Vigilant lop-3

by James Alan Gardner

  "Come on, Festina-girl," I said. After my trip to the bathroom I was sitting on the edge of the bed, Festina splayed out beside me. I twisted till I could touch her with my tied-up hands. Grabbed her knee and shook it. "Come on, wake up. Don’t give them an excuse."

  Nothing. Her breathing hadn’t changed, and her face still had a nobody-home emptiness. I shook her leg harder, squeezing her knee. "You have to wake up now, Festina."

  Sheer blank nothing.

  I gave her leg a full-strength yank, and roared, "Explorer Ramos, atten-shun!"

  Suddenly, I wasn’t sitting on the bed anymore. I was flying across the room, jet-propelled by a pair of feet slamming into my back with a double thrust-kick. For a second, I thought I’d plow headfirst into the wall; but I tucked enough to hit with my shoulder, denting the plaster before I toppled to the floor.

  Stun-pistols slapped out of their holsters — I’d fallen with my face to the wall, but I could recognize the sound. "Stop!" I shouted. "Everybody stop!" Then I added, "Ow."

  "Sorry, Faye," Festina said behind my back. "It’s a reflex."

  "I’ll remember that next time we share a bed. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow."

  My shoulder was going to have a grand old bruise. I contemplated the throb of pain while Mouth and Muscle impatiently processed Festina through the bathroom. They gave her a grudging sip of water but no food; I wondered if they were cranked at Festina herself or admirals in general.

  Then: out to their skimmer in the chalet’s garage. The temperature was balmier than ever — soft spring. As the garage door opened, I caught sight of a night sky heaped with fast-moving clouds.

  Mouth took the driver’s seat, and I sat beside, giving directions. In the two minutes we took to get to the bunker, Mouth must have said a dozen times, "You’d better not be lying about this."

  His way of making conversation. Men.

  The dipshits weren’t half as handy with the Class 2 lock as they thought they’d be: cocky-assed city boys who hadn’t expected the jet-black of night on the tundra, with clouds blocking the sky and no nearby lights. The closest home was the Crosbie family compound, a hundred meters off… and the Crosbies had always been crazy-cheap, never leaving a yard lamp burning once everybody was inside for the night. When I was seventeen, I sometimes parked Egerton plunk in the middle of his family’s lawn and with both of us bare-assed to the stars…

  Never mind.

  The dipshits fumbled and swore at the lock for a good five minutes, not daring to spark up a light for fear the Crosbies might see. While they were busy, I considered hobbling over to their portable radio-jammer and jumping on it a few times. If I broke it, who cared if the dipshits whazzed me with their stun-guns? The world-soul would pick up low-level link-seed activity from my unconscious body. Heaven knows, the authorities must be scanning for me by now — the world-soul would have raised the alarm as soon as I lost radio contact in the guest home. But Mouth and Muscle had obviously got me away before the cops arrived…

  The Class 2 lock snicked open. So much for pulling a fast one behind the dipshits’ backs. Mouth picked up the jammer and slung its carrying strap over his shoulder, while the Muscle grabbed Festina and me by the arm, hustling us into the tunnel.

  They locked the entrance behind us again, just in case some local wandered by. No one would be able to tell we’d come down here. And if Festina or I tried to run for it, the locked door would make it that much harder for us to get away.

  Nothing I hate more than a dipshit who thinks ahead.

  We started downward. Our light came from a torch-wand the Muscle had strapped to his upper arm to keep his hands free. As he walked, his arm swung… and our shadows shifted back and forth, back and forth, along the tunnel walls.

  The shaft here was made of the same false granite we’d seen in Mummichog. Or maybe it was real granite — the Great St. Caspian shield. Hard to tell, considering how there were black scorch marks covering most of the stone. I tried not to dwell on the thought that all this carbonization came from burning Oolom corpses. Even after twenty-seven years, the air was filled with a strong whiff of charring… the smell that never leaves a place where there’s been an uncontrolled fire.

  The ash streaks on the walls grew thicker the farther down we went. Somewhere under the black stains, I’d once painted my initials in stolen yellow paint: F.S. loves… I forget who I loved that day. Probably one of my future spouses. I’d only liked a few people in Sallysweet River, and I’d forced them all to marry me.

