The Paranoid Thief (13 page)

Randolph closed tearing eyes to the agony
as the robot moved uncaringly to its docking station, where a panel slid open
to dispose of its garbage. Without hope of catching himself, he fell another
ten feet into a recently emptied trash receptacle. He hit the solid surface,
feeling the instant shock of temperature from dry cold to a hot rainy night and
fought to regain control of his fingers before dragging himself up to the lip
and scaling out of the container. With a splash onto asphalt, Randolph landed,
wincing, and clawed up to a standing posture. He felt his way along the
concrete wall till encountering an alcove where he could begin treating his
abused body.

Randolph fought to remain conscious the
whole time while he eased out of the thousand-credit shirt, using the pen knife
to cut it into strips as his hands were too abused to evenly tear the material.
Then locating some old paneling, he cut it in strips to use as splints. Next
came the hard part in his deteriorating condition. Randolph braced himself,
feeling the warm rain running down his face before he pushed and turned his right
arm out of its socket. He awoke moments later after blacking out, finding his
arm dangling. He pushed the button and ejected the small cylinder through his
skin. Still biting back his cries of agony, using only his teeth, Randolph
unscrewed the cap and swallowed the pain killers he resupplied while in the hot
shower a month back. Randolph laid his head back against the building’s hard
surface and let the wonder drug fasten itself to his pain center, where it
would block all nerve impulses to inform his brain of his injuries.

After ten long agonizing minutes, Randolph
breathed a sigh of relief. Now that he could think, and understanding he
couldn’t show up at a med clinic, Randolph reset his arm and proceeded to do
the same with his lower leg while the drug was working at full capacity. Next
came the patch to his shoulder to stop the small amount of blood flow, then
Randolph finished the ties to the splints and sought out a city map before
morning could find him. Abstractly, while dealing with his own problems,
Randolph wondered if Jill had made it out and where she might hole up. As the
city was a large place, and soldiers are trained in city fighting, she should
make it all right.

By the light of a liquid crystal map,
Randolph identified color codes the local police used to warn travelers off the
worst regions in town, and by these warnings, Randolph found where he needed to
go. In those bad areas, he ticked off in his mind,
I can sell my rather torn and abused pants and shoes, buy medical
supplies as well as new clothes, and hide out with the homeless till I have a
couple of days under my belt of healing time.
The only flaw he saw in this
was the possible bullies who frequented those places for what easy picking
could be beaten out of the locals.

By morning, however, Randolph was in worse
shape. The rising temperature already above eighty and the intensifying heat
radiating off the building made it impossible for his system to cool itself
off. Even his meds had thrown in the towel, but collapsing on the common
streets meant a trip to the med clinic and a jail cell right after his ID had
been established. Then again it might not matter where he collapsed, for Mr.
Bennett was sure to hear the news in a short while and activate the mini bomb
in his skull. Still, a portion of Randolph couldn’t just lie down and die, so
he kept moving. Thus as 10 a.m. rolled past, Randolph stumbled into the poorer
quarter wearing old clothes and a second brace to keep his leg immobile. Once
settled in a small vacant spot in the “Homeless Ally,” as the residents called
it, Randolph
chowed
down on a ham sandwich then
opened a bottle of whisky he’d bought with the last of his hard currency from
the remains of his business suit and proceeded to drink
himself
into a stupor. Once in a world of fuzzy numbness, Randolph raised his bottle
skyward in a salute to those he would be seeing soon, and downed the rest till
blackness reigned total.

When consciousness reintroduced itself into
his still quite whole but pounding brain, Randolph puzzled over his current
ability to wake, wondering if the feds had raided Mr. Bennett’s building as
well, thus making it impossible for the corporate sadist to flip the switch.
This meant he had a short reprieve, as sooner or later the feds would learn of
the device and activate it out of pure simplicity to the problem of having dead
people walking around. Regardless of the short transition of ownership, if the
feds really did raid the place, Randolph was in no shape to tryout his skills
till he had some days of inactivity, allowing his body to mend.

This had been his plan till the noise level
in the long alley told him something was wrong.

Forced to move to crane his neck like all
the rest, Randolph saw the dregs of society stumbling his way, complaining,
crying and making a terrible ruckus as they moved on past. Not understanding
their unheard-of activity in the sweltering hours of the day, Randolph’s first
reaction was to scramble away and find a hole to crawl into, but then again the
current activities did not fit into the feds’ procedure of fugitive
apprehension. Only those fitting Randolph’s appearance would have been rousted
from their living space, and this wouldn’t include women and children. Then
again, by some astronomical coincidence, Jill could have been tracked into this
very alley, rendering such activity necessary. Regardless of the reasons, the
group of brutish men behind the mob of undesirable dregs of polite society made
sure everyone, including Randolph, was on his or her feet and stumbling to the
back alley where the building’s support teams helped keep the flow of
merchandise and garbage flowing.

