Rajnar Vajra: Doctor Alien’s Five Empty Boxes

I could barely hear her response. “Sorry, Al. I’d need to recharge first.”

“But I can manage that small task,” Deal said. I hadn’t realized she’d gotten close enough to overhear. “If you wouldn’t find it beneath your dignity, Doctor?”

“Hardly. Let’s go! What should I do?”

“Enjoy the ride.” With those cheery words, Deal wrapped limbs around my waist and legs, then hoisted me surprisingly high into the air and took off, bounding across the street as if Earth’s gravity was on coffee break. I didn’t much enjoy the experience, but had to admit that Deal got the job done.

She put me down outside Bradley’s back door and I barged in.

Bradley S. sat at his kitchen table gluing snips of colored veneers to a rectangular board. He looked up at me with the ire of a man interrupted mid-marquetry and uncharacteristically let me have it, both barrels. “Knock much?”

Normally, I find that particular TV-dialog-meme annoying, but today my attention was elsewhere. “Brad, you’re in danger! Run out your front door and keep running. Hurry!” Deal squeezed into the kitchen as I was talking.

Bradley stared at the Trader for a second too long and then it was too late. Four glittering claws smashed through the sheetrock behind me and then pulled most of the wall out accompanied by an ear-splitting concerto of snaps, crunches, squeals, and bangs. Thoth glided through the newborn dust cloud and over the pile of fresh rubble. It brushed past Deal and tenderly pushed me aside. One of its many claws elongated into long serrated pinchers that opened wide and began closing around Bradley’s thin neck. I’d never seen anyone look so terrified, and even though it wasn’t my neck in the alien guillotine, my blood turned to gel.

And time seemed to freeze. Each tick of the oversized clock mounted on one undamaged kitchen wall came slow and far apart. Dust motes lazed in the morning light streaming though Thoth’s remodeling project. The big hole tugged at my attention. My supposed protector hadn’t smashed into the house in its usual modus operandi; it had pulled the wall out . Why? Because I stood on the other side and would’ve gotten hurt. That insight told me what to do, or at least what to try…

“THOTH! If you kill this man, I will also die.” I had to believe the robot would understand me even if it wouldn’t obey me in its current mode. And I was counting on its protective programming.

Thoth didn’t release Bradley, but its pincher didn’t close. My neighbor gazed at me with eyes that were too scared to plead, and I did my best to convey a reassurance I didn’t feel. The impasse stretched on and there seemed no safe way to break it.

Then, for the first time, Thoth proved that it could speak. “You will not die when Bradley S. Pearson dies.” Its voice had a gelatinous tremolo but an ice-cold edge—murder in aspic.

The pinchers closed just enough to squeeze Bradley’s neck without breaking the skin. Brad made a nearly noiseless whimper and I felt sweat run down my back. “You’re wrong! Killing him will destroy my reputation and career. The guilt will make me kill myself.”

“I will prevent your self-destruction.”

Despite that excellent rebuttal, the pinchers didn’t tighten further. So maybe the Hoouk had a fairly broad definition of protection. “You can’t save my reputation.”

Thoth responded to my counterargument by doing nothing, a big improvement from what I was afraid it would do. But before I could let myself breathe again, Deal offered a few clicks of advice.

“I suspect, Doctor, that your servant is temporarily engaged in weighing the potential harm to your status resulting from this man’s demise against the harm he intends to inflict on you.”

Deal’s message came through perfectly: Any moment now, Bradley would lose his head.

Once again, something seemed to clog the gears of time as fear whipped my thoughts into clarity. “Don’t hurt him, Thoth!” I ordered for whatever good it might do as I took off running through the big hole, over the rubble, and toward the clinic. Dismantling the controller was Bradley’s only hope, and obviously L and Tad weren’t having much luck.

Halfway across the street, I gasped. Not only because I was out of breath. In my mind, a dozen scraps of information snapped together, forming a picture I hadn’t even suspected existed. My Volvo exploding, Tad saving me, the video-feed showing no one planting a car-bomb, Tad apparently avoiding Deal, Deal calling Tad “surprising,” three shattered macramite walls, and even Cora’s months of unresponsiveness added up to one stunning revelation. A truly disturbing revelation, but one that might provide a tool to save Bradley.

The frozen cops were stirring, although in slow-mo. They didn’t seem hurt. In the distance, I heard sirens and guessed they were headed this way.

The front wall had nearly healed, so I had to use the door to enter the clinic, but barely broke stride sprinting toward the room with the controller. I’ve seen some really weird things in my life, but the scene within that room beat them all. L had sprouted a forest of tentacles tipped with built-in wrenches, screwdrivers, hammers and whatnot, and was twisting, prodding, and banging on the controller like an army of insane mechanics. Meanwhile, Tad occupied herself with barehanded tugging and prying. All this hyperactivity was accomplishing zilch.

“Stop!” I shouted over the racket. “L and Tad, join me in the hallway, quick.”

I doubted Tad would obey, but L grabbed one of her arms with an extruded vice and tugged her out of the room. I slapped the wall-plate and the door swished closed.

“Have you stopped the robot?” L asked.

I kept my voice below a murmur. “Not exactly. We’ll have to do that from this end.”

“A glorious idea. How?”

I turned to glare at my insecurity officer. “Tad, do you have any of that explosive left? The stuff you used on my car?”

Dead silence for a moment. “You know it was me?”

“I’m positive.” She’d broken her routine to accompany me to the parking lot and reacted too quickly and perfectly to what she’d claimed was the “scent” of a bomb. Also, a team of macramites, too small to be noticeable on a video feed, could’ve easily carried the alien C4 to the car in minute batches. And who would be better at controlling Vapabondi macramites than a Vapabond? “I even know why you did it.”

To make me trust her, to allay any suspicions I might be developing about her.

“If you’ve got any explosive left, get it now,” I ordered in a nearly silent shout. “Hurry!”

You wouldn’t think that something resembling a cross between an ape, a walrus, and an armadillo could look sheepish, but Tad managed the trick. Then she demonstrated that it was also possible to slink away while running. She was much faster than I’d expected.

“You believe a detonation will disable the controller?” L whispered.

“God, I sure—wow! She’s back already. Guess we’ll find out.”

Tad carried a large, clear jar half full of what looked like crushed ruby dust and held it out for me to inspect.

“How do you detonate it?”

She answered by pulling out a small gadget with a miniature antenna on one end. She held this device to her mouth and mumbled something. Then she put the thing away and placed one of her sausage fingers on the nearest wall. A tiny moving strip of ivory appeared on the finger, marched across Tad’s shell, and worked its way down the arm holding the jar. I moved closer, but still could barely distinguish the individual shells of the parading macramites. A few seconds later, the ivory strip abandoned Tad to bury itself in the ruby dust.

“Will self-ignite at command,” Tad offered.