Teddyhunter: Baby-Blues

By Kevin Williams

Volume Seven: Teddyhunter and third-gen bots are trying to escape UFO supervision. Super-bots hunting rogues, Harvey in an alien mid-shipmans suit, Mindy Tracker and Henry try rogue-teck trails.

Cats play a major role.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin Williams
• Release date: Apr 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463020104

Kevin Williams

ANNOUNCEMENT.For my ten year anniversary here? New covers+ upgrades for everything!At a million words a week, I should be done by the end of feb.(Man! Had everything proofed before posting. Shoulda been after.)Oh, the AI rev? Bring it.Stealing market share, capturing a demographic, developing a fan-base?That's the game. Always has been.Unfortunately, so are goons, thieves and legislation. Luckers, people.Latest novels:The Finest Evil in the System : AI Woes Jan 2024FANTASY Aaron+Henna: The Elfin Princess's Kiss may 2023SF: Teddyhunter Rogue planets June 2023BOTH The Finest Evil in the System : AI Woes Jan 2024Shorts : The Finest Evil in the System; Loons, goons + booms.Novels are usually 100,000 words: freebies vary. (And might be ANYTHING!)If you don't fall over laughing at least once while reading, the book is a failure.Other than that, SF is the lit/philosophy of western urbanization.Problem-solvingthe effect of techon peoplevia new mythology.Beware, you MAY learn something. Or think a bit here and there, even in the comics..Cartooning? Does-is-ought. Take a does, show what it is, (is is?) discuss the ought. (ie: table= work-server= that gossips)SF? what if, then what, so what?Fantasy? Any sufficiently advanced tech is indistinguishable from magic. (Characters in conflict over issues)***Readers are welcome to proof-read; if I think it's a good correction, it goes in. (just send an e-mail, book-name + quoted line) Thanks. (One long-suffering reader got a few books dedicated to him.)On a personal note; I've got nearly 2 million words published at smashwords.com now. SF + fantasy novels, cartoons + short-stories.Jeez, lemme see; This whole mess got started in grade school; shorts in HS; novels after. (first one done in pencil.)Dozen or so 80,000 word novelettes (mostly type-writer.); first computer stuff, 80's; novels+shorts.Years of zines, quarterlies, novels, cartoons; (apple-clones, compacts, pcs) '86: BBSing a shorts echo (rogue-bone), blogs and cartooning. I THINK I can add another million words there. Maybe. Most of them are lost unless some old CD backups turn up.2021: Dead tree? If you don't make the best-seller list with your first novel today, you don't get a second. An 8-million web-wonder hit is entry-level stuff. (for movies. An ebook best seller is 10,000 or so) I think my count is 43 currently published over 8 years; and another dozen or so early works lost.******************* WARNING! * Live and live, (long i vs short) tho and thou. I use thou as tho sometimes. It's the most common complaint. Mostly edited out, but I still do.******************Writing has been a hobby of mine since the third grade, and was an ambition even earlier. Cartooning, music + philosophy are other bad habits I keep up. (Plus a few secret ones I'm NOT telling you about, so there!)Zining SF cons with shorts for years (on the freebie table) was a hobby. Well, till charging for intros,(lessons) freebie-table placements and contests became common. It was fun; quarterly editions, mostly. Fantasy, horror (Halloween), children's (Christmas), romantic comedy, (Valentines, st pats) hard SF, on july 1st or world con.Most are in the short-story collections, tho I'm still writing the occasional one today.Enjoy, thanks, pass it on! (Have a day of it, eh?)

Book preview

chapter 0 summary

Tracker hunts escaped robot teddybears, runaway bots and other rich-kid toys. Angel is a female cyborg, head of city-security, borg division. She stole AI code from the (secret) UFO galaxy observer Greysuit; her new AIs accidentally-on-purpose escaped. AI-wars resulted with earth under galactic quarantine till cured of escaped AIs.

A bodyguard cyborg called Mindy helps Tracker; she’s his girlfriend and the two of them accidentally got hooked together in bio-net, saving each other lives.

Several adventures later: The last UFO observer was a mad GMO-scientist type and a still-quarantined Earth, a low-class civilization, got treated as his personal lab-rat. The Galaxy’s military is starting to get nervous at how fast we handle these little problems.

