Tran looked out through the front window and saw an auto-cab pull up. A male passenger got out and took a moment to scan his surroundings. He was wearing a disguise, but Tran saw through it right away—Joman Jones! Come to case the bank prior to his meeting with Jamar-Jalmar. That was a surprise.

  Tran wanted to run, but that would cede the game to Jones, so she did her best to suppress the fear and focus on the situation at hand. Suddenly she had it—or what might be it. Six steps carried her over to the spot where Jamar-Jalmar was waiting. As she touched the alien’s arm, Tran was conscious of the fact that Jones was in the process of passing through the rotating door.

  “Listen carefully . . . Ignore what happens next, leave via the side door, and go to a place called Mitzel’s Bistro. I’ll meet you there. Understand?”

  The alien was still forming his response when Tran turned and headed for the main entrance. Jones saw her and frowned. He was wearing a black wig, but there was no disgusing his chiseled features and perfect teeth. “Hey, baby . . . What are you doing here?”

  Tran shifted all her weight to her left foot, drew the right one back, and kicked Jones in the balls. He swore, grabbed his crotch, and fell to his knees. The next few seconds were a desperate blur as Tran pushed her way through the door and blundered into a woman on the street. Then she ran—and ran some more.

  After a block or so, she looked back over her shoulder. There were no signs of pursuit. She turned a corner and slowed to a walk. The next few minutes were spent entering and exiting stores, always on the lookout for trouble. Time was of the essence because Jones was pretty, but he was tough, too, and would be back on his feet in no time. Tran flagged an auto-cab and jumped inside. “Mitzel’s Bistro, and step on it.”

  The machine heard, paused to let a truck pass, and pulled into traffic with the same caution it always employed. Cargo carriers had to get out of its way, but the streets were congested and progress was slow.

  Finally the vehicle pulled up in front of Mitzel’s. Tran ran one of three stolen credit cards through the machine’s scanner, swore when the piece of plastic was seized, and barely made it outside before the onboard computer locked the doors.

  It would have been nice to put some distance between herself and her most recent crime, but time was ticking away. Tran approached the restaurant and stepped inside. The maître d’ recognized her immediately. “How nice to see you again. A table for one?”

  Tran forced a smile. “Thank you, but I’m meeting someone, a Sentha named Jamar-Jalmar.”

  “Of course,” he said smoothly. “Follow me.”

  Tran followed the maître d’ toward the rear of the restaurant. Jamar-Jalmar was easy to spot. He was standing, for one thing, his well-rounded torso sticking under the tabletop, while a row of six-legged insects advanced toward his waiting beak. Tran winced as the alien speared one of the creatures. Then he rapped it against the tabletop and ate the resulting mess.

  The Sentha spied Tran at that point and wiped his beak on the already stained tablecloth.

  “Ms. Arlo! I was hungry so I ordered some appetizers. Would you care for one? They’re riper than I prefer but tasty nonetheless.”

  Tran wondered why the little creatures were so eager to be eaten—and decided she didn’t want to know. A waiter brought a stool and Tran took advantage of it. “No, thank you. I’m not hungry at the moment, but you go ahead.”

  The alien speared another of his seemingly willing victims and whacked it on the table. “So,” Tran said, trying to sound calm. “How did it go?”

  The Senthas had no cultural prohibition against speaking with their beaks full. Tran had to avert her eyes as Jamar-Jalmar sprayed food into the air along with his words. “It was exciting!

  Beings said and did all sorts of unusual things. Mr. Jones made horrible noises, sentients chased you, and my teller was quite distracted. May I ask why you chose to attack Mr. Jones?”

  “It was an act,” Tran replied. “A distraction. You got the money?”

  “Of course,” the alien replied, as small bits of carapace dribbled onto the formerly white tablecloth. “The suitcase is under the table.”

  Tran extended a foot and encountered something solid. A feeling of warmth suffused her body. “You did a wonderful job.”

  The alien belched. “Thank you.”

  “Well,” Tran said, noticing that her throat felt dry, “I don’t want to keep such a large amount of cash around any longer than necessary. With your permission, I’ll take the suitcase back to the office. Then I’ll check the serial numbers and return the contents to you. Would six o’clock be convenient?”

