Wasteland Blues (22 page)

“I’m thinking dusk,” said Leggy, his mind racing. “Just before the sun sets and darkness falls, and all the dangerous stuff comes out.”

“Ah now,” said Tines, one finger following the outline of his metalworked cheekbone, “I like it. Perhaps we can manage to get a look of anxiety into their eyes as they hurry to finish their chores before the coming of the dark night and its deadly denizens. Yes, that should work well. I see a gloaming dusk, the sun a fiery orb sinking behind the rim of the continent, the cloak of night looming. Dangerous eyes peeping from the shadows of the wild. Very poetic.”

“Now then,” said the robot. “What else do we need?”

“Well, we’ll need a campfire, of course,” Leggy began, cautiously studying the automaton for any sign of adversity.

“Yes,” said Tines, nodding. “I believe I can simulate that.”

“You’ll need some gear—you know, cook pots, a couple of tin plates, a knife. Probably a rifle. I think Magdalena had one of those.”

“Who?” asked Tines, distractedly. “You mean the female? Yes, she did. It’s in the workshop.”

“And you’ll have to have a donkey, of course,” added Samuel. “No one in San Muyamo does anything without a donkey, right John?”

“Uh…” murmured John, nodding dumbly. “That’s right. Donkeys all over the place.”

“Oh dear,” said Mr. Tines, his blue eyes dimming. “I think a donkey might be outside my capabilities.”

“No problem,” said Samuel. “Teddy’s got two donkeys. You could embalm one of them.”

“Teddy?” asked Mr. Tines.

“Another companion of ours,” said the boy. “He’s still upstairs.”

“Upstairs?” asked Mr. Tines. “In the reception hall?”

“Is that what you call the glass house?” asked John.

The robot nodded.

“Then yeah, they’re in the reception hall.”

“Well, this is just wonderful,” said Mr. Tines, his eyes brightening again.

“There’s a problem, though,” said Leggy. “The opening in the shaft isn’t big enough for them.”

“Ah, that is most definitely
not
a problem,” said Mr. Tines. “They can come down the freight elevator. Shall I send it up?”

“May I go up too, to tell Teddy what’s happening?” asked Samuel. “He’ll be so excited!”

“Of course,” said Tines. He swiveled quickly around and bounded excitedly across the open plaza.

Samuel followed. As he walked, he put his mind in connection with Leggy.

I WILL BE BACK WITH TEDDY

And, just for good measure, Samuel projected an image of Mr. Tine’s head being smashed into a cloud of sparks and wire between Teddy’s enormous hamfists.

***

Mr. Tines approached another divider between two blackened display windows. He pressed a button recessed into the wall and the divider slid up, revealing an access passage. Samuel followed him inside. They passed through a narrow corridor about six feet long that opened onto a workshop the size of a gymnasium. It reminded Samuel of the labs that had been housed in the bunkers where he’d been raised, although the equipment here included woodworking and machinist tools along with silicon fabricators, nano-assemblers, computer terminals, and a gene sequencer. The room was tidy and dust-free, but it still gave the impression of long disuse.

“The master’s workshop,” said Tines, his voice low and reverent. “It was here that he created the displays you see in the cases in the plaza. He built me here, too,” Mr. Tines said with pride. “His greatest achievement, he often said, though were he alive to see how things are now, he would know it wasn’t true.”

“Did he build those cleaning robots too?” asked Samuel.

“Ah, yes. My dumber cousins. But essential. I couldn’t manage the place without them.”

“How long ago did your master die?” asked Samuel.

“Die?” said Tines. “I don’t know that he’s actually dead. Fifty-three years ago he went to the surface with the sand crawler. He said he was going out to collect artifacts. But he never came back. He was quite old by then, of course, so I must assume he’s perished. But still, I’ve tried to maintain the museum, waiting for his return.”

“How sad,” said Samuel, feeling a momentary pang of sympathy for the robot. Samuel knew what it was like to live at the bottom of a hole, alone for ages. But he put his feelings aside, knowing that he had to focus on himself and his companions.

As they passed through the workshop, Tines pointed to a small corner that showed signs of recent activity. A mannequin stood in various stages of assembly, but even up close, Samuel scouldn’t tell what it was supposed to be.

“What is it?” he asked.

Mr. Tines sighed, his blue eyes nearly fading to black. “A mutant. At least that’s what it’s
supposed
to be. I tried to fabricate it myself, but I just couldn’t get it to come out right.”

Tines brightened. “But now you’re here. I haven’t felt this hopeful in so long!”

