Robot Blues (47 page)

“I won’t be buried
in olive drab,” Raoul remarked in passing.

Xris could have
told him that he wouldn’t be buried at all, decided to skip it. The smell of
lilac lingered in the air. “Jamil, Tycho, Quong, report in.”

Silence.

That was definitely
not right.

Xris tried again. “Jamil!
Report in! That’s an order!”

Nothing.

“Tycho, turn on
your translator!”

No apology from
the chameleon.

“Quong? Where the
devil are you?”

Silence.

What was going on
now?

“Harry, stay here.
I think my comm’s out. I’m going to check on—”

He turned, saw
Tess standing right behind him. She held up a grenade for him to see, then
tossed it into the small enclosed area in which they were standing.

The grenade rolled
to a halt, almost at Xris’s feet.

“I’ll save you!”
Harry cried.

He flung his body
full length on the grenade.

“Harry, it’s a—”

There was a
muffled
whump,
a soft hissing sound. Yellow-gray fog curled up from
beneath Harry’s broad stomach. Harry grunted. A funny look crossed his face. He
lifted his head.

“Sleep-gas
grenade,” Xris said.

“Yeah, I—” Harry’s
eyes blinked, his head lolled, thumped down on the deck.

Tess lifted a gas
mask, placed it over her nose and mouth, and set off another grenade.

Xris tried to
raise his gun, to fire, but the weapon fell from his hand. He keeled over,
halted his fall with his hand, tried to push himself back up, fighting the gas,
fighting the darkness that was his brain shutting down.

He lost, pitching
forward onto the deck.

“I’m sorry, Xris.”
Tess’s voice, muffled by the gas mask.

Yeah, right.

Unless someone has
the wisdom of a Sage, he cannot use spies; unless he is benevolent and
righteous, he cannot employ spies. ... It is subtle, subtle!

Sun-tzu,
The Art of War

Xris woke to a
blind darkness, numbing cold, and a throbbing pain behind his eyes. Memory was
blessedly fuzzy for a few minutes, then he saw Tess with the gas grenades and
heard her “I’m sorry.” He knew then what had happened and where he was. Dark,
cold, like a refrigerator. Very much like a refrigerator. He was in a Corasian “meat
locker.”

He lay still,
trying to think, to force his brain to work when it would have much preferred
to crawl off in a hole and howl. The pain was nothing more than the
aftereffects of the sleep gas. It would go away. The gut-twisting knowledge of
defeat, the certain knowledge of the horrible fate which awaited him and the
members of his team would not go away. He asked of the Creator only one thing
before he found himself listed on the Corasian dinner menu as “Catch of the
Day.” He wanted to get his hands on Tess. Preferably the hand with the vise
grip.

It was at that
moment that he realized he had another problem.

His hand was
missing.

“Shit!” Xris sat
up.

“Xris is awake,”
said a voice in the darkness— Tycho’s, by the mechanical sound.

Xris readjusted
his cybernetic eye to infrared, was then able to see the warm bodies of his
friends, though nothing else.

Corasians have no
eyes and therefore have no need for lights on board their spacecraft. The
darkness was absolute. Xris was the fortunate one. He could at least see heat
sources. His fellow team members, not gifted with his augmented vision, were
effectively as blind as if their eyes had been gouged out.

He made a quick
count. At least they were all here and, since they were all radiating body
heat, they were all still alive. Xris felt better. Not much, but some.

“How are you, my
friend?” Quong asked, peering into the darkness in the completely wrong
direction.

“Over here, Doc. I’m
wonderful, absolutely wonderful. Well rested. Don’t know when I’ve slept
better. How about the rest of you?”

“The same,” Jamil
said lightly. “I’m thinking of going jogging.”

“I’m okay,” said
Harry. He cleared his throat. “Uh, about that grenade, Xris—”

“You saved my
life, Harry,” Xris said solemnly, suddenly glad of the darkness that was hiding
his smile. “Well, you would have, if that grenade had been the exploding kind.
But that was still the bravest thing I ever saw anyone do. I mean it, Harry, I
owe you one.”

“Naw, you don’t,
Xris.” Harry was pleased, probably blushing. “You’ve saved my skin plenty. Don’t
give it a second thought.”

During the
conversation, Quong had crawled over in Xris’s direction, found Xris by
clutching at him.

