Unidentified Funny Objects 2

by Silverberg, Robert

  “Most remarkable,” said Humbert. “I myself encountered two more on the grounds.”

  “It’s all very unusual to say the least,” I said.

  “I suspect clones, madam.”

  “You think clones put the Hornsby family up to this?”

  “I believe these are the clones, madam.”

  Across the room the door to the pantry flew open and out stormed one Wiggy Turpin.

  “Why that lying, good-for-nothing cheat-bag!” he shouted.

  “Wiggy, how nice of you to show yourself,” I said, a pistol suddenly in my hand and aimed directly at his head.

  Wiggy stopped in his tracks but continued his tirade. “I specifically asked Howard if he knew anything about cloning techniques and he assured me he was a complete dim-bulb when it came to any of that genetics business.”

  “And hasn’t he just been made the fool. I don’t suppose, Wiggy, that you would like to catch us up on anything yourself? Recent events? Rumors of your untimely death?”

  “Oh, you know full well that was all a sham,” he scoffed. “I had to go into hiding.”

  “From the Hornsby clan?”

  “How many more of them can there be?”

  “Impossible to say. They’ve certainly taken poorly to your ‘accident’ though.”

  “Yes, well, er,” (he cleared his throat) “Howard always was a little contrary-minded.”

  Humbert reopened the broom cupboard and my collection of life-sized Hornsby figurines toppled out. He bent over and examined them. After a few minutes of mechanical humming and hawing, he reached down and wrenched the head clear off the top Hornsby.

  “Lord have mercy, Humbert,” I gasped, “I know we’re in a cruel business but we can still show a modicum of respect for the dead.”

  Humbert held the head high and let us see what had caught his attention. Dangling from the neck hole was a large cluster of wires, and the skull was clearly some metallic compound with an overlay of synthetic skin.

  “It’s a clone robot?“ I asked.

  “I believe that technically, madam, the correct term would be robot clone,” said Humbert.

  I glanced at the remaining bodies.

  “Wiggy,” I said, “if you have any light to shed on the matter, now would be the time.”

  Wiggy crossed his arms defiantly. “I haven’t the foggiest.”

  “Well, we’d best check the house again, I suppose.”

  Back up the stairs we went, only to stop short at the main level. The sparking bodies of Jeevz and Greetta lay on the floor before us, and behind them the entire dining hall was filled to the brim with Hornsby clone robots. Or robot clones. Or—well, there were an awful lot of Hornsbys in there was the heart of the matter. Certainly more than a proper fire marshal would allow. And every single one with a murderous gleam in his eye.

  “I do believe I’m going to have to charge extra for this,” I said.

  “Indeed, madam,” agreed Humbert.

  Wiggy took cover behind a statue of Napoleon riding a gazelle while I dove in wielding a twin pair of ancient Roman gladius replicas, superb for close quarters fighting. I swung and sidestepped and stabbed my way through the mass of synthetic core bodies. The noise was incredible, mostly because they were all screaming and trampling one another in an attempt to get away from me. It turns out the clones of a classically trained cellist, even robotic ones, are no match for the Guild’s “Advanced Level Multiple Opponent Room Clearing Tactics” class.

  “Humbert,” I yelled over the din, “see if you can find out where they’re all bloody coming from.”

  “Yes, madam,” he said, and he plowed his way to the north exit, dispatching a few clones himself in the process.

  I have to admit I was actually having a real bit of sport; as it turns out, robot clones are a good deal crunchier than I had imagined. But despite the fact that it was a little like having Christmas and my birthday all at once, my arms were slowly beginning to tire and there is something about overwhelming odds that reminds you why assassins prefer slipping in and out quietly through the back door.

  Gradually, though, and much to my relief, the numbers did thin out. I caught the last two cowering under the grand piano, but a single serrated boomerang to the instrument’s legs completed the job with a rather cacophonous boom.

  Humbert re-entered.

  “Any luck?” I asked.

  “Not specifically, madam, though I have developed a theory as to their origins.”

  “Do go on.”

