A: No.

Q: Did the droids ever discuss the matter in your presence, or did you overhear anything that might indicate what their purpose was?

A: No.

Q: Can you come to any conclusion, given what you know, why they might have wanted to salvage and impregnate women of childbearing age?

A: No. Please, I can’t anymore . . . .

“Colonel.” The Corporal’s voice interrupts her memory. “The Major says they’re ready.”

Reluctantly Maggie levers herself up, feeling the persistent soreness in her right leg where the bullet grazed her. She wants nothing more than to be done with McCallum and all he represents, but she sees no prospect of that in any immediate, realistic future. She dusts a bit of soil and leaf mould off the seat of her uniform. “Coming,” she says.

Both men are seated when she re-enters the room. Only Boudreaux rises at her return, but something in the set of McCallum’s back is less defiant. Maggie glances at the Major and receives an almost imperceptible nod. She seats herslf at the table across from the prisoner and switches on a small recorder, stating her name and the names of those present, the date and time. Then she says, “Talk.”

McCallum shoots his legal representative a quick look; Boudreaux stares stonily back. After a moment he says, “All right. You wanted to know what the droids were up to. I can tell you.”

Maggie does not unbend by an ångstrom. “We’re waiting, Mr. McCallum.”

His knuckles go white under their tattoos, but he looks her straight in the eye. “You remember that the Jews and the A-Rabs never bought none of the domestic models, right? Just the heavy-duty military droids that don’t really look like humans.”

“I remember something about it,” Maggie answers, frowning. “Get to the point.”

“I am getting to the fucking point, you—” McCallum catches himself and glances down, away from Maggie’s hard stare. “They didn’t buy the MaidMarians and that junk because they’re imitation humans, get it? They’re images. And the Jew god and the A-Rab god Allah don’t want no images. The ones that are serious about it won’t even paint a goddam flower, much less somebody’s face.”

“I remember,” Maggie repeats. “Get—

“—to the fuckin’ point. I hear you.”

“Now.”

“So the goddam Jews and the goddam A-Rabs don’t got nothing but the military droids. They can control them all through their guvmint, their buncha fag princes royal families. And they can use those droids to control all the rest.” He looks up expectantly, as if every word he has said is self-explanatory.

Maggie waits.

”So they got the oil, right? And now they want to control all the rest of the world, so they use the drods to kill all us American and European Aryans off and probably the sp- uh, Hispanics and Ornamentals, too. That just leaves the Semite race alive.”

“That tattoo you’ve got there,” Maggie says, pointing to the impaled crown and cross. “That’s the Church of Jesus Christ Aryan, isn’t it? That bunch up of Neo-Nazis up in the hills in Montana?”

“Nazis?” The man’s voice climbs in genuine outrage. “Fuck, no! Old Schickelgruber himself was a Jew! Why the fuck you think he couldn’t make the Thousand Year Reich last even twenty? Naw.” He looks as though he wants to spit, glances around him and thinks better of it. “We’re White Nationalists. We’re Christians. That’s different.”

“I see.” Maggie steeples her fingers, willing herself to patience. If there is some chance, some minuscule chance, that this racist idiot has some clue about what has happened to the world, she is duty bound to hear it, even if McCallum makes her skin crawl. She promises herself a long, hot bath with double the lavender she ordinarily uses. “So why, having destroyed your Master Race, do these people want to breed more of you? How does that fit with your theory.”

McCallum leans across the table confidentially. It takes all Maggie’s willpower not to draw back. “They want to live forever.”

This is too much for Boudreaux. Even though he is an auditor, and, in Maggie’s view therefore used to lies, he apparently cannot quite stifle the sudden constriction in his throat. He covers his mouth and transforms the laugh into a cough. “Sorry, Colonel. Something caught in my throat.”

Damn right. Like this preposterous story. Aloud she says, “And this has what to do with—“ A wave of her hand encompasses the whole horror of the jails, the apparent breeding program, McCallum’s place in it.

“Spare parts. They grow the kids, see, then harvest their organs when they need ‘em. Replace a heart, replace a liver, a kidney—the bastards’ll never die. Just keep getting replacements

“Forever.”

There is a certain nasty plausibility to the story, if one begins with a certain mindset. Maggie can remember hearing news reports of Mexican paisanos and Columbian farmers attacking evangelical missionaries because they believed the americanos had come to steal their children to sell for parts on the medical black market. Prejudices never die, she reflects, just attach themselves to new and different “others.”

