The Android Chronicles Book One: The Android Defense (27 page)

“He’ll show up,” Trista
said. “Don’t worry.”

“I’ll try not to,” Mandelie
said. “But it’s completely not like him.”

Accompanied by two Imperial
Guards, Luke stood waiting in the majestic rotunda of the
Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria. Beside the guards it was hard
to tell a difference between him and them, even though he wore a
dark sweater, gray trousers, and shining black shoes, instead of
their green and gold uniform. He was similarly tall and lean, his
posture alert and effortlessly controlled. His dark blond hair was
brushed back and his blue eyes were inscrutable.

The room in which he was
standing was vast, filled with dark, echoing spaces. The carpet
under his feet was deep and thick. Long richly red curtains were
pulled back from the arched windows of the room. A coat of arms was
placed on the stone wall high over his head. Meandering, silent
servants drifted through the room like jellyfish on a
current.

There was the sound of a
door closing and then a slender, ethereal-looking girl appeared at
the top of an ornate golden staircase and made her way down the
crimson stairs towards him. She had a pale face with aristocratic
features and her large blue eyes were filled with a strange,
haunting light. Her pale blond hair was coiled into innumerable
slender braids piled on top of her head. She wore a red caftan with
gold embroidery on its skirt hem and its long draping sleeves, an
abundance of golden bracelets on her slim wrists, and a gold collar
around her white neck. Her steps were silent and
graceful.

She paused on the bottom
step. Her eyes rested on Luke and showed their satisfaction on
seeing him.

She extended her hand
towards him. It was bedecked with golden glimmering
rings.

“At last we meet, Luke,” she
said. “I am Princess Dabya.”

“Oh, look, that koala just
touched the other one,” Brigite said, pointing to Jake’s computer
screen.

They were both so engrossed
in staring at the koalas that at first they did not notice the door
opening and Damian entering in his wheelchair, accompanied by
Carlie, who cleared her throat.

“Mr. Foster!” Brigite said.
She walked out from behind the reception desk in her spiked
heels.

“Always nice to see you,
Brigite,” Damian said. “I’ve got an appointment with Dr.
Miles.”

Mandelie and Trista came
into the room.

“Mandelie,” Damian said,
throwing a smile in her direction.

Mandelie returned it, only
politely.

“Follow me, Damian,” Trista
said, leading the way to the experiment room where Dr. Miles
was.

“Hello, Damian,” Dr. Miles
said, shaking Damian’s hand. “And you too, Carlie.”

“So what’s going to happen
here?” Damian said. His face was still wary and guarded.

Dr. Miles held up the black
plate.

“I’m going to administer an
anesthetic to you,” he said. “I will perform a surgical procedure
on your back and then attach this black plate to an area on your
spine. The top of the plate will show through your skin, but the
bottom will be attached very securely. Once the plate is attached,
it should generate an electric surge that will – hopefully – give
you the use of your legs again.”

Damian exhaled.

“It sounds like a fantasy,”
he said.

“It’s very real,” Dr. Miles
said. “I can’t guarantee that it will work, of course. However, if
the plate does work, you won’t be able to remove it from your
spine. You’ll need it in order to walk.”

Damian glanced at Carlie,
and then at Mandelie, and then back at Dr. Miles.

“Are you sure you can do the
surgery?” he said.

“I’m not a surgeon,” Dr.
Miles said. “But I’m knowledgeable about anatomy and you won’t find
a surgeon anywhere who will be willing to put this plate on
you.”

Damian looked a little pale.
But he nodded.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s
get started.”

Chapter 2.

Luke and Princess Dabya were
seated at a graceful wooden table in a sun-drenched garden of the
palace. The table was laid with golden cloth and covered with a
magnificent tea set made of white china and gold.

Princess Dabya began pouring
a cup of tea for them both dexterously.

“I have heard of you much
earlier than this,” she said. “The events of the past year
concerning you and your cohorts at Argonaut Laboratories have
reached the worldwide media. I’ve found them extremely riveting.
You are as handsome in person as you are in your press
photographs.”

“And your Habsburg blood
shows in every aspect of your bearing,” Luke said. He pulled his
cup of tea towards him.

Princess Dabya laughed. She
sipped from her own cup.

“You are too kind. I try to
modernize myself in every other way, however.”

A servant slipped between
them and began laying plates of pastries on the table.

“Palatschinken,
apfelstrudel, nockerl, and sacher torte,” Princess Dabya said,
pointing to each dish in turn. “Have you ever eaten Austrian
food?”

“No,” Luke said. “I’m afraid
I have not. But I am honored to try it for the first time in the
presence of Your Imperial Highness.”

“Please. Call me Dabya.
Using titles is such an expenditure of time.”

Luke waited until the
servant had gone before speaking.

“I am sure you receive your
news through different channels as well,” he said. “Lesser-known
channels spanning a wide network of influences. The Society of the
Future, maybe?”

Dabya paused before her fork
was about to touch the apfelstrudel.

“So that is why you are
here,” she said.

“You are an incredibly
influential member of the society,” Luke said. “It doesn’t surprise
me, concerning your impressive knowledge of robotic engineering and
computer dynamics. Much of the public does not know that you
secretly received a sciences degree in engineering from Vienna
University.”

“My family was against it,”
Dabya said. “But I have slightly distanced myself from the Society
in the past year, Luke. Our most recent president, Cargio Lataun,
was jailed. It was a disgrace, an embarrassment.”

“But you remain a financial
supporter and a member,” Luke said.