Prodded into unmarked cargo trucks at the
end of the alley with shock sticks, the captured residents were packed in like
sardines and closed up in the sweltering tin can for ten hours before the hover
truck settled to the ground. With a yell, Randolph came to life when someone
used his brace to stand up. Then the back opened and the group was herded out
of the sweltering cargo truck into a lighted human processing center on hard
packed desert ground. Here Randolph caught a blurry vision of the surrounding
buildings, but in his state of pain and dehydration, he could only remotely
remember an article about such places. Besides, as Randolph was given no
opportunity to realign his thought into any cohesive order, he simply deemed it
simpler to limp on with the crowd and hope somewhere along the line food and
water would be given.

Moved single file by rough hands and
electrical sticks, like the men and women before him, Randolph was summarily
stripped naked, prodded through a spray of disinfectant, scrubbed by brushes on
handles, pushed through pressurized water spray and forced into a line up. As
his since of self began to restore itself, a well-dressed man looked over the
captive group and directed each in turn down one of two lines leading to long
two-story buildings. Once in front of Randolph, the man eyed his obvious
discomfort and tapped Randolph’s bad leg. To Randolph’s wince, the man directed
two awaiting men to carry Randolph to the infirmary.

“Next,” a bored and balding older man
dressed in orderly clothes called.

“This one has a bad leg, Doc,” the
remaining guy still holding Randolph explained.

“Right, lay him down here,” the doc
directed.

“Where am I?” Randolph questioned, as his
mind started working again.

“Shut up, you!” The brute
who’d
brought Randolph into the doctor’s office slap
Randolph’s face. “Or I’ll cuff you a good one,” he finished, doing so anyway.

To this abuse, Randolph decided it would be
less painful to do as requested for no other reason than having a doctor look
at his broken leg. Lying on the cold stainless steel table, still without
clothing, Randolph was strapped down without comment as the doc moved a sonic
imager over the broken leg. While his leg was being tended to, Randolph looked
about the facilities. The place was but a rudimentary med clinic, with low
cost, basic equipment. The only pricey item he saw was the imager, and that the
doc only used long enough to judge the condition of Randolph’s leg. Moving the
device aside, the doc walked a few steps to a wall of medical instruments and
took down a leg brace with a turn knob at midpoint. For just a second, Randolph
wondered about the odd thing,
then
he caught on to its
possible use when the big brute placed a block of wood between Randolph’s
teeth. The doc was about to stretch out his bad leg without giving him any pain
killers! With dreadful knowledge of what was to come, Randolph struggled against
the straps, gaining no headway. He squeezed his eyes shut preparing for the
agony to begin.

Randolph awoke to the pounding, throbbing,
stabbing pain in his leg, which he alerted an orderly to by his complaints. The
unsympathetic fellow advanced and told Randolph to swallow some pills he’d
brought. With ill grace, Randolph took the pills, hoping they were something
stronger then aspirin; in time he found they were not. This left Randolph in
agony with his leg elevated in a plain splint instead of cocooned in a basic
cast. Because of the cheap setup, Randolph was forced to take up room in the
infirmary for three months before he was able to move about on crutches.

During his time of convalescence, Randolph
discovered where he was and why. Apparently, the city he’d been in had its fill
of the destitute dregs of society, signing an agreement with a low-cost work
force corporation. Randolph, along with all the homeless who were caught in
that dragnet, were now owned by “Cheap Labor Incorporated,” interred in an
encampment fifty miles out in the desert from the city, and now subject to
being hired out for the benefit of having a place to sleep and food to eat. As
for the matter of being identified, Randolph found the encampment was run under
such low funding, to better supply the corporate heads with a larger credit
allowance, he held no worries of being found out. But a side effect of this low
cost outfit was that the mini bomb in his head had never been removed. And
because of this, Randolph had to reason the implant had only been a bluff, or
somehow made useless by the electric pulse scrambler Jill had set off, as
surely by now the switch would have been thrown, if not for any other reason
than plain curiosity. Either way, Randolph could no longer worry about the
device planted in his skull, so he could start concentrating on escaping his
new surroundings once his leg was fully healed and he’d disconnected the
restraining bracelets about his wrists.

“You there,” a brutish guard with biceps as
large as Randolph’s thighs called, bringing him out of his mussing. “Do you
know anything about computers?”

Randolph blink, nodded yes.

The guard’s huge hand landed on Randolph’s
shoulder as he said, “Good. Grab a crutch and follow me.”

