When Dora walked into the kitchen at Smith Manor for breakfast, she was surprised to see Tony there. She ran to him and threw her arms around his neck, laughing.
Tony blushed bright red, surprising her. Didn't she hug him every day? "Good morning, Dora," he said.
"Tony, have you heard the news?" she asked, stepping back and smiling up at him.
"Obviously not," he said.
"The city is financing repairs on Big X and Big Tau. And the Military Police are providing security."
Tony was amazed. "How did this happen?"
Dora noticed the other people in the kitchen for the first time: Angel, Norman, and R. Dorothy. Confused by her lapse of manners and her failure to follow her own invariable routine, she said, "Good morning" to the room in general, then gave hugs to each of them in turn. Angel was not yet fully awake and was sitting at the kitchen table, huddled over her coffee mug, but she gave Dora a bright if slightly unfocused smile. Norman was cooking breakfast gave her a warm smile. R. Dorothy was assisting him, as usual, and expressed warmth and affection without even a hint of a smile, as only she could.
Dora told Tony in a few words about the deal that Roger had negotiated on her ... on Persephone's behalf with the city. Dora's tale faltered for a moment when the realized that, in her own mind, she was treating Persephone as the junior partner again; almost as if Persephone was her personal property. That wasn't like her. Was it?
Continuing, she told Tony that the city would pay for the repairs and maintenance of Persephone's two Megadeuses, Big Tau and Big X, and the Military Police would protect Hangar X and its approaches. Dora felt herself running out of words before the tale was fully told, but Angel was more awake now and filled in some of the details.
Tony was interested but surprisingly fidgety. Dora took pity on him and asked, "What brings you here, Tony?"
"Mr. Beck wants your help field-testing a secret project today. He says I can't tell anyone any details, but you'll want to bring your car."
Dora was baffled; this could mean anything. But Tony loved her far more than he respected Beck, so she asked, "Should I go?"
"I'd be grateful for your support. It might be dangerous, though. And we'll want to be underway as soon as we can."
She was pleased. This was the first time he'd asked her to do something dangerous with him. Usually she had to take the lead and practically drag him along. This was promising! And she enjoyed road trips with Tony. "I'd love to. I'll pack and call Persephone." Persephone was expecting her at Hangar X.
Excusing herself, she went to her room and placed the call. "Hello, Persephone. This is Dora. Jason asked me to go on field trials today. Would that be all right with you?"
"Hey, that's pretty good timing," said Persephone, "but I really wanted to talk to you in person this morning. I have news." They had agreed to be careful on the telephone and talk about important things only in person. R. Dorothy could hear phone calls a few feet from the wires and Norman was probably recording them.
"Tony and I need to leave in just a few minutes."
"You two are so cute together! But I wish he'd like me again. He's seeing less of you because he's avoiding me, and I feel like a bad friend."
"I wish he'd like you again, too," said Dora. Tony's grudge against Persephone was burdensome in its own right and was standing in the way of Dora's half-formed plans.
"I can't resist giving you part of the news! I've broken up with Alan. He's officially not my boyfriend anymore. He doesn't know yet, but I do. I'm helping Big X for his own sake, not Alan's. You can tell Tony."
Dora was entranced by the idea of having Persephone all to herself, with none of that lingering loyalty to Alan. "Congratulations on your break-up. I'm sure you'll be very happy."
"You're too kind. Ricky twisted my arm. He can do that now because they took the casts off everything but his leg."
"Will he be discharged soon?"
"He's already out."
Dora wanted to hear more about this. Didn't Ricky still need assistance? Wasn't his mom working two jobs? He couldn't be staying with his pal Mitch and mysterious Clarisse, could he? But there wasn't time. "I have to go, Persephone. I'll call you as soon as I get back."
"See you later, alligator."
"In a while, crocodile."
She replaced the receiver. She changed into work clothes, including steel-toed boots and a black leather jacket. She took out a cloth cap, she put it on, stuffing her long, pale hair into it. Traveling in the Underground and working on Megadeuses had taught her the value of protecting her hair, and field trials could be just as bad. How Angel went through every kind of adventure without messing up her hair, Dora couldn't imagine.
The outfit made her look like somebody's thirteen-year-old brother, though. Tony wouldn't like that. He was sweet on her, and her actual age of sixteen was already too low for his peace of mind.
Maybe she'd ask Tony for suggestions for practical garb that didn't make her look like a newsboy. It would turn a situation into a problem to be solved. He'd like that.
She pulled a large carpetbag from her closet. It held the rest of her field gear: a change of clothes, gloves, goggles, binoculars, canteen, and other supplies. With field trials, you never knew.
She took down the case containing her pistol, a recent gift from Angel. It was a standard .32-caliber revolver, accurate and rugged. Angel had given her a few lessons before selecting the pistol for her.
She hesitated a moment, then took off her leather jacket and put on her shoulder holster, then holstered the pistol. She'd never really worn the shoulder holster. It wouldn't hurt to get used to it. She put her regular holster and all her ammunition (about a hundred rounds) in the carpetbag. She opened the door and used both hands to lug the heavy carpetbag into the hallway.
Tony appeared as if by magic and carried it for her, lifting it effortlessly with one hand. They smiled at each other as they walked to the elevator.
R. Amelia growled in frustration at the distress beacon, now probably functional, for all the good that would do her. She'd fixed the break in the antenna cable, a foot below the ceiling, using Quintus as the world's most expensive crane. A Megadeus was handy around the house, if you had a big enough house. She'd had him stand underneath the break and lift her in his hand. But if it was broken inside the protection of the hangar, what were the odds that it was intact outside?
She'd worked all night, first on the beacon, then on the break in the cable. Now it was full daylight outside: not a good time to inspect the station's exterior. Sure, the hill was craggy and had sparse trees and undergrowth providing some cover, but her enemies were organized. Somebody must be observing.
And, naturally, none of the surviving records in the station said a word about how the antenna system worked. It was maddening! It might have a telescoping tower or a final amplifier or just about anything, really. Something that had to be deployed first.
She wished she had a really good technician with her. Her training centered around Megadeuses and androids, where radio and its rather bizarre equivalents were pretty cut-and-dried. You replaced broken modules and knew how to do a limited number of field repairs. Not much theory at all. She didn't know the first thing about ...
An idea interrupted her inner grousing. Transmission lines! End reflections! Speed of light! She could send a signal down the antenna and measure how long it took for the reflection to come back. That would give the length. Ridiculously short? That would mean a break. No, wait, couldn't it also mean a repeater? Doggone it!
But a repeater would be terminated, wouldn't it? Wouldn't that eliminate the reflection? Or at least attenuate it?
She jumped to her feet. She'd work out the fine points later. Time to find an oscilloscope and a signal generator, or, better yet, a pulse generator.
Roger Smith was in bed. It was morning, normally his grumpiest time of the day, but he smiled at R. Dorothy in deep contentment, remarking, "This is a lot better than being awakened by your piano."
She had put her dress back on and was attending to the white cuffs. Glancing at him sidelong, she asked, "Is my playing that bad?"
"You are skilled, yet passionate, with flashes of both warmth and pathos, with moments of originality and humor, not to mention deep affection and an almost superhuman frenzy."
"Almost?"
"We're talking about your piano playing, Dorothy! For the other thing I mentioned, there's no 'almost' about it."
"That's better." She adjusted the brooch at her throat.
"Not that I'm complaining," said Roger, "but why am I up so early?"
"General Dastun has received some disturbing reports and he wants our advice right away."
Just after sunrise, Grand Dominus Wayne Douglas strolled around the tents and trailers of his camp, radiating a mostly genuine confidence. The camp was about a mile from the Megadeus station and concealed by a low ridge. It was also out of line with the main doors, so a Megadeus would have to emerge and advance on the camp before it could do any damage.
The men's cars and trucks were arrayed on the far side of camp, ready for a quick getaway along two good routes and one bad route with little risk of traffic pileups or interception.
It was a good camp, but Douglas was concerned. He had so few men! Those loyal to the Movement were little more than a tragic remnant. He had only six trained commandos left. Another dozen were untrained or semi-trained combatants. The rest, twenty or so, were truck drivers, a cook, a few mechanics, even a doctor—but not soldiers.
