Ghost Legion (19 page)

The couple had reached the Scimitar and were frowning at the ladder
that led to the hatch. Mis. Mopup rolled to a halt beside them. Tusk,
thinking he understood their concern, hurried to catch up.

"Don't worry. I can stow the 'bot in a storage compartment down
below." He pointed them out.

"By herself?" asked Cynthia, her eyes widening.

"Well," said Tusk, grinning, "there're some spare
parts and a busted anti-grav unit in there. Maybe she could strike up
a conversation with them."

"Oh, dear, no," said Cynthia, shaking her head. "Mrs.
Mopup wouldn't enjoy that at all. She has to come with us, Don,"
she added, turning to her companion.

"Of course she does," Don said heartily, though he looked a
bit daunted at the prospect of hauling Mrs. Mopup up the ladder.

He started to lift the 'bot, but Tusk stopped him.

"Wait. I got a winch. We'll hoist her up." He looked at
Cynthia dubiously. "If she wouldn't mind ..."

"Heavens, no." Cynthia laughed. "She's only a robot."

"Yeah," muttered Tusk. "Well, I'll have to rig it up.
It'll take a while. You two want to wait on board? The bar's well
stocked...."

"No, thank, you," said Cynthia. "We'll stay with Mrs.
Mopup. Won't we, Don?"

"Sure," said Don agreeably. "She might get lonely. But
you can bring me a scotch on the rocks, Tusk, when you come down."

Tusk, dazed, nodded. "Sure thing. You want something to drink,
ma'am?"

"No, thank you," said Cynthia, smiling.

It was on the tip of Tusk's tongue to ask if Mrs. Mopup would prefer
a glass of premium or regular, but he passed up the temptation. He
had the feeling the joke wouldn't be appreciated. "Wait here.
I'll be back in a minute."

He ascended the ladder, carrying the luggage. "Hey, Link. Come
give me a hand, will you?" Tusk hollered through the open hatch.

Link appeared below. Tusk tossed down the luggage, dropped down
himself.

"Where the hell did you find these two? The nuthouse?" Tusk
demanded in a low tone. He followed after Link, who was stowing the
travel cases in a compartment beneath a couch. "I gotta rig up a
block and tackle, haul a goddam vacuum cleaner up the side of the
plane 'cause 'she' wouldn't like being shut up by "herself' in
the storage compartment!"

Link straightened, looked at Tusk. "You been on the juice?"

"No," said Tusk grimly, "but I got a feeling that I
will be after spending the day with Cynthia and Mrs. Mopup."

"Mrs. Whos-it?"

"Mopup. Hey, XJ," Tusk bawled, going to open the bar, "have
I got a girlfriend for you. Wait till you meet her. She's just your
type. Comes with a hose and everything."

Only when Mrs. Mopup was safely hoisted into the Scimitar did Don and
Cynthia agree to board themselves. Cynthia climbed nimbly up the
ladder and lowered herself through the hatch as if she had been doing
this sort of thing all her life. Don was a little more clumsy, but
then he'd had four scotch on the rocks while waiting for the
ascension of Mrs. Mopup.

Cynthia was charmed at the Scimitar's interior, was equally charmed
to see Link again. Handsome and dashing as ever, the spacepilot was a
born flirt and lady's man. Tusk, watching out of the corner of his
eye as he fixed Don his fifth scotch on the rocks, suddenly had a
pretty good idea why Cynthia had chosen to take her vacuum cleaner
into space with them.

Tusk glanced at Don, hoping this wasn't going to create problems. But
either Don and Cynthia were strictly business partners or else Don
wasn't the jealous type, for he was lounging back on the couch, his
drink in his hand, taking in everything with a wide smile.

Link showed the passengers how to strap themselves in and gallantly
helped Cynthia with the buckles when she couldn't manage them
herself. Tusk ascertained their destination, punched the coordinates
into a sulking XJ.

"We have sunk low before," said the computer, "but
never this low."

"Shut up," Tusk growled. "Tact and discretion,
remember?"

"I am thankful," XJ added in sepulchral tones, "that
none of my old comrades-in-arms can see me now. I, who was once under
the command of Warlord Derek Sagan ...

"You, who were a goddam deserter" Tusk muttered.

. . reduced to dispensing scotch—good scotch—to traveling
salesmen."

"Say, XJ," said Link, swinging himself down the ladder into
the cockpit and flopping into the co-pilot's seat. "I think Mrs.
Mopup likes you. Treat me nice and I'll fix you two kids up."