Already having felt the heavy handedness of
the guards should he use words harder to understand than a simple “yes sir” or
“no sir,” Randolph followed the fellow along the cracking concrete hallway and
out into the sweltering heat of day. With the aid of his hand to shield his
eyes, Randolph got his first true glimpse of the surrounding world in a few
strides, only to have his observation distracted when his guard called out to
another by a disabled hover truck.

“Smithy, I’ve an operator for you.” The brute
squeezed Randolph’s shoulder hard, causing Randolph to wince as he threatened,
“You do as Smithy tells you, or I’ll break your other leg.”

Randolph made the required response and
limped over to Smithy.

“You know computers do yea?”

As Randolph had already established this
with the first guard, he felt like saying “Duh…” but held his tongue in favor
of simply nodding.

“Good, then get over here and have a look
at this.” Smithy gestured to the grounded hover truck.

Still doing as told, knowing the weight of
the truck had likely already crushed the directional ports—making the vehicle
unusable—Randolph rounded the front and froze in place, shocked to his marrow.
He stared at two sets of unmoving legs sticking out from under the truck.
Quickly he slapped his hand over his mouth in aid of warding off his stomach’s
reaction.

Smithy lent his own hands by grabbing
Randolph’s shirt and slapping his face a few times till he regained Randolph’s
attention. “Pay no never mind to them, as they’re beyond any further pain;
however, you, on the other hand, are not. So pull yourself together and get
into the cab.” With a shove at the cab door, Smithy propelled Randolph up into
the cab, and instructed Randolph to get the truck up off the ground.

Weak kneed, smelling the bodily fluids from
the crushed men underneath, Randolph swallowed some of the upcoming bile before
he looked over the dead control panel. After a simple visual inspection of the
basic controls, switches, and after-market replacements, Randolph found no
obvious reason for the cold panel. Adjusting himself, he lay down and popped
the under covering. He fished out a flash pen and tester leads from Smithy’s
tool kit on the floorboard, then began an hour-long search in the over powering
heat, wiping sweat from his face every couple of minutes to see. Only after
Smithy’s fifth interruption did Randolph find the lower-grade spliced-in wire
in the harness assembly that had fried when extra power ran along the wire.
This then told the circuit breaker to automatically trip, killing the panel,
dropping the whole weight of the truck on the two unlucky men. Not touching the
discovery, Randolph showed the evidence of a saboteur to Smithy.

“Here now, let me see that,” he demanded,
pushing Randolph out of the way. After eyeballing the wires Randolph exposed,
Smithy sat up and slammed Randolph into the cab’s door. “Here now, are you
trying a fast one? How do I know you didn’t just cut that wire?”

Even over his pounding head and throbbing
leg, Randolph managed, “Hey, don’t believe me if you wish, I’m only telling you
what I found!”

Smithy glared, and his underdeveloped mind
asked, “You’re saying the truck was made to malfunction?” To
gave
Smithy the simplest answer for his abilities to understand, Randolph merely
nodded yes, to which Smithy let go, rubbed his bearded chin and pulled Randolph
out of the truck and told him to get lost.

Two months later, contemplating three
avenues to quietly vacate the premises, Randolph endeared himself to the head
foreman by lowering operating cost in repairing simple machinery and
electronics. This bit of being the foreman’s pet, added an advantaged of never
having to pile into the trucks of human slavery, while giving him access to
every building and available supplies. As for the saboteur, no one had a clue,
even after discovering three more, less life-threatening acts.

After six months in captivity, Randolph was
promoted to record keeping for the outfit, that is to say when he wasn’t
repairing something which to his mind should have been replaced two or three
years ago. Now having access to a hard line computer, Randolph slowly started
learning the local area outside the barbwire fence, roads, small towns and bus
routes. While doing so, Randolph found an article describing two corporate
executives assassinated by person or persons unknown. Bringing up the full
article, it appeared to Randolph, Jill had a new partner. And thinking of Jill
brought up a startling realization of what he’d been missing all these years.
In my kind of work, he mused, moving from
town to town, job to job, is not conducive in discovering and maintaining a
family, thus I’d settled for prostitutes, but while their only concern was
getting their “John” off as fast as possible, Jill showed me what sex was
really all about.
Randolph leaned back in his chair and rubbed his growing
beard, as they didn’t supply hair removal cream, pondering what he really knew
about her, and would it be worth breaking her out of that place.
If I did,
he continued
pondering,
I’d have to
talk her into retiring while I continued my career. It might also be best if we
vacate the continent for one where the feds have nothing on us.
Randolph
nodded; he’d look into the possibilities later. He finished the daily lists
before he set out for his next job.