by Ron Goulart
“See anyone who can help us?” Tad moved toward a vacant table.
“As I mentioned previously,” said the disguised robot, “your cousin used to allow me to accompany him to Fetid Landing now and again. Thus I came to know some of his local friends. If I can contact certain of them I’ll be able to arrange passage out for us. Otherwise, we’ll take potluck and approach the least rascally appearing riverman.”
“Over here, you two promising-looking chaps.”
Bish was flapping a green inviting hand at them from behind the bar.
“We’d prefer a table if you—”
“Boss wants a friendly discourse with you two blokes.” Another large waiter, human this one, appeared at Electro’s side. “Don’t antagonize him.”
“We’ve been traveling a full weary day,” said the robot. “Couldn’t we dine and—”
“Discourse first, then food.” The waiter hustled them up to the bar.
Bish gave a pleased chuckle when he noticed their arrival. “Two coves of obvious intellect,” he said. “Clearly several cuts above the usual run of dimwits we get at the Belles Lettres. Take that owlish gent who just received the old heave, he didn’t know his blip from a snerg hole. And him claiming to be a professor at the University of California on Jupiter. Not bloody likely. What’ll it be, lads?”
“What sort of ale do you have?” asked Electro, leaning an elbow on the bar and producing, at least to Tad’s ears, a metallic thunk.
“No, no, I don’t mean what blinking kind of swill you want to slosh into your blooming gullet.” Bish’s gaunt green left hand jabbed out, pointing at a large blackboard propped against the liquor shelves behind him. “What intellectual topic do you wish to discuss?”
Today’s Special was chalked across the top of the blackboard in a mismatched style of lettering. Below was a scrawled list.
Chromatic Aberration
Kepler’s Second Law
Megavitamin Therapy
Harlan Ellison’s Green Period
The Later Miracles of St. Reptillicus
Electro stroke his chin with his scaly knuckle. “Rather sparse fare tonight, Bish.”
“We had to scratch a couple of topics,” said the one-time bishop. “Too controversial, they was. In fact, number seven provoked three brawls, a broken marriage and a scimitar-knifing between sunset and about a half hour ago. I won’t even tell you what that particular topic was, lest you be moved to violence. How about taking Kepler? I’m always good for twenty minutes of heated interchange about that old sod.”
Electro rested his other elbow on the bar top, making a lesser thunk. “I was hoping to discuss transportation,” he confided. “More specifically, transportation along the River Sneath.”
Bish made a rude sound. “That’s no fit subject for men of intellect to chew the blinking rag over.”
“It is, nonetheless, a topic I will pay a small but impressive sum to discuss,” continued the robot. “Earlier inquiries have led me to believe that a few rivermen I knew in former times still travel the Sneath. Should I be able to contact one of them this night, I’d be very pleased.”
“Ar, you’re iust offering a little cumshaw to me for setting up an interview ‘twixt you and one of these sods who run boats on the river,” said Bish. “Hardly the sort of exchange I anticipated when you entered, mates.” He swayed in Tad’s direction. “Are you as intellectually sterile as this verdant pritz here, young fellow?”
“If we chat a few minutes about Kepler, will you help us locate the people we want?”
“Now here’s a true intellectual,” said Bish, attempting to reach across the bar to pat Tad’s shoulder. Instead he slipped, tumbling head foremost into an ice bin behind the bar.
Tad said to the robot, “Maybe there’s an easier way to contact this Commodore Snow or the other riverboat people you mentioned.”
“This place is the crossroads of Fetid Landing, the favored hangout of rivermen,” replied Electro. “If Snow is in town, he’ll be somewhere in this vicinity. Perhaps in a private room above. Same goes for Skipper Anmar, Harpoon Louie and One-Eye Reisberson.”
“Where was I?” Bish, upright again, inserted his little finger into an ear hole to grind out a few flecks of cracked ice.
“Kepler,” said Tad.
