“One problem at a time,” Dr. Granville said. He crouched down in front of the anxious dog. “William, what did you learn from his board?”
“There are two boards,” William said. “But I haven’t seen them. His owner wouldn’t let me.”
Martin put a protective arm around Chip’s neck. “He’s scared of resets, sir.”
Dr. Granville’s eyebrows went up. “Retrofitted?” he mused. “Well, don’t worry,” he went on as he ruffled Chip’s ears. “We probably won’t have to reset you. But we need to see your boards, so do me a favor. You’ve seen glass, clear glass, like these windows here. I need you to simulate glass for me so I can get a good look at your circuits.”
Chip glanced from Dr. Granville to Martin. Should I? his dark eyes asked.
“Go ahead,” Martin told him in a low voice.
The color in Chip’s gorgeous coat faded out until he looked like the silver ghost of a German shepherd. Then his rough hairs smoothed to satin. In seconds, he was a clear statue with two green circuit boards lodged in his chest.
“Very pretty!” Dr. Granville said. “But I’m seeing some distortion. Can you thin this area out? That’s it; perfectly flat. Good. Very good. Now, do me a favor and don’t move.”
William crouched down by Dr. Granville’s side and pushed her hair out of her face as she leaned forward. Rudy bent down to see too.
“Retrofitted, just as I thought,” Dr. Granville announced. “This toy board came later. See the clumsy soldering? That wasn’t done in a factory. He lost consciousness as one kind of bot and woke up as another. No wonder he’s afraid of resets.”
Dr. Granville pulled a small lens from his pocket and fitted it over his left eye. It gave off a tiny hum as it focused. He peered closely at the boards. Then he jumped up, handed the lens to William, and sat down on the top of his desk.
“Why he’s been altered is a bit of a puzzle,” he said. “But there’s no mystery about what he is. That’s the circuit board of an elected official.”
William looked crestfallen. “Are you sure?” she asked.
“Positive. There’s a regular hoard of them coming out these days, and they’re adding to the list all the time. Mayors, judges, county commissioners, corporation protocol officers, game show producers, you name it. Even half the talk show hosts are bots these days. No one seems to notice the difference. All in line with the favorite motto of the Savior of Our Nation: ‘The best way to safeguard a democracy is to keep the people out of it.’”
“A politician.” Rudy’s face clouded in disappointment. “Well, that settles that.”
Martin shifted uncomfortably. “It settles what?” he asked.
William peered through the lens at Chip’s transparent insides. “Dr. Granville, did your people make him?”
“Oh, heavens, no,” Dr. Granville replied. “They get produced in an automated facility. Never touched by human hands. William, did you note the connections? What do you make of it?”
“It couldn’t be worse! The boards have been married so that the connections can’t be severed. He’s always going to be a dog.”
Martin’s heart gave a leap. “Really?”
“Not quite,” Dr. Granville cautioned. “He’ll always be a dog if he wants to be.”
“But I don’t understand,” William said. “What about his amazing skills? What about the other bots? How can he be fooling them if he’s nothing but a talk show host in disguise?”
“That is a mystery,” Dr. Granville conceded, “but the mystery is why, not how. See the little gray chip snapped onto the daughter board? It’s not even soldered; it can pop right off. That’s the way your bot fools other bots. I just don’t know what that chip’s doing there.”
“Because it’s a chip normally issued to military bots?”
“Because it’s a chip not issued to anybody, anytime. I know because I made it myself, and quite complicated work it was— gave me a number of sleepless nights. Last year, the order for it came out of nowhere, highest clearance, highest priority, very hush-hush. I made it, and it went into the same nowhere— and here it is, prancing around in a toy.” He shrugged. “Don’t ask me why. That’s the kind of question I know better than to think about, and if you’re wise, you won’t think about it either.”
He pushed a malachite pyramid out of his way and seated himself more comfortably on his desktop. The malachite pyramid gave an angry mutter, sprouted stubby legs, and stalked off to settle itself elsewhere.
“What does the chip do?” Rudy asked.
