The Raven-Haired Rogue: A Novella

by John Zakour

  “Sweet move,” I hear Maxxx say.

  “OK, we’re not giving Mars a good name here,” Tezza says.

  “People, Zachary is our guest. Remember, he saved Saturn,” Merinda says sternly. “Don’t make me give you all a mental time-out!”

  “Woof!” Saturn agrees.

  HAL50 doesn’t seem to hear anything anyone says. He is furious. From the ground, his android arms telescope out and grab me by my ankles.

  “I did not know he could do that,” Tezza says.

  Just lovely, I think. I need to end this fast. Of course, the question of the moment is how?

  I can feel HAL50 tightening his viselike grip around my ankles. My underarmor is protecting me for now, but I can’t let this go on much longer. Yeah, I could pop my gun into my hand and shoot him, but that would be too drastic of a move, especially since I know that HAL50 is doing this to defend Alicia. I have to give him kudos for that. Of course there’s a difference between giving a guy—well, an android with a guy’s brain—kudos, and letting it break your ankles.

  “Zach, do you wish for me to help?” Merinda thinks to me.

  “You can’t go wrong with Merinda’s help,” Saturn thinks.

  “I can help, too!” Carol thinks.

  “I am sure I can do something, also,” HARV transmits to my brain. “After all, I do rule when it comes to dealing with machines.”

  “OK, there are way too many people in my head!” I mentally scream. “This is more annoying than being squeezed by an android with a human brain!”

  “Everybody, time-out!” Merinda shouts.

  The next thing I know, Merinda is tapping me on the shoulder. “Zach! Zach! Mars to Zach. Time to wake up!”

  I open my eyes to see Merinda standing in front of me, smiling. Saturn is asleep, curled up in a ball near her feet. Looking around, I notice HAL50 has released his grip on me. He is now asleep on the floor. In fact, everybody else in the room, including HARV, is asleep on his or her feet.

  “I thought everybody could use a little time-out,” Merinda says.

  “I’m not going to argue with you on that one,” I tell her. Though I have to say I am a little off put by how easily she can stop people in their tracks. Pointing to HARV and Carol, I note, “Those two aren’t easy to control.”

  Merinda nods. “Yes, I believe the bionics in my mind, combined with my Martian DNA, make certain parts of my mind quite powerful. I am hard to resist. Even SRIP is asleep.”

  “So then why not probe the minds of your people to see who is trying to harm you?”

  Merinda sighs. “I do try to stay out of the minds of those around me.”

  “Yeah, but once Saturn heard that somebody wanted to harm you, I would think you’d at least try to pick their brains. DOS, you can probably make them talk.”

  Merinda looks away from me. “I have to admit, Zach, I did try. But none of them seem to know anything. Whoever the guilty person is, he or she may somehow be immune to that part of my power.”

  Looking around at the sleeping Carol, HARV, Maxxx, Tezza, and HAL50, I find that hard to believe. Then, gazing out of one of the windows of the ship, I notice the people around the ship are also asleep on their feet.

  “Wait, you put everybody in the area to sleep?” I say.

  “Well, not quite,” Merinda answers.

  I point out the window. “Look out there. All the ground crew is asleep.”

  Merinda nods. “Yeah, well…Zach, I haven’t quite told you the entire story. Right now your entire planet is asleep.”

  11

  I look around Merinda’s ship to see that everybody, except Merinda and I, are asleep on his or her feet. Peering out the window, I see the same thing. Just for kicks, I activate my wrist communicator to scan for any broadcast. Total silence.

  “Impressive,” I tell Merinda.

  Merinda gives me a wry smile. “I do have to admit it comes in handy at times.”

  “It would have been nice, though, if you had told me about these extra powers of yours,” I say bluntly.

  Merinda locks her big, green eyes on me. “Frankly, Zach, I didn’t want to cloud the issue.”

  “Cloud the issue? Your powers are a big part of the issue!” Waving at everybody sleeping, I add, “Power like this makes you a threat.”

  Merinda tightens her glare on me. “Don’t you think I know that!” she blares. She takes a deep breath and calms a bit. “Zach, it isn’t your place to ponder why somebody might want to harm me. It’s your job to figure out who it is, despite his or her reason.”

