Delos 2 - Futureworld

by John Ryder Hall

  “I want you to do something for me,” he said in a low voice.

  “What?” She looked up at him with a faint frown.

  Chuck put his lips almost in her ear. “I want you to pick one of these nice young men and turn him on.”

  Tracy pulled back her head and stared at him, smiling in some sort of surprise. “Are you serious?”

  “You bet.” Chuck took another look past her at Schneider and Duffy.

  “Why?” She, too, glanced around at the busy technicians.

  “For once,” he said, emphasizing the words, “just trust me, will you?” He tugged at her sleeve. “Come on, Socks, you know how to do it. Just pick one of these guys and lay that sex appeal on him. Get him interested,” he said in a husky whisper.

  “What—?”

  “Come on,” he urged. “You know how. Don’t tell me you never used your pretty face to get a wedge into a story.” He raised his eyebrows at her.

  “What’s your game?” she asked suspiciously.

  Chuck looked over at Duffy and Schneider, checking their continued occupation. “It’s no game, believe me. Will you do it?”

  Tracy shook her head. “I must be as crazy as you are.” Then she peered around with a little grin. “All right, which one?”

  Chuck pointed at a technician at some distance from Duffy and Schneider, and said, “Try him.”

  They sauntered along the railing, glancing into the various screens, watching the technicians change from one distant peeper camera to another. Chuck remembered that at no time had he seen a lens or camera when they were in the Futureworld section of the huge mechanized resort. “Damned clever, these electricians,” he muttered. Then he stopped, ostensibly to watch a bank of screens showing a Roman chariot race, but actually to unobtrusively oversee Tracy’s work.

  The young video reporter drifted along until there was a break in the observation railing, then she slipped down, and leaned on the console of the young man’s controls. Flashing a big smile at the early-thirties technician, her eyes were brightly sending messages. Chuck put a casual hand over his mouth to hide his smirk.

  “Hi there! I’m Tracy Ballard.” She waited for recognition and got none, so she continued smoothly. “I’ve been watching you work.” Gesturing at the knobs, buttons, dials and other controls she continued, “You really know what you are doing!”

  “Thank you,” the technician said.

  “What’s your name?” Tracy asked, leaning closer, glad they had changed out of their shapeless “white room” costumes into her own clothes.

  “Steven.”

  “Well, listen, Steven,” she purred, moving her hip quite close to the seated controller, “I’m going to do a big video special on Delos and I sure could use some help describing all these complicated things you do.” Her eyes were intense, her mouth wide and inviting. “You think maybe later, you know, we could get together and you could tell me about all this . . . ?”

  Steven had never taken his eyes from the banks of screens before him after his first look at Tracy and this bothered her. He shook his head. “I am sorry, that is not possible.”

  Tracy’s smile slipped. “Are you . . . married?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  She studied the nice-looking young man. He didn’t seem cold exactly, nor did he act the least bit homosexual. He merely appeared, flatly, to be uninterested, and this piqued Tracy. She edged even closer, draping her arm across his shoulder and bending down to give him a good whiff of her expensive perfume and to admire the fall of her thick, glossy hair, for which she had received many compliments in the past. As she talked intimately into his ear, Steven just continued his work.

  “It must be wonderful to have a job like this,” she whispered. “But don’t you get a little . . . lonely sometimes?”

  “No, ma’am. Activate Phase Eight-Twelve-Slash Two, please.”

  “You know, Steven,” Tracy continued, well aware that Chuck was within eavesdropping range, “you’re not making this very easy.” She leaned around, almost blocking his view of the television screens. “Tell me. Do you think I’m pretty?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Bring up the Moon, please. Standard orbiting speed. Prepare to activate shuttle.”

  “Well, I get lonely, too . . . so why don’t you—”

  Steven looked directly at her for the second time. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said and put out an arm to move her to one side. “All right,” he barked into the microphone, “we will begin the spacewalk sequence on my mark. Bring the Moon up fuller, please”

  Tracy stood up and looked down at the controller, a puzzled frown on her face. Her head whipped around to Chuck, who was watching the Roman scenes on the screens, or seeming to.

