Brother to Dragons

by Charles Sheffield

  “Why does anybody go in right away?” asked a voice from the back of the little bus. “Why not wait a while, until the short-lived radioactives get less hot?”

  “Because the bad stuff can spoil the good—half the containers split when they land, so unless we go in real quick the leakage gets to everything.” Ormond turned to glance back along the bus. “Any more questions? If not, we’ll head back.”

  There was a movement from the people in the van, like the release of long-held breath. The dashboard monitor had edged its way up past twelve. As the van turned, Job took a last look at Tandy Center. One of the Tandymen was climbing down the side of a steep ridge, black legs pumping and sturdy tracks digging in for a grip. The bright-red arms were clutching a roll of wire to the barrel chest, and the lenses of the red-eyed head glittered in the sunlight.

  Job watched until the Tandyman had trundled around the base of the ridge and out of sight, then did his own exhaling of breath. He leaned back in his seat. It was not every day that a long-feared demon was so cleanly exorcised.

  • Chapter Fourteen

  …and it shall bring him to the king of terrors.

  —The Book of Job, Chapter 18, Verse 14

  Again, the informality came as a surprise.

  Ormond drove to a fair-sized town eight miles from the center of Xanadu, where she assigned each person a dormitory and a room. They were fed in a dining room big enough to hold four or five hundred. One hour later they were assembled in the main square, along with fifty other newcomers who had arrived at the Tandy during the past week. Only then did Job learn that Ormond was not merely their driver of the day. She would be their watchdog, tutor, and absolute boss until the end of their three-month training period. After that they would be assigned to other duties and become someone else’s worry.

  “Always assuming that you make it,” explained Ormond. “You probably want to know what the odds are. There are sixty-four of you. A month from now that will be fifty-one, in two months you’ll be down to forty-four, and by the time training’s over I expect to shake hands with thirty-nine. Sixty-one percent training survival. If you don’t like the sound of that, check around. My figures are as good as anyone’s.

  “Study those numbers, fix ’em in your head. They’re only averages, naturally, but they ought to tell you one thing: the first month is the worst. And the second month is the next most dangerous. If you make it through them and the rest of training and don’t get sloppy after that, you can live here for years and years. Like me.”

  Job was reevaluating Ormond. The young face and casual manner disguised a lot of self-confidence.

  “When in doubt,” she went on, “ask questions. Xanadu charges a high price for ignorance. So who’s going to start, and ask me something useful?”

  The new arrivals stared at each other and at their surroundings. The square they stood in was broad and open, flanked by big brick buildings intended to house a hundred people or more. Beyond the town were cultivated fields, empty of crops and fast losing their snow cover in the late afternoon sunshine. It would be dark in another hour. The group stood cold-footed in melting slush.

  A tentative hand went up near the back.

  “Why do new people like us have to work near the middle of the Tandy, where the hot drops are made? Why not fence that part off, and just leave it?”

  “Good question. Anyone like to answer for me?”

  Job had been absorbing her intonations and speech patterns. Xanadu was a melting pot for people from all over the country, but it also seemed to have developed its own characteristic accent. Job had noticed it in Paley, and now he was tracing it in Ormond. He needed to hear as much as possible, and he needed to speak it. He could not do that following his usual rule of remaining silent and inconspicuous.

  He raised his hand. “Because you need what’s dropped at the center of Xanadu.”

  That brought a flash from Ormond’s gray eyes. “All right, so far so good. Go on.”

  “People come in from outside, but they don’t bring supplies. Even if you are self-sufficient for food and fuel, you need finished products. The buses we came in stay here, but that’s not much. You need the things that are dropped off by air, whatever happens to be mixed in with the toxic wastes and nuclear by-products. They’re your only source of outside materials.”

  “Right answer. There’s just one thing wrong with it. Anyone know what it is?” She was cocking her head at Job.

  Challenging me, he thought. Testing me. But he could find nothing wrong with his answer. He shook his head.

