For Us Humans Read online

  Brundall brought up the security feed. The time stamp in the corner flickered by as she flashed through the recording. “There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong here. I’ve already looked it over, as did the DEXA agent. None of the people present in the exhibit hall or in the other nearby areas looks suspicious.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.” Hmm. She did have a point—not that I was willing to admit it. There were a ton of people of all ages touring by the screens and peering into the microscopes, especially at the Snooze You-Qwa-whatever terminal. Men and women of all ages, heights, and weights, mostly white, more Hispanic than any other minorities, a gaggle of children here and there.

  Something skittered at the corner of my vision. “Freeze the frame!”

  “What? Oh.” Brundall pounced on the control. Way too slowly.

  “Back it up.”

  “How far?”

  “Not sure. Maybe two minutes. But do it slowly—half real time.”

  She finessed the controls enough to get me what I wanted. Come on, come on. It wasn’t a hallucination—and it wasn’t a shadow either.

  “What do you see?” Nil leaned in so close that he loomed over Brundall like a tree about to tip over in the woods. “I saw nothing.”

  “There was movement at the corner—hold it!”

  There it was. Brundall froze the control much more quickly this round. She’d do okay on a game show.

  Right there. I stared at the screen, mouth about to drop wide open. “Would you look at that bugger?”

  The screen showed the crowd frozen. A tiny silver and gray shape with spindly legs sat motionless between a man’s shoes in mid-step.

  “Some kind of automaton,” Nil said.

  Brundall zoomed in on the image close enough for us to see the optic ports, the smooth shell of the body, the eight legs. It couldn’t be any larger than my wallet.

  “Very primitive—it seems to lack advanced AI and biogenic reflexes.”

  “What’re you, the latest issue of Popular Mechanics?” Stuck up qwaddo. It was definitely a robot, though.

  “I was simply inferring it was of human origin. Not something manufactured by the Consociation or its adversaries.”

  I really, really tried to put out of my mind what kind of “adversaries” a multi-species confederation of worlds that used interstellar transport gates could worry about. That’s one of those things that could be a real downer on your day. “Let’s see where this thing goes.”

  We tracked it through several more minutes of footage and through the field of vision of a few cameras. It scrambled underfoot, dodging people’s shoes and hiding behind potted plants. Whoever built this sucker knew their robots. It was pretty maneuverable and didn’t stagger about blindly like some test models I’d seen. And it was hard to follow. We lost it twice in the shuffle. No wonder Rutherford missed it.

  Finally it reached its destination. The spider-bot-thingie crawled up the wall to the same RFID panel we’d been at not ten minutes ago.

  And it had its own version of my Swiss Army knife. “Nobody paid that thing any attention,” I muttered. “Why would they? Everyone’s staring at the walls.”

  “At the exhibits,” Brundall said. “These are some of the finest examples of Western art.”

  “Not arguing with you. I’m just saying—ah, see? He’s done already.” The spider-bot-thing replaced the panel. It was off and running to . . . oh, rats, the ventilation shaft.

  “Where did it go?” Brundall asked.

  “The robot is likely on its way to its second objective. Correct?” Nil looked at me, those eyes shining amber.

  He had a point. “Show me the external feeds.”

  Brundall pushed another key. Now we were looking at outside shots of the building, dimly lit by blue light from lamps over the doors.

  “Same day?”

  “Yes.” She seemed tense. Should be.

  “Hmm. Here we go. See it?”

  The critter crawled into view, picking its way through the grass and dirt like it was born there. It shimmied up the wall and started unscrewing the RFID plate.

  Nil grunted softly.

  Me? Big grin. I love it when I’m right.

  Brundall shook her head. “This doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t. There is still no footage of the theft.” She fast-forwarded the video to night. The feed jerked to a halt at 11:00 p.m. The security guys in their rent-a-cop uniforms finished their sweep of the room. Lights out.

  “Nothing.” Brundall hit the fast-forward again. “Nothing until the first guard arrived back the next morning.”

  That was a problem. But Agent Rutherford apparently suspected as much. “That’s ’cause he fiddled with the video feeds. Get us back to tracking that bug, and we’ll find it.”

