Machine Man - Max Barry [80]
“Biggles!”
I had never heard a more piercing sound, and I’ve worked in metals fabrication. Dr. Angelica rushed at me, her fingers hooked into claws. I looked down and saw a dog, Biggles, I guess, trapped under the rubber toe of the pole. Mostly it seemed to be Biggles’s blue vest, but he was making a hell of a noise, so maybe some of Biggles was there, too. I tried to raise my leg but snagged on his coat. Then I was off balance and could do nothing but pivot. Dr. Angelica’s shriek reached a new pitch of outrage. It possibly looked like I was grinding on the dog. She banged into me with her shoulder and I hit the floor in a tangle of poles. When I levered myself up, Dr. Angelica was cradling Biggles in her arms. Biggles licked her face, whimpering.
I realized they had planned this. Dog, the pack mind, had sent Biggles to throw himself under my poles. He was a suicide bomber. I looked around for the furry faces I knew would be watching from a dark doorway somewhere. “It’s a setup.” In retrospect, I should have kept this theory to myself. “Biggles did it on purpose.”
Dr. Angelica hit me. You would think a surgeon would be careful about using her hands as blunt instruments. But she let me have it. Her nails raked my cheek. On all sides came yapping and shrieking. Dogs streamed out of the walls. Biggles bit my finger. “Get out!” Dr. Angelica screamed. “Get out you asshole you asshole get out!”
“Stop hitting him!” said Lola. The dogs’ yowling melded with Dr. Angelica’s enraged screams and Lola’s shrieks until I couldn’t tell one from another. At Better Future I once attended a demonstration of sonics-based nonlethal weaponry and what came out of that gun did not sound as bad as this. I wrapped my arms around my head. Pain exploded in my kidney. I looked up. Dr. Angelica had kicked me. She stared down and in this moment I was glad she did not have a scalpel. Lola grabbed a fistful of hair. Dr. Angelica shrieked. She swung a looping punch at Lola and Lola ducked and they stood a few feet apart, shocked at each other, or themselves. Dr. Angelica clutched Biggles tight and ran out of the room. A train of little dogs trotted after her. One looked back at me before he disappeared and I sensed him gloating. The bedroom door slammed.
“God,” said Lola. She looked at me, then the closed door. “God.”
I began levering myself up. “That was an accident.”
Lola blinked. “Of course.” She came over and helped me onto the sofa. “You’re scratched. Let me see that finger.”
“Biggles can’t be too hurt, if he can bite like that.”
“Shh.”
I shushed. In the silence I heard Dr. Angelica muttering to her dogs. “She’s going to kick us out, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know.”
Dr. Angelica’s voice rose. It sounded strident. I had never heard her talk to the dogs like that.
“How could she think you would deliberately step on Biggles?” I said nothing. “Nobody understands you,” Lola said.
Dr. Angelica said, “Svvn nmm hrr nww.”
“Is she on the phone?”
We listened. Now there was silence. But I knew what Dr. Angelica had done. I could almost hear it: the white van with the Better Future logo on its side.
I struggled to my feet. My poles, I mean. A standing position. I got upright. “Where are Angelica’s car keys?”
“What?”
“Her car keys.” I managed a step, then another, and made it to the kitchen doorway.
“Why do you want Angelica’s car keys?”
This was a difficult question to answer without elevating Lola’s heart rate. Elevating Lola’s heart rate would be bad. It could lead to an electromagnetic pulse, a dead car, and no way out. I had to execute the world’s calmest escape. “I just …” I spotted them on the counter, and scooped them up. “Let’s go to the garage.”
“Why?”
“I feel like a drive.”
Lola stared. “You want the welder.”
“What? No!”
“Angelica was right.” She put her hands on her forehead. “I’m so stupid.” Her eyes popped open. “Do you love me? I mean, even a little?”
“What?”
“You’ve never said it.”
I felt surprised. But she was right. I guess I assumed it was obvious. “Oh.”
“ ‘Oh’?”
“I mean, I love you.” It sounded