Robots versus Slime Monsters

by A. Lee Martinez

  The Blade’s warrior came into view, and he was struck dumb by what he saw. My witch took hold of the delicate strands of red fog and with a few snaps she shaped it into a long crimson robe she threw over her shoulders. With a sweep of her hand, she created a red hat to cover her head. It was a bit big, but I suspected that was on purpose.

  “By the gods,” said the warrior, “you are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen.”

  “Can I kill him now?” asked Newt.

  My witch only smiled slyly as I floated into her hand.

  “Very nicely done, my dear.”

  “Ah, there you are!” The warrior picked up the Willful Blade.

  The sword sighed. “I suppose it’s too late to change my mind.”

  His bearer noticed the blood on the Blade. “What’s this? We’ll have to get you cleaned up, won’t we? What have you been getting into?”

  The fog slowly dissolved, and the chamber was crowded with a few dozen creatures, all of them freed victims of the amulet’s stealing mists. The mists had spread throughout the fortress, and there were hundreds more scattered throughout. They were naked, but the element of surprise worked to their advantage. They quickly overwhelmed the warlord’s forces. It helped that their leader was dead. Soldiers tended to lose their sense of purpose without someone to tell them what to do.

  My witch left the fortress behind. The warrior trailed along with her for some time more. I suspected, having seen her true beauty, he was hoping to gain her favors. He didn’t know the high price such favors might cost him, and because of her self-control, he never would.

  “A rousing adventure,” said the warrior. “We make an excellent team, witch.”

  “What did they do?” asked the Willful Blade.

  “Oh, let him have his moment,” I said.

  As for my witch, I didn’t know if she’d known all along this was the way it would go or if she’d only been fortunate enough to have a broom she could rely on. Like any good witch, mine was so mysterious, even I, her trusted broom, couldn’t know for sure.

  “I’m sorry for nearly destroying you,” said the Blade.

  “Think nothing of it. I knew you’d come to your senses sooner or later. It wasn’t in your nature. Not truly.”

  “That was an awfully big chance to take,” he said.

  “Not so big. If you were as bloodthirsty as the amulet thought, you’d have killed your bearer a long time ago.”

  The Willful Blade shook with such laughter that he nearly fell out of his scabbard.

  ###

  GREYBACK IN BLUE

  The Automatic Detective

  Like Penelope, Joseph Jung the mutant gorilla detective was top of my list of characters I’d love to put at the center of a story. A tough guy ape with the soul of a poet was made to order in this noir-ish tale of romance and all the dangers that go with falling for the wrong woman. We’re all suckers when it comes to that special someone, and if a detective doesn’t make bad decisions when his heart is involved, he’s not much of a detective at all, if you ask me.

  She lumbered into the office like an angel in blue born of the primeval wilds. There was a grace to her lope, like she was dancing on a cloud. Her fur shimmered like the sun on a good day, and she had the kind of haunches that might inspire more dimwitted apes to start caving in skulls, just on the off chance something like that might impress her.

  She took off her hat with two fresh red roses pinned to it. I could smell them from here. I could smell her.

  She batted her beady brown eyes at me and smiled. It was right then I knew I'd walk to the ends of the earth for this lady. I'd always been a haunches kind of primate.

  Eve, my auto secretary, said, “Ms. Darrow is here to see Mack, but I said he was out on a case. Said maybe she should talk to you.”

  Darrow scratched something on a chalkboard in her hand and held it up for Eve to say. Thank you.

  “No problem, sweetie. I’ll leave you two alone.” Eve said it like we were about to tear each other’s clothes off and go at it like the wild beasts we once had been. Or maybe that was just my imagination. She rolled out of my office, closing the door behind her.

  “What can I do for you, miss . . . . ?”

  I let the question hang there, expecting she’d answer before too long. She put her little chalkboard in her purse and pursed her wide gray lips. “I was hoping to meet with your partner.”

