Mark Tiedemann: Mirage

"Ma'am, do you require assistance?"

The transport drone had rolled alongside her. She blinked at it, wondering at the slight panic she heard in its voice, and wondered why a drone would panic. Then she remembered that it was being run by the RI, which was positronic. But the RI was not responding, had gone off line for some reason. Was it back now, along with everything else that no longer made sense?

"Ma'am, do you require assistance?" the drone repeated.

"Yes, I-" She dropped her pistol and touched fingertips to her arm; they came away damp. She swallowed hard and looked at the bright red liquid on them. A chill scraped down her neck, across her back. When did that happen? She tried to catalogue her injuries, struggling for consciousness, but she kept forgetting where she started. Leg, ribs, arm, ribs, arm, leg…

The renewed com chattered in her ear insistently.

"-ambulances right now! We've got at least twenty down! Get us priority-"

She touched the button, changing the channel.

"Bogard?"

"Yes, Mia?"

"Status."

"Both targets apprehended and subdued. Returning to your position."

"Good…hurry…I'm…"

She had never passed out before, and it came as a surprise and a frustration and a peculiar anger that she was losing control so fast.

The transport robot asked again, "Ma'am, do you require assistance? Ma'am…?"

Derec heard the wailing of the injured even before he entered the tunnel to the main gallery. Mingled with the clinical noises of paramedics and ambulances, the controlled urgency of shouted orders and sirens, the sound cut through him, sharper than any cold wind, and he shuddered. As he emerged beneath the high arched ceiling, his two aides close at his heels, he saw bedlam and pain.

"Sir," a harried security guard challenged him, "this area is restricted. I-"

Derec held up his ID and the man stopped, blinking at it as if momentarily unable to recognize it.

"Oh. Phylaxis Group." He nodded, suddenly relieved. "You're expected. Let me…" He stepped back and spoke quietly into his comlink.

Derec did a slow survey of the scene. So many robots trampled and broken, frozen in place, or wandering about purposelessly, in advanced stages of positronic collapse, and human paramedics and security people shouting at them or pushing them out of the way. Derec felt a chill at the sight; these robots all should have been linked through the RI and if they were breaking down, then the RI must be having trouble. The only other robotic presence were the service drones-nonsentient automatons that did the grunt work for the emergency personnel. They did not even call them robots here. He wondered briefly if Bogard was still here, if it had survived, if it had functioned, if…

He turned to his team.

"Get to the mid-stage breakdowns first," he told the people with him. Only two specialists from the Group had accompanied him, Caro and Amson, his best field team. From the look of things, he wished he could have brought a dozen. But the Phylaxis Group's limited resources allowed only a small team; other specialists were too far away, in the Spacer districts at the periphery of D. C., working other situations. "Get them out of the arena. Find out where the stand-by niches are-I doubt any of these people will be using that room. Then tend to interaction and facilitation crises."

His people gave him quick nods and dispersed into the chaos.

"Hey, hold it," another voice intruded. A uniformed policeman strode up, one hand raised, the other touching the butt of his holstered stunner. He glared briefly at the first security guard, who was still on his comlink. "Who and what are you and what are you doing here?"

Derec extended his ill again. The officer studied it briefly. "Phylaxis Group. Great, we already have more medics than we need walking allover the evidence; now we get you people collecting tinheads."

Derec pocketed his ill. "Sorry if rendering assistance is such a burden for your forensics people. Maybe you'd even prefer leaving the dead and injured just where they fell till you finished? I'm sure only a few of them would expire before the evidence techs got all they wanted…"

The policeman's mouth tightened and he stepped toward Derec. Whatever he had intended to say, he changed his mind. "All right, point taken. You have clearance." He turned sharply and strode away.

"Thank you," Derec called after the retreating officer, who gave a negligent wave.

"Sir," the security guard said then. "Mil Jeffries is the floor supervisor. I'll have you taken to her." A drone approached, a nonpositronic escort unit, little more than a tall, spindle-like machine with a map programmed into it. "Just follow this one."

"Thanks."

Derec followed the drone along a narrow path between bodies that had not yet been picked up and small knots of people he assumed to be security-rigid, anger-frozen faces, quick conversations with each other or into coms, attitudes of arrested momentum, and, if Derec was not mistaken, embarrassment-and tried to get his mind around what he saw. It was clear that the bodies here had been trampled.

The largest knot of standing people occupied the raised platform toward which the drone led him. Everywhere the wounded and traumatized moaned and cried, a few shouting anxiously for help or an explanation or for the simple emotional need to scream at something. Whole sections of the huge floor contained the injured, stretched out, and tended to by humans and a few medical support robots-again, nonpositronic units that lifted and carried and contained portable diagnostic units for the human techs. Most of these did not even look like robots in the Spacer sense, but rather were collections of boxes and spheres and chunky assemblies mounted on treads or antigravity motivators, following the humans around like obedient pets. Derec saw frightened people shoving at them, crying or cursing, unwilling in typical Earther fashion to be touched by metal fingers. It was probably just as well no positronic robots were here to try to help-only the specially programmed could cope with injured or dead humans, but here they would be faced with the added confusion of humans rejecting their help. First Law dictated that they aid the injured. Second Law said to obey humans. The conflict of being ordered not to render aid would hit them hard; they would not understand the nature of the fear and resentment. Positronic breakdowns were sad, pathetic things to see. The robots still functioning here clearly could not cope. The lucky ones seemed already shut down. Derec's team moved quickly among the traumatized robots, getting them out of the way with the least damage possible. Some might be salvaged but he was not optimistic.

Several robots stood around the collections of the dead, mechanical bodies stiff, eyes dark, minds broken.

What about Bogard? he wondered. He could not find that particular robot here. Perhaps it had already been removed from the gallery. It was not really his anymore-it had been signed over to Special Service for active duty-but Bogard remained Derec's creation and he could not help but worry about it.

Derec looked away. The outer walls of the gallery bore tall, blackened streaks from the explosions. On the subetheric broadcast, the blasts had seemed great enough to gouge holes, but all that showed were the stains.

Derec's right foot slid sharply and he pinwheeled his arms to keep balance. He looked down. On the floor was a bright red smear leading from a puddle of blood. His stomach lurched sickeningly.

The drone led him up onto the platform and toward a small woman who stood in the midst of a cluster of people, talking rapidly and stabbing the air with her index and middle fingers.

"Supervisor Mil Jeffries, sir," the drone said, loudly enough to attract her attention. The woman glanced his way, frowning, then nodded and held up her hand to indicate that he wait.