“That means my mother’s looking for me, Gonner. Two sharp barks close together means, `Go home, your mother wants you.’ She probably needs this Entero-Scope Field Generator that I, uh, borrowed, back in the lab. I’ll be back, Gonner, okay? Maybe not today, but I promise I’ll be back. You just sit tight and don’t shoot anyone.”
A command! I respond with intense pleasure. “Hold! Hold! Hold!”
My new Commander smiles into my sensor pickup. “Yeah, that’s right, Gonner! You did a great job, holding. Just keep holding the fort until I come back and don’t shoot any of the colonists.”
My Commander departs with her friend and the equipment which has restored my backup power levels to full battle charge. She has commanded me to remain at Active Service Alert Status. I survey the valley and scan with my sensors. I await my next command. I have a restored purpose. Even in my damaged condition, I am again useful. I am content.
—8—
“Mom?”
“Hmm?”
Her mother was busy at the gene-sequencer, which was good. She should be able to ask her question, get an answer, and get away again without rousing suspicion.
“What kind of brain damage would cause someone to answer questions in one-word answers, you know, like not a direct answer, but it sort of makes sense if you think about it?”
Her mother glanced up. “Sounds like global aphasia. Got an assignment?”
She nodded.
Her mother went back to the sequencer. “I’ve got a medical library in the study. Read up on it and show me a copy of your report when you’re done.”
Relieved, Kalima made her escape to the study. Global aphasia, she discovered, was a condition in which people were capable of fully rational thought, but could not articulate anything but nonsense. The disorder had become an obscure one ever since Dr. Collingwood had discovered how to culture immature nerve tissue.
“Bet that’s what’s wrong with Gonner,” she muttered, chewing one fingernail. “He almost makes sense. Wonder what `monkey’ and `slick’ refer to?”
She made a list of synonyms for each word, and started a computer cross reference, looking for anything that might make sense. Eventually, she came up with a possibility. “Grease monkey: mechanic.”
“He needs maintenance, of course!”
Dismay followed at once. How?
She couldn’t notify the Navy or Sector. They’d simply destroy him. He was a war hero, like her father had been, and no one was going to hurt him. Gonner had been hurt enough already. She couldn’t fix him. And she couldn’t tell anyone in the colony, either, because any adult who found out would call in the Navy or Sector representatives and Gonner’s life would end, abruptly.
She thrust out her lower lip, in the expression her mother despairingly called, “Your father’s look.” She was only thirteen; but she had the manuals and things her father had given her about Bolos and she could learn everything the colony had to offer about mechanics, electrical systems, and engineering.
She could always tell her mother and the school officials she wanted to become an engineer. She just wouldn’t mention that she wanted to become a combat engineer. The decision made, Kalima spent the rest of the evening studying everything in her mother’s library on brain disorders. She wrote the required composition, which she then carefully smudged and marked “B-” in a fair approximation of her teacher’s handwriting.
The next day she told her teacher she’d decided on a career choice, after all, and scheduled as many math, engineering, and mechanical practicum courses as they’d let her cram in with her other academics.
—9—
Six months later, Gonner’s outer sensor arrays had been fully repaired. That wasn’t as difficult as Kalima had first thought. She’d found a compartment with spares and had studied the existing, burnt-out units carefully before replacing them. Gonner had responded by saying, “Bird! Bird! Bird!” about a dozen times in rapid succession.
She laughed. “Bet it does feel like flying, after you’ve been blind for a couple of centuries. Or . . .” She canted her gaze into the bitter-white winter sky “. . . is there a bird somewhere up there, too far for me to spot?”
Gonner hummed in silence. Kalima grinned. “Well, that’s one repair job done and about a million more to go. At this rate, we’ll never get you back up to ratings.”
“Bird,” was all Gonner said.
