“You are helping,” said Taylor. “More than you know. You and your platoonmates have been abused. It’s not right. I’m sorry, Tom.”
Greer stared up at the night sky as it continued to reveal itself in the growing dark. “It’s over now, I think. Right? No way they expect us to go back to training with those fucking things.”
“Not if we have anything to say about it,” said Taylor.
Brodie, wanting to say something more definitive, added, “Operations at Camp Hayden are over.”
He looked at Greer, who didn’t necessarily look reassured. Actually, it was kind of hard to tell how he was feeling. His big eyes were open wide to the night, taking in stars. He was somewhere else. Somewhere better, maybe.
Why should they have expected more than this from him? Tom Greer wasn’t a computer scientist. The kid didn’t even have a college degree. Ames hadn’t brought him up here to tell all he knew about what was really going on at Camp Hayden and inside Bucky’s CPU. He’d brought him here to talk about the history of the Mojave tribe and to look for lizards and to listen for birds, for Tom Greer to be doing exactly what he was doing now—taking in the beauty of the world with eyes wide open, with senses tuned to everything, being plunged into his own humanity instead of the machine world, where he could only fail, over and over, until his mind and body broke.
What had everyone said about the major? That he wanted to push things. He wanted to focus more on machine brains and less on machine brawn. He’d thought, apparently, that elevating the bots’ minds would make them safer and more predictable. He was an idealist, a techie hacking his own mind with nature’s chemicals. Maybe he was also a fool, high on his own supply, so giddy about where he was headed that he didn’t realize it was right off a cliff.
Brodie felt tuned in now. He was looking up, and he could see the milky band of the galaxy’s edge streak across the sky.
He imagined what it was like all those years ago, the people of the high desert who knew nothing of astronomy or physics, and yet saw all this, this sky, a sky almost no one in the light-polluted modern world ever saw.
His mind was humming. He could see what he wanted. He went down the elevator to the Vault. Fifty-nine tin men strapped in their holding bays. One free. Bucky. It was sitting in a chair. Roger Ames was across from it, talking. His was not the face of a corpse, with haunting white sclera without irises. He was alive, he was young. He was questioning and questioning. Probing a thing he thought he knew. And finding things he didn’t like. He didn’t like them because they weren’t his. Because they didn’t belong there. They were put there by someone else. This thing was dangerous. Not because of its titanium arms but because of its silicon brain. The major’s dream was coming true right in front of his eyes, and he saw it for the first time like a nightmare.
And then he’d trekked up here, with a lost and damaged Army private, trying to show him something good. Maybe Roger Ames did save this kid. Ames had regretted helping to build the D-17s, which meant he regretted a major portion of his life’s work. So maybe one of his last acts in this life was a shot at redemption—an act of generosity and salvation.
Now Brodie saw Caroline Dixon, alone in her lab. Looking at it. The code. Praetorian…
Her computer. It was on her computer. The code was on her computer. The source code.
It was poisoned at the roots.
It was in all of them, wasn’t it? Praetorian. Was it active? Or dormant by design? A held breath before the trumpet blast. An unrung bell.
It was in all of them.
He was back in the Vault, and now it was full of people. The important people of Camp Hayden, the officers, standing in their monster lair, explaining so matter-of-factly why the monsters had to be manufactured. We had to do it because our enemies are going to do it. We need to beat them. We need to haunt their dreams before they can haunt ours.
He turned to tell Taylor what he was thinking, but she was gone. He was alone again. How much time had passed? Where was he?
He looked for the willow tree but could not see it in the dark, moonless night.
Well, how far afield could he really go? If he fell off the edge of the mountain, he’d know he’d gone too far.
He saw something ahead. Water. Was it real? It looked real. It was small, some pond formed from the rainfalls. A disc of still liquid like polished obsidian, reflecting the stars with the clarity of a mirror.
He walked toward it. And he saw something near the pond catch the starlight. Something thin and upright. He drew closer.
It was the wavy branch of a desert willow, stuck in the earth, as high as Brodie’s chest.
Wasthisreal?
He got close enough to grab it. It felt real. He peered at the pond, which was no more than thirty feet across. He stepped toward it and caught his reflection. He looked older than he remembered.
You look beat-up, pal.
He leaned in. He touched the shallow crow’s-feet on the edges of his eyes, the creases on his forehead.
No, not beat-up. Just alive, and on the far side of forty. Living, aging. It was fine. It was good. Especially when you considered the alternative.
He’d considered the alternative his whole life. At least as far back as his homecoming from Iraq. He’d gone home to his parents’ in upstate New York. He’d sat at the table in their country kitchen, beneath a hanging garland that smelled of fresh pine. It was almost Christmas.Some plug-in electric Santa danced on the windowsill, glowing too brightly. Its face looked vicious from a bad paint job at the factory in Taiwan.
His parents, two ex-hippies who hated the war their son had just risked his life in, seemed almost wary of him, like they weren’t sure who this was in their house. Their boy had become a man, and then the man had become… what? A warrior? A killer? They wanted to know, but they didn’t want to know. They searched his eyes to see if there was something behind them that they could no longer recognize. Something to fear.
