Brainz, Inc by Ron Goulart

Author:Ron Goulart [Goulart, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci Fi & Fantasy
Publisher: Daw Books
Published: 2012-04-25T13:10:34+00:00

CHAPTER 13

“That was very impressive,” observed Sheldon Sickmann as he shrugged free of his straps and hopped off the cot. “I do wish, though, that he hadn’t spilled the soup when you decked him, Mrs. Pace.”

“Get over to the door and listen.” Hildy was kneeling beside the stretched out servo she’d just disabled. Deftly, she was removing its right arm.

“Been nice if they’d left us our shoes.” He tiptoed around the pool of Scotch broth that was growing beside the fallen mech. “Boy, that stuff sure has a pungent odor, doesn’t it?”

“Ah.” Hildy straightened up, the detached arm held in her hand like a club. “Any idea what’s out in the hall, also who?”

“As I may’ve mentioned, Mrs. Pace, I awakened in this very room after my stunning and, therefore, haven’t seen much else of the surroundings,” answered Sickmann, nodding at the neowood door. “This only opened thrice each day, when that robot brought in the meals. Have you ever had cold gazpacho for breakfast?”

“Gazpacho’s always served cold.” She barefooted over to join him near the doorway.

“I wasn’t complaining so much about the soup’s temperature as I was about its inappropriateness for the meal that commences the day,” Sickmann said. “By the way, how’d you manage to fell our servobot so swiftly and surely?”

“All National Robot & Android mechs have a concealed shutoff presspot in the left armpit. For emergencies.”

“Is that so? We pitched the NRA account once, yet I didn’t know—”

“Hush for a moment,” suggested Hildy.

“Didn’t mean to babble. It’s simply that, not having anyone to talk to for so … Well, I’ll be silent while you case the situation.”

Hildy pulled the door open inward.

Facing her out in the yellow corridor was a white-uniformed guard. A large freckled fellow who gulped twice at the sudden sight of her before reaching for the stungun in his belt holster.

That small hesitation gave Hildy the advantage.

She swung the borrowed metal arm, bopped the surprised guard on the skull with the fist and soup ladle end.

“Umph,” he managed to say.

She whacked him twice more. Caught him as he toppled, dragged him into their room.

Before she discarded the unconscious man on the soupy floor she had his stungun in her left hand. “Let’s try to move on out of here, Sheldon,” she said quietly.

Sickmann said, “You did a marvelous job of rendering him unconscious.”

“I did,” she agreed, edging into the hallway.

At twilight Hildy, alone, was flying low over the Bronx Ruins in a skyvan shaped like an enormous cockroach. Below her in the darkening rubble and debris cook fires under cannibal pots were being lit.

When she reached the sector she wanted, a small silver gadget attached to the dash chirped, “Bingo!”

Setting the controls on hover, Hildy unbuckled her safetybelts. After giving her short-cropped chestnut wig a pat and inspecting again the new authentic-looking tattoos on her bare arms, she left the pilot seat.

Through the one-way glaz panel in the belly of the flying cockroach she could see torches bobbing amid the tumbles of old brick and wood.

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