“Such foolishness,” he began. “As I told you back at the track, a human is no match for a machine. My creation—my Kurt Austin—is superior to you in every way: greater strength, greater speed, faster reactions. And perhaps most importantly, an inability to feel pain or fear. Something you’ll soon wish was a part of your limited human programming.”
47
SHANGHAI
GAMAY FOUND she couldn’t sleep. There was too much to worry about, too much she couldn’t control.
Paul, on the other hand, was stretched out on the floor of the INN production van and slumbering as if he were in a king-sized bed at the Four Seasons.
Gamay found she had an almost uncontrollable urge to wake him. She left him alone and took a seat at the editing station instead. It was three o’clock in the morning. The air had grown cold and damp in the van. It was still pitch-dark outside except for the security lights in the gated parking area.
Unwilling to risk a hotel, as the van had been their accommodations for the evening. But it wasn’t a long-term solution. Even if the Chinese didn’t figure out where they were, sooner or later someone from the network would attempt to use the van or fuel it or perform some maintenance on it.
And even if none of those possibilities came to fruition, Gamay was certain that both of them would go stir-crazy before too long.
Staring out into the darkness, she noticed movement. This time, she jabbed Paul in the ribs without hesitation.
“What’s that for?” Paul said, awaking with a start.
“Someone’s coming.”
“Who?”
“I couldn’t see.”
“Was it a security guard?”
Gamay shot him a look. “What part of ‘I couldn’t see’ made you ask that second question?”
“Sorry,” he replied. “Half asleep.”
He rolled up the blanket and pushed it beneath an equipment locker and stood, banging his head against the low ceiling for the umpteenth time. “Now I’m awake,” he said, stifling any expression of pain or anger.
Peering out through the front window, they scanned the lot for any sign of someone moving around in the darkness. They saw nothing.
A knock on the back door startled them both.
Paul reached for the door.
“Paul,” Gamay whispered in warning.
“What are we going to do?” he said, shrugging. “Besides, something tells me the secret police don’t knock.”
He flicked the lever to the unlocked position and the door swung wide. Instead of policemen or military personnel, the smiling, perfectly made-up face of Melanie Anderson appeared beyond.
She climbed inside and shut the door.
“Why did you knock?”
“You know, Miss Manners and all that.”
“Your mom would be proud,” Paul replied with a smile.
She placed an insulated cup down in front of them. “I brought coffee. You’ll have to share this, but it would have looked odd if I’d brought three cups out to the van for myself.”
“If you knew how much Paul has been dying for a cup, I’d think you were trying to steal him away from me,” Gamay said.
Paul took the first sip and looked as if he’d just sampled waters from the Fountain of Youth. “Oh, that’s good,” he said, handing the cup to Gamay.
The aroma was enough for her, at the moment. She turned back to Melanie. “You said you were coming at first light. Unless my eyes are going, it’s not morning yet.”
“Not my fault,” Melanie said. “My bureau chief called and told me to come in early. He said we’d been hacked again and that it had something to do with my last report.”
“But you weren’t hacked,” Gamay said. “We made all that up.”
“Which caused no small amount of worry on my part, let me tell you.” She held up a zip drive. “When I got down here, the chief handed me this and walked away. Said he needed to make some hasty travel arrangements in case he had to leave China early. He suggested I seriously consider doing the same.”
“What’s on it?” Paul asked.
“Don’t know,” she told them. “It’s encrypted. But the hack was done stateside. Our New York office was breached; our satellite was compromised for two minutes and then returned to our control after transmitting the information on here. It was the same satellite we used to get your signal out. So I’m guessing it’s meant for the two of you. Care to take a look?”
Gamay took the zip drive from Melanie’s hand, stuck it in the slot on the laptop and powered up. A few moments later, she was looking at a log-in window. She used her NUMA password and was rewarded with a list of files.
“It’s from Rudi,” she said, opening the first file. A presentation began on-screen.
Paul was incredulous. “He sent a PowerPoint presentation? Instead of fake passports, disguises and tickets for the Orient Express?”
Gamay laughed. “You know that train doesn’t come this far east, right?”
“I was being facetious.”
Gamay read through the first page of the file. “Sounds like Priya has been working with the geology team in your absence. They’ve been studying what we sent them and they believe they’ve figured out where the water is coming from. Han’s mining operation created a deep-earth fissure, releasing water from beneath the transition zone.”
Paul leaned forward. “That’s two hundred miles down.”
“Water under intense pressure,” Gamay said, reading and summarizing. “Z-waves caused by the water being released from a mineral known as . . . ringwoodite.”
“Ringwoodite?” Paul said.
“Did I say that correctly?”
“Perfectly. It’s just . . .” He hesitated. “Read on.”
