I did. A second breakfast. Since I had no idea when my next meal might be I decided to stoke up as best I could.
Standard routine followed. We emerged from the hotel at the appointed hour and the robocar was waiting. It started at once towards its programmed destination, the war office where I had been demonstrating the effectiveness of the Fazzoletto-Mouchoir fuses. A number of targets had been destroyed, and today others would be blasted under even more exacting circumstances. It was all good fun.
We surfaced on the main road, spun down it and turned off into the side road that led to our destination. Traffic was light here—as always—and no pedestrians were in sight. Perfect. Street after street zipped by and I felt a familiar knot of tension developing. All or nothing. Slippery Jim, here we go…
"Ah-choo," I said, with what I hoped was appropriate realism, and reached for my handkerchief. Pacov was suspicious. Pacov was always suspicious.
"Bit of dust in nose, you know how it is," I said. "Say, look, is that not the good General Trogbar over there?" I pointed with my free hand.
Pacov was well trained. His eyes only flickered aside for an instant before they returned to me. The instant was all I needed. Knotted into the handkerchief was a roll of small coins, the only weapon I could obtain under the authority's watchful gaze. I had assembled it, coin by coin, under the bedcovers at night. As the eyes flickered my hand struck, swinging the hard roll in a short arc that ended on the side of Pacov's head. He slumped with a muffled groan.
And even as he slumped down I was leaning over into the front of the car and banging down on the emergency stop button. The motor died, the brakes locked, we squealed to a stop and the doors popped open. Not more than a dozen paces from the selected spot. A bullseye. I was out and running at the same moment.
Because when I hit my bodyguard and the stop button every alarm must have lit up on the bugging board—there were plenty of little seeing eyes in the car. The forces of the enemy were launched at the same instant I was. All I had were seconds—a minute perhaps—of freedom before the troops closed in and grabbed me.
Would it be enough time?
Running, head down as fast as I could, I turned and skidded into the narrow opening of the service street. This cut through behind a row of buildings and emerged on a different street. There were robots here loading rubbish into bins, but they ignored me as I ran by since they were simple M types programmed for nothing but this kind of work.
The robot pusher was another matter. He was human and had an electronic lash that he used to stir the robots along. It cracked out and snapped around me and the electric current crackled into my side.
Chapter 5
It was shocking, to say the least, but I barely felt it. The voltage is kept low since it is meant to stir the robots, not to cook out their brain circuits. I grabbed the whip as soon as it hit and pulled hard.
All of this was of course according to plan. I had seen this robot pusher and his work gang in this same place every day when we passed; Cliaand does love its routine. The robot pusher, a thick-necked and thuggy looking individual, could be counted on to interfere with a running alien-and had done just as I had hoped. When I pulled on the whip I had him off balance and he staggered towards me, jaw agape, and I let him have a roundhouse right on the point of that a gaping jaw. It connected.
He shook his head, growled something, and came at me with his hands ready to crunch and rend.
This was not according to plan. He was supposed to drop instantly so I could rush through the rest of the routine before the cavalry arrived. How could I have known that not only did he have the IQ of a block of stone but the constitution of one as well? I stepped aside, his fingers grabbed empty air, and I began to sweat. Time was passing and I had no time. I had to render this hulk unconscious in the quickest way possible.
I did. It wasn't graceful but it worked. I tripped him as he went by, then jumped on his back and rode him to the ground accelerating his fall. And held him by the head and pounded it against the pavement. It took three good knocks-I was afraid the pavement would give way before he did-before he grunted and relaxed.
In the distance the first siren sounded. I sweated harder. Indifferent to the ways of man the robots dumped their dustbins.
The robot pusher was dressed in a uniform of a decomposed green in color, no doubt symbolic of his trade. It was closed with a single zipper which I unzipped, then began to work the clothing off his bulky and unyielding form. While the sirens grew closer. At the last moment I had to stop and tear his boots off in order to remove the trousers, a noisome operation that added nothing good to the entire affair.
The siren echoed loudly from the walls of the service street and brakes squealed nastily close by.
With what very well might be called frantic haste I pulled the uniform on over my own wasp-like garb and zipped it shut. Running feet pounded loudly towards me. I grabbed up the whip and let the nearest robot have a crack right across his ball bearings.
"Stuff this man into a bin!" I ordered and stood back as it grabbed up its former master.
The feet had just vanished from view when the first of the red uniformed soldiers burst into sight.
"An alien!" I shouted, and shook my whip towards the other end of the narrow street. "He went thataway. Fast. Before I could stop him."
The soldiers kept going fast as well. Which was a good thing since the pair of recently removed boots were lying there right in plain sight. I threw them in the bin after their owner and cracked the whip on my half dozen robots.
"We march," I ordered. "To the next location." I hoped they were programmed for a regular route-and they were. The truck-robot led the way and the others fell in behind them. I went behind, whip ready. My little procession emerged into the police gorged, soldier full street. Armored vehicles twisted around us and drivers cursed. My faithful band of robots struck straight across the street through this mess while I, with a paralyzed smile on my lips, trotted along after them. I was afraid that if I made any attempt to change the orders my mechanical team would stage a sit-down right there in the street. We passed behind the abandoned groundcar just as my old bodyguard, Pacov, was being helped from it. I turned my back on him and tried to ignore the chill prickling up and down the nape of my neck. If he recognized me…
The first robot entered another service way and I staggered after them until, after what felt like a two day walk, I entered this haven of relative safety. It was a coolish day but I was sweating heavily: I leaned against the wall to recover while my robots emptied the bins. More cars were still appearing in the street I had so recently left and a flight of jets thundered by overhead. My, but they certainly were missing me.
What next? A good question. Very soon now, when no trace of the fugitive alien could be found, someone would remember the one witness to his escape. And they would want to talk to the robot pusher again. Before that moment came I would have to be elsewhere-but where? My assets were very limited; a collection of garbage collecting robots, now industriously clanking away at their trade, two uniforms-one worn over the other-either of which made me a marked man, and an electronic whip. Good only for whipping robots; the feeble current it generated was just enough to close a relay to cancel a previous order or action. What to do?