Mark Tiedemann - Mirage

"Prudent…? Bogard, you have a fine sense of the absurd."

"Pardon?"

"Never mind. Let me think."

Mia found that more difficult than she expected. All she wanted to do was go back to sleep. She had never experienced so much fear; she had no idea what was a normal reaction, but this surprised her. It was as though her unconscious, the repository of habit and instinct and reflex, was telling her that the safest thing to do was to go away until the danger was over. Bogard would protect her.

She looked up at the trace of white light from its head, above the curve of its upper torso and shoulders. No, it could not protect her completely. It could carry her out of immediate dangers, evade pursuit, act as a wall against blasters and explosives, but it could not exercise deadly force, could in fact be only minimally aggressive, and even that could be subverted if it was forced to recognize the actions as inimical to humans. Mia had to remind herself of Bogard's limitations, that no matter how fearsome it could seem it still used a positronic brain with all the constraints against harming humans that implied. It had brought her here and now-sensibly-but it had handed the next decision over to her.

So decide… she chided herself.

She needed to know who they were, the two who had just tried to kill her. Their choice of method seemed unnecessarily crude at first, a hammer to kill a fly. But with Bogard in the room with her anything else might easily have been countered. Which meant that they knew Bogard was with her. No matter what Bogard would have done, it could not have done it fast enough or safely enough for other people who might have been in the building.

They knew about Bogard…

That led to uncomfortable places. Mia set the problem aside to consider the immediate situation. Prudence dictated that she avoid another public facility until she knew all the facts.

Protocol dictated she contact One and report.

But they knew about Bogard…

Her leg ached violently, and she sucked air between her teeth. "Bogard, is there anything you can do for my pain?"

"I can administer a general anжsthetic. I regret I do not have a local."

"At some point we need to find painkillers. First, though, I need… I need some things… Can you get me to my apartment from here undetected?"

"Yes."

"That's a start. Do that. I can think on the way." Instead, she slept most of the way. She glimpsed the passing of lights and unfamiliar places, old construction gradually becoming organic over time, the bones of the City encrusted with the residue of time and neglect. Bogard travelled so fast that even had she managed to keep awake, it would have still made as abstract and indefinable an impression. She lost direction, sense of place. Sleep came easily, brief lapses in which dreams hinted at safer realities, and pain faded.

"You'd make a wonderful transport," Mia murmured once. If Bogard replied, she did not hear.

Once again she awoke in the absence of motion.

Bogard stood surrounded by trees. Mia pulled herself up as well as she could into a sitting position. The smell of pine and grass filled her nostrils, displacing for a moment the distant tinge of blood.

Through the tangle of limbs and leaves, a walkway separated the edge of the parkland from a blocky apartment complex. Streetlights set the pavement aglow, but above them only the warm illumination from windows broke the night.

"Bogard, assessment. "

"There is a Service transport in the garage entrance. One occupant. High probability of encountering personnel or detectors. Degree of safety indeterminate."

"Damn." She could not see herself wrapped within Bogard's arms like this, but she imagined what she looked like dressed in only a hospital shift. Even if no one was looking for her, her appearance screamed fugitive, especially in the company of a robot like Bogard. "Can you bypass surveillance?"

"Yes."

Mia looked up at Bogard. "Remind me to ask you for a complete manifest of your capabilities."

"When?"

"When what?"

"When do you wish to be reminded?"

Mia almost laughed. "When we're reasonably safe for more than an hour. Listen. I want you to leave me here-"

"That is not an acceptable action."

"Listen, I said. Leave me here, under cover. Find some bushes or something. I need things from my apartment. Would it be safer for you to go in alone or carrying me?"

"Alone."

"Then don't argue. Leave me here under cover and enter my apartment. Exercise extreme caution. If you cannot get in and out undetected, abort. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Good. Now this is what I want…" tactical parameters, apartment complex, three pedestrian/ residents accesses, four maintenance accesses, abutment to commercial facility, one joining access, standard antiintrusion security hard-linked to urban police network, additional security on-site deployment of widescan sensors at three residential entrances, one enhanced visual surveillance by human, in-house systems tapped by mobile monitor, optimum access via commercial facility, lowest potential Three Law violation, access achieved via service port, sublevel two, on-site internal security ambient heat and motion sensors, adjusting shell reflectance for ambient temperature 20 degrees centigrade, air permeability adjusted to 95%, visual reflectance null, access achieved, residential security personal code access to elevator, situation indicates optimum procedure to minimize unauthorized human contact via service conduits, enhanced shell configuration to space allocation 1.25 meters square, access achieved, target area unoccupied, additional on-site security deployed, Service-issued sound, heat, and motion sensors, full-range acuity, reconfigure for ambient conditions, objects located, exit secured Oddly, Mia could not sleep once Bogard left. She sat propped against the itchy bark of a pine tree, her injured leg stretched straight out atop a bed of fallen needles, and stared through the small breaks in the evergreens surrounding her, listening to the dissociated sounds of the park, unable to tell which belonged and which meant threat.

It seemed, though, that she had slept enough and now found herself on the other side of a nightmare. The events in Union Station did not feel real, but more like a fiction or the events of history as witnessed by someone else. Not her. She had not lived through an assassination attempt, or seen her employer killed. She had not chased a murderer and in turn nearly been murdered. She had not been carried from a hospital room less than two minutes before it was bombed. She was not cowering under cover of bushes, unable to cross a street and enter her own home for fear of being arrested or killed.

Not Mia Daventri. This sort of thing happened to others, never to her, and whoever this was happening to would never experience it again. Perhaps they were not experiencing it now but only waiting for sleep to resume or end so the waking world next time she visited it would show her that it all had been a dream, a chimera, a mirage of the mind.

I could ask Bogard… she thought.

The robot could do either, though, she realized: comfort her by confirming her hypothesis, or dispel the desperate rationalization just concocted. Safer, perhaps, not to ask it just yet.

She heard the crisp crackle of twigs snap nearby and her breath caught.

Dreams can only threaten and illusions only kill when you surrender to them…

The shrubs around her shifted delicately. She pressed her hands to the ground, muscles tightening. She could not run, and she doubted she could do much more than annoy someone in a fight.

A branch moved aside, and a blunt helmet -shape with a streak of white light peered in at her.

"I have the things you requested," Bogard said in a clear whisper.