by J. S. Morin
Roddy slipped an arm around her. “Listen, baby. We just scored a big payday, right?”
“Right…” Shoni echoed with a skeptically cocked eyebrow.
“Wrong!” Roddy snapped. “Those grass-munching rhinoceroses paid us in local currency. The hardcoin version wouldn’t be able to buy us beer from a vending machine. The digital stuff we’ve got is worth even less, everywhere but here. So unless you fancy a nice quiet life of imported meat and neighbors ten times your size, we need to make real money: terras.”
Yomin sighed. “I love the little bank accounts they gave us. Those zeroes look sexy, but that currency symbol is like a kid’s scribble.”
Archie shook his head. “Play the long game, and maybe ARGO recognizes New Garrelon as a legitimate government entity. Those stuunji zuukas will be worth face value.”
“Not all of us plan on living another hundred years,” Roddy said with a sneer. “Investing in upstart rebel colonies is a sucker’s bet. Even with interest and inflation, none of it’s worth sitting on when this place won’t last five years before some treaty or other breaks down and this planet gets overrun. We can split this job four ways and turn our zuukas into money that buys.”
“Plus,” Yomin added. “Fuck Carl. I mean, we’re sitting here for days on the most boring planet ever settled. Why not borrow the Mobius and earn something for ourselves?”
Archie’s chair tilted forward until the front legs slammed down. “Well, now that’s something I can get behind.”
“Fine. I’m in,” Shoni added with a sigh.
# # #
Roddy drew the assignment to craft a response on Carl’s behalf:
Yo, Roger,
Hope that “mutual acquaintance” you mentioned didn’t tell you anything too embarrassing. I’ve got a reputation to maintain. Anyhoo, I’m on New Garrelon anyway, so I figured I’d give your job some thought. Never been much of a chair aficionado, but your specs look simple enough. Price tag works for me. Let’s do some business. I have a two-day window before pressing matters demand my personal intervention. You’ve got until then to arrange and meet me for pickup.
-CR
It wasn’t Roddy’s best work. But he knew that the longer the message ran, the greater the chance of slipping up and giving away the ruse.
“Is that it?” Yomin asked, reading over Roddy’s shoulder.
Roddy hit the send button. “Yeah. Now we just gotta find us a chair.”
It was as stupid a job as it sounded, but money was money. Well, not all money. Their zuukas weren’t worth the electrons it took to represent them. But soon, they’d turn hay into gold.
# # #
The Mobius landed in a grassy field just outside the New Garrelon town of Puhn Gasha. A stiff breeze bent the wildflowers and carried the loamy scent of crops in mid-season. As Roddy stepped from the cargo ramp to the ground, his foot sank into the vegetation.
“Who the hell wants to live in a place like this?” Roddy grumbled.
Yomin pointed at the solitary, barn-like structure nestled against the nearby creek. “Him.”
The trek to the carpenter’s workshop was a slog. Walking in beach sand was grueling, but at least the sand didn’t try to grab at ankles and suck at the gloves of Roddy’s lower hands. By the time they reached the stuunji-sized door, Roddy’s hands were cramped from the effort of tearing free of grassy entanglements.
Yomin knocked.
There was no response, but inside the wheezing sound of a handsaw ceased. From inside, the floorboards creaked, growing louder until the door opened.
“How may I—? Oh, my!” The stuunji carpenter took a step back and covered his mouth with a platter-sized hand. “Come in, little friends. Come in.”
Roddy wiped his lower hands on a mat just inside the door. “So. I guess you know who we are.”
“Oh, of course. I watch the news feeds,” the stuunji replied. “I am Hua Juun. I am humbled by your presence.”
The carpenter brushed his hands across a leather apron and offered one to Roddy, kneeling to cut down on the nearly two-meter difference in height.
Roddy shook hands with Hua Juun. Yomin followed suit, nearly able to look the kneeling stuunji in the eye.
“Heard you were the real deal,” Roddy said. He made a show of letting his gaze wander the room for a few seconds. “I’m looking for a gift for a friend of mine.”
“Rai Kub,” Yomin added. If the carpenter knew who the two of them were, Roddy figured that names weren’t needed. But it also meant that there was no point beating around the bush.