  Steven started counting. “Three . . . two . . . one . . . Mark!”

  Tracy joined Chuck again and they drifted along the railing, glancing at Duffy and Schneider, still deep in discussion. She was very annoyed with herself. “You’d better try him yourself,” she said bitterly. “I don’t think he likes girls!”

  Chuck tugged at her arm. “Come on!”

  “What were we trying to prove?” she asked him as he took her along to another level of monitors. Duffy and Schneider broke away from their discussion and joined them.

  “Hey, Duffy . . . ?” Chuck said amiably.

  “Seen enough?” Duffy offered with a smile, as if to say: “Technical stuff is boring, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve seen enough to know when I’m getting the fast shuffle.”

  Duffy blinked. “What are you talking about?”

  Chuck stuck his thumb at Schneider. “Your friend, Dr. Schneider here, gave us ten thousand words on everything except the obvious.”

  The gaunt scientist asked, blandly, “Which is?”

  The reporter waved his hand around, to include everyone. “What the hell is wrong with the men in this room? I mean, are they drugged or hypnotized or what?” He glared at Duffy. “Because they sure as hell aren’t normal.”

  Duffy’s smile was thin and wise. “They are normal for robots.”

  Tracy’s jaw dropped. “These men . . . are machines?” She turned again to the men manning the control consoles. “That’s impossible.”

  Chuck frowned, looking alertly from one technician to another with his new knowledge. “They can’t be,” he protested. Turning back to the two Delos representatives, he said, “What about their hands? Their hands are perfect.” His tone indicated he had caught on to their joke.

  Schneider shook his head in self-chastisement. “It seems that I am at fault for not explaining.” His face was earnest and frank. “You see, we discovered that one of the causes for our disaster with Westworld lay with the human flaws of our controllers.” He shrugged, and gestured around them. “So we replaced them with these. The model seven hundred technician series.” He shrugged again. “They have no ego, so they have no hangups . . . Thus, one more source of error has been eliminated.”

  Tracy and Chuck looked around the room with new eyes. The men manning the consoles did seem unusually efficient. They never fumbled for a switch, they never hit the wrong button, their voices were always nicely modulated, and they never panicked or tired.

  On the big screen a space ski sequence appeared. As Chuck and Tracy were adjusting their perceptions, the scene changed to the red ski slopes of Mars, where the yellow-suited skiers in space helmets slashed through powdery crimson snow. The sky was jet black and Tracy thought the chrome-yellow figures were like something out of a dream as they flew through the drifting red powder.

  “So they’re all robots . . .” Chuck whispered.

  “I really feel very badly,” Duffy responded apologetically. “I was certain Mort had told you.”

  “No . . . No, he didn’t . . .” Chuck said softly.

  • • •

  The clatter and clank of the troop of Roman soldiers marching along the service tunnel was drowning out the faint hum and dry whisk of the three little electric cars in which Tracy, Chuc
k, and Duffy rode. Duffy was well ahead, but Tracy and Chuck drove along together, running parallel to each other and arguing. They raised their voices as they approached the marching soldiers.

  Tracy glanced ahead, then spoke loudly to Chuck, who was skirting the phalanx. “I’ll tell you something, mister! That’s the last time you’ll use me to fly-speck Delos!” Her car wobbled and she looked ahead and corrected quickly, avoiding a gladiator with only a handspan to spare. “And if you don’t stop acting like a paranoid idiot, I hope Duffy throws you out of here.”

  She increased the speed of her car and passed the stolidly marching soldiers, but Chuck quickly caught up.

  “Why didn’t he tell us they were robots? Why did he wait?” he argued.

  Tracy cut ahead of Chuck, avoiding an elephant, painted and draped and wearing a houdah on his gray back, with a sideplate open to reveal a dripping interior tank. “Because he forgot!” she yelled back at him as she swerved back into Duffy’s track. “A perfectly human thing to do. And if you weren’t so eager—”

  “Look out, Tracy!”

  She swerved again, missing a tiny band of slim, green-clad fairies marching along behind a brunette in a long dress. “And if you weren’t so eager to do a hatchet job, you wouldn’t think twice about it.”