“This was told to you? By whom?”

“Ah hell! Hell no, lady, they wouldn’t tell us that! What white man’d want his little kid cut up for parts?”

“So you did it because….?”

“To save my fuckin’ skin, why do you think? Think I enjoyed ramming those bitches?” He manages a quite convincing shudder. “Man, not more’n half of ‘em was white! Think I wanna pollute myself that way?”

Maggie manages to keep her thoughts to herself and her fist out of his lying teeth. She says, “So how did you find this out?”

McCallum’s face relaxes into bland sincerity. His eyes gaze straight into hers. “Because I overheard two of the droids talking. They do , y’know. Said the E-Mir would be pleased with them. Said the kids would be ready for harvest in four-five years.”

“I see. That’s your story.”

“That’s what happened!”

“And you want clemency on the basis of your testimony?”

“I deserve clemency. I told you why the metalheads were up to it. You owe me.”

Maggie presses the control buttons on the recorder, and a printer across the room spits out a couple pieces of paper. Boudreaux brings them to her, and she reads them through without comment. Then she sets them in front of Boudreaux. “Sign.”

Laboriously, he reads it though, the holds out his hand for a pen. Maggie hands him a soft-tip, and he laboriously scrawls out EMcCallum across the bottom of the page.

When he is finished, Maggie reclaims the pen, touching it gingerly only with her fingertips. She jerks her head in the direction of the cells. “Lock him back up.”

“Hey! We got a deal,” McCallum objects.

“We got a deal,” Maggie repeats. “You tell us what you know, we take it under advisement. No promises.” To the MP she says, “Lock him up.”

Maggie picks up her folders and the recorder and pushes her way out of the room and all but runs out into the evening air. She has never felt so dirty.

She needs a bath. She needs a long talk with Dakota and with Kirsten, too. Hot water. Lavender salts. Clean.

She switches her brief case to her good left hand and sets out for home.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

KIRSTEN REMOVES HER glasses and rubs at eyes far past weary. The past twelve hours have been spent studying line after line of code that marches across her monitor like a parade of ants to a picnic. Still, the day has been somewhat productive. She’s managed to weed out all but two groupings, each similar in form, if not content. Somewhere within this mess of binaries, she knows the answer, or at least part of it, will be found. For all that, however, she’s not even close to being out of the woods. It’s as if the scrolling numbers are all the words to War and Peace.

With no capital letters.

Or punctuation.

Or spaces indicating where one word ends and the next begins.

In Russian.

And she can’t read Russian.

She doesn’t hear the clatter of her glasses hitting the far wall and coming to rest in a forlorn twist of glass and metal atop the threadbare carpet. With her implants switched off, her world is blessedly silent. Not that there would be anything to disturb the silence if her implants were on, of course. Maggie and Dakota had left the house early this morning; the Colonel undoubtedly off making the world—or what remains of it—safe for Democracy, and Koda tending to the animals thrust suddenly into her more-than-capable hands.

Or maybe not, she thinks as she lifts her head and takes a deep breath through her nose. The scent that lingers there takes her back to a time of cold winters and warm blankets, the love of her family, and the adventures of Katrina Callahan—Intergalactic Cop. A smile steals unnoticed over her face. Mmm. Chicken soup. My favorite.

Casually flipping her implants back on, she listens expectantly for the sounds of life within the house, then frowns, disappointed. Beyond her half-closed door, it’s as silent as a tomb. With a soft sigh, she pushes back from the desk and rises somewhat stiffly to her feet, shaking her legs to restore some feeling into the seemingly deadened nerves.

Padding softly across the small room, she peeks through the opening, smiling in surprised delight at the sight of Dakota propped on the couch, face mostly hidden behind the cover of a thick book. Asi lays sprawled half-across her lap, blissfully asleep. The scent of simmering soup is much stronger here, and she takes it in on a satisfied breath, squinting slightly to catch the title stamped into the thick leather hide of the book Koda holds.

Der Untergang des Abendlandes by Otto Spengler.

“Wow,” Kirsten remarks softly, “and they call me an egghead.”

So confident that her remark was unheard, she almost misses the brief flash of pain that crosses Dakota’s striking features as she looks up from her book. She masks the expression quickly, but Kirsten feels her heart plummet somewhere in the region of her stomach and she takes an involuntary step forward, arms at her sides, palms outspread. “I’m….”