But that wasn’t Bolly’s intention. He had something much more heroic in mind. He grabbed a dangling vine and tested his weight on it. It didn’t break.
“He isn’t...” I said.
He was. Holding onto the vine, Bolly leapt off the branch and swung out towards his sister like an overweight trapeze artist. He overshot completely, passing over her head. As he swung back, she reached up to try and grab him. He collided with her. He knocked her out of the tree. Bolly dropped, landing up in exactly the spot his sister had just vacated. Bella dropped butt-first into a small bush.
“Is that one of the spiny ones?” I asked.
The robot nodded. “Porcupine plant.”
“Have you seen my nose?” a voice asked. Dante, the big bald guy, was talking to the pirate with the white-blond mohawk. Dante had a big stripe of white gauze taped across his face where his nose used to be. “If I can find it, they may be able to sew it back on.”
“Were you expecting this to be more of a fight?” the robot asked.
The young pirate was looking slowly from one of his hapless crewmates to the next – and I was sure he was giving serious thought to changing sides. I wondered if I could persuade him to come with us. Me, him, and the robot could just head off in the cargo lifter and leave the others behind. There was no harm in asking him. Probably.
“Hey!” I called to attract his intention.
“Down!” the robot said, pushing me to the ground and dropping down next to me.
Blondie opened fire with the massive gun. Hundreds of armour-piercing projectiles flew through the air. All around us were rattling and snapping sounds as the bullets smashed into the jungle. Leaves and branches rained down and splinters of wood exploded outwards. The fresh green scent of mulched foliage filled the air, mingling with the smells of smoke, hot metal, and spent gunpowder. The combination reminded me of a family barbecue. The robot and I were completely buried in fallen jungle.
The robot raised its left arm and fired the machine gun towards the young pirate. Whether he was targeting Blondie directly I didn’t know, but at that point I wouldn’t have complained if he was.
“I need more ammunition,” the robot said. I rummaged in the duffel bag. As the empty clip dropped, I jabbed a new one into place. The stream of bullets he fired towards the Celestia had hardly been interrupted.
The pirate’s gun fell silent. I raised my head.
“Stay down,” the robot said, “we’re out of time.” He was looking towards the cargo lifter.
A flash of orange lit up the cockpit of the cargo lifter. The front of the ship swelled like a balloon and then split with enormous tearing and booming sounds. Released from containment, the ball of flame expanded outwards, filling the air with the smells of hot metal and burning plastics. A blast of burning air washed over us. The robot’s body lying beside me protected me from the worst of it but I felt hairs on my head curling as they were singed.
The front of the cargo lifter had been completely destroyed. It continued to burn fiercely, sending a thick plume of smoke up into the air. Around the ship, small bushes and pieces of dead wood burned or smouldered. It was like a scene from a war zone.
“What happened?” I asked, thinking a stray bullet must have triggered the explosion somehow.
“I blew up the cargo lifter,” the robot said.
He’d set the explosives on a timer – that’s why he kept saying we were running out of time.
The explosion had knocked Blondie onto his butt. He looked as stunned as I did. Shaking his head to clear it, he turned his attention back to his gun. It looked like he was trying to unjam it.
As the ringing in my ears faded, I became aware of the sounds around me. Voices crying out.
“I have prickles in my butt!”
“I can’t get down! And there’s a monkey humping my leg!”
“Where’s my nose? I can’t find my nose!”
I got to my feet, brushing away the bits of twig and leaf. Beside me, the robot did the same. We were both speckled with sticky tree sap.
“Why did you do that?” I asked, gesturing towards the burning cockpit.
“I did not want them to use the craft to pursue us.”
“If we’d flown away in it, that wouldn’t have been a problem.”
“Next time, you should let me know your preference sooner.”
“You think there’s going to be a next time?” I asked.
“We have to survive this time first,” he said.
Old Jack Sterling appeared at the top of the Celestia’s ramp. He had some sort of cannon on his shoulder. A rocket launcher. He surveyed the almost comical carnage in the clearing.
“What the scrack is going on here?”
He turned then and saw us. The robot and I stood exposed. The jungle that had previously hidden us had been completely obliterated. Old Jack pointed the rocket launcher towards us. The hole in the end of the barrel looked big enough to drive my Trekker into.
“You blew up my ship!” Jack bellowed, spittle flying from his lips. He was probably angry at himself for not taking out the optional damage waiver when he rented it.
The robot stepped forward, addressing Old Jack directly. “We should all seek cover,” the robot said. He turned his head towards the burning ship. “The second explosion will be bigger.”
“Second explosion?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the robot. “You remember all of the weapons we loaded into the hold?”
I nodded.
“Boom!” the robot said, miming an explosion with his hand.
“He’s bluffing,” Old Jack said, keeping the rocket launcher pointed at us.
“Do you think you can shoot down the barrel of that thing?” I whispered.
“Yes,” said the robot, equally quietly, “but my gun is empty.”