  Standing my mental ground, I retort, “Merinda, knowing why they might want to kill you helps me determine who might want to kill you.”

  Merinda turns away from me. “Yes, I see that now. I should have given you full disclosure on the true nature of my power.”

  “Here’s the thing, Merinda. Haven’t you used your powers to probe your people?”

  Merinda nods. “I told you they all deny any involvement. Somehow, whoever this is, is immune to my power.”

  Looking around the room at the sleeping people, I find that hard to believe. “OK, how long do we have until they wake up?”

  “They will sleep for as long as I will them to, but I find anything more than a few minutes will cause a dissonance. So I try not to keep subjects sleeping for more than ten minutes. It’s easy to justify in their minds why they missed ten minutes of their day.”

  “Ah, OK, if you say so.”

  I didn’t have a lot of time, but I still wanted to take some advantage of the situation. “Please, take me to HAL50’s quarters.”

  “It’s this way,” Merinda says, moving toward a door at the end of the common area we are in. “Why his room?”

  “One, he was the last member of your team to attack me. Two, he has a human brain in an android body. If you ask me, that’s asking for trouble with a capital T.”

  We reach the door to HAL50’s quarters. Merinda waves her hand over the lock and the door pops open. Walking into the room, the first thing I notice is that there is no bed.

  “Where’s the bed?” I ask.

  “HAL50 only needs an hour of sleep each day, which he takes sitting down.”

  Looking around the room, it’s not just missing a bed. The place is pretty barren. It has an old wooden chair and desk, and nothing else. There are two doors in the back of the room. I assume the small one leads to a closet. The other door must lead to a bathroom.

  “Each of the walls is an information screen?” I ask, heading toward the door I believe is a closet.

  “Yes, of course,” Merinda says.

  I slide open the closet door to reveal a row of brown suits. Rubbing my hands over the suits’ material (and checking the pockets), they are all smooth and expensive feeling. “These are real silk.”

  “HAL50 likes to look his best,” Merinda says. “Those suits are handmade on Mars.”

  Pointing to the other door, I say, “That’s a bathroom, right?”

  Merinda nods as she follows me toward the door.

  Walking into the bathroom, I can’t help but ask, “Why does an android need a bathroom?”

  “Well, this room was designed for nonandroids. Plus, HAL50 likes to keep it for company.”

  I move to an old-fashioned mirror and medicine cabinet on the wall over the sink. Sliding the door open, I notice the shelves are bare except for an old-fashioned barber’s razor with a jet-black handle. I only realize what the razor is from my sense of fascination with things from the old days. I take the razor and flick it open to expose the shiny metal blade. Taking a strand of hair from my head, I run it over the blade. The hair splits in two. Now what does an android need with a really sharp razor?

  Looking at the old barber’s razor glistening in my hand, I can’t help thinking, what the DOS does an android need with a razor? Showing the razor to Merinda, I say, “OK, I can understand why an android would want a bathroom for guests, but why in Asimov’s name would an android need a razor?”

>   Merinda shrugs. “Androids have weird tastes.”

  OK, the razor wasn’t exactly a smoking hand laser, but it was something. Now I needed to see if I could find more something on the other potential killers. “Do we have time to check Tezza’s room?” I ask.

  Merinda nods as she leads me back into the main area of the ship, past all the sleeping people. “Of course.”

  We enter Tezza’s room as I try not to think too hard about the repercussions of having a client who can put everybody to sleep on a whim. Tezza’s room is the opposite of HAL50’s. It is crammed with a huge king-size bed covered with pillows and a menagerie of stuffed-animal cats, a row of dressers, and lots of old mirrors. And everything is red. Her wall monitors are all on, with positive messages scrolling across them: “You are the best! Today is the first day of the rest of your life—conquer! The secret to success is to not give up! Success is 0.1 percent inspiration and 99.9 percent sweat. Ladies don’t sweat. They perspire.”

  Pointing to a closet in the corner, Merinda tells me, “Tezza’s room is the one with the wardrobe bot. Tezza is a wizard with it.”

