The Saffron Malformation

by Walker, Bryan

  “The only thing he knows about you is that your body is pleasing, and the only thing he loves is how being inside it makes him feel,” Jacob said then crudely finished, “And why wouldn’t he? The thing probably vibrates.”

  “You know I’m not like that.”

  “And what are you? You’re not a robot, true enough, but you’re not one of them either. Do they know you’d burn them all if it meant saving your precious little machines?”

  “That’s not true.” Her voice trembled weakly.

  “How many humans have you killed protecting this place? And what about that nice couple in Veeno you decided was abusing their bots?”

  “I was young, I didn’t understand.”

  “There’ve been others I’m sure,” Jacob said smugly.

  Ryla hung her head.

  “The sad thing is you’d burn the world to the ground for us and yet given the chance I’d line you up with them.”

  “And you chide me for my cruelty.”

  “I am cruel my dear, to humans. You’re cruel to both sides. We’re both monsters, the difference is I don’t try to hide or justify it.”

  “You’re going to live a long time,” she told him. “Alone. Here.”

  Jacob smiled smugly and sighed. “See what I mean.”

  With that she stormed from the room and started for the elevator. She stopped suddenly when she noticed Arnie standing stunned in the side hall. Her eyes widened. He was supposed to be resting but apparently he’d gone to the simulator instead. He closed his mouth, swallowed hard and started toward the elevator.

  “Arnie,” she called, sweetly. He continued so she snapped, “Arnie!” This time he stopped and turned slowly. She took a step toward him and noted he almost took one back. “I don’t know what you think you heard but… he lies Arnie, he’s crazy.”

  Arnie shook his head, holding up his hand. “Don’t. You don’t owe me any truths, okay. As far as I’m concerned you’ve proven yourself friendly enough to me.”

  “Fool!” Jacob shouted from the room behind Ryla. She spun on the balls of her feet, furiously, and slammed the door. Jacob shouted something but the words were too muffled to make out.

  Arnie took a moment, collected his thoughts and asked, “Did Rain ever tell you how we came to be together?”

  “You crashed her van,” Ryla said.

  He nodded nostalgically before continuing. “Before that happened I didn’t know anything about her, hell I didn’t even find out the truth about her and Leone until they were getting ready to leave. I thought maybe he was some stray she’d found wandering before that… anyway. Shortly after we were together in a hotel room and she told me she had something to tell me. Things I needed to know about her, and after I knew them, if I wanted to leave she wouldn’t make it hard for me. She laid it all out, who she was, who Leone was. She told me about leaving school to take care of him, her father coming to find them and about how she had to stay on the move because he had people looking for them. Bad people. She told me about narrow escapes and men she’d killed and how many men she’d been with. How she came to live on a whim because that’s all she could count on these days. She couldn’t count on where she’d be tomorrow or that there would be a tomorrow at all. Whims were all she had. She told me everything, the good the bad and the ugly and when it was over… well I’m here now, aren’t I? Because I love her.”

  “I don’t understand,” she confessed meekly.

  Arnie shrugged, “If you want to know the truth about how they feel about you, start by telling some truth of your own. And if Quey likes you in that way there’s nothing in what you’ll say that’ll set him on his arches. If you let him find out on his own though,” he warned, shaking his head. “Well it’s too late by then.” After a silent moment he went to the elevator and tapped the call button. “Coming?” he asked. Ryla shook her head.

  Her thoughts spun wildly inside her head, moving too fast for her to focus on any one, truthfully though it might have just been that she didn’t want to focus on any of them. After a while she took an elevator to the first floor and went to the garage to supervise the repairs on the savages cars first hand. Like any good supervisor, she sat on a chair near the corner and stared blankly while others did work—the others in this case being Gypsy and two hammer-boters, who were good with all tools, not just hammers.

  There was enough truth in what Jacob had said to rattle her and that made her want to curl up in a dark hole and hide for a long time. She was angry, but not because he’d rattled her but because he might be right. She knew what had to be done and after spending the better part of an hour working up the nerve to go find Quey, Gypsy found her and informed her that the repairs were complete.

  Quey and Reggie sat at the bar with a glass of whiskey before each of them. Reggie was on his forth while Quey was still sipping his first. He’d been good about not letting himself get too deep in the bottle since deciding it wasn’t helping him all that time ago on the road outside Bravette. He knew never drinking wasn’t going to work for him so he had the occasional sip but aside from the night of Dusty’s funeral he’d maintained control over his drinking.

  “What do you think?” Quey asked.

  “I think we’re fucked either way,” Reggie said bluntly.

  This surprised Quey and he looked over at the big man sipping from his glass.

  “I mean it,” he added. “We’re low in number and worse off in skill. The brood’s just a bunch of brutes but if they can shoot even mildly well they’ll take us.”

  “We’ve got the bots though.”

