Jennings' Folly

by Thomas C. Stone

  “Hello Amanda.”

  “Hello Michael. How are you?”

  “Fine, thank you. And yourself?”

  “I’m okay. Please stand for me, Michael.”

  Still smiling, Michael rose to his feet without question.

  Standing, Michael was a few centimeters shorter than I. His anime face contained a sharp nose, rounded cheeks, over-sized blue eyes, and a tiny mouth that did not exactly move in unison to the words he spoke.

  “I think it’s time we put you to work.”

  He made no reply. The pacific smile was plastered on his face and I thought of Jonah. I told him to drop the smile and he did so immediately.

  “Michael, how are you with children?”

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am, but could you re-phrase the question?”

  “Yes. Are you capable of looking after children, of taking care of children?”

  “Why, yes ma’am, I have a program module specifically designed for interactions with juveniles.”

  “Excellent. And drop the ma’am, please.”

  The robot gave a little bow. “Certainly,” he said.

  The basement door opened and Aunt Liza called down to me. “I need some help with these kids,” she said. “Quit hiding and come up here.”

  “I’m on my way with reinforcements,” I told her and then directed Michael to climb the stairs.

  Our new robot did not frighten the children. Quite the opposite, in fact. They gathered round Michael in the kitchen, running little fingers across his synthetic skin, pulling the hair on his head to see if it would come out (it didn’t), and looking into his large, hypnotic eyes.

  Ahmed Frisco was eight years old and had a reputation for being the most curious out of the clan. Among the children, he was something of a celebrity at the local madrasa gaining fame for arguing with his teachers. Ahmed asked, “Does he speak?”

  “Sure. Ask him something.”

  “Hey mister.” Ahmed tugged Michael’s sleeve until Michael looked at him. “Can we go outside now?”

  The other kids piped up and began insisting on playing outside the house. Not surprisingly, Michael was at a loss for words and looked to me for guidance. I shook my head and told them I didn’t think it was a good idea.

  They all disagreed but Ahmed’s voice came through the clearest. He said, “It only makes sense to allow us to play outside. Otherwise, we’ll drive you crazy. That’s what my momma says and she lets us play outside.”

  “He’s got a point,” said Liza from the kitchen sink where she washed a mountain of breakfast dishes one by one.

  “It’s not safe,” I argued.

  “Your Uncle Pat has sensors all around the house tuned for the volume and characteristics of the you-know-what. If you watch the kids in the yard, we’ll be all right.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Liza dried her hands with her apron and leaned to my ear. “If any of the remotes pick up a kitzloc signal, it’ll key the shield. Keep your gun handy anyway.” She stepped away and said, more loudly, “I think it’ll be fine if everybody goes outside.”

  The kids cheered and my ears rang.

  Michael and I herded the children out the door as Liza told them again to “stay in the yard and mind Amanda or you’ll be back in the house.”

  In unison, they sang, “We will.”

  I sat on the porch as the smaller children, that is, Franco, Isaac, and Semmi, pulled Michael out into the sun. The other three, led by Jambo, put their heads together to decide what to make Michael do.

  “Well, what can he do?”

  “He’s a robot. He can do anything.”

  “Can he fly?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Cause he ain’t got no wings.”

  Amused, I sat in one of the porch rockers with the Vimbacher in my lap, watching the midget circus. I was reminded again of how resilient children are to trauma. Although the Frisco children knew something had happened to their mom and dad, we hadn’t told them the full truth yet, that both parents were dead. Fortunately, none had asked. The younger ones hadn’t thought of it and I think maybe the older ones were afraid to ask.

  Riley hung with the Frisco kids at first, but when he saw older brother Toby heading for the barn, he broke off and ran after him. I started to call after the two to remind them to stay in the yard, but what was the difference, really?

  “I know,” announced Ahmed, placing himself in front of Michael. “Let’s see if he can dance a country jig!”