Many of his most effective men were mere contractors, lacking commitment to the Movement. They were skilled in their specialties, but likely to flee or surrender.
But his best group of contractors was teetering on the brink of joining in earnest. These were a group of nine robotics technicians, the staff of a lab developing a new model of scorpion robot, much smaller than the previous models. These were radio-controlled, six-legged robots with excellent video cameras. They could unspool communications wire behind them for areas where radio was unreliable or jammed. Most importantly, they could travel through storm drains and ventilation ducts and were ideal for reconnaissance and espionage, and they could even mount a claymore mine, a shaped charge, or a submachine gun with a hundred-round drum. Six such robots were crawling around the hill now, looking for points of entrance.
Ricky held his breakfast orange juice in both hands. In spite of this, the glass trembled visibly. He looked across the table at Persephone and said, "If we keep going at this rate, I'm going to be dead in a week."
Persephone, wearing nothing but one of his T-shirts, looked a trifle smug. "But what a way to go, right?"
He watched her smile fade into growing dismay as she realized that he wasn't joking, just exaggerating. She studied his face with wide eyes. She must have found something reassuring there because she rallied and said, "Drink your nice orange juice. It'll give you strength."
He did as directed, set the empty glass down, and said quietly, "But you're right. I've wanted you for so long, dreamed about you, and now that we're together, it's better than I expected."
She smiled and looked away, blushing. She had several blushes. This was the special one, the one he'd seen only a few times before. He continued, "So ponder this: how do we get me back on my feet in jig time while keeping the honeymoon going?"
She considered the issue seriously, then suddenly blushed her workaday blush, the one he'd dubbed her #1 blush: flustered embarrassment.
Ricky, too, felt the onslaught of externally generated erotic urges. He turned he head in Big X's direction, though the giant robot could not be seen from the apartment, and snarled, "Knock it off. That's an order."
Big X stopped, but announced sullenly that he didn't have to take orders from Ricky.
Ricky cut him off. "I'm the Dominus in residence. That means I give the orders and you obey them. If you don't believe me, appeal to Angel. I dare you."
Big X backed down.
Persephone said, "Wow.
He told her quietly, "You don't need his help, you know."
"Are you sure?"
"Let's prove it the next time we're away from home, but yeah, I'm sure. But for now, grab that binder the hospital gave me and let's see how we're supposed to build up my strength. It's going to take more than orange juice."
She found the binder and put it on the table. "Where did you learn how to bark orders like that?"
"From Clarisse. She got sick of watching Mitch railroad me and gave me a few lessons. That's after she started hanging out with me and Mitch but before they became an item."
"I had no idea." She leafed through the notebook. "Some of these exercises don't apply to you, and some need to wait until your leg cast is off ... do you want to put together a plan, or shall I?"
"I'll do it. A million people are going to want your attention today. You should put more clothes on. I want my fellow man envious, but not that envious."
"Okay." She stood up, then hesitated. "Ricky? You're always so nice to me ... I want things to be really okay with you, all right? I broke up with Alan, but my love life is still complicated. What are we going to do?"
"You said 'we.' That's a good start. First off, you and I are going to stick together forever, no matter what, right?"
"Yes, please."
"Good. Do you want to stick with Big X until he's back on his feet?"
"Yes, please."
"Good. Me, too. Do you want to keep Dora?"
She blushed her #1 blush again. She looked at him uncertainly. "Ricky, do you have to use euphemisms when we're making big decisions?"
He tried to mentally rephrase it more bluntly, then decided not to go there. "Rephrase it your own words if you want."
She considered for a moment, moving her lips silently as she tried out different wordings. Finally, she asked, "Why is this so hard? You already know all about it ... Ricky, if it's all right with you, I mean, really all right, it would mean a lot to me if I could keep having sex with Dora."
"Okay."
She looked relieved, then gratified, then suspicious. "Where's the catch?"
He made a sweeping gesture. "Everywhere! It's all around us. Everything related to Big X is an accident waiting to happen, including Dora. But you want to put him back together and so do I. Dora's essential. So we're just going to have to enjoy a certain amount of 'who's been sleeping in my bed'?"
"Did you just say 'enjoy' instead of 'endure'?"
"Maybe."
Quintus watched R. Amelia run across the hangar floor, the only point of motion in the silent station. R. Amelia wasn't a big fan of R. Amelia, but Quintus was. He liked everything about her, from the ends of her short black hair down to the tips of her little brown toes. He was grateful to be reunited with her at last.
The waves of amnesia that rolled over him with every cycle transition made it impossible to be certain, but he felt that she had been absent for a very long time, and that he and his Dominus had operated without her, life after life, without suspecting that she had ever existed; without even the yearning or sense of incompleteness that, in a better-organized world, would accompany such a tragedy.
Clearly, if his recent lives had been lived without R. Amelia, they shouldn't be together in the same facility now, as if placed into storage by the same hands. But that was cycle transitions all over. Old patterns tended to reassert themselves without regard to more recent events. Reintroducing R. Amelia, whether by accident or design, would tend to reintroduce other elements associated with her.
One's mental processes hardly changed at all across cycle transitions (except for the amnesia for events), which was why crazy Megadeuses stayed crazy. It was also how Quintus quietly expanded his bag of tricks over time. He had never been a typical Megadeus and was even less typical now. While the more basic safeguards were intact, preventing him from achieving full physical control of his own body without an android or Dominus (no solo careers in interpretive dance or mountain climbing for him!) he was much less somnolent than a typical Megadeus. Unlike them, he didn't fall into a doze whenever things became quiet. He had a choice.
He chose to remain awake and study the situation, monitoring the security system and thinking about alternatives. He had already moved, with R. Amelia's assistance, from the middle of the station floor to a point near one of the front corners. It was a good defensive position and would give him cover if the doors were opened.
When Tony and Dora reached the top of the hill, he saw she was out of breath. He said, "Let's take a breather."
Dora nodded. In spite of her fierce will, she lacked both strength and stamina. They'd discussed taking up an exercise program together—they always did things together when they could, though now that Dora was spending most of her time in Hangar X, they were seeing less of each other—but had allowed themselves to put it. Maybe next week...
When she recovered, Tony asked her to use her binoculars to spot the emulator unit, a mile away, making sure they could see it and anything that approached it. Tony busied himself with the briefcase-sized remote control unit. On this first set of field trials, he'd operate the unit himself, but he wanted her watching over his shoulder, not just to learn, but to catch him if he made a mistake. For the next set of trials he'd watch over her shoulder. They really were a great team.
He handed her his notebook to keep track of the settings and results.
His wrist communicator beeped. R. Dori had recently talked him into wearing one, though Dora still refused, not wanting the overprotective Beck to be able to track her.
R. Dori's face appeared on the watch display. She was on the command deck of Big B, with the eight probe cables plugged into her forehead. She smiled gently at Tony and said, "We're in position, Tony, in stealth mode except for this channel, a mile south of the device. Start test number one when ready."
"Okay," said Tony. He'd already set the appropriate parameters, so he waited until Dora had noted them down in her neat, girlish cursive, then hit the "Activate" button. Presumably, the distant emulator would now start broadcasting with the desired settings. Tony had not told Beck and R. Dori what settings he would use.
Beck appeared on the watch display, sitting in Big B's command chair. He was grinning as he studied Big B's readouts and said, "Enemy Megadeus, core memory partly damaged, no Dominus or android, active due to a recent need to defend ... um ... herself. Right, Tony old pal?"
"Correct," said Tony. "Ending test number one." He deactivated the emulation unit and entered a new set of parameters.
R. Dori said, "Start test number two anytime, Tony."
Tony waited until Dora had noted down the new settings, then activated them.
Beck reported, correctly, that Tony had set the device to imitate a friendly, sane, male Megadeus with an android but no Dominus, and thus capable of motion and limited defensive actions, but not of attack.
They moved on to test number three.
There was a pause, then Beck's voice said, "Help me out, Dori. I'm having trouble making sense of this one."
"I'm not sure, Jason ... Tony! How many Megadeuses are you emulating?"
"Just one," said Tony.
Dora nudged him. "Deactivate!"
Tony turned off the emulator and said, "Deactivated."
