Spiky and sharp.
Matti-Jay kept moving back. Her hands reached something. Smooth and cold. A wall. She pressed right in against it. Back flat.
She started moving sideways.
The robot’s arm kept moving. It creaked. It gave off an oily smell.
How did these things maintain themselves? Or maybe that was just a human question. Maybe however they kept going was some completely alien mechanism. Or system. Or whatever.
Well, of course it was.
Matti-Jay kept sliding along the wall. Her heart had to be beating double speed. Like a fat fist in her chest trying to explode out.
The robot kept its arm moving.
Matti-Jay’s shoulder bumped into another wall. She stopped. Pressed right in. Breathing hard.
Practically hyperventilating.
Was this it? Was this how this human expedition to Ludelle ended? Everyone destroyed by these machines?
She hoped some good data made it back. Not all the machines were bad. Dub and Esgee had helped. Been friendly.
Matti-Jay sank down against the wall. She pressed in. Drew her knees to her chest. Wrapped her hands around them.
She sat there shivering. Soaked. She hugged her knees. Holding herself. It was all the comfort she had.
The robot kept reaching around. Reaching and reaching.
Matti-Jay sat in the dark.
Hold it together girl. You’ll figure something out here.
She shook. Cold.
Wet.
Alone.
And the robot kept reaching.
Chapter Forty One
It felt like hours before the robot finally left. Matti-Jay sat exhausted and chilled. She sneezed, the spasms jerking right through her.
The air was cool and already it was growing dark. Maybe that was just the weather.
The robot’s grabbing into the space stopped with a sudden clank. A change in its sound and its movement. The appendage withdrew and the body moved away from the opening.
Very little more light came through.
Rain did, though. Heavy and sheeting. Coming through the doorway, making steams across the floor.
Matti-Jay’s eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness. The ceiling showed gray and flat above her. Maybe a half a meter above the top of the doorway.
Was there another floor above? Was there a way up?
Matti-Jay pushed herself up a bit. She slumped down again. Exhausted. Physically worn out. Emotionally shot.
Everything she had left. Everything gone.
She lifted the meal pack Dub had made for her. She couldn’t help but laugh. At least she had a last meal.
When had she last eaten? First thing in the morning? Breakfast. The protein bar, and some water. Not a big meal at all.
How late was it? Impossible to tell in the light. And she had no guide from the passage of the events through the day. Was it all day?
The dead animals–the whales–on the beach. Then the big robot coming through from the dunes. Dub and Esgee racing up the beach and along the stream.
Esgee running off. Trying to distract the big robot. That’s what Esgee had done! Running off like a decoy!
It hadn’t worked. But Matti-Jay choked up for a moment. Both of them had tried to help. Esgee hadn’t been abandoning her at all.
Had been strategizing.
And now that big robot was off hunting Esgee. Matti-Jay sniffed and blinked. She looked away, though there was nothing to look away from.
Sad over robots. Still.
She huffed. Took a deep breath.
What next?
Sliding her feet out, she lowered her knees and placed the meal pack on her lap. She peeled the pack open.
Maybe it was loaded with toxins. Maybe it was all just plastic and sand particles.
Who knew?
What choice did she have? There was nothing else to eat. And Dub had made her a good pair of boots. A soil sampler indistinguishable from the original.
And Matti-Jay was hungry. What had they said in training about conserving rations? How it was all about calories and that conserving was not all that vital. Better to be fed than going around hungry. Especially because chances were that you would be ‘rescued’ within a couple of days. Eating little didn’t make much sense, you’d just have low energy.
The meal pack’s cover came away easily. Her eyes were doing better now. She could just see.
Inside the pack was the slab of lasagna, together with something like a vegetable–maybe pumpkin or potato–and some kind of gravy with rice. Or something.
It all smelled all right. Smelled good, actually.
Really, it should be heated, of course. in the Blue Defender’s little oven. These rations were part of the operational runabout’s system. Not even the emergency supplies, really.
Matti-Jay picked up the vegetable. Bit into it. Pumpkin. Cold, but strangely delicious.
So great to have something ordinary like that.
She chewed and swallowed.
“Thanks, Dub,” she whispered. “Thanks for this.”
Matti-Jay polished off the meal quickly. Her stomach churned, happy to be fed. The lasagna was kind of gluggy cold, but oddly tasty.
What she really needed was to stop feeling sorry for herself. She needed to get dry and warm. Needed to figure out what to do next.
She wasn’t going out in the storm, that much was clear. It was awesome that Dub had brought her here to this building. It offered shelter. Not to mention some protection from the crazed giant robot.
It would be night soon enough. Already it seemed pretty dark.
She needed to make use of the light she still had to figure out what else was in the building. The walls she’d bumped into weren’t outer walls, she was pretty sure of that. So there were probably other rooms. And the ceiling suggested the possibility of more floors above. So perhaps there was a stairway.
