Fatboy Read online

  The freezing air stung at his eyes as he slithered up the street towards home. His anger flowed out of him in all directions: the state of the road, the unswept sidewalks, the miserable lighting; but above all, the powerlessness of his community, the invasion of the government machine. He spat out expletives every few steps, searching for something to crush with the sheer power of thought.

  He still didn’t want to go home. He had nothing good to say, no way of apologizing, no hope of righting wrongs. It could only be a mess. But he had to do it.

  He crashed through the front door and began shouting. “Y’all here? Hey! Listen up, folks! I got to go again right now!”

  He waited a beat and banged on the walls and shouted again.

  Dolly appeared in her doorway, eyes wide, hand to mouth. Rosa came out of her room, looking angry.

  “KR? What’s going on?”

  “Everything. Cops, SWAT teams, you name it. Where’s Mom?”

  “Laying down.”

  He turned to bang on her door, but the door opened and his mother stood there in a house coat, looking at him gravely. He caught his breath. He suddenly saw how the years had worn her down, how much older she looked than the image he carried in his head. He wanted to run, as he might have done as a kid, rather than stand there under her steady gaze and acknowledge what he’d done.

  He found himself mumbling. “You guys should talk to the cops if they come here, tell them what they want to know, don’t try and protect me. Got it? It’s my fault and I’ll take care of it. If they get overbearing, now or later, get Rosa to fight for your rights. Make sure you get good video. Don’t let them dole out C-spies.”

  His mother was staring at him as though she knew everything, as though she could see right down into his soul. Her lips were parted, but she didn’t speak.

  “Got to go, Mom. I’ll call you.” He took a backward step, glanced again at his sisters, and then turned and fled.

  He found the police circus by heading for the bright lights. His anger had died away almost as quickly as it had come, and he didn’t hurry. For a brief moment he wondered if he was doing the right thing. He could still run. Maybe the cops were trolling the ghetto with other things in mind. Maybe they hadn’t got Fatboy. Maybe they weren’t looking for KR Rawlings. Maybe the fuckers still liked to fatten their pay checks with the extra silver that KR Rawlings could provide.

  But he didn’t believe any of that, and they’d soon put him straight if they wanted to deal. He trudged onwards. The police caravan had placed themselves in the middle of a crossroads. The area was ablaze with light, and he spotted a couple of airborne monitors, but no humans were visible. The SWAT team robots, he knew from bitter experience, would be out securing the area: breaking into a few homes, frightening a few people, impounding weapons, drawing out the trigger happy. He hoped that Sol and others had got the word out, and that none of his guys would set themselves up for easy retaliation. The robots were big bastards, bigger than Fatboy, and nothing that humans could throw at them had much effect. He expected to meet one at any moment.

  He stopped suddenly and called Sol. “You gone from there yet?”

  “Hey, one more minute, man! We’re throwing the auxiliary gear down the hole.”

  “Yeah, I was going to tell you. Then get the hell out.”

  He started forward again, picking his way carefully over the ice.

  A big flashing shape arched down from somewhere and skidded towards him, sending powder and liquid over his leather coat. They liked to do that, he reminded himself, gritting his teeth and standing his ground. The flashing blue and white across its midriff said, ‘POLICE’. It was a quadruped with mirror-image top and bottom, mirror-image front and back, and mirror-image pairs of legs. The legs reputedly had over forty modes of locomotion, and it could see and hear equally in all directions. As it came to a stop, it rose up on one pair of legs, taking its height to nearly seven feet. Lights from a dozen locations on its body were beamed at him and at the surrounding roadway. It made an intermittent chirping noise like a loud hen.

  “Nice to meet you, dickhead,” KR said.

  “Name?” the robot said.

  “KR Rawlings.”

  There was a brief pause. “You can go to the trailer on the left. Detective Alice Bukowski.”

  KR kicked at its leg with his boot on the way by, but the robot didn’t seem to notice.

  “Where did you get the military robot from?”

  KR kept his expression blank. “What military robot?”

