The Man of Bronze

by James Alan Gardner

  What he wasn’t ready for was someone dropping onto his head. My boots landed hard on his skull. I punched him a few times just to be thorough, but that was more a precaution than a necessity. He’d been out from the very first blow.

  I ducked inside the guardroom, staying below window level in case the man outside turned back. He hadn’t noticed me; the dog was still barking and the guard was yelling, “Shut up, you mangy cur!” I pulled the unconscious guard into the room where he’d be out of sight from his partner. Then I waited for the other guard to return. He did a few seconds later. “I don’t know what that idiot animal is after—”

  That’s as far as he got before I side-armed him with my Uzi. He fell flat across his partner’s unmoving body.

  The dog never came back. I don’t know what happened to it—off chasing shadows or looking for me in all the wrong places. I kept expecting it to appear as I sabotaged a number of Jeeps and SUVs in the guardhouse garage; but the dog’s barking dwindled and the night returned to its usual ambient noise: crickets chirping, owlet moths bumping against lightbulbs, wind rustling through grass and trees.

  Pushing my luck, I peeped into the rest of the guardhouse. It held a lounge kitchenette where the men obviously went for rest breaks . . . but no one was home. I couldn’t resist looking inside what appeared to be a weapons locker—I had quite a collection of keys taken from various guards, and one fit the locker’s lock. When I opened the door, what to my wondering eyes did appear but some dear, dear friends: Ilya’s katana and AK-47; Lord Horatio’s Walther PPK; Teresa’s machete; and my own VADS pistols.

  Darlings! I thought. However did you get here?

  I should have thought about that question more seriously. But I didn’t. I simply loaded my arms with weapons and flicked the gate-opening switch before going back to the car.

  15

  RIO DE JANEIRO: INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE CITY

  It was morning by the time we reached Rio. First, we’d blundered for more than an hour on unmarked back roads trying to find a more significant thoroughfare. Then came a lengthy drive along the coast until we actually entered the city . . . and with perfect punctuality, we arrived just in time for rush hour. Or maybe it was only the usual pandemonium that fills Rio’s streets twenty-four hours a day. Despite the traffic chaos, we fought our way to the Copacabana Palace hotel and settled into four suites courtesy of my own sweet smile. It’s nice to be recognized by desk clerks. If anyone had asked to see a credit card, things might have gotten embarrassing.

  Ilya, Teresa, and Lord Horatio immediately stumbled off to bed. They were still feeling drained from the sedative they’d been given; whatever the drug was, they’d clearly received more doses than I had. The three of them had all fallen asleep on the drive from Silver’s estate and they still hadn’t fully recovered. I, on the other hand, felt fine—refreshed even. So while my friends collapsed into slumberland, I dealt with other business.

  First, a phone call to Poland. Father Emil sounded relieved to hear from me. We’d disappeared from Australia two days earlier, and the good father had feared we were now residing in some crocodile’s stomach. When he heard we’d retrieved the leg, he whooped for joy and recited a few choice phrases of Latin—beginning with Gloria in excelsis deo and ending with so many amens, I lost count. Next thing I knew I was talking to Bronze.

  “Yes?” came the familiar grating voice.

  “Mission accomplished,” I said. “By the way, I met an old friend of yours.”

  “What old friend?”

  “A chap just like you . . . except he’s colored silver.”

  There was a pause. A long one. Then, “Where is he now?”

  “A few hours ago, he was on an estate outside Rio. By now, he must have discovered I got away . . . and if he has an ounce of sense, he’ll be on the run. He must realize you’ll come after him.”

  “He has no sense,” Bronze said, “but he can be sly when necessary.” Bronze said something to someone . . . possibly Father Emil. Then he spoke to me again. “I will come to Brazil . . . to retrieve my leg and to begin the final hunt for Silver. Even if he’s left his home base, he must have left clues where he was going.”

  “Do you think he’s that sloppy?” I asked.

  “Yes. And I excel at examining tiny shreds of evidence. Where are you now?”

  “The Copacabana Palace.”

  “Did you check in under your own name?”

  “I couldn’t do anything else. They know me here.”