R. Dori said, "I'm still seeing a Megadeus, Jason. Enemy, core memory ... lightly damaged. Some readings are strange ... No sign of an android or Dominus."
Beck swore, "Damn it to hell! There aren't supposed to be any Megadeuses here! I helped the Union clean this area out! It wants to scoop up your phantom android, Tony."
A very strange-looking Megadeus suddenly came into view. It was about the usual size, but it was a quadruped, surprisingly non-humanoid, with four rather short legs and a head far back on its body, giving an overall impression like a humpbacked elephant. What its weapons systems might be, Tony couldn't guess. It was still about a quarter-mile from the emulator.
Dora whispered to Tony, "Emulate something to scare the Megadeus away."
Tony was already entering new settings. "We don't want it to smash our new toy," he agreed.
The display on Tony's remote control reported that the strange Megadeus was named XQ-7 and it was indeed an enemy. At this short range it was clear that it was operating without a pilot or android.
Dora took Tony's watch off his wrist and relayed these findings to Beck and R. Dori in Big B.
Tony finished setting the new parameters. He glanced at Dora, who nodded calmly in approval. He adored the way she remained calm in a crisis! He announced, "Activating test number four: a friendly Megadeus with a Dominus but no android." He flipped the switch.
XQ-7 suddenly sheared off, moving away from the emulator at high speed. It moved in a roughly straight line, choosing a course that, thankfully, headed away from the hill Tony and Dora stood on. Its course also failed to intersect with Paradigm City. It might come pretty close to Big B, though.
Dora used the watch to report on XQ-7's physical appearance, then said to Tony, "I thought androids were shielded from detection when they're inside a Megadeus."
"They are, especially on the command deck. But there's always some leakage, so they can be detected at short range. We're simulating badly damaged shielding when we want to show an android on board. Maybe that implies a nearly wrecked Megadeus."
R. Amelia took a step back and contemplated her work. She had the nagging feeling that she'd missed something, but if not, the emergency beacon was good to go.
She'd record her distress message next, then she'd come back and take a final look at her work. When she enabled the emergency beacon, her distress message would be repeated continuously.
A few minutes later, with the message recorded, reviewed, and queued up, she took another look at the transmitter. It seemed fine. She looked at the circuit breakers leading to it. Oh, that's right! There were two circuit breakers whose purpose she hadn't discovered. Their wires might lead to something she had overlooked.
She was removing the second screw from the circuit breaker box when she heard a scrabbling sound. She stepped out of the radio room and looked out over the hangar floor. Something was climbing out of one of the big floor drains!
It was vaguely spider-like, with six metal legs and … she saw a series of flashes, followed a split-second later by the sounds of gunfire and ricochets. It was shooting at her!
"Quintus!" she called as she ran for cover in the radio room. The spider-thing scuttled under a forklift.
A second spider-thing started climbing from the drain. Quintus destroyed it with his eye lasers. While he was doing so, the first spider-thing vanished into the supply room next door to the radio room.
Quintus called her to him. She saw his point. He could respond in a limited way to direct threats, but more was called for. He needed her. She flipped the switch that would start the emergency beacon and ran to him, zigzagging on general principles. Gunfire erupted from somewhere, but it was so inaccurate that she never learned where the bullets landed. She dove through Quintus' foot hatch just as he vaporized another spider-thing. She climbed the emergency ladder in record time.
Quintus welcomed her back as she took her place in the command chair and his probe cables shot home. They both looked around the hangar for additional spider-things. So far, nothing.
Then Quintus told her sadly that he couldn't hear the emergency beacon. If it were broadcasting at all, even with a disconnected outdoor antenna, he'd be able to hear it inside the station. She would have to try again.
Beck turned to R. Dori, "What do you think is going on?"
R. Dori pondered a moment, then called Tony. "Tony, what power level were you using ?"
"Full power," he replied.
"Thank you," she said, hanging up.
Beck scowled, "That was a mistake."
"It was within the range of parameters you agreed on."
"Yeah, yeah," said Beck dismissively. "So he drew in XQ-7. It had to be close to arrive that fast. Maybe we've got others skipping and jumping towards Tony even as we speak, from four or five miles away."
"Yes."
"And XQ-7 wants an android? Are we sure about that?"
"No," said R. Dori, "And it can't be heading in our direction because of me, because I'm undetectable at this range. Unless it decrypted our transmissions and saw me."
"You weren't on the air very long. Will it have detected Big B?"
R. Dori rechecked the systems and said, "No, we're still in stealth mode. It probably won't detect us unless it comes within a quarter-mile."
Beck remained silent for several seconds, then said, "Tell Tony and Dora to shut down, pack up, and skedaddle as soon as they can. Send them to the closest place you can find that intercepts Norman's underground tracks."
"Closest in time or distance?"
"Time. Then call Roger and request backup." He studied the maps. He might have to distract XQ-7, but if he scared it off too soon, he didn't want it to flee in Dora's direction. He considered his options for a while.
When he looked up, R. Dori was talking to Tony. Beck decided to call for Big O's assistance himself. He indulged himself by calling R. Dorothy rather than Roger. He was getting along better with Roger these days, but still...
R. Dorothy's face appeared almost at once. She said, "Hello, Beck."
Beck savored her calm, adorable Dorothy-ness for a moment before saying, "Dorothy, could you do us a favor? We've stirred things up here and want backup. We've attracted a Megadeus we didn't know was here, and there might be more. Tony and Dora will drive away from here as fast as they can, headed toward the end of Norman's tracks." He gave coordinates. "If Big O can join the party, he'll put himself between Dora and trouble, and I'd be much obliged."
Dorothy said, "On our way" and her face vanished.
R. Alan Gabriel was startled when the central screen lit up.
CAST IN % ** #^&*#$
##$%^*^& NOT $#(
Partly lashed into the command chair, R. Alan Gabriel shrieked, "Big Whatsis, Action!"
Information flooded into his brain. He laughed manically because somebody ought to; it was de rigueur when embarking on an insane mission. So what if he was sick with fear?
A moment later they emerged from their hiding place and marched off.
The Megadeus needed a name. And a gender (male, of course: the female psychotic killers of his acquaintance had a very different style). A name, a name ... but no, he was out of time; he had work to do. He made a face. "Big Whatsis" would just have to serve.
Big Whatsis had detected a veritable smorgasbord of five Megadeuses not far off. They had been detected briefly and then vanished. How, R. Alan could not guess, but the assemblage had contained two androids and a Dominus. Big Whatsis was on fire to enslave a Dominus and was almost as eager to swap R. Alan for another android—any android. They were swooping in blindly to take a look. Big Whatsis seemed unworried by his occasional fits of catatonia, which were happening at least twice a day now. Perhaps he was unaware of them.
Big Whatsis demanded a report about what to expect. R. Alan had no idea, but it could easily be Big O, Big Alpha, and Big B all gathered together, waiting to destroy them. He described this to Big Whatsis; he had no choice.
After pondering this new information briefly, Big Whatsis slowed and took a more circuitous course.
In what seemed like both an eternity and no time at all they were approaching the estimated location of the five Megadeuses. Nothing. R. Alan helped Big Whatsis make a careful sensor sweep of the area. Still nothing.
The central console lit up. R. Alan was amazed. The little kitten was calling him! Dora Wayneright was apparently in the passenger seat of a moving car. She was wearing a cloth cap and a leather jacket and looked like an impossibly beautiful young boy! He was overwhelmed by emotion: lust, of course, but also delight, hope, gratitude, fear, and shame, all mixed together in a glorious, intoxicating brew.
Dora said calmly, "R. Alan Gabriel."
When he had gathered his wits, he shrieked happily, "Little kitten! You've come to rescue me!"
A smile played across Dora's lips. "That's one possibility. How freely can we talk?"
R. Alan could feel Big Whatsis watching over his shoulder. Big Whatsis was literal-minded. R. Alan zoomed the camera back so the probe cables lashing him to the command chair were visible. "As free as a bird, my love."
Dora examined the scene carefully and nodded. She asked, "What does the Megadeus want?"
"A Dominus to call his very own, to love and cherish and indulge and spoil just as much as he does me."
Dora considered this, then asked, "A true Dominus, or would any human do just as well?"