  That was the ticket. They all shouted for Michael to show how he could dance. “Aw,” said Jambo, “I’ll bet he can’t dance at all.”

  But Michael only smiled and began to tap his foot. Then, he clapped his hands in rhythm to his foot until the children started to do the same. When they took over the beat and carried it along, Michael began to jump around the yard in what the automaton’s positronic brain considered to be a dance.

  It wasn’t very good, but it was entertainment for children and it worked. They clapped and watched Michael and laughed at the robot’s efforts.

  All this transpired in the approximate center of the yard and, as I alternately kept a watch on the barn door to my left, I failed to watch the path to the right that led down the hill to the driveway.

  As the kids laughed and tried to imitate Michael’s moves, I was distracted by motion at the corner of the house. I rose from my chair and swung the Vimbacher up to my eye as I drew a bead on horsemen entering the yard from the right.

  The children stopped their carousing and stared at the newcomers even as Michael continued to step and jump and spin. Robots, of course, have no shame.

  I set my aim on the rider of the tall white horse in front. He stopped abruptly and held up a hand. The horsemen behind him halted as well. It was Jonah and his posse.

  “Are you going to shoot me, Amanda?”

  I surprised myself by saying, “I might.” I lowered my weapon but kept the muzzle end pointed in his direction.

  Liza came out onto the porch, drying her hands on her apron, and shouted at the kids to “get back in the house. Now.” The Frisco children were fast learners and had already developed a quick response whenever Liza used her outside voice. As a result, they bolted past me, back to the porch, through the door and into the family room where they gathered before the windows to watch the horsemen from Summit.

  Jonah smiled and tipped his hat at Liza. “Hello, Liza.”

  Liza nodded her head a fraction and uttered his name. “Jonah. What do you want?”

  Jonah kept smiling but his eyebrows crept towards one another. “Why, I’ve come to help. Word spreads fast, you see, when our citizens are attacked and killed.”

  “We’re not your citizens. Neither were the Friscos.”

  “It was a figure of speech.”

  “Well go figure your speech somewhere else, Jonah. We don’t need any help.”

  He leaned back in his saddle and looked around. “It’s been some time since I was here. The place looks well kept. Kitzloc killing business must be good.”

  When Liza made no reply, Jonah continued, “But, apparently, not good enough to spare your neighbors’ lives.”

  “If you want to speak with Gary, he’s at the Frisco’s place, taking care of things.”

  “Yes,” said Jonah, “we saw him there, along with Mr. Ramey.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “Two reasons, actually, and, by the by, I didn’t speak with Mr. Jennings or Mr. Ramey. As I said, we saw him, but I don’t think he saw us.” Jonah looked at the faces of the men accompanying him and they nodded in agreement. “We did, however, track the lizard here.”

  “We’ve already been out looking for the thing,” I said. “Pat set up sensors.”

  Jonah nodded. “Well, we’re here to hunt it down.”

  “Like I said, it’s not here. You think we’d be out dancing like fools around the yard if it was here?”

  I looked
at Michael who was still strutting his stuff. Apparently, he registered the new humans as a growing crowd in response to his performance. “Michael, stop it,” I said and the anime robot immediately quit hopping from foot to foot.

  Jonah was amused. However, he looked to the windows where the Frisco children were lined up and watching, and said, “It was kind of you to take in the children.”

  Liza shrugged. “It’s what one does.”

  “Indeed,” replied Jonah.

  “So what‘s your second reason for coming out here?”

  “Ah, I thought that was obvious. We’ll be taking the children with us.”

  Aunt Liza pursed her lips and thought about it a full second before answering. “No,” she said, shaking her head, “I don’t think so.”

  “Surely you don’t expect to raise these children?” Jonah looked about himself at the property. “This is a pleasant enough place to live, well-fortified, good farming with fresh, flowing water. I can see all that at a glance. But a place for six orphaned children? I don’t think so. They’d be better off going with us back to Summit.”

