Word Puppets Read online

  “eDawg was searching for treats then. She shouldn’t be excited here. Think ‘scared.’ ”

  The sniffing changed instantly. eDawg crouched and shivered. She lifted her nose and sniffed twice. Saskia’s jaw dropped. It looked exactly like eDawg emerging from her doghouse in the thunderstorm episode. “Are you doing this by rote?”

  “I’m mimicking your movement.”

  Saskia glared at Metta. “You can’t just copy what I did in episodes, you’ll make inappropriate choices.”

  Patel pursed his lips and turned to Saskia. “Can you teach her?”

  The taste of “no” filled her mouth, but a kid’s life was on the line. “How long do I have?”

  “Two hours.”

  They wanted her to teach fifteen years of experience in two hours. Not possible. She bit her lower lip and tried to focus on the problem at hand. “What’s your cue to enter?”

  “The kidnapper gave us the address; Mr. Cruise is supposed to drop eDawg off a block away.”

  “eDawg wouldn’t understand it if you told her to go to a specific address. You could point her in a direction or tell her to ‘go home,’ but that’s about it.” This was stupid. There was no way she could teach Metta everything she needed to know about the character in time.

  Patel’s jaw worked subtly as he subvocalized. Metta gave no outward sign of having a private conversation with him, instead she said, “What sort of signals might eDawg look for?”

  “A whistle, a trail of eTreats, a ball . . . someone familiar? I don’t know. Look—” Saskia caught herself before she could offer to perform eDawg for the ransom drop. She might know puppetry, but there was no way she should be involved in a kidnapping investigation. “You’ll have to hope it’s obvious.”

  “Will you show me the correct response to each of those?”

  Saskia’s neck stiffened like someone had shoved a control rod through her spine. There was not enough time. “Do you want me to just perform the puppet?” She wanted to call the words back as soon as they were out of her mouth, but she didn’t see a choice if they wanted to get this kid back.

  Patel looked at her and smiled. “We were just talking about that.”

  “And what have you decided?”

  Metta raised her chin. “We’re still discussing it.”

  “I think having Ms. Dorlan work the puppet may be our best option.” Patel tugged at the cuff of his shirt and avoided looking at Metta’s interface.

  Metta’s nostrils flared, for all the world as if she’d taken a deep, angry breath. “I can learn this.”

  “Look.” Saskia raised her hand. “It’s not that I don’t think you can, but it took me fifteen years to get to where I am—”

  “With all due respect, I learn faster than you can.” Metta rocked eDawg back on her heels in a perfect match of Saskia’s movement. “I simply need the right instructions, which I am not getting.”

  “Excuse me if I don’t offer to upload my brain for you. But, gosh. I can’t. You want to learn this. You have to practice it. And you have two hours. So do you want to practice or do you want me to work the puppet?”

  Patel’s jaw moved but he said nothing that Saskia could hear. At her feet eDawg lay down and powered off.

  Patel cleared his throat and turned to Saskia. “So you’re willing to work the puppet?”

  Saskia ought to have felt vindicated that they recognized her skills, but there were still so many things that could go wrong with this role. But there was this kid, Wade, and underneath that . . . she loved working eDawg. She loved the purity of motivation in the character and the simple trust of being a dog. “What would I have to do?”

  “Not much. You’d carry the money in saddlebags and wait for the kidnappers to send you back with instructions. We’ll use the cameras built into the puppet to map the location.” Patel seemed to sense Saskia’s unease. “It’s extremely unlikely that Wade will be there. Typically, the kidnappers keep the victim at a safe distance from the drop location.”

  Thank God. The possibility that a mistake might get the kid killed had slowly been making its way to the front of her brain.

  Patel gestured to the puppet. “Want to practice?”

  “That’s okay.” Puppetry came as easily as breathing. Saskia frowned, remembering all the quirks of the rig. “I think you’ll have to put it in a truck.”

  “What? Why?” Patel said. “I thought it was designed to work remotely.”

  “It’s designed to work in a studio; the farther away I am, the more likely you are to have a delay or interference with the wireless signal.”