  “Then you can’t keep the leg in the hotel. Silver might track you down and attempt to steal it back. He wouldn’t care who got hurt in the process.”

  I shuddered, imagining a gang of mercenaries in Silver Shields smashing their way through the Copacabana’s lobby. Bronze said, “Our Order has an agent who owns a coffee plantation outside the city. Her name is Vidonia Portinari. Phone her at this number.” He recited a string of digits; I scribbled them onto the phone pad provided by the hotel. “Call her. She’ll give you instructions how to reach her. Take the leg there and I’ll meet you as soon as I can.”

  “Only if you promise to let me go after Silver with you.”

  “Of course.”

  Of course. His inhuman voice sounded no different saying those words . . . yet I was sure he was lying. I don’t know why. Maybe he agreed too quickly. Maybe after talking to both androids, my ear was becoming attuned to the subtleties of their speech.

  But I knew Bronze had no intention of letting me accompany him. He’d take the leg from me and chase after Silver, fighting me off if I tried to follow.

  When Osiris fought the evil Set, he didn’t let Queen Isis take part.

  “See you at Vidonia Portinari’s,” I said.

  Bronze didn’t answer. He simply rang off.

  I called the aforementioned Ms. Portinari—a woman with a rich voice and a soft slurring accent. Once she’d given me directions to her plantation, she said how excited she was to take part in this. The Order of Bronze had agents all around the world: seldom called into action but always keeping watch for bronze body parts in museum collections or art auctions. Vidonia told me this was the first time she’d ever contributed to the Order’s work; she was looking forward to it.

  Personally, I wasn’t looking forward to anything. Maybe the problem was that Bronze had lied to me. Maybe it was my unresolved fear that restoring an alien hunter robot to full functionality might be a dim-witted move. I thought about it for all of five minutes—practically a record for me, considering how ill disposed I am toward introspection—and decided to take out some insurance.

  I had keys to my friends’ suites. I went into Teresa’s room without waking her, picked up her machete, and slipped out again. Back in my own rooms I laid out the bronze leg on my dining table and watched it gleam like copper in the late morning sunlight. Pity to ruin it . . . but I raised the big knife and brought it down hard on the little toe.

  Unlike in the Polynesian temple, the toe didn’t break off cleanly. I had to whack it several more times before it finally came free. I thought, Maybe now that the whole leg’s together, the parts are harder to detach.

  Sometimes I’m not very bright.

  I picked up the little toe nubbin and looked at it. It looked like normal bronze—nothing special. But there was an easy way to determine what it really was. I had a friend at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro: Professor Davida Quintero, a first-rate archaeologist with a fine little laboratory for carbon-dating organic compounds, analyzing pottery, DNA checking mummified corpses, and all the other tricks of our trade. I decided to take the toe to her on my way to the Portinari plantation . . . partly because I wanted a full scientific analysis of the thing and partly because I wanted a place to stash the toe where neither Bronze nor Silver would think to look.

  Oh, what a tangled web we weave . . .

  Rio de Janeiro has been many things in its history: a strategic port, a mining center, and now both an industrial city and a tourist destinatio
n. But for much of its life, Rio was most noted as a source of coffee—the second most important trade good in the world after oil. Rio de Janeiro state is still home to many coffee plantations. The one belonging to Vidonia Portinari ranked among the largest.

  I reached the plantation in late afternoon . . . partly because I’d spent time in Rio getting reoutfitted: first, some money wired from home, then shopping for suitable clothes, boots, and ammunition. Ah, the relief of being properly equipped! I also ditched the Oldsmobile in a five-story car park and hired a nondescript Camry from an equally nondescript rental agency. Thus prepared, I headed into the countryside for the Portinari estate.

  It took me an hour to get there. Much of that time was spent driving past field after field of coffee bushes. Years ago, the plants were only grown in shady nooks on the sides of mountains; some people claim that’s still the only way to produce good quality, not to mention protecting the environment. But these days, modern farming techniques allow coffee to be cultivated like any other crop: in straight rows on flat land. I felt a twinge of regret that romantic highland farms were being supplanted by clinically efficient agribusiness . . . but if I’d ever been a coffee picker, paid by the bean and forced to slog up and down mountainsides, maybe I might have welcomed the chance to work on level ground.

