Pepper opened the case, which contained six sets of what looked like earplugs. A label at the top of the case read:
Wearable Auricular Consciousness Scramblers
“WACS,” said Rex. “It’s an acronym, like SLACS.”
“No kidding,” Pepper replied. “What in Space are they for? Why would we want our consciousnesses scrambled?”
“We wouldn’t,” said Rex. “Unless we want to end up like Nana Nutcakes here. This is a dead end. I’m going back to the ship.”
“Good morning!” Denise exclaimed. “I hope you slept well. Can you believe it’s Tuesday already? I’m famished. Would any of you care for some lasagna?”
We spent the rest of “Tuesday” watching Denise prepare and eat three bites of lasagna. Wednesday she cleaned the kitchen. Thursday was slightly more productive.
“They’re not really ghosts, you see. I call them sirens. They tap into your consciousness and try to lure you into the asteroids. But if you have WACS in your ears, you can’t concentrate well enough to pay much attention.”
Rex was unimpressed. “You’re suggesting we navigate an asteroid field while wearing devices specifically designed to keep us from being able to concentrate?”
Denise shrugged. “It’s up to you,” she said. “Goodnight!”
“Well, this was a waste of time,” Rex said. “Let’s get out of here.”
I looked at Pepper and shrugged. She closed the case and followed Rex.
“Wake up, Boggs,” I said, giving him a kick in the ribs.
Boggs rolled over and gazed at me through glassy eyes. “What… what time is it?” he asked.
The sun had just come up behind us.
“Friday,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty
“Wow!” Boggs yelled from the main cabin as I maneuvered the Flagrante Delicto past a particularly large asteroid. “That was a doozy!”
He was not, as far as I could tell, talking about the asteroid. Experimenting with the Wearable Auricular Consciousness Scramblers had revealed them to be nothing but small speakers that played various loud noises on an endless loop. Rex had identified breaking glass, an air raid siren, mariachi music, the shriek of an enraged baboon, nails on a chalkboard, the sound of someone chewing peanut brittle, a vuvuzela and crashing cymbals before getting bored with the exercise. Each sound lasted between one and five seconds, and the interval between sounds ranged from three to fifteen seconds. Wearing a pair of WACS was just disruptive enough to keep you from ever devoting your full attention to any particular thought. The noises themselves were jarring, but just as bad were the random waits between them, during which you couldn’t help but wonder what sound was coming next and when.
Boggs and Pepper had happily put their WACS in their ears the moment we entered the asteroid field, convinced the devices would protect them from what the Oracle had called “sirens.” I remained skeptical. It’s possible the so-called sirens were another manifestation of some sort of mind control, but I couldn’t imagine why anyone would bother to set up such a defense mechanism in a remote asteroid field that was already barely navigable. In any case, Donny and I—lacking organic brains—were probably immune. Additionally, neither of us had ears per se, and I wasn’t convinced Donny had any thoughts worth disrupting. Also, I was the only one capable of piloting the ship through the asteroid field. Rex had refused to wear the WACS at all after his initial experimentation. Having doubts about both the supposed threat and the suggested remedy, I didn’t press the issue.
The first three hours in the asteroid field passed without incident, other than Boggs occasionally startling the group by shouting “Wow!” or “Zowie!” about a particularly loud or otherwise impressive noise coming over the WACS. As far as I could tell, the different pairs of WACS were not synchronized; each of them transmitted its own series of noises on its own unique schedule.
Once we had pinpointed the location of the SLACS receptacle, we had stuffed Ort Felzich in the cargo hold to keep him out of the way. The challenge now was to avoid all the hunks of rock between us and our destination.
“Try going that way,” Rex said, pointing just to the right of an asteroid as I was about to bank left.
“You have to take inertia into account, sir,” I said. “Given our current course, it would require far more fuel to get around that asteroid on the right side.”
“We refueled at Sargasso Seven,” Rex said. “Go right.”
“Be that as it may, sir, the logical course is to bank left.”
“I said right, Sasha. That’s an order.”
