Buck Rogers 2 - That Man on Beta Read online

  “And now it’s your turn, good buddy,” Buck answered.

  “Way off in Skipland where the big cliffs have faces,” Pandro said. “Just under the faces is a cave. That’s Aris’ home 20.”

  “How far?” Buck asked. “Which way?”

  Pandro pointed outside the vehicle. “That way,” he said. “ ’Bout half a day’s ride if you drop your hammer in that roller skate of yours.”

  Buck frowned with concentration. “Mount Rushmore?”

  “A big ten-four,” Pandro grinned.

  Buck offered his thanks, started toward Pandro’s door, then turned back for a moment. “Tell me, Pandro, why do you people talk that way?”

  Pandro looked blank. “What way?”

  Buck shook his head. “Never mind.” He climbed from the vehicle, stood outside. “So long,” he added, starting toward his landcar.

  “Threes on ya,” Pandro called after Buck. As soon as the spaceman had pulled away in his landcar, Pandro turned back toward Dr. Theopolis. “Talking box, huh?” the gypsy gritted. “Otherwise known as compuvisor model Theo 1480, member of the Inner City council. But a dumb old buddy like me wouldn’t know that, would I?”

  He grinned, opened a section of wall inside his camper, entered a glittering, ultramodern communications room. He stepped inside, pressed a series of controls and spoke into a microphone. “Pandro here, looking for a break. Excelsior. Come on.

  The answer that came seemed to carry an almost tangible air of remoteness and bitter cold. “This is Excelsior,” the voice said. “Go ahead, Pandro.” The voice called itself Excelsior, but to those who could identify its owner it was clear who the voice of Excelsior really belonged to: Kane. “Have you located Rogers, Pandro?”

  “Located?” the gypsy leader replied. “You bet! He fell right on my head. Just like we planned.”

  The cold voice gave an oily chuckle. “You sent him to see Aris, Pandro?”

  “Rodger-dodger. And I copped his compuvisor into the bargain!”

  “Oh, wonderful, Pandro,” Kane gloated. “Wonderful! Oh, ho-ho-ho-ho-ho! The Gregorians had better beware!”

  “A big ten-four, good Draconian buddy.” Pandro switched off his transmitter.

  S I X

  Colonel Wilma Deering was walking across the tarmac at Inner City spaceport, en route from her office to the armaments hangar. This was no matter of critical urgency, no exciting new development: it was part of her daily routine, part of the never-ending responsibility of command.

  She was surprised by a gentle touch at her elbow, turned, exclaimed, “Dr. Huer! What are you doing out here at the spaceport?”

  “Just a little informal call,” the aged scientist explained. The bright daylight gleamed off his old-fashioned spectacles as he looked up into Wilma’s face. “I’m a little worried about Captain Rogers, Colonel. Perhaps you’ve been working him too hard. The sensor readouts turned up an alert on him the other morning.”

  Wilma shrugged. “Nothing unusual in that. Could be anything. Maybe he was up celebrating something the night before. He couldn’t make it to my fancy Clipsop dinner!”

  “No, my dear, it wasn’t just that. In fact, we had alerts on Captain Rogers three mornings running. His overall metab ratings have dropped 12 leers. But we couldn’t find any physiological cause in the sensor readouts!”

  “Then it must be psychological, obviously. You know, I am concerned for the health and welfare of my command, Dr. Huer. But I’ve always had my reservations about Rogers—his emotional stability, his psychological suitability for his assignment. A man from five hundred years in the past is going to have problems adjusting, no matter how well he seems outwardly to fit in.”

  “Suppose he’d been staying up all night, Wilma? Night after night. That would explain the metab drop, wouldn’t it?”

  Wilma halted and faced Dr. Huer. “Captain Rogers’ ship is right over there,” she gestured. “Let’s see if he’s in it. Most of our pilots spend a lot of hours working over their ships. The ground crews that we have are tops, you know—but it’s the pilots who put their lives on the line every time they fly.”

  They peered into Buck’s ship, saw a figure stretched across the cockpit. For a moment he appeared to be dead, but a slow, steady rise and fall of his chest showed that he was merely napping.

  “There you are, Doctor,” Wilma said. “I just think he’s been working by day and playing by night, and it’s finally caught up with him. And I’m going to find out what’s going on!”