  Ormond grinned. “Just a detail—but an important one. Think of the way you gave your answer. You need finished products, you said, and you need what’s dumped at Tandy Center. What you should have said is that we need those things. You’re part of Xanadu now. Don’t forget it.

  “All right. Any more questions?”

  Before the group could respond a growing rumble sounded from behind. They all turned. One of the Tandymen was chugging along the road that led to the square. As it neared it suddenly accelerated. In a few seconds the mechanical robot was traveling at top speed, fast as a running horse.

  “Wild Tandyman! Scatter!” Ormond was off like a rabbit, racing for the nearest building. After a confused pause, everyone followed.

  The long journey west to the Nebraska Tandy had stiffened Job’s legs. They had not yet recovered, and he was slower off the mark than the others. Lagging the field, he heard the clatter of Tandyman tracks behind him. The thick concrete of the square was shaking under his feet. He ran on. Already he could imagine metal treads on his back, snapping his spine, flattening his rib cage, squirting the lifeblood from his open mouth.

  And then the Tandyman was past him. It had singled out one man from the group, a balding forty-year-old, and it was ignoring everyone else. Twenty yards short of the building the Tandyman caught its prey. Four pincered arms reached out and down, seized the man at waist and shoulders, and lifted him into the air. He screamed in wordless terror, wriggling and twisting in the metallic grip. The Tandyman brought him up to touch its broad chest, then lifted him higher on telescoping arms. In a few seconds he was dangling upside down, bald head fifteen feet above the concrete of the square.

  Everyone else had reached the safety of the building. They turned and looked. Job, with the Tandyman between him and safety, did not know what to do. He backed away, while the man hung suspended in midair, shouting and writhing.

  And then, inexplicably, the metal arms shortened and swung down. The man was rotated in midair and placed lightly on the ground. His legs buckled beneath him and he sank sobbing to the concrete.

  The Tandyman’s pincers released their hold and rubbed slowly up the man’s body from knees to neck. At the head they paused for a few seconds longer, running pocked metal claws around the naked scalp. The man shivered and began to crawl away through the slush. The Tandyman retracted its pincered arms. It turned and rolled quietly away, the questing head rotating back and forth on its smooth bearings.

  Job started to walk forward. The man had risen to his knees and was rocking backwards and forwards, eyes wide open and staring.

  “Are you all right?” asked Job.

  “I thought I was dead.” The man brought his soaked hands up to his face and gave a shuddering laugh. “God in Heaven, I knew I was dead. I was sure it was going to tear me apart.”

  “Stand back!” Ormond hurried forward and pushed Job away from the kneeling man.

  “But he needs—”

  “He needs nothing you can give him. Wait here, don’t go nearer—any of you! That’s an order. Give him at least twenty feet clearance. I’ll be right back.”

  She ran into the building and was gone for a couple of minutes. In that time the Tandyman’s victim managed to stand up. He stared around in confusion. The others were watching sympathetically, but they left a wide circle of space about him. When Ormond emerged she was wearing a gray suit complete with a glass helmet and was carrying anot
her suit under her arm. “Here.” She thrust it at Job. “You’re skinny, you ought to be able to get into that with no trouble. Do it. The rest of you, inside.”

  The gray suits had their own shoes. Job was forced to remove his and stand barefoot in freezing slush before he could climb into the legs and pull the suit up over his body. He clamped the helmet closed.

  “Take his other arm.” Ormond was running a device the size of a small calculator over the man’s body and peering at its display.

  “I don’t need help.” The man tried to shake off Job’s hand. “I’m fine. It didn’t hurt me.”

  “It didn’t hurt you. It killed you.” Ormond held out the little sensor. “See this? That Tandyman came right from the middle of Tandy Center. Its pincers have been soaking in the hottest nuclear material. You just got four thousand rads. You’re a goner. All we can do is try to make you comfortable.”

