The Winter of the Robots (21 page)

The golem stomped over and laid into Cutie, punching her and pushing her farther off the ledge. Her rear wheels spun helplessly.

“Next time we use a four-wheel drive,” said Rocky.

“Yeah. Next time,” said Oliver. He picked up a snowball and hurled it at the dinobot, missing by a mile.

The golem took a swing at Cutie’s tail with one of its long arms and knocked the wrecking ball loose from the dipper. The huge ball bounced off her trunk before it rolled down the embankment, collided with the fallen tree, and shoved the dinobot into the snow. The golem froze as its puppeteer was buried.

With the rear end lightened by five hundred pounds, Cutie’s back wheels were able to push her back onto the embankment. She rattled as she rolled among the junk and found a place to hide. Without her rear lights, the riverbank was plunged into darkness.

“Anybody bring a flashlight?” I asked.

“Dan gave us a couple.” Oliver handed me one. I aimed it where the dinobot had fallen, swept it back and forth along the bank. I saw its tracks in the snow.

“It went that way!” I pointed with the beam of my flashlight.

The golem woke again and plodded toward Cutie on its mighty piston legs. She headed back toward the fence, slow and wobbly. One of her rear tires had gone flat. The golem caught up easily.

I followed the dinobot’s tracks around the piles of junk until they disappeared into a pipe. It was the one with the otters, and something was right in the opening. I hurried over, fell to my knees, and peered in. Sometimes I am not that smart.

I saw a flash of blue light and threw my weight to the
side. The electric bolt seared the collar of my parka. The dinobot emerged from the pipe and leveled its sinister blue eyes at me. I backed away until the ground disappeared: I’d backed right off the ledge. I flailed, found a handhold, and held on. I’d been saved by the otters’ makeshift ladder.

The dinobot scuttled over and took aim. In a split second, I calculated my odds of surviving a fifty-foot drop. If I was
lucky
, I would only break every bone in my body. This is what I got for picking a girl over a robot, I thought.

Something heavy, wet, and sharp tore up my back. I felt my coat rip and a dozen daggers pierce my body. A lightning bolt of chestnut brown flew over my head, met the robot dead-on, and knocked it to the ground, then scrambled on to the pipe.

In the distance, the hammering noise stopped. I pulled myself back to the top of the embankment, and Oliver helped me up.

The robot moved, but Oliver gave it a boot stomp, then another, then kicked it off the ledge.

“We were on our way to help you,” said Rocky.

“Just three more seconds, we would have been here,” said Oliver.

“I know,” I told them. “The important thing is, we won.” I offered a fist, and they bumped it.

There was a terrific crunch of metal, and the earth shook. We all hit the ground, expecting the sky to fall down around us. There was another, smaller, but still deafening noise, and another. The golem must still be alive. There must be a fifth
dinobot controlling it. I groaned. If there was a fifth, there could be a sixth, a seventh, an eighth.

I got up to my knees, saw what was going on, and laughed.

“Come on. Get up,” I said.

I helped Rocky up, then Oliver. The noise continued unabated.

Across the junkyard, Cutie had brought down the golem. That was the tremendous crash we’d heard. She was now driving into it, again and again, whacking it from one end, then the other, pushing it toward the ledge. With what must have been her last gasp of life, she sent the monstrosity tumbling down the embankment. It rolled, taking out bushes and trees as it did so, causing a minor avalanche of snow.

“That’s the match,” said Oliver.

I found the dropped flashlight in the snow, handed it to Rocky, and pointed at the pipe. “This is your chance to see an otter.”

She crouched down, peered inside, and made a
squee
sound. “Otter puppies,” she said. “They’re amazing.” I peered in and saw the mother looking back at me, glossy black eyes peering cautiously over a puff of damp muzzle.

“Thanks for saving my life,” I whispered to the mama otter.

I didn’t do it for you
, her face seemed to say.

Surrounding her were five or six kitten-sized bundles of soft brown fuzz, peeping and squeaking as they nursed. They were tiny and helpless and more perfect than anything any of us could make ourselves.

Cutie was barely recognizable: All of her glass was shattered, her roof hammered flush with the hood, the tail dragging on the ground.

“It’s amazing she still works,” said Oliver. “Or, you know, that she worked until a few minutes ago.”

