The Thieves of Nottica

by Ash Gray

  Lisa repeated, word for word, and Rigg was surprised by the conviction in her usual monotone voice. When she finished speaking, she looked at the three Keymasters, who were all smiling back at her. Rivet clicked happily and scuttled over to Lisa, rubbing its side against her like a cat. Lisa’s eyes hooded fondly and she stroked the little robot’s head.

  “You’re one of us now,” said Rigg, grinning.

  “Welcome to the Keymasters, yadda, yadda, etcetera,” muttered Morganith, lighting the cigarette in her teeth.

  “Welcome to the Keymasters, yadda, yadda, etcetera,” repeated Lisa blankly.

  Morganith took a pull on the cigarette and exhaled smoke. “No,” she said, frowning, “you don’t have to keep repeating . . .”

  Lisa suddenly grinned. “I am joking.”

  Chapter 9

  The Edge of Nowhere

  That same afternoon, the Keymasters discussed their pending meeting with Kito. Kito phoned a message to Madame’s Fisheye, announcing that he was waiting for them in a tavern two streets over. Morganith was immediately suspicious, as Kito’s foreknowledge of their location meant he’d been spying on them since their arrival in the city. When Hari grew impatient and declared she would then go alone, Morganith insisted on going with her.

  The two older women hated the idea of leaving the girls alone in the boarding house, but knowing that two of them walking the streets would attract less attention than four, they decided to leave the girls behind. Hari even admitted that if Kito had betrayed them and they were, in fact, walking into a trap, at least all of them wouldn’t be captured. She cautioned Rigg and Lisa never to leave the boarding house and to even stay in the bedroom for good measure, avoiding all contact with Madame, Daisy, and the few cameras rigged throughout the building. If they ran into trouble, they were to run to the town square and wait in the alley near the great clock. Hari made them recite the instructions three times before she left, coaxed away by an impatient Morganith, who told her to stop “treatin’ the kids like helpless morons.”

  Rigg didn’t like being left back at the boarding house, not only because she hated being treated like a child but also because being alone with Lisa made her incredibly nervous. She didn’t know what to do with herself, so she paced the room restlessly, stopping every now and then to look out the window at the smoggy city.

  Lisa sat on the edge of the bed, her legs folded neatly, her hands folded neatly in her lap, watching serenely as Rigg paced back and forth. The rusty golden key hung around her neck, gleaming in the pale sunlight.

  “Rigg?” Lisa said eventually. “Your heart rate is exceedingly high. Is it because of me?”

  Rigg paused and scratched the back of her hair. “Maybe.”

  Lisa patted the space beside her. “Perhaps you should try sitting. Sitting usually calms an organic heart rate in two to three minutes.”

  Rigg laughed weakly and sat beside Lisa on the edge of the bed: there was no way sitting closer to the source of her discomfort was going to calm her down. But she liked being near Lisa. She didn’t know why, but she loved the coppery smell of Lisa’s synthetic skin. Perhaps because it reminded her of riggits. If there was anything she loved more than candy, it was riggits.

  “Why do I make your heart labor so strenuously?” Lisa asked softly.

  “Cuz I like you,” Rigg said with a laugh, as if she should have known.

  Lisa’s lashes fluttered. “Oh.” Beams projected from her eyes, and Rigg went rigid as they passed hot over her. “Also,” Lisa said, “your erogenous zones are filling with blood. In most organics, this indicates arousal.”

  Rigg sighed. “Don’t scan people, Lise. It feels weird.”

  Lisa tilted her head. “Next time I will do so with heat sensors cooled. You will not notice or experience discomfort.”

  Rigg pushed a weary hand back through her hair. “No, Lise. You shouldn’t scan people because it’s intrusive.”

  “Oh.” Lisa dropped her eyes. “I am sorry.”

  “Not --! Not that you can’t scan me,” Rigg said quickly. “I mean . . .” She blinked in realization. “I think I liked it.”

  Lisa laughed softly. “I like you too, Rigg. You and Hari are the first organics who were ever kind to me. When you found me in the sewage pipe, I thought you were going to kill me. I . . . still can not believe it. No one in all my years has ever given me the benefit of the doubt.” Her faced darkened. “When you are an automaton, organics do not risk doubting that you are dangerous.”

