The Mammoth Book of New Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  Maggie eased forward again, eyeing the supine robot. “Ben faxed me some ad copy at our agency last week, but that was five or six days ago,” she said to herself. “So, theoretically he could’ve kicked off since then.”

  But, no, that didn’t make much sense. Their advertising agency was well-known.

  Maggie leaned her buttocks against the edge of the case and took another look at the bulky Guardbot. “If one of the partners of Quincade & Quincade Advertising had died, it’d be in all the faxpapers and on the vidwall news and the netsheets and . . .” She trailed off, sniffling.

  Surprisingly, she found she was crying.

  “Jesus, why am I getting sentimental over that mean-minded, immoral, philandering son of a bitch?”

  “Gurk,” murmured the bot once again.

  “All right, OK.” She pulled the manual free of the mechanical man’s grip.

  After scanning the opening pages of the section titled Congratulations On Owning The Best Bot For The Buck, Maggie tossed the booklet over atop her new floating plasglaz coffee table and knelt beside the crate.

  “Where the heck is Button A-6?”

  When she lifted the robot’s left arm, it made a raspy creaking noise.

  “Didn’t they oil this thing at the darn factory?”

  Button A-6 was in the chromeplated armpit, along with B-2 and C-8.

  Maggie sighed again, pushed A-6 twice, B-2 once and C-8 three times.

  As the big bot groaned and sat up, Maggie jumped back and away from the crate.

  “You sure took long enough to get me up and running, Mag,” the robot told her.

  She frowned. The voice coming out of the mechanical man’s voxgrid was that of Ben Quincade. “How come your voice has that distinctive nasal twang when you don’t have a nose?”

  “Of course I’ve got a damn nose.” He swung up a metal hand to locate the nose on his face. He, instead, whapped himself on his prominent metal chin.

  “Well, yes there’s a little button of a nose,” she conceded. “But nothing like the Roman schnoz you . . . Hey, wait now. How come you’re talking with Ben’s voice at all?”

  He located his nose, felt it. Then he poked and prodded his torso. “Shit, I’m dead,” he realized. “Yeah, that’s it. They succeeded in knocking me off. But Ira was supposed to install the –”

  “Ira Tandofsky, your buddy at Botz, Inc. over in the Laguna Sector?”

  “That Ira, yeah.”

  Maggie, eyes narrowed, was studying the robot’s rather blank face. “What did Ira do? Make a download copy of your nitwit brain on a silchip and stick it in this bot’s coco?”

  “Well, that wasn’t the original deal, no. You’re right about the brain chip, but I didn’t expect to end up a Guardbot.” He held up his metal hands, studied them for a moment, shook his head. “But I am definitely one.”

  “And you were expecting to be what?”

  “An android dupe of myself, obviously,” answered Ben. “Well, no, I was basically hoping to live into my eighties at least and keep inhabiting my original body. After all, I exercise regularly, eat a sensible vegan diet and –”

  “It was probably all the tomcatting around you did that wore you down, Ben,”

  He held up a single silvery finger. “One little affair, Mag,” he said. “And a fleeting one at that, yet you –”

  “Fleeting? Two and a half weeks in a houseboat off the San Pedro Sector is your nitwit idea of fleeting?” Hands on hips, she scowled at the robot. “And what about that other bimbo who has that condo up in the Cold Water Canyon Sector of GLA?”

  “Mavis? C’mon, I was just teaching her how to play flamenco guitar. You’re so violently jealous that you misinterpreted the –”

  “Oh, so? I suppose that tapdancer you rendezvoused with in that orbiting motel satellite was –”

  “We used Denise in those commercials we produced for Foodz, remember? That was purely and simply –”

  “Never mind,” cut in his estranged wife. “Just explain to me how come you’ve intruded into my private life. We’re officially separated, Ben.”

  “Hey, don’t you have any heart left? I’m dead and –”

  “Bullshit, who says you’re dead?”

  “Boy, it’s just like old times again,” complained the robot. “You’ll argue about anything, Maggie. If I’m not dead, then why did Ira install the copy of my brain in this bot?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m wondering.”