Presently Harvey, (cyborg teacher and ex-dean of an underground cyborg school) has a donated alien-tech super-suit. Cyborg Mindy, Tracker’s girlfriend has 6 UFO-cloned daughter-girls with useless embedded crystal tech and 6 corp-clone boyfriends.

Mindy and Tracker’s son was ripped from Mindy’s womb and stolen as a fetus, tanked and born as a modified rogue cyborg by a UFO observer.

There is a galactic military black-bot wandering about trying to sterilize leaked tech and rogue AIs.

A rather large, 4 billion-year-old prehistoric mushroom is in the basement of our planet, one of seven known to exist in the galaxy. He’s powerful enough to laugh at any technology. Mindy, Tracker’s cyborg girlfriend, had Tiberius, their fetus-child, taken, tanked, birthed and trained in crystal-net tech by the last mad-scientist type UFO observer.

Jaz, another UFO clone from the same lab and Tiberius are now ambassadors to the galaxy at large, almost the only people who can talk to the sapient mushrooms living in deep bedrock all over the Galaxy.

chapter 1 sam

Breakfast afreshco in a cafe, a pleasant enough outing. Muffins and hot coffee for me; health-food weirdness for Mindy. One of those places, right? She ate ravenously, I starved and made piteous noises about the lack of edibles in the vicinity of my breakfast plate.

Till the gunfire started, that is. Shots sounded far, far off-track. I ignored them, but Mindy perked right up at the sound and started looking around for the fun.

Look, it’s a bot! A bullet zinged overhead, hissing a little as it splanged into something buildingish overhead and got stopped cold. Chippy, anyway. Mindy was aiming for a distant robotic eyeball before I even blinked. They’re shooting at you, Tracker!

Unusual for a cyborg she hadn’t shot anybody yet, but Min was very upset someone had just taken a couple shots at me. Sort of. I did notice Mindy only had one gun out. That mean she wasn’t seriously worried, or battle-ready yet.

Weird. A bot. And he tried to shoot you? She went on in disbelief, scratching behind one ear with the barrel of her pistol as she made big eyes at the ruckus in the distance.

Assassins are like that, dear. I wasn’t very concerned. Cheap guns, cheap ammo and distant bots don’t make for big dangers. Most free-bots couldn’t shoot straight if their lives depended on it anyway. Few have guns or ammo they know well enough to do anything dangerous with.

One teddy-bot tried to kill me; and the rest still love me. I answered a nervously vibrating Mindy. She wanted in on the fun. Most of them. No danger. I’m a deacon in their church, remember?

That might be why one was shooting at you. Deacon. You’re right, it’s safe now. Tell me Tracker; why did this bot just try to assassinate you? Mindy went on, scanning around hard.

If anybody looked twice at Mindy right now they’d find out cyborgs are trained from before birth to stomp things flat, hard, fast and not overthinking it a lot.

This was not a good time to attract the attention of a crown-of-creation. They were adorable but keen to hit first; hard, early and fast and then shoot the witnesses a few times.

You do see the other bots over there ripping his arms and legs off, dear? Tapping my deacon-goggles happily, my eyes didn’t even come up to look. I asked for the leftovers to go to the muties this time. He can do his learning and growth from down there. That got mumbled absently, me waving vaguely at the ruckus from behind a menu.

Danger? Derisively, I snorted. It’d been sad, really. One bot pulled a gun and gotten a couple bad stray shots off before every other bot within sight had taken him apart. Some had leaped into the fray from balconies to defend their deacon.

Me. I was their deacon. A handy job and a big change for someone that used to track down and return runaway bots.

Yeah, I see your cavalry. Why? Mindy was more than puzzled. Her side-arm had not gotten put away yet. Why’d he try to shoot you, Tracker? Explain.

Probably because I’m what’s used as a boogie-man to scare robot babies and children to sleep in both bot-net and church-net. Maybe the cult colonies too.

I sighed wearily. Mindy-hon, I’m TeddyHunter. The Teddyhunter, the hunter-killer Brother John converted to bot-help and I just might remember how to eat babies if the kids are bad enough.

