Robot Blues (32 page)

Xris heaved a
sigh, glanced again at his watch. He should have heard from Tycho and Quong by
now, wondered what they were doing.

Tess attempted to
soothe the distraught museum curator. “Please, Mr. Grant, I don’t want any
trouble. The government has the right to confiscate any equipment that might
affect national security.”

“Don’t worry,
Grant. We’ll give it back,” Xris said.

“Thank you,
Captain Kergonan.” Tess shot him a warning glance. “But I’m perfectly capable
of handling this.”

“By this time next
year,” Xris muttered.

Jeffrey Grant was
looking from Xris to Tess to the unit and back to Xris again.

“The Navy just
wants to study the unit,” Xris explained. “We’ll make a few vids of it. Then we’ll
give it back.
If
that’s what you want.”

“Personally,”
Raoul offered his opinion, “I’d take the money. Buy a new wardrobe,” he hinted.

“I don’t want the
money, sir. Or a wardrobe. I want my Collimated Command Receiver Unit.” Jeffrey
Grant was firm.

“Fine. No problem.”
Xris was eager to please.

“Captain ...” Tess
was beginning to get irritated.

Grabbing hold of
her hand, Xris gave it a squeeze.

“This is for your
king, Mr. Grant,” Xris said solemnly. “For your king and your galaxy.”

“For the king,”
Grant murmured.

Xris could have
sworn he saw the man’s hand start to lift in a salute. “Very well, sir.”
Jeffrey Grant altered his move, put his hand lovingly on top of his humming
Collimated Command Receiver Unit. “You can take it, ma’am. But I insist on
coming with it.”

“We’ll see,” said
Tess, in a tone which meant
Not on your life.
“I’ll have to clear that
with the Admiralty.”

Grant slowly
nodded. His eyes blinked rapidly. “The unit has a traveling case. I’ll get it.”
He went to the back of the plane, began to rummage around loudly in a storage
bin.

Tess sidled over
near Xris. “You know he’ll never see that machine again.”

“I know that. You
know that. He doesn’t,” Xris said.

Tess sighed. “Sometimes
I really hate this job.”

Grant returned
with the case. Fussily, refusing all offers of assistance, he packed the unit
securely inside the case, closed it.

Xris stepped
politely around Grant, bent down, lifted the case. It wasn’t particularly
heavy, though somewhat awkward. He handed it to Tess.

“Good-bye, Mr.
Grant,” she said. “Thank you.”

Carrying the case,
she left the spaceplane. Xris watched her walk across the tarmac. Grant was
watching, too, his face and hands pressed up against the steelglass, his
expression that of a parent who’s lost a custody battle.

“She’ll take good
care of it,” Xris said. “I promise you.”

“I wish I could
see it. The robot, I mean,” Grant said softly.

“So do I. Before
they blow it up,” Raoul added offhandedly.

“What?” Jeffrey
Grant turned. He had gone a sort of sickly wax color. “What did you say, sir?
Blow it up!”

“Yes, we have a
bomb. It’s in Jamil’s briefcase. We’re going to plant it in the robot and
detonate it.”

Grant’s mouth
opened and shut several times before he could make anything coherent come out. “Why
... why ... why would they do such a terrible thing?”

Xris was grim.
This was just all he needed. “Raoul, you and the Little One go see if you can
find out what’s keeping Quong.”

Raoul cast a
horrified glance out the window onto the baking tarmac. He looked back at Xris,
reproachful. “You know how bad the sun is for my complexion. Do you want to see
me covered with freckles?”

At the moment,
Xris would have liked to have seen Raoul covered with blood-sucking leeches.
Grant was breathing funny, quivering all over, and making odd gasping sounds.

“I’ll risk it,”
Xris snarled. “Go. Go on. Both of you. Beat it.”

Hurt, Raoul rose
majestically to his feet and swept out of the spaceplane, the Little One
trudging behind. Outside, Raoul put his hand over his forehead in a vain
attempt to shield himself from the ravages of UV rays. Taking the Little One by
the hand, he ran as fast as the Little One’s short legs would carry him,
heading for the nearest shade.

Xris assisted the
stricken Grant to a chair. “I’ll get you some water. Are you on any type of
medication?”

“No, no, sir. I’m
fine.” Grant was bewildered. He clutched at Xris. “Why are you going to blow it
up?”

