The Saffron Malformation (4 page)

             
This mistrust coupled with the threat of breakage and the price tagged onto the tech made it so that there was no market for them and so the projects were abandoned and finally lost when humans left earth.  People, it seemed, preferred their robots to look like robots and perform basic functions.  They wanted them to roll around on wheels while sweeping the floors or fetch them coffee with clumsy claws, not dexterous hands.  And they most certainly didn’t want to feel that their robots could ever deceive them or be mistaken for a person.  Corporations considered it a blessing because that tech was cheap and the profits were greater.

             
Quey took another swallow of water and thought about the compound south of his position and the woman called Ryla.  He’d met someone who claimed to have seen her once, though it was at a distance and lacking any real detail so he wasn’t sure if that particular story was trustworthy.  Still there were enough tales about her floating around that he thought she must get out to the settlements from time to time.  Most of what he’d heard of her was that she would fix busted bots for a price, usually leaving them in better working order than they had been when they were new, and that she traded with folk.  Of course there was still the matter of her being crazy, that had been in the stories as well, but to what extent was always vague.  Still, if the rest of it were true then she couldn’t be beyond reason.

The bots whirring about the road finished inspecting and assessing the first car and moved on to the second.  The lead bot, the one with the fire turtle painted on it, turned its head in his direction and stopped.  It lingered on him with its lens focusing for a long time, far longer than it would take a robot to scan him.

Quey, not sure why, waved at the bot and faked a smile.  It remained motionless for a tick.

The robot returned to its salvage and he watched it thoughtfully, considering what he knew and the limits of his options.  It was true that Ryla might be mad but he’d never heard a story about her being hostile
just for hostilities sake.  Something usually provoked her.  He watched the bots that had ignored him so aptly and wondered what constituted provocation, because if she deemed you a threat he hadn’t heard any stories of survivors.

             
Just then, the screen on the sheet computer began to flash and ‘incoming Dusty’ was written across it.  Quey tapped it and Dusty’s face, pale and surrounded by his dirty blonde hair, appeared in the sheet.  “Hey man,” Dusty grinned.

             
“Bad time to talk,” Quey replied thoughtfully.  “Got my dick in a bit of a tiger’s mouth out here.”

             
“Ouch,” Dusty replied.  “You’ll be rolling through in the next few days though right?”

Quey watched the robots outside his truck.  “Reckon odds runnin just about fifty-fifty on that at present.”

              “I’ll put cash on we’ve seen worse.  Set a grand on I’ll be seeing you soon,” the face in the screen said with a smile.  “Got some news when you get here, the good kind too, so don’t go dying out there just to avoid it.”

             
Quey chuckled.  “I’ll try not to,” he said.  “Best be going,” and they disconnected.

             
Dusty was an old friend, the oldest one he had, actually.  The tale of how they came to meet began as he watched his parents die sharing a hospital room, their individual beds pushed side by side.  The doctors told them the only thing left to do was make them comfortable.

             
They weren’t the only ones, Quey learned later.  Lots of passengers on the old transports had problems, died young, and those left behind found a corporate wall of lawyers between them and the answer as to why.  In the end it came down to, ‘everyone on board signed a waver.’  A fucking waver, sign it or choke on the first colonies’ toxic air—air the same companies had made toxic by using cheap outdated technology to run the cities.

             
After their death Quey found himself in the system and as bad as it may have been for children before the corporations took over, it was worse after.  There was no profit in wayward children save assigning them a trade and then paying them little to nothing to do it.  Quey spent a year learning how to work on engines and about safely changing power cells and then he did as most kids in his position.  He left.  Fled into the streets and tried to make a go of it on his own.  The first night he slept in the park and ate out of the trash.  It was better than any night he’d spent in the camp.

             
He learned fast on the street, how to steel, how to con.  It was easier for a kid, people rarely suspected.  Most of the time they wanted to help this poor lost boy.  Girls had it even easier when it came to that, though it could get worse for them in other ways.  In the event he got caught, an occasional occurrence, he was also fast.

             
This was where he met Dusty, both of them running scams and hustles.  They always said Quey was the face and Dusty was the mechanic of their little operation, and it was true.  Dusty could not only count cards he had magician’s hands.  He was an expert in misdirection, which he sometimes used to entertain children just before he stole their parent’s wallets.  “People with kids are gullible as all hell, if you can just get the little tykes to smile,” Dusty would tell him.

