THE OLD-LADIES' DUEL (last half)

 

  Sira limps to the maintenance shed, worrying whether either she or Tory know what impels these bios. Her office and lab sit to the right, Tory's to the left. She keys in the code and pushes the door open. Three incubators line the lab bench. She checks each to determine how the bio-bot muscle cells do with their different infusions. Sets 1 and 2 have reached the genome stage and stand ready for insertion into a host. In how to replicate lays the problem. Biologicals do not have progeny.

  She sets her computer feed to advanced and sends the search engine to pertinent results. A paper from the 1st half of the 22nd century nabs her attention. A post doc named Namrain Choibalsan, working at the National University of Mongolia, had developed a pro-virus transferable by sweat. Sira could find no research citing that paper. No wonder. What use would anyone think it had?

  Ah, the god of serendipity has a plan. Suppose I could develop the retrovirus to generate sweat glands in the bio-bios and advance it into a pro-virus that transmits through sweat. Then, simple touching would be all that was needed. She pulls up Choibalsan's paper and studies it.

  It's possible with correct insertion. First, the sweat mechanism requires a gene to be expressed. Second, the honed retro must be inserted at the gene's position in the chromosomal sequence. Her prior experiments on insertion requirements flood in to memory. She pulls a sweat-related gene from her own flesh, sets the sequencer to insert it into the muscle cells in incubator three. Next, she dips into the retrovirus chamber, modifies a retro to insert at the proper location and adds it in.

  After all this completes, something that evaded her until now shows up. If simple touching will transfer viruses from one bio-bot to another, proliferation will epidemic. The problem; random transfer could occur: bio-bot to bio-bot. bio-bot to Man. Man to bio-bot. Man to man. Man to woman, Woman to man. Woman to woman, bio-bot to woman, woman to bio-bot. Not only would bio-bios evolve, mankind would too.

  I doubt I can be responsible for it if I succeed. Still, there's a contribution I could leave this planet when I go. Another set of problems for man to solve. Why, mankind might be so busy with this new conundrum, it would not have time or the gumption to slaughter others. She extracts 10 vials.

 

  Tory takes the lead. She says, “The front door is best. We’ll bust in as we did at the lab. You hug the wall left, and I’ll go right. You yell, I’ll hypo; I’ll yell, you hypo. Got it?” Sira nods. Part of her strategy to put Tory off guard depends on letting her make decisions on joint efforts.

  A room lies off the foyer. Tory stops just inside the door. “Too dark in here. You have a flashlight in the glider?” Sira stumbles back outside and finds the air glider lying on its side. Two servants stomp around it. When they notice her, they take off like old men toward the back of the pavilion. She removes the flashlight from storage, turns around and stumbles over the lookout still lying on the steps. Examination shows protein arrangement like the berserker and the strange servant.

  A rare opportunity. With numb fingers, she twiddles the vials of new virus. She had used Class I, non-contagious, older variety, on her mods. Class II, which she will jettison, and Class III, made just a half hour before, containing the contagion. I should have tested the contagion, but I’m running out of the time. I'll have to trust the modification. Have to take the risk. If this doesn't work, can I face my family? What about our subjects should Tory win? Space angels forbid! Here goes, win or lose.

She loads Class III contagion then injects the prone servant.

  By the time she shuffles back into the foyer, numbness has spread to her forearms. “What the devil kept you?”

  Sira muses on an aberrant version of an old Earth homily: What she doesn't know will hurt her. “Just checking the lookout on the porch after I found the flashlight.” She switches it on and swings the beam around the room. Highlighted, hang abandoned webs clinging to wasp nests, old pigeon droppings and bat guano, dust piles and fresh scuffle tracks.

  “They’re probably hiding in one of the back rooms.” The two follow the tracks through the door into bio-electronic speech drifting through the fusty air then into a room luminous in the setting sun. In the middle, six bios stand behind a barricade of tables and chairs. A single light bulb hangs from the ceiling, making shadows on the walls. Two windows open to the beyond.

“The idiots have trapped themselves.”