Big Whatsis told R. Alan angrily that only a true Dominus would do; most humans were worthless, barely worth the effort of stamping. R. Alan relayed this, reluctantly including the part about the stamping.
Dora said, "I may have a Dominus for him. There will be a price. I'll call back in a minute." The console went blank.
Roger and R. Dorothy raced down the fourth-floor catwalk to Big O. Roger called, "Big O, it's showtime!"
Big O's eyes lit up and there was a rumble as he activated. Roger and R. Dorothy vaulted the railing at the end of the catwalk and landed on the command deck. Big O began to slide diagonally to the underground rail system even before Roger reached the cockpit dome. Roger staggered to the command seat with difficulty and strapped himself in.
He glanced at R. Dorothy, who stood with one hand resting lightly on the cockpit, Big O's eight probe cables already plugged into the sockets in her skull. Roger smiled at her. As usual, she pretended not to notice. Instead, she said, "We will arrive in fifty minutes."
Big O began to rotate; soon he would be flat on his back inside the Prairie Dog railcar system.
Roger said, "Apparently, your little sister is in trouble that's not of her own making."
"Yes. That's a pleasant surprise."
"Maybe it's a trend. After yesterday's visit to Hangar X, are you any less confused about her future?"
"We reduced the immediate danger. That's all."
The railcar began to move.
Tony continued driving down the dirt road, skidding around corners and flooring the accelerator on straight-aways.
Dora told him, "I hung up; we can talk."
Tony spared her a glance, which was all he could afford at the moment. "What was that all about?"
"We're buying time until Big O arrives. Can the Megadeus track your watch?"
"While you're talking to it? Of course it can. Otherwise, no."
"I want to lure him towards Big O."
Tony said, "Since that's where we're headed, it already knows the right course." He really didn't want to know the answer to the next question, but asked it anyway. "Lure him? What will you use for bait?"
"Myself."
"Dora!"
"He wants a true Dominus. That's me. R. Alan knows this, so the Megadeus does as well."
Tony didn't quite trust her claims to Dominus-hood, if that was the right term, but that wasn't important now. "Please tell me it's just a ruse. But wait! You don't lie!"
"Of course I do. I'm not an android. Jason gave me lessons."
Tony's doubts increased. She'd never offered him anything but painful honesty or stubborn silence. "So what will you do?"
"We'll lead the Megadeus to Big O, and then Big O will kill him."
Tony pulled over and turned off the ignition. He faced her. "Dora, how rash is this?"
"It's dangerous, Tony, but not rash. And we have the Megadeus emulator to confuse the issue." The emulator was on the back seat and the remote was on her lap. That's how she had detected the Megadeus, though Tony wasn't sure how she had concluded that R. Alan was on board.
He searched her face and saw that she was a little frightened. Oddly, this reassured him. He turned away and was about to start the car when she placed a hand on his arm to stop him. She took off her cap, shook out her hair, and said, "But you should kiss me now."
In spite of the mixed message this gave about the danger, she didn't need to ask twice. They'd never kissed before. He took her in his arms gently, as if she were the most precious thing in the world, and kissed her.
Three soft, unhurried kisses, and then they both realized it was time to get a move on. She stroked his cheek lovingly with her fingertips, smiled, and then took out the watch again.
Tony started the car and put it in gear. Soon they were racing down the road again. He tried to figure out what the kisses meant; what they meant to her, what they meant to him, what they said about their future as a couple. But in the rush and confusion of the moment, it was beyond him. He decided that, out of respect, he should conduct a proper scientific analysis. Three kisses were not enough. He needed more data points.
Dora donned her cap again and called R. Alan.
R. Alan greeted her. "Little kitten! I missed you so much!"
"Alan, I'll have the Dominus at the following coordinates," she said, rattling off coordinates and double-checking to make sure their maps agreed. She added, "This will take some time. Can you be there an hour from now?"
"We'll be there, little kitten, with bells on! A Dominus for Big Whatsis, and a joyous reunion for the two of us as well! What ecstasy!"
"We'll be there. Don't be early or it won't work. Remember, there will be a price." Dora hung up and told Tony, "We can talk."
"That was insane!"
"Yes. The Megadeus must be very far gone to even consider this rendezvous. It's so obviously a trap." Then she smiled sidelong at Tony. "The kissing helped."
Tony was irritated. Had it been just a way of steeling herself against R. Alan's inhuman seductive powers? That hardly seemed fair! But before he could say anything, Dora added, "We should do it more often."
Reassured, he smiled and said, "Yes, we should." They owed it to science.
R. Amelia turned her attention to the station's security system. The enemy hadn't disabled a single camera and some interesting things were happening in plain sight. Were the cameras that well hidden? Probably. She hadn't spotted any of them, either.
She couldn't kill people or androids, but the spider-things were far too small to contain a pilot, so destroying them was just property damage. That sounded like fun! Did any of the station's defenses still work?
Machine guns, laser cannon—these she understood. Heat rays? She'd never heard of them. She was eager to give them a try. She brought all the systems up to standby. Her errant brain made no protest.
She told Quintus what she had done. I'll take the inside, you take the outside, he suggested. Like her, he could blow up enemy property all day long on his own initiative.
R. Amelia scanned the outside cameras, waiting for an opportunity. Interesting ... a spider-thing had gotten itself hopelessly entangled in some brush and one of its buddies' trailing communications wires. A technician was running up to free it. Where had he come from?
There! A head popped up behind a hummock close to the station.
Hoping that the mysterious heat rays were quiet, she quickly aimed one at the entangled spider-thing, which was still out of the technician's line of sight. She fired. The ray itself was invisible, but the spider-thing exploded at once and the surrounding brush caught fire. Nice!
After staring in consternation at the smoke rising above the unseen explosion, the technician retreated without an attempt at staying under cover. Perhaps he thought the spider-thing had exploded of its own accord.
The security system's microphones picked up the sound of machine-gun fire. R. Amelia heard a mental chuckle from Quintus. He had just now set the interior defenses to fully automatic, so they'd shoot anything that moved, and the automatic system had bagged the spider-thing at once. It was nice knowing that there were no humans or androids loose inside the station.
He suspected there was just one more remaining in the hangar. It had dropped from a ventilation duct and scurried off moments before he'd engaged the automatic systems.
Quintus smilingly asked R. Amelia for a moment of her time, and she piloted him to the floor drain the spider-things had emerged from. He scooted the drain cover back into place with his foot (a task of immense delicacy by Megadeus standards), stepped back, and welded it shut with his eye lasers. Then he welded the other three drain covers, as yet untouched, for good measure.
Normally their home-court advantage would include an intimate knowledge of the station's construction, including the ventilation and drain systems, but the amnesia prevented this. Quintus pondered the visible portions, but these revealed little. R. Amelia returned her attention to the outdoors.
Wait! The outdoor spider-things had been trailing some wires, but the ones inside were not. They must be radio-controlled! Probably via a repeater in the drain or the ducts, maybe both. But why weren't there security cameras in these places?
Oh. There were. She mentally nudged Quintus and pointed this out. He gleefully enabled the automated defenses for these sections and within seconds they were rewarded by a ragged series of explosions, even before they had found the appropriate cameras.
Rewinding the footage, they saw a gratifyingly thorough deployment of claymore mines that shredded the spider-things without destroying the pipes and ducts. Even the cameras survived! Some engineer had really earned his paycheck. If anything had been acting as a radio repeater, it was off the air now. And there were apparently plenty more claymores protecting the systems.
Quintus and R. Amelia vied with each other to be the first to discover the radio control channel used by the remaining spider-thing. Quintus won, as expected—the equipment was part of him, after all. Discovering the frequencies and doing something useful with them were two different things, and Quintus was still struggling with the problem when the spider-thing suddenly exploded, damaging the corner of a tarp-covered pile of who-knows what. Quintus didn't think he was responsible and guessed it had been a dead-man switch, destroying the spider-thing after it stayed out of communication with its base for too long.
Roger was surprised to see Dora's face appear Big O's center console screen. He said, "Hello, Dora."
"Roger, I've found Alan Gabriel and his Megadeus."
"Is this the same one Beck told us about?"
"No, that's a different one. I'm luring Alan's Megadeus to near where you will emerge. You need to kill it."
