The bullets shattered wood and screamed off of stone beside him, pelting him with pieces of shattered adobe. Jean-Claude Molet dived behind a waist-high adobe wall and stubbed out his cigarette. The adobe dust spattered across his grey suede coat and black slacks.

"Merde," he grunted, then spat. Molet was on the second storey, and he was disgusted that they should have him trapped so easily.

He glanced out when the bullets paused for a moment. People were scattering down the streets and diving back into the buildings of the quaint little Arts District. His car would be watched, even if he could get to it without being punctured. Maybe it was even booby-trapped.

So, some other way to go. He coughed briefly, then threw himself through the door into the little gift shop. It had only the one door visible, but several large French windows. And across the tiny alley, there was a second small balcony with a few tables. It was a restaurant or bar of some sort, with candles on the tables protected by hurricane lamps from the cool night winds.

"What are you doing?" screamed the proprietress as Molet picked up a heavy brass pot and heaved it through the window.

"I was wondering the same, for I am not an acrobat," Molet replied. A spray of bullets took down the second window, and a ricochet cracked the glass in the third. "Oh, and keep your head down."

Molet took a running jump off the window sill and landed face-down on a table across the alley, smashing the table and sending several candles to the floor. He sat up, cradling bruised ribs, adjusted his cats-eye glasses and then scrabbled quickly inside and down the stairs.

Curious faces turned to watch him come and go, some laughing, some concerned. Molet had no time for them, however. He dashed out the back and across another street, to dive down a passageway lined with hanging flowers. Hopefully he had gained a moments rest.

There were two exits, so he relaxed for a moment. He backed out of sight into an alcove, and sat on the back of a carved bench, his feet on the polished wooden seat. He could not be seen from either end of the alley. He sighed. Time for another cigarette -- he needed to think.

He pulled the black Players pack out of his flimsy suede jacket, surveying it with sadness. It had been completely crushed in the jump and fall. He attempted to save one of the cigarettes, but it was bruised beyond all recognition. To the point of having shining filaments sticking out of the filter.

Metal filaments.  Nylon filter.

Molet dove for the back exit to the alley, leaving the pack where it lay. No telling if the transmitter was still functioning or not. Across the street behind, and into the side entrance to a small art gallery.

Police should be arriving soon to investigate the shooting, but he had no reason to trust the local police. This was a college town, and a research town. The police were cozy with the U.S. Feds, and dollars to drachmas, these were probably United States agents shooting at him. Research or no research, it was time to leave the country.

Molet moved quietly to the back of the gallery, holding his breathing steady and looking at the pastel landscapes and acrylic sculptures. They smelled of fresh chemicals.

Kidnapping wouldn't be so bad. Jean-Claude Molet was used to kidnapping attempts, ever since working on Project Think Tank. But these were real bullets. Dead, he didn't want to be.

But where to go? Trina might be fuzzy enough to think dodging bullets was romantic, but she wouldn't really hold up under fire. Hell, no one Molet knew would stand up to this, not even that tough little Ben Kott fellow.

A strange look passed over Molet's face. What was it Kott had said? Molet pulled out his wallet and read the card. Alan Benjamin Kott. An address nearby, one of those ancient buildings converted in the eighties to "artist's lofts." As if any normal artist could afford a loft in the Arts District.

Molet's command of American idiom was not complete, but it had seemed very odd when Kott had given him the card. "If you're ever in trouble, deliver yourself to this address and try not to think too far out of the box."

What could Kott have meant? Molet had only spoken to him a few times, and once offered a minor hint about an AI programming problem. It was not like Kott had owed him any help.

"Have you been helped yet?" A gaunt gentleman, dressed Goth but smiling warmly like something from Norman Rockwell, finally approached Jean-Claude Molet.

Molet considered, "I believe so."

He left by the front door as the sirens were beginning to approach.

Nearly as soon as he broke into the street, Molet heard the sound of an engine gunning. He dove across the way into another flower-hung alley. Molet clenched his fists. It would have been too much to ask to stay out of sight of the killers for the whole ten minute walk to Kott's loft.

Male voices shouted and car doors slammed. Molet realized as he came out in a flowery little courtyard that there were no other exits to this alley. He was trapped. He heard as the leader sent one man around the building, and then another into the alley.

In desperation, Molet climbed a post using the hanging pots as handles, hauling himself onto the roof with a few moments to spare. The pots were still swinging in the slight breeze as the killer padded into the courtyard.

Molet quietly moved away along the roofline, working his way out to the street side, where he could see the lone remaining killer standing next to the nondescript car, its engine running. The driver was only two meters from the overhang, concentrating on watching the alley.

For the first time in what seemed like an hour, Molet smiled a hunter's smile.

Molet's feet landed on the driver's shoulders, knocking his face into the car door with all the force of Molet's fall. There was a snap as he hit, but Molet didn't have time to check the man for injuries, he simply dived into the car and engaged the engine, leaving the body on the ground. Let them care for their own.

Molet ditched the car five minute's walk north of Kott's place, taking the keys and briefly checking the car for equipment. There was little of use -- probably everything the killers needed was hand-held and personally carried. If their own car was bugged, and they knew how to proceed directly to it, they would miss Kott's place by several blocks. If not, they wouldn't have any reason to go there anyway.

Molet shrugged, briefly mourning his lost Players. Then he began the jog to Kott's place.

No one answered Molet's knock on the door. He looked briefly around. It was an old adobe building, with two stories, the second story in this section being Kott's. Outside the front door, attached to the wall, there was a large box labeled "For Deliveries." The opening was almost large enough for a mini-refrigerator or air conditioner. As far as the rest of the loft, the windows were frosted, and set with some kind of moderately complicated security system. He hadn't come to break in, but if he had, he probably would have reconsidered.