  “Extremely so,” Jamar-Jalmar replied. “I will await your arrival.”

  Tran gestured her thanks and slid off the stool. Her hand shook as it reached for the suitcase. The money was surprisingly heavy. “Thanks! I’ll see you soon.”

  • • •

  Jamar-Jalmar waved cheerfully, speared another hors d’oeuvre, and watched her leave. It occurred to him that humans were a strange race that was prone to excessive activity and rather highly strung. On Sentha the authorities would have bypassed the entire evidence-gathering process in favor of a quick execution. Ah, well. Aliens. Who can explain them?

  Jamar-Jalmar broke his latest morsel on the tabletop, took a bite, and sent the mouthful down to stomach number three.

  • • •

  Once the bel bot exited her hotel room, Tran activated the security system and took her clothes off. Then she padded into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. She had pert breasts, a flat stomach, and nice legs, all important assets. Thus reassured, she slipped into the shower and triggered a blast of hot water.

  Ten minutes later she emerged from the shower, lit a stim stick, and entered the sitting room. The suitcase was right where she’d left it, just begging to be opened. But she was determined to eat first in order to prolong the pleasure. So she put on one of the hotel’s robes, ordered dinner, and waited for the auto-cart to arrive. Once it did, she allowed the device to enter the room. The meal consisted of steak and lobster, one of her favorites. As she ate, Tran caressed the suitcase with her eyes. Finally, having consumed the meal, she went over to stand in front of the suitcase.

  Fear flooded her belly. What if it was all part of an elaborate counterscam, a trick by Joman Jones? What brought him to the bank anyway? Was it caution or something else, a ruse that only his bent mind would think of?

  Fingers fumbled at catches. A nail broke. Tran swore and something clicked. The lid popped open. She lifted it up and out of the way. Stacks of money appeared. They stood shoulder to shoulder like soldiers on parade. Twenty or thirty holographic likenesses of President Ignu-Baratha waved 3-D feelers in her direction, as photosensitive audiothreads were activated and tiny voices whispered their denominations. “Greetings on behalf of the president. I’m a twenty. I’m a hundred. I’m a fifty.”

  Tran listened to the chanting for a moment and told the money to shut up. It obeyed. She grabbed a stack with each hand and held them high. As she let go, rectangles of pink plastic fluttered, whirred, and circled her head. The money was everything she could ever want, and it was all hers—unless someone took it away, just as she had taken it from Jamar-Jalmar. What felt like ice water flowed through her veins. It was time to work on the next stage of the con.

  She needed a place to hide.

  Tran put the cash back in the suitcase and flopped down in front of the vid set. There were 1,267 channels to choose from. Among them were the left-handed bike riders’ channel, the sleep apnea channel, and the puppy channel. She was searching for travel programs when the matchmaker channel caught her eye. Bingo! What she needed was a chump—a mark like Jamar-Jalmar. Only one that chewed with his mouth closed.

  Dozens of images appeared and were rejected. Eventually one of the entries caught her eye. She said, “Play.” The video showed a vast wheat field waving in a gentle breeze. It looked soft and peaceful against an azure sky. That shot dissolved to waves lapping on a pristine beach. Tran heard a man’s voice, and as she thumbed the volume up she caught him in midsentence. “. . . a rather attractive planet.”

  As the water vanished, a handsome man of African descent appeared. He was standing in front of a white house. It was large and appeared to be well maintained. “And this is where I . . . we would live,” the man said. “It’s a big house with every possible convenience. I’m gone a lot during the day, and I have to travel sometimes, but I would spend as much time with you as I could.”

  The man shrugged and looked slightly embarrassed. “So, if you’d be interested in marrying a man like myself and living on an agricultural planet, please contact me via intersystem e-mail.

  My name is Rogan. Dan Rogan. And my address is: DR@Calag4782/X-C-Sec4/7854. I look forward to hearing from you.”