“We’re not. Raoul
misunderstood. We’ll keep the robot safe. I promise you.” Xris was making a lot
of promises. Maybe someday he could actually keep one. “Just relax, Mr. Grant.
Don’t worry. Perhaps if you told me a little more about this professor—”

Xris’s built-in
commlink, located in his left ear, buzzed—a bad sign. It meant that one of the
team had something to communicate which was strictly private.

“If you’ll excuse
me, Mr. Grant? I ... uh ... gotta go ...” He motioned in the direction of the
head.

Grant nodded
vaguely back and whispered, “Blow it up!...”

Xris left the
bridge.

The head in these
rent-a-spaceplanes was small for a normal-sized person. Xris, with his large
shoulders and broad chest, was a tight fit. He had to work to shut the door,
and then was forced to straddle the toilet. One elbow was in the sink.

“Xris here. What
is it?” he said, keeping his voice low.

“Quong here. Bad
news, boss. The robot’s gone.”

“Gone?” Xris
protested. “What do you mean, gone? Someone stole it? That’s impossible! The
case itself weighed in at about a metric ton, not to mention the robot! It’d
take a crane to lift it—”

“Hold on, boss,” Quong
cut in. “The case is still here. From a preliminary investigation, I’d say the ‘bot
freed itself. The case has been popped open from the
inside.”

“I’ll be
damned....” Xris was awed, stunned, amazed, and in a hell of a lot of trouble. “Find
it!” he ordered, squeezing the words out of his constricting chest. “Don’t say
a word to anyone, just
find it!”

“Sure, boss.”
Quong was confident. “What does it look like? There’s a lot of robots working
around here.”

“Not like this
one. Picture a metal jellyfish with sad eyes. Once you’ve got it, sit tight and
get back in touch.”

“Yes, boss. Quong
out.”

Xris took a twist,
chomped down on it savagely, chewed it, and swore, briefly and bitterly. He
indulged in one of his favorite pastimes—beating himself up. He should have
anticipated this. He should have taken precautions. He should have this. He
should have that.

But the damn ‘bot
had seemed so meek and compliant....

“Fuck it!” Xris
said loudly.

He slammed open
the door to the head, walked to the bridge and right on past. “Please stay
here, Mr. Grant,” Xris said. “I’ve got to leave for a few minutes. I’ll send
someone for you shortly.”

On his way out of
the spaceplane, Xris picked up the two MPs.

“Come with me,” he
ordered.

“Yes, Captain.”
The MPs obeyed with alacrity.

Xris was, after
all, still in uniform.

Opportunity makes
a thief.

Francis Bacon, “A Letter of Advice to the Earl of Essex”

Jeffrey Grant,
left alone in his rent-a-plane, was barely cognizant of the captain’s
departure. The shock had left Grant dazed.

Blow up the robot!

Why? It wasn’t
harming anyone. Didn’t they realize how ... how wonderful this was? To be able
to touch, to speak, to listen to an entity that had been touched, spoken to,
and listened to by Lasairion—the great Lasairion—himself!

And then came a
cheering thought.

“Perhaps,” Jeffrey
Grant said to the console, “if they don’t want the robot, they would give it to
me.”

The female captain
had said the robot was government property. But surely, if he talked to the
right person ... perhaps his planet’s representative in Parliament. Or the
prime minister. Or—Grant seemed dimly to have heard of an important talk show
host ... Jeffrey Grant couldn’t say. He had never been much involved or even
interested in politics. His union had told him how and where and when and for
whom to vote and he had gone and voted that way for as long as he had been
eligible to do so. The universe had seemed to run along very satisfactorily in
this manner. If only he could remember a name....

Grant closed his eyes
and tried to think back. He recalled a billboard for a political candidate.
Grant could see the face; he could, after a short struggle, remember the woman’s
name. But had she won? Had that even been the current election, or was he
thinking of a billboard from ten years ago? He had no idea and eventually he
gave up worrying about it. He formed a vague plan of writing a letter to the
king. Perhaps His Majesty could persuade them not to blow up the robot, but to
let Grant have custody of it.

“I suppose they’re
worried about maintenance costs,” Grant said to himself. “The upkeep might be a
bit expensive, but I’d handle all that myself. I wouldn’t ask the government
for. a single credit.”