  “Mr. Rawlings, have you any idea how serious an offence it is to procure and use a military robot in a civilian context? Especially when a homicide is involved?”

  “I guess I’ve got a pretty good idea, but I don’t see how it applies to me.”

  Bukowski was a detective he knew by sight. She was polite enough, but this was a formal interview monitored by a virtual defense entity: software that was supposed to speak up when his rights were contravened.

  “We’ll find it, you know.”

  He gave her a quick look. Did she realize what she’d just given away?

  They hadn’t got Fatboy.

  Or was it a clever bluff? “Y’all crazy? How can you find something that doesn’t exist?”

  “Oh it exists, all right. We have witnesses who’ve seen it, and we have witnesses who’ll confirm it as yours.”

  Tank, probably. His own family, if they did what they were told. But maybe there was a glimmer of hope here. It looked like Fatboy had been smart enough to escape whatever kind of a trap they’d set up, and had gone to ground. Emergency behavior, or something. If it stayed out of sight, and Sol and his other top guys didn’t say where they’d hidden the auxiliary control robots, then maybe he had a chance.

  “I don’t know what you’re saying,” he said with a shrug.

  “Mr. Rawlings, you’re a very dangerous man, and on the basis of witness testimony I’ve obtained a warrant for your arrest. And I’m not talking about a custodial robot. You’re going to jail, I hope for a very long time.”

  “Oh great. My enemies make up a bunch of stuff, and you put me in jail. What does my algorithm for the defense have to say about that?”

  “You’ll go to jail strictly according to the law. Your defense counsel can’t help you.”

  “And meanwhile,” he said, his anger suddenly stirring again, “you’ll use this fantasy robot as an excuse to blast your way through everyone and everything, knock us down, keep us niggers in our place. You’re a fucking disgrace!”

  He reached out and banged his fist on Bukowski’s desk. That was when the robot twined him up in a temporary constraint and they shipped him downtown.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Fatboy lay in a ditch beside the canal, its body the color of mud. Willows and birch saplings provided cover. It was aware of a partial dysfunction in one of its tool-using limbs, and after the nano-repair elements failed to make much improvement, it re-allocated circuitry and restored most of the essential utility.

  It monitored all available wireless sources to assist its tactical planning, while avoiding wireless transmissions of its own. It assessed the current level of engagement with the enemy at somewhere between one and two: every operation had to count, but a high level of risk was acceptable. Directives from home base, signed off by Deputy Commander Sol Winters, were less than 100% secure, and therefore not of the highest priority. Better data came from police network exchanges, which it was now able to decode, and these told him that Commander KR Rawlings was in enemy hands and was being transferred to a downtown location.

  Fatboy risked sending a brief wireless pulse up to a datasphere satellite in order to download information on the southern precinct Police Department building and its associated defense systems. Then it began a comparative assessment of available assault profiles.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Being stripped and given a uniform and placed in a holding cell wasn’t a process that worried KR. He just wanted to get it
done and to be left alone. Okay, they’d feed him, shunt him around, treat him like dirt: so what the fuck, he was used to that shit. How bad could it be? All you did was ignore everything, and maybe you got some rest at last.

  The five holding cells were old technology, steel bars between them, a steel-bar gate to the corridor. Things might liven up around midnight, but at present they were all empty except his own. He lay on his back on the wooden bench and closed his eyes against the bright light.

  His mom would be okay. Forget the way she’d looked at him; she’d be okay. Everyone would be okay. Better off without him. He’d got it all wrong, screwed up, and now it was all very simple...

  He was jarred into life by the clanging of something hard against the bars of the cell. He swung up off the bench into a sitting position and looked around. Some grinning fat idiot was standing at the door of his cell holding a nightstick.

  Brolin.

  He cursed to himself and stretched out again on the bench.

  A fusillade of bangs on the bars. “Hey, you deadbeat piece of shit, stand up and talk to me when I come visiting, or I’ll come in there and club you to death like a fucking seal pup.”