“They knew how to make cars back then,” said Rocky.

We traded glances, thinking about all the work Sergei had put into this beautiful car. It wasn’t going to be restored again. It was beyond all hope.

“She was a good girl,” said Rocky. She reached out and gave the car a single affectionate pat. The grille shifted, collapsing on one side, and some of her innards burst out.

“Oops,” said Rocky. “Sorry.”

Something fell out of the grille and rolled toward me. I picked it up and put it in my pocket.

We limped home, slowly, on layers of ice and snow. I was glad when we got to First Street and the glow of street lamps. Oliver split off first, mumbling that he would see us at school. Rocky and I trod on.

“I wouldn’t have done any of this if I didn’t want you to like me,” I told Rocky.

“That’s a dumb reason to do anything,” she said.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.”

“I already liked you,” she said. She took my hand, gave it a squeeze.

I walked her home, then let myself in my house through the back door.

“Is that you?” Mom’s voice called from the living room.

“Yeah.” So much for sneaking in and going to bed.

She appeared in the doorway and flipped on the light. “Thank God you’re all right.”

“I’m fine,” I said. I took off my jacket and hung it up. “I didn’t mean to keep anyone up.”

“Well, go to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.” She gave me a hug. “You’re in big trouble,” she said.

“All right.” I didn’t care. At least I was alive.

I waited for Mom to leave, grabbed something from my jacket pocket, and went upstairs. Mom had already gone to bed.

I went into the bathroom and awkwardly sloshed peroxide on my otter-inflicted wounds, then went to my room. Penny crept in a moment later.

“You did it, didn’t you?” she whispered.

“Yeah, we did it, and we won.”

“I knew it!” she said.

“You know because you saw it happen.” I handed her the
camera that had fallen from Cutie’s grill. “Better get this cleaned up and back in the box before Dad finds it.”

“I will.” She took the camera. “I didn’t get to see all of it. Dad kept asking me what I was doing on the computer.”

“We’ll watch it later. Now go to bed.” She did, and I changed into jammies and crawled into bed myself. It felt like I’d just fallen asleep when Dad popped into my room. “Glad you could make it home. Don’t forget you have to shovel.”

He did let me sleep for another couple of hours before I went out to shovel. I was tired and sore, and the snow was wet and heavy. A fine way to treat a hero, I thought. The new ache in my back harmonized nicely with the sting of my scratches. Penny came out to help, scattering rock salt behind me as I shoveled snow and scraped ice.

Mom was waiting when I got inside, a mug of cider in her hands. She handed it to me.

“I think it’s time to talk about last night,” she said.

Dad was there, too, his face serious but calm. My eyes met his.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Tell us what happened.”

“I’ll show you,” I said.

I burned the video to two DVDs, and we watched it as a family on TV: thirty-seven clips of the robot’s-eye view of the world. We skipped over Rocky and Oliver finishing their work and fast-forwarded to the battle. It made me a little
seasick to see the screen flashing by garbage, steamrolling dinobots, hanging precariously on the ledge as the golem’s fists swung overhead.

“Hooray!” Penny shouted when the golem finally went over the edge, as seen by Cutie as she gave it the last big shove.

Mom and Dad watched in stunned silence.

Dad shook his head. He was too dazed to be angry. “You run through all the scenarios in your head,” he said. “All the trouble your kids might get into. This one, I didn’t expect.”

“Me neither,” I said.

“How did you even … get involved with all this?” Mom asked.

I thought back to when I chose the girl over the robot, but I didn’t need to go back that far.

“I guess it was when I took Dad’s cameras,” I told them.

The news was full of reports about Nomicon—the fence broken down, a decade’s worth of junk tossed around, noises audible for miles, all in the middle of a late-season blizzard. Hooligans playing with heavy machinery, some of the reporters speculated. It wasn’t clear if they found Cutie—the police didn’t give away that much. Dmitri told me in an IM it was fine if they did. Sergei had blasted off the VIN, just in case.

They never came up with any real answers. Eventually, lawyers representing the real estate company that owned the land requested they close the investigation. The request
was granted, and the fences went back up. The mystery on Half Street faded from the headlines. Nomicon was going to be forgotten once again.

