His running style was clumsy, awkward. His physical side seemed always to be in competition with his mechanical side, giving him a peculiar, swing-legged, lopsided gait. But he could move fast and most of him didn’t tire. The parts that did grow weary or started to hurt or cramp he ignored.
He found the road leading to the construction site, discovered that it was also, unfortunately, the main route the cops were taking to reach the bar. Headlights caught him. He made a mad dash to a culvert on the other side. Someone shouted, and one car swerved to try to catch him, but he put on some speed, headed straight into the desert. The cops gave up the case, went after easier prey.
Xris loped through the desert, slogging over the shining Pandoran sand that had now—after the rain—turned into mud. A particularly clinging, sticky mud that caked on his boots and made running difficult.
He kept to the desert until the cop cars and the lights of the bar and the sound of shouting and swearing were behind him. The city proper was off to his left. The lights of the construction site shone ahead of him. The base lights were to his right. This part of the road was deserted since it went essentially nowhere. The pavement ended in ruts left by the heavy dirt-moving equipment.
More mud, and puddles of water. Xris had to stop every half a kilometer to clean the gunk off his boots, which had become so caked with the gooey gray muck that they were slowing him down.
Lightning flared. Thunder crashed. The next storm in line chose this moment to dump on him. Rain slashed down in torrents, typical of desert storms. He was soaked to the skin in seconds. This did nothing to improve his spirits, which were as dark, gloomy, and thunderous as the weather.
He hoped Tess had escaped the police. He felt rotten enough about using her as it was. If she was caught in a raid, ended up in a Pandoran prison cell, she’d probably be a private in the morning. He tried to sell himself on the fact that she would have gone to Jake’s with her roommates anyway, but he wasn’t buying it. If anything happened to her, it would be his fault.
And there was tomorrow to look forward to.
He’d say good-bye to her. They’d exchange a few wisecracks. He’d promise to vidphone—a promise that he would never keep. He couldn’t tell her the truth. She’d assume then that he had only been using her to get off base and she’d assume right. When you peeled back the layers, the ugly truth was there, like the ugly mechanics in his arm. All the fleshfoam and plastiskin in the galaxy couldn’t hide it. Far better to cut the arm off clean, never see her again. He might spare her some pain. She’d be left with the memory of a few laughs, a few kisses, a pleasant evening.
At least, Xris hoped, that was how Tess felt about their time together. As to his feelings, he continued to pummel himself mentally all the way along the road. This blasted job. It had come wrapped in brown paper, looked so plain and simple on the outside, and when he started to cut the tape, it had blown up in his face. For a single plastic credit, he’d call the job off, return Sakuta’s money, let the Pandorans keep the antique robot. It was theirs, by rights.
Unfortunately, Xris couldn’t do that now. He had his orders. And someone had Jamil.
He stopped running, bent down once again to clean the mud off his boots and—now that he was alone—to equip himself for the job ahead.
Xris detached his fleshfoam hand, replaced it with his working hand. His fingers were now tools: drill, cutting torch, screwdriver. The hand that had appeared ordinary had suddenly become something monstrous. Tess wouldn’t be so eager to jump into his arms if this steel hand was attached.
Sure, he could always take off that working hand, replace it with the fleshfoam hand, replace the steel with Captain Kergonan.
But he wasn’t Captain Kergonan.
This hand would always be steel, cold, without life, designed to do a job.
That was all it was good for.
All he was good for.
Xris began to run again.
Chapter 14
This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights . . .
John Keats, “This Living Hand”
Xris jogged along the road until he reached the rusty barbed-wire and wooden plank barricade that had been erected to protect the construction site. A security light illuminated the gate, probably for the benefit of the night watchman. Xris saw no hut, however, no lights behind the gate. The guard was probably inside the area, closer to the heavy equipment, the building materials. Xris glanced behind. He could still see, off in the distance, the flashing lights of the police cars. He could hear the wail of sirens.
