Robot Blues (30 page)

“Uh? Oh, yeah,
sure, Xris. I remember
where
I left it. It’s just
how
I left
it—sort of sudden-like. You see, I really wasn’t supposed to have left it at
all, only I said I had to go to the can and— For God’s sake, Xris,” Harry
expostulated. “I heard you were in trouble!”

Xris thrust a
twist into his mouth. “Still think I planned this?” he asked Tess in an
undertone. Aloud he said, “Jamil, go with Harry. See if you can keep him out of
the brig. Doc, you and Tycho meet us at the airfield with the ‘bot. I’ll take
the Little One with me.”

Xris turned to the
small raincoated figure. “Would you know this time if Harsch was using a
telepathic scrambler?”

The Little One
nodded emphatically, smashed his two small fists together.

“And if the Little
One comes along with you, Xris Cyborg, I come along in addition,” Raoul
announced. “
After
I repair my makeup, of course.”

Tess glanced
sidelong at Xris.

“I’m afraid he’s
right. He has to come,” he said, grinning. “They’re a team. We all are.”

“God help us,”
Tess muttered.

She left to
arrange for an armed escort for Tycho and Quong and the robot. (“It’s not that
I don’t trust you. Let’s just say that I don’t want anything else to go wrong.”)

Jamil and Harry
left to try to retrieve Harry’s spaceplane. (“I know where I left it. It’s
sitting right on the tarmac. Jeez! I wish you guys would forget about that
other time....”)

Once Tess was
gone, Raoul drew out a pocket mirror, began redoing his lipstick. Xris bent
down, said quietly, “What about Darlene?”

Raoul answered in
the same soft tone, pausing at intervals to examine the tracings of the lavender-colored
pencil around his lips. “It was close, Xris Cyborg. Very close. The Little One
discovered the plot and warned me in time.”

Xris’s stomach
clenched. “The Hung?”

Raoul looked not
at Xris but at Xris’s reflection in the mirror. “Yes, my friend. That is what
the Little One says. They were Adonian assassins, hired by the Hung.
Third-rate, mind you.” Raoul sniffed and concentrated on his work. “No
delicacy. No finesse. And they used a poison to which there was an antidote.
Still, I suppose that a mob can’t be all that selective—”

“She’s all right,”
Xris repeated urgently.

“She’s fine. She
left on a pleasure cruiser to Moana. She chose that planet because it is near
Pandor. I have ... somewhere”—he glanced at his handbag—”exactly where and when
we are supposed to meet her. She sent it in code. She said you would know how
to decode it.”

“How the devil did
they track her?” Xris demanded angrily. He grabbed hold of Raoul’s arm roughly.
“Stop painting your face and listen to me. Damn it! You and the Little One were
supposed to be on the watch—”

“We were, Xris
Cyborg,” Raoul interrupted. He regarded Xris with mild reproach and put his arm
around the Little One, who shrank into a heap of wrinkled raincoat at Xris’s
furious tone. “No one followed her. We kept close watch. We would have known.
After all, we are fond of Darlene, too.”

The Little One
darted forward, grabbed hold of Xris’s pants leg, tugged on it fiercely, and
pointed a jabbing finger at Raoul. The Little One put his finger to his mouth,
pointed at Raoul again, repeated this gesture twice. Raoul had returned to his
interrupted beauty regime, was again complacently regarding himself in the
mirror.

Xris suddenly
understood the pantomime. “You ingested the poison.”

Raoul gave a
delicate shrug. “My body is able to adapt. Hers might not have been.” He
searched through his purse, found the note with the coded message. It was
scribbled on the back of a shopping list.

“I’m sorry.” Xris
took the list, tucked it carefully in his pocket. “It’s not your fault. I brought
this on her.

This is my fault.
If I’d left her alone, she would have had the whole goddamn Royal Navy
protecting her!”

“Like they
protected her from you?” Raoul asked, with a slight, sweet smile.

Xris stared at
him.

“
You
found
her,” Raoul continued. “It would have only been a matter of time before the
Hung accomplished the same task. She would have died at their hands. And she
would have died alone.”

“She’s alone now,”
Xris muttered.

“No, Xris Cyborg.
For you are in her thoughts. And she is in yours.”

“A lot of help
that’s
going to be.”

