Robot Blues (5 page)

A woman stood with
her back half to them, apparently deeply involved in studying the brochure she
held in her hand.

“She interested in
us?” Xris asked quietly.

The Little One
nodded.

“I don’t suppose
she thinks I’m incredibly sexy and hopes I’ll ask her to go dancing.”

The Little One
shook his head.

“Who’s she working
for?”

The Little One
shrugged.

“She is very
single-minded, is thinking only of us. Perhaps she is aware that we have a
telepath. Do you want me to deal with her, Xris Cyborg?” Raoul asked, his hand
reaching for his purse, where he kept a tube of very special lipstick.

“No,” Xris said,
and continued walking out the door. He watched, out of the corner of his eye,
the woman follow after them. “It’s nice to know someone cares.”

Advance knowledge
cannot be gained from ghosts and spirits, inferred from phenomena, or projected
from the measures of Heaven, but must be gained from men for it is the
knowledge of the enemy’s true situation.

Sun-tzu,
The Art of War

The Mag Force 7
team was scheduled to meet later that evening in a small conference room in the
Megapolis Spaceport Hotel, in a room that had been reserved by Xris under the
auspices of a corporate leader gathering together his regional managers for a
sales conference. When Xris had first been contacted by Sakuta for the job, he’d
put the word out to the Mag Force 7 team— disbanded since the Knights of the
Black Earth affair— to meet him on Megapolis, gave them the name and location
of the standard business-class hotel adjacent to the spaceport.

A job for the
Megapolis Space and Aeronautics Museum wasn’t likely to call for top-level
security conditions; no need to travel to the edge of the galaxy, to Hell’s
Outpost to discuss their plans at the Exile Cafe, for example. Xris guessed
beforehand that this would be a simple job and he’d been right—in that, at
least.

What he hadn’t
counted on was Amadi and friends dropping by to join the party—
if
that
woman at the museum had been one of Amadi’s. Logic told Xris she was a bureau
agent. Paranoia whispered that she was one of the Hung.

Whoever she was,
he hoped to throw her off the trail. Xris and Raoul and the Little One drove to
the spaceport. No sign of Amadi or any of his agents following. Small comfort.
Amadi was good and when he didn’t want to be seen tailing a suspect, he wouldn’t
be seen.

Dropping off the
rental vehic, the three merged with the crowds in the terminal, purchased three
tickets for an outbound flight, and then lounged around in the bar until it was
time for their flight to leave. Xris sipped a beer and studied the professor’s
notes. He formed a preliminary plan to steal the robot, then spent the rest of
the time worrying about Darlene.

Raoul bought the
latest edition of the
Galactic Inquisitor
and caught up on the gossip
about the Royal Family, began ooohing and aahing over the first official family
photos of the newly arrived baby prince, attempted to show Xris, who wasn’t
interested. The Little One crept into the minds of everyone in the immediate
vicinity and, though he expanded his store of knowledge on humans considerably,
the telepath caught no one tailing them.

When the flight
was called, they weren’t around to catch it. By the time Amadi—or whoever was
keeping an eye on them, if anyone
was
keeping an eye on them— realized
they’d been given the slip, the three were long gone. Xris, Raoul, and the
Little One left the spaceport, caught a tram to the nearby spaceport hotel.

Xris had plenty of
opportunity for thought, with the result that paranoia fought logic and emerged
the victor. By the time he reached the hotel, Xris had worked himself into such
a fevered state of anxiety that he posted Raoul and the Little One to keep
watch, then used the house phone. Asking for Darlene under the name of Mohini,
he buzzed her room.

Having already
convinced himself that something terrible had happened to his friend, Xris was
startled and relieved and even slightly angry at her voice—calm and
sleepy-sounding—at the other end.

“ ‘Lo?” she
mumbled.

All that worry,
and she’d been taking a nap!

“Darlene, is that
you? Are you all right?” Xris demanded.

She heard the
tension in his voice, woke up fast. “Yes, it’s me. I’m all right. What’s wrong?”

“Has anyone been
inside your room? For any reason?”

“No.”

“Did anyone make
you switch rooms? Offer you cash to move?”

