Brother to Dragons

by Charles Sheffield

  He cupped his hands over his aching eyes. The clock was running. Fast. He must be out of sight of Techville before daylight, and dawn was less than an hour away.

  • Chapter Nineteen

  My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh,

  and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.

  —The Book of Job, Chapter 19, Verse 20

  Job walked to daybreak, and through it.

  After the first half-hour his legs took on a momentum of their own, swinging his body forward across the dark, damp earth. If it had been hard to start walking, now it was much harder to stop. The need to keep moving, to travel, to press on towards the eastern edge of the Tandy…the urge was almost irresistible; only as the sun rose higher could Job force himself to halt.

  The inducement was the shrunken remains of a snowdrift, piled against the north side of a dense evergreen shrub and protected from sunlight. Job knelt, took a handful of packed gray snow, and sucked it avidly. He held another handful against his forehead. No doubt about it, his fever was worse.

  He stared east and made the calculation over and over. Less than a mile away the ridged trash mounds of Tandy Center rose above gentler hill slopes. He must circle that lethal central area and head east for another ten miles before he came to the fence around Xanadu. The total distance to be traveled was, say, fifteen miles. It would be dark again by six. The defensive laser ring would be turned off from eight P.M. to two A.M. Assuming that he started out promptly at sunset, he would have eight hours before the barrier closed for the last time and his chance to leave Xanadu vanished forever. Fifteen miles in eight hours; less than two miles an hour. It sounded trivial—if his legs could carry him so far.

  And if the barrier around Xanadu could be opened.

  Job sighed and lay full length on the ground, face up. He peered into the sky, into as deep a blue as he had ever seen. Somewhere in that void, hundreds of miles above him, unsleeping surveillance satellites stared back at Earth. Onboard sensors, if Wilfred Dell were to be believed, were even now scanning the Nebraska Tandy with their sensitive optics and cunning shape-detection algorithms, searching for the starfish form of a supine man against black earth.

  Were they there? Would they see him?

  Job forced himself to lie in the same place for two hours. The temperature gradually rose and the sun climbed higher, until even the gentle rays of early spring were enough to sting his ulcerated face. At last he crawled to the shelter of the scrubby evergreens and lay down by them. With the day to go before he could safely move on, what he needed more than anything was rest. But he was too feverish to sleep.

  He began to munch on hard bread and tough meat, chewing with raw, lacerated gums and swallowing with a throat on fire with fever. The early lessons of Cloak House allowed him to endure the pain: Eat when you can, not when you feel like it.

  He swallowed every scrap that he had brought with him, washed it down with mouthfuls of melted snow, and stared about in search of a safer hiding place.

  There was nothing. The Tandy was too flat and open. Its valleys were broad and shallow, not enough to conceal a human, even one lying at full-length. The evergreen bushes might seem like the best hiding-place—but that meant they were the first place that any searcher would look.

  Job rose to his hands and knees. A couple of hundred yards to the southeast the spiky grass vegetation gave way to taller sedges and rushes. It suggested swampy ground. He crawled that way. As he came to the reedy area his hands sank deeper into cool, soft mud. He kept moving until he was at the center of a little depression. His hands were in above the wrist, and his knees and lower legs were covered, but the reeds and sedges were still not enough to conceal him. He had to burrow deeper. He lay flat on his back and wriggled, feeling his body sink slowly in the ooze until all but his head was covered. He reached out to each side, picked up handfuls of wet black mud, and daubed his burning face with them. Now he had become a man of earth, invisible from more than a few paces. He placed the mud-soaked cloth that had held his food over his fevered forehead, closed his eyes, and relaxed.

  The cool embrace was exactly what he needed. As the day grew hot and the sun rose past its zenith, Job could feel the fever draining out of him, leached away by wet black earth. The soil above him dried and crumbled in the heat, while he drowsed and drifted and dreamed. He did not remember falling asleep, but when he opened his eyes the sun was suddenly a ball of orange fire, low on the horizon—and he was feeling human again.