They came to a pair of doors set back into the wall. Mr. Tines pushed a button and the doors slid open, revealing an enormous elevator.

“This is how the master brought equipment and materials into the museum,” said Tines, stepping in.

Samuel followed. Like the workshop, the elevator was neat, but stale with disuse. Mr. Tines pushed a button on a small white control panel. With a gentle lift, the elevator began to move.

“The lift arrives just inside the eastern face of the reception hall,” said Tines.

“We looked all over the reception hall,” said Samuel. “We didn’t see any entrance for an elevator. It’s just a big glass room.”

“Not glass. Nano-crystal,” said Tines. “Strong as steel but infinitely malleable. To your friend inside the reception hall, it will look as if the floor is suddenly sprouting an elevator. In fact, it’s just the nano-crystal re-arranging itself to accommodate the elevator.”

“Neat,” said Samuel. “Did your master invent that, too?”

“Oh no,” said Tines. “Though he was one of the first to stabilize it enough for industrial applications. But the war engulfed the world long before his processes could be put into widespread use.”

“Is the whole museum made from nano-crystal?” asked Samuel.

“Heavens no. Just the reception hall and the windows for the display cases.”

“How did your master build this place?”

“He didn’t build it. The museum itself is an aquifer that ran dry decades and decades ago. My master stumbled across it before the war during a vision quest in the desert. Under the divine influence of the peyote cactus, he fell in love with the place and realized its potential. He purchased seven hundred acres of land above the aquifer and began making the underground chamber habitable.

“You see, initially, this wasn’t supposed to be a museum,” admitted Tines.

“No?” asked Samuel.

“My master originally built this place as a refuge. In his vision, he saw that a catastrophe was looming on the horizon. A worldwide calamity, he called it. A paradigm shift. A redefining of human consciousness. He planned to populate this refuge with like-minded friends and family, as well as other scientists and artists and craftsmen. They would preserve the best technologies available to humans and then emerge after the catastrophe and help remake the world.

“But the end came much sooner than he’d anticipated. The bombs fell while he was here alone, making final touches. How lonely he was, then! How often he contemplated killing himself—just another corpse among the millions, this one courteous enough to have had himself pre-buried.

“But his nature wouldn’t allow him to take his own life. He was disgusted by the idea of unnecessary waste. And so he conceived of the museum. I think it was just a project to help keep him busy—he never really expected to have visitors. But his hope was that someday, if civilization arose again, his work might be discovered, and perhaps serve as a warning against folly. ‘We must preserve the past,’ he would cry. ‘Mr. Tines, we must preserve the present. We must never forget.’”

***

The elevator came to a halt. The door slid open. It was night, and the crystal hall was translucent. Stars were strewn across a clear black sky, and a waning moon illuminated the landscape with silver light.

Samuel stepped out to find Teddy cowering in a corner with the mules.

“Teddy,” he shouted.

Teddy looked up and, seeing Samuel, he cried out with joy. He sprang forward and scooped up Samuel in his arms and swung him around. But when Mr. Tines stepped out of the elevator, Teddy stepped backward and shielded Samuel with his body.

“Don’t worry,” said Samuel, gasping slightly in Teddy’s powerful grasp. “This is Mr. Tines. He lives here. He’s going to take us to the others. To your brother.”

“To Der-Der? Where is he?”

“We have to go in the elevator,” said Samuel. “In that room there.”

Teddy looked suspiciously at the elevator. “I don’t like it,” he said, chewing on his lip.

“It’s the only way down,” said Samuel soothingly. “You’re too big for the stairs. It’s very safe, and not dark at all, and when we get down we’ll see Derek and John and Leggy and Magdalena. And we can bring the animals with us.”

Teddy let himself be convinced, though reluctantly. They herded the mules into the elevator, and descended. Teddy nervously bit his lip, and the mules were unhappy to be confined in such a cramped place. But Mr. Tines was delighted. He ran his hands lightly over the beasts.

“Oh, these will do nicely. Yes. Quite nicely. This one is the best specimen, I think,” he said, pointing to Minna. “The other seems to have some kind of…mutation.”

“True,” said Samuel, “but it wasn’t all that uncommon where we lived.”

“Hmmm,” said Tines. “I shall have to weigh the aesthetics and the authenticity. As you know, my master was a stickler for veracity.”

The elevator came to a gentle stop. The doors slid open. Mr. Tines exited, followed by Samuel. Teddy coaxed the mules out into the workshop.

“This way,” said Tines, heading to a far corner where a large steel cabinet stood. “My subjects will be coming around soon. It’s time to administer another soporific.”

