Robot Blues (6 page)

Darlene was
shaking her head. “You know as well as I do, Xris, that the Hung could recruit
someone from the ‘chameleons’ and then I’d be in worse danger simply because I
would be so highly visible.”

“Well, Jamil would
probably be the best. He’s steady, reliable, quick-thinking, ex-military. His
only flaw is that he’s a bit of a womanizer, but with two wives on different
planets I think he’s got about as much as he can handle. He’d be ideal, but I
need him for this museum job. All that leaves is Raoul. He’s been pleading for
years to go back to Adonia to attend some weird hedonistic religious festival—”

“Really?” Darlene
looked interested.

Now it was Xris
who protested. “You can’t be serious!”

“But I am. Think
about it, Xris. Carnival time on Adonia! What could be better? Crowds of people
of all types. Everyone who isn’t Adonian wears masks. I’d have Raoul with me—”

“He’d be a big
help.” Xris grunted. “Especially if your mascara’s smeared.”

Darlene made a
face at him. “Come off it, Xris. You think quite highly of Raoul. You wouldn’t
have him on the team otherwise.”

“Yeah, but I don’t
know why,” Xris returned. “And that’s what bothers me. He’s a Loti—a habitual
drug user. I know it; he claims it himself, I’ve seen him higher than a jumpjet
in hyperspace, yet I’ve never personally seen him swallow so much as an
aspirin. When I assign him to a job, he spends more time worrying about what to
wear than he does on how to accomplish his mission—”

“But he gets the
job done,” Darlene stated.

“True,” Xris
admitted. “I have to give him credit, in all the years he’s worked for me, he’s
only failed us once, during that Olicien bug thing—”

“And that was
under extenuating circumstances.” Darlene argued her case. “The Little One
would be with him. He could pick up on the thoughts of anyone trying to find
me.”

Xris considered
the matter. “There would be a drawback to the crowds, you know that. An
assassin can lose himself among them as easily as you can.”

“But he’s got to
find me first,” Darlene returned. “Honestly, Xris, I—”

The phone buzzed.
It was switched to nonvid, as per instructions for all the team. Xris answered,
not saying a word, his usual technique. Team members were prepared for silence
on his end, knew how to respond to it. Anyone who shouted “Hello! Hello?” was
definitely a wrong number.

“Jamil here. The
room’s clean.”

“I’ll be down in a
sec.” Xris switched the phone off. He regarded Darlene thoughtfully. “Raoul,
huh?”

She nodded,
smiled. “I haven’t had a vacation in years. This might be fun.”

“All right. If
that’s what you want. I have to admit, it does make a certain kind of sense in
a nonsense kind of way. It’s sure as hell the last place anyone would figure
you going. Once Raoul and the Little One have made their report on Sakuta, I’ll
send them to you. You can leave tonight.”

Xris walked to the
door, tripped over the computer case on his way. He shoved it with his foot,
kicked it under the desk.

“Lock the door
after me,” he instructed. “Don’t answer the phone unless it buzzes three times,
then quits, then buzzes again. Don’t—”

“For God’s sake,
Xris, I was in the bureau as long as you,” Darlene cut in, annoyed. “I repeat—I
know the routine.”

“I know you do,”
he said quietly. She stood beside him, near the door. He reached up, smoothed
back the errant lock of hair that was falling in her eyes. “It makes me feel
better, all right? Like I’m doing something constructive when I know all along
there’s not a goddamn thing I can do. If the Hung are looking for you ...” He
shook his head.

She put her hand
on his arm, his good arm, his flesh-and-blood arm. Her touch was cold, her
fingers chill. He’d been worried that she was taking this too lightly. She wasn’t.
She knew the Hung better than he did. She’d been inside their organization for
months.

“I’ll be careful.
I promise.”

“All right. And I
promise to quit the mother-hen routine.”

“I’ll lock the
door. You’ll tell Raoul the signal?”

Xris sighed. “I’ll
tell him, but God only knows if he’ll remember it. If he doesn’t, you can smell
his perfume through the woodwork. I think it’s lilac today.”

Darlene smiled at
him—her lopsided smile. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

He nodded, started
to leave.