  “What does the outside door show?” Nil asked.

  “Say again?”

  “The outside door. If the individual in question tampered with the lock for the maintenance access, and I assure you he exited that way, the video would show him leaving the building, would it not?”

  Oh. Right. “That was what I was going to check next.”

  Nil folded both sets of arms but said nothing in response. Wonder if that gesture was universal for “I don’t believe a word of what you just said.”

  The video feed from the outside door was as much a dead end as the one inside the exhibit. It showed nothing. Nothing but the headlights from a few cars driving Willett Drive. So few that . . .

  Wait a second.

  “Do you see that? That car.” I tapped the screen.

  “Please don’t touch that. We clean them every two weeks,” Brundall said.

  “My bad. But that pair of headlights—they look identical to the one that just went by. They even flash the same shape across the ground.”

  They did it again, as we watched. And again.

  “Yep. That bug’s got your video feed recycling itself.” I pushed up out of the chair. “And I bet I know where he’s at.”

  <<<>>>

  Sure enough, we found the little electronic critter.

  It was latched to the back side of the security camera dome on the ceiling of the exhibit hall. Brundall was kind enough to get me a stepladder. I shined my Maglite, a great little pocket model with LED bulbs, onto the bug. “That stinker.”

  “It does have a peculiar odor. All your human-made plastics do.” Nil wrinkled his considerable nose.

  “Not that. I meant—never mind.” Slang lesson postponed on account of impatience. Hmm. There was a flashing blue light on the back side of this thing’s shell, backside, whatever. Slender wires hooked it right through the camera’s dome cover. “Well, it looks like it’s definitely transmitting something. And it must have cut a hole into the camera cover. Smart little robot.”

  “Be cautious. It may have a destruct mechanism.”

  “Thought about that, thanks. But we need this thing.” Time for the Swiss Army knife. Maybe I’d be able to pry that sucker off and make MacGyver proud. Hang on. “Prime Nil. Can you, uh, smell anything explosive?”

  He stretched out his neck quite a bit farther than I’d feel comfortable doing as a plain old human. “No. If there is an explosive, I am not familiar with its scent.”

  “Okay. Good.” Just out of curiosity . . . “How many explosive scents do you recognize?”

  “Three hundred eleven.”

  “Wow. All right then.” I jammed the knife in under the edge of the robot. Carefullllyyyy.

  Snap. Something sounded like it broke. And something hit me in the face. Probably plastic. Yeah, there was definitely a chunk missing from the edge. I pulled hard.

  The robot came off the ceiling. Awesome. But all its lights dimmed. Not so awesome.

  I yanked on the wire connected to the camera. It pulled right out of the feed socket. Yeah, you could even see where it had unplugged the correct wire and inserted its own. “Here’s hoping we can get this thing hooked up to a computer and search its innards.”

  “Ye
s. It will have recorded the actual crime,” Nil said.

  “Now you’re talking.” This qwaddo wasn’t half bad. But—I sniffed. What was that smell?

  “Ah, Mister Fortel?” Brundall frowned. “The robot is smoking.”

  “What—ow!” I dropped it. The heat singed my fingers even through the glove.

  The thing hit the floor. Within a few second it was a lump of molten plastic, circuits and, well, whatever else they put in robots these days.

  Shoot.

  “I thought you knew three hundred eleven explosive smells?” I asked Nil, more than a little ticked off.

  “I do.” Nil bent over the robot. “But this unit appears to have sent some kind of surge to its battery to overheat.”

  “Wish your sniffer could have given me a warning.”

  “I did not think your advanced intellect required my assistance.”

  My teeth ground together. This is why Dr. McCoy never got along with Mr. Spock. “We should still check that—thing out, see if we can’t get something off its innards.”

  “Perhaps.” He reached for the robot.

  “Hey! No contaminating evidence.”

  Nil sneered. “Contaminated? It has already been handled by a human.”

  Note: Do not punch alien. “Fingerprints? DNA?”

  “The scent is sufficient evidence.”