  Damn, I missed them. It hurt. And at that instant, I realized I could never go home for fear of making them sick.

  "Are you all right?" Festina whispered.

  "It’s the smell of smoke," I said. "Making my eyes water."

  The tunnel ended in a standard pithead: flat floor, blank walls, empty elevator shaft leading down. In the early days of the plague, this is where we’d gingerly laid out the dead… but that was before the flash gas explosion. After that, we just wrapped the corpses in body bags, stood at the tunnel’s entrance, and tossed the stiffs down as far as they’d go.

  As I expected, the explosion had blown a hole in one wall of the room — a jaggedy rupture in the stone, opening into a room we’d never known was there. Sometime since the explosion, a lot of the fallen rock had got cleared to one side. I wondered when that happened. The day the androids removed the bodies? Or just recently?

  Maybe Maya knew how to handle Class 2 locks too. I hoped so. That was the whole point of bringing the dipshits down here.

  Muscle unstrapped the torch-wand from his arm and led us across the room to the hole in the wall. The floor underfoot was gnubbly, covered with hard specks of grit. Not sand or dirt — the grit was dried gobbets of Oolom, scattered by the explosion and left to mummify over the years. I could see the stuff everywhere, flecks daubing the walls and even the roof: preserved for nigh-on three decades in this cold dark vault.

  The Mouth moved forward to join the Muscle, peering through the hole into the next room. I arm-wrestled my conscience a moment, then said, "You realize we found killer androids in Mummichog… in a place exactly like this."

  "Are you trying to scare us?" the Mouth asked with his trademark sneer.

  "I’m trying to warn you. Maya Cuttack left Mummichog in a fast skimmer more than twelve hours ago. Plenty of time for her to get here ahead of us. And if she thought people might come after her, she could have set traps."

  "We’re supposed to worry about traps set by a little old lady?" The Mouth snorted. "I don’t think so."

  "Okay," Festina muttered, "that man is plant mulch. A terminal case of stupidity. Fill out the death certificate and paint Oh Shit on his forehead."

  The Mouth gave her one last sneer, then turned to his partner. "Let’s go." Muscle discreetly stepped back as Mouth straightened the jammer on his shoulder and clambered through the hole in the wall. "All you have to do," the Mouth continued, "is watch where you step in case there are trip wires…"

  His gaze was focused on the ground, watching his feet. He didn’t look right or left… which is why he didn’t see the acid coming till it whapped against him.

  Two impacts, split-splat, shot by androids on either side of the hole. Most of one blob slapped harmless against the jammer… but the other wad caught Mouth smack across the face.

  "Stop, you’re making us allergic!" Festina and I shouted in unison. The Muscle only watched, as if he’d be ever-so-fascinated to see what happened next.

  Mouth turned to see what hit him — no sign of pain, just pure dumb wonderment. His cheek billowed smoke; the hair on his left temple disappeared under the smear of acid like a magic trick, and blood spilled down as skin corroded away. He lifted his hand toward his face, as if he were curious to touch the goo that was eating him alive. The hand got as high as his chin. Then Mouth slumped with barely a sound, crumpled into a smoking heap.

  We held our breaths, waiting. Me thinking that if the androids turned my way, I couldn’t dodge or hobble out of ra
nge. But the magic words had once again frozen robot fingers on their jelly guns. Some other time, I’d have to decide if I felt guilty for not speaking sooner.

  "Idiot," the Muscle said, staring at the steaming Mouth with no apparent emotion. "What did he expect?" Muscle looked our direction as if he wanted us to agree with him. "The man thought everything in the world would just fall together to make him a hero. As if that was the whole point of the universe, to glorify him. What can you do with someone like that?"

  Right there at the end, Muscle’s voice had a teeny catch in it. Not enough to make me think kindly of him, but still a slight trace of humanity.

  "I don’t suppose you’re going to call an ambulance," Festina said to Muscle.

  "We have higher priorities."

  He drew his stun-gun and aimed at the Mouth. Mouth was still breathing, but dabs of acid had already begun to polka-dot his throat. Soon some droplet would eat through his windpipe… or jugular vein, or carotid artery, or some other indispensable piece of anatomy. I wondered if I should say a quick prayer; but Festina opened her mouth first, offering a prayer of her own.