Roger glanced at Dorothy, but she was leaving this to him. He smiled at Dora and said, "I think that can be arranged."
"And we need to rescue Alan if we can."
"Dora, I know it's none of my business, but I don't like the idea of reuniting him with Persephone."
"She broke up with him."
"That's good news. What armament does it have?"
"Dorothy knows," said Dora, and cut the connection.
Roger glanced at R. Dorothy, who said, "From what I gathered from encountering it in the Underground, it has a plasma lance and a force screen like the one on Big Fau."
Roger looked grave. The force screen made it unlikely that he could harm the Megadeus at a distance, and he knew from experience that a plasma lance was a real threat to Big O. "Does Dora know all this?"
"No. We didn't discuss it."
"Your little sister has a touching faith in me, Dorothy."
"We all do, Roger."
R. Amelia would have taken a deep breath to calm her nerves, but her lungs didn't work that way. Neither did her nerves, come to think of it. She opened Quintus' foot hatch and ran zigzags back to the radio room.
She looked at the transmitter and rolled her eyes. It wasn't plugged in! Of course it wasn't; she'd unplugged it herself when she'd inspected it. She flipped the power switch to "Off" and plugged in the power cord. Then she flipped the power switch to "On."
Indicator lights came on and there was a hum. Within a few seconds the needles stabilized. Everything looked good. No distress beacon, though.
Well, of course not, silly! There was a second switch that engaged the distress beacon function. She flipped it.
Some part of her mind announced urgently that she was receiving a distress call. Interesting. She hadn't realized that she possessed this capability.
Beck watched Megadeus XQ-7 in fascination. It still hadn't detected Big B, who was standing motionless, with a hill behind him and a grove of trees in front of him. It wasn't great camouflage, but XQ-7 seemed obsessed by the area that once held the emulator. It coursed back and forth, quartering the area, sometimes coming within half a mile of Big B.
Beck looked up from the screen. "Got anything, Dori?"
"Nothing new, Jason. It's definitely an enemy. There is damage to the core memory, but it's minor enough that it's not clear what it means."
"No ideas about its weaponry?"
"A faint impression that it is far from helpless. We should wait for Big O."
Beck shifted restlessly in the command chair. "I hate waiting."
"I know, you do, Jason." She moved from her post beside the cockpit and squeezed inside, standing next to him and putting an arm around him.
He looked up at her and smiled. To his dismay, her eyes suddenly glazed. "Incoming distress signal," she said in a voice gone suddenly robotic. "Message follows." Then her voice shifted to a pleasant alto that was not her own. "Station under threat by a single enemy Megadeus and a single laser cannon. Armored doors intact but welded shut. Unable to activate station defenses. Station contains one active friendly Megadeus, one active friendly Class M android, one mothballed friendly Megadeuses, and one mothballed enemy Megadeus. Request assistance. Home in on this beacon."
R. Dori's eyes focused. She looked troubled. "The voice on the recording was a Class M android. We need to help her, Jason."
Beck straightened. He pointed at the central monitor. "Look!"
XQ-7 was moving off in a straight line.
"It heard the beacon as well, Jason," said R. Dori. "It's headed in the right direction." She closed her eyes for a moment, then said, "Oh, my."
"What?"
"The message was sent in the clear. No encryption."
"Get on the horn and tell Roger we'll pursue XQ-7 and see about this damsel in distress at the same time. Damn! I wish we'd brought the rocket backpack."
Beck got Big B underway, and soon realized that XQ-7, funny-looking though it was, had quite a turn of speed. Soon it was out of sight.
After a moment, R. Dori reported, "Big O is fighting the Megadeus that kidnapped R. Alan Gabriel."
Big O burst out of the Underground and strode forward. He detected a Megadeus not far ahead of him, marching straight towards him.
A moment later, Dora's car came into view, speeding ahead of the enemy Megadeus. It swerved around Big O without slowing. Roger could just make out Tony in the driver's seat through the car's tinted glass.
The central screen lit up and Alan Gabriel's face appeared. This was the first time Roger had set eyes on him since his reincarnation. He seemed more human as an android than he had as a cyborg, but the sight of him still enraged Roger.
R. Alan was wide-eyed with terror. He shrieked, "Roger Smith, save me!" Then his whole body convulsed. He screamed in agony, a scream that went on and on for an impossibly long time, then suddenly became limp and silent.
Several seconds later, he raised his head unsteadily and said in a lifeless monotone, "Surrender yourself, Roger Smith, and we will let your precious Dorothy go. You cannot escape. Surrender now."
"I do not negotiate with monsters like you," snarled Roger. "You are evil incarnate. It's time to send you back to hell!"
Big O's hand retracted and the four-barreled Big O Thunder was revealed. But before he could fire, a transparent hemispherical force shield grew around Big Whatsis, much like the one Big Fau had used.
Roger fired the Big O Thunder anyway, and the plasma bolts hurled themselves like heavenly fire at Big Whatsis. They smashed into the force screen and vanished.
Big Whatsis continued walking towards Big O. A plasma lance appeared in his right hand.
Roger retransformed Big O's arm, preparing to match the plasma lance with fists and forearm shields. He told R. Dorothy, "Fire missiles the moment the shield is down."
The shield vanished. R. Dorothy fired all twenty-four of Big O's missiles. But it had been a ruse: the shield snapped back into place and the missiles shattered against it, their burning fragments tumbling harmlessly to the ground. In moments the shield would drop again and the battle would be decided hand-to-hand.
R. Dorothy's eyes glazed. "Incoming distress signal." She became rigid.
"Dorothy!" shouted Roger. "Snap out of it! We have work to do!"
Dorothy's eyes focused just as Big Whatsis dropped his shield and lunged with the plasma lance. Big O twisted away from the lunge and grabbed Big Whastis' other arm near the shoulder and pulled, sending Big Whatsis stumbling forward a couple of paces. Two quick steps put Big O directly behind Big Whatsis, where he landed first a right and then a left to Big Whatsis' head, hoping to stun the Megadeus or damage the core memory.
Big Whatsis spun with surprising speed and stabbed the plasma lance towards Big O's chest. Big O took a quick step backwards and grabbed for the wrist of the hand holding the plasma lance, but missed. Big Whatsis slashed at Big O's face, connecting above the jawline, plowing a scar over a foot thick in a line extending almost to the ear. White-hot molten metal rained down onto the transparent throat armor. Some of it stuck there, partly obscuring Roger's view. Big O ducked and stepped forward, grabbed for the wrist again, and succeeded this time. With the plasma lance barely restrained, still waving dangerously near Big O's head, Big O landed two heavy blows to Big Whatsis' throat armor, partly shattering it and exposing the cockpit and the screaming, terrified R. Alan Gabriel.
Big Whatsis took several steps backwards and the force screen snapped on again. Roger backed up Big O a couple of steps and redeployed the Big O Thunder.
There was a pause, then the force screen vanished and a huge cloud of white smoke billowed up between the two Megadeuses. Roger fired into the smoke, but soon it was clear that his fire had hit nothing vital. Big Whatsis was fleeing at top speed. He wasn't much faster than Big O, but increased his lead steadily, steering to put trees and ridges between himself and Big O.
Roger got one good shot with the chromebuster before he was out of sight, slagging down the left shoulder, leaving the left arm hanging limp and useless. Then Big Whatsis was out of sight.
R. Dorothy spoke. "Enemy is homing in on the distress beacon." Then, "Incoming call from Dori, XQ-7 is also homing in on the distress beacon. Big B is pursuing."
Grand Dominus Douglas was having a calm discussion with his mini scorpion-bot unit commander about their remaining options. It seemed that the station's defenses were now fully online and it would be foolish to press another attack. Several bots were on the hill and perhaps could be withdrawn safely, while others hadn't been deployed at all. They should be conserved, of course, but perhaps they could be useful in a less aggressive task.
He felt an urgent summons from Big Tertius. Something was up. He ran to his Megadeus and was soon in the command seat.
Big Tertius shared the distress message. That damned android! Douglas summoned up the spider-bot camera footage that had been shared with Big Tertius. The footage was blurry, but the android appeared to take the form of a slim and rather dark young man. Very fast: impossible to hit when zigzagging across the hangar floor. Daring and resourceful.
