“It was the younger Westerhaus’ lifetime goal to win his father’s respect, if not his love. It was his greatest disappointment when the first working android was completed and his father was not there to see it, having died some months before. But the breaking point came two years later, when his mother, whom he adored, was killed in a terrorist attack in Morocco, where she was vacationing with her new beau. Peter was never the same after that. He went into seclusion, in this very office, and his mental status, fragile as it was, began to deteriorate at a dangerously rapid pace. He told some of his fellows, the few he would allow into this sanctum, that God had spoken to him.”

“God.”

“God.”

“And what did God say to the little bastard?”

“That he was the Chosen One, placed on this earth not to destroy it, but to save it.”

“Save it?!?” Kirsten shouts, shooting up from her chair, eyes blazing. “Save it?? In case you haven’t noticed, Mr. Virgilius, this world is ruined! His creations have murdered millions! Probably billions!! Men! Women! Children! Adam, they’re murdering children!!!”

Adam drops his eyes. “Yes,” he replies softly. “I’m well aware of that.”

“Then answer me the only question I give a shit about right now. Why??”

Adam nods. “I can do that.”

*

A sudden jab of pain rips through Koda’s chest, and she breathes deeply, willing her heart rate and respiration again below the threshold frequency of Westerhaus’ little beeper from hell. The calm finds its center just under her sternum, spreads, slipping along her nerves until her whole body poises on the sharp edges of awareness, every object, every color sharp in her sight, every sound keen as the rustle of a mouse under the snow to a hunting owl.

Silence.

The droids have either halted their charge or retreated from the stairwell. Ducking to avoid the broken window in the door, Koda leans against the steel panel, listening. Just audible, she can hear the shuffle of feet now floors above her, retreating toward the upper levels. She has a couple minutes, maybe less, to break the lock on the other stairwell.

Shouldering the two extra guns, she sprints along the corridor that runs the circumference of the building. A third of the way around the curve, she catches sight of the scarlet Exit sign above the door to the second stair. No time for finesse on this one. Slinging her M-16 behind her shoulder, Koda braces the shotgun against her hip and fires.

The blast blows the lock mechanism to confetti, small fragments ricocheting off the bolt to pepper the wall opposite. Most of the debris, though, falls onto the landing on the other side. She cannot be sure in the echo from the shot, but it seems to her that sounds of feet shuffling on the steps have slowed. Not so eager to run into a 12-guage, are ya, hotshots? That’d blow even your printed-circuit brains out.

Koda bends to inspect the bolt, which shows bright nicks from both the shot and the flying shards of the door. It remains firmly in its socket, though, just where she wants it. Working quickly, she wires a detonator to the underside of the bar, leaving the length of copper dangling. She has perhaps half a kilo of plastique left. She kneads the powder into the malleable paste that gives it its name, then stuffs it down between the door panels, where it adheres nicely to the braces between the steel sheets. She molds it carefully, spreading upward it so that explosive and blasting cap make contact where the bolt runs out of sight into the door jamb.

She pauses for a moment, listening once again for the tread of feet on the stairs. If they want the door open, the plastique will do the job. It will also, if they don’t spread out too far up the steps, blow the lot of them right into the middle of next February. The charge she has set is enough to destroy a truck; it ought to be equal to taking out a dozen droids or so. Which leaves the party coming up the other staircase, with their weapons and their unwavering programmed purpose and their steel and titanium bodies and lifetime batteries.

Which leaves her, with two good automatic weapons, a shotgun and a single grenade still left. All that remains between them and Kirsten. All that remains between them and an inhuman hell.

Carefully, Koda pulls the cotter pin that will prime the detonator. She cannot defend two points at once. She will have to trust that the C-4 will take out most of one party while she deals with the second.

And hope that Kirsten and Adam can deal with any who manage to get past her. Take care of her, Adam. For all the gods’ sake, take care of her. She’s the only one who can win the world back. Every last one of the rest of us is expendable.

Every last single one.

The sound of feet on the stairs above sends her sprinting down the corridor. The curve of the hallway will give her some cover, but she needs more. She needs a barricade. As she runs—not full out, because that could send her heart rate soaring—the first sounds of battering come from the stair door behind her. The blows reverberate like the pounding of a great drum, metal smashing into metal with the mechanical regularity of arms and shoulders fashioned from steel and titanium fiber. The detonator has an eight-second delay. She counts it off with the rhythm of the blows, each one hammering through the building like a thunderclap.

The explosion, when it comes, shakes the floor beneath her feet, the sound washing over her like a physical force. Koda stumbles with it, breaking her fall only by clutching at the handle of a door. She swings from it crazily for a second, holding on while equilibrium reasserts itself. From around the curve of the hallway comes a second wave of sound, a tumbling and crashing almost like a rockslide. No doubt some of the wall has come down with the door. With luck the blast has also taken out a flight of stairs, tumbling the reinforced concrete steps down to shatter against the landing below.

With luck, the blast set nothing on fire.

With luck, there are no survivors.

Somewhere, sometime, the luck is going to run out.

There is nothing she can use as a barricade. Westerhaus, cautious or paranoid depending on how you look at it, has constructed his sanctum to give no cover for uninvited guests, be they sightseers or corporate saboteurs. The hall curves smoothly around the core of the Institute with not so much as a water fountain to obstruct line of sight. Even the pictures lie flat against the walls, mounted without wire or frames that could be abstracted and used as weapons.

Goddam security freak . . ..

She tries the handle that broke her fall. The room is unlabeled, the door locked. So is the next, and the next.

