Authors: Ron Goulart
More than enough tools and equipment here in his late Cousin Cosmo’s work lab. The nearest table, for instance, held an array of neatly compartmented lecdrills, power-drivers and automallets. Farther along sat a scanner, festooned with spider webs of a brilliant orange shade. “Hey, and there’s a ‘fuge.’ “
That was something he’d never been able to afford back home. Tad wasn’t yet completely clear on how the Rhymer Industries profits were split up. After his mother died there had been very little money left in any of their bankcomp accounts. That was still something he had to go into with Cousin Joshua. The lawyer, back home on Barnum, had said he hadn’t been able to find out all about the situation. Tad frowned, wondering if their attorney had been exactly truthful. But he let the newly discovered lab and its equipment distract him.
If Hohl didn’t foul things up, Tad would have something to do, something to fill the long misty hours at Foghill.
After stroking the side of the scanner, brushing away the glistening orange cobwebs, Tad moved on. There was a damp, raw earth smell all around. He noticed underfoot, as he crossed into a dark unlit section of the lab, swirls of purplish mildew fuzzing the plyofloor.
Tad stopped suddenly still, hair at the nape of his neck bristling. Something had moved in the shadows. Then the pure-white rat went darting across the aisle between the lab tables. Laughing at himself, Tad realized what it was he’d heard. He resumed his exploring.
He found Electro in a far corner, though he didn’t know the robot’s name then and Electro was in no shape to introduce himself.
“It’s almost . . . almost like . . . a murder,” Tad murmured, kneeling beside the mechanism.
The robot was sitting slumped in a dark corner, legs wide-spread and arms dangling. He was humanoid in shape and facial features, and if he’s been able to rise and stand he’s have measured well over seven feet in height. Orginally Electro had been chrome plated, but he was tarnished now and stretches of his once-bright exterior were pocked. Green, yellow and orange spider webs laced his hungdown head, his splayed fingers, and elbows and knees.
But someone had done more than simply abandon the robot. The control panel in his wide chest had been roughly ripped open and his complex inner workings smashed with an automallet of some sort. Tiny wires, twists of plaztubing, slivers of neoglass, mangled bits of printed circuitry dribbled out of the gape.
This has got to be Cousin Cosmo’s robot,
Tad realized while running his fingers carefully over the surface of the seemingly defunct mechanism. The only one of its kind, the reverend had said. Tad was fairly familiar with the various types of robots and servos manufactured by Rhymer Industries. This slumped giant was nothing that was offered in any of the RI catalogs and brochures.
Straightening, Tad moved back and stood over Electro. “Who did this to you?” he asked. “I guess I’ll never find out unless. . . .”
Tad knelt again, felt at the robot’s head until he located the concealed skull lock. He applied pressure, there was a mild popping and a small section of the chrome-plated skull swung open.
Turning on his heel, Tad sprinted back to a cabinet where he’d noticed an assortment of lightrods. He had to twist the handles of five before he found one which still gave off light.
Back with Electro, Tad sent the thin beam of light into the opening in the robot’s head. “All there, all intact,” he said grinning. There had been no damage to the machine’s brain, his function center or his memory system. Everything seemed unharmed. “So he could tell me what happened to him. . . . And maybe a lot of other things, too, if ..... Yeah, if.”
If Tad could fix the enormous robot. If he could repair all the damage done to the control and power center.
Very slowly Tad shut the skull. “I can do it,” he said. “Going to take time, a lot of work and patience. But I can make this robot work again.”
Hohl went someplace nights, most nights anyway.
Tad first found that out while ducked behind the row of ugly prickly shrubs which lined the central pathway of the estate. It was a few minutes short of midnight, Tad was long since supposed to have been asleep in his room on the second floor of the mansion. Not tonight, though, because tonight he was going to pay his second visit to the underground lab and begin workings on the damaged robot.
He’d managed to get free of his room, down a back stairway and out into the foggy night undetected. While he was cutting across the damp grass he heard Hohl shouting behind him.
“What kind of hoptoad mount is this, you tin-whistle nerf?” the estate manager was hollering someplace off in the mist.
Tad relaxed some, his breathing coming more regularly. The big man didn’t seem to be discussing him.
“Am I supposed to go about my clandestine business on a lop-eared nork of a nag?”
“One is extremely sorry, sir.”