  He sat up. Time to be moving. And as he had that thought and stared around him, he learned that he was no longer alone. On the western horizon a long line of tiny figures had appeared. They were on the brow of a gentle hill, far off but steadily approaching. The line curved around him to both north and south.

  He was hunted. And hunted in the most logical and inescapable way. Once Pyle, Gormish, and Bonvissuto had learned that Job had taken the vials from Hanna Kronberg’s lab, they must have realized that their whole plan was in danger. Since they commanded the use of all the manpower in Xanadu, it would be easy to raise an army of ten thousand or more, send them to the outer border of the Tandy, and instruct everyone in the circle to walk inward. Only a hundred feet from each other at the outer perimeter of Xanadu, they would come closer and closer together as they approached the center. Nothing could escape them—not even a solitary man, lying flat and covered in mud.

  Job could lie still, and wait for night. But only a fool would believe that they lacked flashlights and infrared detectors.

  The behavior of the far-off line of men and women confirmed his assessment. They were in no hurry. They were convinced that they would find him, no matter where he hid.

  And they were right. Job could not stay where he was. As the light faded he began to move in the only available direction—towards Tandy Center. He crouched low to the ground, seeking shelter from every meager bush or hummock.

  He should have waited just a bit longer. As he was passing over the top of a little rise he heard a cry from behind him. Confirming calls rang out along the line.

  Job stood up straight and began to run, taking the risk of being picked off by some sharpshooter. The main line was to his west. It was useless to run north or south—the cordon would surely continue there to form a full circle. All that he could do was run east, on into the central dump of Xanadu. Soon it would be totally dark, and already the tops of the trash mountains were beginning to merge into the sky. No sane person would pursue him into the deadly wilderness of the dumps. He could hide all night in Tandy Center.

  His lungs began to burn in his chest, and he paused for breath. He could hide tonight, but to what purpose? Unless he had a way to escape in the morning it was pointless. In daylight, searchers wearing protective suits would have no trouble finding him in the dump, no matter where he hid.

  He could not fault that logic, but his legs ignored his brain. He began to run again. Soon he was in a broad corridor that wound into the central drop-off zone. Chaotic mounds of unprocessed junk rose high on every side, providing an illusion of security from pursuers. They would not be reckless enough to follow into unknown dangers. But Job’s own knowledge of Tandy Center had also been gained in daylight, and it was useless at night. He slowed his pace, staring in the sun’s last gleam at twisted skeletons of metal, jumbled piles of contaminated aluminum sheeting, and seas of carboys and boxes and sharp-edged crates. He could see those clearly enough—what he could not see were the hidden dangers, the radioactivity and the toxins that permeated the debris.

  At last the twilight faded to total darkness. Job squatted on the ground. Although he could sense the tangled wreckage on each side, he could no longer see it. Walking here at night was an invitation to disaster. He would have to wait until the tricky light of predawn, then try to slip through the cordon.

  It was the half-hearted decision of a man who already knows that he has lost. And as he made that decision, a booming roar sounded out across Tandy Center.

 
; JOB SALK.

  As he jerked to his feet he recognized the grotesquely amplified voice. It was Gormish.

  JOB SALK. I KNOW THAT YOU ARE HIDING IN THE DUMP, AND WE BOTH KNOW THAT YOU CANNOT ESCAPE. YOU HAVE SHOWN GREAT INITIATIVE TO COME SO FAR. SURRENDER NOW, AND YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED. MEN WITH COURAGE AND SKILL ARE HARD TO FIND. COME OUT, AND I GUARANTEE THAT YOU WILL HAVE A POSITION AT HEADQUARTERS. YOU HAVE MY WORD ON IT.

  Job sank back to the ground. Shades of Wilfred Dell and his promises. He and Gormish looked nothing like each other, but they were brothers under the skin.

  COME OUT NOW, JOB SALK. THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING. COME OUT, OR WE WILL COME AND GET YOU.

