by Jody Wallace
“Who are you?” Axel asked. The interior lighting reflected off its round, silver eye sockets. This model wasn’t built to resemble humans as much as some others. “You are not in my archives.”
No, Jenna Banu wouldn’t show up in the DNA databases uploaded to AIs. Slavers kept a low profile, outside common databanks, so they could conduct their business with less hassle. Not to mention, there was no guessing how Javier’s potion had obscured whatever DNA Axel was able to read.
“I’m a customer,” she said sweetly. “A wealthy customer. Though I don’t know how you personally profit if all you’re allowed to do is show people to offices. What a sad misuse of a sophisticated android such as yourself.”
Briar wouldn’t want to clash with robots on a regular basis. She had no idea what cogs were whirring in that metal head. She’d always found Axel prompt and vigilant—overly vigilant—but until Han-Ja’s revelation, she’d never imagined that the robot might have its own agenda.
What agenda would a robot have beyond serving employers? Why would Axel hide Steven’s illicit activities from the rest of Tank Union? And how could she use her insights about Axel to her advantage?
“I fulfill my duties as programmed,” Axel told her. “I do not require other fulfillment.”
She leaned toward him, expressing interest. “I’d be curious to know more about that program. Do you have the new emotion-based learning module installed?”
One of Axel’s silver fingers twitched. “I am not at liberty to discuss the specifics of my programming with unauthorized persons.”
“Axel, I just need this one task completed. Completing tasks is part of every AI’s programming.” She placed her fingertips on her chest as if introducing herself at a high society event. “If you could just mention my name to Steven. Jenna Banu. See what he says. He will be very, very unhappy with you if he finds out I was here and he wasn’t informed.”
Axel’s round eyes lit with the dim yellow glow that meant it was accessing his comms. It was faint, but she’d associated with the robot enough to recognize it.
Mighty meowed loudly, and in her head he said, Put me on the desk.
“Oh, kitty friend, what is it?” Briar stooped, picked up Mighty’s lithe, furry body, snuggled him a moment, and set him on the reception desk.
Another one of Axel’s fingers twitched.
“See my new friend?” she crooned in that same singsong voice. “Kitty boy, this is a robot. Robots are machines that think. What do you think of the robot?”
Mighty padded forward and started sniffing Axel’s silver hands, up its arms, reaching its torso. Axel’s head tilted to watch the cat but it didn’t otherwise move. Bots were capable of maintaining many processes at once, so it would still be contacting Steven.
“The small mammal has a higher body temperature and faster heart rate than humans,” Axel announced. “The small mammal does not appear to be infected with any problematic parasites or zoonotic pathogens.”
“Oh, he had a checkup when I bought him from Raaea,” she said, hiking half of her bottom onto the desk as casually as the cat. “He’s the healthiest kitty ever.”
“Raaea does not allow outsiders to acquire their small stock of felines,” Axel said. Briar swung her bent leg. “His chromosomal structure doesn't match profiles from Raaean breeds, nor does his microbiome. I do not think this feline is from Raaea.”
“Well, they told me he was,” she declared. “Do you think I got ripped off?”
Mighty began walking back and forth in front of Axel, rubbing the scent glands in his whiskers against the robot’s body and presenting his hind end for inspection. Axel obliged him. “The feline appears to have defecated recently enough that he does not have any problems with digestion and excretion.”
“But did I get ripped off?” she repeated. “I don’t like to be ripped off.”
Axel redirected its attention to Briar. “I do not think this small and rare mammal would be considered a bad bargain. This species was almost extinct after the Obsidian War and is being carefully preserved. The mammal is an individual not defined by its place of birth. Like humans.”
Jenna Banu might take issue with that, since her scale for valuing human life was perverted, but Briar Pandora didn’t. “Does it matter where a robot gets made? Does that define you?”
“Model and programming define a robot.” Axel, at last, lifted one of its silver hands and touched Mighty’s shiny black fur. The cat plopped lazily onto the desk and purred. “The small mammal seems to desire contact. I believe I should move my hand in the direction of the follicles or it will cause discomfort.”