“At this point, we’re too far along on our present course. If I try to go right, we’ll crash into the asteroid.”
“Fine,” Rex groused. He watched in silence as I banked left to avoid the asteroid. Then he dived forward, knocking me to the deck, and grabbed hold of the controls. Squawky fluttered to stay on his shoulder.
“Sir!” I cried. “What are you doing?”
“Stay out of my way, Sasha!” Rex yelled, pulling the Flagrante Delicto to the right. “I know where to go. The voices told me!”
I got to my feet and tried to wrest Rex’s hands from the controls, but he knocked me down again with his elbow. Unfortunately, as my programming prevents me from attacking a human being, the best I could do is try to get Rex’s hands off the controls. I wasn’t having much luck.
“Is everything all right in there?” Pepper yelled from the main cabin. “I thought I—”
“Wow!” Boggs shouted. “That sounded like an elephant!”
“What?” shouted Pepper. “I couldn’t hear you over the fireworks.”
“What fireworks?”
“Pipe down!” Pepper shouted. “I was trying to… hey, I just got the elephant!”
“Eleven what? I only counted four.”
“Four what?”
Meanwhile, Rex knocked me to the floor a third time. I’d have yelled for help, but it was pretty clear that none of the humans on board were going to be of any use. Then I remembered the other non-human on board.
“Donny!” I shouted. “Help!”
Donny came into the cockpit as I got to my feet. Rex hunched over the controls, a maniacal grin on his face, directing the Flagrante Delicto right into the path of the asteroid.
“Donny helps?” Donny asked.
“Grab Rex, Donny! Get him away from the controls!”
“Don’t you do it, Donny!” Rex growled. “I know exactly where to go.” The asteroid loomed ever larger in front of us.
“The sirens have gotten to him!” I shouted, trying vainly to pull Rex from the controls. “He’s going to fly us right into an asteroid!”
Donny stood there on his four arm-legs, not knowing what to do. “Donny helps,” he said.
“You have one job, Donny,” Rex growled. “You just sit right there and believe in yourself!”
“Donny, please!” I begged. “Help me!”
Donny stood for several seconds, taking in the scene. “Donny believes in himself,” he said.
Rex knocked me to the floor again. A warning klaxon blared as impact appeared to be imminent.
“That’s the worst one yet!” Boggs shouted.
“I’m a natural born pirate,” said Squawky. “We’re all going to die.”
“Donny believes he can help,” Donny said. He walked up behind Rex, stood up on his hindmost arms, and wrapped his remaining arms—including his neck—around Rex, pinning him to the pilot’s chair.
I got to my feet and grabbed the controls, pulling as hard as I could to the left. The underside of our ship scraped the asteroid as we passed, making a horrendously loud screeching sound.
“Wow, did you hear that one?” Boggs shouted.
“What?” yelled Pepper.
I breathed a sigh of relief as we cleared the asteroid.
“That was close,” said Rex. “Good thing you didn’t listen to me, Donny.”
“Donny believed in himself,” said Donny.
&nb
sp; “Are you okay, sir?” I asked.
“I think so,” said Rex. “It was like something took over my mind for a moment there.”
“The sirens, sir. They’re real.”
“So it would seem. In any case, it seems to have passed.”
“Donny lets go?”
“Better not, Donny,” I said. “We don’t know when it will hit again.”
“I’m fine,” said Rex. “Really. I’m feeling much better, Donny. You can let me go now.”
“Don’t do it, Donny.”
“FLY INTO THAT ROCK!” Rex shouted suddenly. He strained futilely against Donny’s arms, all of which were now wrapped around him.
“Good boy, Donny,” I said. “I’m sorry I called you an abomination that time. You earned your keep today.”
“Oh come on,” Rex said. “That was a joke. I wasn’t seriously trying to get you to—” He suddenly strained against Donny’s grip again. “FLY INTO THE ROCKS, SASHA!” he shouted. “IT’S THE ONLY WAY!”
