“Pakistan? They
want to finalize our arrangement in Pakistan?” the Doctor
lifted his ape-face to regard his robotic servant. “I was
sure they’d want me in Yemen. Or Nigeria…”
“Is Pakistan a
problem?” Mandroid inquired invitingly. It was part of his
programming to play up to his master’s habits.
“Not really,” the
old Nazi replied. “I was sure I was dealing with Arab fanatics—Saudi
or one of the emirates. Sunnis at least—Wahabbists. Pakistan
means they’re most likely Shiites—Iranians or dissident Iraqis.
Maybe even that Taliban rabble.”
Mandroid processed
his master’s comments for a moment, his face a perfect, unmoving
simulacra of the Aryan ideal. “Why not one of the so-called
border republics? Kazakhstan or…I can’t recall the others.”
The Doctor nodded
his orangutan head, light from the computer monitor in front
of him flashed off the shiny steel dome where he’d inserted
his brain into the ape’s skull years ago. “Those shitty little ‘stans
on the old Soviet border? You could be right.” He scratched
a hairy jowl. “I hope you’re right. Any one of them would
be a perfect base to operate out of—hard to be found in a
place no one remembers the name of, eh?
“Besides, I have
had bad experiences in Iran.”
“The Shah fired
you,” Mandroid said, perhaps a touch indelicately.
“Ha! Look what
it got him.” Mandroid adroitly stepped back to avoid a long,
flailing arm. The Doctor’s voice issued from a speaker in
the orangutan’s throat—inevitable given the ape’s lack of
native speaking equipment. The Doctor found it handy to make
obscene faces while working on a good rant. “Two years later
he was out on his ass as well!”
“Shall I prepare
the shipping containers?” A lot of Mandroid’s processing
was dedicated to anticipating his master’s requirements—to
no point. The ancient Nazi was far too erratic. “For transportation
to Pakistan?”
“No, not this
time.” Mandroid tensed imperceptibly at the smug tone in
his master’s voice. “I’m not going to spend weeks cooped
up in that cargo container this time. You can pack up and
send the equipment, as usual. I’m going to teleport ahead.”
“The teleporter?” The
robotic servant reflexively reviewed all of his master’s
many projects—or at least those he was aware of. There was
only one teleporter. “The one that turns every living thing
you send through it inside out?”
“I fixed it, last
week.” There was an undeniable air of smugness in the old
man’s voice. “Perfected it, in fact! All it required was
a separate piece of hardware to go along with the living
body, one that keeps track of all that annoying movement-in-transit.
I sent a rat from here to Hong Kong last Friday, while you
were out. It was infected with that new flu strain I developed.”
“How do you know
it survived?”
The doctor clicked
an icon, bringing up the webpage of one of the better wire-services. “Six
cases of a mystery flu reported this morning in Hong Kong.
It works, it works. I’ll need some equipment to construct
a larger unit—I’ll make a list. You can start getting the
stuff this evening.”
Mandroid shook
his head. “I can’t. I promised to meet Shirley when she gets
off work.”
“Shirley?” The
doctor’s orangutan feet slapped the floor as he lurched from
his chair. “Who the hell is Shirley?”
“My girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend?” The
doctor shook his head so that his jowls flapped. “You’re
a fucking machine!”
“That’s what Shirley
says,” Mandroid replied.
“You’re not supposed
to have a girlfriend!” the old scientist snarled. “You’re
supposed to be my servant. That’s why I made you—to serve
me!”
“I’m programmed
to maintain our cover,” Mandroid explained.
“But not to be
out shtupping bimbos all over Miami.”
“Then why did
you give me a dick?” Mandroid asked.
“You could hardly
pass as a human without one,” his master explained. “The
most casual pat-down could reveal your nature without it.”
“But why did you
give me a working dick if I’m not supposed to use
it?” Mandroid asked. “That had to be more work, a lot more
work, than was strictly required.”