Gamay gave Paul a sideways look. He was holding back. But instead of prodding him to spill what he knew, she scanned the next few lines, again summarizing as she went. “Attached you’ll find our evidence and calculations, along with two separate presentations to use. One is highly technical, the other is done in generalities. Due to the vast amount of ringwoodite and the nature of the ongoing fractures, total hydraulic release cannot be calculated at this time. But if left unchecked, it would likely result in a seawater rise of two thousand feet by end of decade.”
“Two thousand feet?” This from Melanie.
Gamay double-checked to make sure she’d read it correctly. “That’s what it says.”
“Read on,” Paul said calmly.
“Other calculations become speculative,” she said, picking up where she’d left off. “Including a theoretical doomsday scenario, according to which the entire surface of the planet is covered in water within fifty years. Despite the extreme nature of this scenario, the possibility cannot be ruled out. For reasons that remain undetermined, the fractures of ringwoodite seem to be self-perpetuating and accelerating. Branching in all directions and spreading. Each new fracture releases more water. Which, in turn, causes additional fractures.”
The three of them were crowded around the computer now.
“And I thought I was the one who came up with crazy stuff,” Mel said. “Doomsday scenario? Entire world covered with water?”
“I know it sounds irrational,” Paul said, “but if the water is coming from that far down, it could be a real possibility. Believe it or not, there’s more water trapped in the deep layers of rock than in all the oceans of the Earth. Three or four times as much. It’s trapped in the minerals and held under incredible pressure. But if that pressure was released and the water began forcing its way to the surface . . .”
“You know about this?” Gamay said.
“Of course,” Paul said. “It’s deep-earth geology.”
“Why didn’t you bring it up when we were first exploring the rise in sea level?”
Paul shrugged. “I considered it early on
but ruled it out as a possibility. The only process known to bring water up from that depth is a large magma plume, followed by volcanic eruptions. And volcanic activity was down for the past year.”
Gamay turned her attention back to the data put together by the science team. A graphic showed the fissures created by the Chinese mining operation. “The crustal fractures extend downward beyond any existing measurement. They appear to be branching in all directions.”
“That’s where that field of geysers came from,” Paul said. “We couldn’t see to the end of the field. Who knows how many there are. Hundreds, maybe thousands. All pumping water up from the depths.”
Gamay had overcome the shock of discovery and was quickly flipping through the other files.
“What are you looking for?” Paul asked.
“Anything that mentions getting us out of here.” She came to a file labeled Instructions. “Rudi has given us an address to proceed to.”
“Safe house?” Paul asked hopefully.
Gamay typed the location into the computer. “Not sure.”
Melanie leaned over to look at the map. “That’s not a safe house,” she said. “That’s the Shanghai bureau of the Ministry for State Security. Local headquarters of the secret police.”
Paul leaned back. “And I thought Rudi was on our side.”
“Maybe he thinks it’s the last place anyone would look for you.”
“He’s not asking us to hide there,” Gamay told them, reading on. “He wants us to turn ourselves in. But only to a man named Zhang. Make that a general named Zhang.”
Paul sighed. “Well, that ought to speed up our trial and make it easy to get a firing squad together.”
“We have to trust Rudi on this,” Gamay said. “He’s obviously got something in mind.”
Paul nodded. “Can we borrow the van?”
Mel shook her head. “And lose my exclusive on the biggest story ever? Not on your life. You two share the coffee. I’ll drive.”
48
HASHIMA ISLAND
WALTER HAN watched as the robotic facsimiles of Kurt Austin returned to the workbenches and lay down. The movements were both as smooth and as awkward as any human’s. One machine limped where a shot from Austin’s gun had damaged its leg. It hopped up on the bench, favoring the injured leg and grasping for balance as it reclined. Reddish liquid oozed from the bullet wounds and soaked the right leg and torso.
The second robot was undamaged.
“Hydraulic fluid?” Han asked.
“No,” Gao said. “We used a layer of gel between the artificial skin and the inner structural panels. It creates a supple feeling and allows a constant body temperature of ninety-eight-point-six degrees. If you shake the machine’s hand, it feels like muscular grip beneath the soft flesh—as it should. The hand also feels warm. One of the technicians decided to color the gel so it looked roughly like blood in case the robot was damaged.”
Han reveled in such details. “Give that man a bonus,” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought of that myself.”
Studying the robot, Han almost hoped it would be “wounded” on the mission. He would then put a bullet in Austin in exactly the same manner. A touch that would erase any doubt as to Austin’s guilt, once his body was found.
The robot deftly unbuttoned its own shirt, revealing another wound. “How many bullet strikes?”
“Four on the primary machine. A superficial wound on the backup,” Gao said. “I can’t believe Austin was able to fire so quickly and accurately. Although the spread of impacts shows them to be quite random. ‘Lucky shots,’ as the Americans say.”
“Not lucky for us,” Han said. “Nor do I think the shots were random. Austin is very astute. He realized what we were planning and was trying to disable the machine, even if it meant his life. By targeting four different areas of the robot, he was more likely to do permanent damage.”