On the last Saturday in March the Volkovs had a party for Sergei’s acquittal. Less than two weeks had passed, but all the snow from the storm had disappeared. It felt like spring. There were even robins flitting about in the naked branches of the trees outside.

The Volkov house was full of people and buzzing with conversations, a mix of English and Russian. I stood in the kitchen, had a piece of crumbly vanilla cake and two cups of orange-scented tea while Malasha talked to a goth girl named Mandy. I was a bit lonely, but all right—there was something warm and comforting about the Volkovs’ house. With all the problems Dmitri talked about, the place felt like a home.

“Having fun?” Dmitri asked me.

“Sure. Hey.” We slapped hands.

“Thanks for coming,” he said. “Rocky and Oliver coming?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been out of commission. Flu.”

“Rocky just said ‘maybe’ on the invite,” he said. “Oliver never responded. I thought, you know, the four of us could hang out again.”

“Me too,” I said. “I’d like that.”

“I’m feeling kind of left out these days,” he admitted, then laughed nervously. “I guess it’s my own fault for blowing off the battle, huh?”

“No, no. That’s not it. I’ve been grounded and haven’t seen anybody outside of school, either.” I didn’t know what else to tell him. The three of us had been through something—an adventure—that he had not. “Anyway, you did the right thing,” I reminded him. “Putting your family first. That was responsible. Thoughtful.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m the good one. I know.” He gulped some lukewarm tea. “Hey, wait until you see the surprise we have for Sergei,” he said. “You might see him cry.”

“Ha.” It was easier to believe I’d see Sergei
fly
.

Rocky did come, carrying her bike helmet, explaining it was too nice a day not to ride. I made a note to get my own bike tuned up so I could go on rides with her that summer. Oliver came, too, but he doesn’t like rooms full of strangers. He preferred to hang out in the TV room with Alexei, watching muted parrots on the plasma screen.

After an hour or so, everybody trickled out to the backyard for the big surprise. A car was under a tarp. Had Dmitri somehow rescued the Mustang? I wondered. Dan Clouts had helped us cart it back to the storage place, but the car was a wreck.

The four of us stood on the back porch and watched: Rocky and me on the lower step, Oliver and Dmitri behind us.

Sergei looked skeptically at the tarp-covered car. “Is this what I think it is?” He yanked the cloth away.

I’d heard the expression “love at first sight,” but I didn’t know what it meant until I saw Sergei and that ugly green car.

He circled it, reached out, and touched it as tentatively as if it were an untamed horse.

“It is a Superbird,” he said. “I didn’t completely believe it, but here it is.”

I’d forgotten all about the car Dmitri discovered at the junkyard. Sergei inspected it, checking the side panels and the wheels and the bumpers. “It’s all here, too. Even the air wing.” He ran his hand along the crazy big spoiler. “Do I dare ask about the engine?”

“There’s an engine
in it
,” said Dmitri. “It’s old, but I don’t know for sure if it’s the original one.”

Sergei popped the hood, looked at the engine, and burst into tears.

Dmitri edged over to me. “I told you,” he whispered.

“I don’t get it,” I admitted. “It’s kind of an ugly car.”

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” he reminded me. He leaned in to whisper. “And, uh, restored Superbirds can go for over a million bucks at auction.”

One day that summer, just before the Fourth of July, I biked to the University of Minnesota. I remembered the oddly shaped building where Peter Clayton worked, and the way to his office. Oliver assured me he would be there. I caught Peter alone, eating a sandwich, his sleeves rolled up so he wouldn’t drip on them.

“Jim!” He put down the sandwich and grabbed some napkins to wipe his hands. “What a surprise. Is Oliver with you?”

“No, it’s just me.”

“Hmm. OK.” He looked at me uneasily. “What can I do for you?”

“I’ve owed you this for a while,” I told him. “You know, for the cameras you pretended to buy? My dad helped me calculate interest. Seven percent.” I gave him a check, already written out.

“Knox and Sons,” he noted. “So you went into business with your dad?” He set the check on the desk.

“Actually, I went into business for myself,” I told him. “But people like to think there’s a grown-up behind the scenes, you know?”

“I imagine. So, what do Knox and Sons do?”

“Mow lawns,” I said. “Hopefully shovel snow, come winter. I have three workers now, hope to make it five by the end of the summer.”