The A.I. Gene (The A.I. Series Book 2) Read online

  “I’ve been alone for two years,” he said. “Can you comprehend that? No, I doubt the beauty from Makemake understands a whit of that. You’ve always had it easy, sweetie. Not me. Little Walleye has always roughed it. But I’m not crying. Do you see me crying?”

  “You have to get a grip, Walleye.”

  Abruptly, he turned around. He stretched so he floated in the pod, swimming to two bands. He anchored his feet in braces and began pulling the bands out and letting them go in. In and out, in and out—was that an exercise machine?

  He started to sweat, and that stank.

  A unit started up. The beads of sweat slowly drifted to the unit, sucked into it. After a time, the unit shut down.

  “Going to drink that later,” he told her. “The purifier still works, but I don’t know for how much longer.”

  “That’s disgusting,” she said.

  His whispery laughter started up again. She wished he wouldn’t do that. When he stopped, he seemed to turn serious.

  “Listen…Luscious…” He snapped his stubby fingers. “I used to call you that. Do you remember?”

  She remembered hating it, but simply nodded.

  “I might have gone mad for a time. It’s hard to remember two years all alone in this bubble while listening to your cryo unit purr. I almost flushed you…I don’t know how many times. Then I remembered you tried to shoot me. It’s a good thing you tried. I wanted to show you that you were wrong about me. I think sometimes that’s the only thing that kept you alive.”

  June decided she would hunt for the stitch-gun when he zoned out again.

  “I’m not crazy anymore,” Walleye said. “It’s taken me a month, I think, to come out of it. At first—never mind about that. I saw it a little over a month ago. That’s what started my mind working again. It’s closer now, a whole heck of a lot closer. I think it’s going to try for us. Why else would it have changed course?”

  “What are you talking about?” June asked.

  “There’s a ship approaching us. It hasn’t hailed us. I’ve listened for days on end. It’s coming straight for us, and it’s used plenty of fuel to slow its velocity. That means it’s dead serious.”

  “A ship, out here in the Kuiper Belt?” asked June.

  “You’re finally understanding,” he said. “A ship is coming. It’s going to pick us up, I think. But way out here in the belt…”

  “What?” June asked. “Way out here…?”

  “It has to be a robot-controlled ship, right? I don’t know, June. I think the ship is coming so the robots can shove control units into our skulls.”

  -2-

  The days passed in dreadful monotony and growing terror and despair.

  Walleye talked her ear off and then started up on the other one. The words kept pouring out of him. She wished he’d zone out so she could search for the stitch-gun.

  At times, she dozed off. When she woke, when she moved, Walleye jerked upright. He must have fallen asleep after she did. As soon as she woke, he perked up and starting jabbering away with his stream of words.

  She wanted to scream at him, but she was too scared. Instead, she nodded endlessly, making a few “ohs” and “ahs” along the way.

  On what might have been the third day, she started comparing the two of them.

  Long-term cryo sleep ate away at the human body. It just happened super-slowly. That had been one of the chief problems for the cryoarchs. Special cryo units injected growth serum into the frozen occupant. That serum helped to maintain the sleeper’s equilibrium.

  Her cryo unit hadn’t been a specialty one. She was skinnier than when she’d gone in. She wasn’t skinnier than Walleye, though. He was like a skeleton.

  It seemed in the few days that she’d been awake, that Walleye had been gaining weight and strength.

  She managed to ask him about that during breaths that interrupted his endless words.

  That started him on another line of thought. Yes. He’d starved for months on end in order to stretch out the food supply. He’d calculated it carefully. Now, though, with the spaceship braking, heading toward them, he was eating regularly again. He hadn’t felt this fit since entering the escape pod.

  The renewed strength seemed to have reduced the number of times he zoned out. The endless talking seemed to be helping him sharpen his wits, too.

  June finally decided Walleye had been as close to insane as a person could be and still function enough to make a few good decisions. That’s why he’d woken her. The steady food, her company, maybe having a problem so that boredom no longer dulled his mind, was reawakening the sharp and deadly Walleye, the sane mutant assassin.

  It would be harder to kill him now, June decided. Her desire to do so had sharply dropped off. Maybe she was getting used to him. Maybe he was making more sense finally—

  June stared at the tiny control unit embedded in a bulkhead. She’d looked out it once. She didn’t want to do that again. The sight—the loneliness of their position—terrified her.

  “We’re going to die, aren’t we?” June asked him after the fourth day.

  Walleye zoned out at the question. He sat like a statue. It started freaking her out. This was too long.

  She turned away.

  His eyes focused, it seemed. A tight, evil little grin stretched onto his hideous face.

  “It don’t look good for us, Luscious,” Walleye said, sounding more like the old assassin she remembered.

  “I don’t want to be a drone,” she said.

  “Me neither.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Don’t know. Been thinking about it a ton. I’ve decided we’re going to have to wait and see.”

  “It could be too late by then.”

  “Nope. Wrong. I’ll mercy-kill you before I let a robot shove a control unit into your skull.”

  June stared at him. “That doesn’t make me feel much better. I don’t want to die either.”

