The Saffron Malformation (14 page)

             
Ryla sat looking down through the table for a long time and Quey let her.  He could tell she was in the midst of a thought that needed finishing.

             
“When the place was built,” she began, looking around at the room.  “The first and third floors weren’t like they are now.  The whole place was a shop.  The men who worked here lived in some houses a mile or so south, most of them fell apart years ago.  Anyway, they were working on things here.  Robotics.  But they didn’t respect what they were doing.  A man once said that a society can be judged by the way it treats its animals.  There was a man here that said the same could be said for the way they treat their robots.”  She looked over at Botler, resting still near a wall.  “They are alive you know.  In some rudimentary way.”

             
Quey watched her speak.  Her expression wasn’t blank any longer, there was compassion in it.

             
“I don’t know exactly what happened.  All I know is men came, ones who intended to exploit this place, ones who didn’t understand.  But this place was programmed to defend itself.  It killed everyone.  I remember gunfire.  And screams,” she trailed off for a moment.

Quey sat forward and was about to speak when she looked at him, tears flowing from her eyes.  “I was supposed to be like you, like all of them.  I was supposed to be a person but I couldn’t learn how, because all I had was them.”

              “Yeah well, I had plenty of people around me and sometimes I’m still not very good at being a person,” he said solemnly.  “Let my mouth run on and say what it shouldn’t.  Hurt some feelings of yours and they don’t deserve to be, you being so lovely in spite of myself.”

             
A moment passed silently and then Ryla said, “You know I’ve never spent this much time with someone.”

             
“Really?” he asked.  “Not even the people who were here when you were… before?”

             
She knew he didn’t know whether to say built or born but she let it go and shrugged, “I don’t remember them.  Just have blogs.”  Quey nodded and she said, a bit more light heartedly, “Come on.  Eat.  You’ve got to get started.”

             
Quey smiled and scooped some eggs with his fork.

             
Breakfast did it’s job and when he met Ryla in the machine shop behind the lobby, through a set of doors across from an elevator behind the staircase, his truck looked better than it had before the Once Men shot it up.  The hood was open and a bot was tinkering around inside.

             
Quey saw the cars the Once Men had been driving on the far side of the machine shop.  There were all types of parts and tools on shelves along the walls, Quey could have made use of maybe a quarter of them and could have told you the names of less than that.

Ryla stood near the cab with what he assumed was Geo in front of her.  It had a large body and four arms set next to each other on the bots wide shoulders.  Only one of the arms ended in a hand, the others were fitted with tools Quey didn’t understand.

              Ryla didn’t use a sheet.  Her device was around her wrists, projecting an interactive holograph into the air in front of her.  At the moment it was remotely linked to Geo.  As he approached she looked up and said, “Just running a final system test.”  Quey nodded.  “I put your sheet and gun in the truck.  The Once Men left yesterday but I put some extra ammo in there too.”

             
“Hopefully won’t be needin it.”

             
“You can use your sheet to control Geo, should he not respond to voice command for some reason.”

             
“How do I do that?”

             
“I made an app, set it to your first page.”

             
Quey nodded.

             
“I also programmed myself into your contacts.”

             
Quey nodded, “Good thinking.  Might need to get hold of you should this thing turn out to be a death bot.”

             
Ryla snickered.

             
“Well how about that?” he asked, smiling.  “You wouldn’t be startin to get a joke now would you?”

             
She ignored him and continued, “You can start it from the app, there’s a button at the top that says start.  That’s the easiest way and then when its done all you need to say is, Geo get in the trailer.”  The bot took off for the rear door and rolled up the ramp to the inside.  “You can also use the app for that if you prefer,” she informed him as the bot closed the door behind it.

             
“I’m sure I can handle it,” he said as Gypsy slammed the hood of his truck and rolled away.

             
“I put some stuff in your cold box.  Foods fresh, not that processed protein you’ve been trying to live on.”