  “Go away,” he muttered without opening his eyes. “I ain’t got nothing for you.”

  “You said that right. You ain’t got anything for anybody. You’re a busted flush, KR. I guess your sister Dolly will just have to get by without you.”

  KR froze. He got slowly to his feet and took a couple of paces towards Brolin. “What do you mean by that?”

  Brolin tapped the palm of his hand with his nightstick. “Yes sir, poor little Dolly, no more big brother. Real sad. Might have to look out for her myself.”

  KR took another pace forwards and pointed his finger at Brolin. “You know something, Brolin, you’re an even bigger asshole than I thought. You mess with Dolly and there’s a dozen guys in my gang who’ll take you down.”

  “You crazy, KR? Your gangland buddies? They’ll be pimping her out and taking a cut.”

  KR could feel the anger and tension building inside him again, primed by the rapid beating of his heart. Ignore this idiot, he told himself, but as long as Brolin kept standing there, a self-satisfied grin on his jowly face, he knew that was impossible: this guy was the primordial enemy of the downtrodden, the eternal oppressor. He was a clown, a morally disabled misfit, but that’s what they all were, that’s why you had to smash them to pieces before they did the damage.

  Brolin was still smiling and massaging his nightstick suggestively. “You look kind of pathetic, KR. Kind of sad. I guess you’re wondering how it is you wound up in here. Huh? And I guess you’re starting to wish you’d been a bit more respectful to me the other day.”

  “What I wish is that I’d stuck your fat face up your exhaust pipe.”

  “Sure you do.” Brolin grinned and pointed at him with the nightstick. “But it’s too late for that, KR. Too late for you. And too late for Dolly.” He turned and took a step back down the corridor.

  KR took a deep breath. He’d get the guy. Somehow. A few of his guys would be loyal.

  The lights went out.

  Brolin swore. KR tensed and looked up.

  A backup alarm started ringing, and a couple of light fixtures in the corridor managed an uncertain glow. An emergency door slammed somewhere to the left. KR caught a brief glimpse of Brolin’s pastry face, the eyes wide. Lightning crackled and hissed down the corridor, and blackness returned. He heard the tentative squeak of Brolin’s boots on the plastic floor, moving, he thought, to the right.

  The silence during the next three or four seconds seemed more like a minute. A splintering crash to his left was succeeded by the hiss of moving air. A bass drone began resonating through the building, swelling to a pulse every second, like a beating heart. His limbs seemed to relax.

  Intertwined with the bass drone, a sibilant voice said, “Can you hear me, Mr. Rawlings?”

  Jesus, KR thought, staring into the blackness. Fatboy. “Yes,” he said.

  “Lie down and close your eyes immediately.”

  It took him a second to register the instructions, then he threw himself flat and rolled away from the steel gate. A brilliant light pressed against his closed eyelids. He could smell burning metal. Fatboy, Fatboy, he thought, what the hell are you doing?

  The burning light went dark. He blinked, sat up. Fatboy was projecting a faint luminescence from its body. It looked like a huge golden spider, standing guard in the corridor. The door of the cell was open.

  “Follow me, Mr. Rawlings.”

  He struggled to his feet. Fatboy had blown it, destroyed his only hope of lesser charges, so why not? He wouldn’t survive out there for long, even with Fatboy’s protection, but what the hell. A few more hours of freedom...

  A uniformed shape appeared in the corridor to his right. Human. A flashlight in one hand and an automatic weapon in the other. And over his head a white gas mask.

  KR froze. Even Fatboy had to process this. As soon as the man appeared, he shouted above the drone sound:

  “Stay where you are or I kill Rawlings!”

  Brolin. Jesus, he’d been quick. And smart. He’d understood that his colleagues, probably three or four of them in the building at this time of night, had been gassed, knocked unconscious, by Fatboy. So he’d strapped on the gas mask. Or maybe not so smart. He was about ten feet from Fatboy. Did he know how fast Fatboy could move?

  Plus he was holding the gun with only one hand.

