“And if you do have a reason?”
“Oh, but then it wouldn’t be meanness, would it?” Tian asked, looking amused. “In that case, it’d come from the heart-box or the head-box.”
“That’s bizarre,” Eddie said, but he supposed it wasn’t, not really. In his mind’s eye he could see three neatly stacked crates: head on top of heart, heart on top of all the animal functions and groundless rages people sometimes felt. He was particularly fascinated by Tian’s use of the word meanness, as if it were some kind of behavioral landmark. Did that make sense, or didn’t it? He would have to consider it carefully, and this wasn’t the time.
Andy still stood gleaming in the sun, pouring out great gusts of song. Eddie had a vague memory of some kids back in the neighborhood, yelling out I’m the Barber of Seville-a, You must try my fucking skill-a and then running away, laughing like loons as they went.
“Andy!” Eddie said, and the robot broke off at once.
“Hile, Eddie, I see you well! Long days and pleasant nights!”
“Same to you,” Eddie said. “How are you?”
“Fine, Eddie!” Andy said fervently. “I always enjoy singing before the first seminon.”
“Seminon?”
“It’s what we call the windstorms that come before true winter,” Tian said, and pointed to the clouds of dust far beyond the Whye. “Yonder comes the first one; it’ll be here either the day of Wolves or the day after, I judge.”
“The day of, sai,” said Andy. ” ‘Seminon comin, warm days go runnin.’ So they say.” He bent toward Eddie.
Clickings came from inside his gleaming head. His blue eyes flashed on and off. “Eddie, I have cast a great horoscope, very long and complex, and it shows victory against the Wolves! A great victory, indeed! You will vanquish your enemies and then meet a beautiful lady!”
“I already have a beautiful lady,” Eddie said, trying to keep his voice pleasant. He knew perfectly well what those rapidly flashing blue lights meant; the son of a bitch was laughing at him. Well, he thought, maybe you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face a couple of days from now, Andy. I certainly hope so.
“So you do, but many a married man has had his jilly, as I told sai Tian Jaffords not so long ago.”
“Not those who love their wives,” Tian said. “I told you so then and I tell you now.”
“Andy, old buddy,” Eddie said earnestly, “we came out here in hopes that you’d do us a solid on the night before the Wolves come. Help us a little, you know.”
There were several clicking sounds deep in Andy’s chest, and this time when his eyes flashed, they almost seemed alarmed. “I would if I could, sai,” Andy said, “oh yes, there’s nothing I like more than helping my friends, but there are a great many things I can’t do, much as I might like to.”
“Because of your programming.”
“Aye.” The smug so-happy-to-see-you tone had gone out of Andy’s voice. He sounded more like a machine now. Yeah, that’s his fallback position, Eddie thought. That’s Andy being careful. You’ve seen em come and go, haven’t you, Andy ? Sometimes they call you a useless bag of bolts and mostly they ignore you, but either way you end up walking over their bones and singing your songs, don’t you ? But not this time, pal. No, I don’t think so.
“When were you built, Andy? I’m curious. When did you roll off the old LaMerk assembly line?”
“Long ago, sai.” The blue eyes flashing very slowly now. Not laughing anymore.
“Two thousand years?”
“Longer, I believe. Sai, I know a song about drinking that you might like, it’s very amusing—”
“Maybe another time. Listen, good buddy, if you’re thousands of years old, how is it that you’re programmed concerning the Wolves?”
From inside Andy there came a deep, reverberant clunk, as though something had broken. When he spoke
again, it was in the dead, emotionless voice Eddie had first heard on the edge of Mid-Forest. The voice of Bosco Bob when ole Bosco was getting ready to cloud up and rain all over you.
“What’s your password, sai Eddie?”
“Think we’ve been down this road before, haven’t we?”
“Password. You have ten seconds. Nine… eight… seven…”
“That password shit’s very convenient for you, isn’t it?”
“Incorrect password, sai Eddie.”
“Kinda like taking the Fifth.”
“Two… one… zero. You may retry once. Would you retry, Eddie?”
Eddie gave him a sunny smile. “Does the seminon blow in the summertime, old buddy?”