  Vidonia Portinari, somewhere in her fifties, greeted me with a lavender-scented kiss on both cheeks. She was large, black, and gracious, like a Brazilian Ella Fitzgerald. She was also a devotee of one of the local macumba religions . . . or so I guessed from the combination of Christian images—crucifixes, paintings of saints—and Yoruba-style fetishes—feathered medicine bags, painted chicken feet—hanging on the walls of her house. It made me wonder yet again how the Order of Bronze could unite orthodox Roman Catholics like Father Emil with anything-but-orthodox believers like a macumba spiritist; but I congratulated them for doing it. If Bronze was the one behind this peaceful cooperation of different faiths, he deserved kudos for the accomplishment.

  Speaking of Bronze, Vidonia bubbled with eagerness to see his metal leg. She was too well-bred to say so—as a good hostess, she served me cakes and coffee in her elegant living room (the freshest coffee I’ve ever tasted), and she listened in wonder as I revealed there was a second android in the world (Bronze had never seen fit to mention Silver in all the centuries he’d worked with the Order)—but through all the conversation, I could sense Vidonia’s greatest interest was seeing the leg itself. Perhaps to her it combined two types of holiness: part saint’s relic, part magic fetish. She never came out and said so . . . but beneath the polite niceties, her keenness shone through. As soon as we’d finished the courtesies, I asked if she’d like to see what I’d brought.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.”

  The leg was still wrapped in the canvas from Silver’s studio . . . as if I hadn’t touched it since my escape. We laid it on a worktable in Vidonia’s kitchen, like a haunch of beef we intended to roast. “It’s most very lovely,” Vidonia said, running her hand over the smooth metal surface. “It’s . . .”

  Her voice broke off. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “The little toe. He isn’t there!”

  “What?” I said . . . with what I hoped was convincing surprise.

  “The little toe is missing!” Vidonia pointed. “He is gone!”

  I bent over the foot and gingerly touched the amputation site. “Silver must still have it,” I said. “I don’t know why he would cut it off . . .”

  “Because he is evil,” Vidonia answered immediately. “He wishes to use it in a dark ritual. For curses.”

  I shrugged noncommittally. It pricked my conscience to deceive a good woman like Vidonia. “I’m sorry I didn’t notice the toe was missing,” I lied. “I was just in such a hurry to escape . . .”

  She waved my excuse away. “You did what you could. You seized what was there. And to miss a little toe, that is better than missing a leg.”

  Her words were meant to be reassuring. Her tone of voice wasn’t. She seemed terribly afraid of what Bronze would do when he found out.

  That made me afraid too.

  Bronze was scheduled to reach Vidonia’s at nine o’clock that evening. By then, I wanted to determine the location of Silver’s estate . . . so Vidonia got out some maps, and I spent an hour retracing the roads I’d driven during our escape. It was hard work, made harder by maps that were thirty years old. Recently built roads weren’t shown, stand-alone villages had been absorbed by Rio’s ever-expanding sprawl, and a few noted landmarks—church spires, railroad tracks—had vanished since the maps were made. I felt proud for finally zeroing in on what I was sure was Silver’s retreat: a “private beach resort” beside a tiny inlet of the Atlantic labeled Baía da Prata. My pride lasted less than five seconds. That’s how long I took to realize that “Baía da Prata” is Portuguese for Silver Bay. Silver was so vain he must have pulled strings to get a chunk of geography named after him . . . like a big neon sign saying Here I am.

  “Dear, oh dear, oh dear,” I muttered. “Maybe I’m more slow-witted than I thought.”

  I pointed to the map. “That’s Silver’s estate,” I told Vidonia. “And now I’m leaving.”

  “But why?” she asked. “Are you not supposed to wait . . . until he gets here?”

  “Bronze won’t care,” I said. “All he wants are his leg and Silver’s whereabouts. As far as Bronze is concerned, I’m of no further use.”

  Vidonia looked at me carefully. “You don’t like Bronze?”