“Ah, yes, Kepler, the astronomical sod. Let us begin by analyzing his cockeyed notions about— “
Slam!
Bam!
Crash!
Three people had come tromping and shoving into the cafe, accompanied by a battered and mean-spirited robot. Two of the newcomers were lizard men, red skinned, and the other was an albino catman. The robot had once been painted an eggshell white, but was now much chipped and dirt smeared. Wisps of steam drifted out of his battered ears.
“Trouble,” muttered Bish. “Whenever you get more than one red liz in a room, you’ve got trouble coming.”
“All righty,” boomed one of the red lizard men, “where’s the pussy?”
Bish swallowed, tried to slow his swaying. “Gents, this is a blinking, eating, lodging and debating sort of establishment,” he called out to them. “If you seek—”
“Stow that dilettante crap,” advised the other red lizard. “We come for the pussy.”
“I might suggest you fellows try the Temps Perdu Hotel over on Red Snapper Lane across—”
“We don’t want to buy pussy,” said the catman, his pink eyes narrowed. “We come to fetch home the pussy you’re hiding here!”
Bish gathered his purple robes tighter around his lean body. “Am I to understand you are alluding to one of my boarders?”
“That’s right, the blonde pussy,” said a red lizard.
“Hand her over to us and we’ll drag her home to her goddamn lawful husband,” said the other lizard man. “No trouble for you, no questions asked.”
“That, my friends, would be a violation of the young woman’s basic civil rights,” began Bish. “Something I simply can not—”
“Ambrose, persuade this bugger!” The catman nudged the robot.
A few scabs of white paint fell from the mechanism as he lumbered closer to the bar. “Give us . . . the pussy,” he said in a rumbling, rattling voice. “Else I . . . use me fingers . . . on you, sumbitch!”
“This lout’s in dreadful shape,” said Electro quietly to Tad. “A victim of very slipshod maintenance.”
Tad said, “These guys came here to drag away some girl against her will. We can’t—”
“We have to step aside and let them go about their business,” said Electro.
“But it is a violation of her civil—”
“We don’t know the circumstances or the issues involved. Therefore our best course of action is to ig—”
Zzitz!
Zizzle!
Zam!
Ambrose, the delapidated robot, had aimed three of his metal fingers at the proprietor. From each in turn he spurted a beam of different colored light.
The first had caused Bish to stiffen, the second made him howl and shut his eyes, the third sent him falling to the floor.
“Waiter, come here!” one of the red lizards ordered a catman waiter. “You know where the blonde pussy’s room is! Take us!”
“Really, mate, I’m as ignorant as a newborn quilp as to—”
“Ambrose!”
“A moment now, cobber. It occurs to me you must be seeking the lass in room 26B. I’ll give you a key. I’ll show you how to get up there. I’ll fix you a snack from the sandwich board.”
“Get the key,” the catman instructed Ambrose.
“Key . . . gimme.” The battered robot tottered in the direction of the fearful waiter.
The rest of the customers in that area of the cafe moved rapidly back.
“A disgrace to the profession,” said Electro, frowning at the actions of Ambrose.
“Listen, Electro, we can’t let these guys do this,” insisted Tad. “I mean, break in here, stun the owner, drag off the girl. It’s simply
not—”
“We don’t want to attract attention to ourselves,” reminded Electro. “Otherwise we may never get out of town. Our first loyalty is to your father and your cousins. We can’t afford to—”
“I know that. But this is wrong, and we have to stop it.”
Electro shook his green hand. “Forget it, ignore it,” he said. “We’re not going to risk our safety for some unknown runaway wife whose husband is probably fully justified in having her forceably carted back to his hearthside.” The robot moved a hand toward Tad’s arm.
Tad pushed him away, spun. “I’m going to do something!” He ran, dived at the back of the nearest red lizard man.
Chapter 10
Hardly turning, almost indifferently, the red lizard man swing back his fist. “Not smart, kid.”
