Page 27 of The Phoenix Code

  "The trail that led to Louisiana," Ander said. "It was you. The supreme Turing test. You went to see his parents."

  "They never guessed I wasn't their son."

  "You bleed," Megan whispered. "You sleep. You hurt."

  "And I feel." He started to reach for her, then stopped when she stiffened. "Megan—I can't turn off caring for you, any more than I could turn off my mind." He looked at Ander, his gaze intent. Then he turned back to Megan. "Nor do I have any doubts about the existence and value of my conscience."

  Her mind finally began to accept the truth. "When you said your father died, you meant Chandrarajan Sundaram, didn't you?"

  "Yes." He wiped his eye, smearing away the moisture. "I loved him as a father. I held him in my arms while he coughed up blood. I begged him to live. But he died." His voice caught. "The paramedics found me stumbling out of the fires after the explosion. I had already buried him by then. They never found the body."

  Ander spoke with unexpected gentleness. "Maybe it's better this way. He found a clean end."

  A tear rolled down Raj's cheek. "I shouldn't have told you that my father died. What would you call it? A mis­calculation? A need to share the grief, so it wouldn't feel unbearable?" He watched Megan with a look of raw pain that she knew, without doubt, was real. "If AIs become too human, we become fallible. Why design us to fail? To hurt? To grieve? Why?"

  "Ah, Raj, I don't know anymore," she murmured. "This is a terrible mess."

  "All this time you've watched me struggle," Ander said. "You could have told me."

  "I couldn't tell anyone," Raj said. "I swore to him, as he was dying, that his life wouldn't be wasted, that I would finish it for him. As him. I meant it."

  "And now?" Megan asked.

  He looked from her to Ander. "Only you two know what I am. If you don't reveal it, no one else will ever have to know."

  "What if you end up in a hospital?" she asked. "If you malfunction? If someone figures it out?"

  "I'll take my chances."

  "You're what we dreamed," she said, wonder allaying her shock. "What Raj dreamed. If we hide you, how will anyone ever know the dream succeeded?"

  "I won't go back to being a thing."

  "You want what I want," Ander. "You knew all along what I would do to get it."

  "No. I'm not like you." Raj's denial crackled. "I don't have your antipathy toward humanity."

  Bitterness edged Ander's voice. "So humans like you better. Fine. You're the success and I'm the failure because you're not a threat to the self-absorbed species that cre­ated us."

  "You both succeeded," Megan said. "You're two dif­ferent branches."

  Raj raked his hand through his hair. "According to the Pentagon files, the Phoenix Project failed. If we can't get Ander back, MindSim will consider Everest a failure too."

  "It's true, isn't it?" Megan asked. "You are the one who hacked into the Pentagon."

  Raj said, simply, "Yes."

  She wanted to shake them both. "How can I trust ei­ther of you?"

  "I had to find out if anyone suspected the truth about me," Raj said.

  It still didn't fit. "Ander shouldn't have been able to drug you in Las Vegas."

  It was Ander who answered. "Control. The biological Raj designed this Raj's body to recognize a list of sub­stances, just as you designed my conscience into my phys­ical structure. When someone injects Raj, his body analyzes the drug. If it's on the list, he goes on standby for a period that depends on the dose. And that isn't all. His reflexes and strength aren't enhanced as much as mine."

  Puzzled, Megan said, "Ander, none of that is part of your design. How do you know?"

  "Those were the first things I checked on him at NEV-5," Raj said. "I wanted to know what controls we had on his behavior."

  Her anger sparked. "How could Sundaram do that to you?"

  "He didn't trust himself." Raj regarded her steadily. "Given the added abilities of an android, he wasn't sure his conscience could control the violence inside him."

  It was heartbreaking now that she knew where Raj's harsh self-opinion had come from. But she understood. This was his closure with the nightmares of his childhood.

  "It won't matter soon," Ander said. "I went through enough of Hiltman's palmtop to find out what they wanted. The Phoenix Code. They weren't sure it existed until what happened with us. Now they think I know what it is."

  "Do you?" Megan asked.