  “Whatever. You leave it there until I can get an evidence container from the car.”

  Nil stared at me with those unsettling eyes. He was barely breathing. “If we are finished here, I will continue my search outside.”

  “Sure. Knock yourself out.”

  He gave me a strange look at that but left anyway.

  “Mister Fortel?” Brundall didn’t seem the least bit impressed by our teamwork. Or lack thereof. “Have you worked with this—alien before?”

  “Never. Can’t you tell by how much I’m enjoying it?”

  We found Nil halfway down to the parking lot from the exit, head toward the ground as he walked. I tell you, those qwaddos aren’t built for lounging around. He walked fast and his body was a whole lot more balanced than I thought possible for a guy with six limbs.

  “Where is he going?” Brundall asked.

  Good question. That dumb qwaddo walked right across Willett. Good thing traffic was light. The arena-auditorium loomed over the surrounding buildings.

  “He’s, uh, on a lead,” I said. “Why don’t you wait here?”

  I waited for a few trucks to drive by before crossing. The wind had died down some, and it was still good and warm out. Nil stopped in the Double A’s parking lot at a space by one of the light poles. Maybe I’d tease him about losing a contact lens—Nah. He might not even know what that meant. “Anything good?”

  “The thief was here. He was still frightened.” Nil bent down. He stroked the parking spot with his lower right hand and lifted his fingers to his nose. “The vehicle ran on diesel, not fusor.”

  “Well, that’ll help some. There’re few left that do.” I shielded my eyes from the sun as I scanned the area. If we were lucky there’d be . . .

  Bingo. “Security camera over that entrance to the Double A.”

  “Perhaps our Agent Rutherford can assist us from here.”

  “Perhaps you should zip it.” Okay, so I had thought of that.

  Here’s hoping Rutherford answered his texts as fast as he sent them. [Need you to pull security cam, east entrance, Double A, UW. Suspect parked here.]

  Wait for it.

  The phone buzzed. [K]

  “He is very terse,” Nil said.

  “Ya think?” I shoved the phone into my pocket. “Okay. So the guy was here. He took off in his truck. Where was he headed? Train station maybe?”

  “Or he may have stuck to your interstate. It runs a considerable distance alongside the magnetic-levitation train.”

  “No kidding. All the way up to Montana or down through Colorado.” Mental math time: if he left sometime around three or four o’clock, that put him twelve hours ahead of us. Long enough to drive across two states if he really wanted.

  That was depressing. Better to think about something else. I jerked my thumb toward the museum. “What about her?”

  Nil folded his lower arms but used one of the upper ones to stroke his chin. Did he pick that up from humans? “Let me speak with her.”

  Okaaay. “Whatever you say, chief.”

  In retrospect it was a bad idea. I figured that much out when Nil lit into her when we got back to the museum. You’d think Brundall had killed a man—or maybe four at once—judging by the way Nil stood in front of her like he was the marshal of Dodge City. “I must urge you, Mrs. Brundall, to keep this the utmost secret. Do not tell anyone.”

  “My staff must be informed.”

  “No. You must not tell any of them, or you will face criminal penalties under the Extraterrestrial Relations and Security Act.”

  Yikes. No wonder he was dead serious. Brundall went pale. How much you want to bet she’d read the part of the treaty that talks about life imprisonment? They ship those offenders off to Guantanamo Bay, you know, the old U.S. Navy base down in Cuba.

  “Let’s not be too hasty.” I tried a smile. Brundall returned it, albeit nervously. Nil just gave me the same kind of look my fourth-grade teacher used to snap my way when I spoke up in class without raising my hand. Whatever. “What Prime Nil is trying to say in his forthright style,” I continued, giving him my own practiced glare, “is that this is not an ordinary theft of art. It’s a matter of national importance.”

  “Interstellar importance,” Nil said.

  Shut up. “Fine then. Interstellar.”

  “I’m well aware of that.” Brundall wrung her hands. “What do you suggest I do in the meanwhile? The exhibit reopens tomorrow.”

