Free Heart of Steel by Elizabeth Einspanier Page B
Authors: Elizabeth Einspanier
three days since you’ve slept properly.>
Mechanus dismissed this with a wave.
Arthur’s interface drone floated down to a point in Mechanus’s direct line of sight. His monitor bore a generic frowny face that still managed to look mildly disapproving.
Mechanus asked.
Mechanus protested.
Arthur was silent for several seconds.
he said finally, and the interface drone floated away.
Mechanus barely noticed the drone’s departure, so focused was he on the hybrid creation on the table before him. It was nearly complete.
Chapter
SIX
The map of Shark Reef Isle that Arthur supplied to Julia came in a distressingly thick binder. Of course, it had no index or table of contents. Fortunately, Julia was patient—or stubborn, depending on the speaker—thanks to the many hours she’d spent studying for her medical degree, and within a couple of hours she’d found Laboratory 8, where she’d seen what was left of Jim. From there it was relative simplicity to locate her room. It wasn’t labeled Guest Room—that would have been too easy, and in any case Arthur had said that Mechanus didn’t get any guests—but it was marked with a small heart.
...O-kay.
One meal and two more hours’ study later, Julia thought she might have found a possible route leading to an exterior door.
Measure twice, cut once , the sensible voice said. Make sure that is what you think it is before running off.
There was also the minor matter of patrols, in the form of robots and beast-men alike. She had to memorize the hell out of the route—and, by the looks of it, half a dozen alternate routes—to reassure herself that she could dodge the monsters that he had roaming the place.
And then there were the wolves. The dire wolves.
As she set about retracing the possible escape route—and associated hiding spots—for the thousandth time, she started to imagine how big these dire wolves would be.
She’d seen sled dogs that looked about as much like wolves as would likely be allowed in civilization, and guessed that a regular wolf would be about that big. For the dire wolves, she mentally scaled this up to about the size of a bear—comfortably big enough to be worrisome, but not ridiculously big.
And definitely not so big that an aluminum cane across the nose wouldn’t make them think twice about eating her.
She hoped.
That still left getting off Shark Reef Isle and back to civilization.
Well, if she looked around she might be able to find a solution to that. If she could perform an emergency tracheotomy with the barrel of a ballpoint pen, she could fashion a serviceable boat in a pinch.
You don’t even know which direction Hawaii is, said the sensible voice, drawing her up short.
Well. There was that.
So it was that she spent most of that night studying the map, memorizing nearby landmarks and resolving to find out what all the little symbols meant. After checking and rechecking the layout, she found that the corridors seemed to be arranged in concentric
Mechanus dismissed this with a wave.
Arthur’s interface drone floated down to a point in Mechanus’s direct line of sight. His monitor bore a generic frowny face that still managed to look mildly disapproving.
Arthur was silent for several seconds.
Mechanus barely noticed the drone’s departure, so focused was he on the hybrid creation on the table before him. It was nearly complete.
Chapter
SIX
The map of Shark Reef Isle that Arthur supplied to Julia came in a distressingly thick binder. Of course, it had no index or table of contents. Fortunately, Julia was patient—or stubborn, depending on the speaker—thanks to the many hours she’d spent studying for her medical degree, and within a couple of hours she’d found Laboratory 8, where she’d seen what was left of Jim. From there it was relative simplicity to locate her room. It wasn’t labeled Guest Room—that would have been too easy, and in any case Arthur had said that Mechanus didn’t get any guests—but it was marked with a small heart.
...O-kay.
One meal and two more hours’ study later, Julia thought she might have found a possible route leading to an exterior door.
Measure twice, cut once , the sensible voice said. Make sure that is what you think it is before running off.
There was also the minor matter of patrols, in the form of robots and beast-men alike. She had to memorize the hell out of the route—and, by the looks of it, half a dozen alternate routes—to reassure herself that she could dodge the monsters that he had roaming the place.
And then there were the wolves. The dire wolves.
As she set about retracing the possible escape route—and associated hiding spots—for the thousandth time, she started to imagine how big these dire wolves would be.
She’d seen sled dogs that looked about as much like wolves as would likely be allowed in civilization, and guessed that a regular wolf would be about that big. For the dire wolves, she mentally scaled this up to about the size of a bear—comfortably big enough to be worrisome, but not ridiculously big.
And definitely not so big that an aluminum cane across the nose wouldn’t make them think twice about eating her.
She hoped.
That still left getting off Shark Reef Isle and back to civilization.
Well, if she looked around she might be able to find a solution to that. If she could perform an emergency tracheotomy with the barrel of a ballpoint pen, she could fashion a serviceable boat in a pinch.
You don’t even know which direction Hawaii is, said the sensible voice, drawing her up short.
Well. There was that.
So it was that she spent most of that night studying the map, memorizing nearby landmarks and resolving to find out what all the little symbols meant. After checking and rechecking the layout, she found that the corridors seemed to be arranged in concentric
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