“No, Xris.”
Darlene sounded exasperated. “And I remember the routine, okay? No maintenance
man has been in to ‘fix’ the phone, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Good. What’s your
room number? I’m coming up.”

She told him. He
switched off the phone, turned to Raoul. “The Little One latch on to anything?
Anybody interested in us?”

Raoul shook his
head—carefully, so as not to disturb his homburg. “No, there is no one watching
us, no one following us, no one paying the slightest bit of attention to us, probably
because I am wearing this drab gray suit, which—while it is in the latest
style—simply does not suit my personality. May I add, my friend, that the
Little One and I”—he patted the fedora that stood somewhere about waist-level—”believe
that you are behaving most irrationally. It would indeed be remarkable if
anyone were to have kept up with us after all those twistings and turnings and
dodgings and feintings we made at the spaceport. My head is still swimming.”

“You’re a Loti.
Your head is always swimming. As for it being remarkable, the Hung’s pretty
damn remarkable, and don’t you ever forget it. I’m going up to talk to Darlene.
You and the leech here find Jamil—”

“I was going to
change my clothes!” Raoul protested.

“You’re beautiful,”
Xris assured the Adonian. “The gray brings out the red in your eyes. Go find
Jamil, tell him what’s up, have him search the conference room. When he’s
covered it, call Darlene’s room, let us know. We’ll be down.”

“What is he
looking for?” Raoul’s lashes fluttered.

“Anything.
Everything—from bugs to plastic explosives.”

“Plastic bugs to
explosives,” Raoul murmured, attempting to commit the instructions to what
memory he had. “Now, about my request for a leave of absence—”

“Go!” Xris said
through clenched teeth.

Raoul, offended,
went. The Little One trailed along behind.

Xris hoped his
orders would survive in translation and that Jamil wouldn’t spend the next
thirty minutes hunting for rubber cockroaches. The cyborg headed for Dar-lene’s
room.

Darlene Rowan
listened to Xris in silence and even when he had finished, she remained silent.

Xris stood in the
small hotel room, peering moodily out a gap in the curtains covering the
sliding glass door. He had a twist in his mouth, was chewing it to a bitter
pulp.

Hearing nothing from
Darlene, Xris turned.

“Well?” he
demanded.

She looked at him,
shrugged, gave him a faint, lopsided smile. “We’ve known all along this was
coming, Xris.”

“Is that all you
can say?”

“What do you want
me to say, Xris?” Darlene’s voice sharpened. “That I’m scared? I lived for
years being scared. Then one day, it just doesn’t seem to be worth the effort.
I got tired of my heart clogging my throat every time some stranger knocked at
my door. Now I just swallow and go on.”

“Yeah, well,
swallow this. The bureau’s pulled Amadi out of retirement to handle this case.
They wouldn’t have done that unless something big was going down. And Amadi was
making sure that no one saw or heard us talking. He’s made the connection, all
right. He may not know who you are or where you are, but he knows that I know.”

Darlene shook her
head, shoved a strand of brown hair out of her eyes. She was composed, slightly
pale, but then she never had much color in her face. Her hairwas tousled from
her nap. She’d thrown on a hotel robe. Her overnight bag was where she’d
dropped it on the floor, hadn’t even been opened. The only item she’d unpacked
was her computer case. She’d placed the portable computer on the table near the
bed; she’d probably programmed it to wake her. Darlene turned to it now,
perhaps instinctively. Her fingers ran idly over the keys. Her comfort, her
solace—the machine.

Xris remembered
clearly the first time he’d seen her— her, Darlene, not him, Dalin Rowan. He’d
been surprised to discover that his friend was a damn attractive woman. He’d
been more surprised to hear from his friend that deep inside, that’s what Dalin
Rowan had always been—a woman. Now that Xris had been around Darlene for a
couple of months, he understood.

There had always
been something jarring about Dalin Rowan, a dissatisfaction with life, with
himself. He’d drifted through life in a kind of dull, gray haze of unhappiness
that only lifted when he was inside his—or someone else’s—computer. Dalin’s
halfhearted attempts at relationships with women had inevitably ended in
disaster. They complained that he kept himself shut off from them, that they
never truly came to know him.

Even his best
friends, Xris and Ito, had never truly known Dalin Rowan. Xris had proved that
by being ready to believe Dalin had actually sold them out to the Hung, that he’d
been the one to send them into that death factory.