  “Now, why would they be better off in Summit?”

  “Madam,” said Jonah, “we have resources and people who are practiced in looking after young ones. I assure you, I meant no offense.”

  “We’re just as capable of bringing up these young ‘uns so don’t be raising yourself up so high and clapping yourself on the back for all the great things you do.”

  The smile was still stuck on Jonah’s face but his eyes turned cold.

  “Just get them out here. We’re taking them with us.” He signaled to the riders on his left and right to move forward. Another man stepped down from his mount and moved toward Liza as she stood before the closed door.

  Before he reached the porch, I had raised my Vimbacher again and pointed the business end at the man’s bearded face. He stopped in his tracks and looked to Jonah for instructions. Or help. I couldn’t be sure which.

  “Put the weapon down, Amanda,” Jonah commanded. “Be reasonable.”

  I wasn’t as eloquent as Jonah and probably never will be, but I can still make myself understood. “Uh-uh,” I uttered.

  There was a tense moment when nobody knew what was going to happen. Jonah had more riders behind him. If he wanted, he could overcome us by the sheer force of numbers. I knew it and he knew it, but there would be a cost.

  Without an announcement or an order to do so, Michael began dancing again, stepping around the yard, weaving himself between the horses, and generally making a fool of himself. I heard the children at the window laughing, and the sudden action by my robot also amused many of the riders. They turned to one another with smiling faces, shaking their heads at the useless piece of technology.

  Jonah leaned forward in the saddle. “Your, uh, machine, seems to have come undone.”

  I called to Michael and he responded by looking at me. I ordered him to come to the porch and he obeyed without hesitation.

  Aunt Liza pointed to the grass beneath the horses’ hooves. “You’re tearing up my yard,” she said.

  “I do apologize for that,” Jonah said, “but we’re not leaving until the children come with us. It’s too dangerous for them to be here.”

  I don’t know why, but every time Jonah opened his mouth, I got a little angrier.

  Liza sighed deeply and said, “Get your men and your horses out of my yard and I’ll consider your request.”

  I looked sharply at my auntie. Was she going to let Jonah have his way?

  Jonah stroked his chin and then gestured to the other riders. They turned their mounts around and disappeared down the hill. Only Jonah remained.

  “It’ll be better for the children,” he explained again to Liza.

  Liza grimaced and asked that Jonah give her ten minutes with the kids and then she’d walk them down the hill herself.

  Jonah nodded with understanding and then finally, turned his horse away and went down the incline to join the others.

  When he was out of earshot, I lowered the rifle and asked Aunt Liza what she thought she was doing. She didn’t answer. Instead, she swept by me into the house, told the children lined up at the window to go upstairs, and she continued on into the kitchen where she removed a glass from the cabinet and filled it full of water. Michael and I followed her inside. Liza gulped down the water as I watched.

  I asked Liza again, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m drinking a glass of water, Amanda. Can’t you see? I get thirsty when I get mad.”

  “What about Jonah and his men?”

  Liza finished her water and set the glass on the counter as the last of the children plodded, grumbling, up the stairs. “Don’t worry about them,” she said, moving to the basement door.

  I realized what she was doing and followed her down the stairs.

  The switch for the shield was keyed from Kaliis’ terminal. Liza worried me for a moment when she didn’t go straight to the correct menu. Liza squinted at the screen and said, “I always get confused trying to find… oh, there it is.” She jabbed a finger at the GO key and a pop-up appeared on the holoscreen telling us to PLEASE WAIT WHILE PLASMA FIELD IS GENERATED. After thirty seconds, we felt a tremor as the field was projected around the surrounding property, including the house, the yard, and the barn.

  We ran back upstairs and peered out the windows at the shimmering, concave, blue dome that curved down at the yard’s end and behind the barn.

  “I wish I could see Jonah’s face right now,” said Liza.

  “You think he’s still smiling?”

  We both cracked up and laughed until tears came. The children stood at the top of the stairs, asking what was so funny.

