Shade's Children (22 page)

The Myrmidons didn’t take them back to the cell. Instead, they left the house and walked down to the beach, passing through a guardhouse in the wall manned by several more white-armored Myrmidon Masters. It seemed the Overlords only trusted the superior variety to look after their own security.

“Where are you taking us?” asked Ninde, unable to see Silver Sun behind her but still hearing her soft shuffle in the sand, in between the Myrmidons’ heavy scuffling.

“I think I’ll drown one of you till the other answers my questions,” replied Silver Sun calmly. “You see, I have much more experience with animals than Red Diamond does. I spent several years here during our initial reconnaissance and did most of the work setting up the Transfer. So I know there is some psychosexual bond between you that can be exploited. Alternatively, I may just drown you both. After all, we will have the other two for questioning, and they have actually demonstrated this invisibility technique.”

“We will too,” said Gold-Eye quickly, looking at Ninde’s white face and then the sea. Its waves crashed in with a regularity that cared nothing for who might be pushed under them. “But we need equipment.”

“Our packs and equipment belts,” added Ninde hastily. “We’ll show you. But it only works for Change-enhanced vision…like in your creatures.”

“I see,” said Silver Sun. “I will have it fetched.”

That sounded as if she would wait for a demonstration of the Deceptors, and Gold-Eye let out a small sigh of relief. But the Myrmidons kept on marching them down into the sea. As the wash from the waves touched their boots, they stopped—then marched forward again, till the water washed around their knees, well above the thighs of Gold-Eye and Ninde.

“Then again—I think you might be better drowned,” said Silver Sun from somewhere behind them on the sand.

As she spoke, the Myrmidons clasped the children’s heads with their heavy hands and pushed them facedown into the ocean.

Ella turned around, the pistol drawn, finger taking up the first pressure on the trigger. But there was no crystal-bodied spider robot there.

Just a hologram, so faded she could see the concrete wall through it. Shade—but a Shade somewhat different from the image he had always portrayed before. Shorter and less muscular. Eyes not piercing blue but a sort of muddy gray. And teeth no longer blindingly white and even.

Enough of a difference for Ella to put her pistol back and ask, “Shade?”

“Sort of,” said the hologram nervously, running his hand through hair much thinner and browner than it had been before. “But more like Robert Ingman, I think. The man I originally was.”

“What are you doing here?” asked Drum suspiciously, one eye still on the approaching Wingers. “How are you here?”

“Well, it’s sort of complicated,” muttered Shade/Robert. “The Overlords destroyed the Thinker that housed my personality, but I had already worked out how to spread myself…or the bits that I wanted…through the Projector network. So I can pretty well be anywhere there’s Projector power…oh…and I came here to apologize I guess, and…uh…help.”

“How?” snapped Drum. The Wingers were directly below now, banking up for a spiraling climb. At the top of that climb…in about a minute…they would swoop down…

“Well, there is a manual method of opening the door from the inside,” explained Robert. “I thought if I showed Drum where it is and what it looks like, he could use his—”

“Okay, okay!” interrupted Ella urgently. “Show him!”

Robert nodded and quickly sketched in the air with his finger—and a hologram formed against the wall, showing a short lever under a panel with a red and green light.

“It’s there,” said Robert. “On the other side, about two feet in…”

Drum was already feeling for the lever with his Change Talent, eyes closed, sweat springing out on his forehead despite the cold wind. His hand moved, fingers clasping something that wasn’t there…. Dimly he felt Ella slide the pinch bar out of his belt…. Then his arm jerked down, and he felt his mind move the lever down.

His eyes flashed open to see the door sliding up, lights coming on inside. At the same time, the lead Winger attacked.

Salt burned Gold-Eye’s mouth and nose, water filling them as he went under for the third time. This time he stopped struggling immediately, and just let the Myrmidon hold him down. He’d got a good mouthful of air—and was just concentrating on holding that breath. Focusing on that, trying not to think of anything else—even Ninde. But he couldn’t help thinking of her, and tears fled his eyes to mix with the already salty sea.

Thinking of Ninde made him think of Ella and Drum as well. Still alive and obviously at Mount Silverstone. If Shade hadn’t lied, they would be trying to destroy the Grand Projector. So humanity still had a chance…even if he and Ninde didn’t.

Ninde was thinking similar thoughts, the bubbles flying out of her mouth, taking with them her last desperate gulp of air. For a second she was tempted to just breathe out, to finish it quickly—but she didn’t do it. Instead she reached again to drag her nails across the Myrmidon’s gauntlets.

It responded by pushing her still deeper, grinding sand against her face. Panicking, kicking and scratching, she finally lost her battle not to breathe—and sucked in. Water filled her lungs with a terrible rush that was totally and terrifyingly at odds with all the myths about the peacefulness of death by drowning.

Ella smacked the pinch bar across the neck of the lead Winger as it dove past her, but its claws raked across her forearm as she did, opening deep wounds and knocking the bar from her grasp.

It seemed unharmed, looping back to attack again—only to fly headlong into a large stone cast by the furious hand of Drum. Shrieking, right eye crushed and clouded with spewing ichor, it turned too quickly, wing crashing into a corner of the tower with a crack like a dry branch snapping. Lopsided, it cartwheeled into the ground, striking the silver-shot rocks of the mountain many times as it bounced down toward the valley below.

Drum yanked Ella into the building in the next second, slapping the lever to close the door—just as the second Winger dove in. For a few seconds door machinery struggled against Winger strength. Then it closed like a guillotine, cutting off the Winger’s head. This snapped its teeth at Drum’s feet several times, then lay still.

“Can they open it?” snapped Drum, asking the Robert hologram, which had just rematerialized inside.

