Beautiful Intelligence (16 page)

“The risk is too great,” said Joanna, “even though Indigo has not run away... which I must admit I thought it might. But Indigo is different. It has been alongside us, in our company, far more than the others–”

“We
balance
the risk,” Manfred said. “There’s an equally dangerous path, yeah? The path of keeping them in cages and stunting them forever.”

Joanna hesitated, watching the untethered Indigo. Manfred also looked – the bi was motionless, balanced on legs set apart, as if listening. Once again Manfred noticed that its dye was striated.

“Look!” he whispered, pointing to the three tethered bis. “Dye movement.”

They all looked. Manfred lay down on his stomach, as if to minimise the intrusion caused by his presence. The only sounds were those of the river and the wind in the trees. Then, far off, a hawk cried out.

Indigo turned to listen. The dye patterns moved, and so did the patterns on the surfaces of the other three bis. Manfred stared.

“Communication,” he said. “I think that’s emotional communication. It likes what it hears. It’s
moved
by the experience.”

Joanna nodded. “It could be.”

“But the sound could be a kinda music to Indigo,” Pouncey said. “Hawk cries, they got a music to them. Maybe the bis got their own artistic culture.”

“It might be that the dye patterns are like octopus skin patterns,” said Manfred, “sending out basic level information – threat, fear, and so on. Or it might be a form of self-adornment. The earliest human self-detritus is rouge for painting, beads for decoration. We want the bis to decorate themselves, that’d prove they’re aware of themselves in some way, aware of their individuality.”

He got to his feet.

Joanna did too. “No, Manfred. Don’t cut those tethers.”

“I’ve got to. Jeez, I’ve
got
to, they need their freedom. They know they’re one of us. They won’t stray, I promise.”

“Manfred, promises mean nothing.” She gestured at the tethered bis. “This is
science.
We go on facts, not the guesses of individuals. Manfred!”

“Fuck that,” Manfred said as he ran to the tree where the bis stood. Joanna cried out, but moments later the bis were free.

Pouncey hurried across to the soltruck, retrieving the net on a pole that she had fashioned after the incident with the shooter. “I’m with Manfred on this,” she said, “but, hey, just in case... I run pretty fast for a spy girl, and no bi is gonna outpace me.”

Joanna ran to the tree. The bis watched her. Manfred watched them back. They acted like sedated children – quiet, calm, observant. They did not run off. Orange and Yellow fingered the lengths of twine attached to them, as if trying to understand the implications, but Red lay down on its back.

“See?” Manfred said.

“Shut
up,
” Joanna shouted. She was angry. Manfred shrugged, glancing at Pouncey, then winking.

Joanna helped the bis free of the tangled lengths of twine, then sat back. Anger made a mask of her face.

Silence fell across the camp. Manfred sat down to watch the bis. They clustered together –
so
like a little group of kids planning some stunt – then ambled down to the river’s edge. Manfred stood up to follow. Freedom was all very well, but an accident beside the river could wash one away. Like an indulgent father he nudged them away from the bank, allowing them to settle in a moss-covered basin.

“They understand,” he said. “I can
feel
it.”

“Understand what?” Pouncey asked.

“They understand they’re in a social group, of which I’m one member. We’re all in this together, and they
know
it. They’re not acting as isolated individuals, they grasp that there’s bonds, responsibilities, ties between us all. It’s like glue. They’re not going to run off, they’re a clan, like wolves, and we’re part of it.”

“And the dye patterns?”

“Could be emotional reactions – which always have a physical component – or could be gestural language, Too early to say.”

“D’you reckon they think the soltruck is their home?”

Manfred glanced back at the vehicle. Suddenly its significance became magnified to him. “Yeah, could well be,” he said. “Well spotted, Pouncey. Yeah, they would need a home. The soltruck is all they know.” He paused for a moment, imagining their arrival on the West Coast. “When you make us a new base,” he said, “you’ll have to include the soltruck in it, else the bis will be homesick. Then they really might run off.”

“Oh, so now you’re making amendments to your theory?” Joanna said. “The bis will not run off, you claim, but if they are homesick – whatever that is to a bi – they might do. Very scientific!”

“Science is about risks too,” Manfred remarked in a flat voice. “We said we balance the risk–”

“
You
said that – forget the we.”

“Okay,
I
said that.”

