42: Famous Last Words

Argus opened his mouth to shout - and his mouth refused to open more than four millimeters. His voice-generator remained as quiet as the vacuum of space outside the panoramic window.

He tried to move his arms and feet to crush the Kansler's loathsome, pasty face - and just stood still. From the neck and down, his limbs and skeleton had shut down, knees and feet locked in a standing pose.

He raged within, like a ghost trapped in the machine. Fooled again! It dawned on him: the neutrino receptor on his spine didn't need to be filled with water in order to function - for it a larger source to detect the impulses.

The miniscule container might have been an emergency receptor, in case his cyborg structure was emptied of the combined coolant and lubrication liquid that flowed between his composite metal-and-plastic muscles.

That blue liquid, a complex water substitute, was the actual receptor medium that converted neutrinos into command signals for the Direct Control system. Venix had failed. He had failed. Boulder had failed. Argus wanted to rip off the Kansler's body parts one by one, make him suffer for every Jovian he'd had killed.

He could have punched a hole in his leg and drained himself of the liquid earlier - but without it, his internal workings would overheat and grind to a halt. The Kansler was again in Direct Control, except this time without the dreaded words "DIRECT CONTROL" flashing before Argus's eyes. Which made it all the worse for Argus: he just might go insane soon...

Before his reason slipped away, he had to learn how the Kansler transmitted his personal commands to the neutrino emitter. Argus switched to infrared vision and scanned the Kansler's body for hidden transmitters. The pacemaker? No, it only supported the Kansler's heart and ensured a long life span.

Something else was visible on a deeper level, so thin it hardly registered... a wire or cable which ran from inside the Kansler's hands, along the bones of his arms, up his neck bones, then straight into his head which lay hidden under the cap.

Still, nothing metal registered in Argus's heat vision when he tried to look inside the Kansler's skull.

Then, with a shock, Argus thought: I'm the fool of all fools. The Kansler could only pull this off because he's smarter. He never takes off his cap... because it's a decoy, radiating a false thermal image. He's been wearing that thing for almost thirty years, and no one has read his brain!

I can't move my hands, and the voice is blocked... but... how weird... most of my chest and head are still free! Must be to allow me to look like I'm breathing. Kansler... can you see my rage? Can you understand my anger? Could you predict what I might do to you, if you made me hate you this much?

The Kansler moved forward to hang a medal - a meaningless piece of metal with lies and arcane symbols engraved on it, and a plastic blue ribbon - around the cyborg's neck. The brass band blared a crescendo of Wagnerian trumpets and drumbeats. He gave the paralyzed cyborg a smirk so subtle, perhaps only Argus noticed it.

He knew.

Yes, the Kansler had figured out from the surveillance records that Argus had damaged the emergency-shutdown device on his spine. He had received a report from Fleetcom about the suspect neutrino transmission from Mars, while preparing for the award ceremony.

And it all made no difference to the Kansler, none at all. For he had outwitted Boulder Pi from the very start, arranging that he was kept in partial ignorance, never seeing the whole picture of the lunar lab's complex production line.

Unwittingly, when designing and building Argus-A, Boulder used materials which, when combined, formed the working Direct Control receptor and neural override. Argus was, so to speak, in it up to his ears.

The Kansler reached up and around Argus's neck to hang the ribbon and medal.

As if he were in a bad dream where disaster approached in slow-motion, he became aware of how Argus's chest was swelling, and noticed the shrill, short whistle from the cyborg's plastic lips as he sucked in and compressed a large amount of air.

Abruptly, the air temperature around the cyborg rose several degrees. Argus was using his internal cooling system as a thermostat, willing himself colder.

The Kansler put two and two together - this took him two seconds, not quite fast enough to make the mental decision, to activate the total shutdown of Argus's body in time.

He had allowed himself to get within arm's length of his nemesis, just to put on a worthless medal.

Argus blew out a pointed blast of frigid air, with his chest producing several tons of pressure - and knocked the cap off the Kansler's head. The middle-aged man's hair was swept back, revealing a small silvery transmitting plate on the very top of his balding head.

Argus drew a second ultra-fast breath, making a high-pitched whistling noise.

Again, with greater speed and force, Argus lowered his abdominal temperature, to -50 degrees Centigrade - and blew directly at the Kansler's head. He had to set his foot grip to maximum strength, to avoid toppling himself over. The second blast sucked body heat off the metal disc on the Kansler's scalp to below the freezing point.

With a panicked wail, similar to a frightened baby, the Kansler grasped his head and fainted. His body crumpled quietly against the red carpet. The sudden cooling of the metal implant had sent the freeze straight into his brain and bloodstream, knocking him out as efficiently as a blow on the chin.

