4
A door banged in the distance. In an instant Maggie was on her feet, her hand flying to the hilt of her dagger. Likewise, Freud exited standby mode. His head swiveled from side to side, trying to pinpoint the direction the sound had come from.
Maggie stood very still, eyes closed, listening. She heard no further sounds.
“Do you hear anything?” she asked.
“No,” said Freud. “I believe, though, that the noise came from directly north of us.”
She nodded. They had better investigate, but first things first. She zipped open the compartment in her backpack where she kept her meager supply of food, wolfed down a strip of salt pork and a handful of Cap’n Crunch, and drank half her bottle of water. It made her feel marginally more energetic, but did little to alleviate her hunger.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Four twenty-two. If it is any consolation, you would have slept only another eight minutes anyway.”
She sighed. Even only eight minutes of sleep sounded heavenly.
They stepped out of the office and into the east-west hallway they had been traveling down earlier. Fifty feet west of the office door another hallway branched off this one, heading north. They hadn’t checked out that hallway yet.
When they looked down it, they saw the glow of light—electric light—shining in the distance. They advanced slowly and quietly down the hallway, and soon discerned that the hallway bent left at a ninety-degree angle about three-hundred feet ahead. The light was coming from around the bend. Faintly they heard muffled sounds and the low tones of a man’s voice.
“Turn off your eye-beams,” Maggie whispered.
Freud did so. They continued creeping toward the bend, at one point passing a side-corridor on their right that was dimly lit by emergency lights consisting of bars of white luminescence in the angles where the walls met the ceiling. There were also fluorescent light fixtures in the center of the ceiling, but those were dark. Maggie was tempted to investigate this corridor until she noticed the thick, undisturbed layer of dust and dirt on the floor. Clearly no one had gone down there in years.
As they neared the bend in the corridor, Maggie smelled food cooking, which made her mouth water. Was it a kitchen up ahead? If so, she wondered if she could manage to snag a few bites of food. Real food, that is. Something warm and succulent and freshly cooked.
They reached the bend in the corridor. Maggie drew her dagger, held it ready at her side, and peeked around the corner.
The corridor extended due west. Fluorescent lights hummed in fixtures in the ceiling. After so many hours with Freud’s relatively weak eye-beams as the main source of light, the fluorescents were so bright Maggie had to squint. On the north side of the corridor, about ten feet down from the bend, were a pair of swinging doors, each with a porthole window that revealed that the lights were on on the other side, too. A sign on the wall above the doors read “Green Wing Kitchen.” The smell of food was maddeningly strong. Maggie detected beef, potatoes, sage, cabbage, and a dozen other scents that made her almost dizzy with hunger. Her stomach gurgled and groaned, and she felt a brief, irrational fear that the sounds were loud enough for the Marauders to hear.
But that was ridiculous, for the noises from the kitchen were far, far louder. She could hear them all quite clearly from where she stood. Pot lids banged. Ladles clattered. Liquids bubbled. Fat sizzled. And throughout it all, one man’s low, surly voice rumbled incessantly. His words were clear now, and Maggie was amused to discover that it was one constant monologue of complaint.
“Fuckin’ picky little bitches,” the man said. “Thinkin’ they’re all a bunch of tough-ass motherfuckers. Yeah, right. They’re fussier than fuckin’ old ladies. I mean, holy shit, the Grottle can’t eat anything except meat? Sissy bitch. Like if it ever eats a vegetable it’ll shrivel up and fuckin’ die. And that dumbfuck Viking with his stupid fuckin’ venison. You’d think he wants to start dating the shit. Hasn’t that lice-ridden stink‑pit ever heard of fruit, for fuck’s sake? Or whole grains? I guess they’re all too retarded to understand the concept of fuckin’ nutrition. Well, when they all drop dead of fuckin’ heart attacks in the middle of pillaging some dinky-ass village, they’ll understand then, won’t they? They’ll think, ‘Hey! Asparagus Sam was right!’ And then they’ll keel right the fuck over. And me? I’ll just fuckin’ laugh, ‘cause I told ‘em years before to eat right, and did they fuckin’ listen? Fuck, no!”
And so on and so on, without pause.
Maggie tiptoed to the right side of the swinging doors, hunched down below the level of the porthole windows, and crossed to the left side. Then she motioned for Freud to position himself on the right side. When he had done so, she slowly looked through the window in the left door while Freud looked through the one in the right.