  Slowly, swaying some, the chromeplated robot rose up and then stepped clear of the crate. Glancing down at himself. Ben observed, “Damn, I don’t have any private parts.”

  “Good,” said his wife.

  “See, I still don’t understand why Ira didn’t install the copy of my brain in the android replica of my body he was constructing at Botz, Inc.”

  “Not enough time.”

  “How do you know that?”

  She handed him the note. “Says so here.”

  After reading the message twice, Ben said, “I’m going to have to contact Ira and find out why in the hell he –”

  “Just tell him to send a sky van to haul you and that damn crate out of here.”

  “No, we don’t want to do that,” he warned. “Because if I’m dead, then you may be in danger, too. That’s why I instructed Ira to ship me here after I got killed. So I could warn you.”

  “Why didn’t you warn me before you were dead – if you actually are dead?”

  “You know how you are, Mag – you would’ve panicked. And I wasn’t absolutely sure that –”

  “And in danger from whom?”

  When the big robot shook his head, it produced a creaking noise. “Now that you mention it, Mag . . . I don’t know,” Ben admitted.

  “You’re walking around as a robot and are even more unsightly than in your previous format,” said his wife, scrutinizing him through narrowed eyes, “and you have no notion what you were afraid of?”

  There were a few more bonging sounds when he tapped the side of his skull. “This is odd,” he said slowly. “I have the feeling that I did know.”

  “OK, fine. So tell me, huh!”

  “I can’t seem to. I don’t remember the details at all anymore,” the big robot confided. “I think maybe I found out something important . . . and it has to do with our agency.”

  “Can robots suffer from partial amnesia?”

  “It could be that Ira screwed up the brain chip when he was installing it. You know, accidentally erased some stuff.”

  “That seems unlikely, Ben, since he’s an expert at this kind of work,” said Maggie. “Your original brain, you know, wasn’t all that effective. Maybe you’re just having one of your memory lapses.”

  “I wouldn’t be likely to forget two attempts on my life,” he said, annoyed.

  She took a step closer to the mechanical man. “See? You’re remembering. What attempts on your life?”

  The robot tapped the side of his head, concentrating. “When I was at the Holowrestling matches at the Burbank Sector MiniArena a week ago, somebody tried to shove me over the edge of one of the exit ramps,” he said. “Yeah, if I hadn’t caught onto a railing, I’d have fallen two hundred feet.”

  “There’s a force screen to prevent that.”

  “It’d been turned off,” he answered. “Then four days ago, when I was powercycling along the bikepath on the beach, somebody shot at me.” He held up two shiny metal fingers. “Twice with an old-fashioned bullet-rifle.”

  “Who?”

  His shoulders creaked when he shrugged. “No idea.”

  “Was that when you went around to Ira and asked him to make a download copy of your brain and get an android ready?”

  “Yeah, because I was certain I was in danger,” he said.

  “But if you knew something important, something dangerous – why not just go to the authorities?”

  “I must’ve had a reason, Mag. But that’s another thing I can’t seem to remember.”

 
; “Well, nary a soul has tried to knock me off, Ben.” She backed until she was sitting on the neohide sofa. “It’s possible that I’m not involved in this at all – whatever the heck this is.” She shook her head. “You’re a very annoying person and there are probably multitudes of irate husbands and mistreated women out in Greater Los Angeles alone who want you dead. If I weren’t a humane, nonviolent person, I’d have done you in myself long ago for your infidelities alone. From the moment we shuttled back from the orbiting Episcopal Church of SoCal, you started chasing every dimwitted woman who –”

  “Hold on a minute, Mag.” He sat beside her and the sofa shimmied. “I still don’t understand how come you didn’t know I was dead.”

  “You’re not dead,” she suggested, folding her arms under her breasts. “And I’m starting to wonder if this isn’t just some cheesy trick to get back into our condo. But as a bid for sympathy, it –”

  “You honestly think I’d spend the remainder of my life as a Guardbot with no private parts just so I could bask in the radiance of your venomous personality?” he inquired. “I came here to help you, Maggie. Even though you cast me –”

  “What in heaven’s name is going on out here, Maggie my flower?”