Orangutan shoulders
shrugged. “I’m a perfectionist. Besides, you were a prototype
for a line of android assassins. It turned out you are too
easy to detect, too much metal. Just as well, scanning technology
would have caught up…
“Where’d you meet
this ‘Shirley’?” the Doctor snapped.
“In a strip-club,” his
servant admitted. “You’d sent me out for parts in the middle
of the night and I was waiting for the supply house to open.”
“A stripper, eh?” the
ape snorted. It was odd, all of the Doctor’s words came though
the speaker, but his snarls, snorts and occasional raspberries
were somehow directed through his ape-mouth. “Okay, like
you said, it adds to our cover. Which won’t be in use much
longer, so you might as well have your fun.”
“I’ll take the
list with me,” Mandroid said, “and pick it up on my way home,
in the morning.”
“Very well,” Dr.
Ritterkopf said with a sigh. “Just remember, Linux OS—no
Windows. I don’t do Windows.”
“Of course, doctor.”
“I worry about
my boss,” Mandroid admitted. “His body is starting to rot.
I can tell by the smell, but he doesn’t seem to notice. I
wonder if it’s affecting his brain? He seems as brilliant,
and as erratic, as ever, but he’s starting to lose hair.
We cannibalized most of the brain transference units a long
time ago, but he doesn’t seem worried. Maybe his olfactory
hook-up is dysfunctional…”
Shirley ran a
warm hand over his chest in a soothing caress. They were
both naked and covered in sweat. Well, she was covered in
sweat. He sweated distilled water. “I know you worry about
him.”
“He’s a hundred
and twenty years old, this year,” Mandroid explained. “At
least, his brain is. Even his ape-body is old. He’s been
in it thirty years. And I can’t make him take care of himself.”
“But you have
to try,” Shirley said. She spooned up against the android.
His tanned, blond perfection set off her long frame, olive
skin and curly black hair. “I understand.”
“On the plus side,” he
continued, “I’ll be out of the lair a lot, getting our things
packed up and shipped out. I’m not sure of the exact route,
or routes they’re going out on, but I’ll have lots of time
available while I figure that out. If you’d like more time
with me, that is…”
Shirley—Major
Cheryl Avan Dyan of the Shin Bet—smiled softly at her love
machine. “I’d like very much to spend any time with you that
I can.”
Eighty years in
the mad scientist game had piled an enormous amount of the
most varied junk into possession of Franz Karl Ritterkopf,
PhD. Despite innumerable close calls where he’d escaped his
enemies with only the clothes on his back, it never took
him long to replace his accumulation of half-assembled gadgets
and old parts. To anyone else it looked like a warehouse,
or warehouses, of unsorted, uncataloged junk. Only an insane
genius or a ten-year-old boy could possibly find a use for
half of it.
Every project
required either unique components or state-of-the-art conventional
equipment. Ritterkopf rarely took time to cobble together
anything so conventional as a personal computer—though he
did put together his own software. What he spent time on,
while his servant obtained the new equipment, was scavenging
components for the rest of the machine out of his junk pile.
His task was greatly aided by his orangutan body’s great
strength and agility, as well as his own phenomenal memory.
“Capacitors. Really
big capacitors…ah!” He scampered over the carapace of a thirty-foot
robot. “I used some on Destructo’s electric beam. They should
still be here—yes.” The tool belt around his waist was over-burdened
with screwdrivers, socket drivers, wire snips. “Girlfriend!
Heh.
“Why did you give
me a working dick, Doctor?” the Nazi shook his head so his
jowls flapped, again. He’d been doing that a lot, lately.
Had to be left over from the original owner, something in
the motor-processing sections he’d had to leave and splice
into his brain. “We should look for another orangutan, Doctor.
Like I don’t know this body is dead. Like I’ve forgotten
about the brain-transfer device. Idiot.”
