Shade's Children (17 page)

The cache was located a hundred yards into a railway tunnel—a steeply sloping tunnel that ran down into what had become a permanent underground lake, where several flooded tunnels met at a long-drowned station.

The cache itself was in the rearmost carriage of a train, the only carriage that was not completely underwater. It was a two-story passenger car, so the upper floor and part of the guard’s compartment at the rear were relatively dry.

Normally you could easily wade from the tunnel mouth to this carriage, but the rain had raised the water level. Now the underground lake was pushing itself up the tunnel.

Ella led the way, her witchlight raised, occasionally having to swim one-armed through places where the tunnel floor had collapsed. The others followed her light, trying to stifle their sneezes and coughs.

All the Deceptors were off and stored in watertight pouches, as deep water was enough protection against Ferrets. Myrmidons might be forced to wade in by an Overlord, but they would use lights and so give warning.

The last ten yards to the carriage Ella had to swim: Her feet were unable to touch bottom at all. Water swirled in currents about her, going both up and down the tunnel without any obvious pattern.

The carriage loomed ahead, silver steel glinting in the witchlight she held up with difficulty as she sidestroked toward it. With a last few energetic kicks, she entered the carriage and stood up. Water was flowing through the doors on the other side, but came up only to her knees, lapping at the second of the six steps up to the second level.

Ella moved toward the steps as the others came in behind her—then froze, hand at her sword. Something was moving up there, something clicking—like a Myrmidon’s hobnailed boots on the steel floor.

Drum joined her, his sword drawn. Ninde and Gold-Eye were ready too, as the clicking noise grew closer, coming toward the steps. It sounded like a Myrmidon uncharacteristically creeping…or even a new creature, one that didn’t mind water….

Then it reached the top of the steps and was caught in the glow of the witchlight and fixed in the whiter glare of Drum’s flashlight.

It was one of Shade’s spider robots. As its jointed legs felt for the steps, it seemed to sense, or see, them, and waved its front legs in a way that might have been a greeting—or a warning to stay away.

They watched it warily as it ceased its display and started slowly down the steps.

“Can they swim?” whispered Ninde nervously, looking behind her at the dark water all around the carriage.

“Probably,” Ella whispered back, without taking her eyes off the robot. “I just wonder what Shade programmed them to do after he…after he wasn’t around to direct them.”

“But I am around,” declared Shade, his voice suddenly crackling and buzzing out of both the spider robot and the carriage’s speakers. “I got away—as you did, I am glad to see. Come up. I have something to show you.”

The robot partly turned and beckoned with one segmented limb, the other seven already clawing back up the steps. Gold-Eye shuddered at its creepy, high-legged progress and looked at Ninde, then at Drum and Ella, till all four were facing each other. They still hadn’t put away their swords.

“There are dry clothes up there, and food,” Ella said. “We need them.”

“If he did get away, it was at the cost of everyone in the Sub,” said Drum bitterly. “They’ll all be in the Meat Factory now….”

“Ah, Drum,” interrupted Shade, from the carriage’s speakers. “You never did have any faith in me. While I greatly…greatly regret the loss of our people, it was pure good luck that I escaped. You see, I wasn’t even there.”

“What!” protested Drum, his round face reddening. Gold-Eye hadn’t ever seen him so angry.

“Come up,” continued Shade. “And you will understand.”

Ella was the first to sheathe her sword and go up the steps, followed by Ninde and then Gold-Eye. Finally Drum followed, his soft wet-suit boots shaking the carriage as he stomped up the steps.

At the top he saw that the whole second floor of the carriage had been gutted, all the seats removed. One end was piled high with boxes and containers—far more than the allotment decribed in the lesson on emergency caches. Fluorescent lights were flickering on too, making him blink with their sudden white radiance.

A large multibar radiator was starting to glow red. Ninde and Gold-Eye shivered in front of it, and steam began to wisp up from their sodden clothes.

And there were spider robots everywhere. Most sat inactive, legs folded undeneath them, far too like real spiders playing dead. There were rat robots too, red eyes gleaming from between boxes and bags.

There was no sign of the sort of computing equipment that would be needed to store Shade’s personality.

However, there was an enormous spider robot, about half the size of Drum. Unlike the others, its spherical body was made of translucent material, like partly clouded crystal. Optic fibers sparkled with laser light inside the sphere, fibers that coiled around and around the strange conch-shell device Ninde had brought back from Fort Robertson.

Clearly, Shade had transferred himself from his old computers to the Overlord’s Thinker.

“Now we’re all here,” said Shade, his voice emanating from somewhere inside the spider robot’s body and echoing in a whisper from all the other robots around. “I think…you begin to understand.”