It was a neat little con and the one that got him noticed by Quey.

Quey didn’t have the hands for anything as elaborate as street magic or pick pocketing, but he had a way of talking that made people want to listen.  He’d found that was a useful place to have folks because people who wanted to listen wanted to believe.  He’d been running a con on this couple sitting outside an elegant bistro in the middle of downtown Gronbur for most of an hour and had met with limited success.  They took pity on him, lost and hungry, and offered him some of their lunch.  They hadn’t finished it and would he like it?  No.  What he’d like is a bit of the cash he’d noticed in the man’s wallet when he’d tipped the girl at the door for this table.

The couple had a little girl with them, five or so, and as Quey stood nearby and out of sight, scheming, he noticed Dusty walk over to the table.  This new boy said something, waved his hand and erupted a ball of fire from his palm.  When the flash and flame subsided a flower had appeared.  He gave it to the little girl and she grinned.

For his next trick he regaled them with a long card bit that ended with him pulling the queen of diamonds out of the man’s shirt pocket while he lifted his wallet from the jacket hanging on the chair behind him.

“Let me give you something,” the man said, reaching for the wallet that was no longer there.

“No no,” Dusty insisted.  “If you must however, I will take simply the remainder of that sandwich,” he indicated the plate in front of the woman and she couldn’t give it to him fast enough.

“Please by all means,” she offered.  He accepted and took a bite as he headed up the street and around the corner.

“Poor boy,” the woman said.  “He looked so hungry.”

“Yeah, well you can’t take them all in,” the man replied.  “He was good with those tricks though hu?”

The three of them discussed Dusty, the little girl most emphatically, while Quey took off after him.

“What do you want?” Dusty shouted as Quey continued to follow him through the alleyways.

“A cut.”

             
Dusty laughed.  “A cut?  How do you figure?”

             
“Because I spent an hour on those marks and then you just swooped in and took ‘em.”

“Dems the berries,” Dusty replied with a smirk.

“Well how about because all it takes is for you to get busted once and your little operation is on the slab.”

             
Dusty stopped, turned and peered at him for a moment.  Finally he shook his head.  “Been busted before.  I just move.  You go ahead and get yourself a rep as a rat though.  See how long you last then.”

             
Quey sighed.  He couldn’t take it anymore.  He’d been at this shit for over a year and he just wanted to go home.  He just wanted his mom and dad back.  He wanted a bed and a pantry and a hot meal that didn’t taste like desperation and embarrassment.

He could still see them, matching white beds and withering away into death, their skin a saggy pale sheet over their frail bones.  His mother, Star, would look at her husband, Terry, and hold a trembling hand out to him and as bad as he got he would take it.  Even in the end when he couldn’t feed himself any longer and didn’t know where or who he was his wife would extend a hand and on instinct he would take it and smile.  Then he would cough up part of his insides and spit them into a bowl.

Quey’s eyes fluttered but he refused to cry.  “Please,” he said sadly and Dusty couldn’t move.  His lips faded from a smile to confusion.  Quey shrugged and said again, “Please.  We’re in the same boat out here.  The rest of the world is cruel to us, if we’re cruel to each other what have we got?”

             
Dusty had been on the street longer than Quey, he’d dealt with every form of scam but what he saw in the boy standing across from him in the alley was a genuine plea.  Dusty opened the wallet and gave him some money.  After that they were friends.  Later they were a crew, others would come and go but there was always Quey and Dusty.

             
It was with Dusty he’d had his first encounter with the Once Men.  Trouble with the local security had led them to leave quickly for another place.  Apparently some of the locals had gotten wise to their three-card draw scam.  Dusty had gotten sloppy and came up with a set of tens over a pair of kings one too many times so it became necessary to move on.

             
“I’m telling you, if we just go straight over this hill we’ll shave at least a day off our trip,” Dusty told him, the dull blue glow of the map displayed on his sheet shining along the angles of his face.  His eyes shimmered brightly in the shadows of his sockets as a cool breeze blew over them and ruffled their hair.

             
“I don’t know,” Quey replied.  “What if we run into something?”

             
“Like what?” Dusty yelped.

             
“I don’t know.  Animals.”