The neutrino emitter, in orbit far from the flagship, waited. How far away? Argus had no idea. It had to be close, real close, or the delay would make the Kansler's Direct Control inadequate.

But the machine had to be in constant communication with the Kansler. It had to. Or this rebellion would be a short one.

***

Argus, standing paralyzed, waited for the Direct Control mode to cease. Had he been able to sweat, it would have poured down his brow.

Accounting for the speed of light in a vacuum, he simply had to wait. Argus witnessed the movements around him, perceived in the usual slow-motion pace, now heightened further by his own tension.

The Kansler lay stunned; the guards, ridiculously slow and awkward, rushed to help him. The guard robots began to aim their many weapons at Argus. Knowing that he could never defeat them with mere cold blasts, he raised his body temperature in preparation for the fight.

He began to grow afraid as he saw the first electrically charged stun-bullet leave a robot's gun-arm, and hurtle toward his head...

Time is a subjective thing. What seemed to him an endless wait lasted 2.4 seconds. The neutrino signal shut down automatically, while waiting for the Kansler's command signal to return.

The Direct Control signal was shut down. The neural override, not getting its command signals in turn, also shut down.

Argus moved, and it hurt him to feel all that energy surge into his cooled-off muscles. He ducked down and the stun-bullet missed his head.

All guard robots began to fire at the spot where he stood - a millisecond after he started rushing away from it. With his foot grip set to the max, the carpet was ripped into a red cloud as he darted off.

Two robots were smashed in the next second. A third robot, shooting darts and electric stun-bullets in all directions, was tossed up into the ceiling and jammed into a broken circuit-panel, where it short-circuited in a shower of sparks.

The fire alarm went off, and every human member of the crew ran out in panic. Fires on spaceships were a source of terror - rapid, toxic and extremely tough to stop. Chemical foam sprayed about everywhere, from walls and robots.

The fourth guard robot, apparently paralyzed with indecision, hardly tried to escape as Argus smashed it into the wide panorama window. The window cracked into several sections. Air leaked out in a choir of sharp, whistling hisses and howls.

An emergency screen began to roll down over the damaged window - but a wrecked robot was in the way, and blocked the screen from coming down.

The central strategic computer's voice shouted throughout the entire ship. Marketing's designers had made the synthetic voice a rather accurate imitation of a legendary 20th-century actor:

"WARNING, PILGRIM! HULL BREACH IN GREAT HALL, SECTION THREE. WE HAVE A SEVERE ATMOSPHERIC LEAK. ALERT ALL MAINTENANCE. SECURE THE KANSLER AND ARREST COLONEL CLARKE IMMEDIATELY. THE HALL CANNOT BE SEALED UNTIL THE KANSLER IS SECURED. YOU WANT ME TO DRAW YOU A PICTURE?"

In the midst of the smoke and the roaring draft from the leaking window, the Kansler came to. Groggy like a punch-drunk old boxer, he rose on wobbly legs and focused his eyes. Fear made them widen. He saw an ink-black, large human shape rush toward him with uncannily firm steps.

"V... Venix is here, Argus. I swear. Venix! Come here, and talk to him! Tell him to stop!"

Argus snatched the Kansler's cap from the shredded carpet, before the dazed politician could reach it, and his hands moved like a blur. In a moment, the cap turned into a smoldering bundle of tinfoil, crushed circuits and scorched fabric.

He grabbed the Kansler's wrists with one hand, stabbed with his fingers into the Kansler's arms - cutting off the cable implants - and as a side effect, broke the man's arms below the elbows.

Even as the Kansler was still screaming, Argus took a loose shard of metal, and rubbed it against the transmitter implant on the Kansler's scalp.

In a few seconds, he had scraped up the little disc and ruined it permanently. The Kansler screamed harder, and nearly passed out again.

"She's not here," Argus said. "You can't threaten her anymore."

The Kansler managed to croak a coherent reply: "I never - meant to hurt - her. Look..."

A smaller doorway opened in a corner of the wide room, and a female figure hastily entered. She had Venix' face and eyes, just like Argus remembered her, down to the minutest details.

The body was the same matt white with the thick black stripe running down her back and front. The hair had the same coppery sheen. The eyes were just as dazzlingly blue as the ones he had looked into the first time they met.

She seemed afraid, but ran into his arms as if she had known him for a long time. She spoke in the same voice. But her words...

"Gus, stop this! I love you. Please don't kill the Kansler."

Argus immediately relaxed... yet not completely. He really wanted this to be the reunion he had longed for. She embraced him, and he felt his anger fade away as her warmth and strength pressed against him.

But she felt different in his arms - her muscles and chest moved against him in an unfamiliar, crude fashion.