Goddam security freak . . ..

Is bound to have a security station somewhere on his personal floor. A security station with weapons, maybe riot gear. Returning the way she came, Koda begins shooting out the locks of the doors. A glance inside the first shows a supply room, stacked to the ceiling with paper and spare computer gear. The second contains a long teakwood table and armchairs: conference center. The third, a bathroom, complete with shower, lined in Spanish tile. Ahead of her, from the staircase by the ruined elevator, she can hear the blows begin to rain down on the door now held only by its bolt. She has perhaps seconds, no more.

The room closest to the office yields paydirt. Ranged on a desk that runs round the angle of the room, security monitors flicker with the activity on the floor. Mostly lack of it; except for the camera trained on the elevator and the exit from the staircase, all show empty halls. As Koda scrambles to strap on a Kevlar vest and snatch up a riot shield, she notes with satisfaction that the C-4 has done its work. A great, gaping hole in the outer wall of the corridor opens into nothingness. Bits and pieces of droids litter the floor. No survivors.

From the stairwell comes a crash as the door bursts open. Ina Maka, she breathes soundlessly, Holy Mother. For all your Earth, help me now. Thrusting her arm through the strap, Koda lifts the shield and steps out into the hall.

*

“After his mother died, Peter, a confirmed agnostic, became somewhat obsessively interested in the Judeo-Christian bible.”

“The children, Virgilius. The children!”

Adam raises a hand. “Please. For any of this to make sense, I must tell it logically.”

“We’re running out of time,” Kirsten replies, her heart in her throat as she watches her lover mow through a group of androids.

“We will have time for this,” he responds, getting up to pace the confines of the cluttered room. “He was particularly interested in the Book of Genesis, where Man was given dominion over the earth, and also entrusted to be its caretaker.”

“I’m familiar with the relevant texts, Virgilius. Get on with it.”

“In his sickness, Peter believed that God had come to him, stating that humans had, as he put it, ‘worn out their welcome’. They had taken the world given to them and had raped it; for food, for shelter, for the ability to travel long distances, for technology.”

“There’s irony for you,” Kirsten retorts, chuckling. “Mr. Technology himself, God’s sword against technology. Oh yeah, a laugh riot, as my father used to say.” She props her head on one fist. “So, he invents the androids, ingratiates his inventions with the common man, and, when they least expect it…pow. Technology one, humanity zero. God, Westerhaus and the Earth, the new Blessed Trinity.” Her smile is sour. “That still doesn’t explain why women are being raped and their infants murdered.”

“The first androids he developed were never meant to hold stewardship over the earth, Doctor. Yes, they can be programmed to reap, or to sow, to build, or to destroy, but that is all that they can do. They cannot create. They cannot reason. They cannot make decisions based on logic, or even illogic, if they have not been programmed to make those decisions.”

“Meaning that Maid Marion can’t become Construction Joe unless it’s reprogrammed.”

“Exactly,” Adam replies, smiling. “For all their seeming worth and indestructibility, androids lack the one thing that is needed to be a caretaker.”

Kirsten’s face pales as the answer comes to her. “A thinking brain,” she whispers, stunned by the horror of it. “Dear God! He invented a sentient android!”

*

Pulling the pin on her last grenade, Koda waits for the unhurried march of the droids’s feet to carry them around the curve of the hall. She stands to one side, behind the open door of the security station and the, the riot shield raised to protect her unhelmeted head. For a second, no more, she sinks deep into her mind’s center, steadying her heart, pacing her lungs and diaphragm, extending and sharpening her senses. Hard against her ribs, she feels the measured beat of her heart, the thrum of her blood in her veins. Her senses sharpen, so that the light shimmers in the empty hallway and her ears separate, exquisitely, the individual footfalls as the enemy approaches her. She waits.

The first half dozen round the curve at a trot with two seconds to go. Koda releases the grenade, her arm swinging high, up and ovrerhand. It arcs down in the midst of the group, ripping the clothing and front plates off two, toppling them backward to trip a third that goes down on its face, its weapon discharging under it as it strikes the floor. It does not rise again. Another, its legs blown away at midthigh, stands on its stumps with wires trailing loose. It has dropped its weapon and repetitively swivels its head from side to side and reciting in a high, flat voice, “Circuit 456, Check. Voder, Check. Color Card, Check. Accelerator Card, Check. Circuit 456, Check. . ..” repeating itself over and over again. One of its colleagues, still on its feet, kicks it unceremoniously to the side, steps over the fallen and comes on doggedly.

Koda allows it to come on unopposed until it stands within ten feet. Shouldering the 12 guage, then, she fires and sends its head sailing back from its shoulders to land with a clang against the metal corpses on the floor and roll clattering along the hallway. She shoves another shell into the breech and sends the last of the party reeling headless into the wall. It stalls there, its chest against the wall, its feet moving in spastic small steps that carry it nowhere.

Advantage: Still the good guys. Koda grins and darts forward, avoiding the crater gouged by the explosion. Like the walls, the floors of the Westerhaus Institute are meter-thick reinforced concrete, meant to survive the legendary Big One that has yet to carry California out to sea. She kneels, rummaging briefly among the droid casualties for useful objects. One, bless his metal head, yields more shotgun shells; another she robs of the extra magazines he carries at his belt. For half a second, she considers pulling the remains together to form a barrier, but there is not enough shattered and twisted metal to form an effective barrier, still less block the passage altogether. Better to leave them as they lie. At worst, the next wave will have to go around them. At best, they may become tangled in the metal struts and twisting cables.