  “The particular model of combine harvester in question is fitted with a genetic scanner which analyzes moisture, bacteria, and mineral content. It then modifies the next crop of seed so that it can thrive better in its immediate environment.”

  “And these robot clones took offense to that? Rabid environmentalists, you think?”

  “Not quite, madam. I believe that when Mr. Hornsby went into the combine that the genetic scanner analyzed his remains and began creating replicas of him that could survive better in their environment.”

  “So it created a room full of knife-wielding Hornsbys?”

  “So it would seem.”

  “I highly doubt that was in the owner’s manual,” I mused. “But still, whyever were they out for blood?”

  “My analysis has led me to conclude that since the harvester would have scanned Mr. Hornsby in his final moments, and if he felt in fear for his life—as might be expected of someone falling into an operating combine harvester—the subsequent clones may have been programmed to combat the assessed danger.”

  “Or assailant,” I added.

  “My thoughts precisely.”

  I turned to Wiggy. At first he refused to meet my gaze, but soon enough he raised his eyes in defiance and stared me down.

  “Yes, that’s right” he said. “I did it. I confess. I pushed him in but good. Would do it again, too, in a blind second.”

  “But why, Wiggy? I thought you and he were friends.”

  “Not likely. Big self-made man, he was. Always bragging about his great achievements and whatnot, how he taught himself cello at age three using nothing but a piece of string and a fire hydrant. Said I’d had everything handed to me.”

  “But, Wiggy, you did have everything handed to you. Utterly and completely.”

  “Well, yes… that part’s true, but… well, look now, he didn’t always have to go ’round pointing it out, did he? Saying it in front of everybody. Correcting my fingering at rehearsals.”

  Noise from outside drew our attention to the window, and we received not just a little shock. An entire battalion of Hornsbys was marching in perfect formation across the field and surrounding the house. One of the barns was being pulled down and used to build a catapult.

  “That’s an awful lot of Hornsbys,” I said.

  “Yes, madam,” agreed Humbert.

  “What are the odds of us getting past them.”

  “It is difficult to make a precise calculation. A number of factors simply cannot be accounted for under the circumstances.”

  “But your best guess?”

  “Negative fifteen point seven to one.”

  “So, rather poor then.”

  “Rather. But while I was out I took the liberty of securing all the entrances and ordering a hover taxi to the roof. It should be arriving in approximately five minutes.”

  “And our luggage?”

  “Packed and waiting.”

  “Humbert, you’re a credit to your profession.”

  “Thank you, madam.”

  Humbert trundled off and I turned back to our host.

  “Wiggy, it’s been ever so wonderful to see you again—except, of course, for the part where you inadvertently created a horde of incensed musicians bent on murdering us all. But I think now we’d best be off.”

  Wiggy gave me the stink eye but maintained his distance, probably because I still held two thoroughly bloodied swords in my hands. “You’re a cold one, Ash. An honest to goodness ice cube. I
mean, I knew you were and all that, what with the assassination accolades and all, but this is downright arctic of you. A real stab in bosom buddies, if you know what I mean.”

  “I have absolutely no idea what you mean. I simply wish to go home. And though it goes against my better judgment, you’re welcome to accompany us if you like.”

  “You signed on to protect me. We have a contract.”

  “A verbal contract. I signed nothing.”

  “Is your word not your bond?”

  “Typically yes, except for the silent clause exempting me in the face of rampaging psychotic robots. Are you coming?”

  He stiffened. “Not a word of it. You all may think little of me, but this estate goes back five generations in my family and a man defends his castle. I will not flee like a coward.”

  “Suit yourself,” I said, and slipped out.

  Up to the roof and into the awaiting hover taxi I went. It shot into the darkening sky as we watched the swelling ranks of Hornsbys storm against the walls of the estate, flames leaping high into the cool night air, the Dvorak Cello Concerto playing softly against the clamor of it all.

  NOT THREE MINUTES INTO our flight, me already comfortable with my feet up on the cushions and sipping a warm moon apple brandy, there was a blinding flash followed several seconds later by a clap of thunder and a shockwave like a class five hurricane. The taxi swerved and swooped but finally managed to regain its altitude.

