4
Jerking his head to the left every five to ten seconds even though he saw no one around (it never hurt to be careful), Freud passed the kitchen and turned right at the first hallway he came to. Immediately he saw signs of Marauder activity—crude slogans and doodles done in marker and spray paint on the walls; smashed-in doors; recent stains and scuff-marks on the floor tiles. He passed a door with “Armory” stenciled over a spot where an earlier sign had been scraped off (Freud determined from a quick analysis of residual traces that it had read “Assistant Director—R&D”) and another marked “Loot” (this over an earlier sign that had read “Conference Room”).
After about six hundred feet, the corridor ended at a T‑junction. He looked down one arm of the T, then the other. Both showed signs of habitation. Indeed, neatly painted upon a nearby door was: “This Is The Cardiac Kid’s Room—KEEP OUT OR I’LL SIC THE DAWG POUND ON YA!” Below it someone had recently scribbled in marker, “The Kid’s dawg got pounded first!”
Which way, then?
The kitchen had been to the right. Any logical person would keep the kitchen close to the common areas (a category that included arenas). Therefore those common areas would also be on the right.
But were the Marauders logical people? Definitely not. They were, simply put, barbarians who rejected impositions upon their libidos and gleefully allowed full expression to their basest instincts.
So no, logic had little place here.
Instead he stood very still and listened, trying to detect the faintest sounds with his phonic receptors.
And there it was: a distant susurrus as of a large crowd calling out off to the right (yes, indeed, the right after all, which perhaps indicated that even barbarians such as these still followed the dictates of logic, albeit unconsciously).
He headed toward the sound, bedroom doors passing by on either side, all of them sporting warnings against trespassers, as he knew they would: Even those who proclaim to detest civilization and all its burdens demand a right to privacy and personal property, never realizing the hypocrisy of their attitude, for rights are an artifact of civilization, of law.
After passing numerous bedrooms, a dining hall, and a game room, Freud came to a four-way intersection where arrowed signs pointed the way to various areas. “Living Quarters” pointed west, the direction from which he had come. “Arena” pointed east, the direction he had been heading. “The Big Boss” pointed north. “Harem” pointed south.
No doubt the harem was where the abducted women were kept. But while those women certainly needed to be freed, the information he and Ms. Frankenstein overheard earlier suggested that Mr. Frankenstein and Ms. Dagmar were to be put to death, or to a challenge that amounted to death, presumably in the arena, where, judging by the noise, such an event was already underway.
His course was clear: He had to rescue those in the most imminent danger.
As he took a step in the direction of the arena, a door down the northern corridor flew open and a black-haired young woman stepped into the hallway. She was dressed in a truly astounding outfit: a diamond-studded black leather bikini top, tight black leather pants with a silver-buckled purple belt, stiletto-heeled black leather boots, enough jewelry to break an elephant’s spine, and draped over it all a royal-purple robe with ermine edging. Clipped to her belt was an odd yellow gun in a holster.
There was no way for Freud to duck out of sight before the young lady saw him, so he just continued strolling toward the arena as if he had every right in the world to do so.
But apparently he didn’t, for when the woman saw him, her jaw dropped in outrage, and she cried, “There you are! Where the fuck have you been, you fucktard!”
Freud stopped and waited for her to catch up, making sure to jerk his head to the left every few seconds.
“Gimme those!” she snapped, snatching the box of Twinkies from his hand. “When I give you an order, you follow that fucking order, do you fucking understand me?” By the time she had finished this little outpouring, the front of Freud’s (actually Adler’s, may his operating system rest in peace) casing was flecked with tiny beads of saliva.
“You have my most sincere apologies,” said Freud, jerking his head to the left. “The cook is quite…talkative.”
Her lip curled back in a sneer, but now her anger seemed divided between the robot and the chef. “He’s a fucking whiner. The only reason he’s still alive is ‘cause he makes a chocolate-cherry cheesecake like nobody else.” Without a pause her eyes narrowed and she said, “Why aren’t you clicking when you twitch anymore?”
The abrupt change of subject would have rattled a normal person, which perhaps had been this obviously shrewd and suspicious young lady’s intention. But Freud was a robot and so answered swiftly and casually: “It stopped happening about half an hour ago.”
It wasn’t a lie. Adler’s clicking had indeed stopped half an hour ago. Permanently.
“Hm,” said the woman. “That’s good. That fucking clicky shit was really fucking annoying, you know. There were times I wanted to just blow your clicky little head right off.”
“Well, it is indeed a delightful thing that it has stopped, then.”
“Yeah,” she started striding toward the arena, tearing open the box of Twinkies as she went. “Come on. We’re running late. By the way, where the hell’d the Annihilator get to?”
“I am not exactly sure.”
“Hm.”
Freud hurried after her, his processors racing. The weight of the evidence suggested that this profane young lady was the Marauder’s leader. Freud found that very surprising for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that most id‑possessed men would refuse to be governed by someone smaller and weaker than themselves. The logical conclusion, then, was that this young lady, though smaller than the men, was not weaker. She clearly possessed some sort of strength, whether physical, intellectual, or otherwise, that her followers either could not or would not challenge.
Curious, he gave her a quick bio-scan. Physiologically she was human, though she was phenomenally healthy. He had never seen a human, even one as young as she, so problem-free. There was clearly more to her than met the eye. If only he knew what it was.