“You know that every commercially produced bot has a security code that it emits to other machines,” Dr. Granville said. “The code gives the bot’s complete identity. Parts of it are hidden, of course—encrypted in convoluted ways; otherwise, the code could be misused. But my little chip deciphers a bot’s entire code and parrots it back as its own identity code. And that means your toy there tells another bot not just ‘I’m a bot of your same model,’ but ‘I’m you: I’m exactly the same bot you are.’”
William sat back on her heels. “No wonder bots trust everything he says. He was a collector to the collector and an officer to the officer. Even the packet AI thought he was an old railroading man.”
“I know one bot it didn’t work on,” Dr. Granville said. “Come in!”
A man in shabby cutoffs and worn sneakers came through the door. The transparent statue that was Chip yelped and scooted under the desk, where he struck a table leg with a crystalline chime.
“Martin!” the man cried, and Martin found himself confronted by Hertz’s disconcerting ice blue stare.
“Hertz!” he quavered as he backed up.
Hertz barreled over and shook his hand in a bruising grip. “I’ve been so worried! I didn’t intend to leave you alone like that.” He dropped his voice and glared at Chip’s sparkling tail, which stuck out beyond the edge of the desk. “Someone sabotaged me, they say. I have a pretty good idea who it was.”
“No names, Hertz,” Dr. Granville interrupted. “But tell us, what do you think of your friend’s pet?”
The bot’s blue eyes blazed.
“That thing’s a fraud,” he growled. “His insides don’t match his outside.”
“Very well put,” Dr. Granville said. “Hertz knows your bot is a fraud because he’s sending out a signal that he’s Hertz too. But Hertz is a beta, an experimental, one-of-a-kind bot. His programming tells him he’s unique. He’s a tracker. I designed him to find fugitives based on shed DNA, but that part isn’t working quite yet. He came back from his first trial so excited about the boy he’d saved out in the wilderness that he’s focusing all his attention on rescue work now.”
Hertz jutted out his jaw and nodded at Martin. “He and I did important work.”
“You hear that?” Dr. Granville said to Rudy. “‘He and I.’ Your young friend here is as interesting as his toy. Look at the bots in this room. They’re all focused on him. Even the medical blanket wants to get into his game. They respond to something about him. Simple expressions. Simple emotions, maybe. Whatever it is, it’s very handy. I could use this young man to help me with beta trials.”
Sleek and transparent, but canine nonetheless, Chip had begun to whimper. Now the dog came slinking back to his master. The light from the windows illuminated his clear form, so that the bright green circuit boards appeared to float across the room inside a shimmering nimbus. With a loud whine, he leaned into Martin, and Martin ran a hand over his cold, smooth ears.
“Thanks for the show,” Dr. Granville told Chip. “You can go back to being a dog now if you want. And, Hertz, I think you’d better wait for me back in your lab. You’re making our guest nervous.”
Hertz wrung Martin’s hand again in a grip like iron. “Take care,” he said. “If you ever want to go hiking, just let me know.”
Chip darkened like a brewing cup of tea. Then his legs and paws turned the color of honey. In another instant, he was fuzzy and wonderful and licking Martin’s face.
&n
bsp; “Big brother, if you’re counting on a mystery bot for support,” Dr. Granville said, “then you’ve run out of options. But you couldn’t have shown up at a better time. There’s news.”
“Yes, the lab,” Rudy said. “You told me. But this mystery about the bot still feels odd to me. Can we find out what kind of official he is?”
Dr. Granville snorted. “Still in love with puzzles, I see. You know it’s not smart to ask questions like that. For your own good, I’m not going to help you chase down the pedigree of a politician who’s been set up to look like something else.”
“What about calculating backward from when he showed up?” Rudy said. “Doesn’t that give you any idea what he might be?”
“Not anymore. Terms in office are variable now. It’s up to the bot official himself to report when his term expires.”
Rudy rubbed his forehead. “So someone went to all that trouble to hide an elected official, but why not just reset him and stick him in a drawer? And that chip you designed, ordered at the highest level—you mean the Secretary of State, I assume?”