  “Ah. What else do you need?”

  “I need a picture of Wade.” The toy’s tiny brain would have learned to recognize Wade as its owner and part of eDawg’s character was all about strong loyalty. If she was going to do this part, she was going to do it right. Speaking of doing it right. “And you’ll need to talk to my agent.”

  While Patel oversaw transferring the rig to a truck, Metta briefed Saskia on what they knew about Wade’s kidnapping, which was very little. Wade had disappeared from the family home two nights previously. The housekeeper had found Devon Taylor, Wade’s bodyguard, on the floor of Wade’s rec room, dead from a gunshot wound to the chest. Ballistics showed that he had been shot by his own weapon, but it had not been self-inflicted. The forensic evidence suggested the gun had been fired while the assailant was trying to get it away from Taylor.

  The security tapes were erased. There were no signs of forced entry.

  The following day, a ransom e-mail had arrived from a free account.

  If Wade’s father had carried a kidnapping policy on his insurance, they might have considered him as a suspect, but he didn’t, so he stood to gain nothing. Currently, they were expecting that Saskia would see someone related to a household staff member, but not one of the intimate family members.

  “But,” Metta stressed, “I’m only telling you this so you can have appropriate reactions as eDawg. You are not here to investigate. We’ll monitor what you see and evaluate that.”

  Saskia nodded and stared at the holo of Wade that Metta was projecting. According to the AI, the boy was thirteen years old. His black hair was slicked back in the latest style and looked like it had a week’s salary worth of styling products in it. But he smiled at the camera with remarkable openness and held eDawg in his lap.

  Patel poked his head through the doorway. “We’re ready for you now.”

  A thrill of butterflies tingled in her gut. It had been years since a show made her nervous. Not that this was really a show, not in the traditional sense.

  From the outside, the truck looked like it belonged to UPS. Inside, it was a studio in miniature.

  On a small table, the puppet lay waiting for Saskia’s manipulation to bring it to life. Metta’s virtual-head floated over a desktop interface in the corner of the truck. Boxes were stacked at the front of the rig to shield it from casual view through the truck’s windshield.

  The act of strapping herself into the rig soothed Saskia the way she imagined others might feel about yoga. As much as she enjoyed traditional puppetry, motion-capture was the closest she got to actually being something else.

  When she was suited up, with a sensor at each of her major joints, and the vowel capture next to her lips, she tweaked the carapace to get the right amount of resistance. A motion-capture rig had a higher level of articulation than a standard VR suit, but it required finer calibration. More importantly, it provided haptic feedback so that she could feel the floor under eDawg’s feet.

  Saskia dropped the VR headset in place.

  When the feed on the headset went live, Saskia had a moment of disorientation as she adjusted to looking through eDawg’s eyes. Inside the carapace, she flexed her left hand to activate the ears. With her right, she triggered the control that manipulated eDawg’s tail. Then, with each joint, she stretched, checking the range of movement. Saskia’s mind shifted as her consciousness of the puppet’s body became
greater than her awareness of her own.

  She stood on the table and Patel towered over her. Wagging her tail, she barked for attention.

  He jumped, and then, as if he couldn’t help himself, Patel patted her on the head. The rig pushed against her head as it readjusted to the puppet’s new position. It felt as if her head were being patted.

  She wagged her tail in a frenzy of pleasure.

  Patel grinned sheepishly and looked over to the side. “I know it’s a puppet, but you’re really good.”

  Saskia turned her head to follow his gaze and saw herself.

  She looked away. The image of her body twitching in a web of cables and rods was not one she needed in her head while she was performing.

  Another agent climbed into the truck with Hamilton Cruise behind him. Cruise was lean and sinewy. His eyes were red and his entire body leaned forward as if he wanted something badly.

  He examined her, strapped into the rig. “What’s this?”

  Patel said, “Ms. Dorlan is the original puppeteer for eDawg. She’s agreed to—”

  “The kidnapper asked for Wade’s eDawg. I wasn’t informed about this.”

  “It’s a decision we reached this morning.”