  I looked over my shoulder to witness a giant orange mushroom cloud forming behind us.

  I turned back and stared Humbert straight in the telescopic eye.

  “Humbert, did you blow up Wiggy’s house?”

  Humbert shifted uneasily in his seat. “Not precisely, madam.”

  “Not precisely? So you’re saying you didn’t blow it up?”

  “No, I most certainly did; however, it was a Micro-Nuclear device, and so in all probability blew up not only Mr. Turpin’s house but also the entire estate, quite likely the Hornsby estate as well, and in all probability much of the outlying village.”

  I’m quite certain an honest-to-goodness tear nearly moistened my check.

  “My dearest Humbert, thank-you. That was just what I needed.”

  “I hope I did not overstep my protocols,” he said.

  “Not at all, dear fellow. We’ll just call it tying up the loose ends.”

  “Very good, madam.” He held out a tray. “Crumpet?”

  “That would be perfect.”

  Story Notes:

  I wanted to write a story in tribute to P.G. Wodehouse, and common sense told me it should be about a neo-Victorian assassin and her robotic butler. What else is there to say?

  Wade hails from Nova Scotia, land of wild blueberries and Duck Tolling Retrievers. He lectures on ancient languages, dabbles in animation, and spends the rest of his time as a stay-at-home dad. It is also possible he has set a new record as the slowest 10K runner. Ever. He owns one pretend cat and one real one, and they get along fabulously. He has been writing fiction for over twelve years now. You can follow Wade on Twitter: @wadealbertwhite

  HANNIBAL’S ELEPHANTS

  Robert Silverberg

  The day the aliens landed in New York was, of course, the 5th of May, 2023. That’s one of those historical dates nobody can ever forget, like July 4, 1776 and October 12, 1492 and—maybe more to the point—December 7, 1941. At the time of the invasion, I was working for MGM-CBS as a beam calibrator in the tightware division and married to Elaine and living over on East 36th Street in one of the first of the fold-up condos, one room by day and three by night, a terrific deal at $3750 a month. Our partner in the time/space-sharing contract was a show-biz programmer named Bobby Christie who worked midnight to dawn, very convenient for all concerned. Every morning before Elaine and I left for our offices I’d push the button and the walls would shift and 500 square feet of our apartment would swing around and become Bobby’s for the next twelve hours. Elaine hated that. “I can’t stand having all the goddamn furniture on tracks!” she would say. “That isn’t how I was brought up to live.” We veered perilously close to divorce every morning at wall-shift time. But, then, it wasn’t really what you’d call a stable relationship in most other respects, and I guess having an unstable condo too was more instability than she could handle.

  I spent the morning of the day the aliens came setting up a ricochet data transfer between Akron, Ohio and Colombo, Sri Lanka, involving, as I remember, Gone with the Wind, Cleopatra, and the Johnny Carson retrospective. Then I walked up to the park to meet Maranta for our Monday picnic. Maranta and I had been lovers for about six months then. She was Elaine’s roommate at Bennington and had married my best friend Tim, so you might say we had been fated all along to become lovers; there are never any surprises in these things. At that time we lunched together very romantically in the park, weather permitting, every Monday and Friday, and every Wednesday we had ninety minutes’ breathless use of my cousin Nicholas’ hot-pillow cubicle over on the far West Side at 39th and Koch Plaza. I had been married three and a half years and this was my first affair. For me what was going on between Maranta and me just then was the most important event taking place anywhere in the known universe.

  It was one of those glorious gold-and-blue dance-and-sing days that New York will give you in May, when that little window opens between the season of cold-and-nasty and the season of hot-and-sticky. I was legging up Seventh Avenue toward the park with a song in my heart and a cold bottle of Chardonnay in my hand, thinking pleasant thoughts of Maranta’s small round breasts. And gradually I became aware of some ruckus taking place up ahead.

  I could hear sirens. Horns were honking, too: not the ordinary routine everyday exasperated when-do-things-start-to-move honks, but the special rhythmic New York City oh-for-Christ’s-sake-what-now kind of honk that arouses terror in your heart. People with berserk expressions on their faces were running wildly down Seventh as though King Kong had just emerged from the monkey house at the Central Park Zoo and was personally coming after them. And other people were running just as hard in the opposite direction, toward the park, as though they absolutely had to see what was happening. You know: New Yorkers.