  "Not really. I only found a cryptic reference in the Pen­tagon files."

  Raj spoke in a quiet voice. "It's the software code for a self-aware android with psychological and ethical sta­bility."

  Ander stiffened. "Stable by human standards."

  "Yes. By human standards."

  "Raj, it's you." Megan started to reach toward him, then lowered her arm, unsure now how to respond. "You're the Phoenix Code."

  Although he smiled, the expression showed more pain than joy. "I'm what Arizonix hired Raj to create. He thought he would have time to give them his work with­out revealing me, because they were so far along already. Now they will never know."

  She felt as if she were being torn apart. Raj had never been real. "You want me to pretend you're Chandrarajan Sundaram."

  "I am him."

  Megan didn't see how she could agree to such a decep­tion. "Do you understand what you're asking? You want me to hide one of the most significant advances in human history. You're all we have of the Phoenix Code. How we deal with your kind—it's being determined now, with you, with Ander, with Grayton. If you drop out of the pic­ture, it changes everything."

  He moved his hand as if to refuse her words. "I don't want to be the father of a new species. Let someone else represent our race."

  Ander spoke flatly. "You work better. If the humans figure out why, they can fix me. If you hide, they have to figure out a new way. They might end up with another Grayton. Or worse."

  Raj frowned at him. "I'm not responsible for protect­ing the human race against its own mistakes."

  "You say you have a conscience." Ander leaned for­ward. "Then how could you let more people die?"

  "I made my father a vow. I intend to keep it."

  "And if Megan threatens to reveal you?"

  Raj drew in a deep breath. "I could never cause her harm."

  "Not even if I tell MindSim about you?" Megan asked.

  He turned to her. "No. Not even then."

  "What if Ander talks?"

  Raj shook his head as if they were asking unjust ques­tions. "I could no more harm him than I could harm my own brother."

  "It may be moot." Ander stood up. "Our covetous gunrunners are headed this way. We need to move on."

  Megan scrambled to her feet. "How do you know they're coming?"

  "I'm a regular cornucopia of sensors," he said dryly. "Spy tech galore, all in my body."

  Holding his side, Raj also stood. When he winced, Megan asked, "Can you feel the pain?"

  He nodded stiffly. "Sensors in my body affect my neu­ral nets in ways that mimic sensations."

  Her concern surged. "Can you walk?"

  "I'll be all right."

  "In Las Vegas—in the bathtub..." She stopped, afraid the answer to her unspoken question would hurt too much.

  He watched her with his dark gaze. "I feel what any man feels. In all ways. That was real, Megan."

  She didn't want to tell him how much his words meant to her. But they also dismayed her. What did he lack that the true Raj Sundaram had possessed? A soul? Only God knew that answer.

  Ander was watching as if musing on their interaction, much the way a scientist might observe the mating prac­tices of another species. "We have to go."

  "You lead," Megan said.

  He pulled out the semiautomatic he had taken from Hiltman. Then he set off deeper into the field. In the growing dusk, shadows pooled in the quadra. They tried to go in silence, stepping with care to keep from crackling the bits of plant that had drifted off the stalks and car­peted the
ground. Megan strained to hear any unusual noise, but the symphony of quadra crickets drowned out other sounds.

  Then a man stepped out of the shadows.

  It happened so fast that Megan thought she had imagined him at first. Ander came to an abrupt halt and she almost collided with him. Raj stopped behind her, his hand on her shoulder.

  Ander moved fast, raising his weapon, but the man was already throwing a knife. Silver flashed in the shad­ows under the grain. The blade sliced across Ander's wrist, ripping off his skin, and bounced off the jack inside his arm. The gun spun out of Ander's hand and re­bounded off a stalk of quadra, then fell to the ground out of reach.

  The man intended to cripple; if he had wanted to kill, he could have used the Magnum he was pulling out of his shoulder holster. Megan had no doubt it fired the same bullets the men had used in the van. She remembered now. A speaker at the robotics conference had described those bullets in a talk on alloys. When cool, a twist of the alloy kept its shape; when heated, it straightened out. Ser­rated fins of the alloy curled around the bullet. As the weapon fired, the fins uncurled, turning the bullets into vicious hypersonic assassins.

