The Saffron Malformation (11 page)

             
Being clean felt too good, even Quey was amazed at how long the water running off of him stayed dirty, and the pajamas had been too comfortable.  Also, there was the whiskey and the weed.  All of these things combined to make it so that Quey barely made it back to his room of knights and dragons before exhaustion took him.  He fell onto the bed and slept deep and long.

             
When he woke the room was freezing but a blanket was draped over him.  He didn’t know how long he’d slept but the sun was down—probably why the room was so cold—and he was starving.  Botler told him to help himself and he wondered for a moment who had covered him with the blanket?  Sadly, as he left his room and started for the main area, he thought it was likely a robot.

             
Quey stopped, stunned.  The main room was dimly lit by the painted stars on the ceiling and far wall.  They’d been drawn with some sort of glowing paint.  Ryla was sitting on the couch in her thin black slip and a robot was walking toward her.  It was actually walking, on legs, and with fluidity.  He’d seen robots with legs before but they never moved like this one.  It was about six feet tall with a thin frame, but very much human in shape.  In fact, if the light had been any weaker Quey was certain he would have thought it was a man.

             
The robot’s body was different.  The outside of it wasn’t made of metal, but seemed to be some sort of thick liquid inside a layer of a solid substance, like a skin. He couldn’t tell what it was.  Silicone or something like it, perhaps.

             
But why…?  He began to wonder before his brain stopped.  The robot sat down beside Ryla and she curled up against it.

             
“Initiate affection program zero five,” she said and the robot began to caress her back.  It’s fingers moved over her with a natural dexterity he’d never seen in a bot and she sighed content and settled tight against it.

             
It felt wrong to watch but he couldn’t look away.  He was trying to figure something out.

             
“Would you like me to begin a sensual cycle?” the robot asked, its voice smooth and gentle.  It didn’t skip at all when it spoke, like some of the other robots had.

             
“No,” Ryla replied softly.  “It’s been a long day.  Just randomize affection zero three to zero six until I fall asleep and tuck me in.”

             
“As you wish,” the bot answered and its fingers ran up her back and began to caress the back of her neck and head.  She groaned lightly and curled up in its lap.

             
Quey turned and walked quietly back to his room.  Suddenly he didn’t feel hungry.  He understood what he’d just witnessed but couldn’t comprehend it.  He’d heard of sex bots, especially in the time before the exodus.  They were capable of basic techniques, usually used by lonely men desperate for something that wasn’t their own hand, but that’s not what this was.  This thing was more than that.  She’d programmed it to be affectionate, to mimic caring.  She’d taught it to cuddle.  This was a companion; something she used for comfort and that’s what struck him and he felt… sad.  This was her way of trying to feel loved.

Peaches and Cream

             
Len sat across the desk from Richter Crow in his cheap blue suit shaking badly.  “This is a disaster.”

             
“Maybe not,” Crow replied.

             
“Maybe not!  Well if this isn’t a fucking disaster than what is?  We’ve got a mad man on the loose, slaughtering people on a list we gave him.”

             
“Remember your tongue,” Richter Crow warned, settling back in his leather seat.  Len shrunk in his chair.  “Now, I understand the concern but look, he sent a report after, just as I asked and I told him to eliminate anyone who couldn’t be turned.  It’s possible this Andy Frock didn’t take him seriously until it was too late.”

             
Len was about to interject when Richter stopped him.  “And lets think of the positive here.  He didn’t slaughter a random person, he did someone on our list.  And,” Richter checked his computer, “his current position says he’s nearing the second name on that very list.  So, worst case scenario he kills everyone on it and we have to find a new set of scientists to take their place.  Only this time we’ll find our sort of scientists and no board of global anything will have a say in the matter.”

             
“You’re forgetting the part where we have to explain the brutal murders of our entire geological projects division.”

             
Crow shrugged, “No I’m not.  How can we be held accountable for the whims of a mad man?  Either way, it’s peaches and cream.”

             
Len Garrison looked pale and felt like he was going to be sick.  “I can’t believe this.  Any of this.”

             
Richter sat forward in his seat, stern and looming.  “You listen here you whinny little prick.  What did you think was going to happen?  We’re stealing hundreds of billions from the population of this planet.  Two billion and some change worth of people, and when its over we’re going to leave them to die.  What the fuck does it matter who gets killed in the mean time?  You don’t have the stomach for it?  You wanna change your mind?”