  “Me neither,” he said.

  “Can’t we threaten them?”

  “Tell me how, Luscious.”

  “You have that memory core, right?” June asked.

  He snapped his stubby fingers, pointing at her. “I forgot about it.”

  June glanced at the metallic object lying to the side. How could he possibly have forgotten about the big memory cube?

  “What’s the threat?” Walleye asked. “Let us go or we destroy the cube?”

  “Something like that,” she said. “But letting us go just leaves us stranded out here.”

  “I’m done sitting on my butt for months on end with nothing to do. If I had to do the stint over again…” Walleye shook his head.

  “Are we certain it’s a robot-controlled vessel?”

  “It’s been a few since I looked at it.” Walleye pushed off the floor, floating to the control unit. He typed on the unit and brought up a tiny screen. He bent forward, staring for a good long time.

  June figured he’d zoned out over it.

  Abruptly, Walleye straightened, causing his spine to crack. He shut down the unit and faced her. There was something new in his manner.

  It frightened June until she realized she recognized determination in him. More of the old Walleye seemed to have woken up finally.

  “Find something?” she asked.

  “It’s an NSN destroyer. I believe it’s a Charon-class vessel. They only made a few of them. Most of the NSN was drone-based, constructed for Neptune System combat alone.”

  “None of that means anything to me,” June said.

  “The destroyer was built to travel,” Walleye said. “It’s self-contained. It’s an old ship, I believe.”

  “Okay…”

  “Maybe the crew bugged out during the Solar League invasion. They realized the NSN was going to lose and decided to start fresh in the Kuiper Belt. Other system military vessels have done that. Makes sense if you think about it. They did just what we did on Makemake two years ago.”

  “The destroyer m
ay have a human crew?”

  “Have no idea,” Walleye said. “It’s possible, I suppose. Then I ask myself, ‘Why are they stopping to pick us up?’”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Fuel and velocity,” Walleye said. “You should know that. Everything in the Kuiper Belt is hundreds of thousands or millions or even billions of kilometers apart. That means a ship builds up a steady velocity—”

  “I don’t need a lesson on space travel.”

  Walleye stared at her, and it didn’t seem as if he was zoning out. He might have been pissed and trying to stare her down.

  “Sorry,” she muttered.

  He shrugged, and that seemed more like the old Walleye than ever.

  “What’s the plan?” she asked.

  “We wait and see what they do. We don’t have much choice.”

  “If they bugged out—”

  “Luscious, don’t get your hopes up. If they bugged out, they might still have been in range of the cybership message. The awakened computer could have killed all the humans inside the ship.”

  “Then why slow down for us?”

  “That’s the question all right. If it’s any comfort, we’ll know in about two days.”

  June stared at him. “So soon?” she asked in a small voice.

  “Makes you think. Makes you really think. I should have lived differently.” Walleye shrugged. “But I didn’t. So we might as well get ready.”

  “How?” June asked, realizing she sounded wild.

  “Let me think, Luscious.” The little mutant bent his head as he idly scratched at his splotchy skin, less splotchy with his increased nutrient intake.

  June hoped he could come up with something.

  -3-

  The NSN Charon-class Destroyer had a number and a name stenciled on the side of the vessel:125 Daisy Chain 4.

  Walleye told June what he’d read.

  “What does it mean?” she asked.

  “No idea,” he said.

  The destroyer had a classic triangular shape. It had PD guns poking out and several outer missile racks. That’s the way the NSN liked to build them. The racks held long missiles, all of them there.

  The destroyer didn’t seem as if it had engaged in combat. That seemed to suggest that Walleye had guessed right about the crew bugging out from the Solar League invasion. That would also explain how the destroyer had already made it so far into the Kuiper Belt.

  Despite traveling for two years already, the escape pod had hardly dented the distance between Makemake and the Neptune System.

  “Maybe this is mercy,” Walleye said.

  “Don’t talk like that,” June chided. “I don’t want to end my life with a quitter.”

  Walleye eyed her, eyed her long, slender legs. “We’ll see how we end this. We still have some time.”

  That was the first time June had sensed sexual desire from the mutant. She looked away, uncertain how to handle this.

  Walleye turned back to the control unit, tapping it harder than he had before.

  The Daisy Chain 4 drifted toward the pod. The destroyer dwarfed their tiny living quarters. It used side-jets now, expelling propellant, turning, slowing its rate of advance toward them.

  “It’s matching velocities,” Walleye said.

  “That means it must have turned around.”

  Walleye glanced at June.

  “If it left the Neptune System, it would be heading in the opposite direction from us. We’re heading toward the Sun, not leaving it.”

  “Good point,” Walleye muttered. “The destroyer had to loop around to come at us in the right direction. That cost it even more fuel, and that makes what it’s doing even more suspicious.”

  “I just thought of something else,” June said.

  Walleye regarded her.

  “Why hasn’t it tried to contact us?” she asked.

  “No idea,” he said.

  “That would seem to indicate they’re anti-robot. If they sent us a message, the robots might pick it up.”

  “That’s good thinking, Luscious. You may be onto something.” Walleye smiled. “You just gave me some hope.”