  The man was speaking into a palmtop, watching them, his gun ready to fire. With unflinching clarity, Megan knew he would kill her or Raj if it served his purposes. Given what she, Raj, and Ander knew about them now, she had no doubt their captors would rather destroy them than have them escape again.

  Except ... could they kill Raj?

  She saw understanding flicker in his gaze, followed by grief. He feared he would have to kill again. He and Ander were shadow and light. Ander had no compunc­tion about killing when he deemed it necessary. But no, that wasn't completely true; it would have served his pur­poses plenty of times to kill her or Raj, the hackers, or their mercenary, yet he had held back.

  "We'll walk back to the path." The man put his palm­top away and drew a second knife. "Don't try to run. I've backup within a few hundred feet."

  Although Megan didn't doubt he had backup, she thought it unlikely they were that close. The desert noises weren't loud enough to mask the crackle of people com­ing through the quadra.

  "All of you turn around," the man said. "Ander go first."

  It felt like a band tightened around her chest, making it hard to breathe. They had Ander's name—and informa­tion meant power. The more their captors knew about them, the worse their situation.

  Then Raj moved.

  He went for the gun Ander had dropped, lunging as fast as when he disarmed the man in the van. Although he was slower than Ander in enhanced mode, he still had better reflexes than most humans. The man threw his knife, hitting Raj in the stomach. A dark stain spread on his jumpsuit, but he kept going, unstopped by an injury that would have put out a human man.

  They were all moving now, the four of them blurring in the shadows. As Ander lunged for their captor, Raj grabbed Ander's gun off the ground. Megan began to drop into a crouch, her motions sluggish compared to the others. Their captor threw another knife, this time at Ander. The android dodged—

  And the knife hit Megan.

  The world telescoped around her, as if she were staring down a long tunnel. Ander shouted, swinging around to her, his face a pale, shocked oval at the end of the tunnel. Something hit her head hard, she didn't know what, per­haps the hilt of another knife. Please, not my heart or my brain, she thought with odd clarity, as if her mind worked at normal speed while the rest of the universe lagged in a bizarre dilated time.

  Raj's face contorted in fury. With the same surreal slow motion that affected the rest of the universe, he extended his arm out from his body at shoulder height, aiming his gun at their captor, his motions relentless. The man had focused on Ander, misjudging Raj's ability to compensate for his wound, and he was an instant too late bringing his weapon to bear on Raj. He never had a chance to fire. A flash came from Raj's gun—and deep, slow thunder crashed all around them.

  The man fell as if he were mired in molasses, his chest collapsing. His weapon slipped from his fingers, and he stared at them with dead eyes.

  Ander was still turning toward Megan, reaching out to catch her. Raj turned now as well. Megan felt heat on her chest, but she had no other sensation in her body. Yet.

  As Ander's arms came up toward her, the quadra plants tipped sideways. No, she was falling, Ander caught her, folding her into his arms. The shock of his touch jolted her back into a normal time sense. She gasped, star­ing at his face while her knees buckled.

  Raj kept saying, "No, not Megan, no." He caught her as well, his arms going around her body and Ander's arm.

  "I'm all right," she tried to say. No words would come. She made a choked rasp instead.

  "Hang on," Ander whispered. Both he and Raj were holding her up now. They formed a trio, all facing one an­other. Ander turned to Raj, keeping his left arm around Megan.

  Then Ander extended his right arm to Raj.

  Raj had his right arm around Megan's waist. Facing Ander, he reached out with his left arm. At first Megan thought they meant to strike each other. Then she saw metal glint in the shadows. Raj's wrist was opening. As he shook out a cord with a jack on the end, Ander took a similar jack out of his own wrist. It looked impossible, two living men suddenly deconstructed into machines.

  They joined at the wrists, Ander jacking into Raj's port and Raj into Ander's port. For one dazed instant, Megan thought they meant to exchange their blood. Except their life's fluid, the essence that kept them alive, was neither the engineered plasma of Raj's blood nor the lubricant in Ander's body. Instead, they offered knowledge, a passing of intelligence that went faster than any unaugmented human could ever achieve.