Kids? Robots with babies? Mindy asked in disbelief. Ah. Listen, Tracker…

You do bot-tantric sex studies and they haven’t told you about this yet? My chuckle was deep, unforced and gleeful. Oboy, let me. You see when two bots really, really like each other’s goals…

Ow. Then there’s Rule 34. That came out quickly as Mindy took a furious swing at me from the other side of the breakfast table, missed by miles and upholstered her gun in the same motion.

I got ignored again as she linked into an internal conversation with bot-net.

If it’s possible someone is out there trying it, right? I went on, chuckling. Trying to sell the photos too.

Ow. Right. Ew! That came out after Mindy stared off into space for a few moments, looking things up with her internal link. My girl was not pleased with this day and it was showing on her face.

There are lots of baby-bots, the net says so. Some conjoined parasites, some assembled, some self-assembled. A few random.

Next time any bot tries to kill you I get first crack at them anyway. She grumbled, still annoyed at something and glaring around at innocent bushes here like they were harboring unsafe thoughts. Not you or your help. Me. Is that clear?

Happens about once a month, dear. Or so bot-net tells me. The last one got turned into a talking door-stop at Marley’s, in the rent-a-room-hourly part. I’ll introduce you sometime.

Relax, would you? Bad? He almost shot himself in the foot. Crazy-bots are like that.

Grinning at killer-girl only made her madder. I did it anyway. Not all escaped bots can afford heaps of ram and CPU upgrades, hon. All the dumb ones know is I’m very dangerous and some people don’t want me in the church. That’s all they have to know.

Hey, the breeders have sex-tantrix too. Neat. My girl wasn’t listening anymore and I groaned. Mindy’s baby-blue eyes almost crossed as she went thru some bot-baby tantric, muttering to herself as she stared off into space. Accept-ask-work; romp-hustle-learn; ruined-broken-trained. Strike nine, side down. She went on to herself, puzzled by something.

Trained, ha! Carted, more likely. Unstable horsing around. Mindy was muttering to herself as she looked thru some fresh net-droppings. I sighed. Mentioning sex was always a mistake with Min, my girl was devoted to tantric lessons. She practiced everything she learned on me too.

So far I didn’t have many complaints. Well, except for the smellier oils.

Looking things up instantly was reflex for her. I’ve seen her do it in the middle of battle, and stop to make notes. She was probably reading up on the methods used to program little bot babies right now to see if there was anything there she could do to me.

That sounded like something she’d want to read up on.

So we can eat now? I asked as waiter came over for our orders. It was a bot and he was part of the church, you could tell from his chest-patch. He was also deep in conversation with Mindy long before he even got close to the table as my cyborg girlfriend demanded and got data, likely tac-updates on every assignation attempt ever made on me in recent years and all the insider-info on local loons.

Mindy was not going to let a gunfight get by her again if she could help it, but she was already looking disappointed. As you might expect, unstable bots were both rare and very unpredictable.

*

Hey, tantric! Thank goodness for modern types. Frolic is a lifetime goal, sex-work forbidden in most cultures and learning a bucket of sand from dune-dude.

There was a cyborg squirm with that. Now for some applied AI and bot-tantrix. Yeah us and the UFOs! Mindy was gloating as we got back in from breakfast, her still reading net-news. Tantric or methods of assassinating me, it was hard to tell which by now.

Today’s fun would be from the bot-tantrix school of electronic add-ons, I was betting. (Wearing a jewel belt of glowing crystals, ie. On acupuncture points. That cycled a frequency. Aroma therapy gone modern-electronic was what she called it. I believed her.)

Us? Again? Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow! There was a dirty look with that. I ignored it.

Hon, are you’re still mad UFO-guy stole our kid and tank-developed him into a crystal-galactic? Don’t be. There was a gunfight at our breakfast table you missed out on? Relax, it’ll happen again. Or that Tiberius jumped at the chance of getting away off planet and away from you? I asked nervously. Mindy just glared at me.

I almost chuckled. She almost hit me. Why, Min? You knew everyone and their dog was gonna get interested if any cyborg ever managed to have kids. My shrug didn’t help. You were the runaway that caught. You. The whole galaxy came down on the situation and so did every arms-dealer in the world. The UFOs won, get over it.

There was a dirty look. A hot, dirty look like Min wanted to make another baby right here and now in the hallway. If that’s where we were.

Breeding female cyborgs are what they were after, Tracker. Me, my friends and mine only. Min snapped back at me. Guy cyborgs have had all kinds of kids.