  Those were the words that finally forced Job to action. He might die here in Tandy Center, but he would die according to his own plan, not Gormish’s. For half an hour more he rested, then rose and began to pace cautiously forward. If his signal had been received by Dell the eastern barrier of Xanadu would open in one more hour. The middle of the dump could not be far away. Even though it was a forlorn hope, he had to reach that middle and continue across Tandy Center, to confirm that its eastern edge was blocked by the same line of pursuers.

  He stepped on a piece of hard board that cracked under his weight with a sound like a pistol shot. Appalled at the noise, he stood motionless; and then he saw, like a glimmer of false dawn, a faint light shining through an iron lattice in one of the mounds.

  Surely they had not pursued him here to join him in suicide. He stepped closer for a better view. As he did so there was a clash of gears and the growl of moving treads. Through the open metal grid Job saw a familiar towering shape.

  Tandyman!

  His legs wobbled under him and he sank to the floor.

  The Tandyman’s pincered arms telescoped out, as though the machine was stretching and flexing its muscles, then retracted to the sides. Twin searchlights in the cylindrical head swiveled and moved to narrow beam. Then Job could see that it was not heading towards him. It had turned, to run down a corridor parallel to the one in which he was standing.

  He started in the opposite direction. Before he could take more than two steps another rumble of treads came from his other side. He saw more lights, and heard more engines. All the Tandymen parked in Tandy Center were coming alive, one by one. Searchlights glared out, and behind them red crystal eyes glittered in the reflected beams.

  They were after him.

  He could see lights at each end of the corridor. Job was trapped. Desperately he scrambled up the steep side of the nearest ridge, ignoring cuts from sharp metal edges and the danger that the whole face would slide down to bury him.

  At the summit he paused. He could see lights in all directions as a dozen Tandymen were activated and responded to their remote controllers.

  One of them stood below the mound right in front of Job, no more than twenty yards away. He was about to run along the top of the ridge when he saw that the Tandyman was not moving. It had not yet been activated.

  Job plunged down the side of the mound and straight to the Tandyman’s back. He pulled open the spring-loaded door and squeezed through to the interior. It was utterly dark, but as he dropped into the seat the remote control console blinked to life. Job used its light to slam the lever into position for manual override, one second before the remote operator achieved full control.

  The front and rear viewing screens turned on automatically. He took one quick look at the scene provided by the cameras. Four Tandymen were converging on his position. Without waiting to find out if they had seen him, Job sent his Tandyman straight up the side of the nearest mountain of trash.

  The tracked wheels spun and raced. Six articulated legs thrust and jerked and scrabbled for purchase. Then they were at the top and over, descending the other side in a cascade of falling junk.

  Job turned on the headlights, revved up to maximum speed, and roared away along a dark canyon through the debris.

  He could see half a dozen pursuing Tandymen in his rear viewer, but they were a long way back. The remotely controlled units lacked the fine coordination of his manually operated Tandyman, and they could not take his desperate route over the top of the trash mountain. But their sensors were as good as his. They could certainly follow his lights and his sound. There would be scores of them after him, and they had all the time in the world.

  Job had only one advantage: they could have no idea of his particular destination.

  But where was that destination? The turns and twists within the drop-off zone had left him with no sense of direction. As his Tandyman roared along another corridor and into the open land beyond Tandy Center, he tried to find his bearings.

  Before he had time to scan the land and sky ahead he had reached the line of men and woman guarding Tandy Center. They had been settling down for the night, but as the Tandyman roared towards them they scattered. Job heard the rattle of bullets on the metal around him, then he was plunging through the line. Two men and a woman did not move quickly enough. The rushing Tandyman hit them, and the vehicle lurched as it ground their bodies beneath its metal treads.

  Job shuddered and drove on. He was desperately seeking a reference point. There was no moon. The Tandyman’s range of upward vision was enough to allow him to see the stars, but he did not know how to use them to determine direction.

