The new pitcher arrived, and Spencer began loudly reciting The Face on the Barroom Floor in an attempt to change the subject. When he'd rendered all the parts he knew, Thomas let go with Gunga Din, punctuating the ballad by pounding his fist on the wet tabletop. There was scattered applause from the other tables when he finished, but Negri still stared moodily down at his hands.
"When we finish this one, let's head back," Spencer said. "This must be the fifth or sixth—"
"No," said Negri, looking up with an odd light in his eyes. "It's too early to head back."
"Oh?" asked Spencer cautiously. "What do you think we ought to do?"
"What Jeff and I were doing this afternoon," Negri said. "Blowing up blimps."
"Oh, no," muttered Spencer.
"We were just doing it for laughs then, from the top of the fence," Negri continued. "We didn't know they'd killed her. Now we've got a reason to do it."
"Somebody fill me in," Thomas said. " 'Blowing up blimps' means… ?"
"Well," said Spencer wearily, "androids, as you know, are plant eaters. And sometimes they swell up with methane gas, same as sheep do. They look just like balloons—or like they're about to give birth to a small house. The healthy cops take 'em to the infirmary when they begin to look like that, and a doctor pokes 'em with a long needle and lets all the gas out. Then after a couple of days they're all right again."
"Right," agreed Negri almost cheerfully. "And what we do is climb the fence and shoot flaming arrows into the swelled-up ones."
"You're kidding," said Thomas flatly.
"No sir. You hit them in the right spot and spark all that gas, and they just go up like bombs."
"And that's what you want to do tonight?" Thomas asked.
"Yeah." Negri sucked at his beer. "I don't happen to think it's right that a girl like Jean should get killed by a bunch of androids and not be avenged. Goofus here," he said, pointing at Thomas, "didn't know her, so I can't expect him to give one measly damn about her murder. And maybe you two don't happen to remember what she was like—how she was when you were in trouble, or depressed. Maybe you think it's best that she be forgotten as quickly as possible. She'd like that, huh? Oh sure. She's probably getting sick in hell right now, to see you guys drinking beer and reciting poetry when her body isn't even cold yet." He stood up unsteadily. "Well, I'm going to go send a few androids to kingdom come for her. You guys stay here and… make sure the damned breweries don't go out of business." He turned toward the door.
"Bob," said Spencer slowly. "Wait a minute." He got to his feet. "I—I'm with you."
Jeff attempted to leap up but instead pitched over backward in his chair, his foot having become entangled in its rungs. Negri and Spencer helped him up and brushed him off. "Count me in," he gasped dizzily.
"Wait here for us," Spencer said to Thomas. "We ought to be—"
"Hold it," Thomas said. "I'm going with you. Who was it," he asked, carefully enunciating each word, "that bandaged me up last night? Jean. I can't sit here while you guys go avenge her."
"He's right," Negri said, his voice thick with drink.
"Pennick, you are not the slob I thought you were." They shook hands all around, gulped the last of the beer, and stumbled out the door into the chilly Los Angeles evening.
Making a fist to prevent his barbed-wire-torn finger from bleeding—will that finger ever get a proper chance to heal, he wondered—Thomas loped across the grass after Spencer, stepping high so as not to trip over anything in the darkness. He saw Spencer's silhouette disappear behind the wall of a bungalow and followed him into the deep shadow. Negri and Jeff were already waiting there.
"Okay," Negri whispered when Spencer and Thomas had caught their breath, "now listen: the infirmary is to our right, just past the—"
"Hold it," Jeff said. "If we're doing this for Jean, it ain't right to just blow up some sick ones."
Thomas couldn't see him in the blackness, but raised one eyebrow questioningly. "Oh?"
"He's right," Negri whispered, smothering a hiccup. "We've got to take on the barracks."
Spencer heaved a sigh. "Okay," he said.
"Okay," Thomas agreed. He did wish he could have some more beer first. Maybe they'd find some in the barracks.
"Do androids drink?" he asked.
"Naw," answered Negri. "They've got snoose. Now pay attention; the barracks, as I recall, is over there, ahead of us and to the left. I think the armory is off to the side, in a shed. We'd better go there first and grab some guns. Follow me and keep low."
The four of them scuttled furtively across a little lamplit courtyard, then trotted for about 100 meters in the shadow of another building and halted at its far corner. Negri pointed at a low plywood structure that stood between them and the next long building. A bright light, mounted over a screened window in front, threw the shadow of the padlock across the door like a diagonal streak of black paint.
"That's the armory," he whispered. "We'll dash over there, one at a time, and stay on the dark side. Then we'll pry the screen off a window and Pennick here, being the skinniest, will climb in and hand weapons out to us. After that we'll move on to the barracks, shoot a dozen or so of the bastards, and climb the far fence and head home. Sound okay?"
Everyone allowed that it did, Thomas with some reservations. The beer fumes were beginning to leave his head, and he couldn't remember why coming here had seemed such a good idea.
"Take it away, Rufe," said Spencer, patting him on the back, and Thomas sprinted across the open space into the shadow of the shack. One by one the others followed. It was the work of a minute to lever the screen from the window, and a moment later Thomas was hoisted up and supported horizontally in the air by six hands, his head thrust into the window.
"Can you see anything?" Negri hissed.
"Nothing clear," Thomas whispered back over his shoulder. "Listen, though… roll me face up, and let me get my hands up here, and I think I can climb in." They carefully rotated his tense body until his back was to the ground. He angled both arms in through the narrow window and locked his fingers firmly around a pole that seemed to be firmly moored. "Okay," he said nervously. "Now when I say 'go,' you shove me in. Gently! I should jacknife through and land upright on the floor." He gripped the pole even tighter, made sure again that he could picture how this would work, and then gasped, "Go."
They pushed him through, the pole came free in his hands, and he tumbled upside down over a wheelbarrow and into a rack of shovels. The clatter and clang was appalling, and it took him nearly 30 seconds of thrashing about to even stand. He bounded for the window, and tripped over a bottle of some sort that shattered resoundingly.
Spencer poked his head in the window. "Weapons, for God's sake!" he shouted. "Now!" His face disappeared again.
Thomas flung four shovels through the window and then dove through it himself, rolling as he fell and landing painfully on his shoulder. He leaped up immediately, and was momentarily surprised to see that not one of his companions had fled.
Spencer thrust one of the shovels into his hands. He noticed that lights had been turned on in the building ahead, and a half-dozen figures were clustered in the doorway. "All right, hold it right there!" came a call.
"Run back the way we came," Spencer snapped, and all four of them did, still carrying their shovels. Bang. A bullet spanged off the concrete 30 meters to the right. Another broke a window ahead of them and two more whistled through the air. Thomas's legs pounded on and on, even though every breath seared his lungs and abraded his ribs, and he could see the rainbow glitter of unconsciousness playing around the borders of his vision.
Androids were designed to run faster than the average man, but they also had a tendency toward sluggishness when suddenly awakened, and none of these considered it worthwhile to leave their warm barracks in order to pursue such bandits as would lay siege to the gardener's shack. They simply stood in the doorway while one of their number emptied a revolver at the fleeing figures.