Samuel and Teddy watched as Mr. Tines opened the steel cabinet. A half dozen shelves contained an impressive array of medical supplies. “My master wasn’t sure how long he and his companions might be underground—possibly for several generations. So he planned for just about every conceivable situation. He even stocked embalming fluid. Lucky for me!”

Samuel watched with horror as Tines prepared a sickly green solution in a decanter, and then filled two long syringes with it.

“Is that to embalm them?” he said.

“This? Heavens no. This is another soporific, one the subjects won’t wake up from. Once injected, the heart, the lungs, and the other organs will continue to function, but the higher functions of the brain will shut down. Eventually, the bodily mechanisms will cease as well, but this way I will have the time I need to embalm them without worrying about….” The robot mimed holding his nose. “Putrification.”

Mr. Tines placed the syringes on a small metal tray, and turned to regard the donkeys. “I’d like to use the same solution for the beasts of burden, but I’m unsure of the dosage. Well, let’s worry about that later.”

The robot picked up the tray and looked over his shoulder. Its blue eyes glittered cheerily as it addressed Samuel.

“Come then. Let’s get to work!”

***

“Oh. My. God.” Leggy’s eyes were fixed on the long needle.

Mr. Tines approached the legless old man, who scrambled backward on his hands, until the lascivious robot had walled him into a corner.

Leggy clinched his eyes shut and desperately pushed his thoughts out toward Samuel, unsure if the boy’s strange talent worked in reverse, not knowing if Sam could pick up on thoughts directed this way.

SAM DO SOMETHING
,
Leggy’s terrified brain screamed. DON’T LET HIM NEEDLE ME SAMUEL

Samuel looked frantically up at Teddy and Mr. Tines.

“Your companion seems distressed,” noticed the robot. “I do believe he has fainted.”

“He’s afraid of the needle,” said Samuel.

“This?” asked Mr. Tines in surprise, looking at the long hypodermic. “But it’s not for him.” The robot moved closer to Leggy and reached out a hand to the side of his throat, feeling for the old man’s thready pulse. “He seems to be convulsing. I believe he needs medical attention.”

Leggy clenched his eyes shut as the robot approached. The old man had not had an injection, Hell, he’d not even
seen
a needle, in well over two decades. And for good reason—they tore open deep, painful memories he’d worked hard to bury, a desperate time of needles and pain that he never wanted to revisit, but now had been exhumed. He remembered the cold leather straps binding his arms and his legs—oh god, his legs!—and he could almost still feel the needles, dozens of them, hundreds it seemed, poking and prying, gouging and sticking and bleeding him until—

Thin, cold metal touched his throat and he screamed. Even the blurry memory of that unspeakable agony was more than he could bear. His heart threatened to burst as adrenalin surged and his brain cramped in singular, atavistic terror. That needle—oh god that sharp, stinging needle, venom-spewing needle—was on his skin.
It was on his skin!
It was searching for his eyes, his veins, the crook of his arm, the soft, sensitive weakness behind his knees. He held his breath in anticipation of the bite and the spreading fire.

“Teddy,” he screamed aloud. “Teddy, get him. Don’t let him stick me. Kill him, Teddy. Kill him!”

***

Teddy hit the robot at a full run. Mr. Tines, who’d put a finger to Leggy’s neck to feel his pulse, was body-slammed at full-force against the harder than steel nano-crystal window. The cavernous hall echoed with the fury of the impact.

The syringe fell from the automaton’s hand and skittered across the floor, stopping at John’s feet. Leggy cowered against the wall, whimpering and trembling uncontrollably.

The giant and the mechanical man rebounded from the window and rolled together on the floor. Each desperately groped for a hold, for purchase, for some advantage or weakness in the other. Despite his thin bodice, Mr. Tines proved more than equal to Teddy in strength, easily flipping the gigantic man off him and onto the floor.

Quick as lightning, the robot stood.

He touched a large dent where his head had impacted the floor with a sharp, metallic
clang
. One of his eyes no longer glowed, and the other momentarily flickered before resuming its steady burning light. His immoveable etch grin somehow now evoked an air of menace and mechanical rage.

Teddy sprang to his feet. His fear had turned to anger. He lunged. Wrapping his huge arms around Tines in a bear hug, he lifted the mad robot off the floor.

There was a creaking of metal and Tines moaned. In a slurred mechanical voice, the robot demanded, “You…let…me go! You let…Mr. Tines go…right now!”

Teddy did not let him go. He continued to squeeze.