  “In the meanwhile, we download the phony image of the sculpture onto one of your flash drives and plug it back into that computer. You stick a lab slide back under that microscope with something on it that resembles the bio-whatever solution that held the sculpture.”

  “All right. What do you suggest?”

  “What do I . . . ? How should I know?” These people and their paranoia over every fussy detail. “Use Jell-O for all I care. There’s always room for it.”

  I pointed at Nil and no, I didn’t poke him. Learned that lesson quick. “You and me, meanwhile, are going to figure out what our thief did with that slide.”

  “If any damage befalls it,” Nil said in a soft voice, “the ramifications will be severe.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Broken record! “So as soon as Rutherford gets—” My phone buzzed. Good timing. “See? He’s got it. No problem.”

  [You were supposed to meet me for lunch. Jerk. Don’t call me.]

  Er, Laci. Awkward. My finger hovered over the button to respond, but then, no. She wasn’t a repeat.

  “False alarm?” Nil asked.

  “Shut up.” It felt much better to say it aloud.

  Phone buzzed again. I grimaced. Don’t be Laci. Okay, good, it was Rutherford this time.

  [Cam piked up whit Doge pikup. Runng plates. No ID on driver.]

  Perfect. A white pickup. In Wyoming. We might as well be trying to find a specific Red Sox fan in South Boston. “We got a vehicle.”

  “Direction of travel?”

  “Will you hold your horses?” Let him chew on that idiom.

  [Heded east on I80. Satellit tracked to Cheyenne and north I25 befor lose.]

  He could text Cheyenne right but not befor? I sighed. “Here’s hoping he can get us the ID on this guy. Mount up, Prime Nil.”

  <<<>>>

  Brundall escorted us to the car. I had the robot bits stashed away in plastic evidence containers, courtesy of our pals at DEXA. She shook my free hand with both of hers. “Are you a God-fearing man, Mister Fortel?”

  Umm . . . “Sure.”

  “I’ll pray for your success, whether you are or not.”

  I stared after her as she walked back throug
h the museum doors. Probably what I should’ve been doing all along. Unfortunately, my last prayer was more along the lines of rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub.

  “Would you not welcome His intervention if it were possible?” There seemed to be a lot of respect behind Nil’s voice. Hard to tell coming out of an alien throat.

  No way was I telling him that. “Change the subject. You really think she’s gonna keep her mouth shut?”

  “I could smell her indecision. It may be necessary to detain her. I will contact my supervisors and DEXA.”

  “Hold up. You can’t just lock her up somewhere. She didn’t do anything.”

  “Her knowledge is a liability to this investigation and a threat to Consociation harmony. It is for the greater good of both our homeworlds.” A pinpoint on his left earlobe—which was about four times as big as mine—glowed orange. He ignored me for half a minute.

  “Hey. Earth to Prime Nil! I’m still standing here.”

  The light on his ear flickered and disappeared. “I was in the middle of a conversation.”

  “With what, your earwax?”

  “A cerebral transmitter is linked to the activation sensor in my earlobe. The communication was entirely mental.”

  Built-in Bluetooth? Showoff. “Look, I don’t want this lady in some sweatbox at Gitmo. There’s a better way.” I reached into my pocket.

  Nil’s lip curled back in what I took as a sneer of contempt. “You humans and your propensity for personal violence.”

  “Hey, it ain’t a gun, ET. So don’t phone home on her.” I flapped my wallet before him. “I’m talking cash.”

  “Bribery?”

  “Duh. You think three grand would be enough? Call it ‘government service retainer.’ ” I grinned.

  Nil did not grin. I was starting to wonder if qwaddos ever grinned. Or smirked. Or did anything other than mope. Well, they sneered. “Unnecessary, in both our instances. My superiors say DEXA will monitor her silence.”

  “Yippee.” I jingled the car keys. “Road trip.”

  We didn’t do much talking as I drove us from Laramie back to Cheyenne. Guess the qwaddo didn’t feel chatty. Whatever. The scenery kept me plenty busy for that hour on the road. The train ride out had reduced it to a blur. I’d forgotten how wide open and beautiful it was out here. How long had it been since I was last here? Fifteen years? More.