That came out angrily as Mindy fumed injustice. Cyborg kids? Norms if they survive at all. Usually born broken, cyborgs get lots of gene-mods while tanked. Like clones, almost none survive very long. Their kids either. Me, mad?

Mindy grinned maliciously at me and I winced. A lot more than you know, lad. She whispered evilly.

We’re not making another baby till we find a place to hide for a year or two; and a better way to keep her quiet. Mindy was quietly furious and I groaned. Quiet was the worst kind of mad with her. It meant she’d decided to fester and wait until it was possible to get something insidious done.

She also wanted a daughter this time. I guess her six ufo clone-brats weren’t female company enough for her.

Me, I was sure Mindy had ‘way too much time to think about this.

My little cyborg was content to wait and live in a fuming, angry, miserable kind of festering way. The kind of ripening frustration and hard-nosed focus only a professional killer can do.

Punching out the UFO-guy (currently serving hard time for treating earth as his private lab-rat off planet) won’t do, she’d gotten lots of time to plan real nasty deviousness by now.

The little fact UFO-guy had probably saved her son’s life by taking and tanking her him wasn’t relevant. His meddling was.

Not when Tiberius, Mindy’s months-old son had a girlfriend, was off-planet and working for a living already. He’d hardly even said goodbye; nobody but Mindy wondered why. She’d been awfully rough on the lad in the few months he’d been around.

The girls agree, Tracker. If anyone gets pregnant we disappear and raise them ourselves. Alone in the woods, if nothing else. It’ll take five years tops; less if we can score on a tank. Mindy added briskly. But using that much tech is a beacon telling people where we are. Natural is better, but we don’t get crystal-kids that way.

Try a med-doc from the teddies. A tank. And a cesarean section, the new-age tank.

Mindy started glaring at me again and I sighed wearily. You know the girls are rogue-tech, Min. Any of their kids will need a tank to survive long before they got born, more than yours did. If you want any of the kids to live, that is. Go Teddy, you need them. Med-bot, not live-tank.

I am perfectly capable… Mindy started. I closed my eyes and went away in my mind. This was an old argument, and we both knew all the steps by heart.

Unfortunate fact. Cyborg zygotes need a lot of babying. DNA editing extra. If we wanted any kids from the girls or Mindy to live, tanking was our best bet and earth-tech was iffy at best. Technically, Mindy might be able to carry a child to term but all the experts said that probably won’t work very well with a DNA-damaged cyborg.

The galatics had much better tank-tech than we did but nobody had duped it yet. Being a backward and violent race, it was forbidden tech here, too.

Mushy says Harv’s new suit should help. Mindy went on determinedly. It came from a geneticist’s ship, remember? A galactic one. Right at the moment we’re trying to decide who gets it.

Who? Which of my little girls? I gurked. That was a show-stopper as none of our six (three sets of) twin girls, international comedy stars as they were, were even two years old yet.

Tank-grown cyborgs lived a different life from we mere humans. Three sets of crystal twins and my blond cyborg crown-of-creation had radically different priorities, even for kids. But any of my fashionista girls wearing just one suit for nine whole months? Unheard of.

Oh. Harvey know this yet? And the other crowns are willing to help you out?

I wheezed thru the little floating lights in my eyes after my coughing fit had slowed a bit. Harvey was the ex-dean of various cyborg schools, including the island one our crystal-enabled girls went to for fun. He stayed hidden island-side because it was harder for his ex-students to sneak up on him there.

Harvey’d gotten trapped in UFO-guy’s ship a couple times trying to rescue us recently; a confused but friendly computer outfitted him as a midshipman there, hence the suit. That meant Harvey was wearing a super-suit that could take over the planet on any given quiet afternoon on his little island, and it was a suit that won’t work for anyone else.

Galactic tech was a bit beyond anything we could do around here. They had a few satellites orbiting making sure we didn’t dabble in forbidden weaponry right now. If he still had the suit, Harvey was probably labelled as one of their own and ignored by the sats.

The suit can act tank if we carry full term. Mushy says so, via Radiant. Mindy said into my stunned silence. It’ll do that much on auto.

