Surfing Samurai Robots

by Mel Gilden

  I needed a place to think and went into one of the cubicles, where I found a toilet. So this was what a bathroom in an office building looked like. I waited for the crowd outside to break up. Time crawled by on its hands and knees.

  Suddenly voices came into the room and exploded agains the hard walls. I looked through the crack between the door of the cubicle and the moulding and saw grey business suits. Big help. Water began to run.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ a voice said. If it had been deeper, I would have called it squeaky.

  ‘We’re close,’ the second voice said. ‘But we have to play out the game to the end.’

  ‘I don’t even like robots,’ the first voice said.

  ‘I forgot how delicate you are. But we’ll take a look at them anyway,’ the second voice said. It was not an idle suggestion. There was menace in the voice.

  A third voice, more of a grunt than a voice, said, ‘Yeah. Could be interesting to see how they get made.’

  I flushed the toilet and opened the door of the cubicle.

  Three pairs of liquid brown eyes glanced at me, as interested as if I were a fly buzzing in the corner. They looked away, intent on their own business.

  While I washed my hands I studied the room’s reflection in the mirror above the sink. The three who’d been talking wore suits all right, but if they were men then so was I.

  Everything not covered by suit was covered with coarse fur that was neither black nor brown but some dirty colour in between. More than anything else, they looked like small gorillas. But I forgave them that. I’d forgive them a lot more before I gave up on them. When they lumbered from the bathroom, going to see how robots were made, I followed.

  Chapter 9

  The Biplanes Of Samson Andelilah

  EXCEPT for the gorilla men ambling away from the bathroom, the hallway was empty. I followed them as closely as I dared, hoping that anyone who looked would think I was part of their group. Durf! Three gorillas and a geek. What must SSR be coming to?

  A door opened and a female voice said, ‘I’ll get these to him right away,’ and a short lumpy woman with a topknot of grey hair backed into the hall. She gave a quiet yelp when she saw us through her thick glasses, but only blinked a time or two and tried to kick-start a smile before she walked quickly in the direction from which we had come.

  We kept moving, but we weren’t in any hurry. Just three gorillas and a geek walking jaunty jolly. We rounded a corner and I saw one lonely biplane flying toward us from the far end of the hall. The gorillas slowed down, watchful.

  ‘What’ll we do, Spike?’ the grunting voice said. Spike said, ‘Just keep moving. We belong here; remember?’ Even when he was being reassuring, Spike sounded as if he were making a threat.

  The biplane quickly closed the space between us, and I thought it would go on its way, but it began to circle us. The gorillas watched warily, ducking away from the plane, though it never came close enough for any of us to reach, not even the gorillas, each of whom had a reach like, um, a gorilla.

  ‘Who are you?’ Spike said. He’d taken a quick, surprised look at me, but he was watching the biplane again. We all were.

  ‘Just somebody with an interest in robots,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah?’ he said, unconvinced.

  I blew hard at the biplane. It sputtered and tumbled backward, almost hitting the far wall before it righted itself. It zagged and flew away, looking a little hurt, I thought.

  ‘Pretty good,’ Spike said, ‘but it buys you exactly nothing.’

  ‘I heard you talking in the bathroom, and I thought I’d come along.’

  The one with the squeaky voice said, ‘He looks like some kinda freak too.’

  ‘Birth defect,’ I said. ‘I hear Mom took a lot of drugs in the sixties.’ I looked hard at the squeaky wheel and said, ‘What’s your story?’

  He reacted as if I’d kicked him in the stomach. Spike and the other gorilla laughed under their whiskers.

  The squeaky one started to say something, and Spike said, ‘Shut up.’ The object of Spike’s suggestion stuck out his chin like a football lineman ready for the snap but said nothing. Spike led his friends along the hall again. I walked too. Nobody told me I shouldn’t. As we walked, a rhythmic thrumming got louder. Pretty soon, it filled the hallway, so thick you could almost swim in it.