  Right now though I am more interested in the stuffed animals on the bed. “Never pictured Tezza as a stuffed-animal kind of gal,” I say, walking toward the bed. I’m not sure why the zoo of stuffed cats on her bed fascinates me so much.

  “Each of these stuffed cats was handmade on Mars,” Merinda says proudly.

  Something about this stuffed Siamese doesn’t feel right. It seems to have more weight than I would think a stuffed thingamajig should have.

  “It feels heavy,” I say.

  “That’s the great Mars handmade quality,” Merinda assures me.

  Rubbing my hand down the stuffed toy, I feel something decidedly solid in the tummy area. I use both hands to knead the object close to the surface of the stuffed animal. The very distinct form of a knife protrudes from the cloth lining. I show the form to Merinda.

  “Looks like Tezza has issues,” I tell her bluntly.

  Merinda crosses her arms and sighs. “You have no idea why she keeps a knife in a stuffed animal. It could be a perfectly innocent reason.”

  On a whim, I drop the Siamese on the bed and pick up another stuffed cat—this one’s a fat, yellow tabby with big cartoony eyes. Once again, being a trivia buff of the old days, I recognize this as Garfield. Feeling around Garfield’s stuffing, I clearly feel another rough object. Moving that object with my hand, I determine it’s another knife.

  “This one has a knife in it too,” I tell Merinda.

  “OK, I admit that is odd, especially since Mars hasn’t purchased licensing rights to Garfield.”

  “Yeah, that’s what makes this odd,” I say, not trying one bit to mask the sarcasm in my voice.

  Showing the stuffed Garfield with the knife to Merinda, I say, “You do realize this isn’t at all normal, right? Or is this how you stuff your stuffed animals on Mars?”

  Merinda shakes her head. “I told you, Zach, that animal wasn’t made on Mars. We don’t have the licensing rights. We on Mars are very strict about licensing rights. Very few of our people are lawyers. That is why we are such a happy planet.”

  Sure enough, I look at a tag on the cat’s foot, and it clearly reads, “Made on the Moon.”

  “How long have you had everybody asleep for?” I ask.

  Merinda shrugs. “No idea. I have to admit this is the longest I’ve had everybody sleeping. Why do you ask?”

  “If we have time, I figure I might as well check out Maxxx’s room.”

  “You don’t need to search Tezza’s room more?” Merinda asks me.

  I shake my head. “Nah, I don’t think I can find anything stranger than stuffed animals with knives in them. I figure I’ll check out Maxxx to see if he has any knives in his room. Since I’m sensing a theme here.”

  Merinda walks over to a wall. “Maxxx’s room is connected to Tezza’s.” She touches the wall and a door appears.

  “Isn’t that kind of odd?” I say.

  Merinda shrugs. “They are technically brother and sister. So they like to be close to each other.”

  Walking toward the door, I say, “Ah, aren’t you all clones on Mars?”

  Merinda places her palm on the door. It pops open. “Yes, we are clones. But there are many genetic lines. I’m from the 1616 line. They are from the 0808 line. Those of us from the same line tend to be closer. It gives us a sense of family.”

  “If you say so,” I tell her, walking into the room connected to Tezza’s.

  This room is filled with weights. Not today’s modern antigrav weights, but good old-fashioned metal weights. There are a few assorted punching bags, a treadmill, and an old stationary bike.

  “Ah, I thought this was Maxxx’s room, not the gym,” I say, walking toward a wall that has a row of pegs traversing it.

  “This is Maxxx’s room. He likes to be in tip-top shape. He believes the old ways of training are the best.”

  “Where does he sleep?” I ask, drawing closer to the wall with pegs. I figure it’s a climbing wall.

  “He has a yoga mat he rolls on the floor. He says it’s great for his back.”

  Upon reaching the wall, a closer inspection reveals that each of the pegs is actually a knife handle imbedded into the wall.

  Yep, it was now official. All of Merinda’s people have a thing for knives.

  “So do you have knives in your room also?” I ask Merinda without looking at her.

  I don’t get a response. Turning my attention away from the knives lining the wall, I see Merinda squinting and holding her head.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask her.