“The Thinker,” said Ella. “It’s a computer, and you’ve transferred yourself to it.”

“More than a computer,” said Shade proudly, front spider legs preening. “But in essence, you are correct. After considerable testing, I did indeed transfer myself to this new, and so much smaller and more convenient, host. Then it became only logical to build a robotic carriage to endow me with the mobility I have always lacked.”

“What happened at the Sub?” asked Drum, not bothering to raise his hand. His voice was piercing, carrying with it considerable anger.

“I was out testing this…ah…body,” replied Shade. “So I cannot be sure. The attack came very swiftly, and the Overlord employed some sort of EMP device—that is, an electromagnetic pulse—which knocked out my Eyes and robots. Had I still been…in residence, shall we say…in my old host computer, it would also have at least temporarily incapacitated me. Another unknown device—perhaps some sort of controlled fusion lance—was then used to cut straight through the deck to allow the Myrmidons quick access.

“I fear that without any warning, and without my ability to automatically lock hatches, any resistance would have been short. Certainly the Wingers came swiftly and carried many burdens away.”

“Why was there no warning?” asked Drum, less angry now. “Surely your Eyes on the dock could have seen this Overlord coming before the device was used?”

“It was too sudden.” Shade sighed. “The Overlord came in by Winger, flying low over the sea, and used the EMP weapon at about the same time I saw it. Then my Eyes were blind and I lost all communication with the Sub.”

“Did anyone get out?” asked Ninde. “Stelo…or anyone?”

“I fear not,” said Shade. “We will remember them.”

“We will remember them,” muttered Ella and Ninde mechanically. Gold-Eye belatedly joined in, but Drum said nothing. Standing like a night-clad statue, he watched the Shade robot in silence.

“But amidst this disaster,” Shade continued, “I do have some good news. News we have all been waiting for since the Change. I have learned how it was done…and how to turn it back.”

If Shade had been expecting a dramatic response to his declaration, he was disappointed. Ella simply closed her eyes; Ninde shivered and drew closer to the radiator; Gold-Eye suddenly found that he couldn’t even imagine life without the effects of the Change. Only Drum spoke, his clear high voice laced with skepticism.

“How?”

“As a natural progression from my years of scientific investigation and research,” Shade announced, “I have discovered that the Projectors we see around the city are merely repeaters that convert a broadcast from a central Projector, breaking down its peculiar radiation for use by the Overlords and their creatures. It is this central or Grand Projector that creates the displacement field that created the Change and now maintains its effects.

“If that Grand Projector was ah…turned off…I believe that our normal reality would return, and the Overlords would be instantaneously translated back to wherever they came from—disappearing in the same way that all our people did at the moment of the Change. Similarly, without the Grand Projector sending power to the repeaters, all the creatures would die.”

“So we have to destroy the Grand Projector,” said Ella, in the tone that the others had heard many times before when Ella was focusing in on a new mission. “Where is it?”

“I believe the Grand Projector is located atop the highest point within several hundred miles,” said Shade. “Silverstone Mountain.”

“Where’s that?” asked Ninde. She was interested now, moving farther away from the radiator, not noticing that Gold-Eye was edging across to get more than his share of the heat.

“About a hundred miles away,” replied Shade. “To the northwest. But any expedition there will require careful planning. We can’t just rush into it. After all, we will probably get only one chance.”

“Destroying this Grand Projector will kill you too,” said Drum carefully. “You seem very calm about that.”

“It has been my life’s work to see the world…our world…put right,” said Shade, sounding as if he was delivering a speech to a giant rally rather than to four shivering people. “To reclaim the world for humanity…”

“But the Overlords are human!” Ninde blurted. “I read the thoughts of one.”

“They may seem human,” said Shade, waving two forelimbs aggressively. “But they do not represent humanity. They must be forced to return to whence they came!”

“You already knew they were human?” asked Ella, skirting around the giant spider robot to look at a particular green steel box with diamond-shaped orange stickers on it.

“I have long suspected they were related to humans in some way,” said Shade, turning his bulbous body to follow Ella. “I could not be sure until recently, when I migrated to this new host. The Thinker previously contained considerable data about the Overlords, and I have gathered more via some new communications resources…. Careful with that, Ella!”

The giant spider robot retreated quickly to the other end of the carriage as Ella opened the green box with the high-explosive warning stickers. It contained many items she had read about and studied in pictures, all neatly compartmentalized. Sticks of oily plastic explosive wrapped in grease-proof paper. Cotton reel-shaped primers of composite explosive. A small reel of orange detonation cord, and another reel of green safety fuse, next to a tin of long-headed matches.

