“Now, Mata, don’t start. Doctor’s orders are Pramador.” Cuthbert unscrewed the lid.
She’d been prescribed the liquid since being committed here four nights ago when she’d suffered a breakdown in front of the guards, Eloise and Rudolph. The mockery of the medicine didn’t fail to leave its mark on her: the tranquilizer was boosting the nightmares she was already suffering from the GTS. A double whammy. She chuckled. Another poke in the ribs from Him. God’s doing it, she thought, because—like Stringer had asked her all those years ago—if you can supply that information to the Truattan’s, why haven’t you? Because, you fool, Niyati was weak, but Mata is strong! Mata needs her mind to help the survivors. “I’m not taking the medicine, anymore, Cuthbert. I want to speak with the doctor.”
“She’ll be here in the morning.”
“Let me speak to the night charge.”
“That would be me.”
“Where’s Norma?”
“Come on, Mata, please take your med.”
“Where’s Norma?
“Take this now and you can talk with the doctor when she comes in.”
“No. I won’t have my brain muddied anymore.”
“Open up.”
She clamped her jaws tight.
Cuthbert stared her down, but she stood strong. He threw his palms up. “Fine, but you’re gonna have to explain it to the doctor.” He screwed the lid back on the bottle and placed it back in his pocket. Mata smiled. He swiftly removed the injector that he had shot into the screaming man and punctured her neck with it.
Mata leaped at him. “You son of a—” She fell back and into a murky haze.
Cuthbert walked into the hall and said to an orderly, “Mata’s at it again. She requires binding.”
~~~
A group of small children stood near the compound’s entrance, about ten feet behind the five guards. One of the kids—a boy—shouted, “Make him do it again!”
A ray from the barrel of an electro-rod singed J-1’s right ear. “Do it again, robot,” the guard who shot him said.
J-1 hopped twice. The lock and chains wrapped around his body made jingling noises. The children giggled.
“You all skedaddle home, now,” another guard said. “Before we arrest you, too.”
The kids bolted.
Another guard poked his electro-rod in J-1’s back. “This time, keep moving.”
J-1 hopped three times, lost his balance and tumbled to the ground. On his back, he noticed for the first time the opaque, round bubble-dome surrounding Pocketsville. It was anchored to a fifteen-foot-high stone wall circling the enclave, which looked to be about a quarter-mile in diameter. On the top, inside portion of the perimeter wall was a walkway. A few guards patrolled it. Six others were stationed on the wall at evenly distanced lookout points. They kept their vision glued to the outside.
“Get up, tradshit,” a female guard said. The five guards surrounding J-1 tightened around him. They were slim, crusty people with the same bluish-purple eyes that all Truattans had. They were three men, two women. They thrust the tips of their electro-rods inches from his face.
J-1 struggled to get into a sitting position to boost himself up, but the chains binding him wouldn’t allow it. “I can’t.”
“Dix,” the woman said to another guard. “You and Hammersham want to get the thing to its feet?”
“What do you think, Ham?” Dix asked Hammersham.
Hammersham spit on J-1. “I suppose so. If it’s the only way we can get it to where we’re going.” Each man gripped J-1’s upper arms and forced him up. They dragged him down a long, narrow footpath next to and paralleling the perimeter wall. The area was devoid of people.
Yards away from the footpath were the fenced backyards of tightly spaced double and single story apartment buildings. The buildings were austere. They were constructed from wood and carbo-metallic war scraps. Between each complex were ten-feet-wide separations. Through the gaps J-1 got glimpses of a large enclosed greenhouse constructed yards beyond the fronts of the units. The greenhouse seemed to run down the entire center of Pocketsville.
Several minutes later they passed the final apartment complex. They came to a rectangular stone building.
“Take him in,” the woman said.
J-1 caught Hammersham glancing at Dix. There was a grim look on their faces that brought chills to J-1. They started to drag him inside. He struggled to break free, but it was useless.
A man said to the woman who was in charge, “Beatrice, maybe we should, you know…?” J-1 studied the man. He had a paunch and was older than the other guards. His hair was sparse and there was gray in his whiskers. He smelled of pipe tobacco.
