Nebula Awards Showcase 2004

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “Think,” Axel mumbled deliriously. “Think think think! I have to think!”

  “Sleep first,” Sluggo said, and nudged him toward the door.

  Axel went along like a prisoner being led back to his cell.

  The sleep-pile looked a little like a circus under a collapsed tent. The saurs were already all gathered under the blankets, except for Hetman in his little bed, just next to the pile.

  Sluggo lifted the blanket up at one end to look for Agnes and Axel crawled in with him. It was impossible to make his way in without stepping on someone and eliciting responses like, “Hey! Watch it!” “Ooof!” and “Your foot’s on my crest!” He climbed around from one end of the pile to the other, paying little attention to the ruckus he caused, but he couldn’t find a place that seemed comfortable.

  “Think think think!”

  He lifted up the blanket, crawled out and headed straight to Hetman’s bed, climbing over the railing and getting in next to him.

  “Hetman! Hetman!”

  “Yes, Axel,” Hetman whispered in his raspy voice.

  “Okay if I sleep here?”

  “You’re very welcome to sleep here, Axel.”

  “I didn’t mean to wake you, if I did. Did I wake you?”

  “No,” said Hetman, who was often haunted by pains old and new, though he refused any strong drugs to help him sleep. “It hasn’t been a good night.”

  “Is the egg under your pillow?”

  “Yes it is. Poor fellow,” he said, referring to the egg. “I hope he is sleeping better inside his little shell—or she. But perhaps it can’t be called sleep if you haven’t yet awakened.”

  “Sluggo said I should sleep, but I have to think too. There’s all this inner stuff I have to get into Rotomotoman, but it’s all put together and too heavy to move.” Axel rolled a little closer to Hetman. “Did I tell you yet about Rotomotoman?”

  “At least twenty times, Axel, but tell me again. I enjoy hearing you tell me about the wondrous Rotomotoman. Whisper it, though, this time. We needn’t wake the others. And maybe it would be best if you left out the Rotomotoman song.”

  Axel did just as Hetman requested, starting all the way back, from the dream to the “inner stuff,” careful to leave out the theme song, though he really-really did want to sing it.

  As Hetman hoped,Axel fell asleep as he listed the catalog of parts: Motor Assembly A to Relay Systems Response Assembly B, Relay Systems Response Assembly B to Motor Systems Response Assembly C—and so on. Axel’s voice trailed off after he mentioned that Thermostat Assembly F attached to Carrier Drawer F1.

  Hetman listened. The house was silent except for the occasional grunts and snores from the sleep-pile. He might manage a little sleep too before dawn, if he could just get a little question out of his mind—

  What does a Rotomotoman need with a thermostat?

  * * *

  Axel slept harder than he had at any time before: he slept past dawn. For once he was not at the window to glimpse the last light of the stars (if it were a clear night) and the first light of the sun (if the day was similarly clear).

  Instead, he was lost in a dream of Rotomotoman roaming about the house. The strangest thing about the dream to Axel was that Rotomotoman, with his round head, looked very much like a big soft-boiled egg sitting in a cup. It occurred to Axel that in some ways Rotomotoman was his egg—but instead of needing the pieces to come apart, he needed to put them together.

  Together!

  He sat up, awake. Put them together! He looked around and the room was already filled with sunlight. Hetman lay beside him, asleep at last, but the sleep-pile was gone—everyone was gone, the blankets put away.

  He climbed out of Hetman’s bed and ran to the workroom just in time to see Diogenes and Hubert lowering the assembled components into the uprighted cylinder.

  Not only that, but the wheels were attached to the bottom, the arms attached to the sides: listless, but attached.

  Nearby, Doc rested on his little box, screwdriver still held between his forepaws.

  A crowd of saurs, mostly little ones, was gathered around them, watching and chattering. The Five Wise Buddhasaurs sat up on the top of a set of plastic stairs, to get the next best view to the ones Geraldine and Tibor had from their respective desktops.

  Agnes had the assembly instructions spread out in front of her.