             
Len was shaking his head.

             
“There’s not a man alive with a seat aboard our ship that wouldn’t gladly put you off for an equal split of your dinky little share, and I never want you to forget that.”

             
Len nodded fiercely and said, “I’m sorry.  I didn’t,” then trailed off.  “I get nervous.”

             
Richter Crow stood and circled the desk, taking a seat on the edge near Len.  He clasped a hand on the man’s shoulder and said, “That’s why I wanted to keep you out of this particular loop.  You’re a good man Len, and I need you aboard, but you’re not this kind of man.”

             
“No,” Len protested.  “I can handle it.  I just… keep it in perspective is all.  They’re dead anyway.”

             
Richter smiled.  “That a boy.  Now go on and get yerself a drink.”

             
Len stood and went to the wet bar in the corner.  He poured whiskey strait and downed it fast.  He realized, while pouring his second drink the genius of Richter Crow.  In one conversation he’d put him in his place, insulted him, threatened to have him killed, then made him feel special and got him back in line with his plan. Worse yet, Richter had made him feel good about it all.

             
Len drank his second finger of whiskey in the same manner as his first.

              Richter Crow’s computer pinged and the man sat behind the desk to check it.  A moment later he smiled.  “See there Len?”  He turned his screen toward the man and told him, “Second subject cooperative,” knowing he couldn’t read the screen from the other side of the room.

             
Len nodded and tried to smile.

             
The second subject on his list had been Vil and Grata Wann.  A nice young couple with a pair of rug rats they liked well enough.  All Sticklan had to do was talk to them.  “I’m going to make a simple request, all you have to do is agree, and there won’t be a mess.”

             
“Who are you?” Vil asked, his voice shaky.

             
“Names Sticklan Stone.”

             
That was all it took.  They changed their reports right there in the living room while he played with the tikes.

             
Blocks.  Little guys loved blocks.

             
The new reports had been sent to Blue Moon and to Richter Crow personally and the Wann’s had been left a little shaken but alive.  Of course he had to inform them that, “My employer has asked me not to kill you and for that you should be thankful.  I’d love to cut into you.  Nothin’ brings me joy like that look, you ever see it?  Naw, don’t imagine you’d get the chance spending all your time looking at dirt, but… it’s somethin’, ya know.  The moment a person stops hoping to survive and starts wishing they’d just die already.”

             
He looked over at the kids and smiled.  “They never get it.”  He faced Vil and Grata again.  “Least not in the same way.  Don’t know what it is about kids but they always think they’re gunna live.  They think mom and dad will save ‘em I guess.”  He glared at them.  “Anything about this little visit, anything about you changing your report, anything about anything I think even smells like you talking and you’re going to get to see for yourself first hand.  My employer is protecting you for now, but if you cross me, sell me out, well then that won’t matter to me anymore.”

             
Vil and Grata looked pale.  Sticklan smiled and slapped Vil’s knee.  “Buck up man, you just bought your whole family a ride off this rock before it dies.”

             
Grata looked at him, trembling, and asked, “What about the others.  Billions of people.”

             
Stone peered at her.  “Well that’s a choice you gotta make.  Sure you might save ‘em by blabbin.  But then I will have to come back.  And I will make sure each and every one of you suffers.  You will all die.  Weeping.  Broken things.”  He looked over his shoulder at the children playing in the other room.  “That really what you want for them?”

             
He could see in their eyes they weren’t going to talk so he said goodbye and left them.

             
Unfortunately the third name on his list didn’t go so well.  His name was Cameron Kitt.  His wife was Angie.  He was a righteous man who didn’t give him a chance to introduce himself properly.  Instead he rambled on about how the report was important and it was his duty as a scientist to make it accurate.  He said that’s how we ended up in this mess to begin with, scientists forging findings.

             
“Well I’m sorry we couldn’t come to an understanding but you have to do what you think is right,” Sticklan told him.  They shook hands, Cameron’s handshake was bitter.  Sticklan smiled.

             
They parted and Sticklan waited for nightfall when he went around the back of the house and opened a door.

             
Cameron started down the steps.  He’d heard a noise, went to his closet where he grabbed a gulf club and moved to investigate.  He was in the foyer, heading for the living room when the lamp beside the sofa clicked on.

