IV
Waiting for dawn was the quixotic act of a unit too close to the meatmind to realise day and night were mere conveniences for those lacking infrared sight. Olympia's aesthetic decision should be outweighed by wastage of time. Once recharged, Franken conceived no reason why they should remain at Canyon de Chelly waiting for an illusory apt moment.
They should blow the column and move on. There were many more anomalies waiting to be tidied up. To pass the time, Olympia danced with Kochineel, her face set in a razor smile.
The resettlers might have notified the authorities. Canyon de Chelly was a National Monument and thus conspicuous. The Knock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots could best any number of individual patrols but if the US Cavalry were to mount a campaign like the one that shattered the Western Maniax, the cyborg future would die a-borning. War must eventually be carried against meat, but now the 'bots were too few to make large-scale hostilities pursuable.
Besides, strategy decreed the cybermind take complete control of the processes of perfectibility before meatfolks were rendered entirely obsolete. Dr Zarathustra, so amused by the symbolic face he had given Franken Steinberg, must yield BioDiv to his creation.
After Franken, Kochineel was the most complete machine among them. He wore only black scarves to cover meat forearms and skin shins. The rest of him was perfect automaton. His jester's cowl was metallic pseudoleather. Most of his external body was a ceramic carapace.
Andromeda watched Kochineel with interest. His form was what she could expect of her forthcoming alterations. When Franken had been reshaped, durium was state-of-the-art; now, molecule-locked ceramics were proven superior to any alloy. Kochineel's warranty was good up to and including tactical nukes, though he was not inclined to test it. Suppliers only guaranteed robo-bits; they did not extend insurance cover to the graymass where consciousness lived or any original parts required if you were to remain legally and psychologically yourself.
The dance was deliberate and measured. Through his chest-organ, Talos played the 'Barcarole' from
Kochineel lifted Olympia and morphed her through the air. Their moves were perfect, unwavering. No meat could match the precision. Every step and pose was calculated, computer animation in solid matter. If required, the dancers could encore, replaying their routine exactly to the micro-millimetre. Digital dancers would render obsolete stubborn fools who insisted on remaining trapped in steadily rotting carcasses. Kochineel stumbled.
An alarm! display lit up in Franken's vision. Something was seriously awry.
Olympia screamed, more in surprise than fear. Somersaulting, she landed on her points. She backed away in horror from her suddenly-imperfect companion, long legs like scissor-blades.
Pinocchiocchio stepped forward but Kochineel waved him away. His cowl-bells sounded, desperately. Kochineel's scarves were wet. He gingerly unpicked the scarf from his left forearm, unwinding cloth away from skin. Much of the skin, and a layer of meat, came away with the scarf. Kochineel's painted doll face could not register shock but the set of his ceramic shoulders, as if he were trying to distance himself from his own arm, gave away his feelings.
The meat of the arm was melting like wax, revealing the clean piston inside. Kochineel's hand clasped and unclasped, then, without the meatmuscles, seized up. It was as dead as alabaster. The Zarathustra rods that threaded through Kochineel's muscles were exposed. The effect was general. All organic matter in Kochineel's body was rotting away.
A splash of thick blood fell around him and dwindled into dead scum, leaving only the microscopic ticks of the nanomachines that had coursed through the cyborg's system. He fell to his knees, molten meat squelching, and looked up. His imploring eyes shrank and fell into his mask.
In the blackness of Kochineel's empty eye-holes, Franken read a bleak future. He signalled the others to stay away. There was a 76.83 per cent probability the effect was viral. Contact could be fatal. Olympia had already made the calculation and scrubbed herself. Franken shut down his ventilation system and systematically expelled air from inside the spaces of his body. The little of his meat that remained was not exposed.
Talos's organ still played. Offenbach drifted across the desert, accompanied by the rasps of Kochineel's exposed gears grinding uselessly against each other.
A diagonal crack shot across Kochineel's face, running from forehead to eye to mouth to neck. Liquid seeped through the fissure and flooded across his face. The graymass was gone. Kochineel pitched into the sand, inanimate as a store mannequin. Purely mechanical parts still functioned inside him and would do until his solar batteries perished, but there was no controlling intelligence. Insofar as he could die, Kochineel was dead.
'Most interesting,' Franken concluded.
'Look,' Olympia said, pointing.
Franken wheeled. Andromeda held up her ceramic hand, staring at it, gripping it with her meat hand. The robo-bit worked perfectly but Andromeda deliquesced. The athlete's stricken face ran behind her veil, soaking through. She assumed a position of traditional prayer, whimpering.
It was a waste of human potential.
Andromeda huddled into herself. Fluids gushed through her robes, splashing across sand and rock. She was the size of a dwarf, and shrinking. Her head withdrew like a tortoise's, sheltering in her fragile ribcage. Noisily, Andromeda melted away.
Her white hand, perfect and shining, lay at the edge of a putrescent pool.
'It would appear we are being betrayed by our meat,' Franken said.
The sun rose behind Canyon de Chelly and his IR function automatically cut out. Silver dawnlight flooded the area. The remains of Andromeda and Kochineel looked less real.
In the light-patterns the sun made around the stone column, it was impossible not to see the figure of a bearded man, hands outstretched, dressed in a long robe. It would have seemed a conventional representation of Jesus, the Christ, were it not for the curly horns sprouting from his forehead.
Franken made calculations but no explanation was forthcoming. There were precedents for such things but the files were still open, awaiting convincing analysis. At some point, miracles had been reclassified as Unknown Events.
Olympia, distraction blanked out, squatted by the console of her detonator. She had reordered her priorities and focused on the task. She flicked all the switches.
The charges around the base of Canyon de Chelly did not explode, but every scrap of meat in Olympia's body did. She was a red hurricane, swirling away from her mechanical parts. In the cloud of flesh, blood and bone, a shadow-woman of durium and plastic was torn apart. Franken's thought processes were scrambled by phenomena they were forced to regard as supernatural, and several of his chips burned out in a sizzling flash. He fought his headache and tried to think through the crisis.
Other 'bots emitted automatic distress signals as the effect took hold. Pinocchiocchio, Robbie the Robotman, Tetsuo, Hymie the Android, Rosie the Maid, Talos the Bronze, Mecha-Gojira, Tobor the Great, Maelzel. All exhibited symptoms. Franken calculated a 00.00 per cent possibility of saving any of his comrades.
Jesus Goat smiled broadly, his crown of horns bobbing.
Franken, calm under the circumstances, downloaded from graymass into the chips that constituted over half his brain. Memory bytes and personality traits might be lost, but he could survive without the trace elements of his meatmind. The probability was better than 65 per cent.
Pinocchiocchio jerked as if manipulated by a mad puppeteer, spare parts flying away from his spasming bulk. He blundered against one of the cars, leaving a substantial dent, and crashed down, breaking apart on the rocks.
This was the crisis of evolution.