  Tran hopped to the beginning of the segment and watched it again. “Study the mark”—that’s what Jones had taught her, and she would. But her mind was made up. No one, but no one, would expect Jennifer Tran to take refuge on an ag planet. Rogan’s voice turned into a comforting drone as she fell asleep.

  Chapter Three

  Company Private

  —Do not disclose without prior permission—

  “So, after review by the Design, Engineering, Quality Control, and Product Management teams, we conclude that while one out of six hundred and forty-seven Model AT0892 utility droids will suffer command and control anomalies during the first two years of operation, 94.2% of these malfunctions will occur after the standard warranty has elapsed, creating an additional revenue stream for the company’s Repair and Retrofit Market Unit.”

  (Excerpted from Unidroid Inc. internal document TS-M2039-457.)

  Calag Planet 4782/X

  Rogan folowed the tracks along the ravine and up the side of a scree-covered hil, and paused at the top. The twelve-foot-tall exoskeleton allowed him to tower over most of the surrounding vegetation and see the ground ahead. There had been no attempt to hide the tracks, so they were easy to read. Like all but the most sophisticated of his brethren, the runaway robot had a limited capacity to improvise the way a human might have. And it wasn’t programmed to run and hide.

  However, while that made the machine easy to track, catching the metallic bastard was going to be more difficult. Thanks to the HT, or “human type,” body configuration, the machine was highly mobile, and unlike its human pursuer, it never had to eat, sleep, or pause to take a pee.

  Rogan had been chasing the droid for six hours now, ever since the machine had gone bonkers in the middle of a rutabaga-packing plant and crated four of its coworkers for shipment to Mechnos 3. Traveling at an estimated speed of thirty miles an hour, the runaway machine had covered a good two hundred and ten miles since then, and so had Rogan. The exoskeleton had done most of the work, but the human was tired nonetheless. Now, based on twenty-twenty hindsight, Rogan realized that he should have taken the truck instead of the ES. But the assumption had been that he would catch up with the errant robot within a mile or two. Wrong. He touched his com link. “Wally?”

  Two hundred and fifty miles above the planet’s equator, and two thousand miles to the east, the cyborg closed a mental relay. Video blipped as one minisat moved out of position and handed the task off to one of its electromechanical brethren. The international orange exoskeleton had a distorted appearance when viewed from above. “Yeah?”

  “Got anything?”

  • • •

  Wally used the minisat’s infrared sensor to sweep the area directly to the east of Rogan’s position. Nothing . . . nothing . . . Wait a minute. What the hell was that?

  Wally brought the tracking reticule back, found the tell tale blob of heat, and tracked it toward a nearby lake. “Got it. The SOB is about a mile due east of your position. Heading for lake NH-Q18-2431. Wait a minute. Yup, there’s no doubt about it. It flipped you the bird.”

  • • •

  Rogan made an appropriate noise, checked his heads-up display (HUD), and took another eight-foot step. Servos whined as his right foot hit loose rock and slipped. Fortunately the other pod was on solid ground and he was able to recover. Each movement of his arms and legs was measured by the exoskeleton’s onboard computer and duplicated. Walking around in the ES had seemed strange at first but not anymore. Now the machine felt like an extension of himself.

  The hill and the stream that fed lake NH-Q18-2431 were part of a computer-designed water retention and distribution system. The slope ended and the ground leveled out. Rogan took advantage of the opportunity to increase his pace. Shock absorbers helped to smooth the ride, but he still felt the impact as each foot pod hit the ground. Brush whipped against the exoskeleton’s lower extremities and left scratches in the machine’s orange paint. In spite of the extra foam that Rogan had taped to critical contact points, hours of pressure had opened sores on his shoulders and hips.

  Rogan caught glimpses of the lake through the trees. It was small and seemed to turn gray as clouds drifted across the sun. The link was on. “Wally?”

  The cyborg switched his attention from the coffee harvest on an island called SH-422 to the minisat closest to Rogan’s position. The cloud deck blocked his view. “Yeah? What’s up?”

  “I’m approaching the lake. See anything?”

  “Nope. Some clouds are in the way.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yup, that’s the stuff the universe is made of.”

  “Thanks for nothing.”