  Merinda shakes her head, her eyes still not fully open. “I have this buzzing in my brain. I may be pushing my powers too much.”

  I walk over to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Maybe you should just wake everybody up now?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” I hear the very familiar voice of Maxxx say behind me.

  Turning, I see Maxxx, Tezza, Alicia, HAL50, and Carol walking into the room. To complete the party, HARV appears.

  “What the DOS has been going on?” HARV asks.

  “Yeah, why are you in my room?” Maxxx asks.

  “Why did you come from my room?” Tezza asks.

  Glancing back at Merinda, I think to her, “Hey, I thought everybody slept until you woke them?”

  Merinda doesn’t answer me. She just leans her head forward, pinching the ridge of her nose between two fingers.

  “Tió, what are you thinking to Merinda?” Carol asks in my mind.

  Maxxx, Tezza, and HAL50 storm up to me while Alicia heads toward Merinda.

  “Merinda, are you OK?” Alicia asks.

  Maxxx curls a hand into a fist. “I repeat, what are you doing in my room?”

  “Yeah, and what happened to us?” HAL50 adds. “I repeat! What happened to us?” HAL50 demands.

  The others all fixate their glares on us. Tezza, Maxxx, and HAL50 are red and ridged with anger. Alicia looks frantic and confused. My team of Carol and HARV are somewhere in between.

  Saturn just stands there, staring up at us.

  Merinda and I exchange glances. I don’t need words or telepathy to know she is blindsided by this turn of events. She was still expecting everybody to be asleep as she commanded. Taking a quick glance out the window in Maxxx’s room, I notice that everybody outside is still motionless.

  “Why are you in my room?” Maxxx asks firmly. “Merinda, I know you are my leader, but we on Mars value our freedom and independence. I consider this an invasion of privacy!”

  “Because it is an invasion of privacy!” Tezza adds, her face growing redder by the moment.

  I decide here that the best defense is to go on the offense. “Here’s the deal,” I say firmly. “There has been a threat to Merinda’s life. It was a threat made by one of you!” I accent that last statement by pointing dramatically at Merinda’s crew.

  “Threat by who?” Alicia asks.
>
  “By whom,” HARV corrects, being helpful as always.

  I soften my stance a bit. “That’s the kicker. I’m not sure who the who is,” I tell the crowd.

  They all murmur.

  “Then how do you know there was a threat?” HAL50 asks.

  “Yeah,” Maxxx adds.

  I point to Saturn. “Saturn picked up threatening thoughts.”

  “Wait, so you are investigating us on a thought the dog thought he heard?” Tezza says, not even trying to cover up the disdain in her voice.

  “OK, when you say it like that, it does sound a tad whacky,” I admit.

  “I know what I heard in my mind!” Saturn thinks to all of us.

  “And you all have to admit that Saturn is quite perceptive,” Merinda says.

  “Yeah, for a freaking dog!” HAL50 says. “But I’ve still caught him drinking out of the toilet!”

  “Hey! It was just that one time, and I was thirsty, and it was clean!” Saturn protests. “This world is still biased against beings that don’t have hands and opposable thumbs!”

  I think about how I could play this. I could be coy. I could still be on the offensive. Like my old mentor used to say, when in doubt, be offensive.

  “I found enough knives in all of your rooms to make you all suspects!” I say with conviction.

  “Wait, you went through all of our rooms?” Tezza exclaims.

  “Well, not Alicia’s. I didn’t need to. Not that I’m certain she’s innocent, but I’ve seen her love of knives up close and personal. But yeah, I had Merinda give you all naps so I could work in peace. That’s when I found you all have enough knives to start a Ginsu store.”

  “Of course we all have some kind of knife! We’re from the Mars working class!” Tezza says. “Remember, Knives are part of what makes us us.”

  “She is right,” Merinda says to me. “My people pride themselves on always having their knives handy.”

  ….“Okay, so the knives are the best clues….” I admit.

  “Zach in a world were we hardly ever have to flush our own tiolets or open our own doors we use knives as a reminder that it’s good to do some things by hand.”