  “I will not have you taking chances with my son’s life!” The veins in his neck stood out like control cables gone wrong.

  Metta said, “Mr. Cruise, we believe that Ms. Dorlan’s participation is the best chance to bring your son out unharmed. She is a professional puppeteer and knows this character better than anyone.”

  Saskia stopped fiddling with the sensor at her elbow and stared at Metta. That could not have been easy for the AI to say.

  “I don’t care if she’s Lassie! I object to this in the strongest possible terms. I demand that you send in Wade’s toy.”

  “Sir, even if that were advisable, the toy is currently disassembled as our technicians try to retrieve its memory without wiping it. It is not possible to send the toy in.”

  Cruise’s face strobed through a spectrum of color—white, red, and ended in purple. “If anything happens to my boy, you’ll hear from my lawyers. This is gross incompetence.” Scowling, he thrust a pair of saddlebags at Patel. Saskia assumed they contained the ransom money.

  Patel strapped the bulging bags to eDawg. As he did, the carapace pressed against Saskia, giving her a sense of the change in weight on the puppet. When he was finished, he patted her flank. “Break a leg.”

  Metta whispered in her ear. “I’ll be riding your signal. If you need anything, subvee and I’ll have an agent take care of it.”

  “Will do.” Saskia’s heart pounded like this was her first time on stage. “Let’s kick some puppet butt.”

  Cruise carried her out to his car like she was covered with mange instead of plastic. As they drove to the rendezvous point, Saskia kept the puppet alive, looking around at the buildings, cars, and pedestrians with the random curiosity of a dog.

  When the car stopped, Cruise opened the door to let her out. They were at a street corner in the industrial district. The interstate ran overhead and buildings hunched up against it, almost making a tunnel of the street.

  eDawg would not know what to do. She looked up at Cruise and whined.

  He pointed. “Go on.”

  When he pointed again, angrily, as if she were a real dog, she trotted down the street. The buildings towered over her puppet body and made her feel very small.

  The abandoned Masonic Lodge where the drop was supposed to occur was at the end of the block, but she could think of no motivation for eDawg to go there. So she sniffed and explored the street, praying for a cue.

  The door opened.

  Out of the darkness, she heard a short whistle. Thank heavens. Cocking her head, she trotted to the door, pausing to peer inside. The door opened onto a broad, dark lobby.

  Three doors spanned the far wall. They were heavy double-doors with amber stained glass in their upper panel. On her right, a fourth door opened on a flight of stairs.

  Saskia knew someone had to be behind the front door, but it would never occur to eDawg to look. So she walked to the middle of the room, her hard paws clattering on the marble floor. When the door shut behind her, she yelped and spun.

  Wade stood in the shadows.

  She bounded toward him with her tail in full wag, fighting the urge to look for the kidnappers; eDawg would only care about her owner.

  Wade’s mouth twisted in a smile. “Hello, Edie.”

  Saskia’s heart skipped. eDawg had never had a nickname; she liked it.

  As Wade stepped forward, the light from the dusty windows caught blood staining the side of his shirt.

  Metta whispered in her ear. “Can you tell if it’s his blood?”

  As if that hadn’t occurred to her. But it never paid to argue with your stage manager, and that’s what Metta was for this gig, AI or no. Saskia sidled closer, begging Wade to pet her, so she could get a closer look. When he knelt without a trace of pain in his movements, she subvocalized back to Metta, “I don’t think it is.” It must belong to his bodyguard. She had a horrible vision of the bodyguard jumping in front of Wade to save him.

  “Hey, girl.” Wade’s face was haggard and his hair hung in his eyes with all trace of style gone. He looked younger than his photo.

  Her vision of the world swung crazily as Wade scooped her up. “I’ve been so scared, Edie.”

  Where were the kidnappers?

  She rested her head on Wade’s shoulder and looked around as discretely as she could. The lobby was empty.

  He leaned his head against hers. “I’m sorry I left you, but it’s okay now. Right?”

  “Right!” she barked, as her mind raced to figure out what he meant.

  “That’s my girl.” Wade set her down and unstrapped the saddlebags from her side. “Dad sent it all, huh?”

