Robots vs. Fairies(42)

A few seconds later he pressed the bloody part of the cloth against the spot he’d rubbed twice with no effect. This time, though, the ruddy color changed, vanishing the way grime does when scrubbed with a powerful cleanser. Bright metal shone in the weak light.

“No,” said Duke. “No way.”

He rubbed and rubbed at it until he had a spot as big as his palm. By then the rag was covered in dirt and rust that had mingled with the blood and truly turned it black. When he bent forward, he could see his reflection in the mirror-bright metal.

Duke tried to make sense of it, fishing in his memories of high school science for something rational. Was there some kind of enzyme in blood that eradicated rust? He doubted it. Was it the heat of the blood? No, that couldn’t be right, because spit would be just as warm, especially after more than a minute on the cloth.

Which left . . . what?

He rubbed again, but there wasn’t much of the blood left and the effect was diminishing. He tried spit again and got nothing. Even an industrial abrasive didn’t work.

“The hell . . . ?” he asked the robot.

Farmboy said nothing.

Duke sagged a little, though he had no real idea what he was depressed about. So he’d cleaned a patch of metal. Big frigging deal. All that meant was that Farmboy was a minimally cleaner piece of junk.

He punched the robot. Not too hard. Enough to make his knuckles hurt, though.

“Damn it,” he growled. Then suddenly he was coughing again. Harder. So much harder. It struck him so fast there was no time to brace himself, no time to even cover his face. He caved forward as forcefully as if he’d been punched in the gut and only just managed to keep from smashing his face on the robot by slapping his palms against the cold metal. The coughs racked him, tore at him, pummeled him from the inside out. Spit and blood splatted on Farmboy’s chest and across the sensitive circuits inside the open panel. There were no sparks, of course, because Farmboy was dead.

Duke coughed, feeling the weight of each spasm as it pushed him down, making his head bow down between his trembling arms. It felt like he was surrendering. Like he was giving up. Being forced to admit that this was how it was going to be. Not a holding pattern, propped up by pills and careful living. Not a slow slide down.

No. The cough was immediate and it was huge. It was a great big fist and it was going to smash him. Maybe not this minute, but soon. Without doubt, soon.

Fresh blood splashed across the robot’s chest. He was dying, right here, right now. He could feel his own internal systems shutting down.

I’m sorry, he thought, wishing he could shout those words so that everyone who’d ever loved him could hear them.

He coughed for five long, brutal minutes, and then he leaned there, gasping, tears running down his face, blood running hot over his lower lip and hanging in fat drops from his chin. Sweat, cold and greasy, beading on his forehead and trickling over the knobs of his spine.

The minute hands seemed to fall off the clock for him, and Duke had no idea at all how long he stayed in that position, hands braced against the fall all the way down. When he could speak, it was to gasp a single word.

“Please . . .”

Said over and over again.

When he could finally stand and walk, it took him twenty minutes to go all the way home. All those thousands of miles from the barn to the house.





-4-




* * *



Gramps found him. Duke barely remembered it. The screams that were maybe Grandma’s, maybe Gramps’s, maybe his own. Hands on him, checking him, feeling for a pulse, taking way too long to find it. Dim views of faces lined with pain and fear. The expressions of people who knew what they were seeing, who knew how this would end. And when. Night was falling and Duke knew—as everyone else knew—that there wouldn’t be a morning. Not for him. He’d reached his sell-by date, and he began to grieve. Not for himself, but because it meant that he was leaving his grandparents, and that felt like it was they who were dying. He felt shame at having failed them.

Gran called the neighbors who came and helped carry him to bed. The doctor came and his diagnosis was clear on his face. He left without recommending that Duke be taken to the hospital.

That night Duke sat up in bed, because lying down brought on coughing fits. Grandma had made soup. Now she and Gramps were both downstairs, and Duke could almost feel them trying to decide how to react.

As if there was a playbook for something like this.

The hours of that night were eternal. Sleep was a series of bad dreams linked by coughing and spitting blood into a bucket. The doctor hadn’t even lied to him about how bad this was, or how bad it was going to be. Instead he’d written the prescription and didn’t meet Duke’s eyes. Not once. Why would he? Doctors were all about trying to help the living. They wouldn’t want to stare into the eyes of the dead.

All Grandma could do was cry.

Not in his room, not where he could see her. Downstairs, where she thought he couldn’t hear.

He heard.

He heard her praying, too, and he wondered when the Lutheran minister would come back to handle unfinished business.

The TV was on, but Duke didn’t watch it. His face was turned toward the window, toward the night that rose like a big black tsunami above the house. Duke wept, too, but his tears were quiet and cold and they were not of grief. He wept because he had failed his family. Enlisting in the army had been stupid. Sure, it was a family tradition, but no one had forced him into it. No one said he had to. But he did anyway, and he’d had his heart shredded in a war that didn’t matter to anyone he ever knew or ever met.