"A comedian," snapped the computer. "I'm having to put
up with two traveling salesman and a comedian. We better make a
bundle off this!" Lights flashing ominously, XJ turned its
concentration to liftoff.

Tusk took the opportunity, over the roar of the engines, to lean over
the console, nudge Link on the elbow.

"Where'd you meet her?"

"The Seldom Inn," Link answered. "Hey, it's not what
you think. She's a class dame. This Mrs. Mopup contraption was all
her idea. She built the prototype, started the company. She's
president now. They're a multimillion-dollar outfit. Did you ever
hear the jingle she wrote? It's real cute. It goes—"

Tusk snorted. "Spare me. So why's she using us? Why not her own
private spaceplane?"

"This is sort of a test run, you might say. She's thinking of
expanding off-world, but she's not sure whether to risk it or not.
She's got a meeting with a big corporation on Akara, who may be
interested in distributing Mrs. Mopup to millions of lucky housewives
galaxy-wide."

"Don't forget the househusbands," Tusk said, grinning.

"Yeah," said Link. He leaned closer, winked. "To tell
you the truth, I wouldn't mind being her househusband. She could
support me in the style to which I've become accustomed. Plus she'd
help me recover from my broken heart. I'll never forgive you for
stealing Nola away from me."

"Broken heart, my ass. Nola had too much sense to marry you.
Not, I recall, that you ever asked her."

"Just doing you a favor, old pal. How could she have said no to
me?
Say, do you think I could teach Mrs. Mopup to shoot
craps?"

Tusk described in detail just what Link could teach Mrs. Mopup. By
this time, the Scimitar was in space. The planet of Vangelis was
nothing more than a yellow-orange globe hanging suspended against the
star-studded blackness. Tusk turned over the piloting to Link, went
back up to the living quarters to see if his passengers had survived
liftoff. It could be pretty upsetting to those who had never flown in
a spaceplane before.

He found Don sucking ice and Cynthia calmly reading a mag. Mrs.
Mopup, lashed to a beam so that she wouldn't roll around and bang
into something, was blinking contentedly and appeared ready to tackle
the first housecleaning chore that came her way.

"Uh, everyone doin' okay?" asked Tusk, somewhat taken aback
at the nonplussed attitude of his passengers. "The liftoff can
be kind of rugged—"

"Quite smooth, really," said Cynthia, laying down the mag.
"Is it all right if I get out of this thing now?" She undid
the straps with a deft hand. "And I'll just release Mrs. Mopup.
You don't mind if she walks about some, do you? It keeps her battery
charged."

"Sure," said Tusk, blinking. "I mean, no. Hell, I
don't mind—"

"All right if I fix myself another?" asked Don, already out
of his safety harness and heading for the bar. "No offense,
friend, but you go a little light on the scotch."

"Help yourself," said Tusk, ignoring an irate mechanical
squawk from the vicinity of the computer.

Cynthia, on her knees, released Mrs. Mopup's bindings, freed the
robot. She said something to it that Tusk couldn't hear, wasn't
interested in anyway. Mrs. Mopup took a spin around the living area.

"Probably looking for dust bunnies," Tusk muttered to
himself.

Cynthia rose to her feet. She and Don stood watching the robot with
the fond expression of new parents seeing baby take his first steps.

"The trip'll last about six hours," said Tusk. "Relax,
make yourselves comfortable. I'll be up front if you need—"

Turning, he almost fell over Mrs. Mopup, who had rolled up behind
him. One of her nozzles was pointed directly at him.

Tusk deftly recovered his balance, stopped, stared, then laughed.
"Hey, did you two know that this attachment looks exactly like a
lasgun?"

"That's because it is a lasgun," said Don conversationally.
He leaned on the bar, swirling the ice in his glass.

Mrs. Mopup sighted the lasgun directly on Tusk's forehead.

"She's a remarkable shot," said Cynthia, regarding the
robot with maternal pride. "Never misses, in fact."

Tusk attempted another laugh, coughed when it got stuck in his
throat. "The ideal baby-sitter. All right, I gotta admit that
this was good for a few grins, but now—"

He attempted to sidestep Mrs. Mopup. The robot whirred, lights
blinked. The lasgun followed him, never lowering its aim, locked onto
his forehead.

Tusk looked from the robot to Don.

"No laughing matter, I'm afraid," said Don, taking a
healthy swallow of his scotch.

Tusk switched to Cynthia.

"Indeed not," she said coolly. "You see, I've locked
Mrs. Mopup on to you. If you do anything Mrs. Mopup doesn't like,
she'll shoot you without hesitation. Call your co-pilot up here."