  “Anytime.”

  Rogan followed the tracks through a scattering of genetically modified evergreens and out onto a rocky beach. The impressions were easy to spot and led straight into the water. There were no signs of the robot. Not even a bubble.

  Rogan waded out into the water and stopped when the bottom shelved steeply downward.

  He looked but couldn’t see through the glassy surface. “Hey, Wally . . . The crazy son of a bitch drowned itself in the lake.”

  Wally called up the specs for the HT5643/B and scanned them.

  “No such luck, old buddy. The 43/B comes equipped for submersible vat repair and cleaning assignments. You’d better get around to the other side of the lake. Your friend should emerge ten to fifteen minutes from now.”

  Rogan eyed the shore. There were sections of gravel-covered beach interrupted by steep banks, rocky outcroppings, and marshy areas. No wonder the robot had elected to cross the lake bottom. It would take Rogan the better part of an hour to walk, wade, and bushwhack his way to the other side. But there was no choice, so he set off.

  The trip was even worse than Rogan had thought it would be. He hadn’t gone far when sheer cliffs forced him out into the water, where thick mud slowed his progress. Rogan swore, servos whined, and the smell of overheated machinery filled the air as the exoskeleton battled its way forward. That made the human wonder how the robot was doing. Did the mud extend out into the middle of the lake, or did a nice layer of hard rock form an expressway to the other side? There was no way to tell.

  If the mud was a problem, the marsh was pure hell. The ground was thick with rotting vegetation and unexpected sinkholes, which he stumbled into twice. On both occasions the weight of the exoskeleton pulled him down, and it was a battle to climb up and out. Pieces of weeds hung off the ES as it lurched onto a stony beach.

  The next hour passed slowly, but after a hundred cuts and scratches, and three detours into the lake, Rogan emerged victorious. Well, sort of victorious, since the robot was long gone by the time he arrived on the other side of the lake.

  Rogan shook his head in disgust. Logic dictated that he let the machine wander until its power pack gave out. But having invested that much time and energy in the chase, he wasn’t about to give up.

  Where was the 43/B headed anyway? Did it have a destination or was it wandering aimlessly around the countryside? Had Rogan been aboard the grav truck, he could have called on any number of computers for help. But the exoskeleton wasn’t equipped for that sort of thing.

  Rogan freed an arm long enough to touch the com link. “Hey, Wally . . . Wake the hell up.”

  The cyborg’s synthesizer produced a sound similar to that of an Alhanthian swamp beast passing gas. Rogan climbed a rocky slope. Little bits of freshly chipped rock showed the path the robot had taken. “Same to you, electron breath. How ’bout earning your salary for once?

  Take a look at where I’ve been and tell me where I’m going—assuming my course makes any sense.”

  Wally retrieved the necessary data and plotted it on a three-dimensional map. “Bingo, my mud-encrusted friend. You’re straight-lined for the ocean.”

  Rogan crested the hill and picked his way down the reverse slope. It seemed as though the robot had a destination—one that was at least fifty miles away. Rogan spent the next half hour thinking of increasingly gruesome ways to punish the errant machine, the problem being that it wouldn’t care.

  Bit by bit the countryside began to change. Low-lying hills gave way to rich farmland. It was fallow at the moment but slated for production during the following year. Of course, arable land is never empty of life. Once the massive robo-tillers had come and gone, windblown seeds had landed and taken root. Grasses were especially good at that sort of colonization, and Rogan found himself walking through large patches of Blue grama 6.2, also known as Bouteloua gracilis 6.2, an improved version of a plant once found in the middle part of the North American continent on old Earth.

  Rogan expected the robot to turn and head off in another direction, but the trail ran straight toward the ocean. And it couldn’t be far away, because a Sea Avian Type 3.1 was circling above him. The SAT produced a screech reminiscent of an unoiled screen door.

  The tech heads, working in an unholy alliance with the suits, had decided that three bird species would be more than sufficient for the planet’s highly controlled ocean/land ecosystemic interface. Rogan would have favored more variety—to look at if for no other reason—but the suits weren’t going to authorize ten species if three could handle the job.