Xris leaned down, picked up a good-sized rock, and heaved it at the light. He missed. He tried another. The third time, glass shattered. The light went out.
Crude, but effective. Anyone discovering the broken bulb would probably put it down to vandals. Now that every movement was no longer in the spotlight, he walked over to the gate, studied the padlock. It was a cheap hardware store lock with a dial on the front. With his mechanical hand, he gave it a healthy yank. The lock popped open. He entered the construction site, paused to look and listen. The workers were still in the digging stages; no one had started building anything yet, though the metal forms into which they’d pour the concrete for the foundation were stacked in long rows. He could now see, some distance away, a small shed with a light in it, and figured he’d found the night watchman. Would the watchman be making routine inspections of the site? Doubtful, considering the rain, but Xris was prepared for that eventuality. He had a tranquilizer dart positioned in the projectile firing digit of his tool hand. He checked to make certain all his systems were functioning properly, then set off at a lope for the crash site.
It only took him about five minutes of running to reach it. He saw no one on the way and trusted that no one had seen him. The rain continued to pour down; his clothes were soaked, the night air was chill. He’d slipped and fallen once, done no damage.
Arriving at the crash site, Xris stopped to catch his breath, clean the mud from his tool hand, and inspect the downed spaceplane.
The force field had one advantage: It lit the place bright as day.
The old spaceplane was only partially dug out. The Pandorans had found enough to determine what the plane was and then had called a halt to the project, fearful—according to Sakuta—of contamination. The spaceplane had apparently plunged nose-first into the ground, probably long before anyone had come to colonize this planet. Since then, the shifting desert sands had washed over it, buried it, obliterated all trace of its existence.
Xris studied what he could see of the plane. Sakuta had provided him with old photographs and vid footage of this particular type of craft, known as a Pelican light utility plane, which had been mainly used for long-haul, light cargo loads. It had also proved excellent for unmanned exploratory missions.
According to Sakuta, in the early days of human space colonization, robots like the one Xris was supposed to retrieve had been sent out to various sectors of the galaxy to do mapping and surveying, searching for planets that would be suitable for human habitation.
Crashes were relatively commonplace; the robot-controlled planes would venture too near a system, get caught in its gravitational pull, and, being unable to break free, would be pulled down to the surface. The shielding on the old planes was highly inadequate. Most failed to survive the entry through the atmosphere and burned up, which was why finding one in such well-preserved condition was extremely rare.
Xris surveyed the angle of entry into the ground, assessed the amount of damage to the portion of the spaceplane that he could see, and calculated that the crash had been a controlled one. Whoever had piloted this craft had stayed with it all the way, must have used every bit of ingenuity and skill possible to land this plane and keep it in one piece. This didn’t exactly fit in with Sakuta’s description of these robots as p
lodding, noncreative space-traveling dummies who did what they were told, but no more. Such a ‘bot would have accepted the inevitable, plunged to its death without a struggle. Whoever piloted this plane had fought hard to survive—almost as if it had been human.
Xris considered the point as being of mild interest, but nothing more. There were various explanations— perhaps a human had been aboard, for one reason or another. Maybe the Pandorans had discovered skeletal remains. That might be why they thought the plane could be contaminated. Not logical—if there had been any germs or viruses on that plane, they would have all died centuries ago. But then any government that would go to the expense of building a wall to shield a shopping mall from off-worlders didn’t score high marks on logic.
Xris glanced over the spaceplane—what he could see of it that wasn’t buried in the gray dirt. The fuselage stuck out of the ground at a shallow angle, with the tail and thrusters pointing at the sky. The wings were gone, probably sheered off in the crash. The nose was mostly buried, as was the forward cargo area. The only access was through the top emergency hatch. No windows were visible. He couldn’t get a look inside.
