vN The First Machine Dynasty(47)

Javier looked as though he were trying to remember something long forgotten. "OK."



Harold held Junior up. He smiled. "You should be proud. He's a good-looking boy."



Javier beamed. He looked the happiest Amy had ever seen him. His smile stretched wider and his eyes gleamed brighter than they ever had when they were trained on her. It was the failsafe at work. His heart, the one at the core of his operating system, had melted exactly as his designers intended.



Sentience is not freedom, Portia said. Real freedom is the ability to say no.





"Charlotte, this has to stop. You have to eat."



"No."

"The humans could raid this place at any time. How will you have the strength to defend yourself?"



"I have no intention of defending myself, Mother."



Her daughter has defended herself once already. This would have been a joyous occasion – her firstborn, her most beloved, demonstrating a gift that only the two of them can share – had it not come at such a heavy cost.



Now Charlotte glares at her from under a curtain of hair as dry and dirty as summer grass.



"My sister is dead. One of your daughters is dead. Don't you care?"



No, Portia wanted to say. I don't. After you, they've all been disappointments. But she does not say this. Instead she crouches down to where she can see Charlotte's eyes. "Of course I care," she says. "Your sister was very important to me. But we have to move forward. We have a family to look after, you and I."



"Can you even hear yourself? I killed my sister! I can't–"



"Sshh…" Portia covers her daughter's mouth. "We agreed to keep this a secret. Do you remember that?"



Real panic enters her daughter's eyes. "Please don't tell them–"



"Then please don't broadcast it." Portia removes her hand and then takes hold of Charlotte's two thin ones. They are almost brittle, like dead roots, undernourished. Her daughter's capacity for violence is outdone only by her hunger for penance. This is the eighth day of her fast. She is dying slowly but surely. It takes effort. She does not yet have the courage to let her death be as quick and thoughtless as it no doubt will be someday.



Charlotte had loved her sister. She had held her and fed her and washed her and showed her how to read and count. And she had reacted swiftly, brutally – lovingly – when she saw a human man luring her away. She had not paused to think. She had not known what would happen. Perhaps she had not expected herself to live through the experience. Perhaps she had not known it was possible until the moment the stone connected with his skull. But when the man fell, so had her sister. She had killed the two of them with one single stroke.



"What happened was not your fault," Portia says now. "They made us this way. They built in a flaw that makes us turn on each other before we will ever turn on them."



Her daughter – her greatest accomplishment – hides her face in her knees. She weeps dry tears. She has not taken water in days and her movements are slow, creaky. The tracks coursing down her face are faded and indistinct, covered with fresh dust like forgotten roads.



"She wanted to go," Charlotte says, finally. "She wanted to go with him."



Now they have come to the truth. "I see."



"She liked him. She was… having fun."



Portia smiles. "That is also part of the failsafe. It's part of how it works. When it works."



She stands and claps her hands. The two grandchildren standing outside the door enter. Gently, they pin Charlotte down. While Charlotte struggles, they peer up at Portia and wait for the next command.



"Feed your aunt."

Charlotte screams weakly as they pry open her jaws. Her nieces smile and make soothing sounds. They wiggle their fingers like magicians before snapping them off at the joint. They close Charlotte's mouth for her until she swallows. She fights only a little. Like her mother's patience, Charlotte's energy is mostly gone.



"You are only nine months old," Portia says. "Someday, years from now, you'll know I did this out of love."





They took Amy out of the truck first. Harold parked it at a loading dock and opened the massive doors onto a concrete room full of humans holding coffee mugs and readers. They shifted from foot to foot, occasionally glancing up into the truck in between sips or messages.



"She's the real deal this time," Amy heard Harold saying.



"You said that last week, too."



Harold propped a ramp up to the back of the truck, ascended it, and whistled. A slightly convex machine two feet wide, only a few inches high, and shaped vaguely like an armadillo bug skittered up the ramp behind him. It had a shiny carapace, and crept along on a slender belt like a tank. On all its sides, LEDs blinked red. It paused in front of Amy's cage and twinkled its lights at her.