Кевин Андерсон – Resurrection Inc. (страница 4)

As far as Rodney was concerned, Servants weren’t real people; the tech couldn’t begin to think of them as such. Sure, the bodies moved, and Servants could respond when you talked to them, but no way did a real person live inside. Servants retained their language skills, and some basic knowledge—pretty much anything that happened to be residing on the surface of the temporal lobe. Servants varied—some were like blundering zombies who needed explicit instructions for almost everything, but others held a residue of intelligence and could actually respond almost conversationally.

But no Servant had a memory of its past life—all of that had been erased either in death or in the resurrection process … or maybe the microprocessor just couldn’t reach deep enough to catch hold of those memories. It didn’t matter—despite the artistry Rodney Quick put into the creation of his Servants, they were all just pieces of equipment, machinery, appliances. Certainly not people.

Rodney stopped and gawked at the body of a well-proportioned young female floating in one of the final baths, weighted down by heavy spheres tied to her waist, wrists, and legs. The front panel of the vat was transparent, and she hung suspended in the thick golden-colored solution, but Rodney could imagine all her details to perfection. She had already been shaved and trimmed, but Rodney still remembered when she had come in, dead from self-inflicted poison. She’d had thick red hair, beautiful, almost the color of blood. Rodney kept records of all such details.

It seemed that every time he tried to start a relationship with a woman, an honest-to-goodness human being, she always broke it off. According to one of his Net database searches, handlers of the dead had been despised and shunned throughout history, though in later years men claimed to be enlightened about such things. Undertakers and morticians, sextons during the Black Death, gravediggers, the eta in Japan, “resurrectionists” in the nineteenth century illicitly providing dead bodies for medical research. … How the hell was he supposed to fight against leftover cultural sentiments?

Rodney sometimes wondered if spending his teenage years sweating over a Net terminal, trying to escape from the other jobless blues and into a real job, might have left him socially inept. Not quite able to relate to others in a meaningful way? He dressed stylishly, according to illustrations in all the Net periodicals. He tried to be funny, compassionate, interesting—yet women seemed so volatile, so unpredictable, with so much capacity for hurting in them.

But Servant females never said a harsh word. Rodney placed his fingertips against the warm glass of the finishing vat, staring at the naked body of the once redheaded female, watching as she moved slowly in the gradual convection currents of the amniotic fluid. His own breath began to condense fog on the side of the glass.

“What, exactly, are you doing, Mister Quick?” A woman’s voice: deep and thick, uninflected but carrying a symphony of overtones that made Rodney’s blood congeal.

Supervisor crossed her arms over a deep-purple sleeveless tunic edged with random lines of silver thread. She stood nearly Rodney’s height, built somewhat stockier, but seemed immensely tall in her own personal presence. Her long bluish-blond hair had been pulled into three even braids, neatly splayed and pinned to the back of her purple tunic. A primary Net keypad had been tattooed on the palm of her right hand. Supervisor’s eyes had a pearly, distant look to them, but hard lines on her brow and around her lips quickly destroyed any dreamy look she might have worn. Though she stared directly at him, Rodney felt as if Supervisor watched him with many more eyes than just the two on her face.

One of the few humans who could act as a walking Interface with The Net, Supervisor lorded over all the lower levels of Resurrection, Inc. Her brain carried a remote gateway processor, implanted so that she could directly connect to The Net. Interfaces were rare and highly valued, so Francois Nathans had arranged to effectively own Supervisor, protecting her and doing everything to keep her happy. Consequently, Supervisor encountered no interference when she acted out her managerial fantasies on her human underlings. She enjoyed harping on Rodney in particular, or so it seemed to him.

“I asked what you are doing, Mister Quick.” The flatness of her voice didn’t change, but Rodney could hear a thread of surprise that he had not immediately answered her question.

“I am inspecting the vats, madam. To be sure the Servants haven’t made mistakes in their tasks.”

“Servants do not make mistakes if their instructions are clear,” she said.

“You’re right, madam. I was making sure my instructions were clear.” Rodney clenched his fingers into a fist.