She stopped him,
detained him, her hand still on his arm. “You know this is only a stopgap
measure, Xris. I can’t keep running away. I can’t keep you from doing your job.
Yes, I know you don’t need me this time around—or at least you claim you don’t—but
how about next time? And look how I’ve disrupted your life. And the team. They
don’t resent me now, but they soon will. Next thing you know, you’ll be turning
down jobs because of me. This can’t go on.”

Xris smiled at her
reassuringly. “It won’t. The best defense is a good night’s sleep, as our
friend Tycho and his maladjusted translator would say. Or then there’s my
personal favorite of his, the one about carrying the whores into the enemy camp.”

Darlene stared at
him, wide-eyed, astonished. “You’re not thinking of taking on the Hung
yourself?”

“About time
someone did. It’s not a job we’re going to do tomorrow or the next day. It’ll
take time, planning, money. But I’ve got it in the back of my mind.”

Darlene gave him a
playful slap on his metal arm, shoved him toward the door. “I think you’ve got
a gear loose. Go have Doc check you out.”

Xris listened at
the door before opening it. His augmented hearing would pick up the sound of
anyone lurking about outside. He couldn’t hear anything, but he popped the door
open swiftly, peered out into the hall.

Empty.

Xris thrust a
twist in his mouth. “Have a good time on Adonia. I hear the orgies are
first-rate. Be sure and take vids.”

“It’s a religious
holiday,” she said solemnly. “Raoul told me so.”

Xris removed the
twist. “Take care of yourself,” he said gruffly.

Darlene managed a
smile, but she was a bit impatient. “I will, Xris. I’m good at it, remember?”

She shut the door
behind him.

He walked away,
down the empty, silent hall, and suddenly had the feeling that he would never
see her again.

The feeling was
strong and almost impelled him to turn around and go back, just to prove
himself wrong. But that would be stupid, illogical. Darlene would be insulted and
she would have every right to be insulted.

Xris didn’t
believe in premonitions, gut feelings, or anything of the sort. No kindly
premonition had come along to warn him to stay out of that munitions factory
where Ito had died and part of Xris had died, too. Dr. Quong would say that
this feeling of impending doom was Xris’s response to his lack of control over
the situation. Amadi had taken Xris by surprise, caught him off guard,
blindsided him. There wasn’t a damn thing he could do to help Darlene, other than
make a few plans that were, in his mind, highly inadequate. He was frustrated,
and this was the result.

Xris lectured
himself all the way downstairs to the meeting room, and by the time he arrived,
he felt somewhat better. Darlene would be fine. Just fine.

As he walked
through the lobby, he noticed a man with a pocket viewer, earphones on his
head, seated in a chair, staring intently at the screen. Xris noticed five
other men and one woman, all with pocket viewers, earphones on their heads, all
of them staring with various degrees of attention at the various screens. None
of them glanced at him. None of them paid him any attention whatsoever.

“Paranoid,” Xris
muttered, and continued on his way.

He didn’t hear the
first man speak two words into a cell phone.

“It’s her.”

One who is in
difficulty and doesn’t make plans is impoverished; one who is impoverished and
doesn’t fight is lost.

Sun-tzu,
The Art of War

“That covers my
meeting with Sakuta.” Xris was I speaking to the assembled Mag Force 7 team—the
assembled team minus one. “I’ve accepted the job. Now, here’s the setup.”

“Where’s Darlene?”
Harry asked.

“We’ll cover that
later,” Xris said. “Now back to this job—”

“I don’t think we
should start the meeting without Darlene here,” Harry protested.

Xris counseled
patience. “She’s not coming, Harry. There’s a reason. I’ll go into it later.
Can we get back to the job?”

“There’s something
wrong, isn’t there?” Harry said. “That’s why that thing’s here for a nothing
job like this.” He pointed.

“That’s a water
pitcher, Harry,” Xris said. “I mean that thing next to it.”

The “thing” was a
bug-scrambling device brought along by Quong. The device warbled
electromagnetic frequencies, disrupted sensitive micro devices. Nothing with a
microchip inside it would work while the scrambler was operational. Fortunately
for Xris, his inner workings were specially shielded. Otherwise he’d be
flopping around the room about now.

“Yes, Harry, and
what’s wrong is that you’re annoying the hell out of me. Can we get on with
this?”