  “Okay, next to the motor assembly junk is that other junk.”

  “The battery pack?” Doc asked.

  “That’s what I said, you dimwit! You’re going to need the gray cable and the two blue cables that are in that little bag.”

  Tyrone and Alfie opened the bag and brought the cables to Agnes.

  “Hey!” Axel said. Everyone stopped and turned to him.

  “Don’t look at me!” said Agnes. “It wasn’t my idea! I can’t help it if everyone in this house has gone completely insane.”

  “Sluggo mentioned to us this morning the trouble you were having,” Doc said, putting the screwdriver down. “We thought a little help might get the project moving along.”

  “But, but—” Axel moved closer. He couldn’t keep his eyes off the cylinder. It was still headless, but it had wheels and arms, and it looked nothing like a soft-boiled egg anymore.

  He glanced at the circle of parts: nine o’clock. Three quarters of the parts were gone.

  “Guys—I can’t—I don’t know—”

  “Oh, shut up!” said Agnes. “Go down and get your breakfast. Tom’s waiting for you. Then get back up here and help us out.”

  To Diogenes and Hubert, she said, “Now that that thing is loaded and Axel is up, get Hetman downstairs and come straight back. I want the lid put on this trashcan today! Tomorrow at the latest!”

  Agnes left nothing else to say. Axel ran downstairs. Diogenes and Hubert left the room looking back over their shoulders. Agnes noticed Doc staring at her with his most serene smile.

  “What the hell are you looking at?” she said.

  “I am looking at a marvel, my dear—at a kind of brief miracle. I am looking at Agnes in a good mood.”

  “You’ll be looking at a spiked tail meeting your face if you don’t move your butt off that box and get to work!”

  With that encouragement, Doc picked up the screwdriver and returned to the cylinder without further comment, but unable to remove the grin from his face.

  * * *

  About this time, in the world out past the yard and beyond the trees, a buzz was starting.

  As best as anyone could tell, the buzz began in the offices of the radio telescope at Mount Herrmann. Apparently, a message had been sent to certain coordinates from someone who went by the name of “Axel” and was addressed to “space guys.” There was nothing particularly extraordinary in that, as the telescope operators had been accepting messages for many years as part of a promotional and public relations program to aid in the funding of their research, which included a search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.

  What started the buzz had to do with the content of the message, of a certain reference to “making eggs.” And since the address of the sender was one of the houses operated by the Atherton Foundation for surviving saurs, it presented a rather astounding possibility.

  The rumor could have been a prank, a mistake, a misunderstanding. But there were a number of important persons in the bioengineering community that were not sleeping well and would not sleep very well until the mystery was cleared up. And the bioengineering community was an important group of persons who held a great deal of sway in many circles. They did not bear sleeplessness well.

  And so a call was made to Ms. Susan Leahy, the grandniece of Hilary Atherton herself, who was then in charge of the foundation.

  “They want answers,” she said to Tom Groverton over the phone. “Or I should say they want assurance, if you know what I mean.”

  “They want to send someone over to inspect the house,” Tom replied.

  “Our charter allows us to legally re
strain them, but I’m afraid that would only stir up more controversy. The Office of Bioengineering Standards has never approved of our autonomy and would like nothing better than to challenge it.”

  “So they’re coming,” Tom said.

  “I’ll be with them. And I want Dr. Pagliotti there too,” she said, referring to Dr. Margaret. “I won’t have them pushing their way around, but I’m afraid they have to search everywhere to their satisfaction to see that the saurs aren’t producing their own eggs. If they find anything that makes them think otherwise, they’ll file to do further research, and that will get us into a battle I’d much rather avoid.”

  “I understand,” said Tom.

  “I know you do. You’ll tell the saurs. Let them know we’re coming.”

  “Yes. It’ll be good seeing you again, at least.”

  “I only wish it was under less stressful circumstances. You do a wonderful job, Tom. And the saurs never fail to surprise me.”

  “Then you won’t be disappointed this time, Susan. I can assure you.”

  * * *

  By sleep-time the workroom was empty of everyone but Axel—and Rotomotoman.

