Punktown: Shades of Grey (24 page)

Other treasures included two huge conch-like
shells which
the Mahnzee had used as homes. Taking up most of one side of the hall was a gigantic sixty-foot cephalopod shell. Whether the giant squid shells were found abandoned by the little Mahnzee or whether the creatures were somehow hunted was unclear, though it was certain that the great, tapering, bone-colored tubes had been used as chambered tombs.

Griffin wondered how many archaeologists had died recovering the remarkable display of objects, for the Mahnzee burials were famous for their booby traps.

A waxy pool of luminosity showed on the floor outside of the Yoshizawa display. Griffin pulled a flat compact ray-pistol from a hip holster and followed the glow into the room. The brain slept in its green orb and the ghostly blue hologram stood grinning.

Stay calm.
Swift, but calm.

The inside of Griffin’s jacket was lined with various hidden pockets. He put his gun back in its holster and took out the rest of his equipment. A folded up plastic bag, with a
small attached
gas-cylinder, would contain and support the brain. The palm-sized laser-cutter would slice an opening in the top of the glass. But first there was an alarm to deactivate.

Griffin heard the soft distant whir of a robot and froze momentarily until it was gone. He took a small circular device of metallic black and—crazy as it seems—pressed it to the side of the globe. In a fraction of a second, the contact sensors hooked to the alarm had their energy sucked into Griffin’s (homemade) device, which magnified the emissions and sent them back to the scan-base with so much force that the system overloaded and burnt out.

Ha! Stay calm—swift and calm
.

Next came the laser-cutter. It was quiet at first, the ambery glow giving Griffin jaundiced fingers.

Damn…this is thick glass!

Griffin had to boost the power on the cutter so that it was not as quiet as before; in fact, it hummed so loudly that he did not hear the whirring sound outside the door to the exhibit.

Come on—cut! Cut!

There was a whoosh of sound and a pale blue beam struck the globe and bounced up into the darkness. Griffin jolted and pulled back from the brain, dropped the cutter, drew his pistol. The robot, something like a black snowman on a raised flat base, swivelled to follow him with one of its protrusions. Another beam flashed and tore through the sleeve of Griffin’s jacket, brushing his arm.

Bending into a combat crouch, Griffin squeezed off three quick shots, the firefly beams striking the robot square in the middle. The machine squealed and blew back, skidding with a crash into a display case of Yoshizawa’s writings. Glass and paper scattered and the robot sagged, its thin arms jerking spasmodically.

Griffin collected his tools and stuffed them into his pockets before dashing out of the room. In all likelihood the guard had sent a call out to the other robots as soon as it spotted him. There was probably a link to a security agency and the forcers, too. It was time to run.

The route to the exit was blocked by a stout black security
machine which
was approaching at a startling rate of speed. Griffin had no choice but to detour through the long dark Mahnzee hall. From the sound of things, there was more than one robot whirring behind him. Cold blue beams sliced past the running man, vanishing down the aisle like tracers. Another volley—several beams hit the case of mummies, the brittle bodies breaking as if papier-mâché. More beams—Griffin let out a yelp and sagged to the floor, landing on his back, his eyes closed.

The robots slowed and looked at one another, then
proceeded
gingerly, engines whispering…closer to the figure on the floor. These were cheap (and not terribly sophisticated) guard models, not equipped with life-scan technology—they would need to visually inspect the human to determine whether he was alive or not. They were several yards away when Griffin’s hand raised and the room flashed green.
One beam for each of the robots.
The first actually seemed to scream, its head a piñata of black shrapnel. The other, hit lower, floundered, strobing, its chest a crater of smoky spaghetti and fireflies.

Griffin—who had not actually been hit—picked himself up. Most ray weapons would not have penetrated the robots’ armor, but he, being the inventor that he was, had made a few modifications to his pistol…

A piece of glass fell out of the broken display case and Griffin flinched. Sound carried curiously there in the museum and that of the shard crashing tinkled high in the great room, like hidden wind chimes up in the vaulted darkness. There were other noises, too—the soft crackling of sparks in the guts of a broken robot, the hollow droning of another advancing, close blood thumping in the ears.

Move! Move! The forcers will be here any second!

Peripheral motion spun Griffin and he fired. One of the Mahnzee mummies, jerked by the earlier blasts, had been swinging in its shattered box. The fresh green beam knocked it through the glass side panel and the wispy grey mummy hit the hard floor, its head breaking into small pieces like a scattered puzzle.

More motion—another robot appeared at one of the far ends of the hall. Griffin darted for the closest cover—into the wide dark mouth of the giant squid shell.
Deep into the dark tomb where his heartbeat and his footfalls were the same.
The ceiling grew lower the deeper he went, the squid shell tapering until he reached the rear chamber. A plate seemed to shift beneath his step and a thick door of icy calcium hissed down and banged shut behind him.

Shit! A trap! A fucking Mahnzee trap!

««—»»

Griffin chuckled in the darkness. It was the third day, so far as he could tell—but he couldn’t really tell. He sat in his own urine, chuckling. Maybe, he thought, this was Mother Nature exerting some poetic justice…fair treatment for one arrogant enough to sidestep evolution. She was an
artist,
he was a poser, a meddler.