  Only she didn’t speak the words aloud. She beamed them telepathically into my brain, and I didn’t get the impression she could actually talk. Mutation was a funny thing. It didn’t always work out, but having telepathy when you couldn’t speak seemed like a lucky break. She must’ve carried the chalkboard to talk with robots.

  “He’s out,” I replied.

  Mack, my bot partner, was popular in the way that only a seven foot tall titan of automation could be in this city.

  Nobody gave much thought to a talking gorilla, though last time I’d checked, there weren’t a lot of us dragging our knuckles across Empire’s streets. It wasn’t as if there was an official census, but you’d think someone would’ve been polite enough to alert me when another came along.

  “Oh, I see,” she said“I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  She turned, and I leaned forward on my desk. “Maybe I could be of help.”

  She stopped. “Perhaps, though this problem of mine would be better solved by a robot.”

  The downside of being partnered up with an indestructible robot is that I, the four hundred pound gorilla, ended up being the little guy.

  “I might not be able to throw a skimmer, miss, but I can take care of myself, just fine.” I tapped my temple. “My partner is great for crushing nefarious individuals, but I’m the brains of this operation.”

  Eve piped up from the intercom. “He’s a real gentle giant.”

  “Thank you, Eve,” I said. “That’ll be all.”

  She had a bad habit of listening in on private conversations. I’d have fiddled with her discretion index myself, but Mack, being a robot and sensitive about mucking around with other robots’ programming, wouldn’t allow it.

  I flicked it off. I didn’t know why I bothered. I was fairly certain Eve could override me. For all I knew the switch wasn’t connected to anything other than that little red light under it, and I was only trapped in some elaborate psychological experiment. It didn’t bother me though I would’ve liked it a lot more if a donut popped out of my desk when I responded properly.

  Darrow smiled, though it was mostly in the eyes because she didn’t have the capacity for such subtle expressions.

  “Perhaps you could be of service.”

  I leaned back in my chair and tried to act casual. Drummed my toes on the desk as if I couldn’t care less whether the only intelligent, female gorilla I’d ever met (who I hadn’t even known existed until two minutes ago) walked out that door. In the jungle, I’d have beaten my chest and roared my intentions toward her, or so I assumed. The old instincts weren’t what they used to be since I’d gotten smarter. Not that it mattered. The old rules didn’t apply to we mutated apes. We were a more civilized breed.

  By we, I meant the two of us in this room. Probably the only two on this whole planet.

  You could say I was invested in getting to know her better.

  “Why don’t we start at the beginning, Ms. Darrow?”

  I didn’t ask where the name came from. She might have picked it using a phone book, like I had, or she might have had personal reasons for it. That was the upside about waking up as sentient one day. You got to define yourself however you liked.

  “I need an item retrieved, Mr. Jung,” she said.

  “Please, call me Joseph. Or Joe, if you prefer.”

  Her eyes smiled again. It was absurd, but I was falling for this lady fast. Instinct demanded it, and who was I to argue with instinct?

  My mutation did allow me the subtler expressions, and she must’ve spotted my discomfort with the vagueness of the
request. It wasn’t that I was against bending, or even breaking, some laws for this lady. Quite the opposite. I realized just how flexible my moral code had become at the moment.

  “Oh, please, know it’s nothing illegal,” she said. “It’s my property. I even know where it is. But I can’t risk retrieving it myself. Rather, I’m not brave enough. I can’t honestly say if it’s dangerous or not, but I find my courage lacking.”

  “Nothing wrong with being afraid, Miss Darrow.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  “What’s this item, Miss Darrow?”

  She snorted in a nervous way. “I was hoping to keep that confidential.”

  Normally, I’d have apologized for wasting her time and had Eve show her the door, but the thought of that lovely grayback in the blue dress lumbering out of my life wasn’t something I considered.

  “Go on.” I leaned forward, tried to look thoughtful, as if I was still mulling this over.

  “It’s only an old heirloom. Something I inherited.”