  The faint traces of moonlight coming through the window endowed everything in the room with a kind of ashen, metallic hue. The circle of components was gone. In their place stood Rotomotoman, just under a meter and a half tall, set upon four sturdy wheels and his narrow, rod-like arms down at his sides. His large, round eyes, set against the curvature of his head, were fixed in an expression perhaps best described as dementedly earnest—a fitting reflection of his creator. When seen in connection with the first horizontal seam of the cylinder, a dozen centimeters below them—a seam that suggested a mouth—those eyes also betrayed a certain perplexity, as if Rotomotoman might be thinking to himself an incomplete expression of surprise in the vein of “What the—!”

  A cable connected him to a wall outlet, charging his battery. That was all he needed—with the exception of downloading some delicate software into his brain—before he could come to life.

  Axel stood transfixed, staring up at him with undiluted awe.

  “It’s real,” he whispered. “Real-real-real.”

  “You should get some sleep,” said Doc. He’d come into the workroom at Sluggo’s request, when Axel could not be found in the sleep-pile. “It won’t do to have you falling asleep tomorrow, at the moment of your triumph.”

  “Look at him!” Axel pointed up at Rotomotoman. “Isn’t he the greatest thing you’ve ever seen? The most stupendous, marvelous, fantastic, greatest thing you’ve ever seen?”

  “I’ve seen quite a lot of him, my friend, in these past few days.” Doc’s forepaws were still a little sore from handling all the human tools. His foot still hurt a little from when it got wedged under the cylinder while he was attaching the last of the wheels—but it was the foot of his weak leg anyway; the addition to his limp was barely noticeable. “But yes,” he put his forepaw on Axel’s shoulder, “it is—impressive.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without all you guys helping me. I have the best-greatest friends in the whole universe!”

  “It’s your creation, don’t forget. Without you, your Rotomotoman would not exist, would it?”

  “I don’t know,” Axel said, seriously pondering the question. “It’s like now I feel like—like he always was, you know? And all I did was, like—”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, recognize him! Like, there’s all this real stuff in one place and all this could-be-real stuff in another place, like behind a window. Did you ever see one of those gumball machines that’s got stuff other than gumballs in it? Like shrunken heads and rubber spiders and stuff? That’s what it’s like—like Rotomotoman was in one of those gumball machines and I turned the handle and got him out!”

  “Now I know you need some sleep, my friend. You’re talking like a Platonist. Or even worse: a Jungian.”

  “What’s that?”

  Doc patted his head. “It’s a kind of person who needs a great deal of sleep. Come along. When Axel sounds profound it’s a strong hint that one is either dreaming or should be dreaming.”

  Doc led Axel out of the workroom with a series of tugs. Only after they turned the corner and entered the hallway would Axel stop looking back at Rotomotoman.

  But then Axel stopped in his tracks, struck with an idea.

  “Hey!” He gestured to Doc and headed for the staircase. “Now I can show you!”

  “It’s far too late, little fellow, to show me anything—”

  “No-no-no-no! Come on!” Axel trotted a few steps ahead, then looked back at Doc. “But quiet!” He held one digit of his forepaw up. “Ssshh!”

  Axel crept down one stair, and then another, and then another. Even at this slow pace, Doc found it hard to follow. His bad leg made it hard for him to take stairs, up or down, at any pace. He held to the round, vertical balusters of the handrail and inched himself along until it occurred to him that he still hadn’t been given a good reason for putting himself through this exertion.

  “Axel, would you mind—”

  “Ssshh! Just a little farther.” His whisper was louder than Doc’s appeal. “One more step!”

  Doc had to put his weight on his bad leg to descend the next step. He winced, but caught himself before he cried out.

  “There! See?” Axel whispered. “Can you see?”

  Doc could see nothing. He reached for the next baluster, putting himself in an awkward angle, almost hanging over Axel. He raised his tail to counterbalance his weight. If he slipped a mere centimeter he would topple headfirst down the rest of the stairs. But at last he could make out what Axel was pointing to: a light coming from the living room.

