Free Made to Kill by Adam Christopher Page B

silver-haired companion reappeared at his side, curling one arm up to his shoulder, and touched her lips to a spot of skin somewhere behind Fresco’s right ear. They talked with some animation in low voices but I was distracted by something else.
    That crackling had gotten louder. A lot louder.
    Then I blinked, or at least it felt like I did, and I saw Fresco’s glamorous friend was looking at me with cool blue eyes. Her hair glowed pink in the lights of the club.
    “Sparks,” said Fresco, the playboy demeanor back and turned up to eleven, “I’d like you to meet a very great friend of mine, Ms. Alaska Gray.”
    I gave a small nod.
    “Alaska,” said Fresco, cigarette in hand as he gestured at me like a landscape gardener pointing out a particularly fine specimen of tall pine, “what you see before you is an example of the pinnacle of human achievement, a wonder of the modern age—hell, a wonder of any damn age at all. Because this fine fellow is in fact the very last robot in the world, one Mr. Raymond Electromatic.”
    Alaska’s eyebrow went up and she held out her hand and turned her head in a way I would have said was alluring. I took the hand as gently as I could but while I knew the protocol I didn’t bother with a kiss. I didn’t have any lips and I figured my bronzed steel face was a probably a little cold to the touch anyway.
    Alaska took a breath and seemed to hold it. She looked sideways at Fresco. “And you know him as… Sparks?” she asked. She’d let the breath out first.
    Fresco laughed and adjusted his cigarette and nudged me with that loose elbow again. “Go on, Sparks, give her the show.”
    I lifted my hand, palm up, fingers curled like I was ready to catch a falling apple. Then I deliberately shorted a solenoid and let the little excess charge leak through my fingertips.
    And as I watched Alaska watch the blue arcs jump from finger to finger with wide-eyed delight with Fresco rocking back on his heels with laughter, I listened to the crackling sound and realized just what the hell it was.
    I needed to talk to Ada, and quick.
    I closed my hand. Show over.
    Fresco recovered himself and patted the front of his plaid jacket like he was checking it was still there. Sadly it was.
    Alaska raised a tall glass that had appeared in her hand and gave me a salute. “I’m impressed, Mr. Electromatic.”
    Fresco leaned back into Alaska as he looked at me. “I was just saying, my dear, that Sparks here should be in the movies.”
    The crackling sound ran on and on and on. I started taking readings.
    “You know,” said Fresco. “Science fiction. He’d fit right in, right?”
    “Oh, science fiction! It’s a scream!” said Alaska, doing her best impression of surprise at winning an Oscar by placing her free hand on her chest and leaning back like a ladder was about to fall on her. “It’s all Aldebaran and pink pretzels and the fourth moon had already risen, right?”
    I didn’t know anything about pretzels and why they would be pink, but right now I had other things to worry about. Like why that nervous exhaustion Eva McLuckie had so sadly come down with hadn’t prevented her from walking into my office with a bag of gold. Like how a strange chase up to the Hollywood Sign had led me to the Temple of the Magenta Dragon.
    Like how one movie star had apparently taken out a contract on the life of another.
    Like how Fresco Peterman and Alaska Gray laughed and drank and smoked and while they did those things they crackled like kids at camp eating graham crackers under the bed sheets.
    I took another reading from my Geiger counter. Fifty-seven rads was wafting off Fresco. Nearly eighty off Alaska. These two were the hottest stars in Hollywood.
    Literally.
    I left them laugh and drinking and smoking and radiating and headed for the telephone at the end of the bar.
     

 
     
     
     
11
     
     
    “ I can’t believe it,” said Ada inside my head as I held the telephone to my ear. The roar of the