That was Biernat, the head butler robot. A headless, tank-shape mechanism.
“Sorry, my dangling booper! This frapping grout is one step from the burger grill! Bring me a better one or I’ll put your toke in a sling!”
“One will attempt to do better on one’s second try, sir.”
“Goodness me, Biernat. Have I been bullyragging you again? Bless me, it’s my annoying fog allergy which makes me so cussed all the time. Allow me to take some medication while you fetch a new mount.”
“One hastens to fulfill one’s mission, sir.”
Bong! Kapong!
Biernat fell over onto the walkway. The fog also affected him, making him now and then top-heavy.
“Why don’t you watch where you put your frapping feet, you knock-kneed billyweed? I ought. . . . Oops! There I went, ranting again.”
“One learns to accept such verbal abuse.”
Spang!
Hohl had apparently dealt the metal butler a goodnatured pat on the back.
“You’re a darn good sport, Biernat, putting up with my moods night after night.”
Head low, Tad continued on his way through the misty grounds. The voices of Hohl and the robot and the hooffalls of the grout all dimmed and were muffled away into silence.
The multicolored panels of Warehouse 6 loomed suddenly in front of him. Tad let himself in the same side door he’d tampered with to gain entry that afternoon. Some fog creeped in with him, went swirling around the high-stacked crates, the tumbled furniture.
Tad hurried through the cluttered silence and went down into the lab. Using the light rod he’d discovered earlier, he examined the light-strip powerbox. He’d decided he’d allow himself three hours a night down here, with as much additional time as he could snatch safely from each day. His first night all the time went to repairing the lighting system and getting the crisscross strips cleaned.
He did take a moment, before slipping away, to cross to where the giant robot lay slumped. “I’ll be getting to you soon,” he promised.
The next day he couldn’t get underground at all. Biernat seemed nearly always to have an eye on him and when the robot butler wasn’t around one of the other mechanical servants was underfoot. Tad decided to attempt to get something out of his forced closeness to the butler.
“Biernat,” he asked, when the tank-shape butler served him lunch in the octagonal glaz-walled dining nook, “you’ve been a servant here for quite awhile, haven’t you?”
“One might say that, young sir.” He placed a tray on the table.
“In the days when my cousins lived here, I mean.”
“Rest their souls,” murmured Beirnat, bringing a hand up toward the top of his tank.
Bonk!
“What happened?”
“One asks forgiveness, young sir. One was attempting to wipe away a sentimental tear from one’s eye,” explained the headless mechanism. “It was not until the fist was in motion that one realized one possesses neither a head nor eye.”
“Faulty memory chip,” suggested Tad. He picked up his soysan, didn’t bite into it. “I hear there were more servants here in those days.”
“Oh, so?”
“In particular there was a robot named. . . . Matter of fact, I don’t think I know his name. He was supposed to be a particular favorite of my Cousin Cosmo.”
“Electro,” said Biernat out of his voice grid. “Many’s the time one sat about listening to Electro’s pungent comments on the events of. . . . Ah, but one forgets one has been programmed not to discuss Electro. Forgive me, young sir, it must be that very defect of mine you were mentioning which causes me to ramble so.”
Tad frowned. “Who told you not to remember Electro?”
The butler shrugged his tank. “One doesn’t remember,” he answered.
Anticipation made Tad pace his room in a rapid, bouncing fashion. “Tonight, or tomorrow at the latest,” he said aloud. “Yeah, I’ll have Electro completely repaired and then . . . then we’ll see if he’s going to function again.”
Tad had become fairly good at dodging Biernat and the various other mechanisms who shared the Foghill mansion with him. Hohl had grown increasingly occupied with whatever business it was he conducted with Reverend Dimchurch. The result was the estate manager had not been on the premises much at all lately. This meant that over the past five weeks, since his discovery of the damaged robot, Tad was able to sneak into the workshop beneath the warehouse with fair frequency. He’d put in a good deal of work on Electro, utilizing the tools left by his late cousin.
He felt he had the robot on the brink of functioning. Tonight, with any luck, he’d bring Electro back to life. “And then I can—”
Rap-a-tap! Rap-a-tap!
As Tad turned toward the thick door of his room it swung open. Monique came rolling in. “You forgot to take your vitamins at dinner, Master Tad.”