  “Four thousand rads! But I’m…I’m…” The man opened and closed his mouth, then turned away and vomited into the slush.

  Ormond eyed him with disgust. “That’s not radiation sickness, friend, that’s funk. You won’t start to feel real symptoms for hours.” She nodded to Job. “There’s no danger now to anyone else, but I’m going to put him in separate quarters. And I’m detailing you to stay with him. Ever see anybody die of radiation sickness?”

  Job shook his head.

  “Well, now’s your chance. Got his arm? Let’s go.”

  Between them they walked the baldheaded man across the square. He had started to shiver.

  Job felt like shivering, too. How much dose had he received, when the Tandyman ran past him, or when he had stood close to the doomed man?

  “Why?” he asked. “Why did it pick him out, and not me or somebody else?”

  “I don’t know yet,” said Ormond. “But he knows. Don’t you? You can tell us.”

  The man did not seem to hear. He was staring straight ahead.

  “He failed the test,” Ormond went on, “the same one you got when you came into Xanadu. Either he’s some kind of spy sent in from outside, or else he’s an old enemy of one of the Xanadu bosses from their days outside. Either way, it makes no difference. He’s a goner.”

  “I thought I was a goner when I heard the Tandyman right behind me.”

  “I believe it.” Ormond nodded. “Takes everybody that way. Using Tandymen to punish people is a great method to scare everybody and keep things under tight control. But I wish they’d either find another way, or at least let me know in advance when it’s going to happen. Every time I see a Tandyman running loose it gives me the willies. I guess it’s supposed to. Come on, let’s get him into the house.”

  The building that Ormond led them to was a small wooden structure set apart from the rest. She placed the stricken man inside, then made Job strip in the cold Nebraska twilight while she went over him with the radiation monitor.

  “Couple of rads,” she said. “Nothing to worry about. You don’t need the suit, but I wasn’t sure how big a dose we might get. I’m going to take your clothes and bring you new ones. Maybe I can find something that actually fits.”

  Job was left alone and naked with the silent stranger. The hut had a stove inside, but it had only just been lit. The room was freezing. Job hunted around until he found a closet full of blankets and helped himself to a couple. He went back to the main room and found the man crouched by the stove. “Want to talk about it?”

  The man shook his bald head. “Go fuck yourself.”

  Job was already seeing the skull beneath the skin. Four thousand rads. Ormond was right, the man was a goner. An average lethal dose of radiation was only a tenth of that.

  He retreated to the far side of the room, wrapped himself in blankets, and stretched out on the couch. How long before Ormond came back? She had made no promises. The man was beginning to shiver, bone-deep tremors that had nothing to do with cold.

  If Paley had asked one more question…Job might be sitting there by that stove, too, deep in shared despair.

  And the danger was not over. There could be random truth tests at any time, a convenient way for the leaders of Xanadu to keep abreast of what was happening inside the Tandy. The idea that the people in Techville might be doing something that the Tandy bosses did not know about and approve of became less plausible.

  Job drifted off into sleep. After midnight, for the first time in a decade, he dreamed of the Tandyman. A huge golem, half man, half machine, was pursuing him through the labyrinth of the Mall Compound. Its red eyes were gleaming, its hands blazed white-hot. As it reached down for Job and the burning hands seized him, the face changed to become the grinning gnome mask of Wilfred Dell.

  Across the room, the real Tandyman’s victim had begun to groan. Job awoke, drenched in sweat. He listened, and found reality worse than nightmare. For the first time he understood fully where he was: inside the Nebraska Tandy, with a minuscule chance of ever getting out.

  • Chapter Fifteen

  My breath is corrupt,

  my days are extinct,

  the graves are ready for me.

  —The Book of Job, Chapter 17, Verse 1

  Two rads of absorbed radioactivity produces no immediate effect on a human. Nor does twenty rads. A hundred rads will lead within thirty days to loss of hair, loss of appetite, and a feeling of malaise. Four hundred rads will kill half the people who receive it. Four thousand will kill with a hundred percent fatality rate, and the afflicted person will die within seven days.

