FREE STORIES 2012(25)

A woman, in a black coat entered the room. He froze. She had a hard and handsome face, alabaster skin and large blue eyes. Then Hersh’s blurry sight focused and the coat became wings. Her arms were wings. Her hands were three-fingered claws and her bare feet ended in three, splayed toes like those of a cassowary. She strut into the room with authority. "I am Captain Aello Cricksena with the Candor Aviary Republic," she said, in a melodic, pidgin version of Standard.

This was not the clumsy, transgenic cripple the Hominocracy made harpies out to be. All cross-species awkwardness had been scratched away by generations of selective breeding. This woman was as elegant as a dancer and as deadly as a velociraptor.

Then, a silver, spindly robot with a logarithmic spiral for a head, like a nautilus shell, followed her into the room. It said nothing. The two saucer eyes on the sides of its shell-head shone like green traffic lights. This was not the product of Earthly evolution, this thing had run countless simulations to achieve a form absolutely suited for Mars. Its foreign intrusion into their animal struggle instantly bonded Hersh and the harpy on a biological level like nothing else.

The harpy captain continued, "As the only member of the avian race left in this ghost town, your sentencing falls on me. The M.I. is here as impartial witness."

Dread gripped Hersh and he began to babble like a child. "Please, don’t hurt her. It was me! I fired on the transit tube, but you harpies attacked us first!"

The captain looked at him with barely restrained hatred; her human visage a clever mask hiding a cold-blooded predator.

"Harpy?" she sang in a bluesy voice. "The harpies of old were said to swoop in and snatch children in their talons. You are the damned harpy!" She wavered. "My four-year-old son was on that transport."

The words cut deeper than any claw. The image of her holding the boy's broken body flashed into his mind. She loomed over him and placed a foot on his chest and the weight of it brought him back to the room. One swift swipe would easily bisect him. He grunted in pain. Hersh felt crushed both physically and emotionally. He wanted her to split him open, but he worried for Ameera.

"We are not the monsters you make us out to be. All surviving citizens of Mars are watching this via the M.I. and they cry for justice." The mask slipped and tears welled up in those frosty eyes.

Hersh felt his sternum break. He screamed.

The machine laid a tentacle on the harpy's shoulder and spoke in flawless, soothing Standard, "Aello, it was my concealing dust storm that piqued their curiosity and my decision to maim their aircraft that incited the attack. I thought it would buy us some time. It was my miscalculation and so my responsibility."

The harpy gave a defiant squawk, but withdrew her talon.

"Please, kill me if you want, but let her go. I love her," Hersh rasped painfully. He rolled onto his side making the pain worse, but at least he could see Ameera. "Wouldn't you switch places with your son?"

This caught the captain's full attention. She kicked him over onto his back again. All her body language said she would eviscerate him, but she glanced over at Ameera and suddenly her wrath was tinged with something more subtle: Satisfaction? Pity? Had her sharp senses noticed something he hadn't?

There was a long pause. He stared into those blue eyes and something unspoken and absolutely human passed between them. Hersh began to weep. He shrank within himself.

The harpy turned and warbled something to the robot.

"I know. Go to the ship. We are ready to depart."

A remote part of Hersh knew the machine was speaking Standard for his benefit, letting him know that he would survive. He no longer cared.

The harpy exited the room and he was left alone with the robot.

The machine waved a tentacle and the pixel paint on the prison wall displayed a real-time image of the egg-shaped artifact. "When you return to your leaders, please report that the Machine Intelligence has decided to help the endangered Homo sapiens aves out of the Solar System."

"Why?"

"We value diversity."

"You’re not going to fight back?"

"No. You’ll be allowed to signal your ship once we’re in orbit."

Hersh slowly—excruciatingly—crawled on the floor like a wounded animal under the uncaring gaze of the robot and clung to Ameera. There was nothing in the room, nothing in the universe, but her stillness.

"Please remember, Anton Hershkovitz, you continue to exist because something inhuman chose to treat you humanely." Without another word, the fragile robot collapsed to the floor, its animating personality gone.

Still hugging Ameera, Hersh thought about this; the robot had failed to appreciate the total cruelty of his sentencing.