“Of course,” Dabya said. “I
believe in the Society’s vision of the future and I await their
next presidential appointment with curiosity. Lataun was a mistake.
We had no idea that he was going to take things so far. What do you
want with the Society, Luke?”

“Familiarity,” Luke
said.

Dabya sipped her tea. She
seemed lost in thought.

“You have not yet taken in
Vienna yet, I suppose,” she said. “You must stay and be my guest
until you have. I insist.”

“I would never dream of
refusing the Princess’s invitation,” Luke said.

Carlie sat in the front room
of the lobby, trying not to look in the direction of the room where
was operating on Damian. She stared at her iPad but found herself
unable to concentrate on it for one of the few times in her
life.

At last she got up and
joined Brigite and Jake behind the computer.

“What is this?” she
said.

“Koala Kam,” Jake said. “It
should be classified as a drug. How long have we been watching
these things, Brig?”

“I don’t know,” Brigite
said. “The time seems to have gone by so quickly.”

“They’re going to feed the
koalas soon,” Jake said. “That’s the best part.”

“I don’t really like
koalas,” Carlie said.

Jake and Brigite both gasped
as though she had said she wished to murder the Easter
Bunny.

“This is my security detail,
Luke,” Dabya said. “My head of personal security, Nichlaus
Schroder. Nichlaus, this is my esteemed guest Luke. He is from
America.”

Luke shook hands with the
immensely tall, broad-shouldered bodyguard. Nichlaus had a thick
beard peppered with gray, his face was lined, but his eyes were
sharp and observant.

“A pleasure,” Nichlaus
said.

“I must introduce all of my
guests to my bodyguards, otherwise someone might accidentally get
shot,” Dabya said to Luke, as they continued on their walk through
the gardens behind the Schonbrunn Palace, Imperial guards tracking
their every turn from a distance.

Rose trees were all around
them and the walk beneath them was covered with lush grass and flat
gray stones for their feet. Dabya held a pale green parasol over
her head to shade herself from the sun.

“Do you enjoy the symphony,
Luke?” Dabya said. “There is no actual music to be found anywhere
other than in Vienna.”

“Mozart was a singular human
being,” Luke said.

“Then you’ll be glad to know
the Vienna Mozart Orchestra is playing a tomorrow night at the
Musikverein,” Dabya said. “Will you attend with me?”

“I would be delighted,” Luke
said.

Mandelie was waiting outside
of the room where her father was operating on Damian, leaning
against the door. She could hear faint sounds from inside the room
– the sound of beeping, the sound of a drill, and her father’s
voice as he issued tense instructions to Trista.

After nearly three hours
Mandelie was sitting on the ground outside of the door, dozing off.
She nearly fell into the room when Trista opened the door
abruptly.

Mandelie got to her
feet.

“Get in here,” Trista
said.

She pulled Mandelie into the
room.

Dr. Miles was removing
safety goggles from his face. He looked relieved and began dropping
bloodstained tools into a tub near the sink.

Mandelie saw Damian lying
shirtless on his stomach on a table. He was still unconscious. The
black plate was visible on his back at the base of his
spine.

“He’ll come around in a few
minutes,” Dr. Miles said. “I timed it perfectly.”

Mandelie stared down at the
black plate. The edges of it were stained with blood.

“It should be working
already,” Dr. Miles said. “Getting the current going.”

Damian groaned. He stirred
and lifted his head.

Mandelie was nearest to him
and she met his eyes.

“How are you feeling?” she
said.

“I can feel something below
my waist,” Damian said.

“Try putting your feet on
the ground, Damian,” Dr. Miles said.

Damian reached out with his
hand and instinctively Mandelie took it. He held on to her hand
tightly as he swung his legs over the edge of the table and set his
feet on the floor.

“Try standing,” Mandelie
said.

The black plate on Damian’s
spine sent a burst of electricity through his legs, activating
every dormant nerve in them.

Damian exhaled and got off
the table. He put his full weight on his legs.

He was standing.

Chapter 3.

Her iPad tucked under her
arm, Carlie walked down the steps from the balcony of Damian’s room
and onto the lush green grounds behind his villa. Her face seemed
slightly less strained than it had been in months and she was
wearing her dark hair in a longer style than her usual short
curls.

She passed by the gardens,
the fish pond, and innumerable swathes of immaculate green turf and
made her way down a gently sloping hill to a solid concrete
building at the base of it.

She let herself into the
air-conditioned indoor tennis court. It encompassed two
Olympic-sized courts. The first thing Damian had done when he had
regained the use of his legs was to dismiss his physical therapist
and hire a tennis instructor.

Carlie joined the other
person standing along the sidelines of the court, a maid carrying a
tray with a glass of ice water and a folded white towel on it and
wearing a long-suffering expression on her face as she waited for a
break in the game.

Damian was playing a hard
game of tennis with his instructor, an attractive blond. Carlie
watched as the instructor hit the ball hard towards the opposite
end of the court and Damian dove for it, hitting it back at the
last second. He was drenched in sweat.

“Damian,” Carlie said.
“Damian!”

She picked up the whistle
hanging around her neck and blew it.

Damian finally signaled for
a stop to his instructor. Seizing her opportunity the maid ran to
him with the water and the towel.

Damian dumped the glass of
water over his head. He wiped his face with the towel.

“That’s the fifth straight
hour of tennis I’ve played, Carlie,” he said. “I’m not even tired!
I could probably play all day. Man, this is the best feeling I’ve
ever had. We’re playing a game of naked Twister
tonight.”

“We are NOT playing a game
of naked Twister,” Carlie said.

“Oh come on. You’ve got to
celebrate with me,” Damian said.