“Do you think the
place is bugged? Do you think Harsch is listening?” he asked in a low voice,
using their subcutaneous commlinks.

“Wouldn’t you?”
Xris replied dryly. “And he might be able to pick up even that much noise. Keep
it down. Way down.” He added aloud, “Say, do any of you guys happen to know
what happened to my hand? I can’t seem to find it anywhere.”

“Maybe you left it
in your other pants,” Raoul said, and burst into a lit of high-pitched
laughter.

“What’s the matter
with him?” Xris asked.

“He’s been like
that ever since he woke up. I am afraid that the sleeping gas mixed with some
other chemical substance in his blood. The Little One won’t wake up at all.
Well, he will, but he keeps drifting off to sleep again.”

“ The bastards
took off my hand, didn’t they? Fortunately it was the cosmetic one. Keep
talking, Doc. I have to check something.”

Under cover of
Quong’s long-winded diagnosis of the Little One’s condition, Xris pulled up his
pants leg. He snapped open the compartment, felt inside, sighed in grim relief.
His weapons hand and his tool hand were still there, along with various
assorted small rockets and other implements.

Quong finished. “Are
they there?”

“Yeah. So, Harry,”
said Xris loudly, “tell us more about Professor Lasairion.”

“Huh? Now?”

Tycho. sitting
next to him, nudged him in the ribs.

“What? Oh, yeah,
sure. Let’s see. I think I can remember most of it. Mom always said I had a
photogenic memory. Professor Lasairion was born in Belfast, Ireland, Earth, in
the year 2069. He was one of twelve children ...”

“The Corasians
took your hand,” Quong said softly. “I was just coming around and I saw two of
them in here, working on you. The blobs lit up the place nicely, plus the
humans carried nuke lamps. A man, whom I assume was Harsch, was with them, plus
four other humans, probably his bodyguards.
And
the charming Captain
Strauss.”

“Bless her little
heart. She must have told them I was a cyborg I’m probably damned lucky that’s
the only piece they took off me,” Xris said.

Quong shook his
head. “It is only a matter of time, my friend. According to their discussions
with Harsch, the Corasians consider you an ideal subject. They plan to copy
your mechanics, to give their own robotic bodies greater capabilities. The
Corasians wanted to start operating then and there. Strauss told them not to.
For the time being, at least.”

“That was sweet of
her.” Xris gave a few seconds to the prospect of having his body pulled apart
without benefit of anesthetics. A few seconds was more that enough. “What’s she
want to keep me around for?” He waved his remaining hand. “Other than as her sex
toy, of course.”

Quong grunted. “Seems
there’s some questions Harsch wants to ask you about the robot.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Like where is it?”

Xris stared at the
infrared outline of his friend. In the background, Harry was droning, “The
professor attended MIT for two years, but was expelled for being in possession
of a controlled substance—”

“Oh, that’s too
much!” Raoul doubled over, helpless with laughter.

Xris said
cautiously, “Okay, I give up. Where
is
the robot?”

Quong shrugged. “Search
me. The last I saw, it was in sick bay. I was preparing to dissect it— Oh,
sorry.” He patted Xris on the shoulder, the shoulder that was missing a hand. “I
wasn’t thinking. Anyhow, the ‘bot’s not there now, apparently. And someone else
is missing, too.”

Xris glanced
around the room. He counted six faintly glowing bodies, including his own. “Who’ve
we lost?”

“Jeffrey Grant.”

“Son of a bitch. I
forgot all about him. Where is
he?
”

“He’s not here,
that much I know. And no one’s said a word about him. No one—catch my drift?”

“You mean Strauss?”

“Yes. I don’t
think she’s mentioned him to Harsch. I told the others to keep quiet. According
to what I over heard Strauss tell Harsch, the robot was on its own.”

“Strange,” Xris
said, trying to account for this and not having much luck. “Maybe she’s keeping
Grant on ice, plans to cut a little deal for herself after Sakuta’s gone.
Although that doesn’t make much sense. Wouldn’t be worth the risk, in my
opinion. But then, what do I know? I’ve been operating in the dark this whole fucking
job.”

“... married,”
Harry was saying, “to Greta Jean Schnickbaum, a Ph.D. in nuclear physics. They
had no children. They used to say that their robots were their children..,.”

