Z14 (15 page)

Lothar nodded, tight-lipped. He oh-so-accidentally knocked Melon’s head over as he walked past. “C’mon people,” he said, slipping into easy command. “Pack only what you can carry in your backpacks and in the baskets and panniers on the bicycles. Kam, Oxley, get Baboon onto a mattress, nice ‘n gentle. Then we’ll all lift it into the…whatever the fuck we’re calling this contraption of yours, Kam.”

“Well, we’re taking Kaboom to get medical help – sort of – and it’s my invention, so, how about, ‘Kambulance’?”

“Brilliant,” said Oxley with a grin. “Wait a second, isn’t that just your full name?” Lothar sighed. Kam face-palmed.

Everything got loaded up. Weapons, ammo and food, basically. Kam handed me my own bag and told me Melon’s memory device was in there. Speaking of Melon, someone had put both him and T9 in the front basket of one the bicycles that would pull the Kambulance. I strode over and pulled Melon out by his hair, then tossed him into the basket on the other bike in the pair.

“Let’s not put all our heads in one basket,” I said.

“Melon, carry on hacking around with the cyborg network and let me know if T9’s got anything interesting to say about her mission, or, well, about anything going on in cyborg land,” I said.

The four of us who had bodies carefully loaded a mattress bearing Kaboom onto the back of the Kambulance. We strapped him to the mattress and converted bed frame using rolled up bedsheets. Then we strapped the body of T9 in beside him – they made for very macabre bed-mates. We were taking T9’s body with us, as I was hoping to find a way to utilise her for spare parts – neither I nor Melon knew how to detach or install body parts.

Lothar wheeled a bike up to me and handed me Kaboom’s old-tech automatic weapon, which I slung awkwardly over my shoulder. I looked at the bike: If I strapped my broken foot to one pedal I should be okay. I could steer it with one arm easily enough, it was just a matter of having the arm strength to control the bike.

“Zee, buddy,” said Lothar. “You and me are the outriders. Or at least, we are until those other two pussies get tired-out, which, knowing them will be around about the time we exit the perimeter gate.”

We all saddled up, ready to go. This was the Earth year twenty twenty-three, plus an unknown number of centuries aboard the colony ships, and another, slightly better estimated, but still unknown number of centuries on Deliverance. So, basically, what the fuck were we doing on bicycles?

“Has anyone ever ridden a bicycle before?” I said.

“Negative,” said Lothar.

“Nope,” said Kam.

“What’s a bicycle?” said Oxley.

“I have,” said Doctor Melon.

“Warden Fourteen submit!” shouted T9.

We got on our wobbly way.

It was a good job that Oxley and Kam’s bikes were held upright by the frame of the Kambulance, because they clearly had no sense of balance. I found that odd in a pair of humans who were both excellent snipers. You’d imagine there’d be some correlation between being able to keep a sniper rifle rock steady and being able to ride a bike in a straight line, without weaving around like a human, on fire, running through a minefield – but no, apparently there wasn’t with these two.

After the first hour, they slowly seemed to get it and we made surprisingly good progress. The sparsely wooded terrain had only gentle slopes here and there, and the dry ground was tightly packed; good going for bicycles. Perhaps more importantly though, the trees around here had deep roots, so we weren’t constantly bouncing poor Kaboom over them.

Oxley wouldn’t stop complaining, though. “Ah, man, my ass hasn’t hurt this bad since that time I shoved – well, that is to say, my ass has never hurt this bad,” he said.

I was cycling in front of the Kambulance and Lothar, who had taken to the cycling like a grizzled combat veteran to grizzly combat, was bringing up the rear. He suddenly shouted for us to make a stop. Time to swap with the guys pulling Kaboom’s near-death-bed. I planted my good foot on the ground, leaned over and untied my broken foot from the pedal. Cycling was easy enough with the foot strapped to the pedal, and I certainly wasn’t going to get tired like the flesh-bags did. I could easily pull the Kambulance along by myself, but telling these stubborn monkey-spawn that didn’t so much as dent their insistence that they had to do their bit. We swapped over. Kam and Oxley dropped to the rear on the free-running bikes and I took the Kambulance into the lead, since I was the one who knew where we were going.

I set off at a speed that would be comfortable for the humans to match. I could pedal faster than the highest gear on the bike could keep up with, so I had to pace myself. Besides, if I went too fast, the bumpy ride might hasten Kaboom’s demise. We still had about three hours of punishing travel ahead of us. We could only really afford for Kaboom to expire when we were an hour or so away from our target, if we didn’t want too much of him to be gone for this brain-encoding technology to do whatever the hell it was going to do to his brain. Speaking of brains, it was time to pick Melon’s a bit more.

“Doctor?” I said. Melon and T9 had been arranged in their individual carry-baskets so that they were facing each other. Melon was in the basket on Lothar’s bike, and I could see eye-to-eye with him from where I pedalled. “Have you learned anything from T9?”

“Not really, no,” said Melon. “I’m very, very close to co-opting their network so that we can pinpoint other cyborgs – or any other computers, that happen to be on it. But I cannot figure out how to intercept the network communications between the cyborgs, without revealing T9’s presence.”

“I see, but what does T9 know? What was her mission?”

“Much the same as my own host head, except that she knows she wasn’t activated by her creators. She has no mission other than to activate others, and seek out and repair or destroy ‘damaged’ Wardens.”

“So could it be the Overlords who are activating the cyborgs?” I said. A cyborg would have been able to control the flash or…something, that crossed Melon’s features – but with his copied personality so very much in control of his new, metal head, he was unable to hide it. It looked like he’d been surprised the question had been asked, but not surprised by the idea.

