The Android Chronicles Book One: The Android Defense (22 page)

He rolled his wheelchair
towards her and held out his hand.

“Call it a truce, Miss
Miles?”

Mandelie had to smile. She
shook his hand.

“Truce.”

“Thanks for coming,” Damian
said. “It’s been a while since that day I saw you on the beach in
your bikini, but I hold the memory sacred. If I could get it framed
I probably would.”

He indicated a chair set
out for her. “Sit, please.”

Mandelie sat and tried not
to watch Damian too closely as he pushed himself to the balcony
doors and shut one of them to keep too many breezes from blowing
into the room. She had to admit that despite his handicap, he had
not lost any of the undeniable handsomeness that had once made him
seem so arrogant and easy to loathe. His hair was significantly
longer and made him look like a medieval prince.

“Want anything to drink?”
Damian said. “Coconut margarita? Can you even drink legally
yet?”

“I’m twenty,” Mandelie said.
“My birthday’s in a few months.”

“I’ll make it nonalcoholic
then,” Damian said. “But if you wanted to drink here, I won’t tell
anyone.”

“I’ll pass,” Mandelie said.
She did not want her first drink to be at Damian Foster’s
residence.

Damian wheeled to a door in
the wall that Mandelie had thought at first belonged to a closet or
a bathroom. He opened it and she saw a long, state-of-the-art bar
inside.

“I had the bar put in after
I got back from the hospital,” Damian said. “I spend a lot of time
in here now, you know, and sometimes I need a drink.”

“Isn’t it kind of a bad
idea, having a bar in your room?” Mandelie said.

“It’s like giving a loaded
gun to a murderer,” Damian said. “But whenever I feel like I’m
drinking too much I give the keys to the room to Carlie. Nothing
worse than an alcoholic in a wheelchair.”

Mandelie watched him
concocting a drink for her with expertise. He came out of the bar a
few minutes later and gave it to her in a frosted glass.

Mandelie took a sip of the
drink and found it to be good. Damian quenched himself with his own
glass of bourbon.

Mandelie felt the tension
thick between them like a brick wall. Damian cleared his throat,
evidently aware of it as well.

“So the reason I asked you
to come here today is -”

“Damian,” Mandelie said.
Somehow she felt compelled to say the words.

“What?”

“I just wanted to say I’m …
sorry for not coming sooner to see you. I’m sorry about your
accident. I know we’re not on the best terms and I have a lot of
reasons to despise you, but none of it changes the fact that I’ve
known you for a long time, and once there was a time when I liked
you, really liked you as a friend. I don’t think the past really
matters anymore, now. I just want you know that I wish you well.
Despite everything.”

Damian’s green eyes were
inscrutable.

“Thank you,” he finally
said. “I never expected to hear you say that. But it means a lot to
me, especially coming from you.”

Still Mandelie felt the
distance between them, the inevitable clash between Damian’s wildly
spinning moral compass and her own carefully guarded
one.

“How’s Brigite doing?”
Damian said.

“She’s great,” Mandelie
said. “She’s sort of dating the receptionist at my dad’s lab. His
name is Jake.”

Damian took another sip of
bourbon.

“Good for him,” he said. “I
miss seeing her around sometimes. She gives the best erotic
massages. I really recommend them. Tell Jake that.”

He smiled.

“So why did you want me to
come here?” Mandelie said.

“I wanted to ask you for a
favor,” Damian said. “For your help and your involvement in a new
Adventis undertaking.”

“It doesn’t have anything to
do with androids, I hope,” Mandelie said.

“It concerns androids, but
not in the way you think,” Damian said. “There’s a new company
that’s looking to knock Adventis out of the android market. It’s
called Frontier. Heard of it?”

“No,” Mandelie said. Damian
looked slightly pleased.

“It’s run by this blowhard
named Madrick Castleshank. I know, what a name, right? Madrick’s
got an appetite for bloody corporate tactics like a bull shark. You
may not believe it, but he makes me look like a saint. Anyway, he’s
determined to make his company the biggest, flashiest tech company
around and chew Adventis up into dust. And I’m not going to let
that happen while I have a breath in my body.”

“So what do you need me
for?” Mandelie said.

“I’ve got a wild idea that I
want to make into a reality,” Damian said. “I’m putting together an
android circus. A display of all of Adventis’s newest android
technologies, as well as its older favorites like the X-droids and
the Fantastic Domestics. It’ll be open to the public for the price
of admission. I want it to be flashy and over-the-top, for sure,
but I want it to be state of the art and intelligent too. That’s
where I want your help. Yours and Luke’s and Brigite’s. I’d love
for the three of you to be involved. And I’d like your father to
curate the whole thing for me.”

“An android circus,”
Mandelie said. “Are you really serious?”

“I’m dead serious,” Damian
said. “I know it’ll be huge.”

“It sounds unbelievable,”
Mandelie said. “But I have to say it sounds like you,
Damian.”

Damian grinned.

“You and your father will be
compensated, of course. Generously. Luke too, if he’s interested in
the cash. I don’t know about Brigite, but if she’s goes on display
I’m sure she’ll pick up plenty of dollars.”

“I’d have to ask my father,”
Mandelie said. “And Luke. But I’m sure Brigite would be willing to
be part of it. You built her, after all.”

“What about you?” Damian
said.

His eyes locked on
hers.

“Can you promise me that
this event will be under control and one hundred percent safe?”
Mandelie said.

“I promise,” Damian
said.

“Then,” Mandelie said. “I’ll
help you.”

Chapter 15.

The building that had been
allotted to the five recruited android engineers for their
top-secret work on behalf of Frontier Corp. was a desolate,
ramshackle former shoe factory on the outskirts of Los Angeles. It
had been cleaned up and its structure reinforced, but the paint on
it was peeling and it was situated on acres of undeveloped land,
making it the only building for miles around.

