Stephen Goldin
The Sword Unswayed
Illustration by Todd C. Hamilton
The attack by the mad alien robot surprised everyone at the cookbook writers’ award banquet.
The official banquet had just broken up; the speeches had all been delivered; the awards had all been presented. People milled about in small groups as the crowd slowly filtered out of the dining hall. Bian Dinh stood beside her chair, her petite figure outlined by the gold silk dress embroidered with red dragons. “Did you hope to make the party rounds tonight, Debs?”
Rabinowitz winced at the college nickname. She’d already told Dinh three times she preferred “De-BOR-ah” these days, but the other woman steadfastly refused to listen. “Actually, I hoped to avoid them. I like writers individually, but in groups…” She gave a mock shudder. “As soon as they learn I’m a broker, they swarm on me to sell their books offworld. I hate saying no.”
“So I remember.”
“Well, I’ve learned how to say it, now, but I get tired of the way they look when I tell them it’s easier to snag the lottery.”
“I wasn’t looking forward, either, to the parties. These people are all dreskas, they talk of nothing but business. Recipes and book contracts, as though the people who ate the food were less important than the ingredients that go in it. The oppressed people of the world can’t even afford most of the spices they write about.” She paused. “I hoped we could have a more private reunion. We haven’t seen each other in seven years—”
“I’ll have to ditch that too, I’m afraid,” Rabinowitz said. Then, as she saw Dinh’s expression fall, she added, “I have to be sharp for a rehearsal tomorrow.”
“Rehearsal?”
“Yes, I direct an amateur theater group these days. We open the Scottish play in two weeks, and tomorrow’s our first full run-through.”
There was a sudden commotion in the back of the hall. People were pushing and jostling and there were a couple of surprised shouts. Suddenly an alien’s rented robot body broke through the crowd and started toward the center of the room.
It was a cheap older model, with a short, thin unisex body and indeterminate facial features. Its clothes were painted on and peeling, while its face was covered with small scratches and dents from users who tried to do unaccustomed things with it.
The current user was also not very adept. The body leaned forward, having a hard time balancing upright, while the arms swung about in front as though the user were unsure whether to use them as legs. The head turned from side to side as though used to scanning its surroundings much more quickly. If it weren’t for the path of bruised and fallen people it had pushed aside in its crude rush into the hall, the creature would have been laughable.
“Malfunctioning?” Dinh wondered.
“No, it’s turned off the autos,” Rabinowitz said. “It couldn’t be shoving people if they were on.”
The robot had cleared a space for itself through the mob that scattered before it. Its gaze reached Dinh and Rabinowitz, and suddenly stopped. With a roar of incoherent syllables, the alien picked up a butter knife from a nearby table, lowered its head and charged straight at them.
Even dressed as they were—Dinh in her tight silk dress, Rabinowitz in her black strapless formal with the half-high heels—either woman could have outrun the alien in a foot race. But the surprise of its attack froze them momentarily; the alien was almost upon them before they reacted. Rabinowitz recovered first. Grabbing the chair next to her, she swung it straight into the attacker’s path.
A human could have easily avoided the obstacle and kept on coming. Even an inexperienced alien who left the automatic guidance system turned on would have moved casually around it. But this alien had the autos off and didn’t have the proper reflexes to deal with sudden changes. Its legs hit the chair and lost what little balance they had. The creature sprawled on the ground and slid across the polished floor three meters past the women who had been its targets. Rabinowitz and Dinh each tossed on a couple more chairs, then together overturned a round banquet table and pinned the hapless robot beneath it.
The alien tried to get back up, flailing its robot limbs madly and looking like a turtle trying to swim across a tile floor. The tension in the room broke and everyone started laughing. The alien, realizing its position was hopeless, suddenly froze in place.
“Show’s over,” Rabinowitz announced when she could stop laughing long enough. “He’s off-teeped and gone home. Somebody call the police.”
The police came, in the person of one detective and one uniformed officer. They impounded the rent-a-bod and asked general questions of everyone in the hall. When they learned the alien had homed in specifically on Dinh and Rabinowitz, they asked more pointed questions of them. Both women acknowledged knowing and having business dealings with extraterrestrials, but neither knew of anyone, off Earth or on, who wanted to kill them. Finally, after two hours of taking statements, the police left.
“Well, that was a nice little adrenaline rush,” Rabinowitz said, “but now I really do have to be going if I’m to be at all coherent tomorrow.”
“I really did want to talk with you,” Dinh said, reaching out to grab her arm. “I hoped that we could… well, I never get a chance to see you in person, and there’s much to tell you.”
Rabinowitz looked into Dinh’s eyes, sighed, and quickly reviewed her schedule. “Will you still be in the City Monday? Good, why don’t we have lunch then? Call me Monday morning and we’ll set up a time and place.”
As she walked away, Rabinowitz could feel Dinh’s eyes following her with a strange intensity. She almost wished she hadn’t made the date. Whenever Bian got this intense back in college, trouble usually wasn’t far away.
“This could be unpleasant,” she muttered. “Please, Bian, I hope you’re smart enough to know that some things exist better as memories.”
The bare stage was littered with burned timbers, all that remained of the once-proud Globe Theater. You could almost see little wisps of smoke curling upward from the charred beams that had fallen diagonally across the stage during the fire. You wondered whether there might still be glowing embers about, and how safe it was to even be in the audience. The perfect ambiance for a play in which no one was safe.
An actor entered stage left and walked to center stage, deep in thought and oblivious to the audience. He wore tights and slippers, but was bare from the waist up. He stood pensively for a moment, until a dresser entered stage right carrying an oddly padded vest. The dresser handed the vest to the actor and exited again stage right. The actor slipped on the vest and fastened it down the front. The padding gave an odd curvature to his back.
The dresser entered again stage right, this time carrying a brown tunic embroidered with gold and a wig with long, straight hair. He set the wig momentarily on a charred beam as he helped the actor into the tunic, then arranged the wig on the actor’s head with professional precision. His tasks now complete, the dresser exited, again stage right.
The actor watched him depart. As he did so, a transformation came over him. His left shoulder slouched, his right shoulder raised, and his head tilted slightly to the right. He was now a hunchback.
Alone again on stage, he turned and saw the audience as though for the first time. He smiled then. Not the somber smile of an archvillain contemplating his sinister machinations; no, this was the smile of someone who knows a devilishly funny joke and is about to let you in on it. His tongue was so far in his cheek it practically came out his ear.