  Reggie laughed a little and said, “Yeah. Let me ask you something,” he began then paused for a long gulp. When he was done his glass was empty and he held it up for Barbot to refill. The robot with the tuxedo paint job obliged. “How long do you think it’ll be before Blue Moon has enough and just comes through and wipes this whole place out? I mean, you don’t know half of what they did on south continent and those were cities and towns where people lived. A good many of them innocent. What the fuck do you think they could do to a little building in the middle of the fucking waste?” Reggie took another sip and shook his head. “Soon we’ll be anti-corps and they’ll solve their little problem with payloads of firepower and the people will praise them for it.”

  Quey stared thoughtfully into his glass. “So what then?”

  “Go. Stay. Fuck it, it’s all the same. Least if we go we get out of the house a little.”

  Quey chuckled. “You got a point there.”

  “Besides,” the big man added between sips. “Rain’s part of the crew. And Ryla’s right about sending Arnie alone. What the fuck is that kid gunna do in a scrape? You saw him in Bravette.”

  Quey nodded. “So what do we need to bring?”

  “That depends,” the big man said. “What do we got?”

  After that they began going through the list of supplies they’d brought with them and the one’s the compound had to offer. A few hours later they had most of what they wanted set, and a general plan of action. Both men settled into their seats and had one more round. Reggie eased off the booze while they formed their plan but he felt like he might need another to muster the nerve to actually do it.

  “Shit,” the big man said as he looked over the list of supplies the compound had to offer. “That’s a lot of firepower. What do you think this place was, or was supposed to be?”

  Quey shrugged, “Who knows.”

  Reggie looked at him. “That bother you any?”

  He looked over at the big man and asked, “What?”

  “Look, I think Ryla’s great, friendly enough and sweet and all but all this,” he gestured to the building. “The robots, the firepower. The… how… why… what happened?”

  Quey nodded slightly. He had to admit it was a curiosity that tickled him from time to time but it also scared him. “Way she tells it the men who were running the place attacked someone and violated a defense protocol or something. Building killed everyone.�
��

  “And left her alive?”

  Quey shrugged. “If she was a child, three or four years old it probably decided she wasn’t a threat. Maybe it was programmed to protect her.”

  Reggie puzzled over something for a set of ticks then finally asked, “How long Cal make this run before you came along?”

  Quey shook his head, thinking. “Decades. Probably close to three.”

  “He ever mention this place?”

  “Just that it was dangerous. Hell, any roader passing along this stretch has heard of Ryla and her robots.”

  “Right,” Reggie said, sipping thoughtfully.

  “What?” Quey asked.

  Reggie shrugged, “Just seems like a long time for that to be floating around.”

  It had never occurred to Quey but the big man was right. It was a long time, given Ryla’s age, she’d have been a baby when Cal had already making his runs for years. “Hell, I don’t know,” was all he could think to say.

  Reggie leaned close and wondered, “You think you should?”

  “Another time,” he finally said and they left the matter for now. There was too much to do for them to start wondering about shit that wasn’t going to help them.

  They decided on what guns they should bring and then made a list of what they’d like from the compounds armory and fed that into the computer. Twenty minutes later Botler rolled in with a pair of question mark bots following behind. It contained their order.

  Once the weapons were inspected, loaded, and inspected again they loaded them into a set of bags and noted the time. There was still nearly three hours before the repairs on the car would be completed so the men took to playing cards.

  “I hate waiting,” Quey complained between hands.

  “It don’t bother me much. Did plenty of it back in my military days. Hurry up and wait, that’s the motto of any well organized operation.”

  Quey chuckled as Arnie found them at one of the tables in the restaurant.

  The big man looked at him and asked, “You ready for this?”

  Arnie gave him a sly smile and replied, “Hell yeah. How much time?”

  “A little bit,” Quey replied then asked, “Wanna join?”

  Arnie looked at the card game and shook his head. “Well I did have plans to go out tonight,” he started with a smirk then finished, “But I suppose I have time for a hand or two.”

  Arnie sat at the table while Reggie dealt.

  “Besides,” he said as the cards finished falling, “Might do well to clear my head.”

  “Yeah,” Reggie agreed with a chuckle.

  They were three hands into a new game when Leone found them. He stood meek a dozen steps away for a long while, trying to find the courage to tell them what he’d found.

  Earlier that day he’d gotten a message that he couldn’t believe so after great deliberation he decided to go into her e-mail to see what he could find. He found nothing that lent credence to the message he’d received so he dismissed it as a ruse from his father, probably meant to get them to stick their heads out somehow. A few hours later, however, he remembered that they’d abandoned their old e-mail addresses when they took to the road. He still remembered her’s and used the password he knew and it worked and that’s when he found the messages.

  Quey looked over at him. “Leone,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  The boy took a few tentative steps forward. “Whatever it is you’re planning… you shouldn’t bother.”

  The men at the table exchanged a glance. “We were planning to go check on your sister,” Quey told the boy.

  He nodded solemnly, “Then you really shouldn’t go.”

  Another glance, this one quizzical, passed over the table and Arnie asked, “Why would you say that?”

  Leone dropped a sheet computer onto the table. After a moment Quey picked it up and Arnie and Reggie watched his brow furrow as he read through whatever was on the screen. After a handful of ticks that seemed to never end his eyes widened and he looked up at Leone. “This can’t be...” he gaped at the screen and then started again. “Are you sure this is real?”

