Читать книгу Rabbit and Robot - William Hughes, Andrew Smith - Страница 17

“You two! Go to gate forty-four. Do I have to say it again?” A male cog in a very tight, red Grosvenor Galactic smock flailed his arms as though he were cutting through a swarm of insects flocking between him and Meg. “This is ridiculous! Why are you victimizing me? Why are you doing this to me? What gives you the right to publicly disgrace me like this?”

“What the fuck?” Jeffrie said.

The v.4 in charge of getting the cogs on board was more than mildly huffy.

“I . . . I . . . don’t get it,” Meg said.

“Why do I have to tell you twice? Why do you feel entitled to demean me?”

Meg Hatfield and Jeffrie Cutler didn’t have much experience with cogs at all.

“Are you sure we should do this?” Jeffrie whispered.

“Are you scared?”

“This place needs to burn.”

Then Meg asked the cog, “Why are you so mad at us?”

The cog behind the check-in counter gagged and screamed like he was being stabbed. Then he threw himself onto his back and thrashed his arms and legs wildly. “Why? Why are you making me the bad guy in all this? What have I ever done to you? I don’t know you! I don’t know you! I didn’t do anything to you! I owe you no debt of suffering!”

He tugged big handfuls of hair from his scalp and scratched at his cheeks with his perfect fingernails.

This is what v.4 cogs do all the time. Well, at least the irritated ones.

Meg grabbed Jeffrie’s arm. “Come on.”

The girls joined the assembling crowd of passenger cogs and followed them toward the doorway beneath a sign that read TO ALL GATES.

Although there was no need for medical screenings, since cogs were either alive or dead, running or not running, with no in-between states of disease, all cogs still had to go through the same decontamination showers and suit-up procedures as living human passengers, in order to prevent the transportation of biological pathogens into space. Except cogs, being cogs, were handled a little more roughly than fragile human beings, which was more than a little discomforting to Meg Hatfield and Jeffrie Cutler.

Meg and Jeffrie happened to be in a group that was mostly made up of very, very happy cogs. A few of the cogs were depressed. One of them wept incessantly, although being a cog, he shed an oily hydraulic fluid, as opposed to actual tears.

The jets in the cog showers were not heated and came on like fire hoses. Eleven cogs, male and female models, were packed with Meg and Jeffrie into a shower stall the same size as those intended for only one or two humans. Jeffrie was lost in the press of naked cogs, all of whom were taller than she was. She squeezed into a corner of the stall away from Meg. It wasn’t the best place to be. When the blast of disinfectant came on, Jeffrie was knocked backward and ended up on the floor of the shower, looking up between tangled and nude cog legs.

“Whee! Yippee!” one of the cogs squealed.

“This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me!” said another, prancing from foot to foot.

From somewhere in the crush of bodies came, “I never want to leave this place! Except I need to dance! And there’s not enough room! I want to dance!”

“I can’t stand myself. Can someone please kill me? I don’t think I’ll ever pull myself out of this hole of darkness,” one of the nonweeping depressed cogs added.

The shower lasted exactly ten seconds. When it stopped, most of the cogs were laughing and jumping up and down, which was the only direction they could move.

The sobbing cog continued his sobbing.

Jeffrie got stepped on and kneed in the head. She couldn’t get up from the floor. When the group of naked cogs exited the shower and Jeffrie could finally rise to her feet, she saw that one of the male cogs had broken in half at his midsection. It was hard to tell if he had been one of the happy cogs or one of the depressed ones. But he was broken, naked, and dead, and he was also abandoned and forgotten on the floor of a chemical disinfectant shower.

And things like that happened all the time.

Jeffrie cupped her hands in front of her groin and, dripping, followed all the naked things to the dressing area, where Meg waited for her. Jeffrie was embarrassed and frightened, and felt so terribly small among all the cogs, who despite not being human still had sexually mature human bodies. Jeffrie had been implanted with hormone arrestors, which Lloyd had stolen for her three years earlier, so she wasn’t growing and changing the way her body’s own code had programmed her to do.

“I thought I lost you,” Meg said.

Jeffrie wouldn’t look at Meg. She kept her eyes down, watching the parade of feet ahead of her. “I want to go back to Antelope Acres. I want to darf this fucking place with Lloyd.”

Meg didn’t say anything.

Both girls knew it was too late to leave, much less to light anything on fire now. They were shivering and freezing cold. Of course, none of the cogs had any idea about the temperature of the showers, or that Meg and Jeffrie were not cogs. They were all too overcome by joy, outrage, or deep despair, depending on which cog you paid attention to.

Meg Hatfield and Jeffrie Cutler slid into their orange jumpsuits.

“So. You saw, didn’t you?” Jeffrie asked.

“Saw what?” Meg said.

Meg was not good at lying to Jeffrie.

“We’re going to the Tennessee! We’re going to the Tennessee! I think I just released my bowels!” one of the cogs burbled.

“Ha ha ha!” laughed a chorus of happy cogs.

“I’m going to clean toilets on the Tennessee! I love cleaning human feces and other bodily secretions!” another cog yipped.

“I get to clean bedrooms! Give me a soiled human bed, and I’ll be happy for all eternity!”

“I want to release my bowels too!” someone shouted.

“I’m so lonely. I’m so desperately alone. Someone please help me,” the sobbing cog cried.