According to Sakuta’s colleague, the hatch controls were not working. The hatch itself had been discovered partially opened; it had probably sprung open during the crash-landing. The Pandoran government had ordered the hatch sealed shut, in order to keep any stray viruses from sneaking out into the atmosphere. The seal was a standard restraining bolt; shouldn’t present any problems. Xris’s main concern was getting past the force field. He walked over to inspect the machine being used to project the field.
The device was one of the latest designs for portable force field projection. The field it generated not only repelled physical objects, but redirected energy that it encountered. The machine itself was made of tempered durasteel, was smooth-sided, no controls on the outside, except for one and that was an alarm. Touch that box and the whole planet would know he was here.
Xris was, for the moment, confounded. He studied the force field device and it occurred to him that it must be sucking down one hell of a lot of electricity.
Xris walked around to the other side of the device, found what he was looking for, shook his head. He could use his tool hand, but why bother? Keep the impression of vandals. A pile of steel bars stood to one side, ready to be used for reinforcing rods in concrete. Xris picked up one, balanced it on its end, and directed its fall— straight onto the portable generator. The top of the generator caved in, sparks flew, and then all went dark.
So much for the force field, which might have kept out a troop of Cub Scouts.
“Once I finish this job, I think I’ll offer the Pandorans my services,” Xris muttered. “Someone needs to teach them a few things about security.”
He walked unimpeded over to the hatch, inspected the restraining bolt. A flick of his wrist and the bolt came off in his hand. Xris paused again to listen, look around. The rain was letting up; the night watchman might decide to make his rounds. Xris heard nothing, saw nothing. Switching on a hand-held nuke lamp, he crawled inside the downed plane.
The storm had passed. The lightning and thunder had moved on, rumbled far away in the distance, and could not be heard inside the spaceplane. A light rain fell. Drops splatted against the plane’s hull, but that was the only sound and Xris couldn’t even hear that as he moved deeper into the plane’s interior, searching for the robot. The silence was thick and old, dry and oppressive.
Xris flashed the light around the dusty and cobwebbed control panels, with their ancient and archaic instruments. The leather on the seats for pilot and copilot was cracked, split. Bits of stuffing mixed with rodent dung lay scattered all over the deck. No robot here. And why seats for pilots? If this ship was robot-controlled, seats shouldn’t be necessary.
Xris gave a mental shrug. Sakuta would probably spend years researching that one. The cyborg flashed the light to the other side of the plane, played it over more instruments, metal storage containers, dangling ropes of electrical wire, the smashed front viewscreen. Parts of the control panel were blackened, covered with soot.
Xris crossed the deck, bent down over the damaged panels, rubbed off the dust to take a closer look. He smiled at the crudeness of the instruments—kids’ toys were using more sophisticated hardware these days. That wasn’t what he found interesting. Damage like this might have been done on entry. But it was far more consistent with damage done in battle.
Xris wished Harry were here. An expert pilot, Harry would have recognized the signs, been able to confirm Xris’s suspicions. Too bad most of the spaceplane was buried under half a hill. Xris would have been interested to see if he could find evidence of damaged shields, carbon scoring along the sides, all of which would go to prove his theory.
This plane hadn’t been sucked into the atmosphere. This plane had been deliberately shot down.
Why? Why shoot down a harmless mapping and surveying, robot-controlled spacecraft? And who had fired on it? If he remembered clearly his Earth history, this had been a period of peace.
“ ‘Curioser and curiouser,’ as Raoul would say,” Xris said aloud, and it was good to hear a living voice. The silence and the dust and his speculations were all starting to act on his nerves. Despite the fact that he couldn’t see any bodies, he felt as if he were violating the sanctity of a tomb.
Which was nonsense. No skeletons in flight suits sat in the pilots’ chairs. No one had died in this crash. It was a robot-controlled craft, remember? Xris left the control panel, continued his search for the robot.