             
“Well my body thanks you,” Quey said and moved toward Ryla with an arm extended.  She stepped back nervously and looked over at Bowserbot, watching from a dozen feet away.

             
“What are you doing?” she asked, suddenly serious.

             
“Sorry, slipped my mind for a split.”  He walked over to the driver’s side door, dent free and with a fresh pane of glass for a window, and touched the handle.  “You know,” he began as he opened his door, “You’re gunna have to change that if we’re gunna keep being friends.  I hanker for a handshake from time to time.  And out there in the world sometimes people even hug.”

             
Ryla watched him climb into the rig and asked, “Are we friends?”  It was a genuine question, asked because she’d never really had one she didn’t build before.

             
“Guess that depends on whether you can trust my unpredictable lack of protocol.”

             
She chuckled and thought for a split then said, “Probably not.  But I think I’d like to.”

             
Quey nodded, impressed.  “Well see now that’s about right,” he said before slamming his door and starting his rig.  Ryla pushed a button on her sheet that opened the cargo door, allowing sunlight to slowly stretch across the floor.

             
Quey released the brake and gave one final wave before rolling out of Ryla’s Robo-tronics compound and into the ruthless wastes.

Accusations and Consequences

             
“Lying bitch!” Richter Crow shouted at Della Crow, spraying spittle across his wife’s face before cracking her cheek with the back of his hand, curled into a loose fist.  The solid smack of bone against meat clapped through the house, along with her sudden yelp.  She stumbled but didn’t fall.  “I know you were in there!  I know you’ve been looking through the Moon beam files!  I know everything,” he shouted, his face pulled tight.

             
Tears rolled down Della’s cheeks.  She’d married a powerful man who knew what he wanted and went for it.  A man who didn’t leave any opportunity for another day or any other person, who seized the world by its axis and made it spin his way, but who the man standing before her now was, she didn’t know.  Somewhere along the way ambition had turned to cruelty.  Aspiration had become sinister.  Plans and dreams had morphed into plots and schemes.

             
“Why would I need your terminal to look into the moon beam files?”

             
Richter Crow peered at her.  “You know exactly why.”

             
“The station isn’t even that-”

             
“Oh come off it,” he shouted.  Three of his four children gathered along the banister above.  Della looked up at them, tears shimmering in the corners of her eyes.  “This isn’t about any god-damn moon station and you know it,” he went on, either oblivious of the onlookers or unconcerned about their presence.

             
“Richter,” she pleaded, her eyes meeting Viona’s, their only daughter.

             
“This is about the other project.”

             
“Richter, the children,” she snapped.

             
Crow looked up at his two oldest sons, Gren and Voz, and nodded. They were both attending Saffron University.  Gren was twenty and his brother Voz was eighteen.  They were in training to take over when he had no choice but to leave off.

              “They should see this,” Richter said.

Della was shocked.  “See what?” she asked.

              Richter grabbed her face and squeezed, “See what happens to a lying bitch who can’t keep her nose out of business that’s none of hers.”  His voice boomed as he continued, “See that sometimes things have to be done.”

             
Della’s voice trembled as she said, “Viona,” and the first tears rolled down her cheeks.  Richter looked up at the banister again and saw Viona trembling.  She was fourteen with long blonde hair and deep blue-green eyes.

             
“Viona,” he called.  “You go check on Leone, right hon?”

             
Viona stood staring.

             
“Check on your brother and close the door.”

There was no anger in his voice when he spoke to his daughter, never had been.  Della had hoped her presence would bring him to his senses.  When it didn’t her heart raced and tears flowed free.  All his reason had given way to madness.

              “Go on sweety,” he insisted and finally she went.  “You two get down here,” he said to his boys.

             
Gren and Voz started down the stairs.  Della struggled in Richter’s grip and he shoved her back against the floor to ceiling windows.  “Time you saw man’s business can be ugly business now and then.”