             
“I knew it!” Cam yelped, enraged by the sight of Sticklan sitting on the couch and smiling.

             
“Thought I’d give you another chance to change your mind.”

             
“Fuck you, you’re looking for my computer so you can forge my report.”

             
Sticklan cocked his head left and said, “Couldn’t be more wrong.  Besides, I wouldn’t know how to do that if I wanted to.”

             
“Honey, call for security,” he shouted up the stairs.

             
“Fraid she won’t be doing that,” he informed Cam.

             
“Yeah, and why’s that?” he asked glaring at Sticklan.

             
“Because you need a head to talk on the phone,” he replied lifting Angie’s severed head off the floor and setting it on the coffee table.

             
Cam felt his heart race and his grip tightened on the gulf club in his hand.  He raised it and screamed, tears beginning to fill his eyes.

             
Sticklan raised a finger, and said, “Let’s think about this now.  You could go crazy with that nine iron, or you could think of the two girls upstairs.  What are their names?”

             
Cam had been charging but now he was frozen.  He’d forgotten about his daughters asleep in their beds until this man brought them up.

             
“What are their names?” he asked again.

             
“Lucy,” Cam answered and his voice cracked so he tried again.  “Lucy and Elsa.”

             
Sticklan smiled.  “Pretty names.”  He lifted a picture off the table beside the sofa.  “Pretty girls.  So I want you to think about them and all the fun I’m gunna let you watch me have with them if you come at me with that thing.”

             
Rage and fear boiled together and rumbled through Cam.  “If you-” he spit before being interrupted.

             
“Let’s not start with that.  Because if I do, then it’s because of you.”

             
Cam lowered his club.  “Who are you?”

             
Sticklan smiled.  “Glad you asked.  You never did let me get to that before.  I’m Sticklan Stone.”

             
Cam swallowed and dropped the club.

             
“I see you watch the news.”

             
After that it was… well, peaches and cream as Richter Crow would have said.  Cameron Kitt sat in his study and changed his report while Sticklan sat across from him.

             
“I need to see it before you send it.”

             
Cam turned the screen toward Sticklan and sunk back in his chair while the mad man read.  Satisfied, he sent a copy to Blue moon and one to Richter Crow.  He told Cameron what would happen if any of this got out.

             
“Just remember,” Sticklan told him after loading Angie's body into the trunk of his car.  “She left.  You don’t know why.  Maybe she took a trip and just vanished.  Whatever you like,” he said with a smile.  “Just not the truth.”

             
“What are you going to do with her?” Cam asked from the steps while Sticklan started for the car.

             
“I’m going to let your imagination run with that one,” he replied and got into his vehicle.

             
Number three, peaches and cream.

             
The message was in Richter’s box in the morning.  He smiled, nodding.

             
It was strange, later that day when he went to Andy and Jenna Frocks funeral.  He spoke about how well he knew Andy, about the projects they worked on together.  It was a rush, like getting high, knowing something everyone else in the room would kill to find out.  There were times, standing at the podium, the audience hanging on his carefully crafted words, when he would stop.  It might have seemed to the audience that he was overcome with emotion, that it was difficult for him to go on.  Really he was imagining what it would be like to press his lips to the mike and tell them all, “I had Butcher Baker kill Andy and Jenna and in a decade I’m going to kill the rest of you too.”

             
His heart raced with the thought.  Instead he went on about what a tragic loss had been suffered at the hands of a mad man.

             
Things fell in line over time.  Richter had men find people to keep Sticklan Stone’s apatite satisfied, mostly women but the occasional man.  Sticklan, on his own, off Richter’s radar, found the children.  There was a farmhouse out in the fields, off the highway and away from anything, where he would take them.

             
Richter was happy, as everything was smooth with the moon beam project until he returned home from a day trip into the city and found something happened he hadn’t expected.  Someone had been in his office.  He knew by the position of things, he had an excellent memory, especially when it came to that sort of thing.  It was nothing major, his sheet was turned and his drawers were slightly askew when he opened them.

             
Brow furrowed and thoughtful he woke up his desk computer and looked for recent activity.  Someone had logged into the network from his terminal just five minutes ago.

             
Richter Crow sat back in his chair and his heart sunk.  There was a spy in his midst, someone close enough to get into his home.