Authors: Ron Goulart
Tad hesitated. “I’d like to get a last look at Hohl,” he said. “Tell him how I’ve felt about all the—”
“We don’t have time for settling scores right now,” the robot reminded. “Later, perhaps.” He tugged.
“Okay, we’ll go. But . . .”
In a few moments they were out of range of the squabble. All was fog and silence again.
Until they tramped into a clearing in the mist and saw a circle of a dozen men. Catmen, lizard men, humans. Some carried illegal machines, but some carried blaster rifles and stunguns.
“What have we here?” muttered a thickset catman He held a blaster pistol in his left paw. “A wee lad and his ‘bot nanny, is it?”
“On the contrary,” said Electro while glancing fron weapon to weapon, “we’re part of the mob.”
“The what?”
“The mob, the gang, the bunch,” amplified the robot. “We work for Hohl, same as you.”
“We ain’t got any ‘bots on the team,” pointed out stooped lizard man. “We smuggle ‘bots, we don’t work with ‘em.”
“No, we don’t rub shoulders and socialize with ‘bots,” added the catman with the pistol.
“He’s an expensive-looking model,” said the lizard man, circling Electro. “Fetch a good price in the capital, wouldn’t he now?”
“He happens to be mine,” said Tad, his voice shade unsteady. “And I happen to be Hohl’s boss . . . you might say I’m the mastermind behind this entire operation. So you guys had—”
“Ha!” laughed the catman, scratching at his furry flickering ear with the tip of the blaster barrel. “A mooncalf claiming to be the mastermind what bosses Hohl.”
“I’m tired of being called a mooncalf!” Tad took two steps forward.
Electro caught him. “Diplomacy is what’s called for, my boy,” he said in a low voice. “Allow me to negotiate with these rogues and rascals. Now then, sir, if you’ll—”
“By the blessed bones of St. Serpentine! What’s going on?” The Reverend Dimchurch came rolling out of the surrounding fog in his cart.
“Reverend Dimchurch,” said Tad.
The lizard priest brought his purple scarf up and dabbed at his dry lips. “I had hoped, and occasionally prayed, Tad, you’d never encounter me in this context,” he said sadly. “However, as St. Reptillicus reminds us in his 27th Epistle to the Greengrocer, ‘Some nights you can’t get a drink on the cuff anyplace.’ “
“You know this mooncalf?” asked the catman.
“He’s a close friend of mine.” The reverend’s eyes widened, then focused on Electro. “And this formidable metallic creation can be none other than—”
“Incognito,” rushed in Electro. “I’d prefer to travel incognito.”
“Ah, yes. I see. And where exactly are you traveling to, you and Tad?”
Tad replied, “I’m leaving Foghill. I can’t explain why just now, though possibly you know.”
“We all must wander some in our youth. Doesn’t St. Reptillicus, in his oft-quoted 19th Epistle to the Furniture Company, tell us, ‘If they won’t deliver, you’ve got to go out for the stuff’?” He made a mystical sign in the misty air. “May St. Serpentine be with you on your journey, no matter what its duration or ultimate destination.”
“Thanks, reverend,” said Tad.
The catman snarled. “You mean to let them go, rev?”
“They are to continue unmolested, and no mention made of this incident to Hohl.”
“How come?” demanded the angry smuggler. “How come, rev?”
The lizard priest’s eyes rolled skyward. “It is the will of God, my friends.”
“Okay,” said the catman, “we won’t argue with that.”
Electro got hold of Tad’s arm again. “We’ll be on our way once more,” he told the group, moving away from them with Tad in tow. “Pleasant running into you again after all these years, reverend.”
“Yes, yes,” said Dimchurch, waving a green hand. “Don’t forget the advice of St. Reptillicus. ‘Some towns have hardly any saloons at all.’ Good-bye.”
Soon Tad and the robot were alone again, moving toward the river.
Electro gestured with one glistening metal hand. “Below us lies Fetid Landing.”
“They’re very literal with names hereabouts.” Tad halted beside the robot at the edge of the forest and looked down across the misty night hillside. “Fetid Landing, Foghill.”
“What can you expect from people with organic brains?” He swung his arm leftwards, caught the back of Tad’s tunic as the young man was about to start downhill for the tumbledown river town.
“Now what?”
“Now, stripling, we must avail ourselves of more of my built-in cunning.”
