People with disabilities -- Fiction; Science fiction
Light was streaming from the opposite corridor. Docchi hurried over.
Jordan was just inside the entrance, the toaster clutched grimly in his
hand. He was hitching his truncated body slowly toward the stern.
Coming to meet him was Anti--unarmed enormous Anti. She hadn't meant
to wait for the weapon--she was pretty certain there wasn't any--she
had merely wanted to get him out of the way. And she wasn't walking;
somehow it seemed more like swimming, a bulbous huge sea animal moving
through the air. She waved what resembled fins against the wall, with
them propelling herself forward. "Melt it down," she cried.
It was difficult to make out the vaguely human form of the geepee.
The powerful shining body blended in with the structure of the
ship--unintentional camouflage, though the robot wasn't aware of it. It
crouched at the threshold of a cabin, hesitating between approaching
dangers.
Jordan raised the weapon and lowered it with the same motion. "Get out
of the way." He gestured futilely to Anti.
There was no place she could go. She was too big to enter a cabin, too
massive to let the robot squeeze by even if she wanted. "Never mind.
Get him," she called.
The geepee wasn't a genius even by robot standards. But it did know
that heat is deadly and that a human body is a fragile thing. And so it
ran toward Anti. Unlike humans it didn't need special magnetics; such
a function was built into it and the absence or presence of gravity
disturbed it not at all. It moved very fast.
Docchi had to watch though he didn't want to. The robot exploded into
action, launching its body at Anti. But it was the robot that was
thrown back. It had calculated swiftly but incorrectly--relative mass
favored the enormous woman.
The electronic brain obeyed the original instructions, whatever they
were. It got up and rushed Anti again. Metal arms shot out with
dazzling speed and crashed against the flesh of the huge woman. Docchi
could hear the rattle of blows. No ordinary person could take that
punishment and live.
But Anti wasn't ordinary. Even for an accidental she was strange,
living far inside a deep armor of flesh. It was possible she never felt
the crushing force of those blows. And she didn't turn away, try to
escape. Instead she reached out and grasped the robot, drawing it to
her. And the geepee lost another advantage, leverage. The bright arms
didn't flash so fast nor with such lethal power.
"Gravity," cried Anti. "Give me all you've got."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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