More clicks and clacks. Andy’s head, which had been tilted one way, now tilted the other. “I do not follow you, Eddie of NewYork.”
“Sorry. I’m just being a silly old human bean, aren’t I? No, I don’t want to retry. At least not right now. Let me tell you what we’d like you to help us with, and you can tell us if your programming will allow you to do it.
Does that sound fair?”
“Fair as fresh air, Eddie.”
“Okay.” Eddie reached up and took hold of Andy’s thin metal arm. The surface was smooth and somehow unpleasant to the touch. Greasy. Oily. Eddie held on nonetheless, and lowered his voice to a confidential level. “I’m only telling you this because you’re clearly good at keeping secrets.”
“Oh, yes, sai Eddie! No one keeps a secret like Andy!” The robot was back on solid ground and back to his old self, smug and complacent.
“Well…” Eddie went up on tiptoe. “Bend down here.”
Servomotors hummed inside Andy’s casing—inside what would have been his heartbox, had he not been a high-tech tinman. He bent down. Eddie, meanwhile, stretched up even further, feeling absurdly like a small boy telling a secret.
“The Pere’s got some guns from our level of the Tower,” he murmured. “Good ones.”
Andy’s head swiveled around. His eyes glared out with a brilliance that could only have been astonishment.
Eddie kept a poker face, but inside he was grinning.
“Say true, Eddie?”
“Say thankya.”
“Pere says they’re powerful,” Tian said. “If they work, we can use em to blow the living bugger out of the Wolves. But we have to get em out north of town… and they’re heavy. Can you help us load em in a bucka on
Wolfs Eve, Andy?”
Silence. Clicks and clacks.
“Programming won’t let him, I bet,” Eddie said sadly. “Well, if we get enough strong backs—”
“I can help you,” Andy said. “Where are these guns, sais?”
“Better not say just now,” Eddie replied. “You meet us at the Pere’s rectory early on Wolf’s Eve, all right?”
“What hour would you have me?”
“How does six sound?”
“Six o’ the clock. And how many guns will there be? Tell me that much, at least, so I may calculate the required energy levels.”
My friend, it takes a bullshitter to recognize bullshit, Eddie thought merrily, but kept a straight face. “There be a dozen. Maybe fifteen. They weigh a couple of hundred pounds each. Do you know pounds, Andy?”
“Aye, say thankya. A pound is roughly four hundred and fifty grams. Sixteen ounces. ‘A pint’s a pound, the world around.’ Those are big guns, sai Eddie, say true! Will they shoot?”
“We’re pretty sure they will,” Eddie said. “Aren’t we, Tian?”
Tian nodded. “And you’ll help us?”
“Aye, happy to. Six o’ the clock, at the rectory.”
“Thank you, Andy,” Eddie said. He started away, then looked back. “You absolutely won’t talk about this, will you?”
“No, sai, not if you tell me not to.”
“That’s just what I’m telling you. The last thing we want is for the Wolves to find out we’ve got some big guns to use against em.”
“Of course not,” Andy said. “What good news this is. Have a wonderful day, sais.”
“And you, Andy,” Eddie replied. “And you.”
ELEVEN
Walking back toward Tian’s place—it was only two miles distant from where they’d come upon Andy—Tian said, “Does he believe it?”
“I don’t know,” Eddie said, “but it surprised the shit out of him—did you feel that?”
“Yes,” Tian said. “Yes, I did.”
“He’ll be there to see for himself, I guarantee that much.”
Tian nodded, smiling. “Your dinh is clever.”
“That he is,” Eddie agreed. “That he is.”
TWELVE
Once more Jake lay awake, looking up at the ceiling of Benny’s room. Once more Oy lay on Benny’s bed, curved into a comma with his nose beneath his squiggle of tail. Tomorrow night Jake would be back at Father Callahan’s, back with his ka-tet, and he couldn’t wait. Tomorrow would be Wolfs Eve, but this was only the eve of Wolf’s Eve, and Roland had felt it would be best for Jake to stay this one last night at the Rocking B.
“We don’t want to raise suspicions this late in the game,” he’d said. Jake understood, but boy, this was sick.
The prospect of standing against the Wolves was bad enough. The thought of how Benny might look at him two days from now was even worse.