Tales of the Red Panda: The Android Assassins (17 page)

Chief
O'Mally
came down the stairs
from his second-floor bedroom carefully. It was still hours before dawn, but he
was certain that he had heard something downstairs. A sudden thump that could
only have come from his small study. Now that he thought of it, he wasn't
entire certain that he had
heard
it,
but he knew that he was somehow certain that it had happened. He had almost
settled back to sleep, convinced that the cat must have knocked some of the
books off the small shelf by his desk, when he had noticed the feline in
question sleeping quite contentedly at the feet of Mrs.
O'Mally
to his left. He had slipped from the comfort of his bed as gingerly as possible
to avoid waking his wife and crept to the stairs as silently as he could.

From the top of the stairs he had seen that the house was
silent and still. There was no sign of anything being disturbed and no
indication that anyone had been there since he had made his way to bed a few
hours earlier. Yet something seemed to compel him towards the study. A cold
chill ran up his spine, but he pressed on, down the stairs towards his goal,
more certain with each step that there was something waiting to be discovered
behind the study door.

As he entered the room, he felt for the switch to the
electric light and flipped it, to no response. He turned the switch two or
three more times in irritation before moving cautiously into the room, trying
to find his desk without barking his shins on it. Having done so, he reached
out carefully in the near-total darkness for the electric lamp on his desk and
switched it on. His corner of the room was bathed in a glow that made him blink
hard, but left the rest of the room swathed in shadow. As his eyes adjusted,
the first thing Chief
O'Mally
saw was a small, white
globe resting on the desk near the lamp he had just illuminated. It took a
moment for his sleep-addled brain to realize that it was the electric light
bulb from the overhead light, which had been removed and placed here… how
exactly?

“I did that,” the Red Panda's voice cut through the still of
night like a dagger.

“What in blazes?”
O'Mally
cursed,
throwing open the right-hand drawer of his desk and producing a service
revolver. He pointed it into the darkness from whence the voice had come and
pulled the trigger three times, fast, the hammer dropping on an empty chamber
with a loud
click
each time.

“I thought of that, too,” the mystery man said, looming
forward into the edge of the light spill from the desk. “Give me a little
credit.”

“What do you want here? What did you hope to find in my
study?”
O'Mally
gasped as he met the cold, hard gaze
of the Red Panda's blank eyes.

“You aren't under the impression that you're being burgled,
are you?” the Red Panda seemed amused. “If I had been breaking into your home,
I promise you, you'd never have known it. You certainly wouldn't have heard
this,” and at that instant
O'Mally
once again had the
starling sensation of a loud noise coming from downstairs, just as he had
moments ago in his bed.

“How did you do that?” he said, shocked.

“I was in your head. Just a little.” The masked man grinned
infuriatingly, the angle of his face in the shadows making him appear all eyes
and teeth. “I had very little interest in having this conversation with Mrs.
O'Mally
.”

The Chief bristled. “If that is meant to be a
threat…,”
he began.

“Try not to be obtuse,
O'Mally
,”
the Red Panda said. “I meant just what I said. I think the time has come for
plain speaking between you and I.”

“And why is that?” the Chief narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

“Because there is a city out there that is teetering on the
brink of chaos,” came the reply.

O'Mally
snorted. “I would have
thought you'd be cheering at that. Who represents anarchy better than the local
masked outlaw?”

The grin seemed to get wider, which made
O'Mally's
eye twitch, but the Red Panda moved forward into the light a little more. “It
is an interesting point, Chief, but we simply don't have time for the debate.
You've never made a secret of your opinion of me, and I have never pretended to
care what you thought one way or another. You refuse to acknowledge that I have
done some good, or admit the possibility that doing
good
is even my real goal. That suits me fine. In many ways it helps me. My mission
often depends upon striking fear into the underworld, and what is more fearful
than the unknown? There are mystery men in other places who are forever posing
for photographs and accepting keys to the city. I've always wondered how they
get anything done in a day.”

“It isn't a joke,”
O'Mally
blustered with as much dignity as a public official could summon in his
pajamas. “When the honest citizens of Toronto look for their salvation to a man
who is answerable to no one–”

“They will sometimes find it,” the Red Panda interrupted.
“And sometimes they won't. I do what I can. But this is a discussion that we
simply can't afford right now. Captain Clockwork is on the ropes, and we have
one chance to put him down for the count. If we don't take it now, he'll
regroup, change his spots and return, taking more innocent lives when he does.”

“And how do I know that you aren't working with him?”
O'Mally
said angrily. “Or that you aren't actually him
yourself?”