Gustaf was pleased by this,
the other engineers less so.

“It looks like a prison,”
Mary said. “Are we really going to have to do our work
here?”

“It’s much, much better
inside,” Bernard said. “Frontier Corp. completely renovated the
bottom floor and made it into an extremely comfortable work space.
The second floor has been turned into private rooms for your
residence. There is 24/7 security and surveillance around the
factory as well. Mr. Castleshank wants the work to be done in the
utmost privacy and seclusion.”

“We’ve got that here,”
Jozeph said. “For sure.”

“Come,” Bernard said,
leading the way into the factory. “Let me show you
around.”

Gustaf rolled his single
suitcase behind him as they walked towards the renovated factory.
He noticed a few security guards walking around the
building.

Carel took out her camera
and snapped a picture of the building.

“For memories,” she
said.

She turned the camera on
Gustaf and attempted to take a picture of him as well. Gustaf flung
his arm over his face.

“Please,” he said. “I don’t
enjoy having my picture taken.”

Carel seemed a little
crestfallen but she put her camera away.

Bernard opened the heavy
door of the factory.

The five engineers walked
into a vast space that had once been filled with conveyor belts of
shoes, but were now filled with long gleaming banks of computers
and sound-proof, glass-walled experiment rooms. The floor was
spotlessly clean. Bright fluorescent lights hung from the
ceiling.

“Much better,” Harris said.
“I got a little bit of a fright outside, but this is more like
it.”

Bernard led them up a wide
set of steps to the second floor, where there was a long, bare
hallway of rooms.

“These used to be offices,”
he said. “Now they’re apartment rooms. Please choose the room that
you would like and put your things in it.”

The engineers scattered. To
Gustaf all the doors looked the same so he opened the one nearest
to him and went inside. It was a small, bare room that would have
been comparable to the cheapest motel room, but the floor was clean
and thinly carpeted. There was a low bed and a table, a small,
sterile bathroom and a window that looked out on the bare lands
around the factory.

He approved of his new
surroundings. He placed his suitcase on his bed and began
unpacking.

“You’re kidding, right?” Dr.
Miles said. “Damian Foster wants to organize a circus? An android
circus?”

He was sitting in his
office, looking at Mandelie in amazement.

“That was my reaction too,”
Mandelie said. “But he seems pretty serious about it.”

“Serious enough to come to
us and ask for our help,” Dr. Miles said. He leaned back in his
chair and seemed lost in thought.

“You don’t have to be
involved with it,” Mandelie said. “I wouldn’t blame you if you
turned it down.”

“I’m not saying no
outright,” Dr. Miles said. “I was just thinking about the first
time Damian came into this lab. He was probably seventeen or
eighteen. He had this look on his face, a look of complete
amazement and intrigue. I knew at that moment that no matter what
he did, he’d never get away from that hunger for science meets
spectacle, innovation on a grand scale. It’s haunted him all his
life. He used to babysit you, you know. Here, at the lab, whenever
I couldn’t be there.”

“Don’t remind me,” Mandelie
said. “I remember all too well.”

“And now he wants me to
curate his circus for him,” Dr. Miles said. “You’ve already told
him you’d help him?”

“I did,” Mandelie said.
“It’s not as easy to hate him anymore, Dad. I still don’t like him,
but I think he’s really feeling pushed against the wall and he
needs my help.”

“I am aware that Adventis
has seen better days than its present,” Dr. Miles said. “And I know
Madrick Castleshank in passing. His reputation is solid, but I
suspect it’s nothing more than a façade for his more brutal
instincts. Tell Damian he can count on my help, as
well.”

Mandelie felt
relieved.

“I think he’ll be glad to
hear that,” she said. “And I think he needs your involvement more
than he needs mine.”

“Have you asked Luke yet?”
Dr. Miles said.

“Not yet,” Mandelie said.
“But I don’t think he would say no, either. He’s on better terms
with Damian than either of us.”

Chapter 16.

“You’re on in five minutes,
Mr. Castleshank,” a girl in a staid dress said to Madrick, as he
waited in the wings of the Beverly Hilton ballroom. Beyond the
stage nearly five hundred notables in the technological innovation
industry were gathered for an annual lunch meeting.

“It’s Cass-la-shank, honey,”
Madrick said. He was dressed from head to toe in a glittering black
denim suit, with a beige cowboy hat. “It’s French.”

He looked through the
curtains of the wing at the speaker before him, the president of
Volkswagen, who finished up his speech to an enthusiastic round of
applause.

The man walked back into the
wing and Madrick adjusted the lapels of his denim
tuxedo.

“Showtime,” he said to
Bernard Card, lurking beside him.

A voice crackled on the
ballroom speakers.

“And now, please give a warm
welcome to the CEO and founder of one of the leading prosthetic
companies in the world, Frontier Corporation, which recently
announced plans to transform the market of android technology.
Please welcome Madrick Castleshank!”

Madrick’s colorful
reputation in the technological world was well-known and he was
greeted by a considerable amount of applause.

He walked to the podium, his
boots loud, and waited for the applause to die down.

“Thank y’all for having me,”
he said. “I am honored to be here, at such a wonderful, warm event
for my distinguished colleagues and peers. When I was a boy growing
up on a cattle farm in Austin, I never dreamed I’d come this far,
or that one day I’d be the head of a company single-handedly
responsibly for improving the lives of millions of amputees.
Frontier Corp. is proud to be a corporate sponsor of the U.S. army
and we have aided our boys at the front in ways that still bring
tears to my eyes whenever I think of it.”