Anton's Odyssey (31 page)

The man to the left said, “It’s your lucky day. We’ve just come into some money. How much for a quickie?
One for each of the three of us?”

“What do I say, what do I say?” Ellen said in a panic.

“Tell him —” I thought for a while, trying to pick a number not too extravagant but well beyond their reach. None of us wanted to witness a quickie on the big vid, and precious time was ticking away. “— seven thousand.”

Ellen pushe
d the button on the microphone. The diode turned green and she said, without any confidence at all, “seven thousand,” her inflection practically phrasing a question.

The men were too overcome with disappointment to pick up on any human qualities hidden in the ho-bot’s voice. The one with the money cried, “Seven thousand! What a rip off! You think you’re
Fiona Mammalot or something?”

The guy to the left scowled, and the guy to the right produced a crude switch blade and said, “Why, I ought to cut you!”

The man to the left placed his hand gently on his companion’s knife arm, a gesture to put the weapon away. “She ain’t a person, Elmer. She ain’t gunna feel nothin’ if you slit her. And besides, she prolly belongs to the Tunnel Serpents. They come after you for certain if you damage their property.”

Elmer cussed and spat in the ho-bot’s face. Ellen directed the ho-bot to walk away quickly, which was the right thing to do. When we had reached a safe distance, she asked, “What exactly is a quickie?”

Cotton giggled. “How do you not know that?”

“Come on, tell me.” She begged.

“Stay focused,” I barked. I didn’t really want to hear Ellen call my brother a pervert just because he knew what a quickie was.

Ellen directed the ho-bot to walk the two large rooms in a figure eight for almost an hour, but we never got another auditory hit beyond the yellow-coded probability.

“I thought I saw a small passage in the first room.” Ellen said. “Should I go back and look?”

“I didn’t see a passageway. Are you sure?” I asked.

“It’s right here.” Cotton said pointing to a small gap in the wall on Allen’s mapping program.

“You’ve got good eyes,” I said to Ellen. “Yes, go check it out.”

The corridor was much narrower than those we had seen previously. Ellen dropped another receiver relay.

“How many of those do we have left?” I asked, concerned we might run out before we fully explored the asteroid and found Mike.

Ellen pointed to the small vid. “This number goes down by one each time I drop a relay. It says ‘twelve’ now, so my guess is that we have twelve left.”

“That not very many,” I said “and we have no idea how far we’re going to have to go, so try not to drop them until the image on the big vid goes fuzzy.”

The small hallway opened up again revealing more of the same, another big room with scores of unwashed bodies huddled along the walls.

“There are so many people down here!” Ellen said.

“Look at that guy.” Cotton pointed in the corner of the big vid, “I’m pretty sure that rat he’s eating is undercooked.”

“Eew, gross!”
Ellen shrieked.

“Hey, check this out!” Cotton cried, gleefully, pointing at the orange words “boy” and “money” under the sound wave oscillations of the small vid.

“Orange is good,” I said.

Ellen diverted the ho-bot slightly to face a bearing of
three hundred and forty seven degrees. As the ho-bot walked forward the words turned orange-red and multiplied, “boy, money, ship, departure.” We arrived at a make shift barrier, empty disposal canisters blocking a side passageway. Someone had painted the words, “Territory of the Asteroid Underdwellers, keep out!” on the front of the largest canister in a sloppy scrawl.

“Must be some kind of gang.”
Ellen observed. “What should we do?”

On cue, the letters went red: “ransom, not paid, cut,
finger.”

“That’s where we need to go,” I said. “See if you can push one of those smaller canisters aside.”

Ellen and Cotton had to work together. Although the ho-bot’s body and right arm were coordinated awkwardly, we were eventually able to push one of the smaller canisters aside and unblock the corridor.

Twenty meters ahead, and around a sharp corner, we found ourselves face to face with two large men. Their clothes were less shabby and their teeth less rot
ten than the other occupants of the asteroid. Startled, their eyes wide, we had clearly caught them off guard. My heart pounded with anticipation, not knowing what was going to happen next.

“Should I slash them?” Cotton asked. My brother looked enthralled. Ellen bit her nails anxiously.

“No, I doubt we could beat them both. Let’s just see what happens.” I said.

“What is this?” the hairier of the two goons said.

“Looks like an older model ho-bot,” said the shorter goon. He wore a thick green coat.

“I can see that. But what’s that on her head?” The hairy goon pointed to Allen’s listening device.

“Looks like some kind of crown. I suppose some guys are into the whole homecoming queen thing.” Ellen looked horrified. No doubt she had been elected homecoming queen at some point in her past.

“What’s she doing in our territory?” The goons seemed genuinely perplexed. Far from threatened, there was no hint of malice or anxiety in their voices.

“Must be lost,” said the hairy goon.

“Yeah, but how’d she get past the barrier?”

“They’ve got basic movement programs,” conjectured the goon in the green coat, “probably just scrambled over it.”

“You think she belongs to the Tunnel Serpents?”

“Must be, she’s not ours.”

“Who sent you here?” the hairy goon asked, looking directly into the ho-bot’s camera eyes.

“What do I do?” Ellen asked, anxiously.

My mind raced, frantically. On the spot, seconds seemed like hours, but before the goons became impatient, I formulated a plan.

“Cannot execute command. Maintenance required.” Ellen said in a monotone, per my instructions.

“I think she’s broken,” the goon with the green coat chuckled. “What should we do with her?”

“Hey, how about a threesome?” the hairy goon propositioned.

Ellen turned off the microphone and asked, “What’s a threesome?”

“You kidding me?” Cotton said. “Do you not know where babies come from?”

