly line. The now-active motor of the conveyer belt was deafening. Its sonorous rumbling was pierced only by the whining stops and starts of cranes racing back and forth across the ceiling. Their movements were without apparent purpose, and heavy cargo swung recklessly underneath — large-scale lessons in the forces of physics. When two loads of heavy equipment met going opposite directions, the result was an explosion of debris which then rained down on the floor.
Laura ran into Hoblenz's broad back, and a streaking load crashed to the floor just ahead. Her ankles and knees were jarred by the blow, which passed through the concrete floor like the shockwave of a massive explosion. She covered her ears and jammed her eyes shut — the frenzy of the enormous cavern overwhelming.
"We gotta run for it!" Hoblenz shouted. He grabbed her hand and took off, dragging her along behind him. They dodged this way and that around piles of smashed equipment that grew in the chaos of random frenzy. And all the while the sky rained crates onto the floor and the constantly moving arms along the conveyer belt snapped menacingly.
Hoblenz turned all of a sudden to the right, pulling Laura down a narrow corridor and out an exit.
The door shut behind them, and the world was plunged into gooey silence. It seemed to coat all her thoughts and nerves with balm and to leave her floating in a peaceful bliss in which time ceased to matter. As an afterthought, Laura joined Hoblenz and his men at the top of the steps.
"I guess that was a waste," Hoblenz said.
The Model Sixes and Sevens were having a parade. They were strung out in a line, heading from the assembly building across the lawn to the computer center.
49
"Mr. Gray's down that way," a soldier said from behind his heavy machine gun. Laura followed his finger past the sandbags surrounding the computer center entrance to the lone figure seated against the sloping concrete wall. "He's been there a while."
Laura headed out of the puny human fortress onto the flat green lawn beyond. The grass was gouged and scarred from the battle, and the field was filling again with Gina's army.
Gray stared at the Model Sixes and Sevens, which were forming lines facing out toward the jungle. He didn't bother to look over at Laura even after she settled to the ground right beside him. She studied his stony face — its intensity focused on the ranks of Gina's legion. The brilliant spotlights of Model Sevens scanned the jungle wall, but none of the robots dared stray inside.
"I was looking for you inside," Laura said, speaking softly but feeling guilty for breaking the silence. She followed his gaze out to the lawn. Gray said nothing. "Georgi told Hoblenz that this whole area has been declared a 'special security zone.' Isn't that like what you set up around that first runaway robot on the assembly line?" Still nothing. "Like what you did with the entire assembly building after that worker quit?"
"I don't set up special security zones," Gray replied. "They're declared by the antiviral programs."
"You mean like the phase-one or whatever?" she asked. Gray nodded. "But I thought they just looked for viruses."
"They look for errors," he said as he drew his legs up, resting his arms across his knees. "For malfunctioning system components. It all happens so quickly we could never see it coming. Humans can't function at the speeds of computers." He leaned over to Laura suddenly. "I have to rely on antiviral routines, Laura! You've got to understand!"
She arched her eyebrows and nodded. "I understand, Joseph," she said, worried by the tone of his voice. "But I don't really know what you're talking about."
Gray drew a deep breath and laid his head back against the wall. "I know, but you're getting closer. The computer's right. You'll understand someday, you're just not ready yet." He looked her in the eye. "But what I'm trying to say now, Laura, is that sometimes you have to make difficult decisions. There are trade-offs. Sometimes you have to shoulder the burden of making the tough calls. Of sacrificing the things you love, and with them a piece of yourself."
She rested a hand on his shoulder. It felt awkward, and she quickly withdrew it. "I thought you had to go do something important."
"I did."
"Well, until you get started, can we talk?"
"I'm right in the middle of it, actually."
"In the middle of what?"
"Thinking."
"Oh," Laura said. She rested her head against the wall and looked up into space. There were stars everywhere. "Will we be able to see the nuclear detonations from earth?" she asked.
Gray pointed to the sky. "See the red planet? The star that doesn't twinkle? That's Mars. Look off at four o'clock about the width of your hand at arm's length."
Laura held up her hand. The patch of sky was black. When she looked down, she saw for the first time Gray's rifle lying on the ground beside him. He had taken the deaths of the Dutch soldier and the two security troops hard. What will he do if the worst happens? she wondered. What is the worst?
"Joseph?" she said quietly, trying not to disrupt his thoughts too much. "What is the worst that can happen? With the asteroid, I mean."
She might as well have struck up a brass band. He turned and looked at Laura, focusing on her and her alone. "In the short term, a lot of people will die. In the worst case, hundreds of millions."
It wasn't the answer she'd wanted to hear. It wasn't even a possibility she'd really considered, such was the extent of her faith in the man seated beside her. "What about the long term?" Laura asked.
"What?"
"You said 'in the short term' when you answered. What about the long term?"
He stared straight ahead. "In the long term," he said slowly, "we'll all die."
She waited for more, but he said nothing. "Is that some sort of philosophical bullshit — that we all die, sooner or later — or am I supposed to take it literally?"
Gray shrugged and fell into his normal pattern of ignoring the question. "Well," Laura said, "I'm glad we had this chat." She stood up and brushed the seat of her jeans.
Gray rose also. He headed out onto the field. Laura hesitated, but then followed along by his side. Model Sevens stood silent sentry in the rear ranks. The Model Sixes again drew the tougher duty at the front. Gray spoke quietly. The deep and confident tone of his voice was mesmerizing.
"We humans think we've run out of challenges. We perceive our world as having been tamed. Over hundreds of thousands of years we've carved out our biological niche. We widened it through incessant competition with, and ultimately destruction of, our closest natural competitors. Look at the primates. Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, baboons — all have varying degrees of intelligence arrayed along a spectrum. Each represents a point on that spectrum not very far from each other. But when you look down at the end of the spectrum, what lies next beyond the intelligence of the chimpanzee? There's nothing until you get to the standard by which all intelligence is measured — the human. We aren't the strongest, the fastest, or the greatest in number, but we are the smartest. Our forebears understood the threat posed by intelligence, so they extinguished our brighter competitors and left as our closest relative only the duller species that evolved into chimpanzees."