Peaches and Cream
Len sat across the desk from Richter Crow in his cheap blue suit shaking badly. “This is a disaster.”
“Maybe not,” Crow replied.
“Maybe not! Well if this isn’t a fucking disaster than what is? We’ve got a mad man on the loose, slaughtering people on a list we gave him.”
“Remember your tongue,” Richter Crow warned, settling back in his leather seat. Len shrunk in his chair. “Now, I understand the concern but look, he sent a report after, just as I asked and I told him to eliminate anyone who couldn’t be turned. It’s possible this Andy Frock didn’t take him seriously until it was too late.”
Len was about to interject when Richter stopped him. “And lets think of the positive here. He didn’t slaughter a random person, he did someone on our list. And,” Richter checked his computer, “his current position says he’s nearing the second name on that very list. So, worst case scenario he kills everyone on it and we have to find a new set of scientists to take their place. Only this time we’ll find our sort of scientists and no board of global anything will have a say in the matter.”
“You’re forgetting the part where we have to explain the brutal murders of our entire geological projects division.”
Crow shrugged, “No I’m not. How can we be held accountable for the whims of a mad man? Either way, it’s peaches and cream.”
Len Garrison looked pale and felt like he was going to be sick. “I can’t believe this. Any of this.”
Richter sat forward in his seat, stern and looming. “You listen here you whinny little prick. What did you think was going to happen? We’re stealing hundreds of billions from the population of this planet. Two billion and some change worth of people, and when its over we’re going to leave them to die. What the fuck does it matter who gets killed in the mean time? You don’t have the stomach for it? You wanna change your mind?”
Len was shaking his head.
“There’s not a man alive with a seat aboard our ship that wouldn’t gladly put you off for an equal split of your dinky little share, and I never want you to forget that.”
Len nodded fiercely and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t,” then trailed off. “I get nervous.”
Richter Crow stood and circled the desk, taking a seat on the edge near Len. He clasped a hand on the man’s shoulder and said, “That’s why I wanted to keep you out of this particular loop. You’re a good man Len, and I need you aboard, but you’re not this kind of man.”
“No,” Len protested. “I can handle it. I just… keep it in perspective is all. They’re dead anyway.”
Richter smiled. “That a boy. Now go on and get yerself a drink.”
Len stood and went to the wet bar in the corner. He poured whiskey strait and downed it fast. He realized, while pouring his second drink the genius of Richter Crow. In one conversation he’d put him in his place, insulted him, threatened to have him killed, then made him feel special and got him back in line with his plan. Worse yet, Richter had made him feel good about it all.
Len drank his second finger of whiskey in the same manner as his first.
Richter Crow’s computer pinged and the man sat behind the desk to check it. A moment later he smiled. “See there Len?” He turned his screen toward the man and told him, “Second subject cooperative,” knowing he couldn’t read the screen from the other side of the room.
Len nodded and tried to smile.
The second subject on his list had been Vil and Grata Wann. A nice young couple with a pair of rug rats they liked well enough. All Sticklan had to do was talk to them. “I’m going to make a simple request, all you have to do is agree, and there won’t be a mess.”
“Who are you?” Vil asked, his voice shaky.
“Names Sticklan Stone.”
That was all it took. They changed their reports right there in the living room while he played with the tikes.
Blocks. Little guys loved blocks.
The new reports had been sent to Blue Moon and to Richter Crow personally and the Wann’s had been left a little shaken but alive. Of course he had to inform them that, “My employer has asked me not to kill you and for that you should be thankful. I’d love to cut into you. Nothin’ brings me joy like that look, you ever see it? Naw, don’t imagine you’d get the chance spending all your time looking at dirt, but… it’s somethin’, ya know. The moment a person stops hoping to survive and starts wishing they’d just die already.”
He looked over at the kids and smiled. “They never get it.” He faced Vil and Grata again. “Least not in the same way. Don’t know what it is about kids but they always think they’re gunna live. They think mom and dad will save ‘em I guess.” He glared at them. “Anything about this little visit, anything about you changing your report, anything about anything I think even smells like you talking and you’re going to get to see for yourself first hand. My employer is protecting you for now, but if you cross me, sell me out, well then that won’t matter to me anymore.”
Vil and Grata looked pale. Sticklan smiled and slapped Vil’s knee. “Buck up man, you just bought your whole family a ride off this rock before it dies.”
Grata looked at him, trembling, and asked, “What about the others. Billions of people.”
Stone peered at her. “Well that’s a choice you gotta make. Sure you might save ‘em by blabbin. But then I will have to come back. And I will make sure each and every one of you suffers. You will all die. Weeping. Broken things.” He looked over his shoulder at the children playing in the other room. “That really what you want for them?”
He could see in their eyes they weren’t going to talk so he said goodbye and left them.