  I decided to tell the truth. “He’s a machine. Or a golem or a divine construct or something we don’t have words for. I know he’s helped the Order over the years, tracking down criminals, making the world better . . . but he’s a machine. Bronze will follow his programming to the bitter end—just as Silver follows his programming. If Bronze hadn’t been chopped into pieces, he might have caused just as much trouble as Silver. It’s not hard to imagine how an implacable robot ‘agent of justice’ could wreak havoc.”

  Vidonia shook her head. “Bronze is a machine, yes, but a good machine. Virtuous. He has done good things . . . saved many lives . . .”

  “So I’ve been told.” I patted her hand, then turned the gesture into a parting handshake. “I hope he is as good as you say. But as of now, I’m an independent operator again. I don’t like running errands for anyone, man or machine.”

  Vidonia looked me in the eye. “You’ll go after Silver on your own?”

  I didn’t answer.

  On the drive back to Rio, I debated what I would do. Go after Silver single-handed? That would be futile unless I had a weapon that would work against him. Most likely, I’d head for Silver’s estate and lurk outside until Bronze showed up. If Silver was still there, I’d try to take part in whatever happened next; I owed that much to Reuben and all the others whose deaths led back to the amoral android. But if Silver had flown the coop . . . if, if, too many ifs. I’d go back to Baía da Prata and await further developments.

  First, though, I revisited Davida at the university. If she’d learned anything in her analysis of the bronze toe—especially if she’d discovered that robot flesh had some useful vulnerability—I’d be able to play a more active role than just waiting for Bronze to handle everything. When I entered the lab, however, Davida shook her head.

  “Can’t tell you anything profound,” she said, handing me a piece of paper summarizing her analysis. “The toe is just a common bronze alloy: 88 percent copper, 11 percent tin, 1 percent normal impurities. Probably of recent manufacture.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “Almost no corrosion. The only interesting thing was an odd trace chemical on the surface.”

  I looked at the page she’d given me. “Cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine? What on earth is that?”

  Davida smiled. “Better known as RDX. A popular component in explosives. It’s used pure in blasting caps or mixed with oils and waxes to make plastique. C-4 is about 80 percen
t RDX.” She laughed. “Lara, you’re the only archaeologist I know who excavates with bombs. The rest of us just use shovels.”

  “Bombs?” I whispered. “It’s a bomb?” I slumped against a lab bench. “It’s a bomb.”

  “I told you, the toe is standard bronze,” Davida said. “The RDX is only on the surface. Possibly someone was working with explosives close to the toe and there was a tiny amount of transfer . . .” She stopped and looked at me. “What’s wrong?”

  “The leg,” I said. “The leg is a fake. Booby-trapped like the statue of Osiris. Blast it!” I slammed my fist on a lab bench, making its glassware tinkle. “Silver set me up! He knew I’d escape. He put the leg in a safe that a child could open. He even left the painting ajar so I’d notice it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Davida said. “Are you all right?”

  “No. I’ve been used to deliver a Trojan horse. Blast!”

  It’d been a charade from start to finish. No wonder we’d had such an easy time running from Silver’s estate. The guards had left us alone. There were only two men on the gate, despite the large guardhouse. Our weapons had been left conveniently in that locker so we could pick them up on our way out.

  And everything that happened in the dungeon . . . Urdmann coming to kill me . . . missing a point-blank shot . . . gunfire from outside the room and blood splashes on Urdmann’s clothes, but his body had been dragged away before I could see whether he was actually dead . . . then the guard being foolish enough to open my cell to see if I was hurt . . .

  Of course, it was possible Urdmann really was dead—Silver might have sacrificed him for the sake of realism. I could imagine Silver assuring Urdmann, “Don’t worry, my friend, the guards who stop you will be shooting blanks” . . . then using real bullets after all. That might appeal to Silver’s sense of humor. But whether Urdmann was dead or alive, the rest of the exercise was all a setup so I’d bring Bronze a booby-trapped leg. As soon as the RoboCop got close, the bomb would go off; and Silver would have men standing by to collect the pieces. Once again, bits of Bronze would be scattered around the globe. Silver would be safe for another few millennia. He and Urdmann—living, breathing Urdmann, wiping fake blood off his chest and laughing at how he’d duped me—would hop a private jet to who knows where and spend the entire flight drinking champagne in celebration.