The Saffron Malformation (80 page)

             
“You know I’m not like that.”

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

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

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

             
“I was young, I didn’t understand.”

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

             
Ryla hung her head.

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

             
“And you chide me for my cruelty.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

             
“You crashed her van,” Ryla said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

             
“What do you think?” Quey asked.

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

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

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

             
“We’ve got the bots though.”

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

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

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

             
Quey chuckled.  “You got a point there.”

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

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

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

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

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

             
Quey shrugged, “Who knows.”

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

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

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

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

             
“And left her alive?”

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

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

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

             
“He ever mention this place?”

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

             
“Right,” Reggie said, sipping thoughtfully.

             
“What?” Quey asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

             
“I hate waiting,” Quey complained between hands.

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

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

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

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

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

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

             
Arnie sat at the table while Reggie dealt.

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

             
“Yeah,” Reggie agreed with a chuckle.

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

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

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

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

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