The hard scaly fist smacked into Tad’s jaw, jolting his head back and causing him to shut his mouth with a grinding snap. One knee slapped the floor; he teetered.
“Not smart at all.” The lizard man followed with a chop to the neck.
Tad cried out, biting air. His cheek was all at once hitting the raw wood planking of the cafe floor.
Zzip!
What was that? Was it that beat-up robot again?
The floor seemed to hold him like a magnet held a chunk of iron. Tad struggled, pushed with both hands flat out, finally succeeded in rising to his knees.
The lizard man was directly above him, one hand raised.
Tad flinched, before he realized the red lizard was frozen in his position.
“Most extraordinary,” Bish, conscious and upright again, was saying to Electro. “One rarely encounters a fellow lizard with such powers. By the sacred and allegedly sacred bones of St. Giganticus, that was quite a thing to do with just one finger.”
“I have a touch of mystical powers.” To the three remaining intruders he said, “I won’t have anyone hurting my young companion. You’d best beat a hasty retreat.”
“Flog yourself,” snarled the unfrozen red lizard man. “No bloke can stun my lifelong chum and get off with it!”
Tad concentrated on his breathing for the next several seconds. On that and the tiny dots of intense yellow light which were, ever more slowly, dancing across his field of vision.
“I fix . . . him . . . real good.” Ambrose came thudding at Electro.
Zzizz!
Electro had cocked his thumb at the rundown robot. A sizzling line of scarlet brightness leaped out and found the dead center of Ambrose’s jigsaw chest.
Ambrose commenced folding, knee joints first, then elbows. In under a minute he was slumped on the floor near Tad.
“Impressive, highlv impressive,” commented Bish. “Could vou teach me how to—”
“It’s genetic.” Electro, right hand still raised, was staring at the red lizard and the albino catman. “Let me once again suggest your departure.”
“We come for the blonde pussy,” said the catman. “We don’t go without her.”
“You going to get into a lot of trouble,” warned the red lizard, “messing in our affairs.”
“I whole-heartedly agree,” said Electro. “However—”
From elsewhere in the building had come the cry of a girl in pain.
Tad was getting to his feet. “Upstairs someplace,” he said.
“We got a bigger gang than what you see here,” said the catman, laughing and purring.
“They’re abducting the young woman,” said Bish.
“Electro,” shouted Tad, “we have to help her.”
“I really feel it wiser, my boy, to—”
“Come on.”
“Very well, but first . . .” Rays emanated from the robot’s ring and middle fingers.
The red lizard man fell down, the catman froze where he stood.
“Where’s 26B?” Tad asked the bishop.
“Out that door yonder, stairs on your left, second landing and to your right.”
Tad began to run.
Electro followed.
Up above them somewhere the girl cried out again.
“By the way,” said Electro while they bounded up the narrow wooden staircase, “it doesn’t help my disguise any when you blurt out my true name in public places, my boy.”
“Did I? I didn’t realize. Sorry.”
“Joshua’s goons will have an easier time tracking us if you continue to hoot and holler my rather uncommon name about.”
Tad took the next flight of steps two and three at time.
Then he saw the girl.
She was slender, blonde—older than he was, but not by more than two or three years. She was wearing a short-skirted tunic dress and one of the lizard men struggling with her had a paw up under it.
“I’ll hurt you more,” he said, “if you don’t quit fighting.”
There were three more up in the shadowy hallway beneath the floating amber globe of light. Two ragtag catmen and a husky robot in nearly as bad shape as Ambrose of downstairs. One of the catmen had a coil of rope slung over his shaggy arm, the other held a large rough-spun sack.
“Let go of her,” said Tad.
The nearest catman dropped his rope, drew out a gun and fired it directly at him.
Chapter 11
Music and sunlight began intruding.
The music was loud and brassy, the sunlight pale and thin. And he was rocking gently, flat on his back.
There was the girl again. Sitting, hands folded, her slim figure haloed by the pale light of early morning which was coming in at the round bobbing window.