“Yeah. Him,” Roddy said. “Anyway, a bunch of our people went on a pilgrimage. While they’re gone, I was hoping to arrange a little surprise. Rai Kub doesn’t have much in the way of authentic, stuunji-crafted furniture. I mean, he’s got some comfy stuff for a guy his size on a human-made ship, but there’s no substitute for the genuine article.”
Hua Juun nodded along but remained silent.
“I’m thinking: chair,” Roddy said, holding his hands up in a picture frame and staring through. The carpenter stared right along with him as if the old stuunji could see Rai Kub settling into a nice, stuunji-made seat that fit him like it was molded around his ass.
Hua Juun turned a fraction and regarded Roddy from the corner of one giant eye. “Just a chair?”
“Well, it’s not a big ship,” Roddy said, suddenly defensive. “Plus, we don’t have an unlimited budget.”
Hua Juun stood and clasped both hands over his heart. “I would never dream of charging the Friends of Freedom for my work.”
A sliver of Carl within Roddy’s soul began counting the free terras already. This was like stealing without breaking any laws. And yet, somehow, Roddy couldn’t punch the throttle on the offer. “Please… Hua Juun. We gave that ship to Tuu Nau. The zuukas he gave as a gift in return was meant for settling these sorts of transactions. You still get to show the gratitude of New Garrelon, but Tuu Nau makes sure you still earn your livelihood.”
Hua Juun cocked his head and ran a thumb up the side of his horn. “I see… Tuu Nau was quite clever. Very well, allow me to take you to my showroom. I’m sure I have something your friend Rai Kub will appreciate.”
Twenty-two minutes later, they were hauling a grav sled into the cargo bay of the Mobius. It ticked off every box on Roger Baldwin’s list, and only cost them forty thousand zuukas. Split four ways, that was ten large apiece. Considering zuukas were just short of worthless, it was a pretty good deal.
As the cargo bay door closed, Hua Juun waved his goodbyes. Yomin and Roddy waved back. Then the door closed with a solid thunk.
“You could have let him give us a freebie,” Yomin snapped.
Roddy turned slowly to look up into Yomin’s eyes. “And if I was Carl, I would have.”
# # #
Archie’s first reaction upon coming down to the cargo bay to see the stuunji chair was to have a seat in it.
The chair was gaudy in the most primitive of fashions, with leather tassels and angular carvings covering most of the non-functional surfaces. It was polished to a glossy shine like a fresh apple, and the underlying wood stain left a pleasant old-world impression. Louis XIV could have commissioned a chair like this. But few French kings had a preference for rhinoceros handicrafts over gold and velvet.
“You look like an idiot,” Roddy stated. “Your feet don’t even touch the floor.”
Yomin snorted. “We could sit four across, too.”
“I ain’t feeling that cozy. Thanks,” Roddy replied.
Shoni circled the chair with Carl’s datapad in hand. Electronic bleeps sounded as she tapped through Roger Baldwin’s list of requirements. “Everything checks out. What sort of human would want one of these? Is this fellow’s boss a pituitary giant?”
Roddy snatched the datapad away from her. All the boxes were checked off. “No. He’s just an asshole with an ego that’ll spill over the arms of that titan-sized chair.” Roddy looked from Shoni to Yomin, then over to Archie
. “Hey, who’s flying this thing?”
“I set the autopilot as soon as we dropped into astral,” Archie replied. He suppressed a smirk. After the long reign of Mordecai The Brown, they were finally able to have a working star-drive on the Mobius. Esper wasn’t nearly so prickly about being the lone supplier of faster-than-light travel aboard the ship.
Roddy tapped away at the datapad, shaking his head all the while. “Can’t believe he’s gone…”
Archie knew the feeling.
Despite only knowing Mordecai The Brown for a few short weeks, there was an undeniable presence to the man. The ship felt emptier without him around and not just because half the crew was planetside. Without Mort’s gray-flecked hair and crotchetiness around, Archie felt old. His robotic body kept him from feeling the aches and pains of decrepitude, but it didn’t stop him from noticing the exuberance of youth all around him.
As he climbed down from the chair, a cloth bag hanging from the headrest caught Archie’s eye. “What’s this for?”