“There is nothing
you can do, my friend. The matter is out of your hands, beyond your ability to
control. And that, of course, is why you find it frustrating. It is very
presumptuous, not to mention egotistical, for you to take responsibility for
the odd quirks and twists of fate. Only the Creator—should He, She, or It
exist—may lay claim to that, for which blessing we should all be extremely
thankful.”

“You’ve been
hanging around Quong too much,” Xris snapped. He was silent a moment, brooding,
then said abruptly, “Anyhow, thanks for what you did for her. And, again, I’m
sorry I yelled at you.”

“No thanks are
needed, Xris Cyborg,” Raoul returned. He shut the compact, placed it back in
his purse, along with his makeup kit. “Although the apology is accepted. As you
said, Darlene is one of the team. One for all and damn the torpedoes, as our
friend Tycho has been known to say. And here comes that wretched woman!” He
glanced at Xris from beneath lavender eyelids. “I can’t think
what
you
see in her!”

Xris patted
reassuringly the pocket where the coded message resided. The first moment alone
on Harry’s spaceplane, he would try to get through to Darlene.

Tess motioned them
to join her. She was brisk, cool, a demeanor put on—Xris guessed—to conceal her
nervousness and anxiety. This job had every prospect of blowing up in
her
face now. He should have felt a little vindictive satisfaction, but he was
gloomily aware that— if the bomb went off—he was standing right beside her.
Tess managed a smile for Raoul.

“You look lovely,”
she said sincerely.

“No thanks to you!”
Raoul sniffed, tossed his hair, and—well-groomed head held high—flounced past
her.

Jeffrey Grant sat
in his spaceplane, eating a chocolate bar and watching the two armed MPs
standing guard outside the hatch. He wasn’t surprised at the reception he’d
received. He was actually pleased. It restored his faith in his government. He
was glad to think that they were on top of this matter, that they were treating
this with the respect it was due. He’d been worried that no one here would
understand the danger, that he would have to be firm and persuasive.

If there were two
things he was
not
good at, it was being firm and persuasive.

As it was,
obviously these people knew the treasure they had and were guarding it
carefully. Grant settled back and finished the chocolate bar.

He had enjoyed the
trip. It felt good being at the controls of a spaceplane once more, even if it
was a rental, and a cheap one at that. He threw the candy wrapper in the trash
compactor, took another look at the antique machine that he’d brought with him.
He’d strapped the unit into the copilot’s seat to keep it from being jostled.
The machine was still humming, loudly, contentedly. Grant found himself
humming, too. A tuneless song, a song whose words he’d long since forgotten ...
or had never known. Something about robot blues.

He puttered around
the plane, tidying up, for he knew he would be receiving visitors. This done,
he went back to his chair and amused himself by watching the comings and goings
of the squadrons, naming each type of plane as it landed or took off, imagining
himself at the controls, wondering what missions they were flying. He was so
absorbed in watching and imagining and wondering that he didn’t, at first,
notice the rather odd procession advancing across the tarmac toward his plane.
When he did, he glanced at them, said to himself “Time for your debriefing,
Captain,” and returned to revel in the glorious sight of a Claymore bomber
thundering into the Pandoran sky.

The MPs saluted.
Grant was quick to open the hatch, so as not to annoy anyone. He met his guests
at the entrance to the small plane.

“Please come in,
Captain, sir, Captain, ma’am,” he said shyly, speaking standard military, to
put them at ease. “You, too, uh ...” He was momentarily stumped on the lovely
personage with the lipstick, long hair, pants, and an Adam’s apple. He finally
gave up and coughed to cover his embarrassment. As for the small figure in the
fedora and the raincoat. Grant looked at it with interest. Turning to the
female captain, he said politely, “Your child, ma’am?”

“Uh, no,” the
woman replied, taken aback. “He’s—”

“A spy,” said the
lovely long-haired person. “He’s incognito. So am I.” The lovely person sat
down, crossed his legs. “You won’t tell, will you?”

“No, certainly. Of
course not,” Grant murmured.

The female captain
appeared to be under considerable strain and this exchange did nothing to relax
her. She frowned and bit her lip and shot an irritated glance at the male
captain.

“Won’t you all
please sit down?” Grant said, recalling the duties of a host. “Would you care
for refreshment? I have soft drinks and chocolate bars.”