  She turned into another service tunnel after Duffy, who glanced back briefly to see that they were following. A dragon stood to one side and Duffy toured around it, unworrying. Tracy blinked at the green-scaled monster, which was trailing faint whiffs of smoke from its nostrils, its forked red tongue flicking in and out. Chuck ignored the ceiling-high reptile and caught up to Tracy, weaving next to her car as he continued their argument.

  “And if you weren’t so damned eager not to spoil your video special, maybe you’d start acting like a reporter.”

  Tracy’s head jerked around and she growled at Chuck in an angry voice. “I will never jump at shadows or waste my time looking for dirt that doesn’t exist.” She squealed her tires as she cut around a silent knight on a caparisoned horse, three lions on his shield and a jeweled sword in his scabbard.

  They passed a tram of three cars filled with robot knights sitting stolidly facing each other without expression. The tram was driven by a frog as tall as a man.

  • • •

  A wind drove a tumbleweeb down the dusty street. It struck a hitching post, bounced off, rolled along next to the weathered boardwalk and came up against the wheel of a buggy. A boot-shaped sign, worn and chipped, creaked in the wind. The gilt was peeling off a long board over a porch that spelled out EMPORIUM.

  The board-and-batten doors of a stable swung open to reveal the stainless-steel doors of an elevator opening. Tracy and Chuck blinked at the bright sunlight as they stepped from the padded walls of the elevator. Duffy touched a stud and the steel doors hissed shut, then the worn wooden doors of the building swung closed silently.

  Tracy and Chuck looked around as they stepped out of the cul-de-sac into the street. Grass and weeds were growing up through cracks in the boardwalk and around the base of the dusty buildings. There was broken glass here and there and a hotel sign hung from one hook, swinging awkwardly in the slight breeze. The town was hot, dusty, empty, and very authentic-looking—but seemed more abandoned than it did ruined.

  Duffy pointed at the buildings around them and indicated that they should walk down the street. “I thought you should see what is left of Westworld.” He smiled with one side of his mouth. “I don’t want to be accused of trying to hide anything.”

  Tracy glanced at Chuck, who was peering into a bar through a broken window. “Mr. Duffy, I hope you understand. I don’t believe anyone is trying to hide anything.” Her emphasis on the pronoun caused Chuck to look at her, his face impassive, before he walked on down the street. “I think Delos is wonderful,” she said. “And I’m sure that will be how my story finally comes out.”

  “That’s very gratifying,” Duffy remarked, smiling.

  Chuck turned and gestured toward the side streets. “I’d like to look around by myself. Do you have any objections?”

  Duffy indicated it was all open to him. “None at all.”

  Chuck strode off down an alley and Duffy watched him go. “Interesting fellow,” he said to Tracy. “But he certainly has a suspicious mind.”

  Tracy sighed, her eyes on the tall figure as Chuck disappeared. “He thinks that quality admirable.”

  Duffy faced her. “But still you like him?”

  She shrugged and kicked at the dirt, then looked up at the roofs around her. “I suppose . . .” Then she brought herself back to the nuts-and-bolts realism that was her best cover. “Now, I’m worried about your service tunnels,” she said, shading her eyes to look at Duffy. “I’m afraid there may not be enough light for really good pictures. Do you think . . .”

  Her words continued, but Duffy’s glance was toward the side street where Chuck had disappeared.

  Chuck was scuffling along the narrow rutted thoroughfare, his feet kicking dust from the dry ruts as his eyes moved over the façades around him. They were astonishly real, better than the motion-picture sets he had seen. Here, attention to detail had paid off. These were not just store fronts with another set of fronts backing them to give the illusion of more streets within a smaller area. The buildings were full-sized, with historically accurate details, circa 1875. Turned and carved posts; porches; brick and stone; railings and hitching posts—all presented a most accurate representation of a Western town. Gilded letters on glass windows announced doctors, dentists, lawyers—and bars. Signs on the front and sides of brick and board buildings told of saddlers, groceries, rooming houses, tanners and buyers of tallow and hides, a music hall, a gunsmith, a variety store, and a barber who also buried people. Mrs. Johnson made apple butter and George Clayton made boots. Tobacco, spices, coffee, copper kettles, and Mason canning jars were available at Howell’s. Rieves’ sold Stetsons, water basins, kerosene lamps, plug tobacco, and flatirons.