Yomin smirked and gave the bag a flick. “You’re lucky you can’t smell anything. It’s a stuunji aphrodisiac.” She swayed her hips, slid up beside Archie, and slipped an arm around him. Archie stiffened uncomfortably as she pressed her lips to the audio receptor where he should have had an ear. Yomin whispered, “But it doesn’t seem to work on humans.” Then she laughed and disentangled herself.
In the meantime, Roddy’s comm seemed to have taken a turn for the worse.
“The HELL?” Roddy shouted. “That wasn’t the deal!” The datapad bounced as a laaku hand hurled it to the floor. The laaku took three steps and leaned into a punch that made the tassels on the chair sway.
“Hey!” Yomin snapped. “You might damage the—well, OK, you’re too small to hurt that oversized barstool. But cut the crap.”
Archie switched to his newsreader voice and cleared his throat. “I suspect your sudden outburst may be related to our pending transaction?”
Roddy stabbed a finger at the robot. “Can the phony voice, Robo-Gramps. Our buyer just insisted the exchange be him and Carl.”
“Lemme guess,” Yomin said. “Alone and unarmed?”
Roddy stalked over and grabbed the datapad in one foot. He lobbed it underhand to Yomin. “Alone. Unarmed. Screwed.”
Archie reverted to his robotic voice in deference to the laaku’s current mood. “There’s always some room to negotiate.” As Yomin flipped the datapad right side up, Archie peered over her shoulder to read along. He tugged at the collar of his shirt as he finished reading. “I see… Well, Mr. Baldwin certainly has a colorful and vivid vocabulary.”
“This is why we shouldn’t have taken the job,” Shoni said. “Now we either have to give up or bring in Carl to finish it.”
Yomin blew a frustrated sigh and crossed her arms. “Or we could just quietly land back at Great Prairie and give the stupid thing to Rai Kub as a gift.”
Roddy snapped his fingers. “That’s it!”
“We’re giving it to Rai Kub?” Yomin asked skeptically.
Roddy waved a dismissive hand. “Hell no! We’re bringing Carl in on this. Except… well, we don’t need Carl Carl.”
“What are you getting at?” Shoni asked.
Archie backed away slowly. The laaku scientist might have been a neophyte criminal, but Archie had the suspicious mind to see where the four-handed mechanic was going with this.
“Yomin,” Roddy said. “Think you can stuff Carl’s voice into this robotic windbag?”
# # #
From his seat on the bed in Yomin’s quarters, Archie stared at the door. Yomin stood there, gripping the door handle and watching him. Waiting for him. It was time to go out and try the new voice that Yomin had spent an hour fine-tuning.
“Quit being a baby,” Yomin chided him. “If you can’t impersonate Carl in front of Roddy, how do you expect to win over Roger Baldwin?”
Some sarcastic responses came to mind, but all of them would have required speaking. Yomin had locked out his voice selection subroutine. He was Carl until she reset Archie’s manual selector. That hadn’t been part of the bargain.
The datalens over Yomin’s right eye gave him an idea. He shot off a short-range signal keyed to the datalens’ comm ID.
But the little mongrel’s going to make fun of me.
Yomin pursed her lips and plucked the datalens from her face. “No shortcuts, Archie. You’re Carl now, and you need practice.”
At that moment, Archie wished he had eyes to close. Instead, he shut off his optical inputs for a few seconds. It allowed him to gather his thoughts without the distraction of Yomin’s patronizing glare, but it lacked the catharsis that real eyelids could provide.
In agreeing to this plan, Archie had put his reputation on the line with half the crew. If he backed out now, they’d know he couldn’t be relied on. Sooner or later, a man—or robot—who wasn’t reliable wasn’t worth a spot on the crew. Archie would find himself marooned on a planet, maybe inhabited, maybe not. He couldn’t go back to being alone and scared that the next person he talked to could be the one to turn him in for a bounty.
Turning on his optical inputs, Archie rose and nodded. When Yomin opened the door for him, Archie stepped through and shuffled into the common room.
Roddy and Shoni had been watching something operatic on the holo. The image froze as Roddy paused the playback with a laaku stretching out his arms toward his beloved, mouth agape in song.