We continued in this vein for another four hours, Rex yelling himself hoarse trying to get me to fly into the asteroids and Donny holding him fast to the pilot’s chair. When we were within a thousand kilometers of our target coordinates, we began to pick up a distress beacon.
“That’s gotta be the SLACS receptacle,” Rex said.
I eyed him suspiciously.
“Give me a break, Sasha. I haven’t tried to fly us into the rocks for like five minutes now. A distress beacon within ten thousand klicks of where Felzich directed us? That can’t be a coincidence.”
Although I wasn’t convinced Rex was free of the influence of the sirens, I tended to agree. “All right,” I said. “I’ll check it out.”
Three hours later, we were closing on an escape pod. It had been badly damaged by meteor strikes, and our sensors detected no signs of life. I navigated the Flagrante Delicto to within a few meters of it. While Donny continued to subdue Rex, I went out the airlock to explore the escape pod. I got the door open with no trouble. The pod was empty except for something that looked like a metal briefcase. A label on the bottom read: SLACS Receptacle Model 1733-b. I grabbed the case and climbed back into the Flagrante Delicto.
Once back inside the ship, I inspected the case more closely. There appeared to be no way to open it. There were no buttons or controls on the outside at all. Boggs and Pepper continued to shout semi-coherently at each other.
“What’s happening, Sasha?” Rex called from the cockpit. “Did you find it?”
“I think so, sir,” I said. “But I’m not sure what to do with it.”
“First things first,” said Rex. “Get us out of this asteroid field. But first, FLY US INTO THAT ROCK!”
Chapter Twenty-one
“I can’t express how thankful I am to you for rescuing me,” Ort Felzich said. “And not just because I’m a disembodied consciousness being carried around in a case by my own body.”
The Flagrante Delicto had made it back safely to Sargasso Seven. Rex, Pepper, Felzich and I were in Pepper’s office. It had taken us a while to figure out how to communicate with Felzich, but the solution turned out to be surprisingly simple. As long as his body was within a couple meters of the SLACS receptacle, Felzich was able to control his body as if his consciousness was still seated in his physical brain. Any farther away than that and his body would revert to shambling toward the receptacle while muttering “slacks.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Rex. “Of course I’m sure you’re aware our motivations aren’t entirely altruistic. We plan on selling you to the Sp’ossels.”
“Stands to reason,” said Felzich. “I don’t suppose I can talk you out of it?”
“Why?” asked Pepper. “Don’t you want to be returned to your people?”
“I’m not sure they’re my people anymore,” said Felzich. “I’ve had a lot of time to think since my mind was separated from my body and left to drift in deep space eighty years ago.”
“Who did that to you anyway?” Pepper asked.
“I did,” Felzich said.
“You had your own mind removed?” I asked. “Why?”
“It was the only way I knew to navigate the Cabrisi Asteroid Field,” Felzich said. “The rest of my crew wore WACS, but at least one person had to be lucid enough to pilot the ship. This was right after the Retbutlerian Jihad, you understand, when even semi-sentient robots were still strictly prohibited. I thought I’d found a loophole. Put my mind in a box so the sirens couldn’t manipulate me.”
“It didn’t work?” Pepper asked.
“No, it did,” Felzich said. “But one of my crew members’ WACS malfunctioned. He got free of his restraints and overpowered me. Knocked the SLACS receptacle out of my hands and took over the ship’s controls. By the time I recovered the case, it was too late. We were on a collision course with an asteroid. I tried to escape, but the crewman attacked me again. I managed to toss the case into an escape pod and jettison it before we struck. That’s the last thing I remember. Apparently my body survived and was recovered, but my mind floated in space until you found me.”
“What were you doing out there in the first place?” Rex asked.
“I was… looking for a something,” Felzich said.
“If you want to convince us not to sell you,” Pepper said, “this is no time to be coy.”
Felzich nodded. “Zontonium,” he said.
“You were looking for zontonium in an asteroid field?” Pepper asked.
“When New Borculo went nova, it sent out massive flares that destroyed the planets orbiting it. That’s where the Cabrisi Asteroid Field came from. Early surveys of the system suggested one of the planets had major zontonium deposits. But I never found any asteroids with significant amounts of zontonium.”
