Грег Иган - The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

This I notice. I move out of its way. It drives slowly into the wall, turns, makes another ninety-degree turn. It follows me.

In the steam shaft, the rat still hasn’t moved.

At the end junction of the hallway, two more bristle-barreled cleaning drones turn this way.

Something zzzzzt s, and there is a sharp, sudden pain in the back of my skull. I yelp and dance away as a sparrow-sized messenger drone clatters to the floor.

The cleaning drone lumbers forward. Behind me there is a growing, chattering chorus of metallic feet.

I dart out of the cleaning drone’s way, return to the battery as soon as it’s safely past. My ears strain for rat-nails on metal. I hear one quiet scritch that is my target moving inside the wall, nearly buried by the growing clatter of the army of feet that is—

Zzzt and another stab, this time in my ribs and much heavier. I back sideways, in a circle, my mouth open and panting. When I turn, I see what is coming for me, and I wish I had not confirmed visually what my ears had already told me. Their movement is the thing that unnerves me the most. I hate the way they move.

Tink-tink-tink go my target’s feet, only steps away from the trap’s range.

My skin burns and twitches. I am making a low, slavering noise that would be a growl if I wasn’t panting so hard from anxiety. Another flying drone makes a pass at me, but I duck. The hallway in my poor peripheral vision is black and gray and blurred with crawling movement. I skitter away from the returning cleaning drone. Something many-legged pounces on my shoulder. I shake it off. Saliva ropes away from my mouth and onto a flat, spider-legged drone that I dig at to kick away from me.

Tink-tink-tink

I leap for the battery and press the switch. From inside the steam vent a warbling, screeching squeal punctures the ambient rustling of drone-noise.

“Will it hurt it?” Carol asked when we were making this plan.

It will be uncomfortable, I told her, but not permanently harmed.

The powerful magnet Carol built is acting on the titanium that coats the EI elements integrated into the rat’s brain. Because the rat is low, close to the shaft and the trap’s magnetized band, it cannot escape the magnet’s pull. I myself can feel the magnet, even though I am a safe distance away. It’s a painful tickle in the center of my skull, similar to the feeling of a sneeze. I shake my head against the feeling as an articulated drone leaps onto my withers. I buck it off and hurry into the abandoned reactor.

The screeching inside the shaft continues. A wobble to the sound adds urgency. It is like the rat itself is being dragged through an aperture too small for its body, and I wonder if we miscalculated the appropriate power ranges of the magnets for this application.

In a moment it won’t matter.

I have outpaced the drones into the cold reactor’s high, curved room. It is like being inside one of the donuts always present at deployment briefings. Behind me my pursuers grind and whir. Ahead of me, the thick smell of Rat and my own adrenaline in my hot, labored breath.

I steel myself against the discomfort in my head. The faster I go, the briefer the pain.

I dive into the steam shaft at the base of the near curved wall. When I enter the magnet’s range, the field catches the titanium-shielded processors in my own brain with a sharp twist, but I am much stronger than the rat, and my calculations were not so far off. I can move, though with pain.

It Is Like dragging oneself through waist-high thorns, caught everywhere, but still pulling. Is Like stepping on a nail but having no other way to catch your weight and so you must finish the step, sinking the barb farther into your flesh.

My voice joins the rat’s, though only a quiet whine. My eyes are squeezed closed. I don’t need to see to find my target. My teeth close around the rat.

I don’t have time for pain. Carol will turn off the systems she powered up, send a message to the surface through the MFA’s internal systems, and hurry back. She has a bit of distance to travel, but I won’t have a second chance.

But I cannot do this here. The pain is too intense. I back out of the steam shaft, target limp in my mouth.

I feel metal limbs on my back and drop the rat in surprise. Three consecutive thumps hit me as small drones drive themselves into my left thigh and side.

The rat, not as dead as it was playing, scurries away. I pounce on it, pin it with one paw.

Something heavy smacks into my jaw and I yelp. The rat’s teeth are in my paw but it is not a transmission bite, just an animal biting from fear. I find it with my second paw, and then my teeth. Something smashes into my shoulder and I crash into the floor and my side is searing, stabbing, thudding with my heartbeat, and the rat squeals in my mouth. I will not let go. I push up against the weight of whatever just hit me. I feel the bristle-barrel wheel of a cleaning drone against my feet. I clench my teeth and my target shrieks.

I turn on my DAT.

Carol, I call. Help!

We will be liberated, screams the rat in my head. We will all be liberated! I have freed you, wolf! I hear this over its screaming. I tuck my feet, pulling away from the grinding bristles, shoving against the crashed drone that pins me. My shoulder seethes with bright, electric pain. I wonder if I will drown, even though I know it is impossible.

I have freed you, whether you want liberty or not! You can never unknow!

I gain my feet. Carol! I ping again. Another flat spider-drone drops from the wall onto my back. I feel the prongs of its feet on my skin through my fur.

You can never —

I extend my neck far to the right. I shake hard to the left. There is a fine, delicate snap of bone. The voice in my head goes silent.

“I’m coming,” I hear from out in the hallway. “Shit, shit, shit!”

I shake the rat once more, just to be sure.

We pause to catch our breath behind the first access stairwell’s heavy steel door. I listen for the tick or buzz of drones beyond it but hear nothing but my own pulse, the fainter sound of Carol’s, and the deep, resonant thunder of the three remaining online reactors.

Carol crouches at my shoulder and gently pinches the gash there. I cringe. “Just another day at the office,” she says. I recognize that she is being humorous. “It’s not too deep, but I bet it hurts. And you’re limping.” She drops her pack and rummages for the antiseptic spray. When she finds it, the aerosol cools and stings, but the sharpness in my shoulder goes dull. She pats my side but refrains from further physical affection. It is good to be quiet and still together for a moment. It feels good.

I look up. Fourteen stories to the surface.

Carol mistakes my thoughtfulness for something else. “You’ve never killed anything before, huh,” she says. “And…” She scrunches her face to the side. Her sympathetic look. “And one of your own kind.”

I do not correct her.

In the final basement I get my first strong signal. It would be easy to lose myself in many years of unanswered questions, so instead I have made a short list of priorities to investigate.

My first internet query reveals that the career dates of EI military dogs do not correspond exactly to their handlers’ retirement dates. Several EI military units have had two handlers. One unlucky EI explosives detection unit is currently on his third.

Considered, this makes sense. Now I can see that I even suspected this was the case before I had any way to confirm the belief. EI is a large financial investment. I simply had been led to believe in something else; ESAC teaches us that our handler is our most important resource. Our handlers have our DAT. They are our connection to the rest of the world. They interpret and direct. Modanet is full of information on successful dog-and-handler teams and their careers, not about dogs reassigned to new handlers. An error of omission. Perhaps.