  Rigg frowned. “How old are you, exactly?”

  Lisa’s eyes clicked and went blank, as if she was actually counting the number of years in her databank. “I am . . . forty-five years and twenty-three hours old.”

  Rigg’s brows went up.

  Lisa’s eyes blinked and came back into focus. She looked calmly at Rigg. “In another hour, I will be forty-six years old.”

  “You mean your birthday’s in an hour?”

  Lisa slightly frowned. “Robots do not have birthdays, Rigg.”

  “Then what’s your data counting from? The moment you were first turned on?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s your birthday.”

  Lisa’s eyes grew round. “Oh.”

  “What would you like?” Rigg asked softly.

  Lisa tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” Rigg laughed helplessly, “everyone gets somethin’ on their birthday. You know, to make ‘em feel special.”

  Lisa blinked. “But what is the purpose?”

  “I suppose that depends on the culture,” Rigg said, shrugging. “Down in the Low Quarter, when a demon has a birthday, it’s ah celebration of survival. We celebrate being alive and well, despite . . . everything.”

  “. . . you think I’m alive?” Lisa whispered happily.

  Rigg laughed. “Well, yeah. People who say otherwise about robots can’t see the bare-assed truth. Or just don’t wanna. Not all of us see you as mindless machines.”

  Lisa smiled, her golden eyes crinkling up warmly.

  “Tell ya what,” said Rigg, rising to her feet, “I’ll go out and get you something. I promised you ah sensory chip, didn’t I?”

  Lisa’s eyes grew round. “You should not go out alone. The likelihood of endangering your personal being is 99.9%.”

  Rigg rolled her eyes. “I can take care of myself, Lise. I been doin’ it twenty-six years now.” She staggered as she stepped into her boots. “There anything you need while I’m out?”

  Lisa twisted her fingers shyly, as flustered as if she had never been asked the question before. Rigg realized she probably hadn’t.

  “I n-need more oil,” Lisa admitted sheepishly. “I have to have a quart every week to keep running. Otherwise, I will shut down.”

  “Oil,” repeated Rigg, pulling on her coat. “Got it.” She turned for the door.

  “Rigg!” Lisa slid off the bed, her skirts flying up to reveal her white pantaloons. She rushed to Rigg in bare stocking feet, and bouncing up on her tiptoes, she kissed Rigg warmly, slowly on the lips. Rigg’s heart was pounding when their lips pealed apart, and Lisa’s hot breath tickled her skin as she whispered, “Be safe?”

  ***

  Rigg emerged in the street a few minutes later, her heart soaring from that sweet kiss. Somehow, kisses were always best when you were least expecting them, and that kiss with Lisa was in Rigg’s top ten. Not that she’d been kissed much, she reminded herself. Who would want to kiss her? Her natural face was unappealing and she often went around in various guises that were appallingly hideous just to ward people away. She laughed sadly as she thought of it: even if she wanted to use her abilities to make herself prettier, she couldn’t.

  Rigg had been to Coghurst many times before with the Keymasters. It was the first city west going in and out of Realm Fixitt, so it was a pit stop for most travelers crossing the border. As a result, the city saw a lot of traffic, and it was easy to get lost in the crowds. No one noticed Rigg as she strolled t
hrough the crowded market, hands in her pockets, eying various wares. Of course, only humans could own booths and shops, so only humans were selling wares. She passed so easily for an ugly human girl, humans nodded to her in greeting, no one glared at her like a thief or shoed her from their booth with a broom, and one rich human wrapped in a fur coat even gave her a riggit and called her a poor dear.

  Rigg immediately noticed the junk booth in the middle of one row. It was loaded down with gears and scrap metal, tools, and oilcans. The booth had everything Rigg would ever need to care for Lisa, not that Hari didn’t have a great deal of tools already. Rigg wandered closer to the booth and saw it was run by a human woman in a dingy apron. The woman wore big black gloves that stopped at her elbows, and her hair was a mass piled atop her head in a nest of screws, pencils, and bits of paper. A heavy necklace of several old, rusty keys jingled around her throat as she spoke with a customer over the counter, a beady-eyed human man in overalls. Neither of them looked at Rigg as she approached, completely absorbed in their conversation.

