Metal Fatigue (32 page)

But not even the old USA could have built AIs with the required sophistication small enough to fit into the cranial cavity of one of the "rodents". Each robot would be linked to some sort of central processor, she guessed — a separate vehicle. She kept a careful eye out for such a control van, keen to grasp even the slightest weakness to this overpoweringly superior force. It would be large, probably covered in antennae and, by its very nature, vulnerable. If someone were to destroy the centre, the robotic proportion of the RUSAMC would be effectively wiped out.

It was a comforting hope that the force arrayed before her might have some weakness, no matter how small.

The procession of troops ended suddenly. The tramp of boots faded, leaving another peculiar sound in its wake: a faint buzzing, the rasp of a distant chainsaw. The crowd muttered to itself, curious to see what was coming.

When it finally arrived, Barney's air of cautious amazement shattered, leaving her unsure
what
to think.

Three vehicles glided through the Gate. All three were windowless and painted a dull black; a circular coat of arms in blue and gold was their only decoration. The first two were no larger than tanks and might have been automated. The third was as large as a moderate building — a chain of linked structures similar to a desert caravan. There were no antennae to be seen, but Barney guessed nonetheless that this was the control van. It seemed completely undefended.

Most incredible of all was the fact that none of the vehicles appeared to have any means of propulsion. Black spines pointed downward and at odd angles from the belly of each craft; strange energies stirred the dust on the road beneath. The nasal buzzing grew louder as they approached.

All three vehicles floated one metre above the earth.

The crowd fell silent.

As Barney watched, a hatch on the top of the foremost "caravan" opened and a familiar face rose into view: General Stedman, the leader of the RUSAMC envoy, at last. He was an imposing figure, even from a distance: at least two metres high and solidly built, he possessed a full head of grey hair and light-brown, weathered skin; his face was stern behind its smile. Barney sensed indefatigability radiating from the man.

The General nodded in greeting at the crowd around him and raised a hand to wave. Half the crowd cheered; more than a few remained speechless. Only a small proportion dared to boo.

One of these latter, taking the unenviable role of David in the face of such an invincible Goliath, actually threw a rock. The stone, larger than Barney's fist, arced through the air toward the control van.

"Kick them
out
!"

Stedman's eyes followed the stone, unconcerned.

Had it continued unchecked, it would have missed the General by a metre or so and struck the hull of the van. Instead, it was suddenly deflected downward into the ground by an invisible force, and shattered harmlessly into fragments.

The crowd stirred. A squad of RSD officers moved in to apprehend the rock-thrower. Stedman, untouchable behind the invisible defences of the control van, smiled more widely and began to wave.

Only then, as the caravan drifted past, did Barney remember her promise to call Roads.

"Phil?" she subvocalised. "Are you watching this?"

A moment passed before he replied, his voice muffled but clear through the cyberlink: "No. I've been busy. What's happening?"

Not sure whether he would believe her, she described the arrival of the RUSAMC at the city gates. When she reached the floating vehicles that had just passed, she realised she lacked the words to summarise it accurately.

"Field-effects," supplied Roads. "Force feedback, levitation, boundary-blurring, whatever. You can use them to do anything from float a house to make its walls invisible — even build it out of energy alone, if you like. The technology was talked about during the War, although I never saw it in action."

"And that's what they're using?" Barney shook her head. "If you'd told me, I wouldn't have believed you. I never dreamed such things existed."

"They might not have, until now. Stedman or his predecessors must've dug the plans out of the old bunkers."

"Thank God. I was half-expecting you to say: 'Sure, they were everywhere when I was a kid. Every home had one.'"

"No. Not at all. We — "

"Hang on." A group of people were trying to rush the cordon to follow the procession up the road. Barney joined the squad to force them back, noting the uncertainty in the eyes of the citizens of Kennedy, the occasional fearful stare — even in those who weren't protesting. She didn't blame them.