  Job had learned the arithmetic of radiation sickness quickly, but without facilities for treatment the facts were useless to him. By the second day Untermeyer—the man had finally told Job his name—was nauseated and vomiting. He could eat nothing. By the third day ulceration of his whole digestive tract had begun and any hope of obtaining information from him was abandoned. Untermeyer’s throat had become too painful to permit speech. By the fifth day edema of his body and limbs made it impossible for him to move.

  At midday on the sixth day, Untermeyer died. Job assisted with the burial. Two hours later he received his own assignment: Tandy Center. He would work there for two months before reassignment could be considered.

  Ormond was apologetic. “I told my boyfriend that you’re prime material. After the way you’ve looked after Untermeyer, I said you shouldn’t be wasted. Mannie works in Headquarters. But he says there’s no exceptions for anyone. New arrivals have to work the hot spots.”

  “Thanks for trying.” Job followed her to the blue van. He was already mimicking Ormond’s accent, although she did not seem to notice.

  “I found out more about Untermeyer.” Ormond started the engine and headed in the direction of Tandy Center. “They didn’t catch him on the entrance test. Mannie says that Untermeyer worked for Gormish—she’s one of the top three in Xanadu—on the outside. It was his evidence that put Gormish here. When Untermeyer was sent here too, he bought a false ID. He must have hoped that Gormish was dead. But somebody recognized him and went to her. She set the Tandyman onto him. She was controlling it herself.”

  Job registered the new information: he had the name of one of the three people who ran Xanadu, Ormond had a friend in Headquarters, and the entrance test had its problems. Both he and Untermeyer had passed it. So the chance of continuing tests and checks was increased.

  But none of that information was going to be much use. Job became convinced of that after they arrived at the Xanadu cleanup and maintenance center. It was a long, low building, with a score of trucks and bulldozers parked in front of it. Off to one side loomed dozens of the giant Tandymen. As Job stepped out of the blue van, one of the robots jerked to life and rumbled away down the road that led to Tandy Center. Job could not take his eyes off it until it was right out of sight. After it vanished he went inside and was placed with twenty other newcomers in a cold, low-ceilinged classroom.

  “You’ll work in and around the center, all of you,” said Ormond. She was standing in front of a wall-sized map
of Xanadu. “But of course you won’t sleep there. No point in absorbing more toxins and radiation than you have to. You’ll do a nine-hour shift, six days a week, and come back here at night.

  “The first trick to working cleanup is easy: Know your geography. There’s runoff from the center whenever it rains, and the flow directions are well known.” She turned and tapped the map. “The main runoff and seepage paths are marked. Spend as much time as you can in here, learn the black areas of the map by heart. If you avoid them and stay on areas marked in green, you’ll halve the poisons you pick up.

  “I said the main runoff patterns are marked. But there’s hundreds of minor toxin pools and radiation hot spots, and a lot of them aren’t plotted anywhere. So you have to learn to use your eyes.” She picked up two flowering twigs from the table. “Some plants have high tolerance for certain toxins, others can’t stand them. This one thrives in soil full of poisons that will corpse you. Long spiky leaves, yellow flowers—you see them and you stay clear. This one, flat leaves, hairy on their underside, needs pure, clean soil. If you see it, you can go there safely. Except that the same plant has a high radiation tolerance, so you need to keep an eye on your personal monitor. You need to do that anyway wherever you are. Make it second nature.”

  Job could see that some of the others in the room were hardly listening. When at the end of the session Ormond offered sheets describing plants that flagged safe or dangerous areas, only half the class bothered to take one. Job took two. Illiteracy in Xanadu carried a higher penalty than it did outside.

  So did many other things. On the second day, when the group made its first trip into Tandy Center, Ormond drove a different route. She took the van past a line of scaffolds, where bodies hung eyeless, blackened and rotting in the freezing air.