The source of the music wasn’t in the cabin. It was outside somewhere.
The blonde girl was smiling, tentatively, down at him.
He rocked back with his elbows, pushing himself into a nearly sitting position on the wall bunk. “We’re not,” he said, his voice dry and strange, “at the inn.”
The girl nodded. She was very pretty, he noticed. Something he hadn’t been fully aware of when he’d first seen her at the Belles Lettres last . . . had it been last night?
“I’ve been unconscious for awhile,” he said.
“Yes.”
“How long, do you know?”
“About ten hours.”
“He used a stungun on me, then, nothing deadly.”
“They were instructed not to kill anyone, I believe.”
Tad sat up suddenly straighter. “Hey, do they have us?”
“No.” She smiled again, very cautiously. “We’re aboard a riverboat.”
“Electro got us out of there?”
“Your companion, yes. He took care of the whole crew of them.” She was watching her folded hands.
Tad relaxed, became aware again of the music from the deck above. “What’s the music for?”
“A rehearsal I think. This is a showboat.”
Tad ran his tongue over his dry lips. “How long have you been sitting here?”
“Most of the night.”
“You should have rested.”
“I feel responsible.”
“No, you didn’t force me to barge in.”
“Even so.”
He flexed his fingers, rubbed at his forehead, stretched. “Electro brought us to this boat, after we got away from the inn?”
“He brought you here,” she replied. “I tagged along. He wasn’t pleased.”
“Electro hasn’t had much experience in the world,” Tad explained. “You’ll have to excuse him.”
Her smile widened. “The both of you plucked me out of a nasty setup.”
“It was mostly Electro’s doing. Since I was out cold for most of it.”
The girl left the chair, crossed to the sun-bright porthole. “I’d better tell you a few things,” she said. “My name is Jana Taine. I’m twenty-four years old and—”
“Twenty-four? I thought you were younger. Oh, excuse me.”
She asked, “You’re nineteen or twenty?”
“Nearly.”
“That’s why twenty-four seems old to you.” She
was staring out at the river. “I’ve been married for two and a half years to a man named Rodlow Taine. He’s thirty-five. He manages the Rhymer Industries Household Servo plant in—”
“Rhymer Industries?”
“He’s quite important to them, to RI.” She turned to watch him. “Why does the—”
“I’m a Rhymer. Tad Rhymer.”
“Oh,” said Jana. She pressed back against the cabin wall.
“Right now, I’m an outcast Rhymer,” he said quickly. “I mean, I won’t turn you in or call up RI or anything. We’re on the run from my Cousin Joshua.”
“That would be Joshua Rhymer?”
“Do you know him?”
“Oh, yes. Rodlow’s a protégé of his,” said the girl. “And he’s responsible, your cousin, for my father being where he is.”
Tad swung a leg over the bunk edge. “Wait now, did Joshua do something to your father? Put him someplace?”
“It’s called Blackwatch Plantation.”
Tad was on his feet. “But that’s where my father was taken,” he told her. “Electro and I are. . . .” The floor was starting to teeter-totter. His stomach filled with hollow pain.
Jana ran to him, slipped an arm around him. “Better sit again, Tad,” she advised. “Takes quite awhile to get over a stungun jolt. I know.”
She was warm against him. He found he had difficulty swallowing. “I’m okay,” he said. “Not used to being on a boat is all.”
The girl guided him to the bunk, made him sit. Before she moved away Jana leaned and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m impressed with you already, Tad,” she said quietly. “You don’t have to lie to me. It’s no great shame to be woozy after something like what happened to you.”
He didn’t exactly catch all the words. He said finally, “I do feel . . . well, unsteady.”
“I’m impulsive sometimes,” Jana said, returning to the porthole. “Don’t let the fact that a married lady of twenty-four kissed you out of appreciation unsettle you. Things like that will happen to you from now on, usually meaning not much.”
“Not much,” he echoed. “Did you tell Electro about yourself?”