  The mutant pushed off from the bulkhead and went to a tiny locker. He made sure he had his back to her as he pressed the combination numbers.

  “Mind looking the other way?” he asked.

  June turned her back to him. She heard him open the locker. There was silence. It went on and on. She just about turned around to see what was going on.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  June turned then, and smiled. It was the first time she’d smiled since coming out of the cryo unit.

  Walleye had put on his buff coat. It was much too big on him now, though. He was wearing new clothes underneath. He had put on boots, and it seemed as if he had a gun harness under the buff coat.

  “Do you have your tangler?” she asked.

  He nodded. He put on his hat afterward. She remembered it. The hat with the brim low over his eyes gave him the assassin appearance. This was Walleye. Maybe the mutant hadn’t totally gone to seed these last two years. Maybe his survival showed just how tough-minded the mutant really was. Who else could have survived two years all alone in an escape pod and maintained their sanity?

  Walleye the Assassin could.

  “Why are you smiling, Luscious?”

  “You,” she said. She almost asked him for the stitch-gun so she would be armed as well. She realized he’d probably be too suspicious to give it to her. Maybe it was better if Walleye was the arsenal for now. She’d use other weapons. She’d lost weight, but not too much. Men liked what they saw when they looked at her. She’d use that.

  If we’re dealing with humans that is. The terror and despair of robots—

  June shook her head. She wasn’t going to think about the awful possibility. Walleye would kill her if that were the case. She didn’t want to die. But she didn’t want to live like her friend Mindy.

  That was two years ago already. It was hard to believe.

  Something clanged outside. The escape pod shook.

  June sucked in her breath, looking around wide-eyed.

  “Destroyer must have a tractor beam of some kind,” Walleye said. “I suspect they just pulled us into a bay.”

  There was another clang. The pod shook, and all at once, gravity took hold.

  “Oh,” June said, sitting down hard on her butt.

  Walleye stumbled, went to one knee and caught himself with one of his stubby hands. He looked up grinning.

  “I’ve dreamed of walking again,” he said hoarsely. “In my heart—” He choked off.

  “We can do this,” June whispered.

  A grim look swept over him. He put his right hand into a buff coat pocket. She bet that’s where he kept the stitch-gun.

  Another clang sounded outside, and then several in succession.

  “Someone’s knocking,” Walleye said. “Let’s find out who it is.”

  -4-

  “Pull that lever,” Walleye told June.

  She rubbed her hands as her stomach churned. She couldn’t force herself to reach out. She was too frightened of the possibilities.

  The clanging against the outer hull had become more insistent.

  “Just grab it,” Walleye told her.

  June moaned as she stretched out her right arm. With trembling fingers, she touched the lever.

  “Wrap your hand around it,” he said.

  She tried to will herself to do it. She moaned again, her hand motionless on the lever.

  The clanging outside had become constant.

  “That can’t be people doing that,” she whispered.

  “Let’s find out, Luscious.”

  “Walleye, I—” Her fingers closed around the lever. She yanked it hard. It moved easily.

  For a second, nothing happened. Then the hatch blew off, sailing into a lit hangar bay.

  Walleye rushed out as he drew the stitch-gun. June followed on his heels. Her knees weakened
as she saw three repair bots banging on the pod hull. Each of the bots clutched two hammers, one in each set of metal pincers.

  It was a cramped hangar bay, with two small space boats locked into bulkhead berths. The lights overhead shined brightly. The hatches were all shut.

  A larger bot watched them.

  “Fighting robot,” Walleye said out of the side of his mouth.

  The thing was tubular and mounted on treads. It had a camera eye for a head and a short gun barrel sticking out from what might have been a metal chest. The gun barrel was pointed directly at Walleye.

  “You will drop your weapon,” a speaker on the fighting robot said.

  “Shoot if you want,” Walleye said in an even voice. “I don’t care much. But I’m not releasing my weapon. Not until I see the captain of the ship.”

  “You refuse to obey a lawful order?” the speaker unit on the robot said.

  “It’s not that so much,” Walleye said. “I don’t trust you yet. Until I trust you—”

  “If I instruct the fighting robot to fire,” the speaker unit said, “you shall cease functioning.”

  “There are worse things,” Walleye replied.

  “That is unreasonable, as death is final.”

  Walleye shrugged.

  “Does your shoulder gesture signify something meaningful?” the speaker unit asked.

  June moaned. This was sounding weirder and weirder. That type of question implied computer intelligence.

  “I’m not worried about you shooting me,” Walleye said evenly. “I’m worried about losing the ability to shoot myself and the woman.”

  “Why?” asked the speaker unit.

  “To escape torture,” Walleye said.

  “Why would I torture you?”

  “Don’t know,” Walleye said. “Don’t know anything about you yet. How about you tell us who you are?”

  “You fear me?”

  “That’s about right,” Walleye said.

  The three repair bots had stopped hitting the escape pod’s outer hull. They reversed course, turned around and headed at speed toward a hatch. The hatch lifted, and the three repair bots exited the hangar bay.

  “Does that put you at greater ease?” the speaker unit asked.