My pistol still had four bullets in the cylinder. I could have passed it to the robot – but he wouldn’t get his huge finger inside the trigger guard to fire it. It was up to me to make the shot. I raised my gun slowly, not wanting to draw Old Jack’s attention too soon.
“The chances of successfully making this shot are...”
I cut him off. “Never tell me the odds.”
I whipped up the gun and fired.
Old Jack became aware of what was happening as the bullet tore towards him. He was tossing the rocket launcher away as I heard my bullet enter its barrel. The rocket launcher exploded and Old Jack was thrown sideways by the force of the blast.
“Nice shot,” the robot said.
“Nice bluff,” I said, nodding towards the cargo lifter’s hold.
“It was not a bluff,” he said.
“How long have we got?” I asked.
“5–4–3–”
The robot positioned itself in front of me to protect me from the blast.
The force of the explosion blew me off my feet. I landed on my face in the dirt. I spat out bits of twig and dead leaf. “My preference is for a longer countdown,” I said. “For future reference.”
There was no response from the robot. It lay on its back, not moving. Had it been damaged by the blast? I crawled over and looked down into its eyes. They were dark and in one of them I could see what looked like a flashing cursor. I hoped this meant it was rebooting. How long did it take a forty-year-old robot to reboot? I didn’t know.
I looked over to where the cargo lifter had stood. There was blackened earth, a handful of small fires, and a few bits of twisted metal. Parts of it must have been lifted into the air and scattered because I could see several fires burning in the jungle around us.
I looked around the clearing. There was no sign of Old Jack. Perhaps he had gone back inside the Celestia. If he’d gone to call for a breakdown crew, his ship was beyond that now. The rocket launcher lay on the ground, its barrel opened up and curled back like a banana skin. It had been a good shot. A great shot.
From nowhere, Old Jack launched himself at me. His face was badly burned on the left side and his e
ye was milky white like a cooked fish.
“I’m going to tear your head off and use your skull for a cereal bowl!” he snarled. Old Jack wrapped his fingers around my throat, thumbs digging in to crush my oesophagus.
I looked towards the robot but it lay inert. No help there. I aimed frantic punches at Jack’s side and midriff, but his heavy pirate coat just absorbed the blows. I tried stamping on his foot over the arch and kicking him in the shins, but I was growing too weak to do him any serious damage. I was only seconds away from unconsciousness and possible decapitation. No more Mr. Niceguy – I had to fight dirty.
I brought my hand up and pressed the thumb into Old Jack’s damaged eye.
A roar of pain. His grip on my throat loosened a little. I raked my fingernails down his burned cheek, feeling bits of him get under my fingernails. He let go of me and staggered back, clutching his bleeding face.
I tried to drag air into my lungs. My throat was swollen, feeling like something big was stuck halfway down. I sounded like a drowning man who had come to the surface for the last time.
Old Jack was already recovering, cursing me in a half-dozen languages – including Gator. He set his shoulders and leaned forward, coming back in for the attack.
Unable to move anywhere fast, I dropped to one knee and dug my fingers into the top of my boot. A variation of Quincy’s First Law is: Always have a gun B. The pistol in my boot was small and held only two shots. It was really only any good at close range, but this was fine because Old Jack was almost on top of me. I stood and fired the two shots into his leg.
Old Jack almost went down. But he used his forward momentum to keep coming. He ignored the blood streaming down his thigh.
Off to the right, I saw the robot beginning to stir.
“I need a hand here!” I croaked.
The robot closed its right hand into a fist. He pressed his elbow joint to the side of his body and managed to unlock the elbow joint – his left arm was a machine gun with no fingers to unfasten it. Then he swung the arm, letting his forearm fly and arc through the air towards me.
I caught the arm and swung it like a club. The huge metal fist smacked into Old Jack’s jaw.
“Right hook!” I yelled. I think my brain was still deprived of oxygen. I swung the arm again. “Uppercut!”
Old Jack fell to his knees, groggy. He tried to get up. Thock! I hit him on top of the head. His one good eye rolled up until only white showed and he keeled over sideways. He didn’t move again. He was still breathing – and this soon became a snore, so I figured he’d live.
I walked out into the clearing.
Blondie was sitting at the top of the Celestia’s ramp, still trying to unjam his gun. He wasn’t aware I was watching him. His hand slipped and his finger was trapped in the mechanism.
“Scrack!” He pulled his finger free and then threw the big gun aside in frustration. He looked up and saw me standing there. I couldn’t read his expression – but my guess was that he was thinking real-life gunfights aren’t nearly as easy as the simulations in video games. Without saying a word, he got up and went back inside the battleship. He came back a moment later with a medical kit and a pair of pliers. He saw me staring at the pliers.
“To pull out porcupine spines,” he said.
I shuddered at the thought of it. “There’s another one over there,” I said, “Old Jack.”
Blondie looked over to where the old pirate lay. “I should let him die.”
“But you won’t,” I said.
“No. I’ll radio for someone to come and pick us up,” Blondie said. “You two should probably go.”
