He lifted his hand in a farewell, glad to know Jamie was in good hands. Then he headed back to his car.
His next stop: Alpha.
The trees were at their peak fall foliage, so vivid they reminded Thomas of neon signs. He and Alpha walked down a path bordered by azaleas with dark, waxy leaves, but no flowers this late in the year.
Major Edwards and two armed "orderlies" accompanied them, discreet but always there. Thomas also had a mesh woven into his collar that would record every word he and Alpha spoke.
"The bargain," she said, "was that you take me for a ride and I tell you what orders Charon left me."
"I can"t take you out of here," Thomas said. "If you want to talk about Charon, I"d like to hear. If not, that"s fine."
She slanted him a look. "Bulls.h.i.t."
"Alpha, listen." He drew her to a stop. "It"s over. Charon"s plans to have you kidnap me and Sam failed."
It had been his final ploy; if Charon couldn"t break into the safe house to get Pascal, he would take hostages to trade. It was how Thomas had met Alpha; she cracked the AI of a helicopter transporting him and Sam to the Pentagon and had it fly to her instead.
"It"s never over," she said.
"I can"t hold off the committee forever. If you won"t talk, they will have a.n.a.lysts take apart your matrix."
"It doesn"t matter." Alpha pulled away her arm. "You"re the ones who want what I know. Taking me
apart will destroy a lot of it. But you know that."
What he didn"t know was which unsettled him more, her expressed lack of interest in her own demise or his strong emotional reaction against it. The idea of her death bothered him more than her.
"I don"t want you to end," he said.
She started walking again. "Don"t like losing data, hmm?"
"No. I don"t like destroying life."
"You can copy me."
"It"s not the same."
"That"s not my problem, is it?"
He wished he knew how to reach her. "It doesn"t bother you?"
"No."
She seemed self-protective, hiding her vulnerability behind a tough facade, but he was a.s.sociating human reactions to her behavior. And she wasn"t human.
"I don"t believe you," he said.
"Well, h.e.l.l, maybe I know how to lie, too."
"Can you?"
She regarded him without a flicker of her eyelashes. "No."
"I think you can lie through your teeth."
Her face lost all expression. "It isn"t in my programming. Why would Charon create equipment capable of deception?"
Thomas wished she wouldn"t turn off her emotive responses that way. "It could serve his purposes when you act as his covert agent."
"Maybe." With that eerie lack of affect, she added, "But that wasn"t his purpose in creating me."
"What was his purpose?"
This time she pulled him to a halt. The instant she touched him, his guards surrounded them. Thomas shook his head at Edwards. The major paused, then motioned to the orderlies. They faded back into the trees, but they didn"t withdraw far.
Alpha laid her palm on Thomas"s chest. "What do you think Charon"s purpose was?" Her voice had a dusky quality.
"You"re a mercenary. A spy." He nudged away her hand. "Maybe he had you do other things with him, but I don"t believe he would use up so many resources to make an android whose sole purpose was as a synthetic companion."
"Synthetic companion?" She gave a derisive snort. "General, loosen up. I f.u.c.ked him. Any way he wanted, any time he wanted."
Thomas"s face heated. Who wouldn"t wonder what it was like to have Alpha in his bed? "That makes you angry."
"I don"t feel anything."
"He didn"t program you to react to him?"
"Of course he did. I can simulate anything you want."
"That I want?"
Her lips curved upward. "Sure."
That caught him off guard. Would she "simulate anything" for anyone or just him? Then he felt like an idiot. Jealousy? What the h.e.l.l reaction was that? He hoped the guards hadn"t overheard. He had to remind himself that the a.n.a.lysts working Alpha would have a full record of this talk.
"Thank you," he said stiffly. "But no thank you."
Alpha laughed, a throaty sound. "It is so delightfully easy to embarra.s.s you. I thought you military pilots
were tough-talk guys."
He had no desire to discuss himself or how he had changed in the last half century. "Why would you simulate delight in making someone uncomfortable?"
"Why not?"
"Because it serves no purpose."
"So what? I wasn"t designed to be social."
Maybe not, but this conversation was revealing more than she probably realized. Although she could
a.n.a.lyze human speech with inhuman speed, her responses were intricate enough to make him question what she consciously "simulated," and what arose out of evolution she didn"t direct, the AI equivalent of a subconscious.
He wasn"t certain where to take the conversation, so he started to walk again, with Alpha at his side.
They came out of the trees on the sh.o.r.e of a lake. Rippled by breezes, the water reflected the blue sky and gold-leafed trees hanging over its surface.
He paused a few yards from the lake. "The name Charon is a symbol of death. In mythology, he"s the ferryman who takes souls across the rivers of woe and lamentation into Hades."
She went to the water and stared out at the lake. "That fits."
"The Charon who sent you to kidnap me wasn"t a man. He was an android with a man"s mind."
"Tell me something I don"t know."
"Why would an android create another android for s.e.x? It doesn"t seem like it mattered to either of you."
She swung around to him. "That copy was no less human than the original." In a low voice, she added, "If you can ever call Charon "human." "
"You don"t think he ever was?"
"Biologically, sure." Alpha came over to him, sleek and dark, like a wildcat stalking her prey, except such hunters didn"t just walk up to their targets. They crept through bushes or gra.s.s, hidden until the last
moment. He couldn"t imagine Alpha creeping anywhere. She would stride openly into perdition if she had to.
"Charon even had good qualities," she said. "He was smart. Tough. A good strategist. A leader." She
considered Thomas. "Like you."
Although he didn"t think she meant it as an insult, he hardly appreciated being compared to one of the worst criminals in recent history. "Did you know he was going to copy himself?"
"No."
Her answer was hard to credit, given that she managed Charon"s finances. He would have been hard-
pressed to hide the expenditure required to copy a human being. Had Thomas never met Pascal, he wouldn"t have even believed it possible with present-day tech. But when Pascal had deleted Charon"s mind from his matrix, he saved vital data-the locations of two copies Charon had created of his mind.
What world are we creating, that we can copy ourselves? To Thomas, it seemed like Alpha and the android Charon having s.e.x; soulless and without meaning, a mechanical act that had lost its connection to humanity.
"You really never thought he had copies of himself?" Thomas asked.
"I didn"t say that."
"Then he did make them."
"Yes. You erased them."
She couldn"t actually know the NIA had destroyed them. No one had told her. "Why do you say that?"
"I a.n.a.lyzed the situation and calculated probabilities. In other words, General, I guessed." She shifted
her weight as if she were ready to bolt. "I don"t think I should talk anymore."
Thomas could tell he had pushed her too much. He would leave voice a.n.a.lysis and other tactics to the experts. He didn"t want to lose his advantage, that she was willing to talk to him when she refused
everyone else. Today was a breakthrough. She had never interacted this much with anyone, himself included.