The unruly group didn't put up much of a fight. When the cordon was secure again, the crowd began to disperse. A couple approached the Gate to peer Outside. Barney pursued them to request that they fall back, and to take a quick look herself. All she saw was the rutted remains of the highway and a green plain rolling off into the distance.

"Sorry." Barney returned her attention to the cyberlink. "After all this waiting, I almost expected to be disappointed. I simply had no idea — "

"None of us did," Roads said.

"And — Christ! I thought I was going to die when he stuck his head out of the control van, or whatever it was."

"Who?"

"Stedman. I just knew something bad was going to happen. I could feel it in the crowd. I kept thinking of Cati, and of what a big target El Generalissimo had made of himself." She snorted, then explained the ease with which the rock had been deflected. "What a bloody joke. You might as well give up now."

"I think I see your point. If Cati can kill Stedman, then what chance do
we
have of catching him? And if Cati tries and fails, then the States are quite capable of dealing with him themselves. Right?"

"Spot on. Better to quit while you're ahead, Phil."

"Nice try, but sorry. Machines are just machines. They have to be powered somehow. Field-effects — and robots, for that matter — will be thirsty; Stedman will have to turn them off eventually. Anyway, he's going to have to leave the control van to meet the Mayor. What about when he's inside Mayor's House?"

Barney sighed. "You won't give up, will you?"

"No." Roads faded for a moment, then returned as strong as ever. "DeKurzak was right in one sense: Stedman is
here
. We're out of time. Tonight's our last chance to regain any ground at all."

Barney heard the determination in his voice. Everything he said was true, but she didn't have to like it.

"What time do you knock off, again?" he asked.

"Seven, if the crowd has cleared by then. I'll take an hour or two break, then head into Mayor's House."

"You're going to be there tonight?"

"Wouldn't miss it for the world, regardless of what happens. And neither would Roger Wiggs. He'll be there as well."

"I sympathise. If nothing happens, we should all be grateful. We have to get together before then. There are a couple of things we need to discuss in person, not over the cyberlink."

"Such as?"

"Ah ... developments. Let's leave it at that for now."

"Okay. Call me later, while I'm on break."

"Will do."

Barney waited for more, but the cyberlink was silent. She walked to the edge of the freeway. A fair few people remained, clustered in groups. They seemed slightly stunned, still trying to absorb what they had seen.

The officer who'd recognised the sound of acoustically-shielded machinery came to stand next to her.

"Quite a day," he said, not meeting her eye, watching the crowd instead. "I wonder what would've happened if we hadn't opened the Gate?"

"Don't," she said, as much to herself as to him. "Don't even think about it."

Roads edged the bike through the crowd, following the procession as it wormed its way toward the city centre. The RUSAMC kept the pace fairly slow, giving everyone in Kennedy a chance to absorb what they were seeing, and he had no difficulty surpassing the slow crawl.

When he caught up with the control van and its two companion vehicles, he stopped to watch.

Field-effects. The rumours he had heard about such things had been vague and noncommittal; although he had been curious, he had never received confirmation that they actually existed. He hardly needed to any more. The vehicles in front of him were enough.

Picking up speed again, he dodged through the crowd. He wanted to tell Barney about what he had discovered in Old North Street. A detailed picture of Morrow's face among the others Cati had drawn highlighted a relationship between the two that went deeper than a casual meeting. The obvious explanation was that Morrow was Cati's controller.

But it would have to wait until they were together. He couldn't be certain that Morrow hadn't tapped the old PolNet circuits.

Instead, he studied the soldiers. They looked as young as Roads had been when he'd joined the Army — even younger in some cases. A handful returned the curious stares of the crowd, but most simply faced forward, keeping their eyes carefully above the horizon, like robots.

Or like Cati would've done, Roads thought, if ordered to. That was the ultimate aim of every army: to possess soldiers both skilled and completely trustworthy. Biomodification wasn't the only means to achieve that end, although it was all too easy to imagine it happening again. Unlimited access to the Old World's military science almost cried out for misuse. While the RUSA had vowed never to emulate its predecessor's downfall, cautious scepticism was only natural.