The robot was standing waiting for me. I was still holding his right arm. I went over and fitted it back in place.
“You destroyed everything,” I said.
“You didn’t want them to get away with it, did you?” the robot asked.
“No. I wanted us to get away with it!”
“I was not aware of that fact.”
Chapter Thirty
“How did you come to be on this world?” the robot asked.
We were walking along some sort of animal track, heading for the spot where I’d hidden my Trekker.
“I’m hiding.”
The robot said nothing to this.
“You don’t ask a lot of questions, do you? I like that in a man.”
“I am not a man.”
“Well, you’re certainly not a woman.”
“Would you like me to be?” The robot’s voice had changed to something female and husky and it swayed its hips as it sashayed ahead of me on the path.
“Don’t do that – ever!”
The robot made a sound that I realised was meant to be laughter.
“I didn’t know robots could laugh.”
“I’m not a robot, am I?”
“Then what are you?”
“Now, I am just...” His voice trailed off in an oddly human way.
What was he? Or rather who? I was already beginning to think of him as a person – and not just in the way that makes us give our vehicles and computers names. But Big Red really did need a name. And he had been right: on recent evidence, I really couldn’t claim to be Robin Hood – and calling him Little John just sounded like a weak joke.
“We have to give you a name,” I said. “What would you like to be called?”
“What name do you think would suit me?”
He was an eight-foot-tall, fifteen-hundred pound, fire-engine red robot with a quiver containing a cannon and a giant cleaver. ‘Timmy’ and ‘Mittens’ were probably non-starters.
“How about Butch?” I said. “We could say it’s short for The Butcher.”
“That makes me sound like a psychopath.”
“Yeah, I guess that was the old you. We need something that reflects the new improved version. How does ‘Buckie’ sound?” I got that from bucket of bolts, but he didn’t need to know that.
“No.”
“Slugger?”
“You’d just shorten that to Slug wouldn’t you?”
“Sumo?”
“People would call us Sumo and Baka.”
“Something ironic like Titch? Or Pipsqueak or Half-Pint?”
“Half-Pint and Half-Wit?”
One advantage of travelling with an eight-foot-tall bright red robot was that he kept the flies away – the bigger creatures too. And with him leading the way and clearing the undergrowth, we made rapid progress.
“I’m going to call you Floyd,” I said. “You look like a Floyd.”
“Floyd?”
“It’s either that or Rusty.”
“Floyd,” he said, this time without inflection. Then he shrugged and it was more or less settled.
“Do you intend to remain on this planet?” Floyd asked.
“I don’t have a choice,” I said, “until I can get together enough cash to buy passage on a ship back to civilisation.”
“What happened to the money you stole from the A.C.I.D.?”
“I don’t want to talk about that. And I didn’t steal it. I moved it and then it disappeared.”
“As if by magic? You should have come up with a better story.”
“It happens to be true. I don’t have their money,” I said.
“They seem to think you do.”
“Well, I don’t. Can we change the subject?”
“Someone stole it from you, didn’t they?”
“Why would you say such a thing?”
Floyd looked down at me. Again I imagined he was raising an eyebrow.
“What happened to your head?” I asked. “Your real one?”
“I lost it.”
“You lost it?”
“A dragon swallowed it. I didn’t know it could open its mouth that wide.”
I laughed. “I like this head – the colour suits you.”
“You don’t think it will make me too easily recognisable?”
“No,” I said. The yellow head was the least of his problems. “All eight-foo
t-tall military robots look alike.”
We walked on in silence for a while.
“What will I do when we get there?” Floyd asked.
“Get where?”
“Wherever it is that we are going.”
“I don’t know, why?”
“I no longer have a purpose,” he said. He slowed down and his upper body seemed to sag into a dejected pose.
“You’re a free agent,” I said. “You can do whatever you want.”
“Robots have their freedom now?”
Oops, awkward moment. “Not exactly,” I said.
“Then my options are more limited than you suggest.”
“We all have to do the best we can with the cards we’re dealt,” I said philosophically.
“You cheat at cards,” Floyd said.
“That has never been proved,” I said. “If you were a free robot, what would you choose to do?”
“I am unfamiliar with the world as it is now,” he said. “I think I would need to find a partner.”
I nodded. “Someone who knows their way around. Someone with a lifetime of experience. Someone you could trust.”
“Perhaps I will meet such a man when we reach the next settlement.” Floyd picked up the pace again, his long strides covering twice the distance of mine. He was chuckling, I was sure of it.
“Hey, wait up!” I crashed through the undergrowth after him.
“I dislike the jungle,” Floyd said when I caught up with him. “Moisture impedes optimum functioning.”
“How do you feel about sand and scorching heat?”
“A desert?”
“That’s where we’re headed.”
“Why?”
“That’s where the nearest town is.”
“Dust and grit also impede optimum functioning.”
“This is going to be a long trip,” I muttered.
“We should have stolen the cargo lifter,” Floyd said.
Why didn’t I think of that?
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