  “. . . good for keepin’ them bots in line,” said the woman, brandishing a hammer against her palm. “Other day I had her mouth off to me. WHACK!”

  The customer laughed.

  Rigg glanced darkly at the back of the booth and saw a slumping automaton sitting against the locked safes, golden eyes staring blankly, head to the side and bashed open until it spilled gears. Rigg stiffened: the robot had Lisa’s face. She was filthy and cracked and sat there like a broken doll, gears spilling through her nest of glossy black hair like brains. Her uniform was different from Lisa’s, consisting of a mechanic’s jumper that was open at the chest and torn, so that one of her perky breasts poked out. Rigg swallowed in disgust: it was clear someone had torn the robot’s suit open to grope her while she was broken and unconscious.

  “How could she mouth off?” the customer asked with a laugh. “Bots ain’t smart enough ta do that. Sounds like ah malfunction ta me.”

  Rigg glowered. “Malfunction” was code language for “sentience.” People who refused to believe robots could actually become self-aware often referred to the phenomena as a “malfunction” or a “defect.” Such robots were usually sent back to the factory to be reprogrammed . . . or dismantled.

  “Well, she won’t be malfunctionin’ no more,” said the shopkeeper. “I gotta offer from some cyborg types. Gonna get some good riggits for that hunka scrap.” She jerked her head at the robot behind her.

  “You’d best be careful, Betty,” returned the customer. “People who buy refurbs is usually crims. You know . . .” he glanced shiftily left and right. “Them rebel types.”

  The shopkeeper made a dismissive noise. “I can take care of myself, Marty.”

  “You do that, Betty. Don’t get swept up like ol’ Bobby last week at the pier.”

  “Don’t you worry your ugly little buttons about me,” the shopkeeper returned, and the customer chuckled. “I’ll admit,” she added, smiling bitterly, “I broke the thing in the first place cuz I ‘spect my husband was bangin’ it.”

  “Shit,” said the customer, shaking his head.

  “I know,” said the woman darkly. “Think he programmed the thing to say it loved him!”

  Gritting her teeth, Rigg drew closer. There was an oilcan sitting on the edge of the counter, like a morsel in a mousetrap. Rigg knew better than to take it. Many shopkeepers would place something of value in plain sight, in order to lure potential thieves into an arrest. It was a tactic used quite heavily in the food section of the market, to entice demons who so often went hungry on the pittance they were paid. The Hand was always seeking any excuse to arrest, beat, and murder non-humans, and they encouraged humans to aid them with such underhanded baiting. Every strike against non-humans kept humans firmly in power, after all.

  Rigg drew close to the counter and stared pointedly at the shopkeeper.

  “Ey, girly,” the shopkeeper said to Rigg, shaking out a filthy rag and polishing the counter with it. Her customer turned and wandered off, but she hardly noticed, so focused was she on greasing her counter with her soiled rag. “What can I do for ya, yeah?”

  Rigg nodded at the locked safes behind the woman, her hands in the pockets of her coat. “I want some tools outta that safe.”

  The woman nodded and turned away, carelessly stepping on the slumped robot’s hand. She squatted before one of the lower safes and started fumbling with her keys, her back to Rigg. “Whacha need ‘em for, eh?” she asked. “Gotta foul worker bot at home like mine? Damn things.”

  “Yeah,” said Rigg, casually slipping items in her pockets: a handful of screws, a wrench for Hari. “Stupid thing broke. Mom’s been naggin’ me ta fix it.”

  The woman tisked in sympathy. “Damn things is more trouble than they’s worth.”

  Rigg glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching her and no one was. Passing for human meant becoming invisible in the human world, where everyone in the market would have been watching her closely otherwise. The broken robot had a few chips spilling from her split head, and Rigg snatched them, morphing her nails into blades that cut the wires loose. She felt a pang of guilt to be stealing from a robot that was already so abused, but she figured she was sparing it more torture by prolonging the moment when it would be fixed again. She carelessly dropped an oilcan in her coat pocket, as well as few loose gears and pliers, and six riggits that were sitting in plain view behind the counter. When the shopkeeper turned around again, Rigg was gone.