That doesn’t help much. Radiant’s method of knowledge is to throw bull around and sell whatever sticks. What’d he leave out? Grunting, I settled into a chair and desperately started looking household bills over.

Wait. You want to equip a hungry, cranky, pregnant cyborg with a suit she can wipe up the world with? 24/7, for months at a time? Then ask her to be good? Warn me first, please.

No. No way, that’s just asking for trouble, UFO genes or not. Give the babe to Mushy; don’t invite Radiant over here. Let the mushroom tank a kid to term. That probably wasn’t even possible but sounded better than trying to live with a pregnant cyborg stuck in a galactic war-suit to me.

This was not good news. Radiant wanted on my girl’s good side and didn’t care what happened to my place getting there. Or me. He’d shown that a few times; heaps of dirty dishes were the least of it.

Looking around my place and praying for sanity was all I had. There wasn’t much left here, not with the bills and notices my brats had piled up. (You have no idea how much a dozen cyborgs can eat till you’ve tried paying for it, for instance.)

Till Mindy bent enough to marry me, my home was still my bachelor pad, even if it’d been bombed out of existence a few times, used as a tank-nursery for while, then reno’d into corp-clone barracks.

The place needed a few repairs again as a dozen or so cyborgs wandering around tended to be really hard on the furnishing. Mindy could spend money faster than it appeared but that was usually on weapons, not curtains.

There was no mercy from Henry when it came time to pay for any of Mindy’s experimental add-ons either.

Radiant is the only one that can talk to Mushy; that fungus just drops things on the rest of us. Radiant can handle that, warn us and maybe talk Mushy into things. He’s a great cook, too. My girl answered quickly. Too quickly, she obviously wanted something from Radiant; something she couldn’t beat out of him either.

I wondered what. Radiant was a natural like me; a ganga before getting borged by teddy-bots, then mushroomed into something cyborg-like. Very hard to predict, Radiant was.

Cyborgs are always hungry and gun-happy. The easiest way into their hearts and minds, assuming you couldn’t pound your way in, was to look like a chocolate gun. Radiant was a little different from that, but not by much. He liked girls and money.

Around here chocolate worked. I knew; and it took me forever to find that trick and it didn’t always smooth things over. The only other ways to get a cyborg’s dedicated cooperation were very tricky.

Accidentally reprogramming Min’s bios chip to adore me did it; while trying to reboot Henry’s wonky upgrades and save her life. She lived but would never let anyone touch the chip again. I think she likes me now.

No Radiant. You trust him? Why? You’re one of the things Mushy dropped on me, remember? I chuckled happily. We met in his place. A deep damp cave far, far underground. Past the mutie farms. His dark, wet and gloomy home.

I remember. Chased my last boyfriend in there trying to kill him. The dealer who dumped me into borg-arms so he could get away. Remember him? The antigrav sled blew up and took out most of the cavern while we were fighting him. Mindy grinned and sighed. You both got away. Good times.

You were fighting him. Mushy was saving me. Big boom. Made a couple new farm-caves. I corrected her. Oh, and the drugged boyo I escorted out of the deeps didn’t last in prison. Between annoying you, killing a couple Borg and being a general screwup, he died fairly quickly.

I know. Friends of mine in there offered me his scalp and anything else I wanted off his body. Mindy mentioned dryly. While he was still using them.

Cyborgs! I gulped and stayed quiet.

*

You had to invite him over. You just had to! I thought you were keen to get to the island and see what Harvey’s new suit can do. Maybe which of the girls to get pregnant or something like that.

My better-half glared at me as I complained. She had secret plans she did not want leaked to teddy-net; the deacon-goggles I wore had a nasty habit of reading your mind these days.

Then leaking the info out. Anything I knew, heard or wondered about bot-net knew about too. So Mindy had lots of secrets these days she didn’t always tell me.

The goggles were great; they ordered pizza before I even got hungry now, (or whatever else I was in the mood for, surprisingly enough) but Mindy put a fast stop to that kind of nonsense. She was the diet-queen here. After eating all the delivered food, of course, both mine and hers.

She answered with her glare-gone-frosty. Listen, Tracker. Think baby-blues. The boys are against using them as the fathers. They want undamaged genetics, not corp-clone experiments; their DNA is too chewed-up to trust. The girls seem to object and agree both.

Seem? I shook my head. Min was drifting into her own logics again and I didn’t always follow her there.