Beatrice glared at him. “No, I don’t know, Rudolph. What should we do?”
“Look, I like Prudence as much as anyone.” Rudolph looked at the others. “But shouldn’t we at least get the robot’s side of the story?”
Prudence? J-1 thought. What does she have to do with this?
“For God’s sake,” Beatrice replied. “The thing’s built by Earthers. It’s the damn enemy.”
“I’m aware of what it is, but still, our job isn’t to determine truth and lies.”
“Then whose is it?” Hammersham said. “The court?” The last word carried disdain.
“I’m not an enemy,” J-1 said. “I can prov—”
Beatrice slammed the butt of her electro-rod into J-1’s gut. Multicolored flares shot behind his eyes. He doubled over, gulping air in short, painful strokes.
“Let it speak,” Rudolph said. “Or I’ll have no part of this.”
Beatrice pulled back her weapon. “You’re already a part of it.”
“Maybe so,” Rudolph answered. “But it gets a chance to defend itself before we melt it down.”
Melt it down? Bent over, snatching air, J-1 wondered if he had heard correctly.
“Bracch,” Beatrice snapped at him with contempt. She turned to Dix and nodded.
Dix jerked J-1 up by his scalp.
Rudolph said, gently, “Go on, robot, now’s your chance.”
J-1 looked wildly around at the other, hostile faces. “Are you talking about after Prudence and I were carried off by the Dark Prey?”
Rudolph nodded. J-1 told them everything that had happened, including how Prudence had abandoned him. He stuck with the falsehood of how he had escaped by finding a space to hide in. He did this for the same reason as before—the less they knew about his communication with the Dark Prey, the better J-1 thought it was for himself.
Beatrice smirked at Rudolph. “Happy now?”
Rudolph ignored her and said to J-1, “So it was you who shot the electro-rod that started the fire?”
He nodded.
“Had you ever fired one before?”
“No,” J-1 said, “but I watched Norma and her battalion shoot them.”
“And it was Prudence who left you at the mercy of those creatures?” Hammersham added.
“Yes. Why?” J-1 answered.
“What about Matilda?” Dix asked. “I suppose she tried running away from you, too?”
“Orson’s wife?” J-1’s pulse quickened. “She died in a WarBot attack.”
“Now, Orson’s lying too?” the other woman guard said.
Dix tightened his grip on J-1. “I guess everyone’s lying but the robot.”
“You can’t trust a word from this thing’s mouth,” Beatrice said to Rudolph. “Do you believe me now?”
Rudolph said to J-1, “I’m trying to play fair with you, mechi. Tell us the truth.”
J-1 glanced at the others. It was obvious by the accusation in their eyes they didn’t believe him. He turned to Rudolph. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Haul him inside,” Beatrice said.
Hammersham and Dix dragged him into the building. J-1’s fear turned to rage-laced panic when he saw the name over the door: Hydro-Solair Salvage Plant.
They entered. Overbearing heat, and the ear-ripping pound,
ring, pound of hammer striking metal flooded J-1’s senses. There were four furnaces in the center of the small building. Each was the size and shape of a small silo.
The furnaces were lined with square metal doors built waist high from the floor. Four sweaty, sinewy blacksmiths—three men and one woman—stood by long, crude metal tables located near each of the furnaces. Orange-hot metal was lying on them. The smithies pounded on the metal with heavy mallets. They were dressed in heat-retardant headgear, gloves and tan jumpsuits. Occasionally one of them would put down their hammer, pick up the metal with a clamp and place it on a nearby gurney, roll it to their furnace and place the metal inside. Which each opening of a furnace the room glowed greenish-orange from the hydro-fueled flame inside.
“Stay here,” Beatrice yelled over the pounding to the others. She approached one of the blacksmiths and said something to him. Between hammer strokes the blacksmith glanced at J-1 and nodded to Beatrice. Beatrice returned and pointed to that blacksmith’s furnace. “Take the robot there. He’s nearly ready for him.”