“Of course I know where babies come from,” Ellen squeaked indignantly. “Not being so perverted as to know about threesome
s or quickies doesn’t make me completely naïve.”

“Yes, it does,” Cotton proclaimed.

“Come on, let’s stay focused,” I commanded. “Give them the same line as before.”

“Cannot execute command.
Maintenance required.”

“No threesome for us,” the green-coated goon observed astutely. “She’s too far gone.”

“What do you think we should do with her?”

“Let’s take her to Duffy,” the guy in the green coat suggested. “Maybe he can find some guy to fix her and then sell her services.” The two led the ho-bot further into their territory.

“When you reach this next corner,” I said to Ellen, “don’t turn.”

The two men roared with laughter as the ho-bot bounced off the wall. They picked the robot off the floor. Around two more turns, the image on the big vid started breaking up again.

“Should I drop another receiver relay?” Ellen asked. “It might make them suspicious.”

“We’ve got no choice,” I said. “Ten more meters and we won’t be able to see anything at all, and we might completely lose the ability to execute non-autonomous commands.”

Unfortunately, the relay made an audible ping as it hit the ground.

“What was that?” asked the hairy goon, startled.

“She’s dropping parts off,” the green-coated goon said dismissively, pointing to the relay rolling on the ground, “must have some loose nuts and bolts.”

The hairy goon agreed, “Some pervert must have worked her over real rough. Some people down here are really sick.”

“As if somehow kidnapping a boy and holding him for ransom isn’t sick.” Ellen scolded, quietly.

The two men zigzagged through a maze of hallways. We were very grateful for Allen’s mapping program. Without it, there was no way we were going to find our way back to the surface. The goons arrived at a spacious room, luxuriously furnished compared to the rest of the asteroid.

“That must be their leader,” Ellen observed. “What did they say his name was again?”

“Duffy,” Cotton replied.

Duffy lacked the scruff and grime of the other asteroid inhabitants. His clothing was stylish, and the furniture in his goon-office, or whatever one would call it, was well maintained and of good quality. Yelling insults and waiving a large pistol in the air, Duffy seemed to be in the process of dismissing a small bruised man in a tattered jacked. I expected Duffy to be in a foul mood, but he became rather light hearted and friendly when he finally noticed his two under-goons and the ho-bot.

“Afternoon gentleman.
What’s this you brought me?”

“Damaged ho-bot.”

“Really?” Duffy said, turning to the ho-bot. “Hey there darling! How much for a good time?”

Ellen rolled her eyes before giving the standard response, “Unable to execute command. Maintenance required.”

“You know what they mean by ‘good time’ right?” Cotton asked Ellen, “Or did they not teach you that in nun school.”

Irritated, Ellen threw the nearest thing she could find at my brother, which unfortunately was the microphone. Cotton easily dodged the missile and it impacted the far wall. “Quit making fun of me, you little pervert!” Ellen screamed.

Cotton picked the microphone up off the floor. Eyes wide, he put his fingers to his lips and pointed, indicating the diode was still green.

“Did you guys hear that?” Duffy said, suspiciously. “She just called me a pervert?”

“No, I didn’t hear nobody say the word ‘pervert.’” The hairy goon said shaking his head vigorously. Eager to make a sale, he added, “It was just some random noise, that’s all. She’s broken.”

The goon in the green coat nodded and said, “That wasn’t any word I could recognize.”

Duffy looked at the two suspiciously, “Where did you find her exactly?”

“Out in the common space,” the hairy goon said.

“So, not in our territory then?” Duffy asked.

“No, of course not!” the hairy goon lied.

Duffy’s eyes darted back and forth, searching his underlings’ faces for signs of deceit. The two must have been good liars, because eventually Duffy said, “Very well, even if I can’t get her fixed, I can sell off some of her components to the techs upstairs.”

“Am I hearing this right?” Ellen said with disbelief, “That the space station is complicit with these gangsters.”

“Sure sounds that way.” Cotton said.

“Or at least some of the workers,” I added, “probably not the guys who actually run the place. From what I hear they’re trying to get the international courts to eject these goons.”

“I can’t believe anyone would help these guys.” Ellen looked furious.

Duffy handed his two lackeys some M-notes. He produced three clean glasses and a bottle of Thurgood MacDougal’s Southern Style Bourbon.

“Put her in the room with the kid.” Duffy ordered as he poured the drinks.

The hairy goon pulled back a curtain draped across an opening in the far wall. I couldn’t believe our luck. Mike lay in the corner. He had been badly beaten. His left eye was swollen shut and his right could only open up to a small slit. His hands were bound in front of him with some sort of electrical cable. Some of his teeth were missing, and a few others were broken. Mike coward as the hairy goon walked in with the ho-bot. Unprovoked, the goon booted Mike hard in the ribs. Mike groaned, and the
green-coated goon laughed maniacally.

“Easy boy!”
Duffy croaked. “He’s of no value to us dead.”

The hairy goon left Mike to join his companions. “Do you think they’ll pay the
ransom.”

“They will, eventually.” Duffy said. “We just might need to give them some motivation. You know, send his parents a special care package.” The two lesser goons sniggered.

“Now what?” Ellen asked.

“Get near him, so Cotton can cut his bindings.” I ordered.

Mike coward as the ho-bot approached him.

“Mike,” Ellen whispered into the microphone, “don’t be afraid. We’re going to get you out of here.”

The boy’s face was too swollen for us to read his expression, but in a gesture of trust, he placed his hands out in front of him so we could cut his bindings.

Cotton produced the bayonet. Sawing through the bindings was pretty difficult using the game controller. The task would have been much easier if the blade were serrated, a detail we never planned. Cotton accidently cut into the back of Mike’s thumb.