* * * *
Before they’d landed at the site of their vessel to Plesetsk, Sabrina had done two things of note. She’d asked Livingston if they would meet in person, to which he’d answered, “Of course. I’ll meet you at Balqash Airport. We’ll have to make introductions snappy, of course, as there’ll be plenty of time for chat on the plane, but between the copter’s landing and takeoff, time is of the essence.”
Satisfied, she’d also requested a means by which she could report to Luna. “Ah, yes! Poor folks up there must think you’ve crashed or something. Number Seven’ll bring ya a headset.”
This attempt at communication had failed, as much to Livingston’s perplexity as hers. In response to Sabrina’s accusatory look, he had said, “Right, because I’d block you from speaking to people who could make this mission much easier than it otherwise will be.”
“Motives are complicated, especially malicious ones.”
Notwithstanding, Sabrina had waited the flight out to the alighting in southeast Kazakhstan.
Stepping out into air that was cool yet foreboding of the coming summer, her eyes instinctively drifted toward nature’s dome, Earth’s nighttime atmosphere. “A window to the cosmic panorama of starlight,” as Dad had called it. She loved the moon for its ability to magnify the ease of astronomy, but Earth had been her home for about half her life, and there would always be something special about the experience of stargazing from the vantage point of its surface. It had been on this globe that she’d met the moon and the stars, and for that it would forever hold a place in her heart.
But the next recipient of her attention was a great deal closer. Balqash Airport’s traditional design was alive and well, its pentagonal face staring out from the middle of two wooded areas. One could almost mistake it for a library. Striding out from its middle arched doorway to greet her was a smiling Caucasian man, dressed in a bright red two-piece. He seemed almost too happy, in a mildly creepy childlike sense, but it wasn’t her place to judge.
He extended his right hand and said, “Sabrina! How pleasant to meet you in person!”
She accepted the handshake. “Likewise.” Seeing not much else on which to comment, partly because of how surprisingly amiable Livingston’s impression was, she remarked, “Well, there’s the snappy introduction for you. Shall we go?”
“Certainly.”
Amazingly, the management of this airport’s hamfisted system found a way to synthesize a waiting period of at least twenty minutes out of a situation with only two passengers on the next flight to Plesetsk. Most of that was spent in security checks and various bureaucratic measures. “You don’t seem surprised at my … stature,” said Sabrina.
“Well, I saw you through my android earlier, didn’t I? I’m not the type to keep gawking, unless there’s some body language I’m using that you know better than I do.”
“You have no body language, which isn’t even common in Transhumans. The lack of it, I mean.”
“The body lies quite often, anyway.”
Obviously, metal detectors wouldn’t suffice to check for weapons on Transhumans, leaving Livingston with only the usually embarrassing pat-down option. He showed no shame at this, however.
“See, that’s what I mean!” said Sabrina as she passed under the machine. She’d questioned their mutual lack of electromagnetic guns on this journey, but Livingston had simply said that he had a plan. “I don’t want to offend you – heck, I wish I could be like that – but most people would have too much pride to take a groping for public safety, without a smidge of hesitation. Even if it’s just ‘droids.”
“None taken,” he said with a smile and a warm, if premature, reaching of the arm around her back onto the opposite shoulder, pulling her towards him somewhat. “I guess I just have this talent for swallowing that petty sense of dignity. Or any emotion that could override my reason. Sometimes that happens before I know I’m being irrational at all, so it really only works when I expect emotions to be an obstacle.”
“So if you were about to go skydiving, knowing you’d experience fear normally, you could just shut that fear off?” When his hand found its way into her hair, she shifted away, trying to smile to keep him from lingering on the implications of that.
“In theory.”
“And if you found yourself in a situation where you had to save someone’s life, even if you felt scared to death, you could mask that feeling and just do it?” You could get rid of your empathy instead, but I probably shouldn’t remind you of that.
“Don’t get any ideas.” Another hearty grin. Even with her preferences, not to mention suspicions, he was quite the bowl of charisma. “That goes for ideas about asking how I can do what I do. Every person gets one secret they can take to the grave. Yours is your ‘idea,’ and this is mine.”
They took seats in a waiting area not far from the transit corridor that connected the terminal to the plane. Staring at the tile pattern of the wall opposite her, playing mindless games with it to avoid the dead people all around them, Sabrina asked, “Do you have any guesses about how all this happened?”
“Well, there’s this thing called the Big Bang Theory …”
“Don’t be a smart aleck. I mean ‘this’ as in the Dethroning.”
“Is that what they’re calling it these days? As if we’ve always been the kings and queens of Earth?”
“Just answer the question,” she said in a voice she hoped wasn’t too exasperated.