Roads knew that few people deliberately chose the path to self-destruction. It was a gradual, almost unnoticeable course. With biomodification in particular, the progression was simple: everyone wanted to be stronger, faster, fitter, better — but there had to be a point at which one drew the line. For all he knew, the decline in standards might already have begun, with O'Dell's pragmatic acceptance of Roads' implants. Perhaps it
could
only end with the likes of Cati and the Mole.

Children in Kennedy — and Outside, Roads assumed — had been told the berserker stories for long enough to have made biomodification synonymous with evil. The phobias were so well established that he doubted that the old technology would arise in that form. Yet it was still possible, and he wondered whether that was part of why DeKurzak was so worried. Did he believe that, by allowing Roads to escape unpunished, some sort of floodgate would open, filling Kennedy with monsters and cybernetic villains?

To combat monsters the city needed superheroes, of course, but Roads didn't feel much like Superman. He understood from experience where that feeling led, and what true powerlessness was like. The reactivation of PolNet had revived the memories with a vividness that stung.

The one time he had allowed himself overconfidence — perhaps even a sense of superiority — had been fourteen years before the War. He had drunk too much celebrating both a promotion and the subsequent installation of the first of his implants. When he had been challenged by a gang of Puritans in a public street, instead of walking away or summoning assistance, he had accepted the challenge — and won. With heightened senses and a super-charged adrenal system, he had defeated the gang single-handedly at odds of five to one.

Then, two nights later, on New Year's Eve 2026, he had been walking the same street with his partner, Carol. Apparently by accident, a large man had bumped into him and shoved him into an alleyway. Before he could resist, hands had pinned his arms and a bag had gone over his head. The last thing he remembered was a blow to the back of his neck — until he woke up in hospital a victim of violent assault.

But that hadn't been the worst of it. Two days later, he had been called to the forensic labs to identify his partner's body. Carol had been raped by every member of the gang over a period of six hours, then dumped in a cul-de-sac near Sydney Metro Police HQ where she had bled to death. The policeman who had turned back the sheet had had eyes like jewels — eyes like
his
— glinting silver in the cold, white light.

Genetic traces — skin, semen and hair — had enabled the police to track down the young gang responsible, and they had been duly punished by a court of law. But Roads had never forgotten the lesson behind the act itself.

No matter how strong he felt, and no matter what his advantage over an opponent, he was still weak in some way. His love for Carol had allowed his opponents revenge on that occasion; it would be something else next time, something he had not anticipated.

So he had sought strength from within, through discipline — just as Kennedy had, many years later. He had quit the police force and joined the army, rising swiftly through the ranks until a transfer to the United States had been offered to him. He had trained in a biomodified squad for two years before earning a second course of surgery. He had gained new eyes and new ears; his entire body had been taken apart and rebuilt by a team of biogeneticists over a period of six months. He had spent a further half year learning his new capabilities — and, at the end of it, had still felt weak.

It took him most of a decade to realise that true strength came from a
denial
of strength, and an acceptance of weakness. Everything he saw during the War confirmed this: the Armed Forces — including the CIA and the FBI — had been too powerful for too many years, and ignorant of their own inherent flaws. Every last spasm of the United States had been a flexing of dying muscle; during the Dissolution, the corpse of the nation had torn itself apart — slowly, but inevitably — along with the rest of the world, as a result of its unwillingness to believe that it was no longer in control.

General Stedman's desire to revive that old corpse did not in itself seem unhealthy, but Roads could not help but wonder.

Roads wound his way past a knot of schoolkids arguing with an MSA officer. They wanted to catch one of the rodent robots, but the guard had forbidden them from stepping into the convoy's path. Their shrill entreaties fell behind him and became indistinguishable from the noise of the crowd and the steady rumble of machinery.