How long
will the air
last?

The ray-pistol that had shattered armored robots was no match for Mother Nature’s squid shell. Griffin had drained the weapon firing in one spot—to no effect. He had to chuckle (admirably, ironically) at that. What else could he do?

“I’m sorry,” he said, but was the apology meant for Nature or for something else?

««—»»

The shadowy, thinning creature, vague on the monitor, vague behind a bright rain of static, vague in a screen that no one saw, was slumped in a corner. It was hungry and perhaps—though no one would ever know—perhaps it missed its creator.

— | — | —

A SHADE OF GREY

He fell in love for just a moment, in the broken penny-colored light and summery verdigris of the Fern Museum. Mother was towing him through the glass-encased jungle when he spotted a woman weeping by a fountain.
She
was on parole from heaven—gold as
picture-book
August, eyes the blue of ghosts, with bored fans stirring her hair, a restless nimbus. Coffin’s ten-year-old heart doubled in age at the sight of her; but what did he know of romance when he didn’t even have enough pubic hair to braid?

A small bird had gotten into the museum and a robot worker—a cross between Spartacus and a wheelchair—had gone after it. Whirring about with a net at the end of a telescoping arm, the robot had further agitated the terrified bird, which, in a desperate attempt at escape, had flown full-force into one of the expansive windowpanes. The wee black bird thumped on the glass, splashed in the fountain pool, flailed a bit,
then
floated, a frayed clump of coal.

The woman had witnessed all this with horror, had even tried to dissuade the feverous machine, to no avail. She rushed to the fountain and stood there lamenting, as
Coffin
and his mother made their way through the lush maze of foliage.

“I’ll get it,” the robot croaked, exhaling blue, a plump cigar wedged into its mouth vent.

The woman gave the robot an accusatory look, then gently scooped the dead bird from the fountain pool and pressed it to her bosom. It left a damp stain on the white of her breezy dress. She held it against herself, as if it were her very heart, long lost, and now a soggy flightless thing.

Coffin’s own heart broke just then, watching her—the first break of many—as his mother tugged him around the corner and into the oblivious bright activity of the gift shop.

««—»»

It was the least expected thing. Coffin’s ten-year-old heart had grown into his twenty-eight-year-old body, and he was making his way down Fortune Street on his way home from work, when he heard a voice from the past. Sounded like a frog in a breadbox.

“Hey, pal, can ya spare a bill or two…I’m savin’ for a lube job.”

Coffin stopped. He was between two amber-tiled tenements, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a bag of crullers in the other—the
hazards
of working at Brewland. An alley full of flies and old mattresses and damp cardboard opened on his left. The robot was hardly distinguishable from its setting, the alley like a huge infected wound, a poison clutter of bed frames, and stacks of black garbage bags like dominatrix snowwomen.

“Well, I—” Coffin, too lean, too freckled and bookish with glasses, was about to lie about not having any small bills, when he noticed the cigar.

While the torso of the robot had been striped with graffiti, and one of its wheels was missing, and a length of glittering Christmas tree garland was drooped about its stout neck like a Honolulu lei…he remembered this machine. The fat cigar was squeezed into a thin, smoke-browned mouth grid, under the black doorknob eyes.

“Hey, didn’t you used to work at the Fern Museum?” Coffin asked.

A laugh, or a cough, puffed through the vent. “Shit, yes. Been over ten years since then. I got canned for riding over some rich old broad’s foot.”

“Oh.” Coffin didn’t know what else to say. He’d never been one for small talk, especially with task-bots. “Say, um, I think I could spare a few munits…”

The robot wheezed, “Ahh, you’re a saint, kid. Ya got a nice face—I can always tell a nice face. But your hands are full; here, I’ll hold your coffee…”

A spindly arm came up and the rust-freckled fingers took Coffin’s Styrofoam cup. The human pulled out his wallet and was selecting bills when he heard a loud slurp, then something like a lawnmower backfiring…a burp, then the crunch of empty Styrofoam.

“Hey! You drank my coffee!”

The doorknobs gazed up. “Good stuff, too.
Indonesian beans, or Kalian?
I’m crazy about Sumatra Mandheling, but Kalian marsh-bean has such a smooth nutty aftertaste.”

Coffin took a step back. “I didn’t know task-bots could drink coffee.”

“Well, I bet there’s a lot ya don’t know about task-bots.”

“I guess.” Coffin had second thoughts about parting with his money at this point, feeling rather taken. He had
really
been looking forward to that hot cup of Mandheling. Still, he held out the five ones and turned to head on his way.

Slim metal fingers plucked the money away and the robot hissed out a clot of smoke through its vent, which was now slick, as well as brown. “Thanks, kid.”

««—»»

Coffin rode up in the lift with a neighbor he called Roger Thesaurus-Rex, a bald drum of a man, tempest-bearded and waxen, whose conversational interchanges invariably consisted of an approximate repetition of whatever was said to him.