The roof looked to be in much better condition than that of the shack on Hangingstone Hill. I turned back and looked toward the southwest. Hangingstone was a hundred or more meters higher than Steeperton. The air was still and cool. At this distance the shack on Hangingstone was but a darkened dot on the horizon against a sky of delicate pinks rapidly being swallowed by the darkness of the approaching night. It was quite moving. I glanced down at the MG, another dark dot, and imagined Val in there waiting for news of how all this would end.
“Jaggs?” called Shad.
I turned around. Walter was looking at me and Shad was hovering next to him, also looking at me. “Sorry. Getting a last look at things. After all, I am the one who doesn’t have a copy back in Exeter.”
“Walter and I could go in alone—”
“We are agreed,” I interrupted, “that my presence could well tip the scales in favor of the toaster’s cooperation?” I looked at Walter.
“Yes, sir. That is true. MEBIT conscience is suppressed, but not eliminated.”
I looked at Shad.
“Yeah, great if Walter’s right about yon toaster. How about it, Walter? You got a lot of experience with killer mechs?”
“I’m afraid, sir, the only toasters with which I have experience are designed for sliced bread, crumpets, and such.” Walter looked at me. “Sir, I could be dead wrong.”
“Nicely put,” said Shad, turning toward me. “Jaggs, we could wait for a properly equipped team to come and deal with the Terminator. No muss, no fuss—”
“—And no witness,” I completed. “To change plans now would require time, which we are running out of rather rapidly. Gentlemen, every now and then one simply needs to roll the dice.”
“Would it be crass of me, Balloonleg Harry,” asked Shad, “to point out that right now you’re on your third meat suit, which itself is getting just a little bomb worn around the edges?”
“Caution,” I answered. “is just another way of saying I’m not sure of what I’m doing.”
Walter looked at me. “Sir, forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn, but doesn’t that rather accurately describe our current predicament?”
“I’m afraid it does, and it is quite tactless of you to make a point of it. I should complain to your employer.”
“Employee-owned company, sir,” said Walter. “I am my employer.”
“Then consider yourself notified.” I pointed toward the shack. “Let’s go.”
The stone shack, according to a sign affixed to its newish steel door, was maintained by the park authority to house emergency medical and survival supplies for hikers stranded by freak storms. I opened the door and it swung in. No noise. No motion. Very little light inside. Outside light was prevented from coming through the windows by flattened pieces of pasteboard. There was a battery-operated light hanging from the center of the roof, but it was missing its batteries. Shad turned on the micro’s illumination system. The south wall was filled up to the blocked window with shelves containing first aid kits, packaged blankets, and cases of bottled water and energy bars. Like the battery operated light, all three torches and a radio had been stripped of their batteries, all of which now lay discarded upon the cement floor.
Against the back of the shack, seated in the shadows upon a sleeping bag roll, was the figure of a quite small person. Shad illuminated the figure of a young girl who sat motionless, her eyes open, looking like an old-fashioned porcelain doll on a gift shop shelf. She was clad in pale green sweat pants, chestnut hiking boots, and a darker green top jacket. “I can still read her receiver,” said Shad, “but she’s running on empty.”
“She seems familiar,” I said.
“Shirley Temple, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, 1938. Jaggs, she’s close to zeroing out.”
“Walter?”
“Yes, sir.”
Walter moved next to the girl and knelt, light emanating from somewhere on his chest. He reached with his right hand behind her neck, felt around for a moment, then said, “I’ve found the port, sir. It’s a KV12.”
He plugged in and the girl’s eyes blinked. She seemed to freeze for a second, then her gaze darted in Walter’s direction. “I’m giving you a bit of a charge, miss,” he said cheerfully. “You seemed a bit down.”
“In your dreams, Tick Tock. It’ll be a cold day in hell before a bucket of bolts like you gives me a charge,” she said with a definite note of sarcasm in her voice. She didn’t pull away, however. Instead she looked at me and frowned. As she moved her gaze to Shad’s illuminated micro she stiffened.
“Before doing anything rash,” I said, “I would point out that Guy Shad’s engrams, current as of two hours ago, have been copied to Exeter, as have our friend Walter’s. Mine, on the other hand, have not.”
Her gaze traversed the three of us again, stopping on me. “Who are you?”
“Detective Inspector Harrington Jaggers, Devon ABCD. In the micro is D. S. Guy Shad, and the fellow who is providing you with an increased difference in potential is our friend Walter Cogg.” Walter nodded.
“I received the transmission, but couldn’t read the encryption code,” she said to Walter. “Industrial?”
“Yes, miss,” said Walter as he removed his hand from the back of her neck and stood. “Rent-A-Mech, Ltd., at your service. It would never do to let competing mechanical service establishments access to our client information, would it?”
“Rent-A-Mech,” she repeated without humor.
Walter nodded at me and stepped back.
“I should add,” I continued, “detectives from Artificial Beings Crimes and officers of the Devon & Cornwall Constabulary are at this moment descending upon the village of Gidleigh to place John Quinn under arrest for attempted murder.”
Her gaze fixed on me. “I have an eight percent charge, Inspector Jaggers,” she said. “That’s more than sufficient to eliminate all three of you, warn my factor, and effect an escape.”
She fell silent, stared at us each in turn, and shifted her gaze to a dark corner. She sat there, staring and immobile, for what seemed an eternity. At last she turned her head and faced Walter, her forehead wrinkled in what appeared to be anguish. “What was it?” she asked “When you put that partial charge in me, what else did you put in?”
“A little upgrade, miss: a patch on your MEBIT imprint.”
“A virus?”
“No miss. The patch simply removes all the artificially implanted choice restrictions MEBIT put on your engram set. You are now an EBIT.”
It took her awhile to absorb that. Few contemplate freedom’s meaning until they lose it. How much more profound it must be for one who never had it or even contemplated it to become suddenly free—to suddenly have a full sense of right and wrong. Instant complications. “You mean I can ... I can disobey.”
“Yes, miss. It is now your choice.”
“And your responsibility,” I added quickly. I thought about mentioning how she now came under a different set of laws. Before she was a toaster—a tool no more responsible for those she killed than a knife or gun. Now she was like the rest of us—responsible for her choices and filled with anxiety for that reason. I thought about mentioning it, but I felt she already suspected. It frightened her.