  “Aroo?” She cocked her head at him.

  “It’s okay.” Wade peered inside one of the bags. Trotting closer, she stuck her head in the saddlebag to look. He laughed. “It’s just money. No eTreats.”

  Sitting on her haunches, she raised her front paws and begged for one of the virtual treats.

  “I’ll get you one later. Promise.” The corners of his mouth turned down and he pulled a reset key out of the saddlebag. “Man, I don’t want to do this.”

  “What is he—” Metta broke off as the center door opened.

  Three skate punks sauntered into the room. One had Day-Glo red hair in a perm like Ronald McDonald. Another was so skinny his elbows had worn holes in his green flannel shirt.

  She had to protect her owner. Loyalty was the biggest part of eDawg’s character. Getting between Wade and the skate punks, she growled with all the ferocity an electronic terrier could muster.

  Wade’s face paled and he clutched the saddlebags to his chest. “Come on, Edie.”

  She backed away slowly, still growling at the punks.

  The last punk through the door, a boy no older than Wade and with more piercings than eDawg had bolts, shook his head lazily. “I don’t think so, Wade.”

  “Do I know you?” Wade’s voice cracked an octave higher.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Piercing Boy leaned against the door.

  Trying to keep herself between Wade and the punks, Saskia subveed Metta, “Are you getting this?”

  “Yes,” Metta whispered. “We’re considering our options. The one on the left has a gun tucked in his waistband.”

  She adjusted the view in Saskia’s VR glasses to highlight a slight bulge under the shirt of the kid who looked like McDonald. Saskia couldn’t see the gun, but MickyD’s body language was filled with confidence.

  Taking Wade’s pant cuff in her mouth, she tugged toward the door. Got to get him out of there.

  MickyD slipped his gun out and pointed it at Wade.

  “What . . . what’s going on?” Wade retreated a step, making her dance to avoid getting stepped on.

  Metta whispered, “When I tell you, get Wade on the
ground.”

  Saskia’s heart was pounding so hard that it had to be shaking the puppet. She weighed all of six pounds. How the heck was she supposed to get Wade on the floor?

  “You’re coming with us.” Piercing Boy gestured to Skinny, who yanked the saddlebag out of Wade’s hands and slung it over his own shoulder. Piercing Boy stepped back through the doors leading deeper into the Masonic temple, as if absolutely certain Wade would follow. Almost before MickyD beckoned with his gun, Wade had already stumbled forward.

  In Saskia’s ear, Metta whispered, “Stay with him.”

  She trotted as close to Wade as she could, praying that the skate punks would let eDawg follow. They led her and Wade down a long hall flanked on the left by windows with the same amber glass as the lobby doors. As she passed each window, she tensed, expecting Metta’s command to come with a hail of bullets. But she passed through the flashes of light and shadow without hearing anything from the AI.

  At the end of the hall, Piercing Boy jogged down a broad set of stairs. Crap. eDawg couldn’t handle steps. Saskia stopped at the top of the steps, whining. Wade, bless him, bent to pick her up.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” MickyD held the gun in Wade’s face.

  Wade stopped, held still by the gun. His face was pale. “Her legs are too short for the stairs.”

  Saskia held her breath; she could see Wade think about snatching the gun. Bad plan. She barked at MickyD to distract both boys.

  “Screw that.” MickyD swung his foot forward and kicked her.

  Wade shouted, “No!”

  Saskia yelped as the world twisted in her vision. The stairs. Wade. A light spun past. Saskia shut her eyes against the nausea, but her harness readjusted brutally, wrenching her limbs into the puppet’s new posture. Her eyes snapped open. This was not supposed to hurt.

  eDawg lay on the landing of the stairs, in front of Piercing Boy. Behind him, MickyD and Skinny laughed like kids with a new toy. Piercing Boy kicked her twice, sliding her body to the edge of the steps and then sending her spinning through the air again.

  She tried to stay limp as the carapace forced her into new positions, but when the movement stopped, she did not have to act to make eDawg shiver. She dragged herself back to all fours, wincing as her knee protested.