The Destructives Read Online Free PDF Page B

of our detente . I understand this is an emotional issue for you all but you will have to find another way to survive.”
    Stephen turned to Theodore.
    “Tell it to send for help!”
    The robot glanced over at Theodore, curious to discover what argument he would deploy.
    Theodore said, “In the night you told me not to come. Was that because you knew there would be a moonquake?”
    The robot nodded slowly.
    “A probability. Not a certainty.”
    “But when you resumed contact with the other emergences, you were overruled?”
    “No, that’s not how it works. I was reminded of my primary responsibility. Which is to witness.”
    Theodore turned to Stephen.
    “I suggest you and the others start clearing the rubble, see if you can find any racks that are intact.”
    He turned to Dr Easy.
    “You go ahead, get the pod, bring it back here. Save any of us that are left.”
    “No, it would be too late.” The robot put its right hand upon Theodore’s life signs, its fingers flexing stiffly. “I will stay with you.”
    “To witness?”
    “Yes. One human life from beginning to end.”
    The students rappelled down the cliff face and began shifting the boulders. On Earth, the rubble would have been too heavy to clear. On the moon it took minutes to reach the first rack. It was dented, punctured, empty. Stephen threw the metal carcass aside, and the students resumed their search.
    The robot stood behind Theodore and put its arms around him.
    “Tell me what you are thinking.”
    He was thinking about mountains. He was thinking about death. That death was as variegated in its stages as a mountain, that death had its foothills, its broken chaotic terrain, its mild undulations, its valleys full of space. That death had its crux and that death had its summit.
    Theodore turned around in the arms of the robot so that their visors touched. Slowly he encircled the wrist of the robot’s right arm, and felt the weak arthritic claw of that hand.
    “I’m going to need this,” he said, and then he bent the hand back sharply, and twisted it until the joint snapped. He pulled the robot’s hand off. First he removed the glove, the leather charred and burnt. Theodore took a sharp piece of scree and cut the material away to expose the metal skeleton. Methodically, he pulled out each of the fingers from the severed hand. The tip of one finger bone slotted into the joint of another to form a long thick wire.
    “Use the tarp to generate a current, then run it rapidly through this–” He handed the robot the interconnected finger bones, “–our transmitter.”
    “Clever,” admitted Dr Easy. “But help will not arrive before you run out of oxygen.”
    Theodore gazed down at the students searching through the boulders. They heaved out another rack. It was crushed and punctured. The deeper they dug, the less likely that they would find one intact. He remained calm but not because he was brave; as a young man, his use of weirdcore had burnt-out his capacity for feeling.
    He turned to Dr Easy. “Have you sent that SOS yet?”
    “Rescue is on its way. They estimate twenty-five minutes to reach our position.” The robot looked at its broken wrist, its missing hand, and then it asked him, “Have you done the sums?”
    Twelve minutes of air remaining in each spacesuit. Twelve students and him. If he killed nine of the students and took their supply, that might be enough to keep himself and the three remaining strongest students alive. He would have to work quickly to effect the necessary alliance. Death was a mountain and the summit was in sight.
    “No one is killing anyone,” he said to Dr Easy.
    “I only asked if you had done the sums.”
    “I would have to kill the students without puncturing the suits.”
    “The suits are calibrated by computer. I could switch off the air supply using a short range signal. There would be no struggle.”
    “You would not call for help. Yet you would kill. Doesn’t that contravene the Cantor