  “Rich uncle?” I asked, only half-joking. If there was some undiscovered wealthy family of gorillas out there, I figured I should know about it.

  She laughed. Verbally, it was a gruff snort, but telepathically, it was like an angel singing in my mind. “When I mutated, I was terribly alone. I’m sure you can relate.”

  I nodded.

  “While I awaited citizen status, a human took me in. He helped with my adjustment period, and while he wasn’t exceedingly wealthy, he had enough money to keep me comfortable for a very long time.”

  “Sounds like a swell guy.”

  My own transition had been a lot less pleasant. Once I’d proven my sentience, I’d been kicked out of the zoo, pushed into the mean streets, and told to fend for myself. It might’ve been a tragic story, but I’d made out all right so I guess I had nothing to gripe about. A conveniently dead wealthy uncle would’ve been nice to have though.

  “He was,” said Faye. “But he wasn’t the most reputable sort of man. I had nothing to do with that part of his life. He very deliberately left me out of it. I suppose that’s why he left me some money, perhaps as his way of making amends. And a chimp doll.”

  I remained neutral. “You’re goofing.”

  “I suppose it sounds very silly to you, Mister . . . Joe. But in the early days of my sentience, that doll gave me a lot of comfort. It seemed something familiar in a frightening world.”

  It might have bothered my sensibilities, but I could see where she was coming from.

  She removed a key from her purse and handed it to me.

  “It opens a locker at the train station on Vanadium Street. I think he put it there because he assumed people would be watching his house.”

  She didn’t elaborate on who those people might be or why they might be watching. I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to know.

  “But you’re afraid someone might be watching the locker too,” I said.

  “I know it’s silly.”

  “Not at all. You’re just taking precautions.” I tucked the key in my pocket. “Why don’t you wait here while I go have a look? Eve can make you some coffee or tea. Be back soon enough.”

  “Thank you, Joe. Thank you so very much.”

  I put a hand under her chin and smiled. “Just doing my job, Miss Darrow.”

  “Please, Joe.” She took my hand in hers and moved it to her lips. Her hot breath glided across my fingers. “Call me Faye.”

  I left her in my office. Eve caught me as I loped past her desk on my way to the front door.

  “Hey, Romeo, you know she’s lying to you, right?”

  “You couldn’t even hear her end of the conversation,” I said.

  “Didn’t need to,” said Eve. “Some women are trouble, and my body metric analyzer pings her as one of them.”

  “Didn’t know you were programmed with ape metrics.”

  “Primates. They’re all basically the same thing.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind the next time you take offense when I compare you to a television. You never like the clientele.”

  “And I’m right seventy-four percent of the time,” she said.

  “It’s a dirty business,” I said. “What kind of sucker do you take me for? Of course, she’s lying. Nobody walks through that front door unless they’ve got something to hide.”

  “But you’re going anyway. Driven by your biological urge to impress her.”

  “It’s a lonely world, and we don’t all have the luxury of an off switch when the office closes.” I grabbed my homburg off the coatrack. “Just see that she’s comfortable. I’ll be back in an hour.”

  I was out the door before she could say anything else I’d already figured out but didn’t want to think about.

  ***

  The Vanadium Street train station wasn’t in the best neighborhood. A couple of young turks had staked out a street corner, scoping out vulnerable prey. I lumbered past, confident that they’d seek it elsewhere.

  The station itself was in decent shape. Anything run by the city was kept up by state-of-the-art maintenance drones, so while the neighborhood might have had graffiti and garbage in the streets, that all stopped at the station’s doors. It didn’t keep the more ambitious vandals from trying, but biological ambition was no match for automated dedication. A drone was busy polishing the glass doors. It paused to open the door for me.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  It beeped politely.