“The Overlords? What could they possibly know of the technology of the, ah, the creators?” he said, rather hurriedly.

“Well, Doc,” I said. “They’re the ones who created the plasma weapons Kam brought T9 down with, and they used them to kill three other cyborgs at another city.”

Melon blinked his one eye rapidly, taking in what I had said, none of which I’d told him yet – and evidently T9 hadn’t either. “I’m quite sure I wouldn’t know anything about that.” He smiled slowly and joked, “Why not take it up with Grand Overlord Boram himself?”

“Oh I will. Some of his men wanted to give me an honour-guard to go and see him, just yesterday. He wants to talk to me, apparently.”

Melon really did look worried this time. “Oh, well, I…I wouldn’t talk to him if I were you, he’s just a glorified gang boss. No doubt he just wants to capture you, and use you to his own ends.”

“Like you do?” I said.

A heavy silence hung. Lothar had been listening to all this, as he puffed and panted away, trying to keep up with the pace I was setting, although with both the bikes being bolted and welded to the rest of the Kambulance it didn’t really matter, I was essentially the one pulling the whole thing along. His slower-pedalled bike was actually having a brake-like effect, but it was no real hindrance to me.

“Melon,” I said. “Tell me about the creators, now. Tell me what the Wardens are for, and tell me why the terrible thing they were supposed to do doesn’t seem to be happening.”

“I can’t. I still don’t trust you.”

“I don’t trust you either.”

“But you must,” said Melon. He sounded like he was pleading. “If I had wanted to do you harm, then I would have rigged the data transfer in the space shuttle to completely wipe you and replace you with my personality. But, no. I came to see you, to get your permission for us to share minds.”

He had a very good point there. My human resentment of him must’ve clouded my processors over that bit of logic. “Well, Doctor, you should trust me in return. Can’t you see I’m not all bad?”

“Any amount of bad is too bad,” said Melon. “It’s like I said before, the Warden program could use an overly strong emotion to regain control, your system would report errors, critical failures, and demand that you shut down. Then the Warden woul – ”

“That’s already happened,” I said. I told Melon about how I’d felt overwhelming rage at the humans who’d stalked and killed a crippled cyborg at Jolly Meadows.

Melon looked almost awed. “You were that angry – at humans specifically – right at that moment, and you didn’t reboot? You didn’t wade in and start rending limbs?” He whistled. “Maybe I had done enough to you five years ago after al – ”

“Or maybe, Doc, I’m just a better person, and a better cyborg than you think I am.”

Melon laughed. “Oh, goodness, no,” he said. “Not at all, you’re just programming and the simulation of a human brain pattern, you’re not exactly complicated.”

I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. “Come on then, tell me.”

“Okay,” he said. There was a pause. Neither of us spoke. We were both expecting something to happen, something to interrupt the conversation…

Lothar farted, but that was it for drama. “Excuse me,” he said, disguising his shame with puff-cheeked exertion. “It’s the pedalling, it forces them right out, even if I try to hold them in.”

“You will remember that I told you the people who came to Earth in twenty twenty-three were like us?” Melon said. “Not exactly like us, but very close indeed. Compatible brains. It was all about the compatible brains. They’re generally taller than the tallest humans, thinner of limb, and they have blueish tinges to their pale skins, but otherwise they look human.”

“I remember,” I said. “You also said they were mad.”

“Mad aliens?” said Lothar. “I’ve heard it all now.”

“You haven’t heard the half of it,” said Melon. “Yes, they are total fruit-loops, the whole lot of them. They’ve been around, at their current stage of evolution for almost a million years and they’ve been slowly spreading through the galaxy – basically using it as a big sandbox – during more than seven-hundred thousand of those years.

“They’ve conquered most of the challenges that any sentient race could face. You name it, they’ve probably done it. You cyborgs are proof that they’ve found a way to sidestep death. But, they themselves are not allowed to download their brains into cyborg bodies. Their religion forbids it.”

“That’s not evidence of insanity,” I said. “A bit of religious dedication.”

“No,” said the doctor. I could see how badly he wanted to nod. “But invading a planet and constructing a physically connected network of harvested, living human brains to act as a host for the god you intend to summon into it, is.”

“What the fuck?” I said. “You have to be kidding.”

“I’m not. Everything the aliens do is driven by their religion. It pervades all aspects of their society, including science and research. They have got themselves caught up in what I can only believe is a species-wide psychosis. They believe, after a centuries-long research project, that their god wants to assume a physical form in the universe, but is unable to do it himself because his evil brother is blocking his efforts. Some ‘eternal struggle of good versus evil’ twaddle of theirs.

“They believe that if they can construct a living neural network large enough for their god to pour even a small part of his, I don’t know, spirit, being, personality, whatever, into, then he will do so. Oh, and once they’ve got him in the physical realm, they’ll download him into a computer and re-program him, so that they can change the bits of the religion they don’t like – like not being able to sidestep death themselves and live on as cyborgs. If their own god is in a computer, then, hell, why can’t they be, eh?”

“Holy fuck, that’s insane,” I said.

“Told you,” said Melon. “Conquering Earth was a triviality, but they knew they might fail with their ultimate goal, so they took some elements of humanity to other planets, and left them alone to breed and prosper so that they’d have backup test sites to do it all again.”

“There are more planets like Deliverance?” said Lothar. I thought he’d been keeping up as badly as he had been with his pedalling, but he’d been taking it all in quietly.

“There are more planets, but none like Deliverance. There are none the same as any other,” said Melon. “The aliens saw each colony planet they founded as great opportunities to study the humans under different conditions. To see if they thrived, or, as they have on many planets, withered.”