The Boy at the End of the World
Page 14
The Ark around him was Fisher’s world, and he needed to find a way to use it to his advantage.
He bounced from pod bed to pod bed. Goats, sheep, pigs … None of these would do. With the sounds of Click approaching and his ankle screaming, he hurried down another level. And there he found what he was looking for.
Fisher slapped a green button.
“Initiating awakening sequence on pod UAH-D, adult ursus arctos horribilis, male. Does operator wish to disconnect umbilical?”
“Yes,” Fisher snapped. “And hurry!”
The pod gel stopped bubbling and drained away.
Wet fur glistening, the mammal inside remained curled up and still. Then, with a moist pop, the umbilical came loose and retracted into the pod bed.
“Ursus arctos horribilis, male UAH-D is now self-sustaining. Does operator wish to initiate full brain function?”
“Yes!”
Fisher remembered how he’d felt when he first became born. He’d been confused, and scared, and hungry. His instinct told him to flee when faced with threats.
He hoped this animal’s instinct would tell it something else.
“Fisher, you are making the most inefficient escape I have yet witnessed since your awakening.” Click stood leaning over the rail, one level above him.
“I came up with a plan to stop you—”
“Do not tell me,” Click said. “The Intelligence is conscious and will use anything you tell me to its advantage. Even now, it is attempting to overwrite my personality programming. I am finding myself motivated to strangle you. Hello.”
Click leaped over the rail and dropped heavily before Fisher. Turning, Fisher sprinted several yards down the walkway, but the robot was too fast and caught him easily. He reached out, wrapping his white fingers around Fisher’s throat. It felt like knives clogging Fisher’s airway. He could get only the thinnest trickle of breath.
“Fight it,” he rasped.
“I cannot,” Click said, his voice calm as ever. “You must fight it. You must be the strongest animal. Your survival depends on it.”
A curtain of gray fell over Fisher’s vision, and everything felt so heavy.
Fisher’s left hand scrabbled at Click’s chest. In his right, he still held his blaster ball launcher. The robot squeezed Fisher’s throat tighter and lifted him in the air. The tips of Fisher’s toes scraped the floor.
“I wish you had heeded my advice and destroyed me,” said Click. “Once the Intelligence is done making me kill you, it will turn its attention to killing the humans in the pods. Then it will infiltrate their flesh with copies of itself to preserve them. These tasks run counter to my programming. I must tell you, Fisher, I would rather be permanently deactivated than do these things.”
Fisher raised his blaster ball launcher. He placed the end of the barrel against Click’s chest.
“No,” said Click. “Aim for my head. The nano-worm is lodged deep in my central behavioral processor. You must destroy my brain.”
A throaty growl came from behind Click. Ursus arctos horribilis. The grizzly bear Fisher had awoken. Seven feet tall, the grizzly rose up on two legs, all thick brown fur and sharp claws and clean white fangs.
“I’m sorry, Click,” Fisher choked. “I found a way.”
Bears were excellent fishers. They possessed fantastic reflexes. They were strong and fast. And powerful enough to take on a robot.
“Ah, yes. Excellent, Fisher.”
The bear dropped back down on all fours and charged, half a ton of wild fury focused on the only thing in its path. Click turned his head just as the bear’s paws slammed into his back.
Click struck the ground, and Fisher with him. Gripping his weapon, he crab-crawled away. The grating squeal of the bear’s claws raking Click’s body made Fisher wince. Plastic and metal cracked and crunched as the bear ripped Click apart. Hydraulic fluids sprayed as its jaws closed on one of Click’s arms and tore it free.
“Fisher,” came Click’s voice, weak and full of static, “try to make the bear remove my head plate and get to my brain. The nano-worm will otherwise attempt to squirm free and infiltrate some other device …”
The bear’s fangs sank into Click’s head. Claws pried loose his temple, exposing wires and connectors and a black, fist-sized object shaped roughly like a closed clam shell. Click’s brain.
“Ah, yes. Very good.”
“I’m sorry, Click. I didn’t want to … I’m sorry.”
“You have done very well, Fisher. You used your fishing knowledge and controlled your environment. But I must urge you to be cautious. When the bear is done with me, it will turn on you.”
Click’s voice was barely a hissing whisper now. The bear ripped an eye free.
“I’m sorry,” Fisher said, again and again, nearly blinded by his tears.
“Do not be. You are a successful animal, Fisher. You survived. And not just for your own sake, but for the benefit of your entire species.”
Snarling, the bear forced its paw into Click’s head cavity. Its claws scratched at Click’s brain.
“You succeeded, too, Click. You helped me survive. You helped all of us survive, to repopulate the Earth. Thank you.”
“Ah, you are welcome. Now, I must remind you, do not forget to destroy the worm. It is very important that you destroy—”
“I will,” Fisher said.
And Click’s voice dropped into a soft, rhythmic clicking. The clicking grew slower and ever softer, until it fell away into permanent silence.
Fisher rose to his feet.