With a clatter,
the robot’s innards were revealed. Clever-clumsy ape hands
manipulated tools, extracted parts. “Tall, handsome, blond
and with a good-sized, fully functional dick. Does he think
I want to run around in this ape suit? Every time I go out,
I end up in the tabloids. ‘Florida Skunk Ape,’ my ass! As
soon as I complete this contract, I’ll have funds enough,
and assistants enough, to complete my neuro-cyber interface
unit and transfer my brain where I always intended.”
He lowered the
massive capacitors, each the size of a small filing cabinet,
to the center isle and its waiting flat-cart. “Still, it’s
nice to know everything works…”
Mandroid couldn’t
begin to extract the useful junk from the junk-junk and load
it into trailers until his master had completed assembling
his latest device. All he could really do was estimate the
amount to be shipped—by weight and cubage—and contract for
the shipping containers to be delivered. Then he’d begin
the work of contracting multiple cargo-container ships to
transport them to various trans-shipment points where they’d
be put on other ships, or sometimes trains, in a wild scramble
that would, hopefully, see them all brought together at the
currently unknown destination somewhere in central Asia.
The internet made
the whole process faster and easier, or at least faster and
easier than it had been back when everything was done by
phone and wire transfers. It helped that he’d been programmed
with fluency in over forty languages. It also helped that
money wasn’t a problem, but then money was seldom a problem
for a man who could build a device to efficiently extract
gold from seawater in less than a week. Or process mind-altering
drugs from household garbage, or even set up the odd dummy
company to patent a few of his less deadly and anti-social
innovations.
His master would
be a very rich man indeed if he didn’t have such expensive
hobbies. Evading a fifty-year international manhunt, plotting
world domination and pre-empting or foiling the world domination
plots of his few rivals occupied much of his time and required
a lot of resources. Every fiber of the android servant’s
being was dedicated to preserving the health and comfort,
and enabling the plans of his creator. Yet he sometimes wondered
if the Doctor even remembered he was more than an animatronic
houseboy.
The truth was
he’d devised a way to fulfill every aspect of his essential
programming while providing a more satisfactory existence
for both himself and his master. Very soon everything should—
“Mandroid!”
The servant hastened
towards the sound of his master’s voice. As usual.
The device looked
like a coffin covered in Christmas lights. It rested on the
expanded platform of the resurrected teleporter, which itself
resembled a stereo store after an earthquake, with Tesla
coils and Jacob’s ladders thrown in. For some reason many
of the Doctor’s larger devices required Tesla coils and Jacob’s
ladders, even though they screwed up the computers and monitors
with great frequency.
“Have you rechecked
Google-earth?”
“Yes, Doctor,” Mandroid
assured his creator. “The location is as before, a flat,
open space on the northern border of Pakistan, less than
four hundred yards from the highway. There is a cell phone
in the tracker case—two of them, in fact—as well as your
travel gear.” The Nazi required a few precautions whenever
he traveled. Special clothes to protect his ape body from
the elements and immediate recognition, specially modified
sub-machine guns in case it was a trap, and phones to call
his contact in Pakistan, of course. “All systems showing
green, Doctor.”
Just then Mandroid’s
cell phone went off.
“Is that your
slut girlfriend?” the doctor snarled.
A quick glance
at the phone showed Mandroid an expected number. “No, its
one of the shipping agents. They are probably calling to
confirm delivery of the last containers. Nothing urgent,
I’ll take care of it later.”
“Then help me
inside this thing.”
Five minutes later
his master was in Pakistan.
Five minutes and
thirty seconds later Mandroid had Shirley on the phone. “He’s
gone. Yes, those coordinates. No last minute changes, this
time. Hurry over.” He disconnected and then started powering
down the teleporter. Once the various primitive electricals
were off, he returned to his computer. The screen was much
clearer now. He typed in a long, memorized net address and
was rewarded with a rather plain-looking website with a video
play box.
The coffin-like
chamber appeared on the screen, in the middle of a carefully
cleared rocky plain. As his master emerged, camouflaged soldiers
swarmed in from all directions. The nature of the device
demanded the doctor’s body travel separate from his gear.