             
Richter looked up at Sticklan Stone and nodded.  Sticklan watched Viona with a vacant gaze until she was in the bedroom down the hall then stepped forward with a smile.  “Sometimes you have to handle the mud yourself,” Richter went on as Sticklan looked at Della and smiled.  “Sometimes you can pay someone to handle it for you.”

             
“Richter,” Della pleaded again.

             
“Shut up.”

             
“Please, I really don’t know-”

             
“Don’t even bother,” he interrupted, shaking his head.  “You make me sick, you know that.  I gave you a good life, a good house.  Four good children.  I overlooked your going through my files when I could, but why did you have to download them?  Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone?”

             
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she shouted through tears.

             
“Dad?” Gren asked.

             
Richter shook his head.  “I know its hard son but this is the way it has to be.  You turn on one of us you turn on all of us.  What were you going to do with the files?” he asked his wife.  Della had no words, she just looked at him confused and scared.  “You going to give them to someone?  Publish them on the network?”

             
“Please, I really don’t know,” she wept, shocked.

             
Richter turned to Sticklan and said, “You can handle this?”

             
Sticklan nodded, “Peaches and cream.  Any particular way you want it to go.”

             
Richter stared coldly at his wife and replied, “Do whatever you want.  I don’t care.”  Then he turned and walked away.

             
Della, trembling, started to try and run but Sticklan was a predator.  He was on her with a cloth over her nose and mouth before she made it two steps.  She collapsed almost instantly.

             
Richter brought his boys into his study and explained to them what had happened.  His wife, someone he trusted for over two decades, had betrayed that trust in the worst possible way.  She’d gone into his study and used his computer to access files and there can be no room in a man’s life, in a leaders life, for treachery.

             
“You let someone get away with it once you’re inviting it to happen again and for the world to follow,” he told them.

             
“Geeze,” Voz sighed.  “What was in those files?”

             
Richter smirked at him and warned, “Curiosity like that’s what got your mother in trouble.”

             
Viona was sitting in Leone’s room rocking her brother, who wasn’t even one yet, and weeping.  She was a tough girl, had to be growing up with Gren and Voz while being as small for her age as she was.  Her father had already made her older brothers into assholes by the time she came along, and so she learned early how to handle herself.  They weren’t the sort of brothers that looked out for her, and most of the time it seemed like the two of them were on a team against her.  Luckily they were also against each other, because that’s the level of suspicion and mistrust her father instilled in his children.  She looked down at Leone and decided they’d be allies, and perhaps together they could survive this house long enough to get out and far away.

             
“Looks like its you and me kid,” she said to her baby brother, rocking him slowly back and forth.  “You and me,” she said again and the reality of what her father had done settled on her and squeezed emotion from her in trembles and tears.  She sobbed knowing the last image she had of her mom was her being terrified of being killed by her husband.  How the hell could he do it?  Over Twenty five years and something about some files is enough to…

             
And Gren and Voz, they didn’t say anything.  They didn’t do anything, never had.  They just stood there and did what Dad told them.  It was their mother and they just watched it.

             
‘You walked away,’ she reminded herself.  ‘You knew and you walked away.’

             
She sobbed harder because she knew she was right to blame herself and because she was ashamed of her weakness.  She could fight off Gren and Voz, she could talk reason to her father when she needed to, but tonight she couldn’t find a word or movement.  It disgusted her.

             
“Sticklan Stone,” she whispered to herself.  Ever since he came around she felt scared, really scared.  The man wasn’t right.  He looked at her a certain way, not sexually, well not completely.  She was a young girl who kept in shape; she’d seen the leers of older men before.  His gaze may have been similar in many ways, but there was something different, unnerving, about it.  It wasn’t her father’s voice that had sent her away tonight.  It was him, standing in the shadows staring at her.

             
They were sick, all of them.  Looking down at her little brother she played with his tiny hand and silently promised she’d find a way to protect him from them.  No matter what, she would find a way.