“No…I don’t think so…requires an Overlord,” said Robert, looking down with shocked eyes at Ella, who was busy rolling out a bandage from her pouch. With one end in her mouth and the other in her weakened right hand, she was busy trying to put direct pressure on her wounds.

“But there are two on the way,” he added worriedly. “They’ll be here very…very soon.”

“So what do we do?” asked Ella. She handed one end of the bandage to Drum so he could wrap it around the long cuts in her forearm, her left thumb still pressed firmly on the pressure point inside her elbow. As soon as the bandage was firmly on, she let go—and the cloth immediately turned red, blood spreading like ink spilled on paper.

“Well, the whole Grand Projector is controlled by a dedicated Thinker,” said Robert. “I had considered turning it off somehow, but it is well protected from the likes of me, and in fact may not be able to be turned off at all….”

“Where is it?” screamed Ella, getting to her feet. “Just tell us where it is!”

“Up the ladder…up the ladder,” Robert repeated, pointing to the second of two steel ladders. It stood in a corner of the featureless room and extended through a square access hole in the ceiling.

Ella ran to it, jumping up to the third rung, ignoring the pain in her injured arm as she climbed. Blood ran out from under the bandage, and Drum steadied her as she almost fell back.

“But you should know that…” Robert was saying from down below—and then from in front of her as he reappeared on the next floor.

“You should know that if you destroy it,” he shouted, pointing up to the large conch-shell Thinker on a plinth well above Ella’s head. “If you destroy it, the Grand Projector will overload, delivering enormous amounts of Change energy—lethal radiation! It will kill you both in minutes. Please, please let me see if there’s some way of shutting…oh dear…the Overlords!”

The sound of the door opening below was enough for Ella—and Drum, too. She drew the pistol and aimed it up at the Thinker. Drum moved up close to steady her hand, cupping it gently in his own huge palm.

Then she pulled the trigger, time and time again, laughing and weeping, till the magazine was empty and the Thinker lay in broken shards upon the floor.

Gold-Eye was just about to give up and breathe in water when the Myrmidon holding him down suddenly let go.

Arching backward, Gold-Eye exploded from the water, coughing and spluttering, expecting to be plunged back down at any moment. Then he saw the Myrmidon was kneeling in the water at his side. It had its visor up, but its eyes somehow looked past him out to the blue water beyond.

Then it spoke, in English, not in Battlespeech.

A child is caught

A torment of terror

To know no kindness

Laid down at last

Dream no more death

Forsaken at fourteen

Foul prisoned flesh

Battle the burden

Sleep now Sam

Fall to freedom

Then he did look at Gold-Eye. “I was Sam Allen once,” he said, and fell facedown into the water.

Gold-Eye looked away and saw the other Myrmidon, sunken by its armor—and a smaller shape, floating head down, the waves tugging it out toward the open sea.

“Ninde!” screamed Gold-Eye, splashing through the waves. Grabbing her limp form, he carried her desperately to the beach, so desperately he didn’t even notice that Silver Sun was no longer there.

Laying her down, he thought her dead, and panic and fear stabbed him in the guts. Then Shade’s training gripped him like one of his own visions. One of the first lessons he’d done—one of the few he’d had time for. Essential knowledge for people who lived in a Submarine.

Mechanically he checked her pulse, cleared her airway, and began CPR.

“Very well done…my children,” said Robert, the hologram brightening and becoming more solid as they watched. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “You were all I ever hoped for…and more. I am sorry I was less. Good-bye.”

The hologram brightened still further, the tears shining like lights upon his skin. Then he was gone.

“I feel strange,” whispered Ella, holding on to Drum. “Sort of powerful…as if I could conjure anything…anything at all…. We have a few minutes, I think he said?”

“Yes,” replied Drum, his eyes also wet with tears. “Let’s go out—out into the sun.”

He picked her up but didn’t carry her down the ladder.

He could feel the Change energy flowing in him. It was so strong he simply used his Talent to rise up in the air and descend gently down through the trapdoor, then to float across to the main door.

There were no Overlords there. Just a strange metal tube on the floor, glittering in the shaft of sunlight coming through the door. All the interior lights had gone out.

Dead Wingers littered the ground outside and down the tumbled rocks, so Drum carried Ella around a little way, almost to the shade. They sat down with their backs to the wall, looking out at the blue sky, the sun warm on their faces, the wind cold.

“The power’s ebbing now,” said Ella. “And I can’t think of a single thing I want to conjure. All the things I want aren’t objects you can hold, or even name….”

She held out her hand, and Drum took it, surprised at the effort, as if all his strength was just running out of him.

Hand in hand, they waited for the end.

Ninde came to as Gold-Eye bent down for another breath. He quickly drew back as she coughed and spat out seawater. At the same time, he felt the grip of the soon-to-be-now, stronger than it had ever been.

“No, not now!” he said, veins in his forehead standing out as he tried to fight it off.

“What?” Ninde coughed, and her consciousness rushed back. Obviously they were safe, and Gold-Eye was about to have a vision…and she felt her knuckle in her mouth…and her mind expanding, leaping out over miles and miles. She saw the beginnings of Gold-Eye’s vision and heard fifty thousand children cheering as they climbed over the fallen bodies of Watchwards at the gates of the Dorms; heard the waking thoughts of the survivors in the Meat Factory; and then she felt Ella and Drum, so close that she knew she could speak to them, show them Gold-Eye’s vision, give them something in the seconds before they died.

“It’s Ninde,” murmured Ella sleepily, just moving one finger in Drum’s palm. “She wants us to see…Gold-Eye’s soon-to-be-now….”

“I see it,” whispered Drum. He smiled, a full-hearted smile. Ella smiled too, and for a second his hand tightened on hers.

Then they were dead, and the sun moved around, bringing the shade to wrap around their bodies like a shroud.