“You haven’t been especially cunning so far, Electro. You let us walk right smack into that band of smugglers. Then we didn’t even try to fight our way out.”
“Wisdom comes either with years or superior technology,” the robot told him. “Trust me, therefore, until you develop sufficient wisdom of your own. Before we enter even a shabby town like Fetid Landing we must disguise ourselves.”
Tad said, “You actually think Cousin Joshua will come hunting us?”
“Joshua, Hohl, Cornelia and a multitude of goons,” Electro assured him. “After all, I know far too much and you are the rightful heir to the entire Rhymer Industries empire. We’re lucky Hohl is too preoccupied with his smuggling to have noticed our departure yet.”
“Wait. Am I the heir? I didn’t know that.”
“Naturally, since they didn’t want you to know.”
“But my mother would have kno—”
“She was flummoxed, same as you and your slack-witted attorney. But enough babbly on the subject of familial crookedness.” He fisted his left side, causing a small door to pop open.
“I never noticed that when I was repairing you.”
“See my earlier reference to wisdom.” From the opening Electro withdrew an oblong box marked DISGUISE KIT. “I happen to be a makeup wizard.” He delved into the kit, extracting a tube of something green. “While I’m doing this, reach into your rucksack, my boy, for that cloak I foresightedly snatched out of the wardrobe closet. No use greening up my entire body.”
“You’re going to paint yourself green?” Tad slung off his knapsack, dug around until he located the plaid cloak.
“I am converting myself into a lizard man.” Draping the cloak over a tree branch, Tad remarked, “This particular plaid won’t go with green.”
“A gentleman of style can wear anything. I set trends, lad, I don’t follow them.”
“For somebody who usually goes around unclothed you claim—”
“My brain is a storehouse of fashion lore. Here, hold this mirror while I produce the scale effect.”
Tad held the small oval at eye level. “You sure you can be a convincing lizard man?”
Electro stooped slightly, went about creating scales on the green substance he’d applied to his chrome face. “What does it take to be a lizard? One of the dullest types in the known universe. Snooze in the sun, catch flies with your tongue, shed your skin now and then.”
“Reverend Dimchurch was much more versatile than—”
“Oh, right, he was also a smuggler.” Electro paused to inspect his progress. “Seems fairly convincing in this rather mucky moonlight. What do you think?”
“Yep, you’re starting to look like a lizard.”
“When we encounter anyone I’ll not only look like a lizard man, I’ll act like one.”
“Cousin Cosmo built an awful lot of talents into you.”
“Yes,” agreed Electro, wagging his now lizard-like head. “Ill do the hands next, possibly the arms up to the elbows. Then we’ll tackle you.”
Tad protested, “You’re not going to turn me into a lizard.”
“You couldn’t bring it off,” said Electro. “All we need do with you is lighten your hair and give you a smattering of beard. Joshua’s scouts will be seeking news of a dark lad and an imposing robot. They’ll ignore gossip and rumors about a blond young fellow traveling with an overweight lizard man.”
“I suppose so.”
“You don’t sound terrifically confident.” The robot applied artificial lizard skin to his metal hands.
“It’s only that, well, Electro, you’ve been in that underground lab for six years,” said Tad. “Out here the world is different, this theatrical bluffing may not work.”
“You haven’t led that worldly a life yourself so far. At least according to your dossier.”
“I lived at home, went to a fairly private school, didn’t travel much,” Tad admitted. “There never seemed to be enough money for anything beyond the essentials. My mother kept me close to her, maybe because she didn’t want any accidents to happen to me.”
“Very well then,” said the robot. “We’re both in need of practical experience. Let us, therefore, proceed to gather some.”
“First we better change the color of my hair,” said Tad.
The building hung out over the dark waters of the river, supported by bowlegged stilts. It was pocked with round windows of multicolored glaz, had roofs of slanting slate. The large wooden sign over the doorway proclaimed it as the Belles Lettres Cafe & Boarding House. Noise, smoke and harsh fumes were spilling out of the open window ovals. And as Tad and Electro approached the entrance the double doors popped open to allow two husky catmen waiters to heave a protesting owlman out into the foggy night.
“We don’t go for no fanatic existential humanists in here, bud!” growled one of the waiters while the flung owlman was rolling over on the slippery flagstones.