She patted his pitted war hull. The icy cold of the flintsteel seeped through her insulated gloves. “I gotta go, Gonner. Last thing we need is for me to get caught sneaking out here. Mom would never understand. She’d insist they come melt your Action/Command center. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She slid over to the rungs of the ladder and climbed down. It was a long way to the cratered ground. Evening shadows stretched coldly away from Gonner’s giant treads. Icicles clung like a beard to the bottom edge of his purple-black war hull. Dirty grey ice had formed in the ancient crater depressions. It splintered and cobwebbed underfoot as she started back toward home. She had taken only five steps away when a snickering voice spoke from the shadows of the crumbling wall.
“So, this is where the famous Kalima Tennyson spends her spare time.”
She whirled, going first hot then icy cold inside her therma-suit.
Bradley Dault. Suited up and lying in wait.
“What are you doing here?”
“I wondered where you sneak off to. So I followed you this time.”
“You got no right following me, Bradley Dault!”
“It’s a free world.” He shrugged, infuriating her; then stepped closer. More ice crunched underfoot. “Your mama know you come here?”
“None-ya!” she grated.
He grinned. “Didn’t think so. Don’t worry, ‘Lima. I won’t tell. Not so long as I can come along, too, and watch the Bolo. Can I go inside, too?”
Kalima’s fists clenched, all by themselves. “No! And if you ever follow me again, I’ll make him shoot you!”
Above their heads, the anti-personnel guns swivelled with a scream of freezing metal. The sound brought Bradley Dault six inches off the ground. His face went pasty white, the color of old ice. His eyes bugged, staring at the gun barrels now levelled squarely at him. A brisk wind sprang up, whipping around the end of the wall toward the broken gates and the shadow of the crippled Bolo.
“I didn’t mean nothin’, ‘Lima, honest! I just wanted to see the Bolo, too! Gad, it’s still alive!”
“You say a word—a stinking word—and you won’t be! My Mom’s a geneticist—I got dozens of ways to kill you, hideous-like, if you even breathe.”
He nodded, still staring wide-eyed at the anti-personnel guns. “Not a whisper. I swear. Cut my tongue out, if I’m lying.”
She relaxed a little. “Well . . . okay. But don’t try to come out here alone. Bolo knows me. He won’t know you.”
Again, Bradley nodded without taking his eyes off the big guns. “Can you talk to it?”
“Yes. But he was hurt pretty bad. He can talk, sort of; but there’s a lot of damage to the circuits in his speech center. It’s called global aphasia. He can think just fine, but he can’t talk very well.”
“Make him say something.”
Scorn filled her voice. “You don’t make a Bolo Mark XX Model B Tremendous unit do anything. They do their assigned duty. Unit Six Seven Zero GWN’s duty is guarding this colony. He’s still doing it.”
That got a response from Bradley. He glanced over his shoulder. “You gotta be kidding. He just sits there, getting rusty.”
She stepped forward, fists clenched at her sides. “Want me to command him to shoot you?” Her breath went to ice on the cold wind. “All I gotta do is tell him you’re the Enemy. Personally, I think we’d be better off without you, Bradley Dault. You’re a pig.”
She expected him to get mad or make some wise, smart-mouthed crack. Instead, he just clamped his lips tighter and went white around the edges of his face.
“What? Something I say hit home?”
“No.” That came out sullen. He dropped his gaze and turned away from the Bolo. “Can I leave now, ‘Lima?”
She hesitated. He looked almost . . . hurt. She decided he was play-acting, just to get her sympathy.
“Yeah. Sure. Get out of here.”
He hunched his shoulders against the wind and turned to go. Overhead, one of the tall native conifers cracked with a report like gunfire. Bradley jumped and went down flat in one of the old war craters. Kalima started to laugh—
Then froze. The tree crashed down, broken halfway up its immense length. The trunk smashed against the old wall. A sixteen-foot section cracked, slipped sideways along an ancient fissure in the battered flintsteel casing, and began to fall—directly toward them.
“Run!”
Bradley rolled, came up faster than she would have thought possible, and launched himself straight at her. His tackle brought her down, almost in the shadow of the Bolo’s treads. Screaming metal and the sound of falling concrete and flintsteel filled her ears. But they weren’t crushed.