Copyright Information
Copyright © 1986 by Ron Goulart.
All rights reserved.
Published by Wildside Press LLC.
www.wildsidebooks.com
Chapter 1
The three glittering robots who attacked him on the ground level of the shuttleport were only three feet high but full of nasty tricks.
Jack Summer, a middle-sized sandy-haired man of thirty-nine, had been striding toward the glaz doors leading to the NewzNet takeoff area, when a certain amount of whooping and hollering commenced behind him.
“There’s the blighter!”
“That’s him! Summer the philanderer!”
“Let’s us give ’im what-for!”
Spinning around, Summer found himself facing a trio of midget robots. There were sneers and scowls showing on their silvery ballheads, the words Scoundrel Trackers, Ltd. engraved in gloletters on their metallic chests.
“Fellas,” said Summer, grinning amiably and holding up a hand in a stop-right-there gesture, “I think I know who’s hired you and—”
“Dirty sod!”
“Irresponsible lout!”
“Bloody wretch!”
One of them leaped, tackling Summer just below the knees, causing him to fall over backward. He landed on the plaz mosaic tiles with a slick thump.
A second Scoundrel Trackers robot jumped and sat, hard, on Summer’s chest. “Now give a listen to this, mate.” Music started pouring out of a tiny speaker in his left side. Sweet, romantic music thick with violins.
“So?” Summer got an armlock on the squatting robot and tried to unseat him.
“Ain’t ’e the ’earless one?” observed the third robot, who’d opened a compartment in his shiny chest to reveal a small wafer-thin vidscreen.
“This here’s your song,” said the one on Summer’s chest. “The very tune you and your dear wife loved to play of an evening whilst gathered round the bloomin’ ’armonium in—”
“You gents do sloppy research,” Summer pointed out while trying to wrestle free of the two mechanical men. “Maryella and I never owned a harmonium. Furthermore, that dippy tune is actually the theme from an old Galactic Skymines commercial that aired here in the Barnum System of planets nearly five long—”
“An’ I suppose, you cruel deserter,” inquired the third robot, tapping his picture screen, “that this hain’t that selfsame Maryella workin’ as a-galley drudge in a cafeteria what’s orbitin’ the worst bloomin’ planet out in the Hellquad at this—”
“Nope, it isn’t,” said Summer after a quick glance at the flickering image. “Maryella’s slim and blond, thirty-one her last birthday. That lady’s got to be over fifty and she’s fat as well, and—”
“Well, the poor lass ’as gone to seed since you run off to pursue your dubious career as a muckrakin’ video-journalist, guy.”
“I didn’t run off. Maryella and I are legally divorced.” He managed to toss the robot from off his chest, sending it smack into the one who was showing him the heartrending pictures of a woman who wasn’t his former wife at all.
Both of the ’bots went rolling and sliding, wobbling and rattling, away from him.
That left only the third mechanical billcollector, who had both springy metal arms locked around Summer’s legs.
“I suppose,” asked this one now in his tinny, piping voice, “you’re goin’ to claim you don’t owe the poor slatternly wench four bloody months of back alimony?”
“That was just an error on the part of my bank. While I was out on the planet—”
“Can the tripe, guy. All you deadbeats try to pull that… Awk! Awk!”
Summer thrust a hand into the mechanical man’s right armpit, locating the emergency turnoff switch. Few knew of the switch, but Summer’d done considerable research on bizbots once, for a seven-minute vidwall essay that never aired.
Jumping to his feet and clear of the disabled ’bot, he went sprinting for the NewzNet gates.
The other two Scoundrel Trackers, Ltd. mechanical men were still struggling to return to upright positions.
* * * *
The large toadman paused to fluff his curly golden locks, then continued, “What you don’t seem to understand, young man, is that this—”
“I’m not young,” corrected Summer, who was seated across the shuttle aisle from the toad in the conservative two-piece bizsuit.
“Be that as it may, this is, as is plainly spelled out on the cabin door, in not one but seventeen major languages and a rebus, this is an Executive Shuttle to the NewzNet satellite headquarters.”
“Yep, that’s exactly where I want to go.” Nodding, Summer settled back in his plush seat.
The shuttle was climbing silently up toward Studio One, his intended destination.
“The point is,” persisted the toadman with an angry toss of his curls, “you aren’t an executive, do you see? You’re merely a field reporter—and one noted for his flippancy, his padded expense accounts, his notorious tendency to seduce every and all—”
“Yes, he’s got disgusting morals,” put in a hefty humanoid lady of sixty-one who was sitting a few seats ahead.
“Good morning, Henrietta,” said Summer with a grin. “You’re looking svelte.”
“I am not, Summer. I’m looking fat and gross as usual,” said Henrietta Doff, frowning back at him over her broad shoulder. “Don’t try any of that dreadful blarney you work on barmaids, hookers, floozies, skin models, tarts—”
“Henrietta,” interrupted Summer, “in the nearly eleven months that I’ve been working for NewzNet, my life in the field has been one of exemplary conduct, spotless morality and—”
“Grout puckey,” observed Henrietta, jiggling disdainfully. “You forget, Summer, that I’m a Vice President in our Legal Department. All the complaints that pour in about your wretched conduct cross my desk. Why, even your poor frail ex-wife, who’s been forced to work as a hostess in an animal shelter orbiting one of the meanest planets in the Trinidad System out—”
“Maryella lives in a villa on Esmeralda,” said Summer. “It’s just that her attorneys, especially the android one, are fairly imaginative. They cook up various false yarns whenever I happen, due to glitches on the part of my bank, to fall a week or two behind in my alimony pay—”
“There’s another terrible thing,” said the glowering lady exec. “You go around from planet to planet doing reports about the faults and failings of others, while you owe that poor girl a stewpot of dough and she—”
“Hoy!” boomed someone from up at the front of the shuttle cabin. “Give Jack a break, huh? He’s one hell of an investigative reporter, always has been.” A big, wide catman stood up to face the other three passengers on this NewzNet Executive Shuttle. He was wearing a one-piece paramilitary worksuit, and had a patch over his right eye.
“Wink Bowman,” said Summer. “I didn’t notice you slouched up there.”
Bowman came lumbering up the aisle. “Now, I happen to be the best damn war correspondent NewzNet’s got,” he admitted. “But Jack here’s the best muckraker, the absolute top man at digging out all the sordid details of political scandals, criminal intrigues and dubious flimflams of all sorts. I remember when he was working in the print medium…Muckrake Magazine, wasn’t it? He used to travel to the hottest hot spots and the worst pestholes in our Barnum System. He worked with a horny photog name of…LaPenna, wasn’t it?”
“Palma,”