The Red Panda raised an eyebrow above his domino mask. “I
would be expending quite a bit of energy to thwart myself, don't you think? And
if I were already Captain Clockwork
and
the Red Panda, would I really have felt it necessary to invent the Viper as
well?”

O'Mally's
eyes narrowed. “What do
you know about that?” he growled.

“I know enough,” the Red Panda said matter-of-factly, “and
by tomorrow night everyone who reads a paper will know much of it. The
publicity will drive this villain to a last, desperate strike, and we must be
ready. You have been answering a great deal lately to a certain group of
earnest but outraged businessmen forced to the brink by the Viper's plot.
O'Mally
, this fiend can only be a member of that
committee!”

“You're mad!”
O'Mally
sputtered.
“That's impossible!”

“Think about it,
O'Mally
,” the Red
Panda said. “Captain Clockwork had information that would only have been known
to that group of men. Things that were only revealed in that room.”

“You think so, do you?” the Chief smiled. “Even the
newspapers had some of this story, masked man. Clockwork had offices around the
city bugged with some kind of terra-vision.”

“Tele-vision,” the Red Panda corrected. “Tele. Like
telephone, but with vision.”

“What does it matter?”
O'Mally
blustered over his embarrassment. “The point is he had dozens of private rooms
bugged.”

“But not the conference room at the Club Macaw,” the Red
Panda said quietly.

O'Mally
stopped and thought for a
moment. “I'll be thundered,” he said. “And my office was bugged, but I didn't
work on plans to protect Harrison's armored transport test there, I went over
that with my men in the detective's bullpen. The only other place that the
timing was all laid out was in that conference room!”

“And why should Captain Clockwork bother to monitor a room
which he will actually be
in
when
anything of interest happens?” the Red Panda smiled.

“What about you?”
O'Mally
said
suspiciously. “You seem to know everything that happens everywhere.”

“I do, don't I?” came the reply.

“The waiters!”
O'Mally
said with a
snap of his fingers “Bringing in coffee… they were in and out… no one paid any
attention to them. They say that you're a master of disguise.”

“I dabble,” the Red Panda said with a smile.

“And the monitors,”
O'Mally
said.
“How could you possibly have known what they cover and what they don't? My men
have that entire complex locked down.”

“Do you really think that would stop me?”

“Now you listen here–,”
O'Mally
began.

“Chief
O'Mally
?” the Red Panda
said gently. “I think it is just possible that you're trying to solve the wrong
mystery again.”

“You would think that,”
O'Mally
glared, “but you expect me to trust you, to share information with you, while
you hide behind a mask.”

The Red Panda tried not to look like he was very amused by
this, and was not entirely successful. “Share information?” he said. “Chief
O'Mally
, I feel fairly certain that this time you don't
know a thing that I don't.”

“Then what in blazes are you doing here?” the Chief said
angrily.

“I come bearing gifts,” the Red Panda said, placing a large
but still portable device upon the desk between the two men. The Chief raised
an eyebrow that seemed to demand that the masked man not make him ask. The Red
Panda smiled and complied. “It's a radio tracking unit,” he began, “keyed to a
specific frequency. Its operation should be fairly self-explanatory to any of
your men versed in radio equipment, but there is an envelope with some more
detailed instructions just in case. In any event, there is nothing to suggest
that it came from me.”

“And what, exactly, am I supposed to do with this?”
O'Mally
sighed.

“When the android that was sent to destroy the MacKinnon
shipyards was unable to complete his programmed mission, it did something very
interesting,” the Red Panda said. “It called for instructions.”

O'Mally
paused to consider this.
“You're certain?” he asked.

“Quite.”

“This is how you beat Captain Clockwork last time,”
O'Mally
said, “by tracing his signals back to him.”

The Red Panda grinned. “Are you suggesting that I'm not
actually Captain Clockwork myself?”

“Oh, shut up,”
O'Mally
growled to
the masked man's great pleasure. “How do you know you've got the right
frequency?”

“I've had an expert dissecting some captured robots,” the
Red Panda said. “Once he knew what he was looking for, it wasn't difficult to
find.”

O'Mally
nodded. This could work.
“How long will we have to trace the signal?”

“That's the tricky bit,” the Red Panda admitted. “The signal
only lasts a few seconds, and the response would likely not be much longer.
This is why Clockwork has given these new models so much autonomy.”

“So the only way we'll get any kind of useful signal is if
we can make one of these monsters call for help over and over again.”

“Yes,” the masked man agreed. “And we'll have to keep the
requests simple enough that they can be handled automatically by the equipment
at Clockwork's new base, or he'd start to wonder and terminate the link.”