Dr. Granville shrugged. “The order was anonymous, but who’s higher than the Secretary? Or involved in more . . . what shall we call them . . . games?”
“But why the disguise? A politician turned dog. A dog! That’s brilliant. The canine drive is so strong, the bot’s very happy to stay as he is. He gets to spend all his time playing with children, and if he meets any bots, they welcome him as a brother.”
“We can pop that chip off to solve that problem,” Dr. Granville said. “Listen to me! You’re in trouble. I can help you get out of it.”
Rudy’s face lit up. “Malcolm, I think I know who he is!”
A beep sounded from the console on Dr. Granville’s desk. He hopped down and circled the desk to check it.
“Think about it, Malcolm,” Rudy continued. “A vacation. A free pass for life. Who would give a bot a free pass for life?”
“That’s nice,” Dr. Granville said, but his voice had developed an edge. “We’re out of time here. You’ll listen whether you want to or not. We heads have negotiated a great settlement for you—a promotion, no less. We voted unanimously to bring you back to run the lab. All you have to do is contact the Secretary of State. The job’s already under your name.”
Rudy frowned. “That’s fine for me, but what about the others? Do you think I’m going to hand them over after everything we went through for them? Do you think I’m going to forget about them and save my own skin?”
“There’s plenty of room for negotiation,” Dr. Granville said. “As it stands in our agreement, the prototypes can work in your lab as long as they agree to be chipped so they can’t escape.”
“I expected that,” Rudy said. “I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the children.”
“Those will be yours, to continue the experiment. The Secretary guarantees it.”
“You call that a great settlement, to condemn them to the life of a lab rat? You didn’t live it, Malcolm. I did.”
Dr. Granville threw up his hands. “Would you please just think like a scientist? Stop trying to disown your work! You weren’t just a lab rat; you were the youngest, brightest deputy lab head this nation has seen. You did great work for the scientific community. These past four years have been a legacy any director would be proud of. Don’t let someone else take credit for your achievements.”
Martin stiffened. Deputy lab head? Lab director? His astounded glare met Rudy’s gaze.
“Oh no!” he shouted. “You’re one of them!”
“Shut up,” William hissed.
“No, he is! He’s one of those lab guys. He’s a baby killer! Come on, Chip. We’re getting out of here.”
“I’ll put in a good word for you,” Dr. Granville called as Martin headed for the door. “I hope we meet again. You two,” he said to Rudy and William, “need to stay here. That mystery bot is headed for trouble.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Martin charged out onto the long balcony. A low glass wall prevented him from falling into the tree-filled atrium far below.
“Chip, I think I’m gonna be sick,” he gasped.
“Please wait for your path,” squawked a lime green parrot. It fluttered to a perch on the rail beside him. “Your path is being programmed and will be here shortly.”
“Stuff the path!” Martin yelled as he ran off.
“That was very rude,” the parrot complained.
The balcony ended in a narrow bridge. Martin was positive they hadn’t crossed it, and he was equally sure he couldn’t possibly bring himself to step onto such a flimsy structure. “Which way was that elevator, Chip?” he asked. The German shepherd turned and dashed off the way they had come.
“That was very rude,” the parrot repeated, flapping up from the railing as they ran past him.
“Sorry, okay?” Martin told him.
He collided with William at the office door. “Martin, wait,” she said.
“Let him go,” Dr. Granville urged. Martin shoved her out of the way and sprinted off.
He found the golden elevator doors, but the elevator wasn’t there. Martin leaned over the railing and saw it a dozen floors below him, making its unhurried way up the side of the wall. Rudy and William ran up while he was waiting. He backed into the closed elevator doors as Chip barked at them.
“Get away from me, you baby killer!” he said. “I can’t believe I trusted you!”
Rudy’s handsome face was pale. “My work wasn’t like that,” he said.
“How dare you judge him!” William shouted. “You domedwellers live off us. You take our work, and you give back nothing.”
“Yeah, well, at least we don’t kill little kids,” Martin said.
