Sooner Dead (Gamma World) - Mel Odom [82]
Ignoring the question, Riley brushed through the men and focused on Hella and Stampede.
“Trade, sir.” One of the men remained adamant. “I’ve got goods. Carried them a long way. The least you could do is take time to take a look.”
Riley turned to the man, and the face shield snapped closed. “Stand back or I will stand you back.”
Hella recognized the man as Benjamin Thor, one of the more legitimate peddlers who traveled the trade roads. He could repair electronic things as well, and he was a fair gunsmith. He was a good cook and an even better storyteller.
Reluctantly Benjamin turned and headed away from the campsite. He glanced at Stampede as he passed him. “Not a friendly face in the bunch.”
“I know.” Stampede spoke in a low voice.
Riley’s face shield popped open again, and he smiled at Hella. “It’s good to see you. We were beginning to get worried.”
Hella threw her leg over Daisy’s head and slid off the lizard to the ground. “We had some trouble finding your meteorite.”
Peering past her, Riley looked briefly then turned his attention back to her. “Where?”
Hella pointed at Scatter. “There.”
Still sitting on Daisy, Scatter waved and smiled. “Greetings.”
Hella watched Riley’s face as he took that in. “Okay. Follow me to Dr. Pardot.” He turned and walked back into the campsite.
Stampede twitched his ears and shook his head. “Don’t know about you, Red, but I don’t think he was expecting the cargo to be Scatter.”
“Me neither.”
“You’ve got to wonder if Pardot is expecting Scatter.”
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
Pardot stared at Scatter as the fractoid stood in the center of the camp. “Extraordinary.”
“Thank you.” Scatter smiled. “You are extraordinary as well.” He looked at everyone around him. “We are all extraordinary.”
Surprise drove Pardot back a step and his eyebrows raised. “You can talk?”
“Yes.”
Pardot turned his gaze on Stampede. “You taught it to speak?”
Stampede shook his head. “No. He could already speak.”
“Not our language.”
Hella wondered how Pardot knew that.
Masking his perturbation, although his ears flicked, Stampede kept his voice level. “He taught himself.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
Hella was glad Stampede didn’t give away her part in Scatter’s education. The last thing she needed was the man wanting to poke and prod her or yell at her because of her unwilling complicity.
Colleen Trammell stood beside Pardot, a genuine smile on her tired face. She didn’t look any better rested than when Hella had last seen her. “It’s more adaptive than we thought.”
A stray thought from the woman bumped into Hella’s mind: Alice is going to be all right. Hella felt the relief as well. She drew her thoughts back and tried to shield herself. “He’s not an ‘it.’ He’s a he. He has a name.”
Scatter opened his mouth and that high-pitched screeching squawk that Hella remembered filled her ears.
“That’s his name. We call him Scatter.”
Servos on his exo suit whining, Pardot walked around Scatter. “Why would you call him such a thing?”
In order to follow the man, Scatter reflowed to continue facing Pardot. Stepping back quickly in surprise, Pardot’s servos whined in protest at the sudden movement.
With effort, Hella kept from laughing. “That’s why.”
Pardot halted in his tracks. “Extraordinary.”
Scatter nodded. “Thank you. It is nothing.”
Ignoring the fractoid, Pardot looked back at Colleen. “Did you know it—he—could do this?”
“You know as much about the last one we saw as I do, Dr. Pardot.”
The last one? Hella watched both of them carefully.
Pardot scowled. “I meant while you were in your precog state.”
“No. I only saw it—him—falling to earth where we found him.”
“Excuse me.” Scatter folded his arms across his shiny chest. “You found another being such as me? Where did you find this being? Can you take me to this being?”
Pardot shot Colleen a withering glare.
Stampede cleared his throat and, to anyone who knew him, sounded testy. “If you knew we were looking for a metal man, you might have told us that. It would have made searching easier.