But I’d try to smother my bias if ever I scrutinized a bill about police services.
Behind me the silence was broken by a ragged rupturing. I peeked back over my shoulder to see the android getting to its feet, hunks of tattered plastic in both hands. "Damn," I mumbled; the assassin had ripped the animal robot clean apart, tearing it in two.
Good thing for me the android was programmed to shoot people with acid rather than fight with bare hands. Then again… I knew how to spar mano a mano. How do you block a splash of jelly?
The robot took up the chase again — the same flat-out sprint it’d used before, legs and arms churning. Now though, its speed was hampered by snow cover; the machine’s heavy footfalls punched through the crust, sinking into the soft stuff below. On park paths, that didn’t make much difference: the snow was only fingers thick, scarce enough to slow the android at all. I headed for deeper drifts, someplace the robot would get held back while I gingerly skimmed across the top.
Ahead of me… Coal Smear Creek and its thin ice signs. A frozen surface maybe strong enough to hold me, but not a walking heap of scrap iron.
Behind me, the android crunched through the snow crust again and again, with a sound like boards breaking. A flesh-and-blood creature would soon get stuck, plunged into drifts as deep as its crotch; but the robot pushed forward relentlessly, gouging a trail through the waist-high snow. Not far behind, opportunist snowstriders crowded around the broken snow crust, diving for frostfly cocoons exposed by the robot’s passing. The damned birds were having a merry old smorgasboard while I was running for my life.
I got halfway down the creek bank slope before the thin ice alarms noticed me. They burst into hoots and wails, crashing my ears with noise. The din drowned out any chance of hearing the android as it closed the gap between us. Forget it; I had more immediate concerns: crossing the ice without slipping or falling through thin spots.
The creek surface here was clear of snow — cheerfully shoveled by teenage skaters who probably squealed in protest if asked to shovel at home. The ice was smooth but not glare-perfect… dozens of skate blades had sliced at it, turning the surface into a snarl of crosshatches with the occasional loop or figure eight. I could shuffle-step forward without skittering out of control (praise be to boots with grip-rubber soles), but running was not an option.
As I neared the far shore, I felt shudders underfoot. Tremors from elsewhere on the ice. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the android had made it to the creek.
Alarms still screamed. Snowstriders darted about in feeding frenzy on the bank.
The android tried its old sprint on the ice: slam, slam, slip. Three strides and it lost its balance, soaring up, flailing in the air, then down bang, crashing hip-first and steel-heavy onto the frozen surface.
I imagined the prickle-prickle cracking of ice. I couldn’t hear it because of the alarms, but in my mind, the sound was precious-perfect clear.
The android, not programmed for winter gymnastics, tried to scramble to its feet. It slipped once more, its right hand sliding across the creek surface like butter on a hot pan. This time the robot didn’t fall, but threw out its other hand to catch itself.
The hand went through the ice, up to the elbow. By then, I’d reached the far shore. This bank had been built up with fist-sized hunks of concrete laid in uneven rows for a flagstone effect. After the chilling and swelling of winter, lots of those hunks had broken loose from their mortar. I grabbed the nearest and chucked it at the android’s head, praying to hit something vulnerable while its hand was trapped.
The robot saw the chunk coming and twisted away, taking the blow on its back. Nothing happened; the concrete just bounced off a metal shoulder. Now though, I could eyeball the damage inflicted before, when the peacock tube splashed the robots with their own acid. This android’s whole spinal area was pitted with corrosion: hankie-sized patches of epidermis eaten clean away. You could see circuits and fiber-optic cables exposed to open air… not enough to stop the robot in its tracks, but the acid had taken a fierce vicious toll.
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.