Robota by Doug Chiang

Author:Doug Chiang [Gareth Edwards]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2016-03-31T04:00:00+00:00

Once their guards had left them alone, Caps went immediately to Elyseo’s inert body.

“What are you doing?” demanded Beryl.

“I’m going to see if I can wake him up.”

“Oh, you think you press a button and that’s it?” she asked derisively.

“They can’t have turned him off remotely. Like he said, he’s not a slave.”

“I think we have pretty good evidence that he is one,” said Beryl.

“He didn’t betray us,” said Caps.

“I agree,” said Juomes. “Kaantur wants us to think he did, so it’s to our advantage to think not.” Juomes came over and elbowed Caps aside.

Caps noticed that Juomes’s blow was weaker than the cuffs and shoves he had given Caps before. Perhaps Juomes was conserving his strength, but it seemed to Caps that the journey had not been kind to him.

“I’ve been over the corpses of these things a few hundred times,” said Juomes. “I don’t know what all the external controls do, but I know where they all are.”

He started pressing a series of touch-sensitive pads in various niches of Elyseo’s body. Nothing happened.

“There’s a combination,” said Beryl.

“Oh, I forgot,” said Juomes. “You grew up with them. No doubt you switched them on and off as a prank.”

Beryl came over and knelt behind Elyseo. Almost without looking, she reached in and pressed a combination of control points. “OK, not that one,” she said, and moved her hand to another position, then another.

Elyseo came alert.

“I did not betray you,” he said immediately.

“You don’t have to argue,” said Beryl. “They already believe you, and I never will.”

“You can try to persuade me,” offered Rend glumly. “Except I don’t care.”

“Everybody’s keeping secrets,” said Caps. “Except me and Elyseo.”

“I don’t have any secrets,” said Rend. “I’m just a monkey.”

“Caps has secrets,” said Beryl. “He just doesn’t know what they are.”

“You were raised by Kaantur-Set himself,” said Caps. “I think that was a pretty big one.”

“Juomes already knew, and it was none of your business,” said Beryl.

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