  A good thief never stayed in one place more than five minutes, so Rigg left the market entirely, disappearing through the crowds with the stolen riggits, screws, and gears in her pockets jingling softly. She strolled at her ease so as not to draw attention, taking a turn down a less crowded street, where a row of shops stood crammed together under the smoggy sky.

  Glancing left and right, Rigg pulled the chips from her pockets and examined them. She’d gotten at least five of them off the broken robot, and though she wasn’t a mechanical whiz like Hari, she was still a bit of a mechanist herself. Back in Harlie, the other demons in the Low Quarter had been like family: they knew she was an Aonji demon and trusted her morphing hands to keep the boilers in good repair. Rigg shifted the chips through her fingers and was glad to see at least two of them were sensory chips that could easily be installed. One was for smell and one was for taste.

  Taste. It suddenly hit Rigg what she could bring Lisa for her birthday, and she glanced up and down the street, intent on finding a bakery. A candy shop stood in the distance, with great lollipops in the cracked window, being licked endlessly by two mechanical children who – Rigg realized – were probably very sentient and bored out of their minds.

  Rigg approached the candy shop and stopped before the window, wondering if the robots inside were sentient or not. Despite what she had told Lisa, there were so many different variations of robots, it had never occurred to her that many of them were sentient. Many automatons – especially the worker drone models – were not sentient but simple machines, and for this reason, they were used to justify the atrocities against machines that were self-aware. She looked at the mechanical children in the window, knowing full well that they – for their own safety, if they were indeed sentient – were supposed to ignore her and go on mindlessly licking candy they probably couldn’t even taste. Rigg silently admired robots who could pretend to be mindless to get by. She valued her street smarts so much, she couldn’t fathom pretending to be stupid, even for the sake of appearing non-threatening to humans.

  The robot children had been designated as a boy and a girl. The boy was wearing suspenders and short pants, the girl was wearing a little pink dress, and both were wearing button-up ankle boots. They were rusted, tattered, and rundown, as if the shopkeeper never bothered with their upkeep, and their clothes were torn and weighed down by cobwebs. The girl’s black pigtails were curly and large, lending to a youthful and innocent appearance that probably did not match her age at all. The
shop was over one hundred years old, after all, its wealth having been passed down from human to human, and it suddenly occurred to Rigg just how old the robot children were. They were so old, they synthetic skin was peeling off, revealing the metal skeletons beneath.

  Glancing around, Rigg pointed at the large lollipop in the boy’s hand and pulled the stolen riggits from her pocket, offering them to him. The robot boy’s eyes clicked back and forth, to make sure no cameras or passersby were watching, then he shook his head ever so slightly. Beside him, the robot girl kept slowly waving, but her eyes were carefully watching the exchange.

  Rigg felt stupid: what would two store window robots welded to the floor do with her riggits? She bit her lip, slipping the riggits back in her pocket and pulling out a handful of screws, as well as a screwdriver. The robot boy’s eyes brightened, and after glancing around again, he nodded. Rigg slid the screwdriver and screws through a crack in the window, leaving them in a discreet enough place that the boy and girl could use them to repair themselves come sundown. Satisfied, the boy robot pretended to glitch and chucked his lollipop out the cracked window. Rigg fumbled to catch it and kept walking before the cameras had turned her way.

  Very satisfied with her successful afternoon of thievery, Rigg wrapped the lollipop in a bit of cloth as she made her way back to the boarding house. She halted when she noticed a crowd had gathered under the great clock tower in the town square. Three demons – one a child – were standing on scaffolding before dangling nooses, their wrists bound behind their backs. A Crow stood beside them in the standard black coat and beaked leather mask, reading their crimes aloud from a roll of parchment. As the Crow was speaking, another Crow went along the row and slipped each noose around each prisoner’s head. The child had to be lifted onto a crate, and then a noose was slipped around her head as well. Someone in the crowd booed and they were beaten to silence by yet another Crow with a baton.