No sign of it. He was heading deeper into the plane’s interior, back into what would be the cargo portion of the spaceplane, when his weight and movement caused the unstable craft to shift, settle. The door to one of the metal storage compartments came unlatched, swung slowly open.
Eyes, caught in the beam of his light, stared out at Xris from inside the compartment.
Childhood memories of ghost stories of pharohs’ tombs, wild thoughts of dead people come to life leaped from his subconscious and ambushed him. Xris had heard of being paralyzed with shock and now he experienced it. Lights flashed on his arm, alarms went off. One more jolt like that and he’d have to go in for a complete overhaul. He drew in a deep, shivering breath, let it out in a curse.
The eyes belonged to the robot, of course.
Xris focused the light beam directly on the ‘bot, studied it, waited for his heartbeat to return to normal, and wondered if it was racial memory that caused him to feel the grip of cold, bandaged mummy hands closing around his throat.
Examining the robot, Xris let himself off the hook.
“No wonder you scared the hell out of me.”
The ‘bot had eyes, real eyes—or rather, eyes whimsically designed to resemble human eyes, with white eyeballs, blue irises, and black pupils. Sakuta hadn’t mentioned anything in his description about eyes, and Xris wondered if the eyes worked or if they had been built in for show. Nothing else about the robot was the least bit human—nothing except those staring, unblinking, and unaccountably sad eyes.
The robot itself reminded Xris of a gigantic jellyfish.
Its head was saucer-shaped, made of metal, about a meter in diameter. A blue light flashed intermittently on the top. The eyes were located in what Xris presumed to be the front. The rest of the head was covered with instruments and small antennae, projecting outward at odd angles.
Dangling down from the head were at least twenty— by quick count—reticulated arms. These arms were of varied length. Each arm ended in a “hand.” Each “hand” was different, each obviously designed to perform different functions aboard the spaceplane.
The robot huddled in a heap on the closet floor, its arms all akimbo, and gazed at him with its sad eyes. Xris had the strangest impression that the ‘bot had been frightened by the crash, had run into the closet to hide.
“Watch it,” Xris cautioned himself in disgust. “Next you’ll be giving it a name!”
He took off his tool hand, replaced it with a large clamp, providing himself with a grip that was—literally— a vice. He reached into the closet, took hold of the ‘bot beneath the head, and tried to lift it. He managed to drag it about five centimeters before he was forced to admit defeat and let it fall back to the deck.
“Damn!” He grunted, straightening and massaging his back.
The ‘bot must weigh in at about half a metric ton. Sakuta hadn’t mentioned this little fact, either.
Xris considered making adjustments to the load-bearing portion of his cybernetic arm, but doubted that would help him much. The arm’s designers had not intended him to go around hefting small trucks. He’d have to go out, retrieve the crate, and bring the crate to the robot, instead of the other way around.
All of which would take up more time—
“Central,” came a voice, barely heard. “This is Mike. That blasted generator’s shut down again.”
Xris switched off the nuke lamp, froze where he stood. He could have sworn, in the last seconds before he turned off the light, that the robot’s eyes had widened in alarm. He slid into the closet next to the ‘bot, closed the door behind him all but a crack, and readied the tranquilizer dart. The watchman was speaking Pandor, presumably. Xris had activated his built-in translator while he was in the bar and now he heard pretty much what he might have expected to hear.
“Must have been the storm. Steel bar blew over, bashed in the generator,” the voice was continuing. “Guess you better send out the repair crews. No, morning’ll be fine. It’s darker’n the inside of a cow’s belly around here.”
A pause in the conversation, then, “Yeah, I’ll look the place over. I’m not goin’ near that plane, though. I ain’t gonna risk catchin’ some alien disease. Plus I got to make the rest of my rounds. Mike out.”
Xris smiled to himself. He shifted position slightly, to get better leverage in case he needed to leave the cramped confines of the closet in a hurry. Moving his shoulders, he jostled the robot.
Robot Blues Page 13