Unfortunately the third name on his list didn’t go so well. His name was Cameron Kitt. His wife was Angie. He was a righteous man who didn’t give him a chance to introduce himself properly. Instead he rambled on about how the report was important and it was his duty as a scientist to make it accurate. He said that’s how we ended up in this mess to begin with, scientists forging findings.
“Well I’m sorry we couldn’t come to an understanding but you have to do what you think is right,” Sticklan told him. They shook hands, Cameron’s handshake was bitter. Sticklan smiled.
They parted and Sticklan waited for nightfall when he went around the back of the house and opened a door.
Cameron started down the steps. He’d heard a noise, went to his closet where he grabbed a gulf club and moved to investigate. He was in the foyer, heading for the living room when the lamp beside the sofa clicked on.
“I knew it!” Cam yelped, enraged by the sight of Sticklan sitting on the couch and smiling.
“Thought I’d give you another chance to change your mind.”
“Fuck you, you’re looking for my computer so you can forge my report.”
Sticklan cocked his head left and said, “Couldn’t be more wrong. Besides, I wouldn’t know how to do that if I wanted to.”
“Honey, call for security,” he shouted up the stairs.
“Fraid she won’t be doing that,” he informed Cam.
“Yeah, and why’s that?” he asked glaring at Sticklan.
“Because you need a head to talk on the phone,” he replied lifting Angie’s severed head off the floor and setting it on the coffee table.
Cam felt his heart race and his grip tightened on the gulf club in his hand. He raised it and screamed, tears beginning to fill his eyes.
Sticklan raised a finger, and said, “Let’s think about this now. You could go crazy with that nine iron, or you could think of the two girls upstairs. What are their names?”
Cam had been charging but now he was frozen. He’d forgotten about his daughters asleep in their beds until this man brought them up.
“What are their names?” he asked again.
“Lucy,” Cam answered and his voice cracked so he tried again. “Lucy and Elsa.”
Sticklan smiled. “Pretty names.” He lifted a picture off the table b
eside the sofa. “Pretty girls. So I want you to think about them and all the fun I’m gunna let you watch me have with them if you come at me with that thing.”
Rage and fear boiled together and rumbled through Cam. “If you-” he spit before being interrupted.
“Let’s not start with that. Because if I do, then it’s because of you.”
Cam lowered his club. “Who are you?”
Sticklan smiled. “Glad you asked. You never did let me get to that before. I’m Sticklan Stone.”
Cam swallowed and dropped the club.
“I see you watch the news.”
After that it was… well, peaches and cream as Richter Crow would have said. Cameron Kitt sat in his study and changed his report while Sticklan sat across from him.
“I need to see it before you send it.”
Cam turned the screen toward Sticklan and sunk back in his chair while the mad man read. Satisfied, he sent a copy to Blue moon and one to Richter Crow. He told Cameron what would happen if any of this got out.
“Just remember,” Sticklan told him after loading Angie's body into the trunk of his car. “She left. You don’t know why. Maybe she took a trip and just vanished. Whatever you like,” he said with a smile. “Just not the truth.”
“What are you going to do with her?” Cam asked from the steps while Sticklan started for the car.
“I’m going to let your imagination run with that one,” he replied and got into his vehicle.
Number three, peaches and cream.
The message was in Richter’s box in the morning. He smiled, nodding.
It was strange, later that day when he went to Andy and Jenna Frocks funeral. He spoke about how well he knew Andy, about the projects they worked on together. It was a rush, like getting high, knowing something everyone else in the room would kill to find out. There were times, standing at the podium, the audience hanging on his carefully crafted words, when he would stop. It might have seemed to the audience that he was overcome with emotion, that it was difficult for him to go on. Really he was imagining what it would be like to press his lips to the mike and tell them all, “I had Butcher Baker kill Andy and Jenna and in a decade I’m going to kill the rest of you too.”
His heart raced with the thought. Instead he went on about what a tragic loss had been suffered at the hands of a mad man.
Things fell in line over time. Richter had men find people to keep Sticklan Stone’s apatite satisfied, mostly women but the occasional man. Sticklan, on his own, off Richter’s radar, found the children. There was a farmhouse out in the fields, off the highway and away from anything, where he would take them.
Richter was happy, as everything was smooth with the moon beam project until he returned home from a day trip into the city and found something happened he hadn’t expected. Someone had been in his office. He knew by the position of things, he had an excellent memory, especially when it came to that sort of thing. It was nothing major, his sheet was turned and his drawers were slightly askew when he opened them.
Brow furrowed and thoughtful he woke up his desk computer and looked for recent activity. Someone had logged into the network from his terminal just five minutes ago.
Richter Crow sat back in his chair and his heart sunk. There was a spy in his midst, someone close enough to get into his home.
Roll Out and Ride Again
After breakfast, which Quey devoured feverishly in part because he was still starving from the day before and also because it’d been a long time since he’d had bacon that good, he sat back in his chair and sighed.
“Will that b-be all, sir?” Botler asked and he nodded. He still had half a cup of coffee in front of him, which he finished slowly.