“Four humans.”
Xris was adding up the score. “Armed?”

“To the teeth. Their
teeth may be armed, for all I know They’re walking arsenals. Looks like each
one has an anti Corasian dampener device.”

“What the hell’s
that?” Xris demanded.

“It fires a blast
of oppositely polarized energy, short circuits them, so to speak. Say you had a
battery—”

“Say I didn’t.
What else?”

“They each have
several high-caliber needle-guns, designed to crack open plastisteel.”

“Looks like Sakuta
doesn’t exactly trust his Corasian hosts.” Xris glanced around at his team. “I
presumed they searched us while we were out. I don’t suppose they overlooked
anything?”

“They missed
nothing,” Quong said glumly. “They even look a small corkscrew which I hake a
habit of carrying in my wallet.”

“Those guns would
outfit us nicely,” Xris said in thoughtful tones. “Give us a real edge.”

“Against the
thousand or so Corasians on this ship? I admire your notion of fair play, my
friend.”

Xris smiled. “Beats
throwing Raoul’s high heels at them.”

Quong was not to
be deterred. “Not to mention the fact that we are locked in this cold-storage
compartment with no way out—Jamil couldn’t find a door.”

“He won’t. Not in
a meat locker. The Corasians don’t like to have to chase their lunch around.
Only one way in, and that’s from outside.”

“And,” Quong
continued, “you are the only one who can see in this confounded nightmare, with
the possible exception of the Little One, who may have natural infrared.”

“And that’s the
good
news.” Xris slapped Quong on the back. “It’s what I like about you,
Doc. Your optimistic viewpoint.”

“I feel it is my
duty to identify the difficulties,” Quong said stiffly.

“I know, Doc. I
know,” Xris said. “It’s just—”

A clanging sound
interrupted him, coming from the wall.

“Company,” Xris
warned. “At my signal, Doc, jump them. Pass the word.”

“Jump whom?” Quong
demanded. “With what?”

“I have my weapons
hand,” Xris said softly.

“Oh, well.” Quong
grumbled. “That makes all the difference. Why didn’t you say so in the first
place?”

“And tell Jamil
not to let them shut that door!” Xris ordered.

Quong grunted
again and stumbled off into the darkness, hands outstretched, feeling his way
along. He bumped into Tycho, imparted Xris’s orders. Tycho told Harry. The word
spread quickly, to judge by Raoul’s partially stifled laughter. The team spaced
themselves within arm’s length of each other, reaching out their hands to keep
in touch.

A giggling Raoul
shook the Little One, propped him onto his feet.

The Little One’s
head slumped; the fedora tumbled onto the floor. Raoul prodded him. The Little
One’s head snapped up. He gazed around sleepily, and then apparently the mental
turmoil struck him, for he was suddenly alert and wide awake. He shifted his
gaze toward the wall. The banging sounds continued. Apparently they were
attempting to open the door and not having much success.

The Corasians are
obsessed with obtaining human technology, primarily because they are so bad at
it themselves. Almost all of the technology they have ever acquired has been
stolen from the human and alien residents of the Milky Way galaxy next door.
Often the Corasians borrowed the mechanics, without having any real clear
understanding of how they operated, which meant that machinery breakdowns were
frequent occurrences.

Unfortunately, it
had been Xris’s experience that the breakdowns usually happened only to mundane
equipment—such as hatch seals. Corasian’ weapons, which were attached to the
robotic bodies and operated by impulse energy from a computer “brain,” worked
just fine.

Xris boosted his
hearing. Beneath the banging and clanging, he could hear swearing. A human
voice, probably Harsch’s, though it was too faint to be able to tell. The voice
didn’t sound happy.

Xris grinned.
Harsch was in one hell of a spot. He’d promised to deliver one Lane-laying
robot and was now faced with the prospect of explaining to this bunch of
flesh-devouring fiery globs of goo that he wasn’t going to be able to keep that
promise. Harsch must be sweating— literally. No wonder he was keeping those
bodyguards close. And they would likely be paying more attention to their
Corasian hosts than to a sorry group of unarmed prisoners. The bodyguards
wouldn’t be expecting an assault from that quarter.

It was a chance.
Not much of one. The guards were well armed and it wouldn’t take them long to
shift their thinking and their aim. And there was always the Corasians. But a
chance, even a slim one, was better than no chance at all.