  "Hey," she said to the dying man. Her voice was soft and gentle. "This is what ‘expendable’ means."

  Muscle pulled the trigger, and his stun-pistol went whir. As far as I could tell, nothing changed — Mouth had already drifted away into unconsciousness. But I guess the Muscle wanted to make some kind of gesture.

  Festina and I had a hard time getting through the hole into the next room, but Muscle didn’t offer to untie our hands or feet. He just waited on the far side, his eyes moving constantly, trying to watch us and the darkness looming deep beyond the torch-wand’s light. Any fool could see that was impossible; soon, he was concentrating on what lay ahead, ignoring two hobbled women except for the occasional glance back in our direction.

  He missed Festina edging toward the dying Mouth. She’d gone through the hole ahead of me, and when I saw what she planned to do, I made an extra great fuss clattering my way over the rubble. The Muscle rolled his eyes, peeved at the clunky-chunky old broad… which meant he missed Festina maneuvering the plastic strap that bound her ankles, touching it against a blob of smoking acid that was chewing through the Mouth’s throat.

  Some of the goo came off onto the plastic. Straightaway, Festina edged back again. By the time Muscle looked in her direction, there was nothing to see.

  Seconds later, Festina returned the favor for me by setting up another distraction — she shuffled over to one of the androids that ambushed us. It happened to be a handsomish African man, tall, dressed in white-on-white clothing: Oolom colors of mourning, exactly what the Dignity Memorial robots wore when they emptied the mass grave. I guessed this artificial man had been down here ever since that day; Iranu senior programmed these two to stay behind as guards. Now they were working for Maya, just as all the others had been.

  Probably, none of the robots had left Great St. Caspian after bringing out the corpses. They’d been shipped to the nearest handy holding area, that bunker by Lake Vascho; and they’d stayed there till Maya and Iranu junior reactivated them years later.

  Question: how many more androids did Maya have down here in this bunker? One or two at most; if too many robots had stayed behind after clearing out the mass grave, someone would have noticed. Maybe the androids in this room were the only ones in the whole bunker, and there’d be clear sailing from now on.

  Ever the optimist, our Faye.

  But Festina had caught Muscle’s attention as she strayed too close to the pseudo-African man. "Get away from that!" the Muscle snapped.

  "I’m just making sure it’s shut down."

  "And it never crossed your mind to grab its weapon." The Muscle lunged across the room and seized her by the arm. "Don’t underestimate me, Admiral. I’m not my partner."

  "It was worth a try," Festina said, shuffling away from the robot again. She didn’t even look at me; she obviously had full confidence that while she kept Muscle busy, I’d pressed my plastic leg irons against Mouth’s acid blobs.

  Festina was right. Tiny wisps of smoke were curling up from the plastic, as corrosive goo ate through the strap binding my ankles. In the dim light, I hoped Muscle wouldn’t notice.

  "Let’s move," he said. Festina and I hobbled after him like good little captives… trying not to smile at the thought of kicking Muscle’s teeth out when the acid freed our feet.

  The room we’d entered was almost empty — blank granite walls, with the usual rusty lumps junked about the floor. All the easier to notice the one thing that hadn’t moldered into anonymity: a palm-sized keypad embedded on the far wall. Sixteen white plastic push-buttons in a four-by-four grid. To my eye, it didn’t look modern, or even human — the buttons were too finicky small to be convenient for Homo sap fingers, and labeled with odd squiggles that didn’t look like any language I recognized. But if this was original Greenstrider technology, it was miraculously well preserved.

  The Muscle peered at the pad. "What do you want to bet," he said, "if you key in the right sequence, one of these walls has a hidden door."

  Neither Festina nor I bothered to answer. Obviously, this bunker was like the one in Mummichog; some hunk of wall was actually nano, ready to open for anyone who knew the right code. The door probably still worked too — if this bunker had enough self-maintenance capabilities to keep the keypad in good shape, important things like doors would stay in decent repair too.

  The Muscle looked at me. "I don’t suppose Xe told you the right key sequence."

  I shook my head. "This wasn’t Xe’s bunker; it belonged to the Peacock, her out-and-out enemy. Xe wouldn’t know the codes."