“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear,” said the moderately intoxicated customer. “My stand is not the traditional philosophic pose of—”
“Ar, stuff it in your feathery nork, mate!” suggested the other waiter, making a threatening gesture with one fisted paw.
His associate was eyeing Tad. “You ain’t planning to start some kind of tasteless debate, are you?”
“Not at all, sir,” answered Electro for him. “We merely seek shelter and a warm meal.”
The waiter grunted, stood aside so they might enter. “Go on in, cobbers, but keep your blinking noses clean,” he advised. “Don’t refute the boss too much, he’s in a fair foul mood this blinking night.”
“We appreciate your advice,” said Electro, urging Tad into the crowded main room of the cafe.
“This seems like a place where we’re going to get trouble, not help.” Tad stood surveying the blurred room.
There were fifteen or so round tables on the raw wood floor. The light, dim and fuzzy, came from floating amber globes up near the low, beamed ceiling. A bar covered one wall and standing behind it, swaying from left to right, was a lanky lizard man in the purple robes of a bishop of the Church of Aggressive Beatitude.
“The wavering gent would be the proprietor,” explained Electro out of the side of his now-green mouth. “Defrocked cleric who calls himself Bish. Fancies himself a man of letters, hence the name of this bistro and the frequent philosophical and literary skirmishes which take place herein.”
“See anyone who can help us?” Tad moved toward a vacant table.
“As I mentioned previously,” said the disguised robot, “your cousin used to allow me to accompany him to Fetid Landing now and again. Thus I came to know some of his local friends. If I can contact certain of them I’ll be able to arrange passage out for us. Otherwise, we’ll take potluck and approach the least rascally appearing riverman.”
“Over here, you two promising-looking chaps.”
Bish was flapping a green inviting hand at them from behind the bar.
“We’d prefer a table if you—”
“Boss wants a friendly discourse with you two blokes.” Another large waiter, human this one, appeared at Electro’s side. “Don’t antagonize him.”
“We’ve been traveling a full weary day,” said the robot. “Couldn’t we dine and—”
“Discourse first, then food.” The waiter hustled them up to the bar.
Bish gave a pleased chuckle when he noticed their arrival. “Two coves of obvious intellect,” he said. “Clearly several cuts above the usual run of dimwits we get at the Belles Lettres. Take that owlish gent who just received the old heave, he didn’t know his blip from a snerg hole. And him claiming to be a professor at the University of California on Jupiter. Not bloody likely. What’ll it be, lads?”
“What sort of ale do you have?” asked Electro, leaning an elbow on the bar and producing, at least to Tad’s ears, a metallic thunk.
“No, no, I don’t mean what blinking kind of swill you want to slosh into your blooming gullet.” Bish’s gaunt green left hand jabbed out, pointing at a large blackboard propped against the liquor shelves behind him. “What intellectual topic do you wish to discuss?”
Today’s Special
was chalked across the top of the blackboard in a mismatched style of lettering. Below was a scrawled list.
Electro stroke his chin with his scaly knuckle. “Rather sparse fare tonight, Bish.”
“We had to scratch a couple of topics,” said the one-time bishop. “Too controversial, they was. In fact, number seven provoked three brawls, a broken marriage and a scimitar-knifing between sunset and about a half hour ago. I won’t even tell you what that particular topic was, lest you be moved to violence. How about taking Kepler? I’m always good for twenty minutes of heated interchange about that old sod.”
Electro rested his other elbow on the bar top, making a lesser thunk. “I was hoping to discuss transportation,” he confided. “More specifically, transportation along the River Sneath.”
Bish made a rude sound. “That’s no fit subject for men of intellect to chew the blinking rag over.”
“It is, nonetheless, a topic I will pay a small but impressive sum to discuss,” continued the robot. “Earlier inquiries have led me to believe that a few rivermen I knew in former times still travel the Sneath. Should I be able to contact one of them this night, I’d be very pleased.”
“Ar, you’re iust offering a little cumshaw to me for setting up an interview ‘twixt you and one of these sods who run boats on the river,” said Bish. “Hardly the sort of exchange I anticipated when you entered, mates.” He swayed in Tad’s direction. “Are you as intellectually sterile as this verdant pritz here, young fellow?”
“If we chat a few minutes about Kepler, will you help us locate the people we want?”