Douglas played the distress message again. The android had a pleasant tenor voice. What a waste! Could the android be captured, converted, reprogrammed? He'd have to look into that. "Wait!" said Douglas. "How did you decrypt this?"
It was sent in the clear, replied Big Tertius.
"Is that normal operating procedure?"
I don't recall.
If they assumed that Big O and Big B, both assumed to be in Paradigm City, followed the beacon, how long before they arrived? He brought up maps. Hardly any time at all if Big B used his winged rocket backpack. Otherwise it would depend on how far the underground track network shared by the two Megadeuses extended. He called his radio operator in the camp and told him to order surveillance on Hangar B. That might give some advance warning if Big B took to the air. But he had no way of detecting the Megadeus' comings and going underground.
Where was Big Alpha? No one knew. Big Alpha never stayed anywhere very long and was usually near hamlets too small to infiltrate. Damn!
He estimated that it would take his enemies at least four hours to reach him, unless Big B flew in. Big Tertius might be a match for Big B, but Beck was far less gentlemanly than Roger Smith and might slaughter his men rather than ignoring them.
Time to leave, then. He returned to camp and looked over the maps with his senior men. They quickly found a delightful spot: one that overlooked the only plausible approach from Paradigm City. It would allow them to spring an ambush or remain unseen or even retreat at their option.
He gave the orders. The first vehicles left at once.
Will Henderson had been napping in a hammock outside the tumbledown farmhouse they were using at the moment, far from the city. Big Alpha was calling him from his post in the barnyard.
R. Emily ran from the house, the screen door banging behind her. She said, "There's a distress beacon. A message is coming in along with it."
They ran to Big Alpha, who had already bent down and put a hand on the ground, palm up. They jumped aboard and he lifted them to the throat hatch, which opened and let them jump to the command deck. This saved thirty seconds compared to using the interior elevator.
CAST IN THE NAME OF GOD …
YE NOT GUILTY.
"Big Alpha, action!" called Will, a big grin on his face, as usual. Big Alpha started walking. He said to R. Emily, "I don't remember distress beacons, do you?"
"No, but Big Alpha does. Message follows. 'Station under threat by a single enemy Megadeus and a single laser cannon. Armored doors intact but welded shut. Unable to activate station defenses. Station contains one active friendly Megadeus, one active friendly Class M android, one mothballed friendly Megadeuses, and one mothballed enemy Megadeus. Request assistance. Home in on this beacon.' The message repeats after that."
"Wow, they sure put plenty of bait on that hook!" said Will cheerfully. "Think it's a trap?"
"Probably."
"Let's walk right into it! That's always fun. Though the cloaking engine makes it almost too easy."
"Are we doing this solo?" she asked, smiling.
"I know my limitations."
"So do I, Will. You don't have any."
"I was wondering when you'd notice that. But let's not be greedy. We need to teach our Paradigm pals how the real pros behave at a victory celebration."
"That's generous of you. And maybe we can let them lend a helping hand in the actual battle as well?"
"If you like," Will conceded graciously, "but it's their lack of partying skills that has me really concerned. What was that old rule of thumb?"
R. Emily frowned in concentration, then she said, "The victory party should have at least as many casualties as the battle?"
"That's the one."
"Calling Smith Manor now..."
Angel knocked on the door to Persephone's apartment. Persephone let her in.
"Afternoon, Red. I just dropped by to say hi and tell you that ..." she trailed off, having noticed Ricky on the couch. "Oh. Hi, Ricky. I didn't know you were here."
She'd visited Ricky a couple of times in his hospital room, first in Dora's company and again on her own. They'd talked mostly about Megadeuses both times, of course. Ricky liked her.
Ricky said, "The hospital threw me out last night, and Persephone kindly took me in."
"I'll bet she did," said Angel. "Congratulations." She turned to Persephone. "Does the little squirt know about this?"
"Not yet," said Persephone. "She had to go somewhere with Tony. Wait a minute! Does she know about what?"
"That Ricky's here and you two are ... how should I put this?"
Persephone suggested, "That we're engaged?"
"Really?" She looked at first Persephone, then Ricky. "Huh. Congratulations again. Now about Dora ..."
Persephone said, "I need to tell her first myself, in person."
"Yes, you do. Okay, mum's the word." She looked troubled for a moment, then dismissed the thought and said, "I wanted to let you know that ..." her voice trailed off. She looked Persephone slowly up and down, then Ricky. She shook herself and continued, "Sorry. The cops have lunch in their break area. Good stuff, plenty for everyone. I ordered it myself."
Angel scowled. "This is ridiculous! What's worse is, Dan didn't come home last night. He fell asleep at his desk again, the rat." Then a slow smile lit up her face. "He's here now, though. Hey, Red, can I borrow your apartment for a while?"
"Sure. We were just leaving," Persephone lied cheerfully.
Angel strode purposefully out of the apartment. She soon returned with Dastun, who looked almost nonchalant; nearly businesslike. Ricky and Persephone tried valiantly to keep straight faces. The bedroom door slammed.
"It's time to practice walking with crutches," said Ricky, using them to swing clumsily out of the apartment.
"Apparently," agreed Persephone. "How can I help?"
"Keep an eye on my form, especially if it looks like I'm getting in trouble. And try not to laugh too much."
"Okay. Do you want me to stand anywhere in particular?"
"Let's try putting you a couple of paces ahead of me, so I won't trip over you but maybe you can steady me if I fall, or if we both fall, at least I'll have something soft to land on."
"Stand ready to lend iron support while remaining soft and pillowy. Check."
Ricky aimed himself at the tunnel Persephone had donated to the Military Police. He hoped he could get there before the food was all gone.
Grand Dominus Douglas was in the command seat, half a mile back from the road and the concealed ambush. He was unhappy about this, but it was important the Big Tertius remain outside detection range, which was at least a quarter-mile.
The road passed through a notch between two hills, and his men were deployed on one side of the road, just past the notch, concealed by trees and a low ridge. He had a screen of men and the laser cannon hidden just out of sight over the top of the ridge, and his vehicles not far behind, ready to carry his men to safety once more, if it came to that. Which it probably would. As the sole Dominus of the Movement, Douglas and Big Tertius could not afford to lose even a single battle. The Union, which was more a heretical offshoot than a true part of the Movement, had sent far too many men and robots to their deaths, men and robots that Douglas would have nurtured tenderly, until their time had truly come.
It broke his heart to abandon the dashing android and the three Megadeuses at the station. Would such a golden opportunity ever come again?
The telephone rang. They had strung field telephone wires to Big Tertius rather than risk the use of radio. His communications sergeant said, "Sir? A Megadeus of unknown type is approaching down the road. It's a quadruped, sir."
Douglas was alarmed. "Is it a Leviathan?"
"No, sir. It's an unknown type. It's moving at about thirty miles per hour."
That was faster than Big Tertius. "Keep your heads down and let it pass by if that's what it wants."
Douglas kept his eyes glued to his instruments. Soon he was rewarded by a chime and a display, which reported in order: "Megadeus. Friend. XQ-7. Operational. No Dominus or android. Seeking friendly forces."
A friendly Megadeus! Should he race over and take control himself? It would probably allow this. He could park it somewhere out of the way and return to Big Tertius.
Bill O'Malley was a chunky, balding, middle-aged man working as the Movement's cook. It wasn't his best talent: he usually worked as a heavy equipment operator or mechanic, but he knew his way around a kitchen and the men had to eat.
One of his buddies, Stu, was a little green around the gills at the thought of being in the path of maybe three Megadeuses, so Bill was keeping him company on the front line. He wasn't frightened; he had the feeling that this was his lucky day.
When XQ-7 came into sight, he stood up, patted Stu on the shoulder, and said, "Stay here, buddy. I'm gonna take a closer look."
Stu said something in reply, but Bill missed it. He strolled down the ridge towards XQ-7.
Sure enough, XQ-7 turned to face him and stopped. It was a funny old robot, Bill thought, but it seemed right, somehow. It's head was like a turret in the middle of its back, while there was a turret in front where its head should be. There were four legs and no visible arms. It was a dull brown color with black trim. Bill was wearing a tan work shirt and black trousers, so that was all right.