  Just hours later, Buck and Wilma threaded their way through the crush of close-set tables in the Palace of Mirrors lounge in the Inner City. The lounge was the smartest watering-hole in this twenty-fifth century capital. Men in neatly cut outfits and women in dazzling, daring gowns drank, dined, chatted, table-hopped, gazed at the spectacular light-and-water show on the stage or danced to the weirdly beautiful and compelling electronic music of a robot symphonium that occupied the center of the room.

  To Buck the scene was not wholly unfamiliar. Some of the more fashionable nightclubs of his own twentieth century had been not unlike the Palace of Mirrors lounge. Still, the strange music, modernistic decor, and general sense of displacement and alienation that seemed to dog his feet bothered him more than usual in this place.

  “Here,” Wilma announced as she spotted a vacant table. “Told you I’d find us one. I still don’t understand your twentieth-century custom of tipping headwaiters to get you tables. It sounds like bribery to me.”

  They sat down and Buck surveyed the teeming room. “Nice place they’ve got here. Too bad they can’t get any customers.”

  “Buck,” Wilma said happily, “I’m glad we could get away from the spacefield and the defense squadron. Not that I hate my job. I can hardly think of one I’d swap it for. But a change is good now and then.”

  Buck smiled at her across the table. “Right you are.” He looked up at the approach of a diminutive, vaguely humanoid figure. It was a drone, somewhat similar to Twiki but equipped with the implements needed by a waiter. Its formal outfit seemed to be enameled onto its metal body, and its discreet lapel nametag read simply R-8.

  “May I have your order, please?” the drone asked Buck and Wilma. There was a permanent ingratiating smile on its face.

  Chuckling at the ludicrous drone, Buck asked, “Did you ever have a job as a clown?”

  The drone stood buzzing for a few seconds, then recycled through its command loop. “May I have your order, please?”

  “Hey,” Buck exclaimed, “that reminds me. I haven’t had a Big Mac in about five hundred years. Hey, R-8, what’s the chances of getting a Big Mac around this joint?” And Buck began to laugh loudly, inexplicably.

  The waiter buzzed some more and repeated its standard query.

  “Buck,” Wilma interrupted the odd dialogue, “what’s a Big Mac?”

  “That’s the funny part,” Buck replied, wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes. “We didn’t know what it was back in the old days either. We just swallowed it and hoped for the best.”

  Wilma turned toward the drone. “We’ll have two servings of protein 4-S and Vinol, please.”

  The quad bowed ludicrously, thanked Wilma and tottered away through the narrow, crowded spaces between diners’ tables.

  As soon as the drone had departed, Buck looked at Wilma more seriously. “I’m sorry I got so carried away, Wilma. I was almost hysterical, wasn’t I?”

  She didn’t speak, but Buck could see the answer in her serious expression.

  “I think I’m just exhausted,” Buck resumed. I haven’t been getting much sleep, and . . .”

  “I know, Buck. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Wilma put in. “I know what you’ve been doing.”

  He showed his surprise. “You do?”

  Wilma nodded slowly. “Yes. And I want you to know that it’s all right with me. Our official relationship is a separate matter, of course. But on a personal level, I know I have no hold on you. No strings. And
—Buck—we can still be friends, I hope.”

  “Hey,” the spaceman replied, “I’m really relieved about that. I thought you’d be mad at me. Sure, I want to be friends.”

  “Good,” Wilma smiled wistfully. Her smile started to waver and threatened to turn into tears. She turned her face away.

  “Wilma.” Buck reached to take her hand but she pulled it away. “Wilma, what’s the matter?”

  The drone-waiter tottered back to their table and placed a bottle of Vinol and two glasses on the table. Then it tottered away again. Buck, waiting for Wilma to regain her composure, reached for the Vinol and poured each of them a glass.

  Wilma took a deep breath and faced Buck again. “There’s nothing the matter, Buck. I wish you the very best. I only wish that you’d—you’d told me about it instead of being so sneaky. That’s all.”

  “Well,” Buck frowned, “I couldn’t tell you. Dr. Huer denied me permission. If I’d told you, you would have had a duty to try to stop me. We were through that all before, we’d have been back to square one.”

