“Yeah,” said Duke, “look at us. We’re a real pair. Used up, broke down, and no damn good at all to anyone.”
Farmboy’s black eyes stared back at him from under the brim of the fake straw hat. Duke smiled and used the cloth to wipe at the flakes of rust around the open control panel. He saw that there were many tiny drops of blood spattered on the chest, and some had gone into the open panel and glistened redly on the circuit board. The blood made a small hissing sound as the moisture soaked in through a wire mesh air vent on his chest.
“Oh, shit,” said Duke, and quickly dabbed at the blood, trying to blot it all up. There was a sudden, loud chunk-chunk of a sound, and for a microsecond lights inside the robot’s chest flared. It was so quick, so sudden that it sounded like the throb of a heartbeat, but Duke knew what it was. The blood had shorted something out. Maybe the starter. He cursed and tried to get the last of the blood off the sensitive circuitry, but then he stopped, knowing that it was already too late. The robot sat there, and somehow it felt different. Colder, maybe. Deader? Something, anyway.
He looked down at the blood and grease on his rag and shook his head slowly, admitting his mistake—however much it wasn’t his fault. Circuits and moisture were never friends, and he’d known that all his life. Now his crumbling body seemed to be taking his mind with it. This was a stupid mistake. A rookie mistake. And it was going to cost his family everything. Just as his own mechanical heart was the most expensive part of Duke’s own body, the central circuit board was the robot’s heart. Maybe fixable five minutes ago, but killed now by his own traitor blood.
Duke sat there for a long time, saying nothing. Feeling so old, so thin and faded. He raised the rag and rubbed at the rust spots again. Doing something because there was nothing else he could do.
“We used to be something, though,” Duke said slowly. “You and me. Couple of badasses. What the hell happened to us?”
The robot, being a robot, said nothing.
Duke started to say something else, but stopped, his mouth open. He stared at the robot’s chest and . . . something was weird. Something was wrong. There was a spot, a small smear where he’d been rubbing, where the rust flakes had fallen away to reveal bright metal. Duke glanced down at the rag and saw that he’d accidentally used the part that was spotted with blood, but instead of smearing red atop the dust and rust, it had cleaned the metal. It gleamed like polished stainless steel.
“I don’t . . .,” he said, then rubbed at the spot some more. The spot of bright metal expanded from the size of a dime to the size of a quarter. “That doesn’t . . .”
He closed his mouth with a snap and tried rubbing again but with a clean corner of the rag. Some rust flakes fell off, but the metal remained an oxidized red-gray. Duke spat on the rag and gave it another rub. Same thing.
But that bright patch seemed to shine at him. Duke looked down at the blood spots on the cloth, then back up.
“Don’t be an idiot,” he told himself.
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-
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