  Liza called up to them. “Nothing, kiddos.” Then, suddenly, Liza turned to me with a worried expression. “Where’s Toby and Riley?”

  I ran upstairs but they weren’t there. My first thought, and Liza’s too, was that Jonah had snatched them, but I remembered seeing the boys enter the barn before Michael started his show.

  I told Liza and she was visibly relieved. “I’ll go get them,” I said.

  Outside again, sort of, I looked up at the shimmering blue plasma. It was a light show and I wished we’d have turned it on earlier so that we wouldn’t have had to deal with Jonah. Also, we could allow the children to venture beyond the back door. We had a big, secure playground.

  I pulled open the barn door and the first thing I saw was the hole in the opposite wall. It was big, big enough for a grown man to walk through, but I was sure no man had created it. Something – and I had a good idea what – had burst through from the outside before we initiated the force field.

  There was no sign of either Toby or Riley.

  Chapter 25

  Sometimes, when something bad happens and it becomes known, people say their blood turned cold with the news. Kaliis told me the sensation is a very real reaction in human physiology brought on by shock. As I looked at the hole in the barn wall, I felt chilled as if a portent of winter had blown over me.

  Beyond the hole I could see the shimmering wall of the shield. Forcing myself to breathe, I looked around the barn, at the stables, a quick look in Phineas’ unkempt little room, and the empty loft upstairs. What they all had in common, to my relief and growing hope, was the absence of blood. There was nothing to indicate either of the boys had been harmed. They were simply not there.

  Could it have been Jonah or one of his men that abducted them? I looked at the hole and considered the possibility. I wanted to believe it, but the truth was, I didn’t, especially after finding talon marks on the broken pieces of lumber.

  I lingered in the barn and asked myself why I had allowed the boys to separate themselves from the group. Why had I allowed them to leave my sight? With a heavy heart, I returned to the house.

  Liza was in the kitchen when I entered; stirring a pot, preparing food for what seemed an army of children who were presently marching across the second story floor.
Liza looked at me and asked where the boys were.

  I hesitated a moment and that was all it took for Aunt Liza to jump to the correct conclusion. She dropped the ladle she held and gripped the counter to keep from falling. “Oh my God,” she uttered.

  Rushing to my aunt, I helped her to a chair and began filling in the details as best as I could, but when she lifted her hands to hide her face and began sobbing behind splayed fingers, I stopped talking and simply held her.

  Aunt Liza rocked back and forth, hiding her face and crying in a low, controlled wail that broke my heart. I started crying too and that’s how Grandpaw and Uncle Pat found us – hugging one another and bawling because we didn’t know what else to do.

  The three of them, Papaw, Uncle Pat, and Kaliis each had remote devices that enabled them to suspend the shield. That’s how they got in. Later, Grandpaw told me they had seen Jonah and a band of riders numbering at least forty strong striking out across our land. Papaw shook his head and said, “I should have expected bad news when I saw Jonah.”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” I told Grandpaw. “The lizard broke in before he showed up.”

  Papaw still fumed. “The man is forever meddling. The Frisco children are fine where they are for the time being. We’ll deal with all that when this business with the lizard is over.”

  Kaliis, after looking at the monitoring report, told us there had been a ping associated with a sensor placed three-quarters of a kilometer to the north of the house. Uncle Pat released Aunt Liza, kissed her atop her head, and rose to his feet. “That’s where we’ll start,” he said. Grandpaw nodded and the two men crossed the room to where they had dropped their kits and their weapons.

  My kit was on the floor along with my rifle. I picked them up and opened the door.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Uncle Pat asked.

  “With you and Grandpaw.”

  Grandpaw hefted his bag and slung the military grade Vimbacher across his back. “Not this time,” he said.

  In protest, I told them they needed me.

  “That’s right,” Grandpaw said, “we do need you. We need you to stay with Liza and the children. They need protection and you’re more than capable.”