“You don’t do anything but sit on your hands,” William snapped. “You buy our blood and sweat and eat it for dinner.”
With a melodious tone, the elevator doors opened. Martin threw himself inside and tried to close the doors, but Rudy and William followed him in. Barking and whining, Chip backed into a corner. “Ow! Ow! Okay,” Martin told the dog. “Stop that! It’s loud in here.”
The elevator ride felt endless. The beautiful atrium floated past as they glided down the wall. Martin studied the scenery and tried to pretend he was alone.
“I understand how you feel,” Rudy said. “I’m not defending my lab. But I’m not a monster. I focused on positive outcomes. The eradication of deformity, genetic damage, hereditary disease.”
“Did you kill babies?”
Rudy hesitated. “I fought for a reduction in experimental subject terminations. Under my tenure as deputy, the initiation of terminal tests dropped seventy-two percent. My technicians euthanized only to manage suffering.”
“But did you kill babies?”
“That wasn’t my goal.”
“So what?” Martin said. “I don’t care about your goal! The point is, kids died, and you helped. You did help, didn’t you?”
Rudy sighed. “Yes, you’re right. I did.”
They descended into a canopy of green leaves, and the garden where they had enjoyed refreshments was around them once more. The elevator doors opened, and Martin threw himself out.
“Then get away from me, you baby killer!”
William followed him down one of the garden paths. “That’s not fair!” she cried. “He made a big difference. We had outdoor recreation, sing-alongs . . . some of us even got jobs!”
Martin stopped, and then stumbled as Chip barreled into him. He turned around to face her. “Oh, big whoop, a sing-along. That makes it all just fine.”
“His team eradicated twenty-three different genetic diseases,” she shouted. “Twenty-three diseases that killed people! Doesn’t that matter to you? What would you know about it, anyway, you ignorant, outmoded reject? Our lab did important work!”
Rudy came up beside her and laid his arm around her shoulders. “What about Emilia?” he asked.
William’s face froze into an expr
essionless mask. She jerked away and stood silent.
“I understand how this sounds to you,” Rudy said. “I’m not going to defend my work to you, because parts of it aren’t defensible. But all I want now is to help you, to help your sister, to help all of us. I have a plan. I need you to trust me. We have to get your bot to Central.”
Martin reached the edge of the garden and located the grand hallway that led to the packet rails.
“We already did it your way with my bot,” he shouted. “And I don’t care what you need, I don’t trust you!” He sprinted down the long, curving ramp and rounded the corner into the reception area.
A maroon packet stood on the rails where the little park bench transport had been. The golden sunlight dripping through the thick green glass burnished its shabby sides. Two men in gray suits stepped up beside him.
“Remember us, kid? The A and Z guys?”
Martin turned to run, but strong arms wrapped around him, and Chip melted with a whisper into a silver pool of gel.
“Chip!” Martin shrieked. He tried to kick away the reset chip that clung like a burr to the gel, but Abel pulled him back.
“Ow! Hey, Zebulon, check this out. His clothing is trying to punch me!”
“Let go of me!” Martin howled. “Give me my dog!” But his hands met with a click behind his back.
“Okay,” Abel said, taking a step away, “you’re handcuffed, and I’ll beat the crap out of you if you make a move toward that dog. Now you just tell your shirt or whatever to stand down.”
Martin’s blanket, rippling with excitement, stood out from his shoulders like a giant saucer, daring anyone to come within reach. Abel bent beneath its flared canopy and pulled away the silver pancake that was Chip. The blanket reached out a corner and snapped him on the side of the head.
“I think it’s one of those medical units,” Zebulon said, inspecting it. “If so, it’s got about two seconds to remember its lifesaving mission. After that, it meets our circuit board shredder.”
The blanket gave one last heave in their direction. Then it deflated like a tired exercise ball.
“You’re under arrest, Blanket Boy,” Zebulon said. “Felony assault on the Secretary of State. You broke a bone in his hand. It’s a good thing we decided to consult with Dr. Granville about that weird bot of yours. When we heard a dog had showed up half an hour before us, we knew it was our lucky day.”