The Robo-tronics compound was an amazing place but he knew it was time to get on with things. He had shine to run and a debt to settle and neither of those were things best left till later. Besides, this place wasn’t home and though the food was better and the beds were cozier it didn’t quite feel right.
He watched Botler roll down a hallway, running some robot errand.
The company here was suspect too. There may have been more of it than he got at home but there wasn’t a bit of it he really trusted or understood. Ryla most of all, strange only began to describe her. He’d like to be done with this little endeavor—and her—as soon as possible.
With that, Quey finished his coffee and went to find the queen of the compound.
When he stepped off the elevator and onto the second floor he heard music playing through a speaker system lining the ceiling. He didn’t recognize the song but it was some sort of rock, loud guitars and drum fills with a man shifting between singing and screaming through them. There was a bit more melody in the chaos of the song than was usually found in such a tune and as he stood in the doorway watching Ryla he couldn’t help but bob his head a bit.
She stood at one of the stations across the room with her back to him, a small bot that was just a simple red egg shape attached to wheels with thin arms hanging off its sides, rested on the table in front of her.
Today she wore a summer dress that was blue with small violets growing on enwrapping black thread vines. It hugged her slender torso and hung loose from her hips to her ankles. He watched her lift a tool to the rhythm of the song and sway with the melody before working on a circuit board. It was mesmerizing, the fluidity of her movements, a dance of constructing circuits and connecting them to the computer terminal at the station. Her fingers moved over the holographicly projected keys like those of a pianist, tapping in the board’s new programming while matching time with the song. When it was done she spun smoothly on her bare feet, her dress swirling around her, and slid each board neatly into the metal frame.
She touched the top of the bot and caressed it lightly. “Now lets finish your face,” she said and took the bot in her arms. She started for another table and Quey let the door fall closed before she could catch him watching. She glanced at him briefly while she carried the bot to the painting station.
He noted the shift in her. Her movements remained graceful as she glided across the floor but she was no longer dancing.
She positioned the bot on the table and began arranging the paints as he crossed to her and noted her self-consciousness. “So you are a person,” he muttered under his breath as he approached. Her eyes glanced, briefly, his way but even if she heard him say something there was no way she’d know what. “Good morning,” he said with a smile.
“Hello,” she replied and stirred white paint with a fat brush.
“This guy have a name?” he asked.
She smiled, it was the first time he’d seen that and it amazed him. Her face lit up when she looked at the robot and told him, “I’m going to call him Shy Bot,” as she painted a line of white down its face. She chuckled at a joke he didn’t get, and Quey smiled uncertainly.
“Something funny?” he asked.
She shook her head. “You wouldn’t get it.”
Quey nodded and answered, “Reckon I wouldn’t, or plenty more about you strange one.” Her hand paused mid brush stroke but Quey didn’t notice. He simply continued on. “Like how you came to have a place such as this.”
Ryla began to paint again, starting with the outline of the round mask and then filling it in. Her hand moved steady and nimble, caressing an even layer of white over the bot.
“Care to shed some light?”
Ryla didn’t look at him. She dipped her brush into the paint twice, in time with the music, then dabbed off the excess in the same way. “It’s my home. I was born here,” she said watching her brush fill in the Shy bot’s mask, leaving circles around his lenses.
Quey sunk back from her, not really taking a step just leaning away slightly. He looked around at the robots cluttering the room, some fully functional and others in various states of building or repair. He looked at Ryla, peered at her, and remembered her companion robot. It had been close, eerily close to…
His mind wouldn’t take
the thought any further. He remembered what he’d said as he approached her and wondered if maybe… Leaning his head to the left he searched her eyes. They might get the skin to look real enough, sure he’d heard stories about such things, but they couldn’t do eyes, there was no way. He’d seen enough death in his time to know there was a difference between eyes with life and those without it, and there was something in life that couldn’t be replicated.
Ryla glanced over at him staring strangely at her eyes and she snipped, “What?”
Quey jumped slightly and shook his head, looking away. “Nothing. I was just…” But there was no way for him to finish that sentence so he swallowed the end of it.
“Just what?” she pressed but her annoyance was gone.
He shook his head. “Curious.”
Her brow furrowed ever so slightly and she returned to her robot, trading white paint for brown which she used to paint a thick strap for its white mask that ran around the back of its head.
Quey watched her and asked, “Where’d you come up with this?”
She glanced his way briefly.
“I mean all the things you paint. The bots, the whole upstairs.”
Ryla filled in the leather strap and leaned back to have a look. “I play a lot of video games.” She traded her brown paint for black, which she would use around the lenses and then, with a tiny brush, trace and highlight the details.
Quey nodded. “Well, you’re good at it, making things pretty and shiny and all.” Ryla paused and Quey thought she looked confused. “I mean to say I like them.”
She cocked her head and looked at him. “Thank you,” she replied so soft Quey only knew she’d spoken because her lips moved.
The Saffron Malformation Page 9