“Let’s hope he hasn’t done so,” Gao said, then turned to the robot. “Lie down flat. Transmit diagnostic report to the main computer.”
The machine lay back and went still. Han had insisted on complete realism and for that reason there were no ports or power plugs hidden under the hairline or the body panels. All data and power regeneration was done wirelessly.
“We can always switch to the backup,” Han noted.
“I wouldn’t,” Gao said. “This machine began its training first. It progressed faster. The backup is inferior.”
“They’re the same.”
Gao shook his head. “Despite a common belief that all machines are identical, it’s simply not true. Minute differences in the construction of the components create physical differences. A slightly less efficient servo here, a fractional change in hydraulic pressure there. Even different operating temperatures cause different physical responses. Combine that with the way our artificial intelligence system learns how to mimic human actions—by trial and error and without constant outside direction—and one machine slowly proves its superiority over the other.”
Han understood this. He was just surprised it could be so large a difference. “Austin must have sensed it. That’s why he concentrated his fire on this one.”
“You’re giving him too much credit.” Gao pointed to the facial wound. “Austin made a mistake firing at the skull. He must have assumed that a human-looking machine had a human-like physiology, and so he fired at the head because that’s where the brain must be. My guess is, he hoped to hit the robot’s hard drive or the CPU. But unlike a human’s, our robot’s brain is not in the skull; it’s hidden away, near the right hip, to prevent exactly that. All Austin did was deform the face covering and damage one optical processor.”
Gao took out a scalpel and cut away the skin at the neck, before pulling the face cover, hair and scalp off. He tossed it in the garbage like a used Halloween mask. “Not salvageable.”
He turned to one of his assistants. “Get the 3-D printer up and running. Make sure the polymer mix is right. We’ll need a new facial covering and a lower skin panel for the right leg. We’ll also need an optical processor and a secondary hydraulic assembly.”
“How long is this going to take? We have to be off the ground in an hour.”
“Thirty minutes,” Gao said. “No longer.”
Han nodded. “Get to it. And have your other technicians work up a Zavala facsimile. Use the Austin backup as the underlying chassis. Adjust the size and shape.”
“We won’t have time to perfect it,” Gao said. “We don’t have video or voiceprints of Zavala.”
“He’s available,” Han said. “Get them for him now. It doesn’t have to be perfect. But I want both of them seen at the pavilion.”
Gao nodded. “I’ll get it done.”
“Good,” Han said. “In the meantime, I’m going to conclude my business with Ushi-Oni.”
49
HAN MET Ushi-Oni in the tunnel, where the former Yakuza assassin stood with the Honjo Masamune gripped in his palm.
“Austin and Zavala have been chained up,” Oni said. “But you should kill them immediately.”
“It’ll have to wait.”
“Why?”
“Because if you kill them now, rigor mortis will set in,” Han explained. “In addition, their bodies will begin to cool down. They’ll be cold and stiff by the time the authorities find them. Two minor details that will make it easy to establish a time of death well before the assassination took place. Which will effectively rule them out as suspects and give instant credibility to every conspiracy theorist who suggests an alternate, perhaps Chinese, cause of the incident. I would expect a man like you to know these things.”
Oni stepped forward, his eyes wild. “A man like me knows you don’t leave loose ends around. That’s why I’ve never been caught. And it isn’t about to happen here and now.”
“Lower your voice,” Han said,
reestablishing control over the situation.
Oni did as he was told but continued to fume. “Mark my words,” he said. “They’ve seen you, they’ve seen me. As long as they’re alive, we’re all in danger.”
“They’ll be dead in less than twelve hours,” Han said. “You can be the one to kill them, if you want. But you’ll do it when and how I say. Otherwise, you’ll generate more ‘loose ends.’ For now, they live. In the meantime, I need to get that sword out of your hand before you hurt someone with it. Come with me.”
Han turned deeper into the mine. Oni hesitated. “Why don’t we speak outside?”
“Because it’s pouring rain and I need my people to examine that trinket you’re carrying.”
“I’ve become rather fond of it,” Oni said.
“You won’t be when you hear the story behind it.”
Han led Oni down the hall to another section of the mine that his people had taken over and modernized. He opened the triple-sealed door and held it wide.
Oni shook his head. “You first.”
“Very well.”
Han stepped inside another laboratory. This room was smaller and cramped in comparison to the production room where the robots were assembled. It was filled with machines that would have been familiar to any metallurgist.
“What is this place for?” Oni asked.
“My people use these machines to analyze ore samples we’ve taken from mines and quarries around Japan. Mostly abandoned ones,” Han admitted. “Centuries old.”
They’d been at it for nearly a year. Retrieving, testing and storing what they found. The fruit of the effort sat in labeled metal canisters stacked on the far side of the room. The number of containers had grown continuously, looking now like thousands of beer cans in an overzealous supermarket display.
“What are you looking for?” Oni asked.
“A rare alloy that we believe to be present here in Japan.”