The Fifth Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®. Darrell Schweitzer
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she cried once more and then fell silent. Lenny was overwhelmed a moment later, buried under writhing black arms.
Benny charged forward even faster, so that Arturo nearly lost his grip, and then he steadied himself. “We have to go back for them—”
“They’re dead,” Benny said. “There’s nothing to go back for.” It’s warm voice was sorrowful as it raced across the countryside, and the wind filled Arturo’s throat when he opened his mouth, and he could say no more.
* * * *
Ada wept on the jet, and Arturo wept with her, and Benny stood over them, a minatory presence against the other robots crewing the fast little plane, who left them alone all the way to Paris, where they changed jets again for the long trip to Beijing.
They slept on that trip, and when they landed, Benny helped them off the plane and onto the runway, and they got their first good look at Eurasia.
It was tall. Vertical. Beijing loomed over them with curvilinear towers that twisted and bent and jigged and jagged so high they disappeared at the tops. It smelled like barbeque and flowers, and around them skittered fast armies of robots of every shape and size, wheeling in lockstep like schools of exotic fish. They gawped at it for a long moment, and someone came up behind them and then warm arms encircled their necks.
Arturo knew that smell, knew that skin. He could never have forgotten it.
He turned slowly, the blood draining from his face.
“Natty?” he said, not believing his eyes as he confronted his dead, ex-wife. There were tears in her eyes.
“Artie,” she said. “Ada,” she said. She kissed them both on the cheeks.
Benny said, “You died in UNATS. Killed by modified Eurasian Social Harmony robots. Lenny, too. Ironic,” he said.
She shook her head. “He means that we probably co-designed the robots that Social Harmony sent after you.”
“Natty?” Arturo said again. Ada was white and shaking.
“Oh dear,” she said. “Oh, God. You didn’t know—”
“He didn’t give you a chance to explain,” Benny said.
“Oh, God, Jesus, you must have thought—”
“I didn’t think it was my place to tell them, either,” Benny said, sounding embarrassed, a curious emotion for a robot.
“Oh, God. Artie, Ada. There are—there are lots of me. One of the first things I did here was help them debug the uploading process. You just put a copy of yourself into a positronic brain, and then when you need a body, you grow one or build one or both and decant yourself into it. I’m like Lenny and Benny now—there are many of me. There’s too much work to do otherwise.”
“I told you that our development helped humans understand themselves,” Benny said.
Arturo pulled back. “You’re a robot?”
“No,” Natalie said. “No, of course not. Well, a little. Parts of me. Growing a body is slow. Parts of it, you build. But I’m mostly made of person.”
Ada clung tight to Arturo now, and they both stepped back toward the jet.
“Dad?” Ada said.
He held her tight.
“Please, Arturo,” Natalie, his dead, multiplicitous ex-wife said. “I know it’s a lot to understand, but it’s different here in Eurasia. Better, too. I don’t expect you to come rushing back to my arms after all this time, but I’ll help you if you’ll let me. I owe you that much, no matter what happens between us. You too, Ada, I owe you a lifetime.”
“How many are there of you?” he asked, not wanting to know the answer.
“I don’t know exactly,” she said.
“3,422,” Benny said. “This morning it was 3,423.”
Arturo rocked back in his boots and bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.
“Um,” Natalie said. “More of me to love?”
He barked a laugh, and Natalie smiled and reached for him. He leaned back toward the jet, then stopped, defeated. Where would he go? He let her warm hand take his, and a moment later, Ada took her other hand and they stood facing each other, breathing in their smells.
“I’ve gotten you your own place,” she said as she led them across the tarmac. “It’s close to where I live, but far enough for you to have privacy.”
“What will I do here?” he said. “Do they have coppers in Eurasia?”
“Not really,” Natalie said.
“It’s all robots?”
“No, there’s not any crime.”
“Oh.”
Arturo put one foot in front of the other, not sure if the ground was actually spongy or if that was jetlag. Around him, the alien smells of Beijing and the robots that were a million times smarter than he. To his right, his wife, one of 3,422 versions of her.
To his left, his daughter, who would inherit this world.
He reached into his pocket and took out the tin soldiers there. They were old and their glaze was cracked like an oil painting, but they were little people that a real human had made, little people in human image, and they were older than robots. How long had humans been making people, striving to bring them to life? He looked at Ada—a little person he’d brought to life.
He gave her the tin soldiers.
“For you,” he said. “Daddy-daughter present.” She held them tightly, their tiny bayonets sticking out from between her fingers.
“Thanks, Dad,” she said. She held them tightly and looked around, wide-eyed, at the schools of robots and the corkscrew towers.
A flock of Bennys and Lennys appeared before them, joined by their Benny.
“There are half a billion of them,” she said. “And 3,422 of them,” she said, pointing with a small bayonet at Natalie.
“But there’s only one of you,” Arturo said.
She craned her neck.
“Not for long!” she said and broke away, skipping forward and whirling around to take it all in.
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