  Peering through one window, Chuck saw a black pot-bellied stove, surrounded by some weathered chairs within a rail. On a counter was a red coffee grinder from Elgin National Company. The shelves were mostly empty, but a few cans and jars remained. Blanke’s Mojav Coffee, with its picture of a woman sitting sidesaddle on a horse, stood near some cartons of Genuine Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco.

  Chuck passed under a Stockmen’s Association sign, and past a barber shop that announced, SHAVING, SHAMPOOING, AND HAIRCUTTING DONE IN THE LATEST FASHION. A poster on the side of a GENERAL MERCHANDISE store advertised Ladd’s Celebrated Sheep Dip and another that H.B. Bell was the proprietor of a corral where teams and horses were for sale, freight was delivered to cow camps and all points west, horses were boarded by the day or month and were bought and sold on commission, and there was good pasture in connection with said stable and corral.

  A drug store sold Cuticura Anti-Pain Plaster, Dr. Kilmer’s Female Remedy, Hostetter’s Stomach Bitters, Ayer Cathartic Pills, cod-liver oil in brown fish-shaped bottles, Polo Soap, and Dr. John Bull’s Vegetable Worm Destroyer for the Human System. Calico was sold for four and five cents a yard, beer was a nickel a giant mug, a couple of coins got you a meal of beefsteak, potatoes, coffee, and a quarter of a homemade pie. There was land available in Kansas Territory. A concert and festival would be held on the third of the month, with “singing by a Quartette, admission fifty cents, ‘strawberries are expected.’ ” The poster also stated: “Patronage of Strangers and Citizens Requested”—for the purpose was to procure an organ for the Congregational Church.

  Chuck halted in the street outside the Grand Hotel. It was burned and gutted, with not much more than the ruined façade standing, and blackened timbers beyond. The buildings on both sides were blackened, too, by fire. Strangely enough, the batwing doors to the saloon at the side of the hotel were untouched, although the paint was blistered along the wall next to it. Chuck stepped up on the boardwalk, which creaked under his shoes, and pushed through the saloon doors.


  He stood just inside the darkened structure, surveying the ashes and half-burnt furniture. The double doors swung closed behind him, squeaking, and the bare floorboards groaned alarmingly under his feet. The tall reporter looked curiously about, wandering here and there, picking up a broken captain’s chair and setting it aside. He saw the long bar, with the brass rail still gleaming; but the mirror and bottles behind were mostly broken and in dusty shards.

  Chuck walked to the entranceway leading into the hotel lobby, remembering that in the Old West it was a common practice for a bar to be attached, but no “respectable” women ever went in there. He pushed open the high batwing doors and saw the dark and ruined lobby.

  He was starting to turn and leave when he stopped in surprise.

  His eyes widened as he saw a bloody arm and hand protruding from a dark doorway. Stepping quickly into the lobby, he hesitated, looking around in some apprehension. Then he walked warily over to the door and bent down, feeling the wrist for the pulse. The wrist lifted much too easily, and Chuck found himself holding a severed arm and hand, spiraled with blood and dirty with ashes.

  And he grinned.

  From the end of the arm, where it would have attached to the shoulder, hung colored wires and a silvery metal hinge. He threw the bloody limb into the debris and started to leave, but the limb, on sliding along, had exposed the shiny edge of something.

  Intrigued, Chuck stepped closer and bent down. He saw a flat metal surface that had lifted from the wooden flooring. As Chuck shoved away more of the debris that the arm had shifted, he realized that the heat of the fire had warped up some kind of trapdoor. Scrabbling with his fingers, he found a purchase, and pried the door up enough to get a better grip. With a grunt he heaved it aloft along with scattered ashes and debris; the severed robot arm rolled grotesquely off the rising square of floor.

  Chuck dropped the trapdoor and jumped back as a cloud of ashes billowed out. But he had gotten a glimpse of something metallic beyond, and when the dust cloud subsided he lifted the trapdoor again, more cautiously.