  “Why would Dr. Huer do that?” Wilma asked. She watched Buck raise his glass and sip at the Vinol. “Why would you need anybody’s permission, for that matter? Sex is a personal matter in the Inner City.”

  Now it was Buck’s turn to be nonplussed. In fact, he half-choked on the Vinol he was sipping. Wilma and R-8 both had to pound him on the back to clear his windpipe of the Vinol. “Thanks, thanks,” Buck gasped. “Uh—Wilma. Wilma, eh, what do you mean by sex?”

  The beautiful starfighter commander blushed, her skin glowing from the roots of her softly curved hair to the very low neckline of her daringly cut formal gown. “Buck, I know that a lot of things have changed in the five hundred years since your era. But some things have stayed the same, I’m sure. I know that you’ve been out all night, every night, lately. I assume that you’ve been seeing someone. Isn’t that logical?”

  “Oh!” Buck exclaimed. “Oh, sure! Of course, Wilma,” he said, stalling a little till he could think of what to say. “Well, I didn’t want to upset you, you see.”

  “Yes, I see. Thank you for your thoughtfulness, Buck.” She paused, then asked, “Is she anyone I know, Buck?”

  Before Buck could answer the R-8 returned with their protein. It was a tiny platter of hard nuggets looking something like irregularly shaped ball bearings or gravel. Buck looked distastefully at the dish of food. “Thanks a lot,” he told the waiter as it tottered away. Then, to Wilma, he said, “Look at this funny food, will ya? I’m still not used to this stuff.”

  “It’s very filling,” Wilma Deering said dully. “It swells in your stomach.”

  Buck picked up a piece of the protein, turned it around and around, examining it from all angles. “Too bad it couldn’t swell in the kitchen,” he commented. He popped the pebblelike bit of nourishment into his mouth. “Mmm, I can almost taste it.”

  “Buck, why won’t you tell me about her?” Wilma brought the subject back to its former focus.

  “Terrific light show, isn’t it?” the spaceman asked. “I sure hope that water-act doesn’t get loose and drench all these wonderful munchies!”

  “All right,” Wilma conceded. “It’s none of my business, is that it?”

  “No,” Buck shook his head, “it isn’t that at all. Please don’t feel that way, Wilma. I do care for your feelings. And—she’s a terrific girl. I know you’d really like her. Lots. Her name is—” He hesitated, then resumed. “—Lisa. She has very fair skin, and she’s built like, well, she’s sort of on the thin side.”

  “I see,” Wilma murmured.

  “But, boy,” Buck added softly, “can she ever type!”

  Wilma’s expression—one of barely contained heartbreak—began to change slowly to one of puzzlement and suspicion. “Buck,” she said, “in our society, women don’t type. Robots do.”

  “Oh,” Buck exclaimed—as though he were startled, or alarmed—“so that’s why her feet get so cold in the middle of the night!”

  The next day, Wilma sat opposite Dr. Huer in his sparkling, efficient, glowing white office. “And then,” the defense squadron commander was saying, “and then—then he described a robot!”

  “Good heavens,” Huer exploded, “didn’t he even know the difference? My Lisa 5 is pretty realistic, but one would expect a grown man to be able to . . . or maybe he does know the difference and he prefers a robot to a human being! There have been cases in the past, you know. Severe alienation, fetishism, and so on. This can be a very serious matter. Perhaps I should have a talk with Captain Rogers.”

  “It won’t do you any good, Dr. Huer, he won’t tell you a thing. But I’m going to find out for myself what he’s up to!”

  Within the hour she was at Buck Rogers’ personal dwelling facility—what he would have called, in twentieth-century Chicago, a one-room apartment. Wilma glanced carefully through a slitted opening, then edged into the room as quietly as she could.

  She examined the room carefully to make sure that Buck was absent, then began a careful examination of the contents of the room—Buck’s clothing, his personal belongings, toilet articles, spare military uniforms. The robot Twiki was there, unmoving, with its lights all out. Wilma remembered Buck’s saying his own repairs to Twiki had finally been inadequate, and he was waiting for Drone Repair to take the robot into their shop for a thorough cleaning and a thorough checking of the circuitry.

