Authors: Ron Goulart
“Sir, an urgent summons!” Biernat clattered into the workshop.
“Don’t any of you nitbrained goops realize this lab is not to be barged—”
“It’s the Reverend Dimchurch, sir,” interrupted the butler, arms flapping. “He says the troops may have been alerted about your transactions for this evening!”
“The troops? The norking troops?” Hohl stamped a foot, then went running for the ramp. “They can’t do that!”
“Be careful you don’t take cold from loitering down here, sir.” Biernat followed the estate manager out.
Tad waited a few seconds before rushing to the slumped robot. “Who the hell did this to you, Electro?”
“I did, and you’re damn lucky I’m as shrewd as I am.” Electro’s right arm came up, tucked his workings in and shut the front of him. He scooted the diligent spider away with a swipe of his metal hand. “Never did like spiders trespassing on me. You don’t have a metal exterior, but if you did, the tiny
ping-pong
of a spider’s tread would drive you goofy.”
Tad sat down on his heels all at once. “Who . . . who finished fixing you?”
“Obviously I did. A bright move it was, since you were on the verge of tipping the whole thing to that simp Hohl,” replied Electro. He flexed his bright fingers. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected too much from a callow youth, a mere stripling, a dreamy mooncalf who—”
“I’m eighteen, and I knew enough to nearly repair you. In fact, if you hadn’t butted in I would have completed you tonight.”
“Once I got word that dolt was about to intrude I completed myself,” explained Electro. “Next I arranged myself artistically with spider webs and similar muck to create the illusion of long dormancy. Very impressive, wasn’t it? Looked a bit like that wedding cake in the Dickens novel. Or does anybody read Dickens in this planet system anymore? Not only did I fool you with my impersonation of a wreck, I—”
“Listen, if I hadn’t found you and done most of the work, you’d still be flat on your ass with spiders going
ping-pong
all over you,” said Tad, voice rising. “I was told you were a pleasant sort of a machine, but you’re turning out to be as big a grouch as Hohl.”
“All right, okay, very well. I apologize, I offer my abject regrets.” Silently the robot rose up. He was seven feet tall, over a foot higher than his resurrector.
Tad got up, took a few steps away, stood studying the huge machine. “You are Electro, aren’t you?”
“Who else would I be? I’m unique, as you’ll learn. Full name is Electro-XM13J33. You can call me simply Electro.” He rubbed his chrome hands together. “Now, let’s be off?”
“Off?”
Electro said, “We have our course laid out for us, my boy. Our path is clear, the road we must follow is—”
“Did my cousin build that tendency toward redundancy into you?”
Electro’s blue eyes blinked, making a faint click sound. “I am the proud owner, the sole proprietor, the prime possessor of a vast and thorough vocabulary. In order to make myself crystal clear to any auditor who might not have a mental capacity equal to mine I often—”
“Can you just tell me once what you meant by saying we were off for someplace?”
“Ah, I realize you aren’t aware of what’s gone before, of the events of the past.”
“That’s one of the reasons I repaired you. So I might find out about my cousins and what happened to them.”
“Allow me to fill you in.” Electro placed a palm on his chest, started pacing back and forth across a distance of about ten feet.
“Why are you strutting like that?”
“This is a well-known declaiming posture.”
“I don’t want a speech exactly.”
The robot was silent and thoughtful for several seconds. “We’ll assume another approach.” He moved to a stool, sat on it, crossed his legs and rested an elbow on a knee. “An informal posture, suited to man-to-man talk among friends. Better?”
Tad nodded. “What happened here? Why were you ripped open, dumped in the corner?”
“You’ve touched on one of the saddest experiences of my life,” said the robot. “My only excuse is that I was distracted and allowed that lout Hohl to sneak up behind me with a fairly efficient disabler. An RI brand disabler, by the way. He put me on the fritz, had me carted down here and proceeded to use some of these very tools to incapacitate a goodly share of my inner workings. Being a dunce and somewhat preoccupied at the time, he concentrated on my power centers and left my mental facilities alone.”
“Was this after Cousin Cosmo was dead?”
Electro said, “Cousin Cosmo isn’t dead.”
“Huh?” A deep frown touched Tad’s face. “What do you mean?”