  Soon it should be eight o’clock. The eastern road out of Xanadu would open, and Job did not know how to get there.

  The rear viewer showed the searchlights of half a dozen Tandymen, following his path. They were far behind. He fixed a straight course away from the central dump and bent over the control panel. There was no compass—none had ever been considered necessary—but surely something in the controls would serve to tell him direction.

  He examined every instrument. There was nothing. But the tiny ruby light showing the Tandyman to be under manual control gave him a last-hope idea. He stopped, turned off the engine, and shifted the lever to remove the robot from manual override. The remote control console began to blink; in the same moment Job was pushing open the door and scrambling outside.

  He moved a few steps away from the Tandyman and looked up. The directional antenna on the metal body was moving, homing on the transmitted radio signal. It made a quarter-turn, then steadied around a fixed direction. While it was still locking in, Job was back at the door in the rear of the Tandyman and climbing inside.

  The pursuing Tandymen were only a couple of hundred yards away when he took over manual control again, started the engine, and roared off.

  The Tandyman were remotely controlled from Headquarters, in the far south of Xanadu. The antenna locking on the signal from that direction told Job that he had been heading the wrong way, towards the southwest of Tandy Center. He began to angle south, then gradually east, shifting his bearing little by little so that he did not run too close to the Tandymen who chased him.

  He was at maximum throttle, but he could not increase his lead. The vehicles behind him had fanned out into an arc, always a couple of hundred yards away. They were being systematic in their pursuit. If he made a sudden turn towards any of them, the whole group would not hesitate to ram him. Tandymen were valuable, but tonight any of them was expendable.

  Far to the north Job could see the lights of the cordon around Tandy Center. They provided him with a useful reference point as he spiraled steadily around to a northeast heading. He was following a long, curved path that would bring him tangent to the eastern road by which he had first entered Xanadu.

  When he felt heavy vibration as the metal treads left the soft earth of Xanadu for the concrete surface of the road, he had a new worry. Was he too early? It seemed like hours since he had climbed into the Tandyman, but that was subjective time. Tandymen could run at more than thirty miles an hour, and he had been pushing along at maximum speed. It could be little more than half an hour since he left Tandy Center.

  It was too late to change his mind. The fence was less than half a mile away, rushing closer. He wa
s up to it in seconds.

  If the ring of guarding lasers had not been turned off…

  Job gritted his teeth and wondered if he would have time to realize that he was being vaporized before he died. Then he was through, with the fence behind him.

  He was outside Xanadu.

  Before he could take pleasure in that thought, he saw that his pursuers were still coming after him. They were at the fence—passing through it—

  The night turned blue. Laser beams sprang out across the dark land. Where the Tandymen had been, fountains of sparks and blossoming fireballs illuminated the boundary fence. Watching in his rear viewer, Job saw fragments blown high into the air, to be hit again and again until they were reduced to a fine rain of exploded plastic and liquid metal.

  He drove on. In ten minutes all evidence of the Nebraska Tandy was out of sight behind him. Job turned off the engine and leaned back in his seat. He felt in his pocket, took out the two vials, and sat staring at them in the control board light.

  In Tandy Center he had been forced to action. But that action had still followed Wilfred Dell’s agenda: enter Xanadu, learn what Hanna Kronberg was doing, and escape with proof of it. Job had done just that, and he had with him exactly what Dell needed to persuade others.

  And now?

  It seemed to Job that every action in his whole life had been forced on him by others. It was fear, death, and Colonel della Porta that first made him quit Cloak House. The drug delivery that led to his capture in the Mall Compound had been pushed on him by Miss Magnolia. Starvation had forced him to leave Cloak House for a second time; after his second capture, Wilfred Dell had made him go to Xanadu. Gormish’s words had roused him to escape from Tandy Center. He had always been no better than a human Tandyman, driven along by remote control.

  It was time to change. For the first—and only—time in his life he was going to make a decision of his own.