Pouncey nodded to them both. “I think it’s time for us to be getting back in our mobile home,” she said.

Joanna scowled, and Manfred knew she got the point of Pouncey’s joke. The atmosphere had turned bad.

He sighed under his breath, then went to collect the bis. Like domesticated animals they let him pick them up, and as they did the patterns on their skins changed. He put Orange and Yellow in their cage, then dumped them in the back of the soltruck. For a few seconds he held Red in his arms. The bi looked up at him through artificial eyes. For a moment Manfred felt a kind of conceptual vertigo envelop him, as he imagined looking into the mind of the bi, then imagined it looking back at him.

“Hurry up,” Joanna muttered. “This is not a love-in.”

Manfred, irritated, glanced up at her. “You seem pretty happy with Indigo on your lap in the front of the truck. Can’t I have a favourite?”

She confronted him. “A favourite? They’re not our children, Manfred!”

He stared at her. Something inside his mind seemed to move, like a deep, unconscious realisation about to bob to the surface. “They kinda
are,
” he said. “Jeez, I’m only human. Somehow I know these guys are all different. And I do like this one’s relaxed–”

“It is lazy, not relaxed.”

He laughed. “How easy it is to talk about them as if they’re human. You fall into that trap as quickly as I do, mmm?” He dropped Red into a cage, then shut the door. “I don’t like doing this,” he said. “I don’t like locking them up.”

“Cut the emotional crap,” Joanna said. “These are artificial creations, they are not children, they are
not
human.”

“If they do mimic us they’re gonna be part human,” he pointed out.

Joanna jabbed him in the chest. “They are mimicking one another.
We
are the big bad wolves, remember? Now get in the truck.”

~

A few miles on from The Dalles, as the sun dipped behind white-capped mountains, they found a rock shelter beneath which they parked the soltruck. Low altitude now, a good few thousand feet down from the pass high point. Fish leaped in the Columbia River, the trees swayed in the breeze and pink-limned clouds swept across the sky.

Manfred, eating oat slop by the soltruck, watched the scenery. Fifty metres off, Pouncey sat on a boulder. Joanna was answering the call of nature behind rocks.

Then Manfred saw Pouncey fall off the boulder.

He sat up. Had she slipped? Holding his breath, he watched. When after a count of five she did not move, he ran.

She was out cold, it seemed. He knelt at her side. “Pouncey? You okay? You fainted?”

Then he saw a tiny plastic dart in her neck. He gasped: sat back. He pulled it out. Then he jumped up and looked around.

A few metres away two men with long, grey beards pointed rifles at him. The taller, older man carried an augmented rifle – a lump at the trigger filled with semiconductors.

“You on my land, boy,” the man said.

“Hey, we’re just driving through,” Manfred said. “What’ve you done to my friend?”

“Just a trank.” The man glanced at his friend, then added, “We don’t like dead meat, see? Fresh.” He snickered.

The other man said, “You ask to come through our land, did ya?”

Manfred shrugged, trying to appear cool. He must not antagonise these rednecks. “Didn’t know. I’m sorry. Hmmm, we need to pay a toll?”

“You’ll need to pay summat, boy,” said the first man. “Hands up.”

The other man changed the direction of his rifle. “Hell, there’s three of ’em,” he said. Manfred sagged. Joanna must have appeared.

“You come on over, lady” shouted the taller man. “We got us a l’il conference goin’ on here. Hands up, an’ all.”

Joanna walked over. Glancing at Manfred she said, “Pouncey?”

“Tranquilised. These men didn’t like the look of us. But I told them we’d pay the toll.” He looked back. “Which we will.”

“Whatcha got in that there truck, boy?”

Manfred put his hands on his head as he blew air through his lips. “Oh, nothing much. Just some toys.”

“Tech toys? We don’t like tech ’round these parts.”

“Er... not really. Just foreign crap.” He shrugged. “Toys for kids. Nothing for you.”

“I’ll be the judge of that, boy. I might wanna get rid of your tech, see? So open up the truck.”

Manfred sighed. “Sure. No problem. We just wanna drive on through, after we’ve paid up, get off your land–”

“
Shut
it! I said open the truck, boy.”

Manfred unlocked the rear doors then flung them open. “See?” he said. “Just baby robots, old style, nothing new. Nippandroids, yeah?”