  The hallway dead-ended at a metal door. Spike pushed a thing the size of a credit card into a slot next to it, and a buzzer went off. The door snicked open, and the thrumming immediately became louder. We went inside to meet it. The door snicked closed behind us, sounding more definite about it than I would have liked. The buzzer stopped.

  Beyond the door, arms, legs, torsos, and heads were everywhere. The pieces moved along conveyer belts or hung from hooks attached to tracks that snaked through the air just above head level. The walls were covered with patterns of lights that constantly changed. Guys in long white coats walked along looking at the walls and writing things on clipboards. I heard wind blowing somewhere, but I could not feel it. The room was no warmer than the lobby, but it also had no smell. For the first time since I’d come to Earth, my nose rested. It was stiff, but it rested.

  The body parts were all made of metal, of course, and had wires and electrical plugs sticking out of them. They were just so many parts of a jigsaw puzzle at the moment. And the funny thing was who was putting the puzzle together: more robots. Robots building robots. The mind boggled. The construction robots made no sound. They just worked. The only sound in that place was the constant wind. The door behind us buzzed, and we all turned to look at who’d come in.

  The door was just shutting behind two security guards. They were dressed like the old hard case in the lobby, but they had shiny silver faces that glinted in the bright light of the factory. Their hands were silver gauntlets. Though neither of them was bigger than the average human, their bulk made them seem huge. Machine intelligence shone behind each of their eyes like an electric bulb, and their right hands hung loose and ready near their pistols. In a voice that boomed from the bottom of a deep well, one of them said, ‘Excuse me.’

  Spike, ever the diplomat, said, ‘We ain’t done nothing.’

  ‘This is a security area, sir. You’ll have to come with us.’ The damned thing actually managed to make that hollow boom sound sorry.

  ‘We got our rights,’ the gorilla with the squeaky voice said.

  ‘Shut up, Tiger,’ Spike said.

  The robot security guards walked us out of there, and we were joined by a squadron of biplanes. The planes and the security guards escorted us down the hall and into an elevator. The planes stayed behind, just circling in front of the elevator till the doors closed. The guards never actually touched us, but we knew we were caught. It was in the air like the heat outside.

  The elevator took us down two floors and let us out into a cement corridor with pipes and conduits in the ceiling. The place smelled like fresh paint and hummed with power.

  We turned right along the hallway and passed metal doors with numbers stencilled onto them. The door at the end of the hall had a glass window with chicken wire in it — pretty classy for this neighbourhood. One of the robot guards opened the door for us while the other herded us ito the small office beyond. As soon as the door was opened, I could smell stale cigarette smoke. Once inside the room, the smell was almost overwhelming.

  There was thin green carpeting on the floor that was just enough different from the colour of the walls to make your teeth hurt. On the walls were dull paintings or prints of paintings in dull frames. In the corner was a dusty rubber plant that was too big for its pot.

  The largest man I ever saw sat behind a desk. Only that particular man could make that particular desk look like a toy. I don’t know where they got a uniform to fit him. He took a puff of a cigarette and, with regret, laid it in the wire holder of a badly chipped ceramic ashtray. As if we had spittle on our chins, he studied us through the rising thread of smoke. The guards stood by the door, not
moving any more than you would expect a metal man to move.

  A nose the size of mine can be a terrific asset. Just taking a couple of polite sniffs can sometimes tell you things that you could not find out any other way. But right now. I wished I had a pug, like an Earthman. The cigarette smoke excavated the passages inside my nose as if it were looking for something. It didn’t find anything and kept looking.

  The big man said, ‘I am Samson Andelilah, head of SSR security. You gentlemen are in a great deal of trouble.’ If a French horn could talk, it would sound like that. It was a voice that grabbed you by the ears — funny, since I didn’t have ears — and forced you to listen to it.

  Spike said, ‘We was just looking around.’

  ‘You was all just looking around?’ He picked up his cigarette and puffed calmly at me. I was the odd man out, not having enough fur on my body to make a coat for a flea.

  I said, ‘I came in to buy a robot. I bought one. I guess I got lost on the way out.’

  The man behind the desk smiled.

  Spike said. ‘Yeah. We got lost too.’