  Foot traffic was heavy. The trains were how a lot of citizens got around this city, and they mostly ran on time, though there was always some new experimental prototype component ready to go on the fritz about twice a month. All just the sacrifice we citizens made in the pursuit of glorious technological innovation. Sometimes, it didn’t seem like science marched on in Empire City so much as it was dragged kicking and screaming to places it wasn’t ready to go where it would promptly cower in the corner or attack via industrial accident.

  I didn’t walk right to the locker but took my time to survey the station, looking for any suspicious sorts. There were plenty, but they were more of the pickpocket and petty criminal variety. The station had a reliable police presence that kept the more dangerous element outside. A cop and his auto partner stood by one wall, keeping an eye on things.

  A dog had somehow gotten into the station. It wasn’t threatening. Just weird. There weren’t a lot of stray dogs in Empire City. Those that weren’t captured by the animal control drones were usually caught in traffic or eaten by unspeakable mutated things that everyone knew were lurking in the sewers but pretended weren’t there. The beagle wasn’t big enough to be dangerous though.

  Confident that I wasn’t being followed or that if I had been, no one would be stupid enough to cause trouble here, I opened the locker. I wasn’t sure what I’d find, but there was the monkey doll, just like Faye had said. It was a hell of an innocuous thing to be worried about.

  Maybe she had been telling the truth.

  “Do yourself a favor, friend,” said someone behind me. “Walk away.”

  Except he hadn’t said it. The voice was in my head. I could tell it came from behind somehow. Didn’t know how, since it was a telepathic communication, but I didn’t know the ins and outs of psychic mutation.

  I turned, coming face-to-face with a chimpanzee in a sweater vest and bowtie.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” I said.

  The crowd walked by, and no one paid either of us much attention. A couple of well-dressed primates wasn’t that weird in this town.

  “She’s lying to you,” beamed the chimp.

  I didn’t know why everyone kept telling me that.

  “Give me the monkey, and forget you ever saw her,” he said.

  The beagle stepped out from among the commuters. “We don’t want any trouble,” he said.

  Telepathic animals were crawling out of the woodwork, it seemed.

  “Stay out of this, Gus,” said the chimp. “I thought we agreed I’
d handle this.”

  “Just thought you could use some backup,” said Gus the dog. “This palooka’s big. I think we should call in Jenny and Shawn.”

  I grabbed the monkey and tucked it under my arm. “Fellas, the monkey comes with me.”

  The beagle’s eyes shimmered with a soft green sparkle, and I felt foreign thoughts creeping around in my head.

  “What are you doing?” asked the chimp. “We aren’t allowed to—”

  “Stuff your code. This is too important,” replied the dog as his eyes brightened, his mind pushed itself against mine. “Give us the monkey.”

  The pressure in my head felt like it might make my temples burst. My fingers loosened on the toy. My breath grew shorter as my throat tightened, and the base of my skull burned like someone was poking it with a red hot needle.

  “You have a strong will,” said the beagle, “but you will give it to—”

  Something in my brain snapped. I’d lost most of the old instincts with my rise to sentience, and those that I still had I’d learned to suppress. His prodding must’ve broken some dam holding everything back. A dam I didn’t even know I had until it sprung a leak.

  I rose up and howled, beating my chest. Before I’d realized what I’d done, I pounced on the dog and hurled him into the lockers. He slumped on the floor with a sharp whine, and the pressure in my skull dissipated.

  I turned on the chimp and smashed the cheap tile on either side of him. It cracked.

  The chimp held his ground, though he didn’t attack me. Nor did he try getting into my head.

  “Give me the monkey, please.”

  My savagery subsided enough that I could see what was going on. A couple of intelligent primates chatting might not have drawn much attention, but a slavering, wild ape was a different story. The crowd had moved away. The cop and his auto were already on the way over.

  The sensible part of me said to stay put and let the police sort this mess out. But another part of me said it was time to beat it. I turned and dashed for the exit. The pedestrians parted like the Red Sea, and I was outside in a flash. From there, it was only a short dash to my skimmer. Or it would’ve been if not for the lion and rhino standing in my way.