“I told you, boy, our land is tech free,” the taller man replied. Manfred glanced at the gun. Well, that was a lie.

He said, “Sure. Your rules.”

“Take the nearest crate out. I wanna see what those cute little fuckers are.”

“Okay.”

“How many you got there, boy?”

Manfred glanced at Joanna. Indigo was in the front comp. “Eight,” he said.

“Where you takin’ ’em?”

“Portland.”

“Why?”

Manfred shrugged. “Money. Not much of it around.”

The taller man chortled. “That a fact? Open the cage, boy.”

Manfred did as he was told.

Inside stood Violet and Blue. The bis crept out of the cage, looking like startled cats. They stared at the two rednecks. Manfred held his breath. He could see that the bis were spooked. Maybe they guessed that something was wrong; the dynamics of the group were so different to normal. And Violet had seen a gun before. It would remember the old man and the danger he represented.

Blue began to walk towards the taller man. He swore under his breath, then yelled, “Get away from me, you Jap fucker!”

Manfred waved his hands as he said, “No! It won’t hurt you. It’s just curious–”

Too late. The man lowered his rifle and fired. The lower half of Blue’s right arm vanished, and Manfred saw a glint of the alu-plex skeleton.

He put his hands to the sides of his head. “
No!
You damaged it! For God’s sake,
don’t
–”

“Shut up, boy! My land, my rules.”

Manfred saw Indigo appear at the side window of the comp. The tall man walked up to Manfred.

“I don’t like you, boy. You whinge like a girl. What kinda man you anyway, takin’ Jap toys to Portland?”

Manfred shook his head, unable to comprehend the logic. “
What?
” he said.

The man raised his rifle. “I’m gonna give you a taste of mountain justice, boy. An’ I don’t think you’ll like it.”

He pulled the trigger. The gun popped, whirred. He stared at it.

Manfred leaped forward, grabbed the rifle and pulled it, then rolled to his right. Taken by surprise, the tall man let it go. Manfred jumped to his feet, then ran forward as the other man turned to fire.

Joanna screamed at the top of her voice. The second man turned back. Momentarily distracted, the tall man hesitated, and in this fraction of a second Manfred swung the butt around, cracking it against the tall man’s head. He dropped.

The second man pulled his trigger. His rifle failed too.

“You’d better run,” Manfred growled, “or I’ll drop you too.
Run!
”

The man sped away.

Joanna ran to the soltruck. “I’ll start it up,” she shouted. “Grab Pouncey! We have to get out of here.”

“The bis!” Manfred yelled.

“I will fetch them. Get
Pouncey!
”

Sixty seconds later Manfred and a semi-conscious Pouncey were in the comp, with Blue on the floor by Manfred’s feet, its arm leaking fluid. Violet was loose in the back. Joanna drove the truck onto the road, then floored the accelerator.

A few minutes passed. Pouncey came around.

Manfred reached down to pick up Blue. “Stop!” he told Joanna. “We need to give it some help. Stuff is still leaking out.”

Joanna cursed, then said, “Yes, you are right, we cannot ignore it. There’s a flat, straight section up ahead with nowhere for rednecks to hide. I’ll stop in a minute.”

When the soltruck halted Manfred leaped out, letting Pouncey fall back on her seat. Drool escaped from her mouth, but she was alive, and recovering. Manfred pulled out the bioplas emergency box and rummaged through it, but he did not know what he was looking for. There had not yet been a traumatic bioplas injury within the BIteam.

He turned around to see Violet holding Blue’s injured arm in its own. He froze. It was a scene of succour – or so it seemed. He shook his head, aware of the perils of anthropomorphic thinking, yet unable to push the notion of tender care out of his thoughts. And Violet’s dye patterns, he noticed, were moving like a fast Moiré pattern. An emotional reaction in a time of stress, perhaps?

“Ah, damn it!” he murmured, as he turned back to see what lay in the emergency box. More bioplas required...

Pouncey limped to his side. He stared at her. She said, “Hi.”

“You okay?”

“Blue,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I see it.”

“Can we stop this damn leakage? D’you know?”

“Just give it fresh bioplas. See if they know what to do.”

Manfred followed her instructions. Pouncey knew more than him about the substance, having worked with it when completing her PhD. “How much?” he asked.

From a neoprene-wrapped casket Pouncey took a few tens of grams of bioplas, then gave it to Violet.