“So, how’s he sound?” Roddy asked.
Yomin elbowed Archie in the side.
“Yo. Rodek. My boy. How is it going?” Archie said in Carl’s voice.
Roddy cringed, and all four of his hands balled into fists. “Someone run their fingernails down a piece of slate. I’d rather listen to that than Carl’s ragged soul being dragged naked across a cheese grater.”
“It’s not half bad,” Yomin said with a scowl. “The timbre is dead on. Vocal playback would fool a biometric scanner.”
Waving a hand in Archie’s direction, Roddy struggled before finding words to voice his objection. “It sounds like someone ran Mort through a vocal modulator programmed with Carl’s voice.”
Shoni put an arm around Roddy’s shoulders. “Yes, dear. I know you two were friends, but the differences in speech between Archie and Mort aren’t that pronounced.”
Shrugging away Shoni’s affection, Roddy jumped down from the couch and strode up to the robot. “Like hell. That batty old wizard could turn a phrase when he wanted to. This guy? I mean, at least before he had an excuse not to sound human.”
“I am human, you lemon-brained marsupial!” Archie snapped.
Roddy wagged a finger. “Better. But still not Carl.”
Yomin came up behind Archie and placed her hands on his shoulders. “Well? Teach away, oh mighty expert.”
The laaku mechanic grew a thoughtful expression, rubbing a hand over his chin. “OK… Let’s see what we can do.” Roddy bracketed Archie’s face with his hands. “Imagine that over the course of the past three hours, you had sex with four different women, and none of them know that.”
“Umm…” Archie said. He wasn’t liking where this was going.
“Now imagine that you’re a real humble guy. You don’t want to make your buddies feel bad. But you’re in a great mood. You just walked into a bar. A bunch of school chums all turn and notice you walking in. One of them’s named Roddy. GO!”
Archie tried to recall his collegiate youth. The memories were clouded with cobwebs and that greasy film that always seemed to accumulate on old glass. He’d been a bit of a bookworm, and despite his best efforts, hadn’t enjoyed much success with the ladies in his undergraduate days.
Shifting focus, he thought back to his stint as a teaching assistant. He was a few years older than the students he oversaw, and his superior knowledge and the inkling of power he wielded had served him better at getting dates. But his own respect for the nature of his position kept him from abusing that power.
What if he had?
Fuzzy recollections of faces and curves flooded in from Archie’s memory banks. He imagined a Friday night tour of the Harvard fraternity houses—no, the sorority houses. Archie saw himself suave and self-assured, doling out offhanded secrets to upcoming tests and making off-color jokes about some of the naughtier devices that Tech Ed didn’t cover.
Could Archimedes Antonopoulos have parlayed a night like that into the debauchery that Roddy described? Probably not. But it was a daydream he could paint himself into, at least.
Following Roddy’s advice a bit further, he pictured the end of the evening, exhausted in body and soaring in spirit. There was a little bar just off campus whose name remained elusive, but it had a brick and polished wood motif and beer that came by the pitcher.
What would it have been like to throw open the front door and walk in like a holovid star, only to find a table full of old chums who would never have it so good?
“Yo, Rodek my man!” Archie shouted, holding up a lazy hand in an informal greeting.
A slow grin spread across the laaku mechanic’s face. Roddy popped the top on a can of Earth’s Preferred. “That’s more like it. Let’s get to work.”
For the next four hours, Roddy coached Archie through everything from common themes in Carl’s metaphors to how he responded to jokes, insults, and threats to his life. Most of what the laaku said fit with what Archie had observed himself. But what struck him was the degree to which Roddy seemed to understand Carl at a clockwork gear level.
Shoni and Yomin busied themselves about the ship, neither having the patience for the process. Once Roddy deemed Archie ready for show time, everyone gathered around the kitchen table.
“Lay it on us,” Yomin said as she slid into a chair. She sipped from a cup of coffee. “Show us your Carl.”
“First off, I’m not your Carl,” Archie replied in a perfect imitation of Carl’s voice and cadence. “I’m everyone’s Carl, and there’s plenty of me to spread around.”
Archie suspected he might have taken that last line a bit far when he noticed the predatory gleam in Yomin’s eye over the rim of her coffee mug.
