James Patterson: Toys

“Close, guy. I’m impressed.” I gave him his due.

Then I followed the arc of his knife with my own slashing left hand, slapping the weapon out of his grasp as my right hand crushed his other elbow from behind. Next, I jammed his head between two vertical bars in one of the neighborhood’s iron fences and bent them around his neck to form a snug, but not quite strangling, collar.

“Not to worry,” I said. “The police will be here to rescue you soon.”

I absolutely needed to keep a couple of these skunks alive for interrogation. Had to keep that in mind.

I glanced over at Lizbeth to make sure she was doing OK. My lovely bride was just dispatching her next assignment with a graceful rib-cage-collapsing ballet kick. In her spare time, she’s a dancer, a private dancer for the kids and me.

“Way to go, Dr. Baker!” I called to her.

“You too, Dr. Baker!”

I turned my attention to the last of the group, the one who had registered on my sensors as far and away the most dangerous. The criminal was still in the driver’s seat of the car they’d rammed into ours-he only watched while the others fought. Coward, or mastermind? I wondered. If there is such a thing as a human mastermind.

Only it wasn’t a he, I suddenly realized. The creep’s shaggy blond hair was cut short, but the body and facial structure was definitely female.

She was staring at me through the open car window, and the emotion she projected, the undisguised hatred in her eyes, made my scalp bristle. Then she completely shocked me-she knew my name.

“You think you’re a hero, Hays Baker, but you have no idea what you’re doing,” she said softly. “ You’re the criminal here.”

Then she pulled back on the car’s wheel and it accelerated straight skyward. My muscles tensed to leap and catch hold of the rear bumper. I could have done it. But I stayed rooted to the ground. I had no idea why.

Lizbeth was watching me, suddenly looking concerned. “Hays, are you hurt?” she called. “Hays?”

“No, I’m… I’m fine.”

She looked puzzled. “Why didn’t you go after the driver?”

“I… I thought it was too risky,” I said, though that wasn’t it at all. “If the car had taken off and we’d crashed… we’re in a residential neighborhood. Don’t worry, we’ll catch her.”

“Her? It was a woman?” Lizbeth asked in amazement. “I thought all human females were pregnant and working behind a stove.”

“Good one, Jinxie,” I said and gave her a hug. She could tell a human joke with the best of them.

The local police arrived in the next sixty seconds and very quickly and professionally cordoned off the automobile crash and crime scene. The Agency had already been in touch to verify our vitals and to dispatch another car to take Lizbeth and me home.

We arrived at our apartment, a beautiful tenth-story floor-through in one of the most desirable lakefront locations in the city.

When we stepped through our front door, the first thing we heard was the jangly, atonal pulse of robo-rap music coming from our house android, Metallico, who was prancing around the living room and singing along with the tunes.

Metallico hastily turned off the sound and stared at us in shock. “What in the world happened to you two?” he asked. “Lizbeth, your beautiful hair is a mess!”

“Never mind about that,” she snapped. “What happened to this place? It looks like all the closets exploded.”

“Well, excuse me. I suppose I’m too lazy to shop, cook, play nanny, and clean, all at the same time. If you must know, I just finished giving the girls their bath and was starting to tidy up. I wasn’t expecting you home so early.” The robot’s supple, bronze-tinted silicone skin glowed a little brighter, indicating his annoyance.

“We had a slight change of plans,” I said calmingly. I always tried to smooth over these little sniping matches between the two of them.

The apartment didn’t seem all that bad to me; Lizbeth had a tendency toward tidiness that could go over the edge. There were games and clothes strewn on the coffee table, but Metallico was right: with our two little-girl cyclones racing around at full speed, even he-a machine designed to clean-sometimes got maxed out before day’s end.

His skin had returned to a normal hue, although he still managed to convey that his “feelings” had been hurt.

“All right, let’s kiss and make up,” he said. “I’ll get you both a drink-you look like you could use it. Your clothes- Lord. ”

He gave us quick hugs and pecks on the cheek, then bustled off to the kitchen, crooning again, shaking his booty, and making us both smile, though Lizbeth did mutter “hopeless heap of metal” under her breath.

Besides being incredibly helpful, Metallico could be a lot of fun. He was the size and shape of a normal adult but built for work and, thus, without the refined exterior of the high-end entertainment androids. But he could move with such speed and grace that he made the simplest household task look like an Olympic event. He was also a perfect playmate and teacher for the girls, a vast encyclopedia of knowledge-robots like him were of course interfaced to the Cybernet, with all the information of our entire civilization at their instant command-a witty conversationalist, a master of adult games (such as four-dimensional chess), a gourmet chef, and a thousand other useful things. Also, like the rest of our family, he despised and distrusted all humans.

As he came back with our regular no-carb drinks-a glass of sauvignon blanc for Lizbeth, vodka with a twist for me-Chloe and April came charging into the room and threw themselves into our arms. Ah, my sweet baby girls.

“Did you bring us Jessica and Jacob dolls?” they asked their mom. Chloe, who’d just turned four, pronounced dolls dows. She was an elfin beauty with her mother’s violet and ivory coloring, while April, six, was tawny-skinned with thick blond hair like mine.

“I’m not feeling very good about those dolls, sweeties,” Lizbeth confessed.

“Neither am I,” I added in support. “Sorry, ladies.”

“Noooo,” the girls wailed in a chorus of grief.

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow, OK? It’s bedtime-go get settled, and Daddy will come tell you a story. Won’t you, Hays?”

“Of course I will. That’s why they call me Daddy, isn’t it?”

Although disappointed, the girls were mostly obedient at this age, and they scampered away to their room. “C’mon, Daddy!” they called to me. “You have to tell us a story now. Two stories. Because you’re denying us our dolls.”

I followed close behind and turned my thoughts to choosing a favorite bedtime story for my babies. I scrolled through the library menu on Chloe’s wall… maybe Don’t Let the Pigeon Land the Car, or Mr. Popper’s Penguins.

The thing about the girls and me back then, we had sort of a secret life. On the weekends, we loved to go off to the city’s very large library to read together. We listened to Mozart on earphones on the way there, then settled in to read Charles Dickens aloud. The point-if there has to be a point to everything-is that you can hate humans, but nobody should hate Mozart or Charles Dickens or J. K. Rowling.

As I was reminiscing about our little secret times together, my earring phone chirped-three quick beeps signaled an Agency emergency of some sort. “Damn!” I muttered. “This can’t be happening.”

“Daddy!” April said with a frown. “You just said a forbidden word.” I wasn’t supposed to curse.