“Sure, Xris,”
Harry said. Leaning over, he muttered, “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?”
under his breath to Dr. Quong. “Do you know? No one ever tells me.”

Xris ignored him,
continued on.

“Here’s the plan.
On most other worlds, it would be easy for us to walk off with this antique ‘bot.
Just show up, hijack it, leave. Pandor presents a problem—several problems. The
first: The Pandorans are extremely intolerant and prejudiced against
off-worlders. A spate of serial killings—really nasty stuff—took place in one
of their major cities years ago. An off-worlder was responsible. The Pandoran
people were outraged. In addition, the native Pandorans blamed off-worlders for
stealing jobs and controlling the wealth. Result: They forced all off-worlders
to leave the planet and won’t let any off-worlders back on. With one exception.”

Xris looked to the
former military man Jamil, who nodded and took over.

“As you can see by
the astral map, Pandor is located on one of the major Lanes leading to the
Void. If the Corasians ever decided to attack the galaxy from this direction,
they’d cruise down this hyperspace Lane. Because of Pandor’s vulnerable
location, the Royal Military has maintained an Army base on Pandor for as long
as the Corasian threat has been known. The Pandorans don’t like it, but they
don’t like being attacked by the Corasians a whole lot more. Army personnel are
the only off-worlders permitted to enter Pandor and they are shuttled directly
from the spaceport to the base to avoid contact with the local population.”

Xris picked it up
from there. “According to Sakuta, a construction site is located near this
military base—”

“Is it on base
property?” Tycho asked, through his computer-programmed translation device.

“Unfortunately
not.” Xris shook his head. “That would make this easy. The property is owned by
a group of Pandor developers. They’re building a shopping mall and adding a
high concrete wall to keep the sight of the Army base from offending the
shoppers. The site is near the base, though, which gives us an edge. Jamil and
I will dress up in our best Army officer suits and—”

Quong interrupted.
“Imitating an officer of the Armed Services is illegal. If you are caught, you
could be accused of spying and sentenced to death.”

Xris shrugged. “They
have to catch us first. And we’ll be on and off that base so fast they won’t
hardly know we were there. Where was I?” He consulted his electronic notepad. “Oh,
yeah. Jamil and I get onto the base. We do a little song and dance to pay for
our supper. While he’s entertaining the troops, I inspect the security, make
any adjustments necessary. That night, we slip off base, find the robot, grab
it, bring it back, stash in with out luggage, and depart.”

Quong was
sceptical. “How big is this robot?”

Xris smiled,
pulled out a twist, put it in his mouth. “Oh, about two and a half meters tall,
half a meter in diameter, and probably weighs around two thousand kilos.”

Quong sniffed. “And
you are going to put that in your suitcase? You had better take Raoul’s luggage
instead.”

“It wouldn’t fit,”
Raoul said complacently. After a thoughtful pause, he amended. “Well, yes, it
would, but I’d have to leave half my wardrobe behind.” He was excited. “Xris
Cyborg, it sounds as if you do not need me on this mission. If so, don’t forget
the religious holiday—”

“I haven’t,” Xris
said grimly. He raised his hand, forestalled the Adonian’s arguments. “We’ll
discuss this later. To answer your concerns, Doc, Sakuta provided us with a
crate for the robot—specially built with moisture control systems and pillows
to keep it comfy and God knows what else. Jamil and I just have to figure how
to bring the crate onto the base without arousing suspicion.”

“I’ve got an idea
on that,” Jamil said. “
And
an idea for why we’re on the base in the
first place.”

“Good. Well,
gentlemen, that’s it for that job. Jamil and I can handle it. There’s another
matter that I have to cover.” Xris was silent a moment, chewing on a twist.

Finally he said
quietly, “I had a visit today. From the bureau. One of their agents—my old
boss—bumped into me.”

“They know about
Darlene!” Harry was out of his chair, ready to run to her rescue.

“Yes and no.” Xris
motioned for the big man to sit down. “The bureau is aware that the person they
know as Dalin Rowan is alive and well. They found his footprints in their
computer files. But they don’t know anything more than that. And we have to
keep them from knowing. Because if they find out, odds are that the Hung will
find out, too.”