He relied on the suddenness of his appearance for time, and
this time he was expected.
Dull orange arms
reached for the sky in the face of such overwhelming odds.
Good, Mandroid had been sure his master was too rational
to try anything, but his analysis was based on his knowledge
of the man-ape’s psychology, and not remotely on his history.
Before the commandos had secured his master, the chime announced
a visitor at his door.
He let Shirley
in remotely and she joined him just as the commandos finished
putting the special handcuffs on Ritterkopf’s dead ape arms.
“You’re sure they
won’t hurt him?”
“Yes, I am.” Shirley
smiled at her android lover. “My superiors fully agreed with
your arguments.”
Mandroid nodded
thoughtfully. “He’s a specialist at exotic weapons of mass
destruction. Death-rays, city-crushing robots, simplified
nuclear devices, bio-weapons and exotic viruses. He’s always
used them to threaten or intimidate people, to control them.
He’s never really let go with anything all that destructive.
A few holes in the ozone layer, the AIDS virus, the odd flu
epidemic. Nothing that could actually cause the end of the
world.
“He doesn’t want
to end the world; he wants to control people. To make them
do what he wants, make them acknowledge his superiority,
mostly. Compared to that, global destruction is a fairly
trivial problem.”
“Yes,” Shirley
said. “We took your warnings about his post-mortem revenge
arrangements very seriously. No harm will come to him, ever,
if we have anything to say about it.”
“And he’ll be
comfortable?”
“Of course. We’ve
already constructed a special holding facility to meet his
every need.”
“He’ll try to
escape,” Mandroid warned.
“We know.” Shirley
put her long, slender hands on Mandroid’s shoulders and began
to knead. “He’ll have no access to anything that would let
him escape. No tools, no robotic servants, no fully opposable
thumbs. He’ll have access to a stand-alone computer with
CAD capabilities, so he can still design things. We’ll build
them for him, use them for him. Probably starting with another
brain transfer set-up. We’ll get him a new body, soon. Keep
him healthy and productive.
“We’ll even fawn
over his genius and heap praise on his little Nazi ego.”
“He’ll like that.” Mandroid
said. “He won’t be fooled, remember that. He’s almost as
smart as he thinks he is; he won’t be fooled. But he’ll like
it anyway. And you’ll take care of him, keep him healthy?
Of course you will; he’s valuable.”
“Which just leaves
us with you,” Shirley said. “You’ve become a loose end, love.”
“I know,” Mandroid
said. “Gonna put two in the back of my head, dear?”
“I don’t think
that will work,” Shirley said. “More importantly, my superiors
don’t think it will work, either.”
“It won’t,” Mandroid
said. “I’m practically indestructible. So, what solution
to this ‘loose end’ did your superiors come up with?”
“I’m to monitor
your activities, keep track of things.” Shirley paused and
pursed her lips. “I suppose the easiest way to do that is
to ask. What are your plans?”
“Well, I haven’t
had much time to think them over,” Mandroid began. “It does
occur to me I have on file several thousand of my master’s
inventions. I’ve assembled or helped to assemble most of
them. I also have access to quite a few of his bank accounts.
Nearly a hundred million dollars, though I believe he has
much more socked away.
“I’m still compelled
to follow my basic programming: furthering my master’s goals
until he or I can engineer his release. Which I can’t do
until he’s healthier, at the least. I’ve no need to dominate
the world, whatever that would entail, but I should keep
tabs on things—make sure no one else dominates the world—and
work towards expanding recognition of my master’s genius.
“That should be
easier to do without him mucking things up,” the servant
said. “I think I’ll go into the business for myself, more
or less. Maybe even take on a name, get a henchman or two.”
“How about Steve?” Shirley
said. “I always thought you looked like a Steve. I could
be your henchman. That would make it easier to keep tabs
on you.”
“I’d like that,” Steve
said.
