The Blue Tropics by James Norman

Author:James Norman [Norman, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

A WOMAN, plus the extra brain, bumped into me.

Then she straightened out her course without saying a word and streaked across the square. The jade green gelatin-incased Cerebral on her back twisted slightly as the woman passed me. The eyeless plasm stared at me, questioningly.

“I’m getting out,” I raved.

Trim grabbed my arm in time to keep me from running plumb into a great Gyroplant that swung across the square holding a squirming man aloft. The Cerebral riding on the saddle hooked to the plant also stared at me.

“Quick! Follow me,” Trim shouted, running after the Gyroplant as it turned a corner. Suddenly he crashed head on with an old man. A blue Cerebral tumbled from the man’s back, rolling on the ground. In amazement, I watched the old man lay on his side in the street until the Cerebral crawled back into the saddle on its nerve-like legs.

“What’s the matter with you?” Trim barked at the man.

The old man stared blankly. Suddenly he opened his mouth, shrieking, “Porpe!”

In an instant the plaza filled with others like himself. They surrounded us and stood sideways so the Cerebrals on their backs could stare at us.

Trim whirled toward Lulu. “You tell me. What is it? A joke?”

I looked at Lulu. Then I noticed that something had happened to her. She was completely changed. She stared at us without recognition, her eyes dulled by the same blank stupor I saw in the eyes of the other humans surrounding us.

“Talk, Lulu!” I cried, shaking her arm.

She looked at me as if I were a complete stranger.

“Oh, nuts,” hollered Trim.

We were entirely hemmed in by the mechanical men and women carrying Cerebrals. They flocked into the plaza. The colored Cerebrals glared at us in an eyeless fashion. The blue Cerebral on the old man Trim had crashed into seemed to be trying to think something into us. The eyeless gaze settled on each of us while the blue plasm shuddered.

“I guess it’s me they’re worried about,” said Trim. “They’ve never seen red hair and freckles. That’s something.”

Finally the old man with the blue Cerebral signalled Trim to follow him.

“They’re peaceful,” grunted Trim. “Come on. We’ll see the chief brain and I’ll put over a deal. I can furnish ’em ice from upper Antarctica in exchange for gold.”

I didn’t know what to make of it. Lulu followed us very meekly and we followed the old man through a number of blue streets, finally coming to the edge of the city. Before I knew what had occurred, we walked right into a big blue walled corral. We met some other men with blue Cerebrals.

They took us to an inner corral and left us there.

“They locked the door,” yelled Jimmie, battering his weight against the quartz portal. “We’re prisoners.”

“We’ll bounce out,” said Trim, slowly.

But we couldn’t bounce. The ground was still pink. Only it was quartz; not the resilient plant sponge we found in the Pink Tropics. “Now, look what you walked us into,” I growled at Trim.

Trim scratched his red hair thoughtfully.

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