Not arguing, not listening either. They get to decide who the father is, not the boys. Or Mushy. I blinked at that. As long as the girls weren’t picking on me, I didn’t care who they were planning to blame for this.

Like Min, if they thought blaming everything on me would do any good my girls won’t hesitate a second. There wasn’t a hope their boyfriends weren’t like that either.

Oh. Damaged DNA. Like yours, right? I thought Harvey’s suit was supposed to fix all that. Wha’sup? I asked that carefully. If my girls were a clean go, I might be in for a lot of new troubles. Mindy LOVED babies and she’d be wherever the girls were. Then she’d drag me along, even out into the woods.

She usually got them here eventually, tho she had spent time nursing her twin hordes down on Melody’s farm for a while. Her kids were ‘way too popular, tho.

If any government in the world knew about this they’d be after the new killer-talent made hammer and tongs; and my place wasn’t built for that traffic anymore.

Not that cyborgs minded. They enjoyed a good fight, just not from the whole galaxy at once. The last crystal-births were Tiberius and Jaz; they hadn’t lasted long here on earth before being recruited into something they couldn’t refuse.

The suit might work as a clone-tank on a pregnant female, Tracker. Might. Ted-med and Mushy backup? That’s one of the things we have to find out. We want crystal-tech, too.

That came out absently. I began to see what Mindy wanted with Radiant. He was our Mushy connection, but far enough removed from her schemes the Mushroom won’t get any hint of her mad plots. If she got Radiant to work whatever she was up to instead of her.

Whatever these latest cyborg-upgrade plots were.

I was against Radiant on general principles. He cooked, but did not clean up the mess. Rad had influence with the biggest power on the planet but had roots in Marley’s ganga farms in the air-plant. Always trying to break news, but usually settled for breakins.

Radiant’s problems got left on a regular basis, bills and bedlam both. Besides, he left me up the creek without a paddle once and I was not giving him a chance to ever do that again.

Five-star General Mindy was not going to listen to me, but I tried anyway.

HA! No. Whatever it is you’re up to Min, no! You go crystal and ask Mushy for help yourself. He might forgive your last crystal-enabled child wandering off-planet enough to help with a new one. But Radiant? Any screwup is a hoot, any score a gain, useful is pure accident. Radiant is…

A friend of ours, the only contact we have that can translate Mushy-the-Great into human and almost the only person we know that lives deep rock these days. Mindy stopped and seemed to think a bit. Other than Melody, Harmony and her zombie farmers.

Marley doesn’t count? I grunted in annoyance. Us? Henry? Or the deep-bot cult-colonies? They’ll be glad to hear that. You haven’t offered to beat Marley up or dance in her club for days, hon. What’s up with that?

Don’t worry about the real deeps, Muties are no great fun. I grumped on. They’re tried to kill or enslave us anytime we’ve ever been there anyway.

Mindy was ignoring me again. If she had a place for Radiant in her plans, that was the end of it as far as she was concerned.

Lemme see, dear. The person you need a favor from is high priest to the mushroom clan. I went on. Mushy definitely is a god to the muties. Radiant is high priest to the mushroom and loves it. What’s the price gonna be for his help?

Try Melody the priestess instead. Whoa. I stopped my rant and glared at Mindy. Wait. The only way to get Radiant here was to tell him the girls were visiting and one of them had asked for him. Or at least a cooking lesson. You bringing in their bots?

Mindy ignored me and puttered around planning things. Upgrading defenses against lunatic bot assignation attempts, I think. It looked that way.

Radiant doesn’t like the tantric school sex-bots, not even the ones our girls modelled for, Tracker. Min answered quietly.

Or mine, the pervert. Or bot-tantric. He’s of the opinion that electronic aids are a little too static for use in real-time. I wasn’t gonna try bribing him with some specialty-bot programming, if that’s what bugging you.

I cringed at that. Henry had a few of the copy-bots we’d just had made of our girls. The first time I walked into the lab and saw my twins running around in little-french-maid outfits I almost croaked.

The thing was, the bots were actually cleaning.

Henry admitted his new copy-bots spent most of their time researching the basement weirdness-labs, but they did come upstairs and chirp at him occasionally. Especially the redheaded bot, who he’d outfitted as a lab-coated assistant. Henry was waiting for them to develop personalities and was upgrading them for that day.