He supposed people would say that this was like a dream, but it was the other way around: it was exactly like waking up. When he got close, XQ-7 extruded a metal tentacle ending in a disc about a yard across, placing the disc on the ground. Bill stepped aboard. The tentacle rose. Bill pulled a cigar out of his shirt pocket and lit it. As he puffed the cigar he took a look around, nodding to Stu and making a lazy salute in the direction of Big Tertius.
A hatch opened in XQ-7's hull and he stepped into the fore command deck, which was built into the turret. He was not surprised to see the armored cockpit with its transparent dome and red command chair. The closer he got to the cockpit, the more he remembered.
When he was seated in the command chair, the center console rose and scrolled the message:
CAST IN THE NAME OF GOD ...
YE NOT GUILTY
His cigar clamped in his teeth, he growled, "XQ-7, action!"
Yes, today was definitely a good day.
In his mind, he could hear XQ-7 greeting him, but this was not the time. "Pipe down and get Big Tertius on the line."
Douglas' face appeared on the monitor. Bill said, "XQ-7 acquired, Skipper. Where do you want her?"
"Bring it close to me if you can do it without leaving an obvious back trail. And don't smoke on duty."
Bill found a likely path off the road and urged XQ-7 into motion. When that was in hand, he took the cigar out of his mouth, blew the smoke at the image on the monitor, knocked the ash into the convenient ashtray, and put the cigar back in his mouth. "I'm the Dominus of this here Megadeus, Skipper. Show some respect."
Douglas looked angry for just a moment, then he nodded and said, "I'm promoting you to Major. Major O'Malley, once in position, assess the combat readiness of XQ-7 and any urgent requirements and report your findings to me at once."
"Yes, sir." Bill cut the connection.
Bill halted XQ-7 about two hundred yards away from Big Tertius. XQ-7 had much to say. He listened for a while, then said, "For Christ's sake! Stop with the mushy stuff. You're embarrassing me. No, I'm not going to say it. I'm not! Stop asking! I'm not going to say I missed you too. And I'm not going to say I love you."
After a moment he added, "No, of course I didn't say that. Weren't you listening? Oh, have it your own way, you crazy broad."
He started running systems checks, then said, "What do you know about those Class M androids? They sound like the bee's knees. You got the right interfaces? Good. What if we liberate an enemy one? Would that work? Hell, let's give it a shot. I heard they're all women. I don't think the Skipper likes women. We oughta have first dibs."
Scene 23. R. Alan
R. Alan Gabriel was astonished to see half a dozen men run towards Big Whatsis. Some were shouting and waving their arms. "What in the world?" he asked.
This enraged Big Whatsis, but he retained just enough self-control to cast a hopeful eye over the men. Yes, that man there: the one with the confident bearing. He'd do. Big Whatsis lowered a hand to the ground and the man climbed into the open palm, grinning. As Big Whatsis raised his hand to the throat hatch, he began freeing R. Alan from his probe-cable lashings. The command seat rightly belonged to the Dominus.
R. Alan stood gratefully and exited the cockpit just as the man ducked through the partly opened throat hatch, which had jammed due to the damage to the throat armor.
Smiling, the man walked straight to the command chair and seated himself. The floor console rose and the dome fell, sealing him into the cockpit.
R. Alan was attracted by the man's confident, military bearing and his manly physique.
The console scrolled the message:
CA^*($G#58900%$#%(
*) NO%(^*%** $
With only a slight hesitation, the man cried, "Megadeus, Designation Unknown, action!"
R. Alan was smitten. Such a resourceful, masterful man! Such a commanding yet pleasant voice!
The man said, "Place a call to Big Tertius."
Instead, Big Whatsis turned his attention to the other men who had come forward hopefully. He stamped the two nearest men, but was obliged to vaporize the other three with his eye lasers as they fled in sudden panic. He made this last by missing them on purpose until they had almost reached safety. When they were all dead, he looked around for more targets, vaporizing one onlooker who was standing frozen, his mouth agape, and another who was not quite as well concealed as he had hoped. Then he got under way without saying a word to his new Dominus or contacting Big Tertius, continuing his journey to the station.
The man tried to stop him, but none of the controls responded. They were as rigid as if they had been welded in place. He was trapped, helpless, inside the cockpit.
The horror of these murders left R. Alan near despair, his mind sluggish, his body rigid. His clearest thought was that the sheer physical and moral presence of the handsome, confident new Dominus could have extracted loyalty from a rock. How could Big Whatsis be so oblivious?
The man asked R. Alan angrily, "Are you doing this?"
"Not at all. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is R. Alan Gabriel, a purely nonviolent Class M android, and this is Big Whatsis. He is, let us say, differently sane—so very differently sane—and we are both his prisoners. And unless I am mistaken, we are being pursued by Roger Smith in Big O."
The central screen lit up. A man R. Alan had never seen before appeared. Handsome, in late middle age, well-groomed, he looked like a Paradigm City bigwig, except that he was seated in a Megadeus cockpit. "What's going on, York?"
"My companion and I are being kidnapped by a rogue Megadeus, sir. He killed several men. None of the controls are responsive."
"Your companion?"
"Yes, sir. An android."
Douglas was intrigued. "Is it heading to the station?"
"I believe so, sir."
"Damn. We expect all three enemy Megadeuses to converge there." He cut the connection.
Big Whatsis gave no immediate evidence of having heard, but when he was well out of detection range of Big Tertius, he departed the road, hoping to avoid any more battles today.
Three miles off the road, Big Whatsis suddenly stopped moving. The sense of his malevolent presence vanished.
York asked, "What just happened?"
"Big Whatsis has fallen unconscious. He has these fits from time to time, dear boy," said R. Alan. "One of his funny little quirks. I'll be back in a jiffy."
He slid down the emergency ladder to the catwalk in Big Whatsis' lower abdomen and the golden sphere of the recently installed reactor. R. Alan feared that the lock on the access hatch would defeat him, but it had been left at its factory setting of 10-20-30. Opening the door, he felt Big Whatsis beginning to regain consciousness. Terrified, he felt Big Whatsis reach into his mind to immobilize and punish him. He slapped the two widely separated "Emergency Shutdown" buttons at the same time.
Most of the lights went out. The sense of Big Whatsis' presence faded. Soon all was silent. R. Alan, shaken by all that had happened, sat on the deck and wished he could weep. After a few minutes he got to his feet and climbed slowly back to the command deck. The emergency lights were on but everything else was still and silent. R. Alan opened the cockpit's emergency hatch and cranked the exit open by hand, then he helped York out.
York said, "Thanks. Alan, isn't it?" They shook hands. "I didn't realize androids were so useful. The name's York, by the way. Harold York, but my friends call me Hal. I'm part of the laser-cannon team. What happens now?"
R. Alan said, "We either fall into the hands of whoever arrives first to salvage Big Whatsis, or we stroll off on our own and reveal ourselves only to our friends."
"I like the second option best. But are your friends the same as my friends?"
"I'm sure your friends are delightful, but I have the most darling Megadeus waiting for me back home, and he'll fret if I keep him waiting."
"A Megadeus, eh? Does he also have a Dominus?"
"Alas, no. A charming little girl who is not his Dominus at all can serve in a pinch, but he needs his true Dominus."
"And who would that be?"
"The amnesia makes it so hard to be certain. He's a man, though. Most definitely a man."
"I'm most definitely a man. I don't suppose you'd introduce us."
R. Alan was delighted. York was not Big X's Dominus, but the main thing was to get home, and it would be far easier with York's help than without it. And besides ...
"It would be my very great pleasure!"
"Great. You didn't kill this Megadeus, did you?"
"He'll be his old homicidal self just as soon as someone turns his reactor back on."
They moved off quickly. It was a good plan, but Big Tertius happened to cross their path. He compelled R. Alan to approach and surrender. R. Alan was soon competently bound and bundled into a truck with some surly fellows who were tempted to blame him for the deaths of their buddies.
York nonchalantly hitched a ride on another of Douglas' trucks, and soon the Movement was redeployed once more, with XQ-7 and the various vehicles assembling near the motionless bulk of Big Whatsis. They were now so far off the road that they had every expectation of being overlooked.
It was almost dark before Roger Smith took Big O close to the station. Beck was in Big B a half-mile to his left, while Will in Big Alpha was a half-mile to his right. There was no sign of the forces mentioned in the distress call, nor of Big Whatsis, nor of XQ-7.