  "Pity." The Muscle looked at the keypad again. "If I had enough time and the right equipment, I could crack this baby. But I’m not carrying tools for being delicate, so we’ll do this the messy way."

  He strode back across the room and wrenched a jelly gun from one of the robots. "You might want to stand clear," he told us, taking aim on the keypad. Festina and I beetled away, as far as we could get from the pad… which was the opposite side of the room and still not far enough for my liking.

  "This is a military base," I reminded the Muscle. "If you spew acid all over a security pad, don’t you think you might set off some defense mechanism? Like an explosion that’ll roast all three of us?"

  "The defense mechanisms are thousands of years old," Muscle answered. "They’re bound to be dust by now."

  "Oh sure, bound to be," Festina said. Out the side of her mouth, she whispered, "Get ready with another death certificate."

  I whispered back, "Let’s hope we don’t need three."

  The Muscle fired. His first shot was low: acid wad smacking the wall a handbreadth beneath the keypad. Some of the spatter glooped upward, but only a bit; the rest just hung from the granite, a few jelly drops plopping down to the floor.

  Two seconds for the gun to repressurize, then Muscle fired again. This time he’d corrected his aim bang on — a gooey blob struck the keypad dead center, splotching thickly over the press-buttons. I could hear sizzle all the way across the room: buttons melting like wax, the metal container dissolving in heat shimmer.

  For half a minute, nothing happened. Then an entire section of wall suddenly turned from stone to molasses, a thick fluid of nanites dribbling to the floor. The fluid was runny granite gray, with the slimy texture of raw egg-white gushing over the ground. Nano sludge.

  In the gap where the nanites had been, there was now a dark passageway leading forward.

  Muscle stepped back as the egg-whitey juice trickled toward him. "Admiral," he said, waving the jelly gun toward Festina, "if you’d be so good as to go to the doorway. Just to check what happens."

  "You want to see if the sludge attacks me."

  The Muscle smiled. "Exactly. It’s wicked-looking stuff."

  Festina hesitated. Muscle gestured with the gun again, the smile gone from his face. Before either of them did something daft confrontational,
I hopped forward myself, slopping into the slushy gray gumbo spreading across the floor. Nice puppies, I thought to the nanites, don’t hurt your old Mom-Faye. With Xe gone, the nanites didn’t answer… but they didn’t attack either. No dissolving my boots or climbing up my legs. Festina moved a second later, following in my gooey wake; with nothing more than sodden shoes, we both made it to the doorway.

  "Happy?" I asked the Muscle.

  He waited another full minute, giving the sludge time to take action. What scared me wasn’t the chance of nanites attacking… the problem was Muscle staring so precious keenly at my feet. By now, the acid from Mouth’s throat had eaten clean through the strap holding my ankles; if Muscle had good eyes, he might notice. Lucky for me, he kept well back, staying out of the nanite pool. And there wasn’t much light on my legs — Muscle still had the torch-wand rigged to his own arm, and its glow scarcely reached as far as me. I kept my feet tight together, looked chump-helpless, and hoped that would be good enough.

  It was. The Muscle didn’t notice the corroded split in my ankle strap; and after a minute, he accepted that the sludge wasn’t going to turn homicidal. Delicate as a bird, he tiptoed through the pool and joined us staring into the passageway forward.

  I could have kicked him that very second — broken his knee or swept his feet out from under him. But I couldn’t guarantee I’d take him straight out of the fight, and he had that jelly gun in his hand. Better to wait for a sure thing… especially if I could coordinate an attack with Festina.

  Patience. Why do so many things demand goddamned patience?

  "On we go," Muscle said. He waved the jelly gun to show who was boss, then led the way forward.

  The corridor was only a dozen meters long. Then we came to the bottomless pit.

  Oh, all right… it wasn’t honest-to-God bottomless. But it had to be at least ten stories deep, because torchlight didn’t reach the pit’s floor. Ten stories was still plenty enough that I didn’t want to take the dive; and diving was clearly what the Greenstriders had in mind when they built this place. A long stone bridge led forward across the pit, like a drawbridge across a moat. At the far side of the bridge sat another blank granite wall with another entry-code keypad.