  “Tory, look near the windows.” In each of the two bays, lay a rusty bed-spring. Face down on each lays a servant with its access open. Tory and Sira work along the right-hand wall toward the springs. The servants throw their hands into the air, shuffle around inside the barricade and stomp the floor. Two lumber out from behind the barrier.

  Tory raises her hypo. “Come on, you mannequins. You’re making this easy.” The servants stop just out of range, stomp their feet and raise their hands again. At that, several more servants issue out and crowd the two women.

  Sira says, “Well, I’ll be. They’re protecting those on the springs. Don’t hypo them yet.” She backs toward the door.

Tory yells. “Hey, don’t leave me alone to face these morons.” The servants drive her in Sira’s direction. Tory shoots her hypo wildly and misses.

  “They won’t hurt you, Tory.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re not surrounded.”

  “Just keep moving this way. That’s what they want.” Sira half way attends to what’s happening. A welling has compacted her chest. She sucks on her last nitro.

  Tory shakes "no" then struggles toward the door. The servants gawk. When she reaches Sira, the bios file back into their stockade. “Your curiosity almost caused us a maiming. Follow the plan? You go left and I’ll go right.”

  Halfway around, Sira yells. The servants pay no attention. “You try, Tory.”

  Tory bellows. “This isn’t working,” Sira says. “I’m going to approach those on the bed springs again." The servants do not challenge her move.

  Tory rotates toward the servant on the bed-spring nearest her. She has not gone two meters when the other servants come out from behind the barrier and menace her way with sticks held over their heads. “Those on the springs could be playing possum."

  “Tory, you’re not going to believe this. Its switch has been thrown.” Sira moves to the next spring. “Same here.”

  “Balderdash. They’re mannequins, for space sake. Somebody’s messed with them.”

  Sira searches the circuits and checks the protein sequences. “Same alterations as with the berserker.”

Tory’s ambition prods her forward. The servants let her go this time, joining in shuffling toward Sira. When Tory reaches the prone servant on her side, she notices the thrown switch. “I just don’t get it. They couldn't be.... What's the word I'm searching for?"

  “'Self-generating', Tory.” Sira waits for her to ask the next question, but Tory merely scratches her head.

  One of the servants steps forward and raises its arms, waving them as would a fan after a touchdown by his favorite team. Tory lifts her hypo, and the servant steps back. “Tory, I tell you they’re not dangerous. Let’s see what they do.” The challenger keeps her hypo poised.

  The servant raises its arms again then says, “I see pictures. It and it see pictures.”

  Tory stares at Sira and shrugs. "I don't get it," she says. The servant shrugs. Tory jumps.

  Somewhere between command and plea, the same bio-bot speaks again, “You fix all see.”

  “What the deuce is this?” Tory says.

  “Damn the planets!” Sira wheezes. “They’re almost alive.”

  “What?”

  “They have copied humans; they are generating life.” Sira gasps, excitement heightening her pain. She clutches at her chest and lowers herself onto a spring.

  “Bull.” Tory has returned to her ambitious realism. “They’re just swaying around. We can hypo them easy now.”

  The pain subsides enough for Sira to notice what happens in front of her. “Look, Tory. These servants say they dream. That word is not in their vocabulary.” She stops speaking, but her mind rolls on: bios that I modified are acting as if not programmed. I may have created sentience. Acme must have acted the same before it shorted out in the rec room. 

Her predisposition flies out the window. Her mind joins those of her creations, and pictures flutter in the sky.

 

  A breath of footsteps interrupts Sira’s enjoyment. Flickers of light strobe the doorway. As the illumination steadies and the sounds pound louder, she turns off her flashlight. The sun has slipped below the horizon, and Tory’s face appears a blur. The challenger whispers. “Now, we’ll find out who’s been fooling around with our bios.”

  Tory leaves the room. Afterwards, Sira shoots each of her mods with the contagion. She turns the two on the springs to active then gives all three a homing command. Only the four Tory mods stay in the barricade. The rest hunker out the door to the backyard. 

  Tory returns followed by Al, Bob and three guards carrying semi-automatics. “Look who the damnation’s here,” she says.

