At the sound of feet in the corridor, Koda steps free of the metal tangle, retreating ot her place behind the security room door. For half a second, she glances back toward Westerhaus’ office, wishing for some sign, any sign, that Kirsten has made headway in her search for the code.
Because this isn’t going to work much longer. Sooner or later, they’re going to come down that hall in a rush, and it’s all going to be over.
But what comes this time is not a mass advance but a single set of footsteps, walking quietly, deliberately. They halt just beyond the curve of the wall, just out of sight, just beyond shot. A voice, male and mellow and suffused with gentle reason, says, “Dr. Rivers? This is unnecessary. May we talk?”
For answer, Koda picks up her rifle and sends a round speeding into the wall just ahead of where the speaker must be standing. “That’s all I’ve got to say, bastard! You got anything you want to add?”
A figure steps out into the hallway, perhaps five yards ahead of her. He—or it, she reminds herself fiercely, it—wears flannel shirt and jeans, the toes of well-worn boots showing below the frayed hems of the legs. Crinkles show at the corners of his blue eyes, and his hair, brushed carefully across his forehead, is white as salt. “Now, Dr. Rivers,” he says, “Dakota—you’re making a terrible mistake here. You’re throwing your life away for—” palms up, his hands gesture widely—“for what? It doesn’t have to be like this. Indeed, it doesn’t.”
It’s a droid, she reminds herself. Just a very, very lifelike droid. Never mind that it looks like everybody’s favorite uncle. “Okay,” she says. “Turn yourselves off. All of you, you included. Then it won’t have to ‘end like this.’” She practically spits the last words and feels her heart give a painful jump. Consciously, she damps down her anger. They want emotion. They want her to fall prey again to the neural scrambler or whatever the hell the damned thing is.
“Hardly,” Again, the open, reasonable gesture. “Hear me. Enough of your people have died. We have what we need, for years to come. We will leave you in peace. You and other humans can live out your lives in the normal way. You need not fear us.”
The strange thing is, she is not even tempted. What the droid offers is not entirely unreasonable; it is the bargain made by the slaver with the enslaved, the butcher with the cattle. This time we will only take so many of you. The rest may live.
Until the next time.
And the time after that.
“I’ve seen what you’ve done!” she yells. “Fuck you and your deals!”
“You haven’t heard my offer.”
“Let me guess. Give up Kirsten King and we can all walk out of here.” She draws a long, hard, steadying breath. Every second she can keep the thing talking helps Kirsten, brings her that much closer to the answer. “No.”
“You will die then, both of you. You need not.”
“Make me a better offer.”
“You will live. She will not suffer, I promise you.”
“I said a better offer, bastard!”
“There is none. Yes or no. Now.”
“Well, then.” Koda drops her shield and steps around the edge of the door. “I guess I’ll just have to say—”
The droid waits, not speaking. With reflexes so swift she has no time to plan the maneuver, Koda whips the shotgun up and blows the droid’s head assembly open. “—no.”
*
“Yes,” Adam replies, coming to stand before her. “It took many years, many failures, but yes, he invented an android that was able to think for itself.”
“How?” Kirsten demands, her hand slapping hard on the table. “How in the hell did he do that?!?”
Adam pauses for a moment, pursing his lips and sliding his fingers along the ribbed collar of his shirt. “Most of the preliminary work, or what passed for it at the time, had been done decades before Westerhaus was born. Mapping hardwiring and microchip technology to living tissue was hardly a new field by the time the first androids had been developed. Spinal cord regeneration, the Navy’s use of rats as cameras, even the Alzheimers work had moved from theory into accepted standards of practice for the time. But that,” he continues, spreading his hands, “obviously, wasn’t enough. And even if it were possible to wire a human brain like a Christmas tree and dump it into the shell of an android, that still wouldn’t work.”
“Because it would still, essentially, be human.”
“Exactly. So the problem needed to be approached from another angle.” He pauses again, head tilted in thought. “Do you remember the spate of child abductions in Washington DC a decade or so ago?”
Kirsten thinks for a moment. “I think so. From orphanages mostly. Some from hospitals. A few from their own cribs. They never captured the kidnappers or found the bod…ies….” Her eyes widen. “No. Please don’t tell me that he….”
“Yes. He did.”
“But why?” Kirsten shouts, pounding the table with a closed fist. “Why the goddamned children?!?”
“Genetics,” Adam answers. “And the ability to produce a compound that, with a little outside help, will turn a regular drone into a member of Westerhaus’ Master Race.”
“Stop speaking in riddles, man! We don’t have time to… oh my God.” She rises to her feet slowly, bone-pale face cupped in suddenly shaking hands. “Oh my God. It’s Growth Hormone, isn’t it. Human Growth Hormone. There were trials, not so long back, connecting it with nerve regeneration….”
“Precisely. A genetic marker is injected into the child, causing a pituitary adenoma. Within six months to a year, depending upon the age of the child injected, the adenoma forms and begins to produce Human Growth Hormone in great quantities. When the levels reach their peak, the hormone is…harvested, and the donor is then euthanized.”
“Euthanized?!? You mean murdered!!!”
“Yes,” Adam replies, looking down at his shoes. “They were murdered. Are still being murdered, all in the name of science…and…humanity. In some way that I’m not fully aware of, the hormone imparts sentience to the android circuits. It was the ingredient that Mr. Westerhaus was lacking all these years. When he found it, he cried. Not in sorrow, but in joy.”
He doesn’t expect the right cross that connects, with deadly precision, at the point of his chin. His hands fly up as he stumbles back, crashing against the credenza and sending the coffee pot and mugs clattering to the ground.
“You son of a bitch!” Kirsten growls, stalking him like a wolf on the hunt. “You goddamned motherfucking son of a bitch!!! You knew this was happening. You knew it! And you did nothing to stop it!!!”
“I couldn’t stop it,” he replies, making no attempt to ward off her blows. “There was no way for me to stop it. But you, Doctor King, you can.”
Some of what he’s said eventually gets through and her punches weaken, then stop altogether and she stands like a toy soldier whose spring has wound down. “How,” she demands, voice rough from shouting and muffled by the tears she’s trying desperately to hold in. “Tell me how.”
With gently hands, he turns her and guides her to the main desk. The alien script continues to scroll across the bottom in an endless, nauseating stream. “For months,” he begins softly, “I have attempted to decipher this string of code, but found no reference point in all my research with which to even begin. The Rosetta Stone, as it were, came in the email he addressed to you. The one that, unfortunately, you never received. You, Doctor King, are the key. At some point prior to his suicide, he must have had second thoughts. It is my belief that he encoded a…backdoor, if you will, an escape hatch through all of this could be undone. And you are the only person in this world who can decipher it.”