  The door to the master bedroom had come whispering open and a large redheaded man, about the height and width of the robot, wearing a neowool nightshirt and not fully awake, emerged into the living room.

  “Curt Barnum,” said Ben, standing up. “I’m not even cold in my grave and my Chief Account Executive is shacking up with my wife.”

  Barnum glanced at Maggie, frowning. “Why does this bot have Ben’s voice, sweetheart?”

  “Ben, please.” Maggie caught the robot’s arm before he could climb over the coffee table and go charging at the husky red-haired man.

  Ben was making rumbling sounds inside his metallic chest. “Of all the goons in our office, Mag,” he said, “why did you pick Curt Barnum?”

  “He’s a very sensitive man and you’ve never fully appreciated him.”

  “Sensitive? He –”

  “Can you guys fill me in?” asked Barnum, looking from Maggie to the robot. “I don’t understand why this mechanism seems to have the idea that it’s Ben Quincade or –”

  “Go home, Curt,” suggested Maggie. “This is a domestic problem and I’m afraid I’m going to have to help Ben one last time.”

  “What’s Ben got to do with this?”

  “I’m Ben.” The robot bonged a fist against his chest.

  Barnum shrugged. “I’ll see you at the office tomorrow, Maggie flower,” he said and went into the bedroom to collect his clothes.

  “I may take tomorrow off,” she called.

  Maggie set her palm computer down atop the floating plazglass coffee table. “Well, OK, your earthly remains aren’t in any of the obvious locations,” she announced, leaning back in the tin armchair and sighing. “I ran your DNA-ID through every morgue, hospital, funeral parlor and potter’s field in the country – and checked Mexico and Central America for good measure.”

  “I guess that’s comforting.” He had a panel in his chest open and was using the built-in computer he’d discovered there. “This is neat.”

  “You are also not incarcerated in any known penal institution, loony bin, homeless center or military base,” Maggie continued. “I’ve tried your description with all of them, plus hotels, motels and bordellos. There looked like there was going to be a match down in the San Diego Sector, but it turned out to be a gorilla who’d escaped from the zoo.”

  “Better sleep with a gorilla than shack up with Curt Barnum,” the robot said. “He’s got shaggy legs.”

  “At least they aren’t chromeplated.”

  Ben said, “I can’t locate Ira Tandofsky at all. Not at his office or at home. His answering bot at both locations just plays a thirty-sec vid where he claims he’s going to be out of town for an indefinite period. It’s dated the day before yesterday.”

  “Same day he stuffed your brain chip into a leftover robot?”

  Ben nodded. “Ira looked pretty agitated on the –”

  “Ira is congenitally agitated. He always looks that way, Ben.”

  “No, this is exceptional nervousness, even for Ira. He keeps peering over his shoulder, glancing left and right, fidgeting in his chair,” he explained, poking a finger into the opening. “Come over and I’ll replay the message for you.”

  “Thank you, no. The prospect of gazing deeply into your interior doesn’t appeal to me.”

  Ben shrugged and shut the panel. “There’s something about Ira I can’t quite remember.”

  “Something about where he is?”

  “Yeah, a place he might go to lie low.”

  “Why exactly would Ira want to lie low?”

  “They may be after him, too.”

  His wife stood. “Unless I want you underfoot forever, we’re going to have to resolve this mess,” she told him. “What say we go to your place to see if there’s anything of interest there?”

  “Clues, you mean?”

  “Clues, receipts from motel orgies, some floozie’s discarded lingerie. Stuff like that, Ben.”

  He rose. “That’s a good constructive suggestion,” he said.

  “You look extremely silly,” remarked Maggie.

  “I’m not used,” said the robot, “to running around naked.”

  He and the dark-haired young woman were walking down the ramp leading to the condo complex parking/landing area. The autumn night was chill and overcast.

