Read Online Robogenesis by Daniel H. Wilson - Free Book Online

course not,” I say. “I only maintain. I am the maintenance man, you remember. I would never damage our friend. Never have. And I never will.”
    Leonid studies my eyes for a moment. I stare back and he breaks his gaze before he can tell that I am lying to his face.
    “I only watch over the enemy.”
    “This mysterious boy in the stacks? You keep muttering about this apparition. Nothing registers on our systems, Mr. Zaytsev. You know this. We cannot find even a trace of this … infection. You have been down here too long.”
    “The boy appears only when you are gone. And anyway it is not really a boy. The child is only a form it chooses to take.”
    “Come up with me,” says Leonid. He is pleading now. Imploring me, too smart or afraid to continue to question the existence of the boy. “Let’s have a strong drink together. You can tell me more. Explain everything.”
    “I am busy,” I say.
    Maxim does well hiding the results of my work from topside. Simulations and illusions. Leonid has not seen the tangles of wires lying strewn down the stacks. The winding chain-link barricades that I’ve been building down here in the dark. I’ve been busy-busy, much busier than Leonid can or should know.
    I take another step forward, him another step back.
    “They’ll send soldiers next,” he says, stepping into the elevator cage. “I barely convinced them to let me come talk to you. What do you expect? You don’t pick up the comm link. The elevator mysteriously breaks. They think you’ve gone crazy, Vasily. We all saw how you treated Maxim during the war. Like an animal. There are stories about you and your ax—”
    “I told you! I maintain!”
    My voice echoes through the stacks.
    Blinking, the beak-nosed scientist nods at the plate of food. “Eat, Vasily,” he says, pulling down the solid-steel exterior gate. It closes with a crash. The slats of the inner door lower quietly. He speaks to me through the latticework of the square window embedded in the gate, voice muffled. “And come up soon. You are missing all the parties. The war is over, you know? Time to relax. We won.”
    I bark a laugh.
    “The war is only now beginning,” I say to the faint face behind the glass. The elevator screeches and the jerky platform lifts him slowly up the shaft, toward the light.
    “We’ll be back for you soon, Mr. Zaytsev,” he calls down, voice dying with distance. “And this time we’ll bring guns. You are finished. Ready or not.”
    For three minutes, I stand under the pale flickering fluorescent as the ventilation system hums. I listen until I hear the elevator distantly click into place high above me. When I speak, the echoes of my voice chase each other through the stacks like the ghosts of children playing. “I will try to sever the elevator counterweights later today. Is that possible?”
    For a long moment, nothing. Then my companion speaks.
    “Yes,” says Maxim.
    “Okay. What next?” I ask the room.
    “Move to cold aisle number seven. Proceed to the fourth cabinet. Turn and kneel. Access the bottom rack. Carefully remove it.”
    “Fine,” I say, picking up a crowbar and laying it over my shoulder. “But we don’t have much time. If the cluster doesn’t come out easy, I cut it out. Don’t forget that your job is to protect the people of Anadyr. If it is necessary, Maxim, you will have to make do with a little less.”

    According to Maxim, Archos R-14 is trapped in the processors in this quadrant of the stacks. The claustrophobic alleys between equipment racks are strewn with wires and clippings. If we can build a Faraday cage around the mess and reroute all data through a single wire, then we will be able to sever this whole area in one attack.
    We can cut Archos off, and I hope that we can do it quickly. The kid is really getting on my nerves.
    The projector arm quietly articulates, spraying the hologrammatic image of a narrow-chested American boy. In khaki shorts and tube socks, Archos R-14 leans