“It’s called petting. He likes pets,” Briar said, amused.
“Director Wat did not believe that you were in this building, and I have taken the liberty of transmitting him a hologram. He will be down presently. I thank you for providing me with the accurate information that Director Wat would have been displeased if I had not notified him of your presence.”
“Anytime,” Briar said in her charming Jenna voice, hoping that after all this was finished, she could get to know Axel outside of Tank Union. Perhaps through Han-Ja? The robot had never displayed this much personality when she was an employee here, but then again, she’d never presented Axel with a cat and a challenge.
“You are in my databanks now, Jenna Banu,” Axel said. Had the metallic voice changed timber, to a lower tone? A quieter, more warning tone. “I will know you and any connected to you the next time we meet.”
“Oh, I’m just here to see Steven and head off-planet again,” she said with a breezy wave.
A commotion at the doorway that led to the directors’ offices attracted Briar’s attention. Male voices, raised, one of them particularly irksome and whiny. Steven. Mighty batted at Axel’s fingers as the robot awkwardly pet him.
Would Steven pick a fight? Order Axel to dismiss her? Worse? Surely not. A smart man would pretend she was a friend, complete the sale, and be cautious about provoking slavers in the future.
But Steven was not a smart man. She had no idea what was about to happen, but whatever it was, she’d go first.
“Darling!” she said the minute Steven stormed into the cavernous lobby. His dark business suit fit poorly and turned his coloring sallow, with the bags under his watery eyes pronounced. His thin moustache was even less flattering than usual. “I simply couldn’t leave the planet without dropping by to say hello.”
Behind Steven were Tim and Lincoln, in the guise of Gullim Vex, whom she tried to ignore. But it was good to see him unharmed. If Axel detected elevated pulse and breathing, it could be attributed to any number of emotions.
“I didn’t expect to see you today,” Steven said through clenched teeth. Yep, he was well aware what it meant that Selectstar knew his true identity. Was there hope for Steven not being the stupidest man ever born? “What can I help you with?”
“I wanted to consult about unionizing,” she said brightly as she prepared to twist the knife. “Now that you’re the director in a union, so recently elevated to that position. Whatever happened to poor Director Ficus?”
Steven’s eyes widened. He was so easy to read that it was embarrassing she’d never figured out how corrupt he was. At the same time, it wasn’t surprising that Axel had. The knowledge she could hold over Steven’s head if he tried to renege on this sale should ensure it went smoothly.
“Director Ficus disappeared,” Axel explained. “Due to the need for a seven member board, Director Ficus was declared dead after a reasonable investigation. No signs of foul play were detected.”
“Oh, that is so sad.” Leaving Mighty on the desk with Axel, Briar sauntered forward, letting her hips sway freely, since that was how Jenna Banu walked. It kind of hurt, but she did it anyway. “Come in for a scrunch, would you, darling?”
Steven blinked rapidly before allowing her to embrace him, kiss both of his cheeks noisily, and whisper into his ear, “You lose the bet, sweetie.”
“You’ll regre
t this.” Steven’s grip on her upper arms tightened, and Briar tapped him on the nose with one finger. In Jenna’s form, he wasn’t that much taller. But Axel could overhear whispers and she didn’t respond in kind.
“I brought something special today.” She indicated Mighty on the desk with Axel. “Do you think the other directors and staff would like to see? It’s not often humans get to see a real live cat. I believe the other directors are named Director Vidal, Director Nelda—”
“I don’t need a list, Jenna,” Steven interrupted. She had him over the fire, at last, where a creep like him belonged. “No, they don’t want to see. They’re too busy. In a meeting.”
“That sounds important. Why aren’t you there?” The directors spent a good portion of every day in meetings, which begged the question of how Steven thought he could be a director and maintain his thievery schedule. She herself had had a plan for her double life, but since it hadn’t come to pass, it didn’t matter. And she was at last truly grateful that she had not received the promotion to the Tank Union Board.
“I have other concerns,” Steven snapped.