  “Technically,” she pointed out, “you can’t refer to a robot as being naked.”

  Ben unfastened the top two buttons of the black overcoat he was wearing. One of his old ones that he’d left behind when he moved out, it was no longer a perfect fit. “Eventually I’m going to need a roomier coat.”

  “You have always, dear heart, had a problem accepting reality. You’re a robot now, Ben, and robots aren’t noted for modesty. That beret’s dippy, too.”

  He readjusted the black beret on his chrome head. “I’m not used to going around bald either.”

  “Again you’re being unrealistic. Robots don’t have hair, hence –”

  “How come Curt calls you flower?”

  “It’s a term of endearment, obviously. He happens to be, as I already told you, an extremely sensitive man. Also tender and poetic.”

  “He must be the only sensitive, tender and poetic account exec in all of Greater LA.”

  Maggie said, “What say we lay off my private life and just go over to your place to see what we can find out there, huh?”

  “That’s exactly what we’re in the process of doing, Mag. Don’t nag,” he said. “Eventually we’re going to have to locate Ira. If he’s vanished, then I may never get into my android body or – Hold on!” Ben suddenly took hold of her arm with one big metallic hand.

  “Hey, it was repulsive enough being pawed by you when you were flesh and blood,” she mentioned, pulling free and continuing on down the slanting plazramp. “Being fondled by robots is even less –”

  “Just halt right there, Mag.” The big robot trotted to her side, then pointed down at her crimson skycar some two hundred feet below them. “Now that I’m a Guardbot, you know, I’ve picked up a lot of terrific additional abilities.”

  “What this time?” she inquired, “Does it involve opening a door in your backside?”

  “Well, I seem to be able to sense dangerous devices.” He nodded toward the vehicle. “I’m getting a message that somebody’s planted a bomb in your car.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Ben, quit trying to play hero.” She took a step forward. “Of all the dippy notions.”

  He caught hold of her again. “Even though you never did this during the seven long miserable years we were married, Maggie, you might try now to entertain a point of view that doesn’t agree with yours.”

  “Eight long miserable years,” she corrected.

  With his free hand he tugged the Guardbot inst
ruction manual from his overcoat pocket. “Page 232,” he instructed as he thrust the book toward her.

  Ignoring it, she shrugged. “OK, all right, I’ll take your word for it,” she said. “But why in the hell would anybody want to –”

  “Hit the deck!” Ben dropped to the ramp, yanking her with him and stretching his big metal body down flat.

  “What did I tell you about pawing me?” She started to struggle upright.

  With a widespread metal hand he forced her down. “It’s about to go off.”

  There came a huge whomping sound, the ground and the ramp shook.

  The crimson skycar rose up into the night, not as a complete entity but in a twisted, smoking collection of parts, components and shatters of scorched red plazmetal.

  “You were right,” conceded his wife in a small voice. “But why?”

  “That’s one of the things,” said the robot, “I’m trying damn hard to remember.”

  Traveling in a rattletrap skycab, they reached Ben’s apartment at Boatown Three off the coast of the Santa Monica Sector a few minutes shy of midnight.

  “Your advent,” Maggie was telling the robot as the taxi settled to a wobbly landing on one of the Boatown docks, “hasn’t been all that propitious.”

  “Here we are, folks,” announced the voxbox of the cab as both passenger doors went popping open.

  Maggie continued as they disembarked, “First off you scare a decent, sensitive man like Curt Barnum out into the night.”

  “Well, Mag, that’s what often happens when you’re in the sack with somebody else’s wife and he comes home unexpectedly,” Ben pointed out. “And I wish to hell you’d quit referring to a lout like Curt as sensitive.”

  “Folks,” called the cab, “the fare’s forty-six bucks.”

  Maggie, making an angry noise, halted on the plazplanks of the dock. “And there’s one more thing.” Her nostrils flared. “I had a perfectly fine skycar until you –”

  “Don’t I know it was perfectly fine? The damned thing was mine until that duplicitous attorney of yours forced me to turn it over to you.”