  ‘You need a card key to get into that assembly room.

  ‘We come in the back way,’ Spike said. His explanation sounded thin, even to me, and I wanted Mr Andelilah to believe it.

  The phone rang. Still smiling, Andelilah picked up the receiver and listened. The smile went away, and he became kind of thoughtful. He nodded and said, ‘Yes, sir.’ Later, he said thank you and hung up.

  ‘You three,’ he said, ‘can go.’ He drew a squiggle in the air with cigarette smoke.

  I said, ‘At last count, there were four of us here.’

  ‘The three of you, get out of here. And keep your noses clean. You might not be so lucky again.’

  The two guards at the door stepped aside as the three gorillas nodded and shuffled out the door like bad boys leaving the principal’s office. They didn’t even look at me as they went out.

  ‘Sit down,’ Andelilah said.

  I pulled up a folding chair and sat down. I said, ‘Those guys must have something I don’t know about. As far as I can tell, their only claim to fame is that they walk upright.’

  Andelilah nodded. That was exactly what he was expecting me to say. He meditated on me for a while and said, ‘You don’t look like an industrial spy. Of course, the best ones never do.’ He spoke out loud, but he was speaking to himself. I just happened to be there, I waited.

  ‘What? No protest?’

  I said, ‘Would there be any point to a protest?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You were awfully easy on my hairy friends.’

  ‘I’m the trusting sort.’ Andelilah stubbed out the cigarette and waited a whole three seconds before he couldn’t stand it anymore and lit up another one.

  ‘The one who did all the talking had the card key on him. Where I come from we call that evidence.’

  ‘Where exactly do you come from?’

  ‘Bay City.’

  ‘That a place on Mars?’ He looked at me hard, eyebrows up, waiting for the big revelation.

  I shifted in my seat and said, ‘We could sit here and crack wise at each other all day. When it’s time for you to go home, I could see the changing of the guard.’

  ‘We’re just biding our time.’

  ‘Biding?’

  ‘Our time. Somebody wants to see you, and he’s not quite ready yet.’

  ‘I’ve met guys in their stocking feet before.’

  Andelilah lowered his cigarette hand and laughed out loud.

  I said, ‘Terrific. I have the house in the palm of my hand. Listen, Andelilah, you know I didn’t see anything worth seeing in that assembly room. If I had, those gorillas would have seen it too and you never would have let them go.’

  ‘What you saw or did not see is no longer the point.’

  The telephone rang, and both of us jumped. My chair creaked as I leaned back in it. The phone rang again, and Andelilah reached for it. He listened for a moment, said, ‘Right away,’ and replaced the receiver gently. To the robot guards he said, ‘Take him to the interviewing room.’

  It was a line from a movie, but I didn’t think it was a joke. Each of the guards grabbed an arm and pulled me to my feet. Through my trench coat and suit I could feel their hard fingers.

  As if I were a problem he had not yet solved, Andelilah watched me while the guards pulled me from the room. The air in the corridor was more or less clean. It was a pleasure to get out there and breathe.

  I thought Samson Andelilah’s office was in the basement, but there was at least one floor even lower. The guards took me down to it. When the elevator doors opened, I was looking down a short corridor. More concrete, more conduits and pipes. At the end of the corridor was a wooden door. A regular wooden door. Then I noticed that it didn’t have a doorknob.

  We stood in front of the door, and a moment later it slid aside. As we walked through the doorway I could see that the wood was only a layer on the outside. The rest of the door was as thick and complicated as the door of the airlock back on the Philip Marlowe, The door slid shut behind us. I said, ‘Now what?’

  There was no answer. I turned around and saw that I was alone. I was in a room with a huge dark window at one end, a wide slot under the window and an easy chair in the middle of the room. I walked to the window and looked through it under one hand. The other side was darker than the inside of Grampa Zamp’s left nostril.

  It was obvious that I was supposed to sit in the easy chair, so I went to a corner of the room and crouched there, watching for something, anything that would give me a clue about where I was and what would happen next.