  The light changed color and intensity with quick little flickers and flashes, as if the video screen was still on.

  Not “as if”—it was on!

  “See?” Axel whispered, more successful this time in keeping his voice down. “It’s TV Frog! I told you he was really there! He’s really-really-really there!”

  “Axel,” Doc felt his grip slipping on the baluster. “It’s much more likely that someone forgot—” He couldn’t finish the sentence, since it was he who turned off the video that night.

  “Maybe,” Doc muttered, “a technical thing. A ‘glitch,’ as they say. A malfunction in—”

  A voice with the range and volume of a train horn sounded above them:

  “Hey! What the hell’s going on down there!”

  In the fraction of a second between Doc hearing Agnes’ voice and his forepaws slipping from the baluster, Doc could distinctly see the light go off in the living room, as if someone had slapped the “off” square on the remote pad.

  After that, he saw nothing, but distinctly felt himself in gravity’s clutches as first he tumbled over Axel, then tumbled again and tumbled again.

  He shut his eyes for what seemed like a moment, but when he opened them the lights were on. He was looking up at Axel and several other saurs, including Kara and Sluggo—Tom Groverton was there too—all standing over him with worried expressions. Tom ran his hands over Doc’s back and abdomen, checking for broken bones, no doubt.

  “I’m all right,” Doc said several times, and after Tom examined him carefully he even believed it. Bruises, muscle pains, but nothing worse. Agnes, still at the top of the stairs, kept berating him for “skulking around in the dark like a goddamn idiot!”—which was akin to having a bad ringing in the ears—Doc had lived with that before.

  “Ohhh, Doc! I’m sorry-sorry-sorry!” Axel repeated it until it became a litany. “I didn’t mean—I wanted you to see—that it was TV Frog! It really was! I’m soooo sorry-sorry-sorry!”

  “I followed along of my own choosing, Axel.” Doc tried to reach for Axel’s forepaw but, falling short, weakly waved to him. “It must have been funny to watch. A good pratfall, had there been an audience.”

  As Tom helped him back up the stairs and into the sleep room, Doc couldn’t help thi
nking about the light in the living room. Not that he could believe in TV Frog any more than he had before, but there was something—something—very strange about that video screen being on when no one could have turned it on. And as he leaned his head back against the little cushion Kara brought for him, it was that thought, more than any bumps or bruises, that kept him up for the better part of the night.

  * * *

  Rotomotoman was ready—almost.

  The saurs gathered in the workroom. Most of them were on the floor, surrounding—at what they believed was a safe distance—the figure of Rotomotoman that towered over them. Others were perched on Preston’s desk and others yet were on the desk set across from it.

  None had ventured up to where Geraldine and Tibor kept their separate abodes, but they too were quite literally out of their boxes to view the great moment. Tibor even wore his “hat,” which was really a green piece of concave plastic with a little rim. It looked ridiculous on his head but Tibor insisted it was quite regal and dashing, especially when he wore it at a jaunty tilt.

  Rotomotoman was attached by cable to the hard drive of Preston’s computer. No one knew how long the download would take, but when it was finished Rotomotoman would come to life. Axel, standing next to his creation, tried to count down the seconds, but he lost his place several times and had to start over.

  “Attention!” Agnes called out from her place near the door. “Attention! Keep back! When this piece of junk goes berserk there’s no telling who will be crushed under its wheels! All saurs must keep back!”

  Only Sluggo paid attention to her, and that was only to get her to stop shouting.

  Tom Groverton was there too. No one noticed, though, that he was standing next to the two fire extinguishers he’d placed next to Geraldine’s lab.

  Axel gave up on the countdown and started to chant: “Go! Go! Go! Rotomotoman! Go! Go! Go! Rotomotoman!”

  Some of the other saurs picked it up. “Go! Go! Go! Rotomotoman!”

  Others joined in. “Go! Go! Go! Rotomotoman!”

  Even the saurs who didn’t speak squeaked and chirped to the rhythm of the cheer.