  Fatboy directed tight beams of light at Brolin’s eyes. The gas mask lit up like a museum display.

  The flashlight wavered. “Cut that out!” Brolin roared, and let off a couple of shots, high.

  Fatboy cut the lights and lowered the volume of the bass drone.

  KR said, “Fatboy, are you under my command?”

  “Yes, Mr. Rawlings.”

  “Attack this man!”

  He threw himself down and aside as he spoke. He saw the flash of movement from Fatboy. Brolin had time to let off one brief volley of shots. KR felt something tear into his shoulder. He rolled over and lay for a moment in shock. He could smell the blood lapping against his cheek.

  Something scooped him up, flipped him around, held him firmly in place. He felt the bounce of rapid movement, smoother than a horse, rougher than his own running. His shoulder was numb. He was on the back of something, looking down. He saw Brolin’s body as they passed it, splayed out, gun still in his hand, head at the wrong angle.

  Suddenly they were out in the cold, and he was staring at pavement. Spots of white swirled around, into his face. The speed picked up, the motion different, more uncomfortable. One of his shoes was scraping the ground. He closed his eyes, descended into semi-conscious blackness.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Fatboy was aware that its human burden, slung across its back, was leaving a trail of blood in the street. There were, at least, in this southern precinct of the city, at this time of night, no people on the sidewalks, and only an occasional car. It should be possible to escape the police enemy and get back to more familiar territory. The blood should be obscured by the snow.

  But there were decisions to be made. Rawlings was the number one ranked human in its chart, and he had a gunshot wound. Fatboy checked its data banks, but found no listings for approved field hospitals, casualty centers, civilian hospitals, or other possible sanctuaries. Existing tactical constraints prohibited a return to mission headquarters. So the conditions of self-initiated action remained in effect, moderated by the presence of an injured commander: one, security; two, warmth and shelter for the human; three, communications readiness.

  Fatboy scuttled along the whitening sidewalks, past shuttered snack counters and glowing office blocks, churches and lampposts, its visual sensors scanning in all directions, its processors providing a simulation of its camouflaged body with the prison-red human carapace on top. Gradually the streets became less broad, highways arched across. It stayed under the highways, eased its w
ay across a pair of railroad tracks, crossed a park, tracked through an area of warehouses and small factory units, along a residential street, and over some frozen ground to the canal.

  Its sensors told it that its human companion was alive but unconscious. It twisted its body and laid its commander down on the concrete path.

  Security: moderate.

  Warmth and shelter: poor.

  It reviewed the options. Break into any building radiating heat. Security: unknown. Break into known building radiating heat where occupants were believed absent overnight. Security: reasonable until morning, depending on alarm systems. Warmth and shelter: good.

  Fatboy examined Rawlings. The bleeding had nearly stopped. His skin was pale. Pulse below normal. Slight shivering.

  It went down the bank to the canal and tested the ice. It returned and rolled the man gently onto its back and secured him. Moving more slowly than before, it crossed the canal and went around the ice rink. The streets were empty of cars and humans. It moved cautiously towards the first of the known buildings. No lights. No vehicles parked. Infra red profile good.

  The high front window, which it had broken on entry earlier in the day, had not been repaired. Fatboy moved around the building and up the alley, checking for wireless transmissions. Nothing. The link with the owner’s home was still down. That was a strong positive. The security mice had not been reactivated.

  It placed Rawlings carefully in the alley, face down, and melted the new locks on the loading bay doors. It took less than a minute to check the interior for new sources of surveillance. It carried Rawlings inside the building and laid him down on the floor and closed the doors. The ambient temperature was 14C. The commander’s breathing was weak. Fatboy took three dresses from the nearest rack and wrapped them around his body. It reviewed its current tactics and terms of engagement, and decided not to broadcast its location to Sol Winters. It lay down and went into low energy mode.

  Fatboy found that Rawlings’ heart was no longer beating when it made its sixth check at 3.46 in the morning. It understood that it could no longer be of use to its commander, and it left the building to find a new hideout.