  Finally satisfied—or satisfied, at least, that there was nothing of interest to be found, she spoke: “Theo?”

  “Theo?”

  There was no answer.

  “Theopolis? Dr. Theopolis?”

  Still no response.

  Puzzled, Wilma renewed her search of the room, calling out from time to time, “Dr. Theopolis, where are you?”

  But there was no answer from Dr. Theopolis—he was elsewhere; and if Wilma Deering was mildly puzzled and distraught at her inability to locate the computer brain, that was nothing compared to the emotional state in which Dr. Theopolis was himself.

  “I demand that you return me to Earth at once!” Theopolis exclaimed. “You have no right to bring me here!” If the computer’s carefully synthesized voice, mild and reassuring, had been capable of an outraged screech, that would have been the term best applied to the tone in which he expressed himself.

  In fact, mild and reassuring or not, Theopolis managed to deliver an outraged screech, something very close to a scream of rage: “This is an act of war!”

  But for all that the computer brain was carried away into a near-hysterical state by his reactions to the situation in which he found himself, the men who handled him felt and showed nothing but glee at the machine’s obvious discomfiture.

  The first of these men was a Draconian space pilot, who wearily undogged the hatch of his rocket ship and climbed gratefully from the craft. It was the end of the long flight from Earth to Villus Beta, and the pilot was sweat-soaked and muscle-weary. But the pilot was not too exhausted to smile smugly as he handed Dr. Theopolis to the burly, greasy-visaged figure who was waiting for the delivery of the rectangle of angrily flashing light panels.

  “An act of war, you say?” Kane echoed the enraged Theopolis. “An act of war, eh? Why, how very perceptive of you, you sweet little bundle of wires and tubes.”

  “Wires?” Theopolis screeched. “Tubes?” He flashed through a spectrum of orange, purple, and red shades. “I’ll have you know that I’m built of the most modern components—fiber-optic cables, micro-miniaturized photo-etched supersilicon circuit modules, micromolecular array processors! There’s not a blessed wire or tube in my body! Hasn’t been one in my family for generations!”

  Kane planted his feet wide apart, held the outraged Theopolis before him with one hand while he jammed his other fist onto a beefy hip, and roared with laughter.

  And all the while that poor Theopolis, forwarded by the double-dealing Pandro to the oily Kane on Villus Beta, shrieked impotently at his mistreatment, Wilma Deering was
still keeping watch at Captain William “Buck” Rogers’ quarters. She had left the little room well before dark descended on the Inner City, and stationed herself so she could see his every coming and going.

  The lights were on in Buck’s quarters, and he was carefully decking himself out in a fresh set of civilian clothing for the evening. Wilma saw him switch off the lights and close the door of his room—behind himself.

  Before the spaceman could emerge from the building that contained his individual dwelling facility, Wilma flicked a jimmy into the lock on his landcar—or the landcar that he had arrived in and left standing outside his quarters, at any rate. She climbed into the vehicle, secreted herself in its luggage carrier, and waited impatiently until Buck emerged from the building, opened the car door, and climbed in.

  Wilma didn’t know whether Buck’s story of a love affair with a robot was the truth or a fairy tale, but she was going to find out! The car moved along, its power-pack-energized engine purring smoothly. Wilma assumed that the trip would be for a few minutes, to some other location in this section of the Inner City, for if Buck was keeping a rendezvous on the other side of the dome he would simply have taken the monorail and switched to a groundcar at the other end.

  But the car moved along for minutes, then for what seemed like hours. Wilma became puzzled. Was Buck driving to the far edge of the dome for some reason? And—the car still went on. Suddenly a chilling thought gripped Wilma’s mind: maybe Buck wasn’t keeping a rendezvous in the Inner City. Maybe he was defying both defense squadron discipline and Dr. Huer’s specific ban on leaving the dome except in the line of duty.

  Maybe he was heading into Anarchia!

  Lulled by the steady purring of the landcar’s engine and the throbbing, almost purring vibration of the vehicle, Wilma found herself growing drowsy. She slept, dreamed disquieting dreams of Buck Rogers cavorting romantically with a slim, pale, beautiful rival of Wilma’s, who turned into a clanking, deadly machine and made off with the spaceman while Wilma wept impotently.