The two men dragged J-1 to the furnace. He tried to break free of his bonds, but they were tight and strong. Sweat rolled off Hammersham and Dix as they waited. J-1 glanced at Rudolph. He was again appealing to Beatrice. She walked away. The blacksmith approached, wriggled J-1’s chains and said, “I don’t know if he’ll melt completely.”
“All we care about is that he stops working,” Hammersham said.
“You don’t have to worry about that.” The blacksmith opened the door.
“Tradshit, that’s hot!” Dix exclaimed. He released J-1’s arm, grabbed his legs and lifted them as Hammersham shifted to J-1’s head and gripped him at the armpits.
“No!” J-1 jerked his torso as hard as he could. Beatrice and the other female guard rushed in and grabbed his midsection. I’m not going down without a fight. He wiggled harder.
“You mother Earthin’ piece of garbage!” Hammersham said between gritted teeth. He maneuvered J-1’s head to the furnace opening. J-1 twisted to his right side and bit Hammersham’s arm. Hammersham staggered. He growled and continued shoving J-1 inside the furnace.
J-1 flailed his chained arms and legs.
Dix and the others hung tight. They maneuvered his body so that it lined up head first with the opening. They shoved him inside to his chin. His hair singed. His earlobes burnt. J-1 squeezed his eyes shut—I am not going down without a fight—and continued to thrash about. The movement stopped his forward motion, but only for seconds. The guards pushed harder. His neck crossed into the furnace. A pungent ozone smell filled his nostrils. He was afraid to scream because he thought his tongue would melt. Then something odd. His legs and hips plummeted and smacked the floor outside of the furnace.
The momentum pulled the rest of his body outside with them. The hammering noise had stopped. J-1 looked around—glad that the heat hadn’t damaged his eyes—and tried to make sense of what was going on. Beatrice and Hammersham were holding his upper body. Dix and the nameless female guard who had been holding his leg and waist had released him. They were rubbing their forearms.
Their coat sleeves were scorched. A pink electro-rod ray zipped past J-1 and nipped Beatrice’s hand. At nearly the same time, another ray pecked Hammersham’s shoulder. Beatrice and Hammersham released J-1. He toppled to the floor face up.
“Who in landerbyss gave you permission to take matters into your own hands?” J-1 recognized the voice. It was Norma.
“The robot was built by Earthers,” Hammersham said. “No mercy!”
“It murdered Matilda and nearly killed Prudence,” Beatrice added. “It deserves to die.”
“That’s not your jobs to decide those things.” Another voice J-1 recognized. Teague.
A male and female guard he had never seen before came to J-1. They raised him to his feet. Upright, he saw three other male guards along with Norma and Teague standing near the entrance. Their electro-rods were pointed at Beatrice and her people. The blacksmiths were motionless. Rudolph was about halfway between Norma and the furnace, his hands raised over his head.
“A Slaver killed Matilda. I saw it with my own eyes,” Norma said. “If the court finds him guilty of anything else you have my word there will be no mercy.” She directed Beatrice to unshackle J-1. She told her squadron to confine Beatrice and the others to their quarters until they cooled off. The squadron led them away. The blacksmiths resumed their pounding. Norma and Teague propped J-1’s arms around their shoulders and helped him outside.
Coco was waiting for him. He had never been so happy to see the lifter before. Norma and Teague sat J-1 on Coco’s tray.
Coco floated between Norma and Teague, following along as they traversed a stone path set in the center of Pocketsville. The path ran alongside the glass enclosed plant nursery J-1 had gotten glimpses of earlier. From this vantage point, it was easy to see that there were matching apartment complexes on either side of the nursery.
As he suspected, the apartments and nursery ran nearly the length of the compound. Now that he was closer to the greenhouse, he could see ceiling sprinklers drizzling blue-tinged, GTS-infused water over the plants and vegetables. A notion crossed his mind. He turned to Norma. “How did you know I was in trouble?”
“A couple of kids ran home and told their mother, a guard named Eloise, that they’d been having fun with a robot-man. Eloise contacted me to find out if the rumor was true that there was a robot-man in the camp. We poked around and ended up at the Salvage Plant. Automaton, you are about the luckiest piece of machinery I’ve ever encountered.”