He scowled at the intruding robot, which was built along the lines of the butler with a series of nozzles attached to its front. “I really don’t think I need—”
“We can never pay too much attention to our nutrition,” the kitchen staff robot told him. “It’s important you have, as a growing boy, your minimum daily requirement of vitamins and minerals as recommended by the Barnum Board of Ag—”
“I’m not growing, Monique. I really think I’ve ceased growing, attained my full height.”
“Ho ho, always kidding, Master Tad.” One of the robot’s several arms swung up and turned on a chest faucet.
Slurp! Slurp!
“Spoon,” advised Tad, watching the vitamin fluid spilling onto his neolin floor.
“To be sure.” Another arm brought a spoon under the flowing faucet. When the spoon was filled, the faucet was twisted shut. “Swallow this like a good boy, Master Tad.”
He hesitated before slouching forward and allowing the solicitous mechanism to thrust the spoon between his lips. “Okay, thanks,” he said swallowing, “and now if—”
“Wouldn’t you like a hearty cup of cocosub?”
“Nope, no.”
“Neareal egg nog?” Monique tapped the third faucet down on the left side.
“Nothing more, thanks.” Reaching out, he gave the robot a polite shove in the direction of the open door. He faked a yawn. “Tired, ought to hop into bed. Night.”
“Sleeping potion?”
“No need.”
“I’ll say good night, then, Master Tad.”
“Splendid, do that.”
“Good night.” Avoiding the spill of vitamin fluid, Monique wheeled out of the room.
Tad moved to shut the door. The door, however, came swinging back at him.
“Ha! So there you are, you pigeon-toed mammy-jammer!” boomed Hohl as he followed the door into the room.
“Why shouldn’t I be here?” Tad took several steps backward. “This is my room.”
“Don’t go trying any of your beady-eyed logic with me, my lad!” Hohl’s thick forefinger jabbed at the narrow corridor of air which separated him from the young man. “All is known!”
“All is known about what?”
The bulky estate manager made a grab, caught hold of Tad’s arm. “We’ll just march down to the underground lab,” he announced in a substantial voice, “and see what kind of monkeyshines you’ve been up to!”
Hohl’s spell of anger did not subside. He continued to shout and snort while dragging Tad through the mansion, down the broad staircase and out into the night. “Treat you like a frapping prince! Then you go and stick a poniard in my metaphorical—”
“I’ve been tinkering, that’s all.” Tad finally managed to wrest free of the bigger man’s clutch. “Are you trying to tell me puttering around is some kind of—”
“Enough of your snurly backchat!” Hohl was on the verge of running. “Certain things are forbidden! Putzing around in Cosmo’s lab happens to be one of them!”
“Why? There’s no possible way I can hurt any—”
“Rule! It’s a rule!”
“You should have told me, then.”
“Anyone with an ounce of sense would know the harping rule!” They’d reached the warehouse and Hohl unlocked the main door.
“I think,” said Tad as he followed the estate manager into the darkened dome, “I better get in touch with my Cousin Joshua tomorrow. There’s really no reason I can’t be allowed to—”
“Joshua! Oh, yeah, sure, certainly. That’ll be splendid!” Hohl gave a series of barking laughs. “If he finds out what I’ve let you get away with, all our norks will be on the block!” His feet thumped loudly on the downward ramp to the lab.
When the lights came on Tad sucked in a deep breath, blinking.
“Who fixed these nerfing fixtures? Did you do that, you snerg-livered little tinker?”
“I did, yes.” Tad was watching the far corner of the room.
Electro was back there, back where Tad had first seen him weeks ago. Worse, he was slumped exactly as he had been then. His front hung open, his internal workings dangled. A plump spider was at work decorating his defunct-looking head with thin strands of orange webbing.
Hohl, making sounds somewhere between coughs and hoots, was roaming the workshop. He grabbed up tools, tossed them down. He kicked at tables, poked squat fingers at mechanisms. Gradually he approached the fallen Electro. Standing over the apparently ruined robot, he chuckled in a pleased way. “Looks like I got down here in time, you arrogant piece of scrap!”
Tad leaned against a workbench. Hohl was acting as though he’d not had anything to do with this current wrecking of the robot. Then who had destroyed the five weeks of hard and patient work Tad had put into reviving Electro? Could one of the servants, the one who’d informed on him, have come down here and done this?