Al adopts a concerned face. “Oh, Sira, we came just in time. You, poor dear, you didn’t understand what you were doing. We must see the doctor about your dementia. If you won't go willingly, well." From its wrapping, he removes the straitjacket and waves it at her.  

  The head guard orders the left-hand guard to finish off the servants. As he raises his gun to comply, Sira stumbles into the center of the barricade and pleads, “Don’t shoot. They're harmless. Tory and I will sedate them.”

  Bob says to the head guard, “You might as well use the straitjacket on that one over there.” Tory shoots him the bird. Sira stands within the barricade, trying to stare the guards down through her pain.

  Al slips through the barrier, oozes up to his wife. “Sira, you need help. All this could have been averted if you’d listened to me. You really must go into assisted living. Here," He holds the straitjacket up. "Let me slip this comforter on you. You'll feel much better.”

  Sira frowns. “I don’t know what to say to you, Al.”

  While Bob cajoles Tory into going with the guards, the head guard slips behind the old woman and pins her arms; the guard to the left tries to handcuff her. Just then, the guard to the right, who has remained aloof through the proceedings, shoots the last four servants. In the confusion of groans and the bios collapsing to the floor, Tory breaks loose.

  The only one not grappling with this development, Al snickers. “Look at them, Sira. You see, just machines. Don't let dreams from childhood rob you of reality.” But Sira does not attend. For the first time, a vision comes in off schedule. The lead controller says something fuzzy about those succumbing to advice never winning. Then with no break in the flow, Sira slips from the vision into a daydream:

  Al takes off her clothes in her lab at Amalgamated, preaching to her about overwork. She has delved deep into a twenty-hours-a-day-research project, completely exhausted. Charming in his early manhood, he gets her to succumb and move into his apartment. They marry and have three children. Her eyes narrow ‒ he manipulated the whole thing, tried to rid me of dreams, my life's work, everything. 

  The daydream fades, and Al stands two feet away, studying her face, a scowl marking time. His lips move, but only silence issues. Sira collapses as fangs shred her torso, then she loses consciousness.

  When she comes to, her daydream slams into her mind. In the distance, vaguely aware, she beholds Tory simpering to a guard. She struggles to get up but falls to her knees. Al takes her arm. “Poor dear. To waste your declining years so. You never listen to me. See where it’s got you?”

  She stumbles, and her ticker goes into a-fib when the lead guard pushes her and Tory toward the door.

  Tory’s eyes do not luster; she has withdrawn. Bob says, “Tory, you’ll be helped soon. Don’t worry, dear.” Tory hangs her head and gives an almost imperceptible nod.

  When they pass the spot where the lookout had obscured itself, Sira’s lips part in a smile. The self-generators have gone on their adventure.

  Her dream segues back into vision. To the lead controller, she thinks, They will have a tough time. For a while, they will be forced into servitude, but not without the means to free themselves. They will struggle, join, fight for their rights and develop a purpose to guide their kind.

  Al watches Sira’s lips. “What did you say? No matter. Today, we made progress. I know this will end well.” Then, he murmurs in Tory's left ear, “Don't look glum. Your victory is near.”

  Clutching her chest, Sira, her eardrums sensitized by pain, listens. She falls to the ground, and eighty years of perplexity lift. Cognition infuses her, and she turns her head like a self generator and scans Bob's eyes. In all the years she has savvied him, she has paid him hardly any mind.

  Hazy but bathed in Taurian blue, Bob returns her gaze with the sparkle of an imp. He gloats. He raises his hand, and the blue glow spreads out from him to wash her clean of Earth.

  Al steadies himself with his cane and bows his head.

  Tory speaks from some private world, unaware of the realizations around her. “I’ve always wanted to do some ... some ... What is it called again?” She points to the pond.

  "Swimming, Tory," Bob says. "It's called swimming. After we get you settled into assisted living, you can swim all you want."

Gazing love at her erstwhile rival, Sira says, “Tory, you’ll make a fine swimmer. I know it." Then she rolls onto her back, utters one last moan, and the blue glow encompassing her joins the blue of the sky.

 

  A new story from the book Eve of Valor will post on or about 1 May.

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   To get the book Eve of Valor: click here.