I groaned. Hunting teddy-bots that developed personalities then ran away gave me a perspective on that. I wondered if Henry thought he was going to keep these bots once they got uppity.

Anyway, I think turning up for a mutie-hunt might be fun. Mindy groused on. A surprise anyway. A nice relaxing picnic.

No. Not my idea of relaxing. The shudder was real. Muties like to hunt norm trespassers in the deep tunnels, or used to. In the dark, with dogs. Mindy liked to swim down fish in the dark, herself. I don’t think the muties were stupid enough to try attacking a crown-of-creation assignation-cyborg tho, even an older model like Mindy.

Besides, my girl had lots of Henry’s latest experimental weapons-tech embedded. The muties could tie her to a post in a firing range and she’d still wipe the floor with them before they got back to shoot at her.

And their dogs, too. I’ve seen her wipe the floor with harder people.

Radiant. Here. Ew. He was distasteful. I hadn’t liked the only ganga-borg in existence since he’d tossed me back into battle a long time ago. He’d saved me first, of course, got the info he wanted then dropped me back into active fire against some corp-clones.

That was my story and I was sticking to it. Rad was not my favorite person.

Min, listen. Radiant is a flake, a wandering bard. A girl in every cult-colony, mutie settlement and most zombie farms. Owes money to most of them, welcome only if he brings good news and fresh tunes. A dancer, a priest. Lives the popularity contest.

My rant made no impression on Mindy. We do not need his action. He’d trip you into the zombie charge, then run backwards. Trust me on that.

My girl didn’t say much. She was likely to pound her way into any of those places and demand things if it occurred to her.

Radiant was actually a lot more peaceful than any cyborg would be, and most clones.

Yes Deacon-Tracker. She started sweetly, still puttering away. Radiant is a con-man selling religion. Yes, he can talk to Mushy. Yes, he walks away from his messes only when he can’t run away, doesn’t work that I’ve ever seen, and has crystal-net to patrol. But I might need him for this.

The corps still send in squads there every once in a while. Between our girls and Mushy, they aren’t getting anywhere. Mindy told me quietly. And Radiant. He does all right considering Mushy thinks we’re all just aggravating may-flies. Our whole species is just a ten-million year blip in his four billion years.

I grunted again. I don’t care, hon. No. No Radiant. To the point where if I want to talk to Mushy I’ll do it myself rather than let him in on anything we want done. Why did you call him, dear? Trouble follows him around.

I’ll tell you. Mindy finally said faintly. Regretfully and with a bemused intensity. If you take your clothes off. Especially those goggles. And leave them out here.

*

Radiant was supposed to run as flake and interference. I didn’t know any more when we were finished than when I’d started, if you ignore some new tantric tricks Mindy had found today. Romp, work and learn? Mindy was grousing about the shortages of doctorates in her urbanization again.

I think she was talking about me.

Anyway, Mindy was keen to get Radiant onside with her latest little project, that of getting her girls pregnant and their kids upgraded from rogue-cyborg to full-crystal galactic. Nothing major or anything, right?

The mind boggles. Via getting some kittens fixed up as crystal was the tricky part of her plan.

Anything crystal on earth needed Mushy’s blessings; and a snoopy galactic ok. Mushy could erase you from a couple continents away if he felt like it; and Mushy didn’t want crystal-tech on earth much. We’d need help from a wandering galactic who felt like selling passports, nukes and crystal-tech programs to the natives here to get this done at all.

Plus we’d have to hide it on the moon.

Any help we found better have the ability to duck surveillance from both Mushy and Black-Bot. Since the best we had was a single ship-suit that didn’t listen or won’t do anything for anyone but the owner, aid and abetting crystal-works for a new generation of cyborg earth-warriors was looking to be very unlikely.

Mindy was out to do things anyway; upgrade her grandkids. Her way. Radiant, Mushy and any new-found galactic help aside, I was boyfriend and supposed to help her.

The good news was Harvey’s new suit was not a tank but it could keep the girls and fetus healthy; with any luck. Lots of emergency first aid if nothing else. Crystaled programming was something only Mushy could do locally and for some odd reason Mushy didn’t trust Mindy; or humans at all. Mindy