From the outside, the only opening into the building had been the doorway. No windows or other openings. But then, she’d only been able to see two sides. And not the roof.
The other building she’d seen tucked away in the dunes had been the similar. But it had had windows. Four, or five, she couldn’t remember. Round windows right near the top.
Perhaps a floor up there. Maybe her building had windows too. On one of the sides that she hadn’t seen.
Then again, those windows had been directly above the doorway on that one. Who knew what function the buildings had? Maybe they were completely different. That one could have been a power station and this one could have been storage for bags of sand.
Probably, once, the building had had artificial lighting. Soft emitters in the ceiling keeping the interior well lit. All now failed. Or just switched off.
Most lights that Matti-Jay was used to simply came on by themselves. They were smart enough to know when people were around, and how bright to glow. And to shut down when everyone left.
Maybe these lights were the same. Except that Matti-Jay couldn’t activate them. She wasn’t from here. She was the alien. Maybe the systems just didn’t detect her.
That big robot, though, that had detected her just fine. As had the dragon.
So she wasn’t invisible.
But then, maybe the building was just old and disconnected. Left out here in the dunes.
And maybe just a storage facility. Not that important, with few critical systems.
Matti-Jay got to her feet. A little shakily. Adrenalin. All used up and weary. She was thirsty. That meal had been dry too.
She made her way to the doorway cautiously. The rain still pelted down. Mostly kept at bay by the wall. Some came in through the doorway. Matti-Jay shivered. It was cold, and she was still wet from being out in it.
Still, she peered around. No sign of the big robot. The trees on the dunes made eerie, spiky silhouettes in the haze.
Matti-Jay waited a moment. She didn’t imagine that big robot could hide too easily, but she wanted to err on the side of
caution.
She waited a minute. Another minute. She took another look. Rain pelted her head. Didn’t matter. It wasn’t like she was going to get any wetter.
Nothing. Nothing out there waiting.
She held the meal pack tray out in the rain. The big drips made thocking sounds as they impacted the tray’s base.
The weight grew. After a minute or so, she brought the tray back inside and tipped it up. She got a couple of mouthfuls of water from the tray and she gulped them down quickly. The water tasted of pumpkin and rice. She didn’t mind. She was just thirsty.
Light flashed, followed almost immediately by the crack of thunder. Very close. Her ears almost rang.
She stuck the tray out into the rain again. Repeated. Each time she did it, the water tasted fresher and clearer. Less vegetable taste.
Filling the tray one last time, Matti-Jay stepped back from the doorway. She carried the tray carefully. At some point the rain would stop–probably–and she needed to keep some water for drinking. She returned to her corner and set the tray down carefully.
Letting her eyes work slowly around the space, she looked for variations in the gray-black. Something that might indicate another doorway, or a stairwell. Or anything different at all.
Nothing. It was just too dark. It was all she could do to even see the angle where the ceiling met the walls.
But there was another wall. Along to the right.
Keeping her left fingers on the back wall, Matti-Jay made her way along. She held right hand out ahead of herself. She came to the wall after a moment. It led back along toward the front wall.
Which she came to quickly.
So was this all she had here? A single room?
Another flash of lightning, with a delayed peel of thunder.
But the light had given her a quick glimpse of the room. She’d just needed to be looking in the right direction.
It was a single room. The wall she was following toward the front, had an equivalent directly opposite. That led back to the corner where she’d left her water tray.
But in the back wall, just at head height, there was an opening. It led right the way across. Side to side.
She could only tell that it was an opening because it was a darker black than the rest of the the blackness. How had she not noticed it earlier?
Maybe because back then, she’d been running for her life. Scrambling to avoid a giant robot.
And the lightning.
Another bolt blasted. The light blazed for an instant. The dark hole seemed to have a higher ceiling than her room. Impossible to tell how far back the other space went.
Thunder rumbled through. Loud, but coming from farther off. Maybe the storm was moving away.
But at least the space was up higher. Away from the damp floor, and from the grabbing robotic hands.
Matti-Jay strode over and reached up. The slot’s lip was just above her head height. She grabbed hold of the edge. Pulled and scrambled. Slipped back.
Just too exhausted. What a surprise.
She glanced back at the doorway. A run up? Worth a try.
So she went a few paces toward the door. Ran. Jumped. Grabbed the edge. With some clutching and scrambling she managed to slip over the edge an onto the higher floor.
She lay there panting.
Another thing occurred to her. If those cats happened to come looking for her, they would have trouble getting up here. Wouldn’t they?
Maybe not. Cats back on Earth were pretty good at getting up things. Clawing their way up fences and trees.
As she lay there, Matti-Jay saw that there was some light coming from above.
A tiny glow. Just touching this ceiling.
So maybe there was something above.
She sighed. She just didn’t quite have the energy. But she needed to go find out.
Standing, she started exploring her new space. What would be great would be finding a shower, a bed and a laundry to wash and dry her clothes.