She looked down on it longingly and said, “Where are the detonators? Do you have some?”

“Not if they’re not there,” said Shade. “One of my robots found it some time ago, and I’ve been keeping it here for safety, in the hope that an opportunity might arise.”

“It’s all useless without a detonator,” said Ella, thinking back to the manual of military explosives she’d read over and over, lying on her bunk in the Submarine. “But I guess I could…get one or two of those….”

Thinking about what the explosives could be used for, she added, “Is the Grand Projector like the normal Projectors? Sort of a silver ball?”

“Not exactly,” replied Shade evasively. “I believe it’s in a tower of some sort, built on the very pinnacle of the mountain. They would have built it—or had it built—by normal people, before the Change. And then the Overlords put the Grand Projector in and turned it on.”

“Well, we can discuss the plan in detail later,” Ella declared, seeing that Ninde and Gold-Eye were shivering and Drum was still in his wet suit. She had stopped shivering. It was as if she’d shrugged off the loss of the Submarine and all the rest of Shade’s Children and now could think only of the next operation. But she hadn’t lost her common sense.

“First off we’d all better get changed. Ninde, Gold-Eye, see what you can find in amongst this lot here. Drum, you’d better look for something that fits you. See if you can find some food, too.”

She did the same herself. Finding coveralls, underwear, and a towel, she carried them back down the other end and quickly got changed. Ninde, fossicking about more choosily, saw Gold-Eye watching Ella and elbowed him, accidentally hitting his injured hand. He yelped and blushed at the same time, hastily looking back down at the box of clothing.

“She’s too old for you,” laughed Ninde, causing Gold-Eye to blush again because Ella must have heard. In a whisper Ninde added, “And too tough. I bet she’d want to be on top all the time. I might not, though….”

Gold-Eye blushed again, finally understanding what she was talking about from his experience with “Sex Education I” and “II.” Ninde laughed again—but not unkindly—and ran back with her clothes to Ella.

Gold-Eye carefully didn’t look, keeping his back to them as he hastily stripped off his wet clothes and got a towel over his momentarily bare buttocks.

When he looked back up after slipping on new underpants, he saw Drum getting changed on the far steps, out of sight of the two women. He was slowly unpeeling the wet suit, revealing white, hairless skin rubbed red by several days in the tight neoprene.

Gold-Eye looked away again—and was gripped by the soon-to-be-now. He saw Drum naked, reaching down to pick up his underwear and XXL coveralls—and in that second, he saw the shriveled, hairless genitals that would have been normal only on a very young boy. And Gold-Eye suddenly understood what the Overlords’ steroids and drugs had done to Drum in the Training Grounds where Myrmidon muscle was bred.

He came out of the vision with Shade’s voice close to his ear and turned, instinctively shrinking back from the spider robot that was almost as tall as he was.

“Hurry up!” said Shade, his voice somehow less human now that it emanated from inside a robot spider and not a holographic person.

“Hurry up,” repeated Shade. “I want to hear what happened at the Central Pro—I mean, the Meat Factory.”

Gold-Eye nodded and quickly pulled on a T-shirt before sticking his arms back through the coveralls and zipping it up the front. Like the others, he hung his equipment belt up to dry but kept the sword with him.

“Before I forget,” Shade said, spider body clicking over to a red plastic box, “I have new Deceptors for you all. A new model. They don’t need batteries because they draw power directly from the Projectors. I think you’ll find that they don’t interfere as much with your Change Talents, either. My earlier design was somewhat heavy-handed; it put out too much wide-spectrum interference. Most of my robots have the new model now. As does this body.”

He opened the box with one forelimb and, using the anemone tendrils on the end of another, pulled out four new Deceptor crowns. They looked flimsier than the old ones—more like open skullcaps of wire than crowns—and had no battery wires or connections.

Ella picked them up. As she bent back up, she noticed that in addition to the eight segmented legs on Shade’s new spider body, there were also two additional legs tucked up under the body—each ending in a sharply hooked knife. Like their own swords, with a tracery of gold upon the shining steel.

She handed the others their Deceptors, then tried hers on, frowning slightly as she felt a slight vibration at her temples.

Shade noticed her expression. “The vibration lets you know it’s working,” he said. “It’s not too annoying or unpleasant, I trust?”

Ella shook her head and looked at the others. Ninde and Gold-Eye had already put theirs on, but Drum was hesitating.

“It’s okay,” said Ella. “Better than worrying about the batteries going flat.”

Drum nodded and carefully put his on, stretching the thin wires across his great round head.

“Now,” said Shade, settling his spider-robot body down on its folded legs. “Put those meals on top of the radiator to get warm—and tell me all about the Meat Factory.”