             
Dusty cocked his head and asked, “You think, what, if there is one out there it’s going to stay away from us because we’re on the road?  Is it a magical road?” Dusty asked sarcastically.

             
Quey looked up at the sky.  “No,” he replied with a sigh and a slight chuckle.

             
“So what the fuck man, all this road does is go up that way, take a long turn and come back this way twenty kilometers over that hill.”

             
They were walking toward the hill before Quey even realized he’d agreed.  Together the two of them felt invincible and at times it seemed maybe they were.  When they came over the hill and saw the man squatting by the pond below drinking freely they froze.  The Once Man had been sick, either from disease or malnutrition, that was all that saved them.  That and he wasn’t the sort that carried a weapon.  He ran at them, grunting, and the rest was a blur he and Dusty would discuss at length after.  They’d never agree how exactly it went down except that it was Quey who stepped on the man’s head and crushed it against a rock.

His truck sat lifeless in the middle of the road.

Quey took another drink from his clean water bottle, an act of nerves more than thirst and decided he didn’t have a choice.  It was a good bet that he was going to die if he tried to make it to the registered settlement in this heat and death was guaranteed if he tried to wait for nightfall before pressing on.  At least with Ryla he had a chance.

             
Water bottle in hand, Quey tucked his gun—still fully loaded—into his belt and opened his door.  The bots turned their lenses back to him briefly and then continued rummaging through the car.  He watched them for a long time before retrieving his sheet.  He touched his dot and dragged it to the compound and then released.  A compass appeared in the upper right corner of his screen but instead of leading him north, it pointed the direction he needed to walk.

             
Quey started toward the compound, passing the robots at a distance even though it wouldn’t matter.  If they decided to kill him, he wouldn’t stand a chance.

             
As he made his way off the road and through the wastes that thought comforted him.  The robots hadn’t killed the Once Men to save him, he was sure of that.  They were simply following some computed orders issued by programming and the fact that they let him live and walk away boded well for his chances at the compound.  Though, he still wasn’t sure if knocking on the front door would be considered threatening or not.

Sticks and Stones

             
“It’s just,” Len Garrison hesitated for a moment and loosened the cheap tie around his neck, then adjusted the grey coat he had over a white shirt and took a breath.  He thought it was hot in the back of the luxury car he was riding in, one complete with impeccable climate control.  It wasn’t the car making him sweat of course, it was just that it wasn’t generally considered healthy to question Mr. Crow.

             
Richter Crow adjusted the left cuff of his dark blue custom tailored suit when he noticed Len had stopped mid-sentence and didn’t mean to finish.  He turned slightly in the leather seat that hugged his body in much the same way the suit did and raised an eyebrow to his assistant.  Len fanned his collar and took a sip from his glass, expensive whiskey; the real stuff one only gets to taste if their company includes a man such as Richter Crow.

Len, glass tipped against his lips, glanced at the rear view mirror and noticed that the large, dark, two hundred and thirty pounds of muscle and bone driving the car was watching him.  He swallowed the whiskey hard and continued.  “I don’t mean to question-”

              Richter slapped Len on the shoulder and told him to, “Get on with it already, it’s fine.”

             
“It’s just,” Len continued.  “I have to wonder if this is the best way to go.”

             
Richter nodded solemnly and took a sip from his own glass.  “I appreciate your concern, I really do Len.”

             
Len Garrison played like it was nothing, waving him off with a nervous smile and a sigh.

             
“No.  It shows a lot.  Shows loyalty,” Crow praised.  “Lot of guys in my employ would keep their mouths shut, even if I was making a mistake.  They’d drink my whiskey and cash my checks and snicker behind my back, but not you,” he finished, touching Len again.  The way he spoke was dynamic.  If he hadn’t been a political businessman he would have been a motivational speaker or an actor.  Probably the reason why, at thirty-two, he was the second youngest planetary C.E.O in history.

             
Richter Crow dropped four cubes of ice into the semi-clear liquid in the bottom of his glass and dumped two fingers of smooth whiskey over them.  He took a sip.  “And I have to say, I wouldn’t blame them.  This does seem a might crazy, doesn’t it?”

             
Len bobbed his head from side to side in a noncommittal response and groaned, “Well.”

