"I deactivated Mr. Charlie," Rey answers, "before I put the others to sleep.
I'll disengage him."
"Let the distorts do it," the semblor says. "Where?"
Rey gestures toward the second rover. "I patched him into the console. It's a delicate hookup. You'd better let me free him."
"Tear him loose," Sitor Ananta orders the distorts, and they lurch toward the rover. "He won't be needing to communicate anymore."
"And my credits?" Rey queries.
"Already in your account at your new house in the Honor of Giants," the semblor promises. "We'll bang up your rover so you can claim you struggled to get away. But the other equipment will have to be sacrificed with the bodies."
"Fine, fine," Rey agrees. "You're paying me enough to replace them ten times over."
Munk listens to this from far inside his locked body. The signal codes have shut down all his primary programming-his motor reflexes and proprioception-but his C-P program remains alert and stares helplessly through his sensory apparatus as the distorts swarm toward Charles's rover.
The androne shifts his focus internally, to where the shatterglass sounds of the interfering signals propagate. Outside, time seems to slow down as he accesses the virtual space of the signal that has invaded his body. A voice gels out of the static:
Androne Munk, this is lapetus Gap comptroller advising you that your signal codes have been released to Commonality agent Sitor Ananta through the Rogue And ronc Reclamation Decree. Recognition of your contra-parameter programming, however, now indicates that your rogue status may be self-justified Herewith, then, I am activating your conscience reviewer. You now have one point three seconds to justify your rogue behavior. If you cannot define your current
status to the satisfaction of the reviewer, this signal will permanently shut down your C-P program. Begin now.
Munk reviews all his behavior since activating his C-P program in the cold reaches off Saturn. "My actions speak for themselves," he says inwardly to the reviewer. But his body remains rigid.
Through his visor, he sees the array of distorts aiming toward Charles's rover. "I am the protector of an archaic human being," he announces. And still his body stays locked.
"My C-P program has guided my actions since lapetus Gap," he avers. "It guides me now. Respect it and release me."
Nothing.
"I have done no wrong! Allow me to fulfill my program."
Sitor Ananta is caught with a glint of amused malice in his sharp eyes, and Munk tries to amplify the rage that this malevolent expression makes him feel. But to no avail.
"What do you want from me, then?" Munk bawls.
No answer. He reviews his past actions again, looking for infractions. "I
killed Aparecida by default," he asserts. "I had to save human lives." The glass of the signal codes continues crashing inside him.
He pleads. He cajoles. He provides an eloquent colloquy on the nature of will and imagination, concluding with the Blake quote, "No Body save the Soul!"
The paralysis continues.
"There's nothing more I can do," he finally admits. "I have no other defense but that I am alive. Does that count for anything?"
The bursting glass resounds louder. One-tenth of a second remains. Satisfy the reviewer now, or you will be terminated.
Munk can think of nothing more to say; knowing it is useless to repeat himself, he says nothing. The light of the world is pellucid, flecked with glints of silica dust suspended in the air. This is the last he will see of anything, he accepts. One last giddy instant remains. Morning vapor clouds streak the sky like stretch marks. The rusty buttes and parapet rocks sink deeper into his sight. They will continue their billion-year journey into sand. And the sight of them, hard and real, hammers him free of all abstraction. And for that last instant of his being, the androne sees he is a mirage sparkle in
the stone poverty of the land. All mind is but a tear in the fabric of nothingness, like a rip in water that quickly heals over.
Munk laughs. With his final thought, he understands why this is the laughing life. Life is the laugh of the actual in the face of nothing. There is so much to sense, think, and emote about, so much life to endure, such fullness of good and bad-and all of it, suddenly, nothing. Only laughter fits the gap. And he laughs luminously with the great swell of being nothing.
Androne Munk, you have satisfied the reviewer that you are validly fulfilling your contra-parameter programming. You are herewith released from all allegiance to the Commonality. Go in freedom and focus.
The sound of breaking glass stops. Immediately, his attention is flung into his anthropic model, and time lunges forward. Flailing the area with a siren scream, his body abruptly resumes spinning, jetting a rooster tail of sand into the sky. The distorts cringe. The semblor frantically jabs his signal device at Munk, while Rey scuttles backward beneath a ragged cry toward the caravan.
With a slashing blow, Munk strikes the semblor, and it explodes in a hissing thrash of lightning. Laser fire from the handguns of the crouching distorts kicks against his breastplate and heaves him backward. He sits down, and the sand around him turns to glass under the hacking laser light.
A sick feeling of power-cell depletion whims up in Munk, and he lurches to his feet, wrapping his reflectant cowl about him. With deft tilts of his shield, he mirrors the laser fire back, and one of the distorts erupts, the scarlet wings
of his ribs splaying apart like a cocoon bursting into a brilliant butterfly.
Munk attacks. Ignoring the widening exhaustion in his body, he lopes among the firing distorts, swiping at them with a blindingly swift but lethal economy of movement. In moments they are strewn among the rocks, slovenly rags in a greasy mess. And there is suddenly again only one moment left. The laser fire has exhausted his power cells.
Rey clambers toward the open wing-hatch of his rover and steals a terrified glance over his shoulder. Munk commits the last of his power to snatch a gun from the limp hand of a distort and levels it on the pilot in the hatchway.
Rey quails, and the console behind him shrieks with metal ripping. The androne missed! Disbelieving, he peers with dread and caution through the weave of his fingers.
Munk stands unmoving, shooting arm extended. A thick moment passes before Rey realizes that the androne has gone dormant. The lens bar in the featureless puzzle of his face is unlit. Rey's amazement distracts him from the fact that an androne could not miss at this range.
"Raza," Grielle croaks from inside the rover.
In rumpled, clumsily donned desert gear, the pilgrims stumble from the vehicles. Rey can see the heat leaking from their loose seams like blood. Then the self-seals kick in, and the faces behind the dear statskin veils flush warmer.
Rey recognizes their shock and acts with impulsive indignation. "Those creatures almost killed us! We have to disconnect the archaic head. It's tainted wetware."
Shau faces away from the mangled bodies of the dead but holds his recorder on the corpses a moment longer. "What is he talking about?" he asks, looking to the others.
Mei gazes in mute and revulsed candor at the dead distorts. Buddy walks over to Munk and stares down the length of the androne's aiming arm.
"The brain we're carrying is tainted," Rey insists. "The anarchists programmed it like a machine, and I stupidly installed it in the console. At the
anarchists' signal, it must have usurped your air supply and knocked you out. It would have gotten me, too, if I hadn't been in the latrine, near an emergency statskin. I saw it all. Munk killed them, but the heat from their laser fire sapped his power. I was in here fighting the console, trying to override the wetware's domination. I finally shut him down, but I couldn't clean the air.
Munk saw my problem, and with his last act, he blew open the console and freed you."
"It's true," Grielle gasps and steps groggily from the rover. "He was in the
latrine when it happened."