He was halfway down the stairs before it hit him.

...Deliver yourself...  Don't think out of the box...

Molet shook his head. Really? The Delivery Box? He was still shaking his head when he climbed inside the cramped space and shut the door, which locked with a disturbing combination of clicks. It was a few minutes before anything happened.

"Hello?" Molet questioned into the darkness. "Hello?"

"May I ask who you arrre?" asked a faintly arch, female voice, trilling the final "r" for no apparent reason.

"Molet. Jean-Claude Molet. Do you mind letting me out of here?"

"Purrfect," said the voice, again with the trill. "Give me a moment to verrrify." Some lights blinked on and off in the box, and Molet's skin tingled.

"Did you know, Misterrr Molet, that your shoes are transmitting a locator signal?"

"Merde. No, I did not know."

"If you will remove them, and leave them in the box, we will have them dismantled."

Molet hesitated for a moment -- the shoes were expensive. But he had more important problems. He removed them. "Can you block the signal?"

"As long as they remain in the box their signal should be impurrrceptible. It is purrfectly shielded."

"Very well."

A heavy panel slid open on the wall opposite the door. Facing Molet was the glowing red visor of a metallic cat. "Welcome, Misterrr Molet. To what do I owe the honorrr?"

Switch had been in the middle of an experiment when there was a knock on the door. At first he had thought he had accidentally knocked something over with the robokitty's rear end. Then, when the voice from the delivery box announced the presence of Dr. Molet, he knew what was happening. The man's condition told half of the story, and his soft French-Canadian accent filled in the rest.

Switch looked into the control nexus and manipulated the waldo-kitty directly. He couldn't put himself on video -- Molet knew him as Benjamin Kott, and he didn't have time to put on the goatee and makeup. "I wasn't expecting visitors, so I'm afraid there's not much in the fridge. I can have something delivered, if you want?"

"I would kill for a smoke," replied Molet, gripping the floor with his stocking feet. "Players export."

The glowing visor blinked slightly, whether from startlement or a wink, Molet couldn't tell. "Sure, Mr. Death Wish. I'm sure they're not watching the neighborhood for deliveries of your favorite brand. You want some Molsen, too, or have you given them enough clues?"

"Marlboro Light 100's, then. And Newcastle brown ale. They are not too poisonous."

"In a manner of speaking."

Molet laughed. "Yes, in a manner of speaking."

Molet looked around the little laboratory, with its avant garde hammered steel decorations, and wondered what he had gotten himself into. "Kott, you have a very fancy laboratory, for a man who does not actually come here."

The cat shrugged slightly, appearing to lick its paws. "I don't need to be there, physically. And the last laboratory I had was burned to the ground by some very unfriendly people."

"And this arrangement prevents that?"

"Let's just say that the room you are in has some surprises for anyone who tries."

Molet looked about the room skeptically. It didn't appear particularly dangerous to him, although perhaps the bad taste could cause some squeamish arty persons to get sick. The equipment was quite advanced, however. In addition to the machinery needed for building and maintaining the robot cat, there were wall lockers filled with components and raw materials, and a small, particularly complicated contraption that Kott had claimed was a working factory for fullerene nanotubes.

Molet wasn't familiar with that particular science, although Kott's explanation seemed simple enough -- small geodesic tubes of carbon atoms, impregnated with just enough other atoms to allow them to perform the functions of electronic components. In theory, they represented the smallest possible physical switches, and could be massed together to duplicate nearly any mechanical device. And with the right modifications, they became the perfect threads for the creation of Maxwell's fabric.

Molet was nonplussed. This relative nobody had nearly created a science by himself. No, not one, but several. The robokitty that Kott so blithely used to pour coffee for his guest was itself a sparkling work of art, its cybernetic control mechanisms nearly matching the more difficult aspects of Molet's own work. And its command of language was positively immense.

Whoever Eartha Kitt was, Molet assumed that the robokitty's voice was a joke on her name. A very American joke, he supposed. It was enough to make Molet distrust Kott, or at least want to distrust him.

However, the coffee was black, and excellent. "There are indeed surprises here."

Molet would have to walk carefully in this cat's den.

Both men were nervous, Jean-Claude Molet more than Alan Benjamin Kott.

It had taken a few days to prepare for the next phase of Molet's escape. Small pieces of equipment were delivered, the item built and tested, and finally readied for launch. Molet wouldn't have made it through if it hadn't been for the overnight care package he received from a Wisconsin address -- a carton of Players. The real kind, not the export merde you could get in the United States.

It was that moment he decided he really liked Kott.

Molet preferred to control the drone himself, and Kott said he understood. After all, it was Molet's life. Besides, there would have been a half-second's delay in the reaction time if the electronics were going to be relaying the signals to and from Kott, wherever he really was.

The drone was simply a model plane, carrying a balsa-wood floater in a foil-lined bomb bay. The heavy foil would block the transmission for the half-mile flight downstream until the bomb was released. Then the floater would allow the transponder to continue to send signals as it floated down the Santa Fe River.

It worked like a charm. Molet watched on the monitor until the transponder floated downstream out of range. A few minutes later, a blue Firebird showed up outside and honked a little ditty.

Molet hesitated only a moment, then he grabbed his bag and made for the car, pausing only a moment to look over his shoulder as the cat winked and closed the door for him. Man, this Kott was good.

Molet tossed his bag into the back seat and strapped in as the driver swung the car around the adobe building and towards the freeway heading northeast out of the city.

"Where are we going?" asked Molet.

Switch smiled. "Anywhere you want to."
 

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