With that thought,
Jeffrey drifted into a happy daydream.

“I would put it...
where? Over by the bookcase. Yes, that’s the place. It has the best light. I’ll
move the display case that’s there now into the back of the room. The robot
will be the first thing people see when they walk into the door. And they’ll be
amazed. They’ll be overwhelmed. I’ll be the only museum to own one. Scholars
will travel from all over the galaxy to study it. They’ll ask questions.”

Jeffrey Grant’s
blissful contemplation of the future was suddenly interrupted. He was seated in
the pilot’s chair, looking out the viewscreen. He leaned forward, stared,
openmouthed.

They were hauling
a Claymore bomber onto the tarmac.

One of Jeffrey
Grant’s favorite space simulator games was Wing Commander MCIII, in which he
flew a Claymore bomber on various glorious missions to keep the galaxy safe for
commercial traffic. Grant had played this game a few hundred times and had won
every time except the first, which he counted as just learning. And here was
the Claymore—a real Claymore—not fifty meters away.

A hauler dragged
the Claymore to a cleared area on the tarmac. Once in place, the crew detached
the hauler and drove it off.

“I’m certain they
won’t mind if I just take a closer look,” Grant said to himself.

He walked to the
hatch of the rent-a-plane, opened it, and climbed down the ladder onto the hot
tarmac. He looked about for the MPs, planning to shyly ask for permission to
walk over and inspect the Claymore. He couldn’t find the MPs.

Grant searched
vaguely around, even glanced under the rent-a-plane’s belly. No, the MPs were
gone.

They must have
left with Captain Kergonan, Grant reasoned.

He was a little
uncertain about leaving his plane. If he had been the cause of an
interplanetary incident, he certainly didn’t want to escalate it. He wished the
MPs were still here. They would have been able to advise him. He looked across
the tarmac to a large building, the control tower. He glanced back toward the
Claymore.

Grant could either
walk over to the control tower—a long walk in the hot sun—and ask permission to
go look at their Claymore or he could walk over to the Claymore. He didn’t
intend to stay long. He just wanted to see it close up.

“What harm can
there be?” Grant asked himself. “I’ll take a quick peep. That’s all.”

He started off
across the tarmac.

Something wasn’t
quite right.

Grant halted,
pondered, then knew what he should be doing. Returning to his own plane, he
picked up his helmet. As the pilots did in his simulator game, he tucked the
helmet under his arm and, attired in his union flight suit, he ran across the
tarmac toward the Claymore.

He wasn’t running
to evade pursuit. In his mind, Grant could hear the sirens blowing, the order
shouted, “Man your planes!” He was one of an elite group of brave men and women
ready to risk their lives for whatever cause was on today’s plate. His white
silk scarf trailed behind him as he ran. He reached the bomber. His crew chief
was there, waiting for him.

“
Minx noggle
,”
said the crew chief.

Grant blinked away
the daydream. He stood beneath the belly of the Claymore, sweating in his hot
flight suit, breathing heavily, trying to catch his breath.

Confronting
Jeffrey Grant was a robot.

It took Grant only
a few seconds to realize that this was
the
robot.

He had, of course,
seen old vids. One in particular came to mind. Professor Lasairion in his
laboratory, exhibiting one of the Lane-laying robots. This robot would, the
professor said, “take humankind into the stars, where, I trust, humans will
have learned from their past mistakes and will use this opportunity to carry
civilization forward into the twenty-second century.”

This robot was the
robot of the vid—dangling reticulated arms, saucer-shaped head, humanlike eyes.
Those eyes were regarding Grant with interest. A green light began to flash on
the robot’s head. The pupils of the eyes widened.

Grant felt funny,
as if the robot were able to see inside him.

“
Reep glut?”
The robot had a questioning tone.

Grant glanced
about nervously. He expected Captain Strauss or Captain Kergonan or perhaps the
short spy in the hat to appear and take the robot away.

No one was in
sight.

Grant waited a few
more moments, standing on the broiling hot tarmac in the shadow of the enormous
Claymore, watching and listening.

Nothing.

And then Grant
knew what had happened. The robot had escaped.

“Run away!” said
something inside Jeffrey Grant, something strange and foreign and alien. “Take
the robot and run away! Save it from being blown up! Now! Quick! Before they
come back!”