J-1 didn’t feel lucky. He felt angry and alone. “Those people treated me like Frankenstein.”
Norma and Teague cocked their heads at him, clueless.
“Like I was a monster.”
“Don’t be too harsh on them,” Teague said. “Your masters and their machines have decimated our people.”
“I would’ve done the same thing, too,” Norma added, “if Orson and Prudence had told me what they’ve been telling the others.”
“I know Orson believes I’m responsible for his wife’s death,” J-1 replied. “But what could Prudence say?”
“You want the short version or the long one?” Teague asked.
“I want every detail.” J-1 studied the faces peering out at them from the countless apartment windows that they passed: women, men and children with bluish-purple eyes. They were thin, sickly. Some gazed at him with shell-shocked numbness, others with hatred or fear.
“According to Prudence, she had found an escape tunnel from the Dark Prey, but it was a trap,” Teague said. “And that before she was knocked semi-conscious and her electro-rod ripped from her, she fired into shrubbery and started a blaze to blind the creatures.”
“I don’t believe it,” J-1 said. “She’s twisted the story entirely around.”
“It gets worse. As Prudence struggled to regain her senses, you picked up the rod as a crutch and left her behind,” Teague replied.
“How does that account for her escaping and me not?”
Norma said, “She explained that as you were limping along, she fought past the Dark Prey and caught up to you. She wrestled the rod from you, fired a few pot shots at the creatures, took off and never looked back.”
He could barely contain a heated rage rushing through him. “That’s a lie!”
“Calm down, automaton,” Norma said. “Anger won’t help you with anyone, particularly the court.”
Angry? I’m angry? Why couldn’t he detect these things, or any of the other feelings for that matter and stop them before they blossomed? He took a deep breath to settle himself. Norma was right, irrational outbursts wouldn’t help him. “Do you believe her story?”
Norma and Teague glanced at each other. Norma shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Teague asked, “Why would she lie?”
“For the record,” he said with some resentment, “here’s my version.” J-1 told them how the events really unfolded up to
the point where Prudence abandoned him to face the Dark Prey alone. When he had finished Norma and Teague said nothing.
J-1 had been so absorbed in his story that he hadn’t noticed they had traveled the length of the nursery, which was nearly the length of the compound. They crossed a public square, and were nearly back at the double doors leading into and out of Pocketsville. “Where are you taking me?” he asked.
Norma pointed to a building tucked away from the nursery and apartment complexes. “Prison House.” A six-foot-high metal wall surrounded the squat structure. Sharp stone jutted from the barrier’s top. A sentry stood outside the only entrance.
J-1 swallowed hard as they approached the penitentiary.
~~~
Prison House was austere, cold. J-1’s small cell had a bed, a pitcher of water, a chamber pot and a barred window with a prime view of the prison yard. It was nothing but hard dirt and rock. He’d been issued prison garb: a red jumpsuit and sandals. In the first seconds that he was led into the cell a thought swept through his mind—he’d been in something similar to this a long, long time ago. The moment quickly vanished.
A man named Philo, in the next cell over, said that the only other prisoner was Orson. Fortunately for J-1, Orson was housed far enough away that the epithets he was constantly hurling at him weren’t overbearing.
Philo was a chatty man. He explained that the prison was mostly unoccupied because there wasn’t much serious crime in Pocketsville. “People are too worn out trying to stay alive.” J-1 believed him. Other than Philo, Orson, and two prison guards—Cord, who had the night shift, and Bethel, who had the day shift—the building appeared empty.
Philo said he was a gardener at the nursery. His deep, melodious voice would spring up at all hours without notice. On the first day he inquired about J-1’s incarceration. He told Philo of Prudence’s accusations against him, Orson’s allegation of his wife’s death, and his near melt at the Salvage Plant.
“Either you’re crazy tough,” Philo said. “Or just plain crazy.”
J-1 hoped not the latter, though he again contemplated if his databanks were affected by his injuries and/or by ingesting the genimetrothiasine.
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