“No, thank you,”
the male captain said, smiling politely. “My name is Captain Xris Kergonan.
This is Captain Tess Strauss. This is my aide, Corporal de Beausoleil, and this
person”—he indicated the small being in the raincoat—”is known only as the
Little One. I can’t tell you his real name. Military security.”

Grant nodded. “Very
sound.”

“What?” Captain
Kergonan appeared confused.

“I said, “Very
sound,’“ Grant reiterated. “In light of the circumstances. Now”—he clasped his
hands together, to keep from wringing them, which would have looked
undignified—”please tell me. Where is the robot?”

“Robot?” Captain
Kergonan leaned against the control panel. “I must tell you, Mr.”—he lifted his
hand, glanced at the pilot’s license he held; the MPs had confiscated the
license immediately upon Grant’s arrival— “Mr. Grant, that you are in very
serious trouble. The people of Pandor do not like off-worlders. They have laws
which prohibit them from visiting this planet—”

“Oh, dear,” said
Grant, truly distressed. “I didn’t know. I’m terribly sorry. Will this cause an
... an ...” Momentarily he couldn’t think of the word. “An incident, do you
suppose?”

“That’s why we’re
here,” said Captain Strauss. “We’re going to try to smooth this over. I’m sure
you don’t want to cause trouble.”

“I really didn’t
mean to violate any laws,” Jeffrey Grant said, worried. “I suppose I should
have checked first, before I came, but I was so upset about the robot, you see.
I didn’t know who had it and I was afraid they might damage—”

“Excuse me. What
robot?” Captain Kergonan asked mildly.

At this point, the
lovely person—Grant couldn’t recall his name—reached out with a delicate hand
and tugged on the back end of Captain Kergonan’s uniform.

“Give it up, Xris
Cyborg,” said the lovely person. He indicated the small being in the raincoat. “The
Little One says to inform you that this drab gray person is not Sakuta or
Harsch or anyone else except himself. And”— dramatic pause—”he himself knows
more about the robot than anyone else here in this spaceplane.”

Jeffrey Grant
smiled shyly, proudly, glad to be appreciated.

Hope is a good
breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

Francis Bacon, “Apophthegms contained in
Resuscitatio”
No. 36

Dr. Quong and
Tycho, accompanied by two MPs, walked over to the maintenance shed. The MPs had
been briefed by Tess, who told them that a problem had developed with the
colonel’s exhibit materials; the crate appeared to be malfunctioning. Although
it presented no threat at the moment, Dr. Quong and Tycho, expert on
biochemical warfare, were going to check the crate out, remove it to a place of
safety. The MPs were ordered to show Quong and Tycho the way to the maintenance
shed, go along to see that no unauthorized personnel obstructed the
proceedings.

Not being required
to strictly guard the two, the MPs walked several paces ahead, clearly not
wanting to come any closer to Tycho than was necessary. The “chameleon,” for
his part, altered the shade of his skin to a sickly bluish gray, which, with
his excessive thinness, made it look as if he were in the last stages of some
wasting disease. He and Quong were able to talk freely without fear of anyone
overhearing.

“Why is it,” Tycho
grumbled, his translator giving his voice a tinny, mechanical sound, “that no
one ever hires us for a normal job?”

“Define
normal,”
Quong said.

“I could if I
wanted to,” Tycho said, taking offense. “In several different languages.”

“No, no. That’s
not what I meant. What do you consider to be a normal job for people such as
ourselves?”

“Ah, I see. Yes,
well ...” Tycho gave it some thought. “Not the job itself so much as the fact
that it should have a clear-cut beginning, a clean middle, and a swift and
satisfactory finish. And the money should be good and in no way traceable. With
us, it’s always the same. Either the job gets screwed up somehow or we end up
having to report the income. Or both.”

“Friend Tycho, as
a citizen, it is your duty to pay taxes,” Quong said seriously.

“And who tries,
every year, to take the payments on his sports runabout as a medical deduction?”

Quong bristled. “Driving
the runabout is a reliever of stress, as I have several times informed you. I
have a written medical opinion—”

“Of your own
writing.”

“—that it is
necessary for my mental well-being— Ah, I think we have arrived at our
destination.”