up above her head and the terrified, mechanical-looking man strapped to the table. “All right,” he repeated once more, softly now. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
NINE
You’ll tell me where the Alpha Deposit is?” asked Cassandra, lowering her arm.
“Yes,” Pickover said. “Yes.”
“Where?”
Pickover was quiet.
“Where?”
“God forgive me . . .” he said softly.
She began to raise her arm again. “Where?”
“Head 16.4 kilometers south-southwest of the Nili Patera caldera. There are three craters there, each just under a hundred meters wide, forming a perfect equilateral triangle; the Alpha starts just past the twin fossae about five hundred meters east of them.”
Cassandra’s phone was doubtless recording all this—as was my own. “I thought it was here in Isidis Planitia.”
“It’s not—it’s in the adjacent planum; that’s why no one else has found it yet.”
“You better be telling the truth,” she said.
“I am.” His voice was tiny. “To my infinite shame, I am.”
Cassandra nodded. “All right, then. It’s time to shut you off for good.”
“But I told you the truth! I told you everything you need to know.”
“Exactly. And so you’re of no further use to me.” She took a multipronged tool off the small table, returned to Pickover, and opened a hatch in his side.
I stepped out the closet, my gun aimed directly at Cassandra’s back. “Freeze,” I said.
She spun around. “Lomax!”
“Mrs. Wilkins,” I said, nodding. “I guess you don’t need me to find your husband for you anymore, eh? Now that you’ve got the information he was after.”
“What? No, no. I still want you to find Joshua. Of course I do!”
“So you can share the wealth with him?”
“Wealth?” She looked over at the hapless Pickover. “Oh. Well, yes, there’s a lot of money at stake.” She smiled. “So much so that I’d be happy to cut you in, Mr. Lomax—oh, you’re a good man. I know you wouldn’t hurt me!”
I shook my head. “You’d betray me the first chance you got.”
“No, I wouldn’t. I’ll need protection; I understand that—what with all the money the fossils will bring. Having someone like you on my side only makes sense.”
I looked over at Pickover and shook my head. “You tortured that man.”
“That ‘man,’ as you call him, wouldn’t have existed at all without me. And the real Pickover isn’t inconvenienced in the slightest.”
“But . . . torture,” I said. “It’s inhuman.”
She jerked a contemptuous thumb at Pickover. “He’s not human. Just some software running on some hardware.”
“That’s what you are, too.”
“That’s part of what I am,” Cassandra said. “But I’m also authorized. He’s bootleg—and bootlegs have no rights.”
“I’m not going to argue philosophy with you.”
“Fine. But remember who works for who, Mr. Lomax. I’m the client—and I’m going to be on my way now.”
I held my gun rock-steady. “No, you’re not.”
She looked at me. “An interesting situation,” she said, her tone even. “I’m unarmed, and you’ve got a gun. Normally, that would put you in charge, wouldn’t it? But your gun probably won’t stop me. Shoot me in the head, and the bullet will just bounce off my metal skull. Shoot me in the chest, and at worst you might damage some components that I’ll eventually have to get replaced—which I can, and at a discount, to boot.
“Meanwhile,” she continued, “I have the strength of ten men; I could literally pull your limbs from their sockets, or crush your head between my hands, squeezing it until it pops like a melon, and your brains, such as they are, squirt out. So, what’s it going to be, Mr. Lomax? Are you going to let me walk out that door and be about my business? Or are you going to pull that trigger, and start something that’s going to end with you dead?”
I was used to a gun in my hand giving me a sense of power, of security. But just then, the Smith & Wesson felt like a lead weight. She was right: shooting her with it was likely to be no more useful than just throwing it at her—and yet, if I could drop her with one shot, I’d do it. I’d killed before in self-defense, but . . .
But this wasn’t self-defense. Not really. If I didn’t start something, she was just going to walk out. Could I kill in cold . . . well, not cold blood. And she was right: she was a person, even if Pickover wasn’t. She was the one and only legal instantiation of Cassandra Wilkins. The cops might be corrupt here, and they might be lazy, but