             
“No,” Richter interrupted.  “I can admit it.  But things have cropped up.  Questions that can’t be asked and a whole slew of pesky truths that could sputter to a halt our whole operation.  Foul work ahead,” he continued, then paused for a sip.  “Kind of work a man can’t do and feel good about in the morning.”

             
Len sucked down the last of his whiskey and Richter offered more.  He accepted the pour while his boss concluded, “And that’s why we need,” he paused, thoughtful as he poured, and then finished, “Well, not a man.”

             
“I understand,” Len said.

             
“I mean, unless you want to-”

             
“No,” Len answered too eagerly, and Richter smiled.

“Didn’t think so, and can’t really blame you.”

Len took another drink from his glass and let the bitter burn work its magic on his nerves as they rolled down the winding road and started up the swell of the hill where the massive building, walled in stone and barbed wire, stood waiting for them to stop.  Near the wall was a sign that read North Haven Institute for the Criminally Insane.

             
It was a beautiful day and he was grateful he was this far north.  He’d heard stories about further south, heard that the land had baked into solid lifeless rock.  They said the sky was cloudless and the landscape lifeless.  This landscape, the one he could see through the steel doors just a few meters ahead, was lush.

             
Someone presented him with papers he signed without turning his head from the beautiful day.  He signed them because who gave a fuck what they said.  What were they going to do to him if he violated some clause in some article of some such thing?  They’d gotten lucky with him once.  If he chose, they never would again.

             
The sky was a blue and white marble that swarmed overhead.  He stood on the concrete walkway between the building and the gate with his head tilted to it for a good eight or nine deep breaths.

             
“Go on,” the guard said, nudging him.

             
“Your grass needs tending,” the man said matter-of-factly as he noticed its matted nature and the weeds that had been allowed to sprout.

             
“Keep it up and we might just keep you ‘round and put you in charge of that,” the guard said and nudged again.  This time the man walked to the gate where a luxury car was parked and waiting.  If the guard knew who he really was he might not let him go.  Matter of fact, he might just gun him down right there in front of the gate.

             
He’d been born with a name he chose not to remember.  It wasn’t his.  His name was Butcher Baker—there was even a rhyme about him.  “Butcher Baker has come to take her where it’s damp and cold and he’ll break her.”  There were other variations but that was the one people heard the most.  He wasn’t sure why the most popular version of the rhyme focused on women; he’d killed men too, but he supposed it had something to do with the fact that they made the news more often than the men.  When a man dies it’s a horrible thing; when a pretty girl dies it’s tragic.  If she happens to be a child, it’s an atrocity.

             
They never caught him, not for killing a person anyway.  They caught him because he’d had a bad morning and took a turn down an alleyway.  It was early in the morning and the night’s chill still lingered over the city for the sun hadn’t yet taken the sky enough to vanquish it.

As he walked, he saw a door open ahead and a little girl stepped out of an apartment building with a box too large for her to carry comfortably in her arms.  She had brown braided locks hanging down over her shoulders and wore a ruffled purple skirt and a shirt that matched with a cartoon cat on the chest.  It stared at him mischievously.

He smiled at her black sneakers and the purple and white striped socks that climbed halfway up her calf and took note of the bracelet around her right wrist.  It was a loose ring of colorful charms loved ones had presented her with on special occasions.  You could tell because, unlike the rest of her outfit, it wasn’t cheap.

             
Unfortunately he’d had a bad morning and was pissed over something he could no longer recall as he stopped in front of the girl and smiled down at her.  Then he glanced into her box.

             
“Would you like a kitten?” she asked with a smile.  “Mother says we have to get rid of them.”

             
He smiled at the tiny mewing box and lifted one to his face.  In an attempt to make himself feel better, he looked down at the girl and watched her face as he twisted its head off.  The tears were instant, and he had to do another.  Before he realized it, he’d twisted the heads off half a dozen kittens, and was about to snatch the girl so he could cart her off to a place where he’d do the same to her, when her mother came around the corner.  Her scream alerted the authorities, and they took him into custody.

             
Still, he couldn’t blame them entirely.  It had been sloppy to pull something like that out in the open.  Luckily it had been his only slip.  He met with men from the security detail and two shrinks before he realized they didn’t even suspect who he was.  In the end, he was committed for being a dangerous social deviant, or some such thing.