The kitchen was huge, stretching over two hundred feet from the door to the far wall and forty feet from side to side. Down its center ran two parallel gleaming metal counters outfitted with sinks and cabinets and drawers and racks. There were counters along parts of the walls, too, but mostly the wall‑space was reserved for dozens of electrical appliances: refrigerators, ranges, coolers, microwave ovens. In one section someone had removed the appliances and installed a wood-burning stove and an open fire-pit with a pair of spits above the lapping tongues of flame. Above these new additions a hole had been cut in the ceiling and metal tubing run through it to vent the smoke. A wine-rack and a row of oaken barrels stood to the right of the swinging doors, while to the left was the most well-stocked herb- and spice-rack Maggie had ever seen. The brown glass jars had been meticulously labeled and arranged in alphabetical order on a home-made floor-to-ceiling wooden shelving unit ten feet wide. She saw every culinary herb and spice she had ever heard of and dozens she hadn’t. Anise, mint, oregano, saffron—those she knew. But what about eldrim? Or kotch? Or shnozzberry leaves?
Bustling about alone in this vast space, hurrying from pot to counter to spice rack (during which latter trips Maggie and Freud had to duck out of sight for a while), was a thin, stoop‑shouldered man, probably in his early forties, with curly dark-brown hair poking out from beneath the bottom of his battered toque, black-rimmed glasses held together with electrician’s tape, a blue-and-white plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, blue jeans, brown work boots, and a once‑white apron now spattered and stained with so much grease and juice and gunk that it looked like an Expressionist painting. His face was pinched and sour as he slaved away on the components of a massive feast: Two dozen pots bubbled on stovetops, some containing what appeared to be stews, others sauces, still others fruit filling for pies. Two huge ovens contained nothing but slowly rising loaves of bread. A wild boar roasted on one spit, a juvenile giant eagle on the other. Venison steaks sizzled in pans. Half-prepared toppings, fillings, dressings, flavorings, and coverings lay on countertops. And throughout his complex one-man dance of food preparation Asparagus Sam grumped on and on and on.
“Ooh, special feast today, special feast today. Holy fuckin’ shit, when isn’t there a special fuckin’ feast? Every day’s like a faggy-ass holiday around here. But whaddaya expect considering the fucked-up management we got? I mean, shit, last time it was a fuckin’ devil’s food cake for a mass execution. Who the fuck wants to eat devil’s food cake when you’re watching neck arteries spraying blood all over everything? I mean, what is this shit? And who the fuck eats devil’s food cake anyway? Stuff’s fuckin’ loaded with enough fat and calories to choke a fuckin’ Tyrannosaurus Rex. And do they want the healthy recipe, which I happen to know, and which, in my not-so-fuckin’-humble opinion, tastes just as good as the fuckin’ egg-and-butter-loaded version? Of course they don’t! They want their arteries plugged up like an old woman who’s never heard of prune juice! Fuckin’ morons!”
“Someone is coming,” Freud said.
Even as he spoke Maggie heard heavy footsteps approaching down a side-corridor that extended north about fifty feet to their left.
“Hid
e,” she whispered, and she and Freud retreated back around the corner to the north-south corridor they had come down earlier.
The footsteps grew louder as whoever it was entered the east-west corridor and advanced toward the kitchen doors. Maggie thought the rhythm of the footsteps sounded familiar in some way. Did she know this person? At the moment there was no way for her to take a look without being seen, but once whoever‑it‑was entered the kitchen, she and Freud could creep forward again and peep through the porthole windows for a glimpse of the newcomer. Assuming, of course, that the kitchen was where the newcomer was headed. If not, she and Freud had quite a problem.
To her relief, the kitchen doors banged open and the footsteps grew fainter again. They heard Asparagus Sam groan and say, “Well, fuck me! Twitchy’s back! What do you want this time?”
Twitchy. The Marauders’ leader’s right-hand man. This certainly deserved a look. She and Freud inched toward the kitchen doors.
As they did so, a tinny voice said, “The Master has”—there was a loud, sharp click—“sent me to talk to”—click—“talk to you.”
Maggie suppressed a gasp. Aside from the clicks the voice sounded just like Freud’s. Then she remembered something Freud had said the night before, and she realized who the voice must belong to.
Freud did, too, for as they drew up beside the swinging doors, he said softly, “Well, this is most unexpected.”
They looked through the windows. Inside the kitchen, Asparagus Sam, his hands on his hips, watched a robot approach him—a robot that looked exactly like Freud, except that it was copper‑colored and its head sported a deep dent on its top left side. Its head kept jerking to the left every few seconds in a motion that made Maggie think of a horse flicking its tail to shoo away a fly. These motions were accompanied by a clicking sound from its neck joint.
“Adler,” said Freud. “What is he doing here, associating with these uncivilized brutes?”
“Well, what does the most holy fuckin’ boss-monster want now?” said Asparagus Sam as Adler stopped in front of him.
“First, our noble leader desires another box of”—Adler’s head jerked to the left and that click sounded again—“box of Twinkies.”