That would be great. Matti-Jay smiled to herself. That’s the spirit. Stay positive.
She started exploring.
Chapter Forty Two
Matti-Jay’s explorations of the building didn’t lead far. There were closed and sealed doors. A stairway that led up another level. That was where the light came from. A single circular panel a half a meter wide mounted in the third level ceiling. The panel glowed with a varying, soft light.
The room was directly above the one on the ground floor with the doorway. It had no open exits. Three doors on one wall, two on the other. All sealed up.
What was through them?
“Probably a bedroom, all fitted out with clean sheets and plump pillows,” she muttered.
Still, the room was dry, and smelled of ozone. As if there was some electrical transformer mounted in the walls. At least the room was warmer than it had been down below. The sounds of the thunder were muted by the walls. The storm sounded even farther off.
Matti-Jay found a corner and lay down to sleep.
It didn’t come. She was damp and cold. Shivering.
She stripped off and tried to wring as much water from her clothes as she could. It didn’t make much difference. The clothes were still pretty damp.
She took off her boots and left them on the top of the stairway to air. Cooler air did drift up from below, so there was at least some circulation.
If she had a rug or something to lie on, she would have spread out her clothes to dry too. But it was just too uncomfortable lying on the floor naked. The choice was between being damp and cool or having no cushioning at all between herself and the solid floor.
Eventually she slept. Fitful and uncomfortable. A few times she woke not knowing where she was. There was no reference point.
The glowing circular panel had faded to almost nothing. Barely enough to see by at all.
The storm rumbled on. A couple of times when she woke she realized that she had actually dried out a bit. The clothes sucking away her own body heat and drying slowly. She shivered.
Eventually she woke to quiet and brighter light coming up from the stairway.
Morning.
She was hungry. No surprise.
The storm had blown through. The light panel had gone completely dark. One of the doors had opened up.
“Great,” she said.
Standing, she took a quick look inside. Another room. Smaller, with another circular panel light on the wall and some kind of desk standing on the floor. An odd-shaped chair in front of it. The seat part was angled forward and bent up like a low tent.
Equipment mounted in the walls that looked like electrical controls and readouts. Almost primitive, like something from an old power station museum back on Earth.
Another door at the far end. Closed.
“See,” she said. “I could have slept in here.” The desk looked infinitely more comfortable than the floor had been, and she could have hung her clothes on the chair to air out.
From below came a familiar sound. That peeping whistling sound.
The cats.
“Well, that’s just great. All I need.”
Chapter Forty Three
Matti-Jay inspected the room with the table-desk and strange chair and electrical equipment. The ozone smell was stronger in here, so maybe that equipment was still operating.
Well, the lights were working. There was no reason to assume that they weren’t electrical.
If she’d brought along her handheld, she would have been able to take photographs and make other readings and recordings.
Matti-Jay smiled at herself. Here she was alone and lost, hungry tired and wet, and she still thought of getting photographs and data. That’s how deep all the training seemed to have gone. Ingrained in her now.
The peeping of the cats came again from below. It sounded like more than one. And it sounded like they’d come into the building. Just below her.
They were probably trying to figure out how to get up to her.
The
room’s door was on a simple hinge. It swung open like a regular door in a standard Earth home. The door had been locked earlier. Who knew why it had opened? Who knew why Dub and Esgee had helped her?
Matti-Jay took a breath. She gave the door a tug. It swung freely. She could close it. Barricade herself in here. The cats wouldn’t be able to get her. Even if they could get up the sheer wall to that halfway floor.
What was that for anyway? There were so many questions here. So few answers.
Matti-Jay picked up the chair. It was light, but strong. Three legs, the odd tent shape of the seat part, and with a low back. Whoever the people here had been, they probably weren’t much different from humans. Similar size. Needed to sit down sometimes. Worked at desks.
Clearly a different kind of hip joint involved in their skeleton–that angle in the chair’s seat part would be uncomfortable for a human to sit on. Excruciating, actually.
Matti-Jay gave the chair a swing. Back and forth. The chair was light, but still had some heft. She held one of the back legs about halfway up.
Maybe it would work as a weapon. Well, at least as something to keep the cats at bay.
Matti-Jay took a last look around the room, trying to remember everything she could.
The next expedition to come out here was going to need a different approach. Less of the softly-softly, meek peering, and more of the defensive safety considerations.
That’s what she would tell them. That’s the message she would send when she got back to the Donner and found a jump tech buoy and sent it home.
Come rescue us, she would say. Bring guns.
Carrying the chair–her new weapon–she went back out to the stairs and pulled on her boots. They were pretty dry.
From right below, the cats peeped and whistled. Lots of them.
Chapter Forty Four
Matti-Jay descended the short stairway from the upper rooms to the middle room. Light just about blazed through from the lower open doorway. Not really, but it was all relative. She’d been in the dim, windowless space so long, that even a bit of daylight seemed like a spotlight.
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