“I mean quite simply that Cosmo Rhymer is not dead. I’ve double-checked the fact since I returned to life,” said the robot. “Cosmo Rhymer isn’t dead, my boy, and neither is your father.”
Tad very slowly reached out to tap the robot’s broad chrome chest. “Your brain system is still a little flooey.”
“My thinking equipment has never been in a state remotely resembling flooey, my boy,” replied Electro. “I assure you, both your father and your Cousin Cosmo are alive at this moment. I hesitate to commit myself to alive and well, since six years at Blackwatch have taken a certain toll. However, once we rescue them the—”
“He’s alive? My father is really alive?”
“That’s the news I’m trying to convey. I’d heard you were a relatively bright youth but this—”
“But he’s supposed to be dead. They told us that, gave us a little box of ashes.”
“Most ashes look alike. You and your mother were flummoxed, flimflammed and hoaxed.”
“I don’t understand. Why?”
“If you’ll cease interrupting my discourse you’ll eventually understand the true circumstances.”
“Okay, all right, tell me. And what’s Blackwatch?”
“Blackwatch doesn’t come into the narrative until later, my boy. Allow me to observe the dramatic unities, which were first set down in the Solar System by a moderately gifted fellow name of Arist—”
“My father, it’s him I want to hear about.”
Electro tilted his head slightly to the left. “You’ll need some background details. To begin with, your Cousin Joshua is a crook and scoundrel.”
“I figured as much. Did he put my father in Blackwatch, whatever that is?”
“As I was saying, your Cousin Joshua and your Cousin Cornelia had been up to no good, fleecing Rhymer Industries in a variety of ways for nearly a year before Cosmo, alerted by a rather gross and slow-witted computer, got wise. Had he relied on me, the schemes and machinations of Joshua would have come to light much earlier. That is, alas, neither here nor there,” said Electro. “Before Cosmo could act or confront his criminous cousin, Joshua found out the jig was well nigh up. He descended on Foghill with a large band of goons and, I ruefully admit, defeated us. The bombastic Hohl was among that initial set of goons and it was he, as I’ve mentioned, who disabled me and mutilated my person.” The big robot’s head dropped, metal chin clicking against metal chest.
“And my father?”
“Cosmo had, very cautiously, summoned your father here to Esmeralda to inform him of what he’d unearthed about Joshua,” explained the robot. “Before your father even reached Foghill he was intercepted by yet another batch of goons. Then your father and Cosmo were conveyed across the planet to the Blackwatch Plantation. It’s a wretched place, more penal colony than agricultural facility, secretly owned and operated by Joshua. To think that man is over one-half machine. Well, blood will tell.”
“Why didn’t he simply kill them, my father and Cousin Cosmo and his wife?”
“Joshua apparently possesses a small sentimental streak, which prevents him from killing near relatives. Robots belonging to near relatives, as we’ve seen, he has no such qualms about.”
“Is Cousin Alice on the plantation, too?”
“In some sort of menial culinary capacity, yes.”
“They’ve been there six years,” said Tad. “Six years while we thought they were dead and my mother died still thinking. . . .”
Electro put a metal arm around the young man’s shoulders. “It’s an imperfect world, Tad, even with such highly efficient mechanisms as myself in it,” he said. “It’s been very frustrating for me, over these six years, lying here with my brain gathering all these dreadful facts about people I care for and being unable to do anything much in the way of helping them. But now we can take action at last.”
“Yes, right.” Tad moved free of him. “We’ve got to contact the police, tell them what—”
“Fat chance,” cut in the robot. “Your Cousin Joshua, now that he’s head of RI, had considerable influence with the local, national and international police-keeping bodies on this planet. You go to them and the odds are you’ll be the one who ends up in the jug.”
“But that’s rotten.”
“This is an imperfect world, to repeat myself.”
“Okay, then we have to get to this plantation as fast as we can. We’ll get hold of some kind of skycar to—”
“Whoa, halt. We can’t be anywhere near that direct,” said Electro. “Once we take our leave of Foghill, my boy, Joshua will loose a pack of his goons on our trail. If we avail ourselves of any of the obvious means of transport we’ll be picked off like that.”
Ping!
Electro’d snapped his metal fingers.
“We have to travel some less obvious way, then,” said Tad. “But how?”
“Leave that to my vaunted ingenuity.”
“Whoever vaunted your ingenuity?”
