Laura, Hoblenz, and the others quickly followed. She skirted the two dead men — silent reminders of the dangers they faced.
The Model Eight was unsteady on its feet. Several times it scraped the walls with an awful grating sound. And when the robot lost its balance, it almost dragged Gray off his feet. They finally arrived in the temporary control room, and the robot let go of Gray's hand.
Most of the consoles and chairs lay on their sides, and there were loose cables crisscrossing the large cavern.
'Mr. Gray, I can't promise I can hold this area,' Hoblenz said. He was pulling hand grenades out of a sack that he carried, lining them up on an overturned console.
Laura joined Gray at the observation window, where he stood rubbing his hand. They peered down at the captive soldier curled into a ball on the bare floor of the tactile room. Five robots stood around him in a circle. One robot was stroking the soldier's back, his hand carefully guided by another.
Hoblenz appeared beside them at the window. 'Jesus Christ,' he said, then he began to inspect the window and the frame around it.
'Sir, I can take this thing out with some C4. That'd give us a good angle for direct fire. I'll grab a man and head down. I would take two, but we need to keep an eye on this one.' He shot his thumb toward the robot that had led them there, which hadn't moved an inch since Gray pulled his hand free. 'Unless, of course, you let me do him right now.'
'No,' Gray said as they watched the Model Eight in the tactile room pull his pupil's hand off the soldier's back. Another robot then proffered its hand and waited. The teacher grabbed its wrist and slowly, carefully, laid the hand onto the man's back. The soldier flinched but made no move to uncover his head. He was playing dead.
'Is that 'no' to wasting this one, or 'no' to my plan?'
'No to both,' Gray said, putting his rifle down. 'I'll go down there and get him. You have your men check for signs of drilling, although I don't think you'll find any.'
Hoblenz heaved a loud sigh of frustration. 'Mr. Gray, you may be a walkin' human calculator, but brilliant tactician you're not. I just saw two of my men get snapped to pieces by those goddamn things. Now you wanna go down there by yourself, unarmed, while I split my men up and send them off to look for something you don't think they'll find?'
'There are only five robots down here,' Gray explained, 'four toddlers and one holdback — a robot we're planning to reprogram.'
'Now how do you know that?'
'I told you, this is the toddler class.' Gray turned to nod at the robot behind them, who was staring down the barrel of a soldier's gun. 'That one's called Goose.'
'How do you know its name?' Laura asked. 'I thought they all looked alike.'
'They do, but watch this.' Gray stepped up to the Model Eight. 'Goose,' he said in a loud voice, 'show me your music box. Go show me your music box,' he said, and held out his hand.
'Jeez,' Hoblenz muttered.
The robot led Gray straight to a small pile of belongings placed neatly in the corner of the room. There was a ragged beach towel, all bright green and burnt orange. A small collection of what looked to be doorknobs, their internal mechanisms protruding, jagged and twisted.
But the robot ignored all the rest and picked up a large, multicolored plastic ball.
'Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?' came a distorted and scratchy voice from the toy. The robot pressed another panel. 'Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall.'
Gray returned to Laura and Hoblenz, the robot remaining in the corner with its things.
'That's real sweet, sir,' Hoblenz said with barely concealed irritation. 'Mother Goose nursery rhymes—'Goose.' But those things did just kill my men.'
'But was it Goose?' Laura said. 'They're each different. You can't judge them all just by what some do.'
'They're all ten fuckin' feet tall and can rip the head off of ya if you get 'em riled.'
Both Hoblenz and Laura fell quiet when they saw the look of concern on Gray's face. They turned to look down through the window at the tactile room. All five robots were now standing and staring silently up at the window.
44
'There he is,' Laura said on seeing Gray at the door of the tactile room. Hoblenz returned to the window carrying a black canvas bag. From the bag he pulled a block of plastic explosives about the size of a large brick and began to mash his thumbs into the gray mass.
'What are you doing?' Laura asked as Gray inched closer to the gathering of robots. The robots' attention was focused on him.
'Just a precaution,' Hoblenz said, using all his strength to pinch off a piece of the gummy substance. He began pressing the explosives in a thin string along the seals at the edge of the window.
Laura sensed movement behind her. Turning her eyes but not her head, she saw that Goose stood right behind them. Hoblenz concentrated so hard on his work that he hadn't noticed.
'I think you ought to look around,' Laura said to Hoblenz in as calm a voice as she could muster.
Hoblenz froze, turning his head slowly to look at the robot's legs. Then he looked over at his rifle, which he'd leaned against the wall.
His men had gone to take care of the bodies and to look for signs of drilling. They were all alone with the Model Eight.
'Go-o-od robot,' Hoblenz said. 'Nice robot. That-a-boy, Goose.'
The Model Eight reached out and grabbed the block of explosives from Hoblenz. Slowly, its grip tightened, and the gray substance oozed out between its three fingers. Goose returned to the corner and sat down amid his other toys, continuing to knead the explosives with his one good hand.
'You have fun with that!' Hoblenz yelled. He then muttered, 'You son of a bitch,' as he returned to work at the window. He inserted what Laura assumed was a tiny detonator into the thin string of explosives, then stepped back to admire his handiwork.
'Is that enough?' Laura whispered, worried by how skinny the strings were.
'Plenty,' he said tersely. He then walked backward across the room, spooling out a hair-thin filament in the direction of the elevator.
In the room below, Gray stood inside the circle of seated Model Eights, his hand on the shoulders of two robots. It was like the hand you placed on the rump of a horse when within range of its dangerous hooves, Laura thought. An I'm-right-here-don't-get-startled touch. He was talking constantly, but Laura didn't know to whom.
The robots all began to rise as if on cue. The Model Eight that had guided the students' petting pulled them away one by one.
Gray then led the soldier out without incident.
Hoblenz began shouting for his men to 'Pack it up.' In the corner, Goose held his hand in front of his one undamaged lens. It was covered in the gummy explosives.
When Laura looked back at the tactile room, most of the Model Eights were milling about. But one of the robots sat in front of the room's only door, barring the exit. The robot brought his hand up to his chin and rested his elbow on his knee. It was Auguste, 'The Thinker' — the reprogrammed 'bad seed.' He already had blood on his hands, Laura thought, and seemed determined not to add any more.
Gray anxiously checked his watch. Two soldiers stood with Hoblenz at a terminal, showing him something on the screen schematic.
The third man had ridden up the elevator with the two bodies and the former hostage, who was thoroughly shaken but not badly hurt.
'I've got to be getting back, Mr. Hoblenz,' Gray said. 'It's three hours to deceleration.'
Hoblenz reclined in his chair, frowning as he stared at the screen. 'There's still no sign of any drilling.'
Laura stood at the window and watched the listless Model Eights below.
