Final Battle (12 page)

“Huh?” he said. “Who is that?”

“Does it matter? I'm inside your head.” The sergeant did have a lot of earwax. I was very glad my ant-bot couldn't taste or smell. I had burrowed deep into his ear, deeper than any finger or Q-tip could reach. And I intended to stay.

“Who is it?” he repeated, with panic in his voice.

For the first time, even though I didn't quite know where this conversation was headed, I thought this crazy plan might work.

“Here's the truth,” I spoke into the darkness of the bottom of his ear. “I am someone who can make your life miserable. Unless you listen to me.”

“No!” The sergeant's panic grew. “It can't be you!”

I wondered who he thought I was. But I was willing to play along. “Why can't it be me?” I asked.

He moaned. “I swear I had no choice. I thought enemy soldiers were about to take us. I thought you'd run away with me. When I found out you hadn't, it was too late to return to help.”

“Chicken,” I said.

“Please,” he pleaded. “I've already been tortured by memories of you begging me to come back. I didn't mean to leave you in battle. You don't need to haunt me more.”

This guy believed in ghosts? “Just unlock the rooms that hold the kids,” I said. “Let them outside in the open area. Then I promise to leave you alone.”

“No!”

“Oooooooh!”
I raised the ant-bot's voice and tried the corny spooky ghost voice that you sometimes hear in really cheesy horror movies.
“Oooooooh!
Leaving me alooooooone.
Oooooooooh!”

“Please! Please leave me!”

I notched up the volume.
“Oooooooooh! Ooooooooooh!”

“Ouch!” he cried.

“I think,” I said, “I'll sing you some of my favorite songs. I know about 100 of them.”

I felt his head move. The darkness of the ear got even darker, as if he had clutched his head with both hands.

“Old MacDonald had a farm,” I began in my best off-key voice, remembering when Mom used to tell me about Earth tunes and other things on Mars. I still hadn't seen a farm or a pig or a duck, but I sure knew how to sing about them.
“Ey-iy-ey-iy-oooooh!
And on this farm he had a pig.
Ey-iy-ey-iy-oooooh!”

It was fun, singing, and I hit it with gusto. “With an
oink-oink
here. And an
oink-oink
there …”

“No! Normie, don't do this to me! I'm sorry I let you die!”

“Ducks next,” I promised. It was really sad that he'd abandoned a friend. Sadder that he had all this guilt. But the lives of more than 200 kids were at stake. I was going to push hard. “Do you like ducks?
Quack? Quack?
I'm going to be spending a lot of time in your head. Day and night. Unless, of course, you let the kids outside.”

“I can't! I can't!”

“Mooo! Mooo!”

“Please don't do this to me,” he continued to moan.

So I decided to try a different strategy. I reached out with one tiny ant-bot arm. Although I couldn't see what I was doing, I pinched as hard as I could.

“Ouch!”

I pinched and pinched. And
quacked
and
quacked.
And pinched and
mooed.
And pinched and
oinked
.

“Stop!”

I stopped.

“Just five minutes,” he said. “If I let them out for five minutes, will you leave me alone?”

CHAPTER 23

“Here's the problem,” I said to Nate back at the small space station when I had disengaged from the ant-bot. By now it was almost 2:00 on the morning of 04.07.2040. “Sound doesn't travel on the Moon. So I can't interview the robots in the tantalum mine.”

It was a relief to be away from robot control, at least for a while. I was glad to be floating in the zero gravity of the space station. On Earth, 125,000 miles below, if one plan had gone right, Ashley and all the other kids were now outside the Parker, Arizona, mountain fortress and about to be rescued by Cannon's commando unit. If another plan went right, Dad and the computer expert guy in New York had used an access code given to Dad by Ms. Borris to get into a worldwide satellite feed that would also connect to the computer on Nate's and my space station. On this end, all I had to do was enter the access code they had given me.

“Interview?” Nate had not shaved since we'd left Earth by shuttle. He rubbed the beginning of the dark bristles on his chin as he gave me a quizzical look.

“Cannon said there was no way to send in a military force.” I grinned. “So let's send in the entire world.” I looked down at the space station's mainframe. It didn't take long to keyboard the right access code. But I was far from finished.

“Send in the entire world?”

The next part was tricky. It involved tinkering with connector cables and hardware. I knew I needed to concentrate, but I was so tired that it felt like I was wearing heavy rubber gloves. That's where robots have a distinct advantage. They never get tired. They go until they run out of battery power, then stop. Me, I needed sleep.

I rubbed my eyes and strained to look for the right plug-ins. I needed to connect the mainframe to the robot-control computer. No one had ever tried this before, but the computer expert thought it wouldn't be a problem. Of course, he wasn't on a space station halfway between Earth and the Moon. Nor was he the person about to hook himself up to both computers.

“Ey-iy-ey-iy-oooooh … ,”
I hummed to myself. Anything to stay awake. Somehow the tune had stuck in my brain, and I was having a hard time getting it out. “With a
moo-moo
here. And a
moo-moo
there.
Ey-iy-ey-iy-oooooh …”

“Tyce!” Nate's voice broke in.

“Huh?”

“You all right?”

“Yeah.” I snapped a connection in place. If I had it wired right …

“You didn't answer my question. Send in the entire world?”

I rubbed my face again. “Virtual reality. It's like the real thing.”

“Pardon?” Nate asked. “You're slurring your words.”

I slapped my face a few times. “Virtual reality. We send the world there. Or we send there to the world.”

“Buddy, I'm worried about you.”