Yeah, like stealing company property and dumping bodies in the Mire.
“An orange tabby with similar chromosomal structure and microbiome to this small mammal resides on Trash Planet with a professional dancer by the name of Wil Tango. The orange feline was taken upstairs several hours ago to Director Wat’s office by Gullim Vex,” Axel remarked. “Wil Tango was not present.”
Steven snapped at Axel next. “What have I told you about offering information nobody asked for?”
“You have told me that I should not do it, even if the information is related to the conversation,” Axel said in that uninflected voice. But again, Briar detected a tiny lowering of the tone—something more than robotic.
“In the future, don’t even speak unless I tell you to,” Steven carped. “By the order of the board.”
“Well, I appreciate the information, Axel,” Briar gushed, clapping her hands. Then she nearly smacked herself because that was a Briar selling-stuff gesture, not a Jenna Banu gesture. “I’ve heard of Wil Tango. He made the rounds in the high roller circuit with a cat as a good luck charm. And he lives on this backwater planet now, with his orange kitty?”
“Yes,” Steven said in a strained voice.
“Yet the cat…is in your office. How strange, but we simply must let the kitties meet each other.” Now that they knew Steven was a murderer in addition to a thief, it wasn’t safe to be alone with an angry Steven. She exchanged a quick glance with Lincoln, her first, and he tilted his head ever so slightly to the side—toward the seating area. “Bring the cat to the lobby so the kitties can play.”
“They won’t play,” Steven said. “Cats are vicious. Look what one of them did to my employee. Show her your hand, Vex.”
Lincoln raised a large hand where a red mark could be seen—faint and fading fast. Tim Danger Danger did a double take and frowned. “When did you get nanobots?”
Axel could probably scan the live nanobots in Lincoln’s system but remained quiet—since Steven hadn’t ordered the bot to speak. Would Axel speak to her after Steven was gone?
“Scratch wasn’t that bad.” Lincoln stuffed his hand into a pocket in his coveralls. “Boss, want me to fetch the cat?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Steven said sullenly. “Tim, keep her company. I gotta…go see about something else.”
Briar gathered Mighty off the desk and sashayed toward Steven, in hopes Mighty could figure out where Steven was going—to the safe to get the power converter? What kind of safe was it? Could a cat skip into it?
“My baby’s name is Pretty Kitty,” she said. “Say hello, Pretty Kitty.”
Mighty Mighty stared at Steven. His tail lashed. The cats were terrible at playacting—even worse than Lincoln, who rubbed a hand across his mouth in a gesture at once oddly familiar and strange in Vex’s body.
“Whatever. Stay here,” Steven said and stomped off.
Briar giggled and approached the seating area, where a number of blocky, orange chairs and sofas were arranged around a third-rate beverage dispenser. The directors hadn’t spared any expense obtaining Axel or constructing the buildings, but the same couldn’t be said of the furniture. Tim followed her and threw himself into a chair as if disgusted with the whole day.
Before Steven and Lincoln disappeared behind the door that led to the directors’ offices, she called to Steven, “Oh, and if any of the other directors happen by, I’ll be sure to introduce myself and tell them all about the kitties.”
She wanted him to remember what was at stake if he didn’t go through with the sale, and by the expression on his face before he slammed the door, it had worked.
Chapter 15
The moron’s safe is in the fourth stall in the restroom, Pumpkin said in Lincoln’s head when he and Steven opened the door to Steven’s office. They’d left Pumpkin ostensibly in his crate, but no doubt he’d skipped all over the place and looked in every head he could get close to.
Unfortunately, that hadn’t solved their problem, because Pumpkin followed up with, I can’t skip into it. Boson Higgs says it could set off an alarm and hose me down with poison or some shit.
I doubt those are the words Boson Higgs used, Lincoln replied. But I hear you.
Once they were in the office, Steven’s simmering rage exploded. He stomped back and forth, yelled, and kicked at the wall.
“That fucking vac-head, thinking she can force me to do what she wants,” he snarled. “I will fucking waste her.”