"We'll never be apart again, Gus. I love you."

"Venix... when and how did you get here?"

"I'll tell you later. Let's get out of here. We can go anywhere now. They can't stop us. Then we can connect again, and everything will be all right."

She held out the palm of her hand, and her serial port opened, holding the promise of mutual cybernetic bliss.

At once he turned suspicious. Exposing that serial port was, to him, a personal and intimate act... and she was showing it while the Kansler and the cameras of the Solar System were watching. He forcefully removed her arms from his body. She looked up at him in what seemed like hurt and confusion.

"What did you call your allergic little brother, Venix? The memory we shared when we connected, remember?"

"Gus, don't talk like that. You know who I am. We're -"

"WHAT DID YOU CALL HIM?"

"Kansler! Direct -"

Even if the Kansler had been able to, he would have been too slow. Argus grabbed the Venix duplicate - for it was an android, with a computer for a brain - by one arm, and hurled it into the nearest steel wall.

Its batteries exploded in a spray of black smoke. The stench of ozone and burnt plastic blew through the already hazy, wind-torn room; the duplicate's hair shriveled into a lump as the massive short-circuit burned it up.

From its hand, where the real Venix had a small serial port, a metal spike stuck out.

In the next second, Argus had the Kansler by the throat, and growled into his face: "If you've hurt my Ven, I'll create a hell for you alone."

A normal man, a sane man, would have surrendered.

Not the Kansler. He was the last politician.

Squirming and struggling like a caught centipede in Argus's grip, he seemed to aim for the world record of spoken words per minute:

"It wasn't I who gave birth to you or your twin brother - you were just there for the Fleet to use - another pair of floor polish - other twins I kept check on hundreds of them but only you two fit in just right - you never met your foster-parents never told you were an adopted clone reject, or that you had a brother.

"One - an undistinguished soldier - was groomed into a career officer - the other an excellent physical specimen with the loyalty and brains of a dog - kept on hold until the right moment - that's what you are, Argus - loyalty personified - that's why it had to be you and why I arranged for you to switch places with him!

"You can't realize how much I invested in Clarke's career - how hard it was too keep him from bumping into you until the day of his death - I couldn't let him become Argus-A, he was growing uncontrollable - and he was dumb - but the Fleet wanted a career officer - Clarke was politics - you were the reality - Gus! There's still time to save yourself and the Solar System - yes! I killed and I lied to the public - to protect it - to win this war for Mother Earth - I just followed the will of the people aaak!"

"Ding! The match is over, Kansler. Now that your cap is off, I can practically read your mind. And what a sick mind it is... I see a trail of corpses, and a great hunger. Lots of memories missing, there's almost no personality, just data. Did you have real parents? A robo-nanny? Were you a rejected clone, not cute enough for your blood parents? You were? You expect me to feel sorry?

"Something else I just thought of: Amiella Minsky. You can't remember? Did you kill her? Whaddya mean you can't remember! Other women too? The pressure in your lobes gives you away. You raped and killed more people than I have fingers! How you made'em cover up for your crimes, I'll never understand.

"And your great war? Any strategy in your head, except killing all Jovians? Yes... you made them our enemies, pushed them to seek independence, and then you demonized them to justify your big expensive fleet and build-up of power.

"Does the word 'anti-matter explosion' ring any bells? I see! You wanted my ship to explode during my next mission, causing a Jovian genocide, and you could still call it 'accident'. You enjoyed my first 'death' in the flight-simulator because it was a rehearsal. Then, after my 'glorious death' and massacre of tens of thousands of Jovians, the first man to become 'Argus-B'... would be you. The first immortal cyborg dictator."

Argus turned to the cameras, the eyes and ears of twenty billion people. He wasn't sure whether he was still on the air, but he didn't much give a damn.

"That's his ultimate goal - to make the planets, then you, his personal property!"

The Kansler gasped: "But it would save the Inner Planets! It was the only way to stop the colonies from getting hold of Jupiter! You can have it all! Live forever, and Venix too! Just spare me, and I'll help you lead mankind to the stars gaakh!"

"You want the stars?" Argus grabbed the Kansler by the ankles, and spun him around at an accelerating pace. "I'll help you get there. The Fleet takes care of its own!"

On the system-wide broadcast of the ceremony, Argus became a black-and-yellow blur. The Kansler's face turned violet as blood pushed into his head. He screamed mindlessly, eyes bulging and red:

"AAAaaaaaa-AAAaaaAAAaaa-AAAaaaaaaa-AAAaaaa!!"

Argus let go - and the Kansler's own momentum sent him like a speeding bullet through the damaged panorama window. The Kansler's uniformed body tumbled out into the vacuum, and was lost.