  I sniffed and smelled the ocean. I heard the gentle lapping of what might have been waves and an uneven clicking noise that started and stopped, started and then stopped for a long rime. I got the impression that something on the other side of the glass was looking at me. A loud electronic click filled the room. The gentle lapping sound was louder, as if it were now being amplified. A thin, scratchy voice from my worst nightmares spoke. It said, ‘Good morning, Mr Marlowe.’

  Chapter 10

  Knighten Daise, You Are The One

  I SAID, ‘Good morning. I guess you got my name from Lance in sales.’ My voice wobbled like a kid learning to ride a two-wheeler.

  ‘I would prefer not to say.’

  Ignoring the voice, I went on. ‘Which means that you are pretty high up in this company or work for someone who is.’

  There was a long silence while the owner of the voice made a decision. Waves came in and went out. At last the voice said, ‘Mr Marlowe, you have been brought here because I need some help.’

  ‘At the moment, I need some help myself.’

  The voice grumbled to itself, scratching like the spiral at the end of a phonoograph record. It said. ‘We are not here to discuss your problems.’

  ‘Terrific. Then I’ll just be going.’ I got to my feet and stood in front of the door. It was a bluff. There was no way that door was going to open just yet.

  The nightmare voice said again, ‘I need help.’ A moment later it added, ‘And I thought you might give it to me.’

  ‘Who exactly are you?’

  ‘That is of no consequence.’

  ‘It’s of consequence to me if you want me to help you.’

  ‘You are a detective, are you not? You are in the business of helping people.’

  ‘How did you know I was a detective?’

  ‘It is obvious.’

  The uniform, sure. I turned from the door and sat down in the easy chair. If they were going to hurt me, it could be done anywhere in the room. A spray of machine gun bullets or some funny gas would do it. The chair was comfortable. My voice was steady when I said, ‘Do you always hire the first detective who walks into your building?’

  ‘Timing,’ the voice said, ‘is everything.’

  ‘So I’m lucky. But I don’t do business with mystery clients. There is enough mystery in my life without that.’


  Water continued to lap at a phantom beach. I took a deep breath through my nose. The smell of the sea tickled it and worked at flushing out the cigarette smoke — an uphill battle.

  ‘You may call me Mr Daise.’

  ‘Is that who you are?’

  ‘Yes, as far as you’re concerned. Listen, Mr Marlowe, my identity really has nothing to do with the service I want you to perform.’

  ‘Is that why you’re hiding behind that dark glass?’

  ‘What makes you think I’m hiding?’

  I laughed.

  ‘I have many enemies, Marlowe. I didn’t build this room just to meet with you.’

  ‘I suppose that’s good enough for the moment. What is the service?’

  ‘I am looking for a missing person.’

  ‘Call the police.’

  ‘The police refuse to help just yet. They need to wait a week after the missing-person report is filed, or they need a ransom note, whichever comes first. Mr Marlowe, I fear my daughter has been kidnapped, and I want her back now.’

  The voice wasn’t so bad once I got used to it. Only the initial shock of hearing that near-human insect voice was terrifying. If it had been entirely human or entirely non-human, I could have handled it. It was the not quite human part that made the voice so awful. Strange sentiments from a guy who was not of this Earth. But I’d been listening to human voices for a long time before I got to Earth, and had had a chance to get used to them. Besides, neither birds nor crickets make human sounds, yet humans will pay a lot of money to go where they can be heard. To me, human voices had a pleasant natural sound. I don’t know what I sounded like to humans, but I hadn’t had any complaints.

  A big envelope fell through the slot to the floor. ‘Here is a photograph of my daughter. Heavenly.’

  I picked up the envelope and unwound some red string to get it open. Inside was a photograph of a young woman with a curly explosion of rust-red hair. She was wearing a brief purple swimsuit that might have been sprayed on and did not leave much to the imagination. A bucket holding a champagne bottle and some crushed ice stood within easy reach. Also within easy reach was a tall golden robot with the trademark SSR band around its forehead. It was carrying a surfboard. Golden muscles rippled perfectly, the way only metal muscles can.