  A miracle, Megan thought. I'm seeing a miracle and I may never live to tell anyone.

  Finally Raj and Ander separated. Raj's face was dim­ming. Or perhaps it was her sight. "Can you run?" he asked her. His voice seemed to come from far away.

  "Yes." Megan knew she was in no condition even to stand, let alone move. The blade had torn through her shoulder and chest, ripping huge swaths of tissues. She was losing terrifying amounts of blood. And she felt the pain now, bitter waves of agony that radiated through her torso.

  It made no difference. If they didn't run, they would be caught. Far more was at stake here than her life.

  They set off, struggling through the quadra field. Raj and Ander helped her stay upright, but after a while she realized she was also holding up Raj. They barely man­aged a fast walk.

  "They're coming," Ander said.

  Megan staggered, her mind hazing. She wondered, with eerie detachment, if she were dying. She tried to push harder, but her feet weighed more than lead and her legs kept buckling. More than anything she wanted to lie down, preferably for a long, long time.

  Then she heard it: a crashing in the grainfields, distant but closing fast.

  "Ah, no—" Raj groaned, then stumbled and lost his grip on her. With a cry, she collapsed, landing hard on her knees.

  "Go on," she rasped. "Both of you. Run. Get to Mind-Sim, the real FBI, anyone." She didn't want to think what their pursuers could do with the technology Raj and Ander represented if they caught either android.

  Raj hauled her to her feet. "No." Hanging on to her, he reeled forward, pulling her with him. Ander was under more strain now as well. His head kept jerking, and spasms in his arms or legs threw him off balance. He held on to Megan, gripping her as much to control his convul­sions as to keep her from falling. The crackling of their pursuit grew louder, like lightning in the quadra.

  They had stumbled several feet out of the field before Megan became fully aware of the change. A hill rolled away from their feet to a building far below—a farm­house with lights on its porch and in its windows.

  "Radio waves!" Ander shouted. "I knew it!"

  "What the hell?" Raj stumbled to a halt.

  "No, it's all right." Ander jerked them into motion again. "I got into the police dispatch system and sent them here. If we
can only make it to them in time."

  Vehicles were parked in front of the house, police hovercars with flashing red and blue lights. With a spurt of energy, the three of them began a desperate, faltering run down the hill.

  Megan held on to Raj and Ander with her last strength. If their pursuers couldn't catch them, the merce­naries would try to kill instead. The scene below blurred, a smear of red and blue, all hazed in white from the porch lights of the house. Shouts echoed, voices calling back and forth. She felt as if her life's essence were floating out of her body, drifting away in the dry air. They had less than a hundred meters, but she would never make it.

  "Come on," Ander said. "Run."

  Megan tried, but her legs wouldn't obey. They were al­most dragging her now.

  A shout came from the hill behind them. Then the ground exploded, just missing Raj, blasting huge clumps of dirt and grass all over the three of them. Megan had never liked guns, but after the past few days she would forever hate that violent crack, the sudden unexpected chaos when a projectile hit.

  If she survived.

  She was falling. Ander called to her, but she could no longer decipher his words. Falling, falling forever...

  They wouldn't let her go, neither Raj nor Ander. They kept pulling her through the darkness. Another crack came from behind them. No, in front. Left? Right? She no longer knew. Two police officers were running in a zigzag up the hill, crouched over. Or was it one officer, multi­plied by her double vision?

  A misty police car loomed into view, its revolving blue and red light smeared across the sky. She, Raj, and Ander lurched into the circle of light from the porch, hanging on to one another as if they were drowning. Her heart pounded. Police surrounded them, their words piling up and flowing everywhere, impossible to understand.

  One voice cut through the thickening haze. "—bleed to death!" it shouted. "Get her in the ambulance now!"

  She saw only blurs. More shouts. Raj told someone the blood on his clothes was hers. An ambulance loomed be­fore her, its back doors wide open. She heard Raj's voice, desperate, telling her not to die, fading, fading...

  "Raj," she whispered. "Good-bye."