“Why aren’t you keeping careful watch on the pre-Servant in Vat 66? Everything is routine?” Supervisor’s voice had the barest lilt at the end, only enough for him to guess that she had been posing a question.

“Yes, um, everything’s routine, madam. I’m pumping the synBlood in right now, and then he’ll go to the secondary vat. You’re welcome to inspect my surgery—you can see I took great precautions while installing his new cardiac pump. I’m sure you’ll find everything satisfactory.”

“Since you are involved, Mister Quick, I expect nothing more than ‘satisfactory.’ You are incapable of better.

“The pre-Servant in Vat 66 now has a new designator, a name. You will henceforth refer to him as ‘Danal.’” She paused, and then spoke again; her gaze bored into him. “I will give you a warning, Mr. Quick. Francois Nathans himself has expressed an interest in this particular Servant. After resurrection is complete, Danal is to be presented to Vincent Van Ryman.”

“Van Ryman? But … isn’t he the neo-Satanist priest?”

“That is his business, not yours,” Supervisor snapped, raising her voice only a little, but the relative difference was enormous. “Your point of concern is that Mister Nathans is extremely interested. Therefore your performance on this resurrection will have a direct bearing on your own future existence. Think on that carefully, Mister Quick, before you become distracted by female anatomy.”

Rodney swallowed. “Yes, madam. I, um, understand perfectly. I won’t let you down.”

“I have no confidence in you whatsoever. You cannot let me down.” Supervisor turned curtly and walked across the room to the elevator shaft, seeing yet not seeing with her pearly Net eyes.

Shaken, Rodney retreated from the female’s vat and hurried back to the inspection table, where the slow-pump droned as it continued to exchange the inert saline solution with artificial blood. Rodney used his magnifying goggles again to carefully check for any minute leaks around the seal of the chest wound. Satisfied, he removed the goggles and stepped back to look at the pale and motionless body stretched out under the harsh glare of the overhead lights.

He hated this place, but he couldn’t think about leaving. Sometimes, though, he had to unleash his rebellion in little ways. Smirking, Rodney patted Danal’s cold cheeks in mock paternal affection. He muttered to himself, “Such tender loving care for a corpse!”

He swallowed in a dry throat, looking around to see if Supervisor had seen him. She always moved silently, maliciously, spying. He didn’t see her, but that meant nothing—when linked to The Net, she had all the ears and eyes of the entire network.

The other Servants moved about their mindless tasks. The vats bubbled and the slow-pump hummed, but everything else was quiet. Lower Level Six seemed suddenly alien to him, and Rodney felt vulnerable and alone.

3

Jones carefully arranged the pieces of his Enforcer armor on the spongy bedroom floor, and then aligned all his weapons on the bed-unit. He yawned and stretched before beginning the laborious daily process of assembling his uniform.

He slipped the torso guard over his shoulders and mounted the pelvic plate, making sure everything fit properly before fusing the seams. Then came the arm guards and several segments of leg shielding. The armor was made of lightweight flexsteel fibers, dura-plated around the joints, making for a flexible and comfortable suit, but completely protective.

Last, Jones picked up the high-impact fiberglass helmet and stared for a moment at his reflection in the polarized black visor. The visor could withstand even a laser strike full in the face, but it didn’t allow so much as a glimmer of feeling to show through. Jones narrowed his dark eyes, trying to make himself look tough but not quite succeeding. His thin moustache had never grown quite full, though he hadn’t shaved it in years. Jones was tall, well built but not massive—yet every Enforcer looked the same behind all that armor.

He picked up his weapons in order, slipping them into the appropriate sockets on his armor. Heater-knife, club, grenade, smoke bomb, two projectile weapons, a fully charged scatter-stun, and a pocket bazooka. Bristling with death, every day: instead of filling Jones with power and confidence, it made him feel small and dependent. Not a policeman, according to the official description on The Net, but one of the “conformance assurance personnel,” or perhaps even “a modern-day knight against the dragons of social unrest.”