  Maranta would be waiting for me near the pond, as usual. That seemed to be right where the disturbance was. I had a flash of myself clambering up the side of the Empire State Building—or at the very least Temple Emanu-el—to pry her free of the big ape’s clutches. The great beast pausing, delicately setting her down on some precarious ledge, glaring at me, furiously pounding his chest—Kong! Kong! Kong!—

  I stepped into the path of one of the southbound runners and said, “Hey, what the hell’s going on?” He was a suit-and-tie man, pop-eyed and puffy-faced.

  He slowed but he didn’t stop. I thought he would run me down. “It’s an invasion!” he yelled. “Space creatures! In the park!”

  Another passing business type loping breathlessly by with a briefcase in each hand was shouting, “The police are there! They’re sealing everything off!”

  “No shit,” I murmured.

  But all I could think was Maranta, picnic, sunshine, Chardonnay, disappointment. What a goddamned nuisance, is what I thought. Why the fuck couldn’t they come on a Tuesday, is what I thought.

  WHEN I GOT TO THE top of Seventh Avenue the police had a sealfield across the park entrance and buzz-blinkers were set up along Central Park South from the Plaza to Columbus Circle, with horrendous consequences for traffic. “But I have to find my girlfriend,” I blurted. “She was waiting for me in the park.” The cop stared at me. His cold gray eyes said, I am a decent Catholic and I am not going to facilitate your extramarital activities, you decadent overpaid bastard. What he said out loud was, “No way can you cross that sealfield, and anyhow you absolutely don’t want to go in the park right now, mister. Believe me.” And he also said, “You don’t have to worry about your girlfriend. The park’s been cleared of all human beings.” That’s what he said, cleared of all human being
s. For a while I wandered around in some sort of daze. Finally I went back to my office and found a message from Maranta, who had left the park the moment the trouble began. Good quick Maranta. She hadn’t had any idea of what was occurring, though she had found out by the time she reached her office. She had simply sensed trouble and scrammed. We agreed to meet for drinks at the Ras Tafari at half past five. The Ras was one of our regular places, Twelfth and 53rd.

  THERE WERE SEVENTEEN WITNESSES to the onset of the invasion. There were more than seventeen people on the meadow when the aliens arrived, of course, but most of them didn’t seem to have been paying attention. It had started, so said the seventeen, with a strange pale blue shimmering about thirty feet off the ground. The shimmering rapidly became a churning, like water going down a drain. Then a light breeze began to blow and very quickly turned into a brisk gale. It lifted people’s hats and whirled them in a startling corkscrew spiral around the churning shimmering blue place. At the same time you had a sense of rising tension, a something’s-got-to-give feeling. All this lasted perhaps forty-five seconds.

  Then came a pop and a whoosh and a ping and a thunk—everybody agreed on the sequence of the sound effects—and the instantly famous not-quite-egg-shaped spaceship of the invaders was there, hovering, as it would do for the next twenty-three days, about half an inch above the spring-green grass of Central Park. An absolutely unforgettable sight: the sleek silvery skin of it, the disturbing angle of the slope from its wide top to its narrow bottom, the odd and troublesome hieroglyphics on its flanks that tended to slide out of your field of vision if you stared at them for more than a moment.

  A hatch opened and a dozen of the invaders stepped out. Floated out, rather. Like their ship, they never came in contact with the ground.

  They looked strange. They looked exceedingly strange. Where we have feet they had a single oval pedestal, maybe five inches thick and a yard in diameter, that drifted an inch or so above ground level. From this fleshy base their wraithlike bodies sprouted like tethered balloons. They had no arms, no legs, not even discernible heads: just a broad dome-shaped summit, dwindling away to a rope-like termination that was attached to the pedestal. Their lavender skins were glossy, with a metallic sheen. Dark eye-like spots sometimes formed on them but didn’t last long. We saw no mouths. As they moved about they seemed to exercise great care never to touch one another.