“I suppose you have a plan for that?”
O'Mally
snorted.

“Yes,” came the reply.

“Marvelous,” the Chief said. “What am I supposed to do while
you handle this secret plan?”

“Use the tracker,” the Red Panda said. “Make up whatever
story you like to explain where you got it. I'll get word to you with the
precise timing so you can stand by. If all goes well, the signal should lead
you right to the guilty party.”

O'Mally
was dumbfounded. “You've
cracked this nut, and you're handing the collar to me? Why?”

The man in the mask grew serious. “Say what you like about
my methods, Chief
O'Mally
, but we have done what we
can to bring hope to the people. But this campaign of terror has struck at the
very heart of the people's faith in their city.
The safety of
their homes, their neighborhoods.
The ties that bind them together as a
people have been weakened by fear. I cannot give that back to them. But you
can. You and the system your police force represents.”

There was a small pause as the Chief of Police considered
the masked outlaw standing in his study. “That's a very pretty speech, Red
Panda,” he said seriously, “and if you mean it, then it does you credit. But if
you don't, if this is some kind of double-cross to kick my city when it's down,
I will hunt you down and shoot you like a dog.”

“That's tough,” the masked man said, fading back into the
night, “but fair.”

And he was gone.

Wentworth James stepped up to the podium before a small
assembly of reporters. His arm was still in a sling, but otherwise he was none
the worse for wear after the accident that had destroyed the power plant. The
complex at James Laboratories, however, was still devastated by the explosion.
This press conference was therefore being held in the company's administrative
building, which had been spared the wholesale destruction of the secure labs.
It had been arranged in haste and most of the support staff didn't seem to
fully understand what was being announced today, but if Wentworth James wanted
a press conference, they were not about to question him.

Jack Peters yawned and wondered what could possibly be so
important about some stuffed-shirt inventor that he had to roll out of bed at
this hour of the afternoon and shove aside the cub reporter the
Chronicle
had intended to send to this
event. But the voice
who
called herself Mother Hen had
been most insistent. It had to be him and it had to be now. He had a terrible,
sudden thought and hoped that she had not intended that he should be prepared
for action. Jack Peters did occasionally get into trouble of the life and limb
variety on behalf of the Red Panda, but he was not the sort of agent who was
assumed to be carrying a gun unless instructed to the contrary. At least, he
hoped that was still the case.

James nodded past the small, disinterested group of
reporters to a cluster of a dozen men in white coats at the back of the room.
On his signal, they began to walk past the podium and towards a door at the
back of the
room which
lead to the inner workings of
the complex.

“Gentlemen of the press,” James began, “no doubt you are
aware of the disaster that rocked this facility just a short time ago and the
setback that this explosion caused to one of our ongoing projects, a
revolutionary new power plant upon which we base great hope for the future of
James Laboratories. But what was not revealed at that time was that the most
important and irreplaceable component to that power plant, the revolutionary
new drive system that allows the power core to operate with an efficiency
previously unknown in the industrial world, was not yet installed and remains
undamaged.” The last of the technicians disappeared through the door behind the
young scientist. “I had hesitated about going public with this information. As
you are no doubt aware, this and many of the industrial accidents that have
plagued our city of late are thought to be the work of this same madman who has
sent mechanical terrors into the streets to cover his other crimes.”

Every reporter in the room sat up a little and began to pay
attention. No one had expected a Captain Clockwork angle to this story.
Wentworth James cleared his throat to silence the excited whispers of the small
crowd. “I asked my father, our company's Chairman Ian James, to consult with a
group of business leaders like himself on this subject. He spoke with them by
telephone last night and they were all in agreement that perhaps the strongest
gesture we could make to this madman who calls himself Captain Clockwork, would
be to demonstrate that for all his sound and fury, he has been unable to take
from us the fruits of innovation that make us strong. Therefore, gentlemen, my
associates are on their way to our secure vaults in the back of this complex to
produce the main assembly for the drive system and display it here for you
today.”

The white-coated technicians suddenly reappeared by several
different entrances, which they sealed and locked behind them as they entered.
Again there was a small buzz that rolled through the crowd. James nodded at the
two of his men and they closed the doors by which the reporters had first
entered, locking them soundly.

Wentworth James raised his hands for silence. He turned to
another technician who was manipulating dials on a large device near the podium.

“Clear, sir,” the technician said.

“Very good,” Wentworth James smiled. “Please relax,
gentlemen. You are all in for an interesting show, but I'm afraid it is an
exclusive affair. Your presence was necessary to complete the illusion, but we
did have to ensure that you all were what you seemed to be.”