Xris was starting
to know Darlene Mohini. He was starting to like her, too, as were all the other
members of the Mag Force 7 team. She was more relaxed, more at ease, able to
open up, to talk about herself. When she spoke of Dalin Rowan, it was as if she
were speaking of some unfortunate friend who had now passed out of her life.
She remembered Dalin fondly, a little sadly, but with no regrets.

“I’m not so sure
Amadi has made the connection, Xris,” she said, tapping the computer keys. “He
knows that Dalin is around. All right, yes, it was foolish of me going back
into the bureau’s files to ferret out that information on the Knights of the
Black Earth, but God only knows what would have happened if we hadn’t cracked
that case. And that’s the only link Amadi’s got: me snooping around the knights
and you putting a halt to their operation.”

“If Amadi saw you
alone, he’d walk past you in the street and never recognize you,” Xris
conceded. “But if he gets a close look at the two of us together, that’s all
the link he’ll need.” Xris chomped savagely on the twist. “That old man’s
sharp. His mind’ll ring up a ‘Xris-Dalin, Dalin-Darlene’ match faster than
Harry Luck can shove coins into a slot machine. And as far as we know, no one
but you ever made the connection between the Hung and the bureau. Odds are,
whoever the traitor is, he or she is still there.”

“Amadi knows about
the traitor,” Darlene said. She switched the computer on. “That’s why he’s
being careful.”

“Amadi was born
careful. When he came out of the birth canal he had his head turned, looking
over one shoulder. That’s why he’s still alive. Did you ever say anything to
him about Armstrong’s death? About the evidence that someone in the bureau was
involved?”

Darlene shook her
head. “How could I? I didn’t know who to trust.”

“And we still don’t,”
Xris said emphatically. “So, here’s the deal. You and I split up. Let Amadi and
the Hung traipse after me for a while, if they can keep up. Once they see that
I’m not leading them to you, they’ll lay off, lose interest, follow some other
line.”

Darlene protested,
“But the job—”

“This robot snatch
is easy. I’ve got most of it planned out. Jamil and I can handle it. I was
going to dismiss the rest of the team anyway. Give everyone a vacation. I want
you to go along with someone—anyone but me. You can have your choice.”

Xris ran down the
list. “Harry Luck. He’s trying to decide whether to go to some high-rolling
town to lose what money he made on that last job or to attend some seminars
being held on the ‘Capabilities of the Dirk Fighter in Close Proximity to
Atmosphere’ or something like that. He can’t decide. Harry’s taken one too many
stun blasts to the head, but he’s a damn good pilot, Darlene. You know—you saw
him in action on that last job. And he’s devoted to you—”

Darlene shook her
head, half smiled. “Not Harry, Xris. He’s sweet, but, as you say, he’s devoted
...”

She left the rest
unfinished. Xris, grinning, moved on.

“There’s Dr.
Quong. He’s anxious to finish that study on the Little One, on Tongan
physiology. He could probably use your help. The Doc’s a bit touchy, but you
seem to be able to get along with him better than any of us. Plus he’d have you
eating right and exercising. You could gain weight into the bargain. The Doc’s
a good surgeon and—” Xris stopped, not quite certain where that was going.

“And if anything
happened, I’d have a doctor on call.” Darlene grinned wryly. “Sorry, Xris, but
if the Hung catch me, all the Doc would be able to do is certify the time of my
death. Plus I don’t really see myself spending my vacation immersed in the
psychological oddities of the Tongans—outre as they are.”

“Tycho, then. He’s
planning to go back to his home planet for a visit. The planet of the
chameleons, only don’t call them that. They find it offensive. I’ve been there,
met his family. They’re a fun group. They all look alike. I mean exactly alike.
You can’t tell his mother from his father, his brothers from his sisters, his
relatives from the neighbors. They can tell each other apart, of course. I
think it has something to do with skin pigmentation but I’ve never figured it
out. They’re all tall and skinny, like he is, and they blend nicely into the
surroundings. Of course, you’d stand out like a red flag on an ice floe, but
then so would a member of the Hung or the bureau. Tycho’s a crack shot and a
good person to have on your side.”