Toys

Chapter 61

It turned out that most of the mining labor in Vlosk was robotic; there weren’t many human inhabitants, and though they’d tried to add touches of warmth-brightly painted houses, for one thing; greenhouse gardens; a couple of roughhouse taverns-the place was still as grim as an addict’s funeral.

But our driver, a bristly-mustached young man named Sergei, seemed cheerful enough-maybe because, like the nomads, he wasn’t living with the Elite boot pressed down on his neck.

Our flight was ready to depart, so we said a hasty good-bye to Sergei and drove with a robot attendant to a bulky transport missile waiting on one of the launchpads.

Trouble was, these ships didn’t have passenger accommodations; there wasn’t much demand for them. The few occasional travelers were sealed into small cargo units that were pressurized, heated, and oxygenated.

Lucy and I climbed into the one that was ready for us. It was about the size of a double coffin and just big enough to get us both in-not all that different from the trunk of her car, only with a little more legroom.

After the jolts and metallic clamor of final loading and the fierce roar and terrific acceleration of blastoff, everything settled down into a deep, dark silence.

Lucy and I lay there side by side, close enough to touch, but not touching.

I could hear her breathing though. And I was surprised that she wore some kind of fragrance. She must have put it on before getting into the cargo space. Was the perfume for me?

“Just in case you’re getting any ideas, don’t,” she said after a minute.

“Farthest thing from my mind. Hadn’t occurred to me.”

“Oh, really? It didn’t look very far from your mind when I found you in your car yesterday, making out with your dream girl.”

I could feel my face redden. “I can’t help what happens when I’m asleep.”

“Asleep!” she said scornfully. “You had the simulator on full blast.”

“I was just trying to relax. So I could get to sleep.”

To my surprise, she giggled. “You didn’t look very relaxed. Or sleepy either. You seemed rather alert.”

I didn’t have any snappy comeback to that, so I decided to go on the offensive.

“You’re the one who started a striptease for those bush pilots. Pardon the pun.”

“It was just business,” she said with the patience of a teacher speaking to a child. “Yuck-I just got your joke about the pilots.”

“That’s all it is for you, just business?” I demanded. “You’re the iron maiden?”

This time she sighed, a sound that might have been troubled, or just bone tired.

“No,” she said. “Not iron, and not a maiden either. Get some sleep, brother.”

“I definitely will,” I said. “By the way, you smell nice. For a human.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said. “Pig.”

“No-skunk.”

Chapter 62

When the ore ship finally landed-presumably in England, imagine that- I waited impatiently for the lid of our cargo unit to slide open and let us out. British allies would be there to meet us and take us on to London, a city I’d read about in countless books-books by Dickens, Austen, Amis, Smith, Maugham, Lodge.

I wasn’t expecting to be greeted with tea and crumpets-but I certainly wasn’t expecting what did happen.

The shipping unit was suddenly flipped upside down, dumping us into a mesh net, just as if we were a couple of fish.

Instantly, several threatening rifle barrels held by tight-lipped Brit soldiers were thrust in my face.

“What is this? What’s happening now?” I snapped at Lucy. “More lies?”

“Be calm, Hays. Be patient, please. No one is going to harm us.”

“Don’t even twitch, Baker,” one of the soldiers commanded in a crisp English accent.

Twitch? I was flooded with rage. How dare they treat Lucy and me in such a disrespectful manner!

“They’re just suspicious. They want to question you, but I couldn’t tell you that,” Lucy admitted. “I was afraid you’d-”

“Do something stupid?” I said. “Like maim several of them? Which I could do.”

The rifle barrels poked at my stomach and chest.

“You heard the major,” a sergeant growled. “Shut your mouth.”

“He said not to twitch,” I corrected the insolent soldier.

“Please, just go along,” Lucy urged. “I’m sorry, but there’s no way around it, Hays.” She really did seem apologetic, for what that was worth. Not very much.

“Come along, miss,” the major said to Lucy. “Sir Nigel wants to see you straight off.” He led her away, leaving me alone with my new group of pals.

“They tell us you’re some kind of poofter wonder boy,” the sergeant sneered. “We’ll have to see about that.”

“Let me guess-you have ways of making me talk,” I cracked. “And I’m supposed to come back with ‘Do your worst!’ Right?”

Clearly these lads were not chosen for their keen senses of humor. They stared at me stonily.

“Yeah, that’ll about cover it,” the sergeant said.

Chapter 63

I could see why the humans would want to be careful with me, but still…

“You expect us to believe that for all those years you could carry on as Mr. Super Elite Agent-without anyone there having an idea there was somethin’ off about you?” the interrogator said with professional menace in his voice.

He’d asked me that same question, one way or another, at least a dozen times in the past hour-which was about how long I’d been hanging from the ceiling of a room in a military jet somewhere over southern England.

To be more precise, I was inside a mesh net, which they’d hoisted up so my feet didn’t quite touch the floor. A thin metal bar had been inserted under my crotch, and I was forced to straddle it with my full weight.

Damned uncomfortable, and not very hospitable of the Brits.

“It’s like being a bit thick,” I said. “You don’t know it until somebody tells you.”

I could see the interrogator bristle at the insult, but he kept concentrating on the monitor of the brain analyzer they had me hooked to-a sophisticated lie-detection device that I knew was close to infallible.

Once again, he shook his head unhappily at what he saw. He turned to a Brit major who was standing by and observing me like I was a ticking bomb, which wasn’t entirely wrong.

“Never come across a reading like this before, sir,” he said. “Not a termite-but not exactly human either.”

Termites, I’d gathered by now, was what European humans called Elites-probably a slam at their unimaginative, orderly minds.

“Could I offer a helpful word, gentlemen?” I said. “I’m very familiar with this kind of equipment-I suspect the