He aimed his weapon at the floor in front of the bear and fired. The ka-poom of his blaster ball echoed through the Ark and left a sizzling hole in the floor. The newly awoken grizzly moaned a roar, then turned and fled into the maze of the pod beds.
And there, wriggling away from the parts that used to be Click’s head, was the black thread of a nano-worm, making its way toward an air vent in the wall.
Fisher loaded a blaster ball and curled his finger around the trigger.
He took aim.
He knew he would not miss.
CHAPTER 25
He could still hear the growling and snuffling of the grizzly in the darkness and so kept his blaster ball launcher ready as he made his way back to Protein in the control room.
Protein lowed and touched Fisher all over with his trunk.
“I’m okay,” he said, patting Protein. “Just a little bit busted up. Stay here, okay? I’m going to go out and … Well, just stay here.”
Fisher left the control room and started down the corridor to the Ark entrance. Protein, not at all to Fisher’s surprise, ignored his request to remain back and followed, snorting.
Fisher dreaded opening the Ark door. He feared he’d find the canyon swarming with gadgets and littered with burning clumps of prairie dog fur. But when he stepped out into the searing bright sunlight, the smoking clumps on the battlefield were all machines. Prairie dogs poked through debris, organizing the wreckage into sorted piles of scavenge. The fight had become a salvage operation.
Red Top stood just outside the door, yipping and barking out orders. He barely acknowledged Fisher’s return. But Zapper, leaning on a gadget rotor blade as a crutch, showed her teeth in an expression Fisher recognized as the closest thing prairie dogs had to a smile.
“Prairie dogs is victorious,” she said with a yip. “Silver Paw and Swiftdig is injured, but is getting healed soon.”
Fisher’s chest untightened. “That’s good. Prairie dogs is mighty.”
“Ai, we is mighty. Is Ark all alive inside?”
“The specimens are intact,” Fisher said, fighting against the cloud of sadness blanketing him. “Most of them, anyway.”
Zapper grunted. “Where is robot?”
“Click … I failed him.”
With reluctance, Fisher filled her in on what had happened inside the Ark, including the way he’d used the bear against Click. He did not feel proud of himself relating the story.
“Not this time,” Fisher said.
Zapper gently patted his hip, her whiskers drooping. Even Red Top seemed saddened by this news.
Fisher told the rest of the story, about the nano-worm he’d reduced to dust. And about the grizzly bear still on the loose. He emphasized its size and strength and teeth and claws. The captain’s eyes went wide.
“We should … subdue beast,” Red Top said, his eyes shifting uneasily.
“No,” Fisher said. “I know it’s a forbidden place for you. I’ll do it.”
“I do it with you,” Zapper said, firmly. She barked across the boulder field. “Dullclaw, Shaper, Quicktail! Is salvage job for us in Ark!”
Red Top made a coughing noise. “Red Top helps too. Backstripe, Goodfoot! Not just be standing there, is bringing ropes and net!”
The work continued into the campfire-lit night. Fisher’s wounds were cleaned and bandaged, and his injured ankle splinted, and he allowed himself to rest while the prairie dogs hauled gadget parts back to the colony.
But his rest was short-lived.
He went back inside the Ark and painstakingly gathered the parts of Click, including his fragile brain, which no amount of glue or wire or screws would be able to fix.
Zapper helped him place the pieces on a blanket, which Fisher folded and carried in a bundle back outside. The prairie dog warriors had built a fire. Creosote embers rose on the updrafts, blinking out well before reaching the stars.
The prairie dogs began howling with long cries that sounded both fierce and mournful. Fisher recognized the tones and patterns. It was the Cry of Leaving, the same one they’d sung for Zapper’s fallen littermate, Nailer, and the ceremony was well underway before Fisher fully realized what was happening. It was a funeral, for Click.
He carefully set the bundle of Click’s remains near the fire.
One by one, prairie dogs laid small offerings atop it. Catches-Big-Bugs put down a fat moth. Red Top contributed a broken lance. Other prairie dogs left bits of weapons, or small bundles of grasses, or prickly pear cactus fruit. Protein hauled over an absurdly large saguaro branch. He ran his trunk over the blanket filled with Click’s parts and made a low sound through his trunk. Then he began eating the cactus fruit.
Zapper placed something in Fisher’s hand. “Is not tradition for prairie dogs, but maybe for humans?”
In Fisher’s palm was a small piece of glass-like substance, attached to a leather thong. A piece of Click’s eye.
“I don’t know what human traditions are,” Fisher said. “I always thought Click would be here to tell me.”
Zapper grunted. “Robot pretty smart, but smartest thing robot knew is that Fisher is very smart. You is inventive. You is figuring it out.”
Fisher smiled, just a little, and looped the thong over his head. Surprisingly heavy, the piece of Click settled over his heart.
“Walk with me, human.”
Greycrown had come out to see the Ark for herself. She did not look pleased.
Alone, Fisher gave her a tour. She lingered a long time before the pod beds housing sleeping prairie dogs. They were smaller than her kind, with much in common, but no more than Fisher shared with chimpanzees. She lingered even longer before the humans. They remained in stasis, including the girl whose birthing sequence Fisher had started.