“It’s not easy to infer what could have caused what amounts to a mass coma. This is really bizarre stuff.” He stretched and crossed his legs, touching his chin with deliberate histrionics. “Couldn’t be a disease, or else we’d see some warnings. These people would’ve weaken somehow beforehand. I don’t think there’s any kind of radiation or chemical warfare that could affect all but two people with no remarkable physical features.” He paused and looked at her. “You don’t think there’s some supernatural explanation for this, do ya?”
“Not necessarily.” She made an effort not to look back. The superficial sincerity of his face made it so easy to forget that he’d kidnapped her. “God would have to be pretty arbitrary to kill off most Earth humans but not the Lunians.”
“A supernatural explanation doesn’t have to mean ‘God did it,’ but for all we know it could be some Noah’s Ark situation. It’s a long shot, I know. What virtue could you, me, Uriah, and those other hundreds of people on the moon share?”
“Well, there are ways of knowing what God wants, and this sort of speculation isn’t one of ‘em. I say that now we’ve had time to – to process the grief and such –” She lost her voice. All that could come out was a whisper of, “Stop,” that even she couldn’t hear. After a deep breath, she added, “Maybe it’d be best to take this opportunity to help the world in some way we couldn’t do before. I don’t know what yet, this all seems so … random.” She sighed, idly staring at her fingernails. “But that’s the catch, isn’t it?”
“Believing that it’s all for a greater good, you mean? I can respect that.”
Regardless, she doubted either of them could live as if they really believed it.
After some silence, Sabrina slapped her palm to her forehead. “Of course!” She got up and activated one of the simple public computers built into the ottoman. Livingston said nothing in query, but she could tell he was lurking over her shoulder. “I may not be able to talk to Mission Control from down here, but I can send a digital written message.”
Livingston nodded and leaned back. “You’d better hurry. Plane leaves in three minutes.”
“The lag is negligible. I should be fine.”
The ding of a sent dispatch rang out shortly. When Sabrina leaned back as well, she looked at Livingston, now considerably less apprehensive with a lifeline to Luna. “So what’s your plan? We’re totally unarmed.”
“I have a way with robots, Sabrina, including pilots. Most men would
trade that skill for a way with women, but personally I see more benefits in the former.”
“Is one of which getting whatever weapons you’d like from ‘droids?”
“You could say that.”
“So why not just smuggle in some EM guns and disable the security back there?” She glanced back towards the region of the aerodrome from which they had come, but thought better of it when she saw one of those haunting bodies. She’d anticipated them before entering the building, trying to keep her tunnel vision as they walked through, but the image was inescapable.
“It’s less fun that way. We can get something from the plane that takes a little more imagination to work with.” He grinned with the mischievousness of a kid thinking of the best way to destroy an elaborate block structure.
Sabrina increased her distance from him by about an inch. “You enjoy this responsibility?”
“I like robots, Sabrina, don’t misunderstand me. Sometimes I have more sympathy for them than for humans. That’s just what happens when ya know ‘droids like few humans know ‘em.”
He locked his hands together behind his head and looked out the window across the room. “But just like with humans, sometimes it’s necessary to take out a bad egg who’s a threat to the innocents, and when the fun way to do that also happens to be more humane, so much the better. You’ll see what I mean. Jane’s better off disabled, as a likely conspirator of mass murder. ‘Sides, it’s not like it’ll mind, now that the man it served is dead.”
She checked the computer, but there was no reply, which, by modern standards of communication, struck her as reason for concern.
“I never thought of it that way,” They got up and approached the transit corridor, for a friendly android had announced it was time to board the plane. “It’d be like taking someone raised as a blacksmith’s apprentice centuries ago into this age. What would that person do, then? He’d have no way to apply himself in a fully-fledged career, because now we just use robots for that job.”
“Every minute that Jane lives is a minute of emotional pain. Since I don’t see any way we can make it live for someone other than Marshall, it’s a liability to itself as much as to us. Sad, but true.”
They’d bought first class tickets for the fun of it, on Livingston’s insistence. Sabrina and Livingston sat across from each other in luxurious futons, a coffee table between them. “Would you believe,” said Livingston as he picked out a novella from the ‘library’ built into the table, “that things get worse for poor Jane?”
“Besides that Governess Zolnerowich wants it deactivated just because she hates robots?”
“Worse than that.”
Sabrina looked as curious as she did worried.
“That bot manipulated Dennis Uriah. Thought it was helping him when it stopped me from trying to rehabilitate him after he had a nasty accident.”
“A robot can’t do that, can it?”
He nodded grimly. “Can, and did. She’s too dangerous for her own good. The sadder thing is, he’s still falling for it. He tried to kill me, even, which is why I’m afraid I just might have to do something about him as well.”