Good, I thought, and threw another hunk of cement. This throw missed the android, but bit into the nearby ice with its jagged concrete edge. Hairline cracks radiated out from the point of impact. Did the android care? No. It dragged its hand from the water, shirtsleeve dripping, and picked up for one more climb to its feet. Heavy steel robot feet.
The ice gave way with a snap I could hear even over the alarms. For a wavering moment, the android managed to catch its arms on the sides of the hole — propping itself with upper body still visible, though ice water came up to its nipples. Steam poured from cavities in the robot’s back, where chilly Coal Smear Creek met burning acid and the hot circuitry of the machine’s guts. I yelled, "Short out, you bastard! Blow your sodding battery!"
Obliging things, these robots. The android’s arms suddenly jerked rigid. Then the ice under its hands broke into shockle, and the killer machine plunged out of sight into the creek.
For another moment I stayed on the bank, watching the hole — dark water now, bobbing with ice floes. But a woman my age has watched enough fic-chips to know how witless it is to relax prematurely. Any second, I expected the android’s hand to smash out of the ice at my feet, grab me by the ankle, pull me down. I clambered up the bank to solid ground, and was just shifting Chappalar’s weight for another stint of running when the creek exploded.
All the ice in a ten-meter radius simply lifted up, then slammed down hard on the water beneath. The great banging force fractured the frozen surface into hundreds of separate slabs; but more dramatic was the geyser of muddy water that shot from the hole where the android had sunk. The upburst gushed three stories into the sky, carrying with it scraps of circuit board, metal cables, and tattered gray overalls. Then the fountain lost strength and collapsed, spilling robot ragout all over the creek surface.
"Self-destruct," I whispered to myself. "A deadman’s switch… in case the bugger got in over its head. So to speak. Something to destroy the evidence."
What did that say about the female android, back in the pump station? She’d taken more damage from the acid bath; I hadn’t stayed to watch, but she’d clearly been on the futz.
And when she’d finally shut down? Shut down = cue for the self-destruct mechanism to blow her apart.
I shuddered to think what the explosion had done to the water-treatment vats.
By the time the police arrived, I was back swabbing Chappalar with snow… not the ragged holes in his gliders, but the vicious black pits close to his spine. The ones where ribs and vital organs showed through. His skin had turned a color Dads called Terminal Chalk — an ashy gray-white with no responsiveness. The result of catastrophic failure in the glands that control an Oolom’s chameleon shifting.
I’d seen that color a lot during the plague.
The six staff members of Pump Station 3 were found near the building’s delivery bay. All of them had third-degree acid burns. Three were declared DOA when they reached hospital and one more died later, but two survived.
Chappalar didn’t. Ooloms can be fierce tough; they can also be precious fragile.
Damn.
While I was pacing the rug in hospital, watching Chappalar float lifeless in a burn tank, I got an emergency call from headquarters. Seven other proctors on assignments around the planet had been ambushed by androids and killed. A coordinated attack. No survivors. All at the same time Chappalar and I made our visit to the pump station.
Someone had declared war on the Vigil.
SNAKE-BELLY
Link-seeds are handy for giving evidence. The world-soul asked my permission, then downloaded everything I’d witnessed, straight from my brain. Soon, Protection Central had a VR repro of everything I’d been through — the smell of the acid, the howl of alarms. Might have been a big seller on the entertainment nets if the Vigil didn’t have rules against that sort of thing.
In Cabot Park, the cops dredged Coal Smear Creek for the remains of the male android, while another team bagged up the soggy mess in Pump Station 3. (When the female android self-destructed, flying bits of her had perforated five of the plant’s water vats. Much spillage. It was only luck the whole blessed petting zoo wasn’t washed away.)
Similar investigations revved up all over the world — everywhere proctors got killed — and by the end of the day, detectives had accumulated enough evidence to affect continental drift. By then there was an official task force coordinating the work, trying to avoid pissing contests between federals and locals. Meanwhile, all levels of government had bitten their nails to the quick, worrying the Vigil would throw a tantrum demanding Immediate Action Now.
Of course we didn’t. How would that be productive? But you can bet good money, there were suddenly a lot more proctors exercising their constitutional responsibility to scrutinize police activities.
The local detectives treated me like velvet. I might have had a few less-than-friendly run-ins with police in the past, but now I was a member of the Vigil, and respectable as mother’s milk. On the other hand, the appearance of the tube of light — that thing I’d started to call the Peacock’s Tail because of its colors — well, a mystery like that set conservative cop nerves on edge. What was it? Did I have any guesses? Could the investigators maybe I dismiss it as hallucination, a delusion brought on by terror, stress, and my newly implanted link-seed?
I could only shrug; I saw what I saw. If they wanted a dissertation on link-seed side effects, ask a neurologist.
(Of course I could have retrieved some clinical data myself. Reams of it. The Vigil’s databanks were full to bursting with case studies, every possible way link-seeds could bugger your brain. But I didn’t try access the information. You know why.)
The reports released to the media said nothing about the Peacock’s Tail. Not that the cops wanted to suggest this tube-of-light business was a figment of my imagination. Three different detectives made a point of telling me it was Standard Police Procedure to withhold a few details of any crime. Yeah. Sure.
My family wanted me to quit the Vigil. "At least ask for a leave of absence," Winston suggested, "till they catch this bastard who’s mucking about with robots."
If I begged off on a leave of absence, I knew I’d never go back. And I’d still have poison ivy in my brain.
"No," I said.
We were in Winston’s private dome — all seven of my spouses sitting worried around the dome’s circumference, with me in the middle. Our Faye in the hot seat. Concern pressing in on me… like the bad old days at sixteen, when my friends watched me trolling the streets for trouble. Later, age nineteen, as we kicked around the thought of getting married, all seven of them took me aside, each by each, to murmur, "You won’t be too crazy, will you, Faye? You’ve got the angries out of your system? You won’t make us all widows?"
"No," I told them all now in Winston’s dome. "You don’t have to fret about me."
Which is what I used to say in the bad old days.
Back then, I believed myself. After every scrape, I believed I’d finally scrounged up the wisdom and willpower to keep my head straight. Eventually, it even became true.