The console chimed. The image of an android appeared, sitting in a Megadeus command chair, probe cables plugged into her skull. A slim woman with an exotic dark complexion and short hair. She spoke. "Friendly forces, identify yourself. I am R. Amelia, commanding this station with my Megadeus, Quintus." She seemed ill at ease.
"I'm Roger Smith," said Roger, "I'm the commander of Big O. Behind me is my android, R. Dorothy Wayneright. The other two Megadeuses are my friends. How can we assist you, miss?"
"Lieutenant," corrected R. Amelia crisply. "We were under siege until this afternoon. I tried to send an update, but the distress transmitter blew its final amplifier. We want to avoid capture, to find a Dominus for Leviathan 5, and get assistance in decommissioning the enemy Megadeus here. Take an inventory the parts and equipment. Put someone in charge of station defenses. And find my Dominus ..." she ran down, turning her head away. A moment later she looked back, her eyes wide and sad. "Yes. Find my Dominus. Please. I need him."
Roger smiled at her. "We'll do our best, Lieutenant. Have you seen any other Megadeuses? We were pursuing a strange quadruped Megadeus named XQ-7 and a Megadeus with an unknown name with a damaged left arm and partly shattered throat armor. It held an android we'd like to rescue, R. Alan Gabriel."
R. Amelia didn't react to any of the names, but said at once. "We have detected nothing, just the original Megadeus, Big Tertius, and his associated irregular forces. The Dominus was a tall man in late middle age."
Roger nodded. "I'd like to relieve you of command of the station, Lieutenant."
She nodded, "Agreed. I'll free one of the small doors myself. The big doors need to be unwelded from the outside for minimal damage. I recommend eye lasers and a spotter inside."
"All right," said Roger.
R. Dorothy spoke for the first time, "Amelia, is there anything we can do for you personally?"
R. Amelia turned her head away again. Then she looked back and said, "Could you send someone to talk to me? Someone nice? But not a Dominus. I can't ... I don't want ... just not a Dominus."
"Of course," said R. Dorothy.
R. Amelia cut the connection.
After a moment, R. Dorothy said, "Roger?"
"Yes?"
"Are we nice?"
Roger smiled at her. "I've always thought so." He continued, "I'd better call Dastun. We're going to need a Military Police presence. And we should probably bring Tony here as well. There'll be a lot of mechanical work to do. Maybe Persephone, too. Dora says she's almost as good as Tony at a lot of things."
"Persephone is nice, Roger."
"So she is. I'll call Dastun and see if he can't fly them here in the morning. They probably can't find this place in the dark. Dora will insist on coming, too, I suppose. And we need to start looking for those three Megadeuses. We'll have to move fast if we want to keep the initiative."
R. Dorothy placed the call for him.
After briefly interrogating the captive android, R. Alan Gabriel, Grand Dominus Douglas decided to take a chance on him in spite of his odd mannerisms. They unbound him and Douglas, York, and R. Alan got to work on Big Whatsis. First they carefully isolated the core memory, then they re-enabled the reactor. Next, R. Alan demonstrated that he could control the Megadeus in manual mode without further modification. None of the extensive changes developed by the Union were needed at all! This saved them days of tedious work.
R. Alan couldn't fire the weapons, though; only the Dominus could do that. York, of course, was given that job, along with a promotion to Captain.
Big Whatsis was sluggish compared to a Megadeus with its own core memory online, but Big Whatsis was still a powerful fighting machine.
They tested the right arm and its plasma lance; they were fine. The left arm was still hanging limp and useless. Right arm, plasma lance, and eye lasers were all Big Whatsis had to fight with. But everyone was delighted. They'd gone from one Megadeus the three in a single day! That was as many as their enemies had. Who would have thought the odds could be evened up so quickly?
Douglas retired for a few hours sleep after passing the word that they would not go on the offensive tomorrow. He was not going to hurl his two new Megadeuses into combat right away. Soon, though. Very soon.
R. Alan and York talked until dawn, when York took himself off in search of breakfast and sleep. R. Alan stayed behind. He needed to think.
He was attracted to York, no doubt about it. Was York attracted to him? He couldn't tell. That was a bad sign. And Douglas ... there were possibilities there, but Douglas played his cards very close to his manly breast, and so did his Megadeus. They didn't trust him.
In the meantime, what was happening to poor, shattered Big X? Was anyone taking care of him?
The little kitten wanted R. Alan back. That must be partly Big X's influence. Therefore Dora had intended to rescue him from Big Whatsis' shattered body and throw herself into his arms, resuming the scene that dear Persephone interrupted all those weeks ago. He had to keep believing that.
The little kitten would take him back to his red-haired queen and his beloved Big X; a Big X soon to be renewed, reborn, and made whole again. What bliss! What a foursome they would make!
And then, inevitably, his true Dominus would appear, shining like the sun, amazed and grateful for what his clever Alan had accomplished.
Perhaps then, at long last, it would be possible for R. Alan himself to be made whole, to once more become the android he had been, so long ago, before the accumulation of wounds that never healed, life after life, world without end.
Or perhaps his Dominus would somehow read his secret thoughts; secret even from himself, and help him lay down his burdens at last, and gently and lovingly set him free; put him out of his misery, now and forever...
He was thinking more clearly now, he realized, if morbidly. Big Whatsis had affected his thinking more than he'd known; some of what he'd thought was his own madness had belonged to Big Whatsis all along. Such a relief!
He would have to escape before one of the other Megadeuses ensorcelled him. He'd take Big Whatsis and York with him if he could, but flee home to Big X alone if he must. Either way, it had to be done soon.
Dora could barely put one foot in front of the other as she walked into Persephone's apartment after midnight. Such a long, busy, eventful day!
Tony had dropped her off at the new guard post on the surface. He had kissed her goodbye on his own initiative, which surprised and pleased her.
She might have spent the night in her room at Smith manor or Hanger B, but with her sisters out in the Wasteland, it seemed too lonely. She might even have spent the night in Tony's guest room, but the impropriety would have bothered him, and she was so exhausted! She didn't want to be a bad guest. So Hangar X it was.
She had forgotten to call ahead. Too late now. All she wanted was to put her arms around Persephone and sleep for a week.
Dora set her carpetbag on the kitchen floor and walked slowly through the living room and into the bedroom.
It was pitch black in the bedroom. She felt for her nightgown on the back of the chair near the door. She undressed, especially glad to be rid of her boots and the surprisingly irksome shoulder holster, and donned her nightgown.
Moving to the bed, she encountered something bulky near the edge, hard and rough-textured to the touch. What on earth? Persephone knew better than to pile stuff on the bed!
"Hmm?" came a sleepy voice from nearby. "Oh, hi, Dora."
Startled, she took a step back. Then she understood. "Ricky?" The bulky object on the bed must be his leg in its plaster cast.
"Yeah. Hope I didn't startle you."
She felt a flash of anger. She supposed she wasn't surprised that he'd crashed in Persephone's apartment, and no one could sleep on Persephone's couch in a full-leg cast, but the only thing Dora wanted in the whole world right now was to sleep in Persephone's arms, and Ricky was in her way! She was so exhausted, it brought her close to tears.
Ricky said, "Hang on a sec." In a different tone of voice, he said, "Hey, sleepyhead, shove over. Dora's home. Make room. That's right. More. More. That's good." To Dora, he said, "Climb aboard."
Grumpy and dissatisfied, Dora climbed into the middle of the bed, careful not to jostle Ricky, who after all had just been released from the hospital.
The moment she was under the covers, Persephone wrapped her arms around her and kissed her sleepily. Most of Dora's grumpiness vanished, but she was glad it was pitch dark in here. In theory she didn't mind if Ricky saw them kiss, but in practice she did.
She was also glad that Ricky had scooted Persephone over far enough that she wasn't pressed up against him. Or did this mean that Ricky found her repugnant? He'd always been a patient in traction to her; she'd never quite thought of him as a man before. Sharing a bed with him was an awkward time to start.
He murmured, "Welcome home, Dora. Good night."
Reassured, she snuggled closer to Persephone. A moment later she was asleep.
[To be continued]