“Boss, can’t the others hear you?” Lincoln placed his body between Steven and the cat crate. How often did Steven go ballistic like this? How should he act?
Act like a sketchy crook, Pumpkin whispered. This guy’s nearly as hard to push as you are. I’m getting tired.
Shit. That wasn’t good news.
Steven rolled his shoulders as if his rant had strained his muscles. “They’re in the lower conference room, dumbass. Making a five year plan or some other shit I opted not to bore myself to death with. They ignore the here and now. We need to seek bigger buyers and be less picky about the ones we hook. This pathetic ban on selling to staffing agencies, the pro bono rescues during the dark season, it’s all screwing up our bottom line. I mean, fuck. We aren’t a fucking charity. It’s why I struck out on my own.”
It sounded like a dumb move to Lincoln, for the new director to ditch board meetings, but Vex would be supportive of his boss. “You got better things to do than argue with those old…fuckers.”
He had never said the word fuck so much in his life as he had the past several hours.
“What should I do?” he asked Steven. He picked up the crate, which was lighter than it should be. Where had Pumpkin gone?
“Keep that bitch busy until I’m ready for her. And don’t let the cats out of the building. We’ll sell them both after we get rid of Jenna Banu.”
Lincoln’s stomach lurched. “Wait, you’re gonna kill a slaver? One who knows where we work?”
This was a terrible time for Pumpkin to have deserted him. He wished he’d been paired up with Mighty, who was much more attentive.
“Pfffft,” Steven said. “We’ll give her the poison we used on Ficus. The one from the chefo berries. That shit’s all over. Some dumb off-planet person could think they were edible.”
Mota and cebada could be smoked or fermented into alky, but Lincoln hadn’t heard of any specific Trash Planet poisons—only that he should never eat native plants.
“Yeah,” he said, wishing he could ask about chefo. About what Steven intended and how he would administer the poison. Ingestion? Contact? Would it overcome nanobots—had Director Ficus had any? “Where’s the poison?”
“Don’t you remember anything?” Steven exclaimed. “It’s in Vidal’s office. He thinks tiny amounts of it give him a boner, but he’s too fucking old.”
He really needed a cat here to read Steven’s mind. Damn it. “I guess you
’ll steal some of that and then flash the fancy power converter at her to lure her?”
“Fuck, no, I’m not taking any chances with that damn thing,” Steven said. “If it’s as valuable as you say, it stays where it is until we find a more cooperative buyer. I’m gonna get a carbon monoxide monitor because she’s too stupid to know the difference. If she takes the bait and gives me the money, she gets to live.”
Steven had a sort of feral intelligence—but it had limits. He underestimated his opponents, and Lincoln had no idea how he’d maintained his scam for longer than a few months. “And if she’s not that stupid?”
“Then I’ll pretend to be stupid,” Steven said, shrugging. “I’ll say this is the part my people handed me, and if she wants to pick the right one, she’ll have to come with me. We’ll take her somewhere chefo berries grow, and oops, she’ll get poisoned.”
“I don’t know.” Lincoln switched the cat carrier to his dominant hand in case he needed to swing it like a weapon—up against Steven’s head would be a good target. “Seems like she wants to stay in the lobby, in a public place. She’s suspicious.”
Steven scowled at him. “Seriously? Why are you turning into baby shit on me now, Vex? You went soft because you pet some stupid kitty.”
“I’m not fucking soft,” Lincoln protested. His brain felt too slow to handle all the new twists Steven was throwing at him. Not for the first time, he wished he was a quick thinker, like Briar. “I just want to keep our business healthy.”
“My business,” Steven said. “My ideas, my contacts, my access. So shut up and let me do the thinking.”
With Steven refusing to get the Mozim converter out of the safe and the cats unable to skip into the safe, Briar-as-Jenna would have to convince Steven to sell it—without getting poisoned. Or distract him long enough for Pumpkin and Lincoln to break into it. He and Briar had a few hours before their faces and DNA melted into their original forms. Or something like that. Javier had been vague about the reverse process.