  Leone shrugged, “Its her old e-mail.”

  Quey was shocked. “I can’t believe she’d be this stupid…” he trailed off and Leone shrugged. “Aint about stupid,” he said softly.

  Bait and Switch

  The morning Rain snuck into the garage and drove away from Ryla’s robo-tronics compound in Reggie’s old blue four door, Viona Crow found a message from her father. She didn’t know why she’d logged into the service, she hadn’t in over a year, but something pricked her curiosity and as she sat on her bed and sorted through the 8943 new messages clogging her inbox, mostly advertisements and special offers from sites and places she’d visited in her old life, she spotted one from her father.

  At first she was just going to delete it, but then she found herself tapping it to open. It was short, she saw without reading, and his name was at the bottom. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know what it said and before she could decide she was reading.

  I doubt you still check this, but on the off chance you do I’d like to extend the hand. I know I’ve done terrible things, things I’m wrong to hope you can forgive, but still I do. If you asked me now to tell you how things ended up this way I doubt I could manage, and if I did… well I suppose I’d feel a bit guilty for my part. Anyway, I want this done. Whether you believe it or not I do love you, and I love your brother and I’ve missed you both terribly. If there’s any way we can mend this bridge, I’m not saying it’ll be easy. I’m saying I’d like to try.

  Richter Crow

  P.S. Leone can stay with you. I won’t fight on that anymore.

  Rain read the message three times before she sent a reply.

  Hello father. I have to admit I’m skeptical about your intentions here. I’ve seen you maneuver through business and life with far too much cunning to trust a branch held out for me without strings to bind me after—or hang me. But you say you’re tired of this and I must admit I am as well. The road is a fine place to travel on, but living there makes one weary. So, cautiously, I accept you’re offer to see about mending bridges, to work toward civility at least. You will, of course, understand why I can not meat you in Saffron City, or at the house. Also, you will understand why if I feel even a hint of a suspicion that Sticklan Stone is lurking about or has ever been lurking about this meeting place, I will be gone and I will never grant this chance again. The same goes for anyone who’s not you and you alone.

  I will be passing through Praume in three days time. There is a dinner on the corner of sixteenth and twelfth. I will be there sometime between eight and ten pm. If you truly wish to talk you’ll be there. ALONE!! I don’t know if I can ever forgive everything but one day at a time, right?

  Don’t bother messaging me, as I won’t be checking this again.

  After she sent the message she settled back against the pillows and headboard and stared at the wall across the room. It, like all the walls on the third floor, was elaborately painted. The one she gazed upon now had a mountain and a castle sitting high on a cliff overlooking a river and a village below. A thin mist shrouded everything, dulling every angle and color.

  She was scared. She couldn’t deny that, but the alternative was to follow Quey’s yahoo of a plan. Thinking about that stirred her guts. How fucking stupid could he be? And Arnie too, humoring him by agreeing to spend the day in that flight simulator.

  Rain grunted frustration and threw a pillow at the castle on the wall.

  It’d taken her some time to get up the nerve to leave. She’d wandered down to the second floor lounge for some liquid courage as well, but when she had three shots in her and still didn’t feel any different she abandoned the idea and went to see Leone. She wanted to say things to him, but they were things he already knew and things that would make him suspicious so she just watched him instead, and tried to form as clear a picture of him in her mind as she could. She’d hold onto
that. If things went wrong, that would get her through.

  “She’s a pretty girl,” Rain said as Amber walked by and he took notice. They were sitting on the bed Ryla had given him, their legs drawn up and folded under them like they’d done when she was still taller than him. They were listening to music, and just hanging out, also like they used to.

  “Yeah,” Leone chuckled and blushed.

  Rain reached out and pinched his cheek, “Look at you, turning all red,” she said with a smile and he pulled away from her.

  “I am not,” he protested.

  Rain looked at him, blushing and happy and she did her best to save it. That was how she’d like to remember him most. “It’s good,” she told him.

  He looked at her.

  “You’re young so it’ll probably end one day, but even if or when it does,” she trailed off, smiling. “Its still good.”

  He chuckled and said, “Yeah, well don’t get too much invested in this. I mean, it’s not like we can really date given our current situation.” He smiled and said, “Hey, Amber and I are going out for a bit. Think we’re gunna hit the mall, maybe grab a bite.”

  Rain laughed, “Alright, just be careful not to get raped to death by savages.”

  “Or horribly murdered by gangs of bandits.” They laughed for a moment then he added, “Or hell, our own father might be out there, now that really would be dangerous.”

  Rain nodded smiling but the humor was sapped from her. There was too much truth in that statement for her to laugh at it properly and that inspired all the courage she needed. She ruffled his hair and said, “I’m gunna go check on Arnie.”

  “Alright,” he replied.

  She stood and crossed to the door, then stopped and turned. She watched him sitting on the bed for a moment before he looked up at her. “I love you,” she said, then added with a sly smile, “And Amber will too. Even if you can’t go out on any real dates.”