“They well would have, had I not been languishing here,” replied the robot. “I really am an exceptional person . . . exceptional product if you prefer. We’ll leave shortly, taking advantage of the fact Hohl and his cronies are down by the river.”
“What river?”
“The River Sneath. You’d best impress the name on your brain, since we’ll likely be using the Sneath on part of our journey.”
“How far away is Blackwatch?”
“Nearly five hundred miles.” With a barely a creak, the giant robot went striding toward the exit.
“What exactly is Hohl up to? Do you know?”
“Of course I know. Even before I returned to the living I was able to reconnoiter and—”
“How do you do that while sitting down here covered with cobwebs?”
“You are a bit flippant, exactly as predicted in your dossier,” said Electro over his bright shoulder. “My boy, with my searching mind I can contact computers, databanks, robots and androids and sundry other mechanisms in the vicinity and beyond. The result is facts pouring into my ample brain.” He shook his head briefly. “Unfortunately, while I was somewhat defunct, my searching mind worked at nowhere near capacity. But now . . . Ah!”
“So what exactly is Hohl up to?”
“He’s a smuggler.” The robot beckoned. “Let us travel upwards.”
“Does that mean Reverend Dimchurch is a smuggler as well?”
“It does indeed, yes.”
“He seemed to me like. . . . I don’t know, an honest man.”
“Many smugglers are.” They emerged on a foggy stretch of grass. Electro made inhaling sounds, tapping his chest. “The great outdoors and pure unprocessed air.”
“Do you have lungs?”
“I have all sorts of handy attachments. I can even play alto saxophone.” Electro nodded in the direction of the mansion, which was barely visible in the thick mist. “We’ll pack before commencing on our jour—”
“I don’t want to waste time. I’ll travel with what I have on my back.”
“An admirable and symbolic gesture, but screwy in this instance,” Electro told him. “You’ll need warmer clothes for some of the country we have to cross. We also need cash.”
“Clothes I have, but hardly any money.”
“Hohl has wads of it in his safe.”
“Can you open his safe?”
“There are, my boy, very few things I can’t do,” answered Electro. “When we have more time I’ll run you off a complete list.”
Two men materialized, furtively carrying a microwave robot chef. They grunted and muttered and were eaten up by the thick fog.
Electro swung out a cautionary hand. “Halt a moment, lad,” he advised in a whisper. “We appear to be in the midst of the smugglers.”
Tad pressed against the bole of a huge dark tree, flattening his backpack somewhat. “What do you think Hohl will do if he—”
“Try to disable me and lock you up.” Electro shook his head, which was faintly beaded with mist “We don’t want that to happen. Come along, we’ll shift to a Southerly direction for a spell.”
They encountered only silence and fog for the next several minutes.
“Congratulations! You’ve won two more free games of Worlds Collide!” boomed out a tinny voice.
“Hush it up, cobber!”
“How the blinking hell can I? It’s got a flapping mind of its own, cobber.”
“Yes, because you achieved the incredible score of 46,000 points you win two more fun-filled and excitement-packed games of Worlds Collide, the interplanetary destruction game which is fun for the whole family, parental discretion advised!”
“Kick the blinking thing!”
“I did and busted me flapping paw.”
“Well, drop it, then, and let’s whack it with a bleeding rock!”
“Worlds Collide, the dynamic game which teaches you cosmology while you have fun!”
“Next time we lug a servo and not one of these blinking recmecs.”
Tad and Electro had stopped still at the first noise. Two of the smugglers, nearby but completely hidden by the swirling fog, were having trouble with a malfunctioning game machine.
“Step right up, step right up! Play Worlds Collide!”
“Hush, hush, won’t you?”
“Step on it, jump on it!”
“Oh, yes, and then bust it. Wouldn’t Hohl love that.”
“He ain’t going to fancy all this bleeding hooroar, cobber.”
“What is all this bleeding hooroar about!” screamed a new voice.
“Hohl,” whispered Tad.
“We was just talking about you, Hohl. Seems this flapping machine got bunged up whilst we was hefting it off the barge during our recent clandestine nocturnal activities and now it’s taken to shooting off its ruddy—”
“I’ll shoot off your ruddy snout if you don’t silence it!” shouted the unseen estate manager.
“Let’s push onward while they’re squabbling,” suggested Electro as he took hold of Tad’s arm.