“I don’t get it,” Pepper said. “The Sp’ossels were getting into the rocket fuel business?”
“Zontonium is useful for more than propulsion,” I said. “Rex and I discovered that on Vericulon Four.”
“What’s on Vericulon Four?” Felzich asked.
“Not on it,” Rex replied. “Over it. A Sp’ossel mind control satellite.”
“Ah,” said Felzich. “Then you know what the Sp’ossels are after. Mind control on a galactic scale.”
“Rex and Sasha were telling the truth about that?” Pepper asked. “Then… the Sp’ossels really are trying to build a device to make everyone in the galaxy artificially happy?”
“That was the plan when I was their leader. If, as you say, the Sp’ossels are willing to pay a large ransom for me, it’s because they think I know where the zontonium is. They will need several million tons of it to build a psionic transmitter powerful enough to reach the entire galaxy.”
“But you never found the zontonium,” I said.
“No,” Felzich said. “And I wouldn’t tell them if I did. I’ve come to the conclusion that happiness is meaningless when pursued as a direct goal. It is valuable only as a side effect of striving toward a purpose.”
“This is all very touching,” Rex said, “but we’re still going to sell you. I don’t care what you were looking for or whether you found it. I care that the Sp’ossels think you know something worth paying for.”
Felzich sighed. “It makes little difference to me in the end. And I suppose I do owe you after you rescued me. Perhaps the Sp’ossels won’t kill me when they realize I don’t have the information they’re looking for.”
“That’s the spirit!” Rex exclaimed. “Pepper, how long will it take to set up a meeting with the Sp’ossels?”
“Already done,” Pepper said. “We’re meeting them on Schufnaasik Six tomorrow.”
“Schufnaasik Six,” Rex repeated. “That sounds familiar. Have I been there, Sasha?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “You once won the planet in a card game.”
“I own a whole planet?”
“Not anymore, sir. The Sp’ossels cheated you out of it.”
Rex shrugged. “Probably a lousy planet a
nyway.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. He was actually right about that part.
I landed the Flagrante Delicto at the coordinates on Schufnaasik Six that Pepper had specified. The location had been selected at random as far as I could tell; Schufnaasik Six was a featureless brown ball with no discernible geographic features. By virtue of its gravity and breathable atmosphere, the planet was technically an APPLE—an Alien Planet Perplexingly Like Earth—but it had nothing else going for it.
When the Sp’ossel ship was visible on the horizon, Rex, Pepper, Ort Felzich and I exited to the surface while Boggs and Donny remained in our ship. The Sp’ossel ship would be landing a hundred meters away. The plan was to exchange Felzich for a suitcase full of credits on the open ground halfway between the two ships. While we waited, I made one final effort to dissuade Rex from his current course of action.
“Sir,” I said, “I would like to express my displeasure once again at the idea of doing business with the Sp’ossels. These people have manipulated us for years. They are not to be trusted.”
“Your objection is noted, Sasha,” Rex replied. “Now cram it.”
Pepper remained silent. I got the impression she was having second thoughts about doing business with the Sp’ossels as well, but she was too desperate for cash to make an issue of it. The lines of the Sp’ossel ship were now discernible in the distance.
“What do you mean, Sasha?” Ort Felzich asked. “How have the Sp’ossels manipulated you?”
“We’re what they call acquisition agents,” I said. “They program us to seek out wealth and then take it for themselves. Rex and I have been unwittingly working for the Sp’ossels for years. We just found out about it.”
“Ah, yes,” said Felzich. “Our engineers were working on that program when I left to find the zontonium. I’m sorry to hear they went ahead with it.”
Rex shrugged disinterestedly. “Nothing for it now but to try to get as much money out of them as we can.”
“But sir,” I said, “how do you know they’re not manipulating us even now? For all you know, they released us at that refueling depot knowing that we would hijack the Raina Huebner.”
Aye, Robot (A Rex Nihilo Adventure) (Starship Grifters Book 2) Page 14