“Mister James,” Jack Peters called, “what's this all about?
Where is this thingamajig anyway?”

“The drive system?” James asked. “Alas, that was destroyed
with the plant. The real question, sir, is not what aren't you seeing, but how
many people didn't bring it to you.”

“Say that again in my good ear?” asked Peters to a general
laugh amongst the assembly.

“Did any of you eagle-eyed chroniclers of the public good
happen to notice how many men in lab coats walked through the door in back a
moment ago?” Wentworth James was relaxed and enjoying himself now, as only
someone accustomed to being the smartest person in any room he happened to be
in possibly could.

“There were twelve,” said a pimply voice that Peters
recognized. He turned and spotted the kid from the
Telegraph
, to his deep chagrin.

“And now?” James asked, sounding for all the world like an
amiable professor who was going to be forced to give you a D anyway.

Jack Peters did a quick count and shouted out his question
before the kid from the
Telegraph
could give the idiot's answer that there were only eleven.

“All right, Mister James,” he said, “so where's the other
one?”

“That is a question that I am certain he is asking himself
just now,” Wentworth James smiled. “Or rather,
it
is asking
its
self.
You see,
gentlemen, one of those lab-coated figures was
more technology than technician.” James seemed very pleased with himself at
this, but there was no reaction from the crowd, so he continued. “The twelfth
man was not a man at all, but another destructive android sent by Captain
Clockwork to destroy my drive system!”

There was a loud buzz in the room at this. Jack Peters
shouted above the din. “But you said the drive thingy was destroyed already!”

“And so it was,” James smiled, “and the only people in the
world who might have thought differently were the seven men my father called
last night. And dear old Papa himself, I'm afraid. He won't be very pleased
with me at the deception, especially if this doesn't work out as planned. But
since only a small collection of the very richest men in town had the
impression that the drive system was intact, and Captain Clockwork has suddenly
sent an machine to destroy it…”

Jack Peters could see where this was going. “You've blown my
scoop for the evening edition!” he wailed. “Captain Clockwork is some rich bird
trying to take over the city!”

Wentworth James raised his hands. “You may yet get your
exclusive, sir. Remember, I cannot allow any of you gentlemen to leave and risk
the operation currently under way. But it should certainly warrant an extra
this evening,
n'est
ce
pas
?”

“Mister James,” the kid from the
Telegraph
called, “exactly what is happening to that man… or
machine… right now?”

“I'm glad you asked!” James said with a clap of his hands.
“I was contacted yesterday and asked if there were any way I could think of to
perpetually confuse a fairly intelligent, thinking machine. To befuddle its
programmed mission and make it continually require small inputs from a master
system located some distance away.”

“Why?” the kid asked.

“So they can trace the signal, dummy!” Jack snapped to the
laughter of the other reporters. “Who put you up to this, James?”

“I am not at liberty to discuss all of the details,” James
said with a wave of his hands. “Don't ask me for the facts and figures that
Police Chief
O'Mally
will hopefully have for you
quite soon. You'll miss the really clever bit of the story, which is of course,
my part.” He smiled. “The bait was a simple matter, as was arranging matters
with my father. But how to confuse a robot and keep him confused for a half
hour or more? I suddenly thought of a project of mine from my old school days.
A sort of macro experiment in human behavior that I conceived of
one spring term.
I turned the entire rugby pitch into a constantly
changing maze into which I put my schoolmates to study their reactions for an
extended period. Quite a clever mechanical cheat, really. My lab partner and I
almost got expelled over it. Of course it all seems like child's play now, and
since I have a large and energetic staff at my disposal and an enormous open
space at my beck and call, I was able to recreate my old science experiment in
a single night.”

Jack Peters blinked. “Are you telling us you've got the
mechanical man in a maze? Like some kind of lab rat?”

“Ah!” said James nostalgically. “Just the allusion that was
made at our expulsion hearing. Yes, the creature is in a maze, but not a maze
that it can ever solve, as the walls keep shifting. When we're all done here
I'll take you back and show you the mechanisms. It really is quite clever, if
oversized and appallingly expensive.”

The kid from the
Telegraph
raised his hand again. Wentworth James looked surprised, but indulged him.

“Yes?” he said politely.

“If this machine gets confused,” the kid began nervously,
“is there a chance that it could just… you know… blow up?”

“Well,” said James, “I don't believe that it will play out
quite like that, but yes, I suppose there is.” He smiled brightly. “Are there
any other questions?”