"Link, turn the plane over to XJ and come on up here a moment,
will you?" Tusk called, lifting his hands slowly in the air.

He was examining the 'bot closely, trying to decide if he was being
played for the galaxy's biggest idiot or if he really was being held
hostage by an armed vacuum cleaner. The more he studied it, the
deadlier that lasgun looked.

"Yeah, what do you want?" Link climbed up, saw Tusk and the
robot, and began to chuckle. Only Tusk noticed that the pilot had
slipped his hand into the pocket of his fatigues. "What are you
doing with the 'bot, Tusk? Playing cowboys and aliens—"

"Shut up, you ninny!" Tusk hissed. "This gun's real.
Look at it! It's locked on to me! And it's gonna shoot me if I do
something it doesn't like." He glanced over at Don. "Just
what's included on the list of things Mrs. Mopup doesn't like?
Leaving wet towels on the deck?"

Don said, smiling, "She takes offense at little things—like
going for your lasgun. Or disturbing us while we're flying your
plane. Or maybe trying to jump us in our sleep."

"Fly ... sleep ..." Link apparently couldn't get his brain
working long enough to form a complete sentence. "What—"

"—the devil's going on up there?" XJ demanded. "Are
these guys from the collection agency? I suppose you forgot to pay
the light bill again, Tusk—"

The spaceplane suddenly went dark. Tusk dove for the deck, rolled. A
flash of light blinded him; pain seared up his shoulder. Another
flash of light, a yelp from Link and a metallic clatter of a boltgun
hitting the deck told Tusk that their scheme hadn't worked. The 'bot
had fired in two different directions damn near simultaneously.

"Did I fail to mention that Mrs. Mopup's locked on to both of
you? And she can fire her weapons from anywhere in a
three-hundred-and-sixty-degree radius." That was Cynthia.

"And she can detect you quite well in the dark. Movement, body
temperature, brain waves, heartbeat, that sort of thing." That
was Don, crunching ice.

"Yeah, but she almost missed," said Tusk, sitting up. He
was shaking and sweating and his arm hurt like hell.

"No, no." Cynthia was soothing. "I set her on
incapacitate. I can switch to kill, but I'd prefer not to."

"Can we have some light?" Don asked. "I can't see to
pour."

"Turn the lights on, XJ," Tusk ordered sullenly.

"I will not," snapped the computer. "And if you
salesmen are thinking about hijacking this plane, you've got another
think coming. I won't cooperate. After all, what can you do—kill
me?"

"No, but they could kill us, XJ," called out Link.

"Oh, now, that
would
be a loss." The computer
sneered.

"Actually, we wouldn't need to shoot anyone," said Cynthia.
"Mrs. Mopup is quite adept at invading other computer systems,
erasing their memories, and seizing control. All we'd have to do is
plug her in . . ."

The lights came on.

Tusk leaned back against a bulkhead. Gritting his teeth against the
burning pain, he examined his charred and bleeding shoulder. The
wound wasn't serious; the laser beam had seared through flesh and
muscle, missed the bone. He glanced across the deck at Link, who was
still standing, but wringing an injured hand. The small boltgun he
always carried concealed in his pocket lay on the deck beside him.

"Look, I don't get this," said Tusk, rising slowly to his
feet, careful to keep his hands in plain sight. Mrs. Mopup had him
covered all the way. "What's going on? Why hijack us? Link and I
aren't the curious type. We'd have taken you wherever you wanted to
go, no questions asked."

"Probably not," said Don, fiddling with the liquor
dispenser. "Hell's Outpost? The Exile Cafe?"

Tusk stared; his jaw went slack.

"Just think of us as your friendly neighborhood recruiting
officers," added Cynthia, heading for the Scimitar's cockpit.
"Coming, Commander Perrin?"

"Sure thing, Captain Zorn." Don paused to hand Tusk his
empty glass. "I think you're out of scotch."

Draw near with faith, and take this holy Sacrament to your comfort;
and make your humble confession to Almighty God ...

Book of Common Prayer, "The Invitation"

Sister Superior was a brisk, business-suited woman, who greeted the
archbishop at the front entrance to the hospital with a firm
handshake, as if she were greeting any brother of the Order, not its
titular head.

In keeping with the sister's mysterious and urgent request that he
make his visit anonymously, Fideles was cloaked and wore plain and
simple robes. He had removed all vestments and other symbols that
might indicate his high ranking in the Church and kept his hood up
over his head so that he would not be recognized. Fortunately,
brothers of the Order of Adamant were frequent visitors to the
hospital; the staff was too busy to pay them much attention.