Asparagus Sam rolled his eyes and raised his hands as if to invoke divine guidance. “Again with the fuckin’ Twinkies. How many times down I have to say it: That stuff’s artery cement! I mean, shit, I don’t care how young and healthy you think you are, you eat that shit, you might as well be drinkin’ fuckin’ poison.”
Adler’s only response to this was to say again, “Our noble leader”—jerk; click—“desires a new box of Twinkies.”
Despite his protestations, Asparagus Sam was already yanking an unopened box of Twinkies from a cabinet that was packed with such boxes.
He thrust the box into Adler’s hands.
“What else?” he said with weary resignation.
“I have been instructed to”—jerk; click—“instructed to tell you that the feast must be”—jerk; click—“must be ready by the end of this morning’s festivities, which begin at”—jerk; click—“at dawn and are expected to last half an hour at most.”
Asparagus Sam goggled at him. “Dawn’s only an hour away! There’s no fuckin’ way this food’ll be ready by then!”
“I was told you might say something”—jerk; click—“of the sort. That is why I was further instructed to tell you that should you”—jerk; click—“should you not have the food ready at that time, then a third”—jerk; click—“a third shall enter the arena this day.”
Maggie’s stomach sank. The two already slated to enter this ominous arena had to be Adam and Dagmar. She dreaded to think what they might face there.
She was about to say something to Freud about how they needed to get moving now—after all, they didn’t even know where the arena was, much less where Adam and Dagmar were being held—but Freud spoke first.
“I believe I have a plan,” he said.
Before he could say more, Asparagus Sam roared, “Damn it! Fuckin’ shit! Fine! I’ll have it fuckin’ ready in time! It’ll be shitty, of course, but you fuckin’ people like shitty, don’t you? You got no fuckin’ taste whatsoever. Wouldn’t know a caper from a rat turd.” He made a shooing gesture at Adler. “Now piss off. Leave me the fuck alone to finish this fuckin’ garbage-ass meal.”
“Conquest of others”—jerk; click—“conquest of others”—jerk; click—“conquest of others is the goal which directs the activity of most human beings.”
Asparagus Sam snorted. “Save your little pearls of wisdom for the big fuckin’ kahuna, okay? I got no use for ‘em.”
Freud sighed. Though he had no lungs and no breath to expel, it sounded just like a real sigh. “It would appear that the Marauders’ leader has confused Adler’s sayings for great truths, a misunderstanding one can only call tragic, seeing as how Adler’s theories are based on countless fallacies, the most egregious being—”
“You said you had a plan?” said Maggie.
“Oh, yes. Come, let us withdraw to our previous position.”
They slunk back around the corner.
“My plan,” Freud said, “hinges upon two features of the model of robot of which Adler and I are examples: One, there is an emergency shut-off button on the underside of the back of the head. Take a look at mine, if you wish to see for yourself.”
She did. Where the back of the head curved inward toward the spot where it met the neck, there was a round button the size of a fingertip that lay flush with the surrounding metal.
“I see, but—”
The kitchen doors banged open, and Adler’s heavy footsteps thumped out into the hallway. As the doors swung shut, Freud stepped around the corner and said, “Why, if it isn’t Adler.”
Adler whirled around.
“Freud? Is that”—jerk; click—“is that you?”
“Yes, indeed. Come over here. I have something interesting for you to see.”
Adler strode forward. “You would do well”—jerk; click—“do well to join us. The master says that with”—jerk; click—“with my invaluable insights, the Marauders are well on the way to becoming”—jerk; click—“the superior force in this land.”
He reached the corner, looked around it, and saw Maggie.
“Hello,” Maggie said, extending a hand but not stepping forward. “It is a great pleasure to meet you. Freud here has told me so much about you.”
Adler stepped forward, his free hand rising in response. “Really? I—”
He never got a chance to finish, for Freud, who had been waiting until Adler was out of sight of the kitchen hallway, reached up and pushed Adler’s shutoff button. Adler’s eyes went dark and his arms fell limp at his sides. The box of Twinkies smacked to the floor, the plastic wrappers inside it emitting one loud rustle.
Maggie and Freud waited in tense silence to see if Asparagus Sam would come storming out into the hallway to see what all the noise was about. Thankfully the swinging doors remained closed.
“Now what?” said Maggie. “We have eliminated Adler from the list of Marauders we must contend with, but I fail to see how that helps us. He hardly seemed dangerous.”
“You are missing the point,” said Freud. “But that is because I have not yet told you the second pertinent feature of this model of robot.”
“And what is that?”
“The casing of such a robot is removable.”
Maggie frowned and started to shake her head. “I do not see how that can…”
But then she did see, and she grinned like the devil himself.