“Is many dangerous things here,” Greycrown said. “You is wanting to awaken everything, I am thinking?”
“Of course not. There’s not a habitat for everything. There’s not food for everything. I mean, some of the pod beds have hammerhead sharks in them. Click said the idea is to wake things gradually, over the course of many years, when there’s a place for them. When the world is ready. In fact … I’m not sure I should be waking up anything.”
“But is why you fought Intelligence and rovers. Is why you is journeying across grassland and desert and carnivorous jungle. Is why you come down river. Thousands of miles, and thousands of hardships. You is scared, now that there is just some buttons to press?”
“Yes,” said Fisher. “I’m scared. Anyway, you said if you ever got inside the Ark, you’d give the order to destroy it.”
“That is what Greycrown is saying to you in colony, yes.”
Fisher directed the hardest look he could summon at the prairie dog leader. “But you know I’m not going to let you do that.”
She waved a dismissive paw at him. “Greycrown is not caring about you. But Zapper will not let Greycrown destroy Ark. Even Greycrown’s own captain of troops will not let her. Colony chose to help human. Now is question: what will human choose?”
Fisher didn’t have an answer for Greycrown yet. He walked away from her, down the corridor and back out into the open air.
When morning broke, he was once again inside the Ark.
For the last few hours, he’d been standing over the pod bed housing the girl whose awakening sequence he’d started yesterday. Physically, she was fine, but not conscious. With a few buttons and vocal commands, Fisher could return her to full and complete slumber.
“I thought everything would be easy if I found an intact Ark with living specimens,” he said to Protein. “Just punch some buttons or throw some switches and wake everyone up. They’d know what to do, and I could let them take charge. I’d catch fish for them, and they’d rebuild civilization, and everything would take care of itself.”
Protein snuffled.
“It’s just … there’s a lot to do.”
Fisher’s fingers brushed over the lid of the pod bed housing the girl.
What kind of human would she be?
What would she make of the world she awoke to?
What would she make of Fisher?
Protein ran his trunk over Fisher’s head, and Fisher touched the glass hanging around his neck. Then, with a firm hand, he reached out for the big green button.
CHAPTER 26
She came awake in a bed of bubbling gel.
And this is what she knew:
Her name was Hunter.
The world was dangerous.
But she was not alone.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing a book is a lot like taking a journey, and I had a great deal of help along the road. The following people provided guidance, advice, maps, fuel, way stations, snacks, and repairs, and it might have been a pretty crummy trip without them.
My thanks go first and foremost to my road buddy Lisa Will, for life support and defense systems.
Special thanks as well to my agent, Caitlin Blasdell, who navigates me through the often confusing roads of the book business, and to my editor, Margaret Miller, whose gentle but insistent feedback whenever I got tired or lost helped make this a much better book than it would otherwise be. Much appreciation goes to the entire team at Bloomsbury, whose care and expertise turned my manuscript into the book you now hold in your hands. And big thanks to August Hall for his beautiful, evocative cover art.
The Blue Heaven and Starry Heaven writers’ workshops provided useful getaways with plenty of fun and camaraderie, and, most importantly, smart feedback on portions of this book at various stages, so thanks to Paolo Bacigalupi, Brad Beaulieu, Gwenda Bond, Tobias Buckell, Sarah Kelly Castle (who also came up with this book’s title), Deb Coates, Brenda Cooper, Robert Levy, Sandra McDonald, Holly McDowell, Catherine Morrison, Heather Shaw, William Shunn, and Rob Ziegler. And for slogging through the entire manuscript, my gratitude to Kris Dikeman and Adam Rakunas.
Additional thanks to Rae Carson (who held a mirror up to my opening to show me the ending), C.C. Finlay (who drew me a map), Sarah Prineas (for answering my call for emergency roadside assistance), and Jenn Reese (whose ideas on everything from structure to funny character bits proved invaluable).
Thanks also to Mike Jasper, Karen Meisner, Tim Pratt, Jeremiah, Theo, and Maud.
Finally, my thanks to all the technology I relied on throughout the writing of this book, from my laptop to my smartphone t
o my coffeemaker. Truly, we live now in an age of wonders.
ALSO BY GREG VAN EEKHOUT
…
Kid vs. Squid
Copyright © 2011 by Greg van Eekhout
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in the United States of America in June 2011
by Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers
E-book edition published in June 2011
www.bloomsburykids.com
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, Bloomsbury BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Van Eekhout, Greg.
The boy at the end of the world / by Greg van Eekhout. — 1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Born half-grown in a world that is being destroyed, Fisher has instinctive
knowledge of many things, including that he must avoid the robot that knows his name.
ISBN 978-1-59990-524-2 (hardcover)
[1. Science fiction. 2. Survival—Fiction. 3. Robots—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.V2744Boy 2011 [Fic]—dc22 2010035741
ISBN 978-1-59990-710-9 (e-book)