             
“We’re lucky,” the shrink said satisfactorily.  “We got this one early, before he had a chance to really hurt someone.”

             
Butcher Baker just laughed and went along with it.  He spent two years in the ward and then two weeks ago he was pulled from his cell and taken to a terminal where he had correspondence with a man.  This man knew who he was and he was offering a way out.  After one night of sleep, he returned to the terminal and accepted.

             
Outside the gate, the back door of the dark luxury town car opened and the man he’d met on that terminal’s screen stepped out.  He was disheveled: his tie half-undone and his cheap suit never seemed to fit him right, causing him to adjust it every now and then.  Baker thought this the sort of man who didn’t mind being a used so much.  The sort that would take it as a compliment.

             
He reeked of nervous energy.

             
After another of these adjustments he motioned for Baker to climb in and Baker obliged.  Len closed the door behind him, then climbed up front and rode shotgun.

             
The car pulled away in silence that didn’t last long.  “This is Mister Crow,” Len said from the front seat, looking back over his shoulder.

             
Baker looked at the man in the custom suit sitting beside him with a drink in his hand.  Crow gave him half a smile and reached into his breast pocket.  “Here,” he said, offering a pill bottle.

             
Baker took the bottle and peered at it.

             
“Take one,” Len told him.  Baker looked up at him, unmoving.  “It’s in the contract,” he added.  “If you don’t like it let us know and we can turn around.”

             
“What is it?” Baker asked.

             
“Just a little inhibiter,” Mr. Crow told him.  “Don’t worry, it won’t alter you too much.  See, we like you just the way you are, we just want to dial you into a little bit of control.”

             
Baker opened the pill bottle and looked down at the little round tablets.  They were light blue, but he didn’t think he’d taken them before.  “Control?”

             
“Sure,” Len added and Richter Crow gave him a look that made him turn around in his seat and close his trap.

             
“Medication doesn’t work on people like me.”

             
“Medication doesn’t work on your nature,” Crow corrected.  “But it can work on your appetite.  As I said, control.  Impulse control to put a fine point on it.  We want your nature; we just can’t have it running free and whimsical.”  Crow watched the man look down at the pills for another few seconds before he handed him a bottle of water and added, “Just one a day, friend.  That’s all.”

             
Baker shook a pill from the bottle into his hand and swallowed it without liquid.  Crow smiled and nodded, “Good.  Now, what’s your name?”

             
“I thought you knew who I was.”

             
Richter Crow nodded then said, “Yes, but that was another life.  If you’re going to work for us then you’re going to need a new… everything.  It’s simple; you’ll just have to go by-”

             
“Sticklan,” he interrupted.

             
Crow raised his eyebrows and took a sip of whiskey, “Sticklan?”

             
The man smiled, “Sticklan Stone.”

             
Crow laughed hard and the large man behind the wheel checked him in the rear view mirror.  Crow slapped the knee of the newly donned Sticklan Stone and declared, “God damn, you are brilliant.  Sick and brilliant.”  He took another sip, the last of the ice clinking against the side of his glass, and said, “I knew there was something I liked about you.”

             
Sticklan studied him, trying to make sense of the man.  Len was watching him over the shoulder of his seat again.

             
“You get it, right?” Crow asked Len, who sat slack faced and watched him.  “Bah,” he scoffed then asked the big man, “You get it Sen?”

             
Sen nodded and replied, “Sure do boss.”

             
Crow gestured toward him, looking at Len.  ‘See,’ that gesture said, ‘he gets it.’  What he said was, “Sticklan Stone.  Sticks and stones.”

             
For the first time the new Mister Stone grinned and said, “Sticklan Stone will break your bones and death will follow after.”

             
Excitement drained from Richter Crow a bit as he looked at the face of the man sitting beside him.  Through all the planning, the string pulling, the greasing of wheels, and finally the fetching of this man, he’d never considered what he saw now, in his eyes and on his face.  It came off him in waves, an energy that made you want to run.  He’d dealt with men who were hunters, men who could track something down and trap it to whatever end, harmless or violent.  He’d dealt with soldiers and men who could kill without feeling, that was nothing new to him but this was different.  This was the first time he’d seen a real life human predator.  When Sticklan killed it wouldn’t be like when his soldiers killed for he would feel something very much indeed.  He would feel pleasure.