“I'm worried about me too,” I said. All I wanted to do was sleep. But I couldn't. Five minutes. That's all I needed. Five more minutes of staying awake. “Can you help get me ready for robot control one last time?”

Back in the tantalum mine, I found the robot exactly where I had left it. In the shadows of a man-size hole gouged into a shaft dug by other robots.

I rolled forward.

All of the other robots were busy with their giant torches. Except for a video monitor, they were not under supervision by any adults in space suits.

This made sense. The kids themselves were held hostage on the Manchurian space station. They had no place to escape, no matter what the robots they controlled on the Moon below them might do. So why waste space-suit time for adults? Just give the kids their assignment and work them mercilessly. The whole thing made me feel sick.

When I reached another robot, I touched its arm with mine.

The robot stopped cutting into rock.

It watched as I bent over and scratched some words on the Moon dirt, glad that English had evolved into a standard language across the world. These kids had all been kidnapped from different countries and had been robbed of the one place most important for anyone. Home. Something that maybe they'd finally find if we could get them released.

I finished scratching and let the kid who controlled the robot see what I had written. The robot clapped. The movement drew other robots closer.

Finally all of them crowded around to read the ground. And all started clapping. It had only taken four simple words.

Time to go home.

CHAPTER 24

Suits. I had never worn one on Mars. So this was a first. I decided I hated them. Especially stiff navy blue, with a white shirt underneath that itched. And a tie that cut off my air supply. I was glad it wasn't standard issue on Mars. But Ms. Borris had knotted the tie for me and told me to quit fussing. Dad had laughed the whole time I had tried pushing her away.

“Showtime,” Ms. Borris said, with an uncharacteristic grin on her face.

“Wonderful,” I said. I made a face at Ashley. She knew what I meant. It was anything but.

Yesterday, two hours after my robot had made contact with the other robots at the tantalum mine, a space shuttle had taken Nate and me back to Earth. After a quick flight to New York, I was ready—finally—for a good night's sleep.

This morning, the most wonderful thing happened. I woke up to my dad's smiling face.

And now I was about to face the World United Federation ethics committee—again. But at least I knew what to expect from the vice governors this time.

The door to the waiting room opened, and a Combat Force soldier nodded in my direction.

Dad knew better than to push my wheelchair for me. I hated it when anyone did that. It made me feel weak and helpless.

I gripped the arms and rolled forward. Alone. And nervous, yet somehow confident too.

The decision of the ethics committee would determine the future of robot control. Which would determine the direction of human history. I guess that was important enough to wear a suit. Even if it was uncomfortable and itchy.

I passed through the door and moved down the hallway.

The Combat Force soldier escorted me into a quiet chamber where all seven gray-haired men waited for me. The chamber where I had already faced them as I controlled a robot.

Now it was me.

In my wheelchair.

In my suit.

Showtime. None of the vice governors spoke for the first five minutes.

Instead the lights were dimmed and footage played on a large screen at the front of the chamber. I knew the footage. It had played for the entire world the day before, while I was still in the space station halfway between the Earth and the Moon.

It showed the interior of the Manchurian Sector space station that orbited the Moon. The kids were lined up in neat rows, suspended in giant jelly tubes.

A voice-over played during this eerie scene. “My name is Ingrid Sosktychek. I am 12 years old. When I was too young to remember, I was taken from my parents. I was trained in robot control on Earth. Two years ago I was moved here onto this space station. Twelve hours a day I control a robot that digs rock in a mine on the Moon. For the other 12 hours I am put to sleep and fed through tubes. Twice now my body has outgrown the tube that holds me. There are 24 of us on this space station. Please help.”

The footage showed as much as Ingrid could see through her own eyes as she turned her head within the tube that held her body. Then it went blank.

The blankness didn't surprise me. That happened when an adult monitoring the tantalum mine through surveillance cameras noticed two robots not moving. The worker rushed in wearing a space suit and disconnected the robots—mine and Ingrid's—from each other. By then, of course, it was too late.

Ingrid had spoken to the world.

Here in the chamber, the lights grew brighter again. “Gentlemen,” Vice Governor Patterson began, “I cannot presume all of you saw this yesterday when it broke live into all the major network programming. Even if you did see it then, or in subsequent newscasts, I want to remind you of the horror and abuse that is capable with robot control.”

“I'm still not sure how all of it was broadcast,” Vice Governor Armitage said. “The technology of this is far too confusing.”

“We'll let Tyce Sanders answer.”

They looked at me.

I swallowed. So far it didn't sound like they were going to vote in favor of robot control. But robot control wasn't the problem. It was the humans who took advantage of the technology and decided to abuse powerless people, like the 24 kids who were forced to operate the robots on the Moon.

“I can't explain exactly how it works,” I said, “because I can't explain everything about how computers work. What I can tell you, though, is that I was able to reverse the information flow. Usually the robots give and take information to the brain. This time a bypass allowed Ingrid to send what she saw and heard through her robot circuits into mine. That was relayed to my computer on board the U.S. space station where I was and patched into a satellite feed.”

In the tantalum mine, I'd made the connection from Ingrid's robot to my robot and then had immediately disengaged so I no longer controlled my robot. That turned my robot into a simple computer, and it continued to send information to our space station computer. Because Ms. Borris, before her disappearance, had been able to supply Dad with the codes that accessed the worldwide television network mainframe, it had been easy to hack into the network and feed the images to the entire world.

“I think I understand the basic concept,” Vice Governor Michaels said after a few moments. His voice echoed in the quiet of the chamber. “And I would like to point out to my esteemed committee members that while this footage is an example of the horror possible with robot control, it is also an example of a problem solved by robot control.”