Simple arrangement: to move forward you had to cross a narrow bridge over a fatal drop. In Greenstrider days I bet there were gun slits on the far side, ready to strafe unfriendlies if they tried to charge forward. Once you were on the bridge, you were bare-ass exposed… and the way across was only wide enough for attackers to dash up single file.
Cute little killing ground. If the defenders on the far side didn’t like you, either you got shot or you fell.
Or you turned back the instant you realized that going forward was utterly nuts.
"End of the line," I said, slipping back into the corridor. "If Maya’s holed up across the bridge, it’ll take an army to pry her out."
"Not so fast," Muscle told me. "First of all, we don’t know Maya’s here — she may be holed up in some other hiding place. Second, there’s not much chance the old Greenstrider defenses are still operational. Sure, this would have been a death trap three thousand years ago; but everything’s rusted, hasn’t it?"
"Not the prison that held Xe captive," Festina pointed out. "That was built by the Peacock, with self-repair mechanisms far beyond human capabilities. And this whole bunker belonged to the Peacock too. A lot of the equipment must have been standard Greenstrider stuff, but some had to be made by the Peacock himself. Those keypads, for example — not a speck of age on them. For all we know, the Peacock built automatic shrap-guns to cover this bridge; if we try to cross, we’ll be shredded."
"That’s a possibility," the Muscle admitted. "But I refuse to retreat without testing the theory." He gave Festina an ugly smile. "Tell me, Admiral: what’s standard navy policy when you think something might be lethal but you can’t be sure?"
She stared back at him evenly. "Send in an Explorer."
The Muscle waved his gun toward the bridge. "You’re on."
I said, "Stop."
They both looked at me. "Are you volunteering to go instead?" Muscle asked.
"I’m serving as a member of the Vigil," I replied. "And our job is to prevent people from getting carried away with their own momentum." I turned to the Muscle. "What do you think you’ll accomplish, sending Festina across the bridge?"
"I’ll find out if any defense mechanisms are active."
"But why bother?" I asked. "Where’s the gain? Do you really think there’s anything down here that will help you?"
"You said there might be high-tech—"
I interrupted him. "I was leading you on, so you wouldn’t muck about with my brain. Buying time till you made a mistake."
"Still," he said, trying to look unflappable, "there might be useful things down here. You mentioned weapons—"
"Which are dick-useless, you know that. If you find a lethal weapon down here, or even plans for a lethal weapon, you can’t take it home to Admiralty headquarters. The League won’t let you carry killing devices across interstellar space. You knew that, but you ignored it, because you wanted to believe you could squeak out of the mess you were in. Grasping at straws, sacrificing your partner for some false hope…"
"I think," he said clamp-jawed, "you’re trying to make me angry. You want me to do something rash."
"You’ve already done something rash, you chump! The three times you came to kidnap me. Did it ever occur to you to work within the system? You could have flashed your credentials at our government, and said, Top admirals are interested in this case, we’d like to get in on it.’ Most politicians would be flattered. ‘Ooo, the Admiralty is interested in little old Demoth, let’s keep these guys in the loop.’ You would have been part of every investigation team; you’d get up-to-the-minute reports, invitations to planning sessions, tactical operations, the works. But no. You have some witless notion that acting like a lone wolf is more efficient or smart or sexy than playing with the team. What crap! What pathetic macho crap!" I took a deep breath. "Do you know the only high-tech artifact we’ve seen since we got here? A keypad that can last three thousand years. And you turned that to slag. Brilliant thinking, you mook."
He took an angry step toward me. I don’t know whether he intended to hit me, shoot me, or just scream in my face. It didn’t matter — he’d come into kicking range.
Festina snapped his knee, while I knocked the jelly gun out of his hand. After that, it was as easy as stamping grapes.
We freed our hands the same way we’d freed our feet: picked up the jelly gun, shot a blob against the wall, and warily dabbed our plastic wrist ties against the smallest drop of acid we could find. Both Festina and I managed the trick without burning ourselves — something of a miracle considering we were doing all this with hands behind our backs, and me half-shaky from pure relief.
As we stood around after, rubbing the pins-and-needles tingle out of our fingers, Festina said, "All right. We head back, smash the jamming machine, and call for help, right?"
"We may need to get closer to the surface," I told her. "My link-seed might not have enough radio power to transmit through all this rock."
"Closer to the surface is good." She scooped up the jelly gun and tucked it under her belt. "I’ll be delighted to put more distance between us and this death trap. If someone wants to know what’s on the other side of the bridge, maybe we can reprogram those androids from Lake Vascho. Let them lead the charge."
Festina bent to pick up the Muscle — he was unconscious with a broken jaw, but generally intact thanks to our ladylike restraint. I put my hand on her shoulder, and said, "This time let me carry the body."
"Oh sure, take my fun."
She unstrapped the torch-wand from Muscle’s arm and held it as I hefted the man up. Once more, I thanked Our Blessed Mother Mary for Demoth’s .78 gravity; the dipshit was heavy enough as it was. When I had him in a secure grip, I waddled with him down the corridor, Festina keeping pace beside me…
…till we reached a dead end. A blank wall of granite where there should have been a doorway to the next room.
"Oh shit," I whispered.
"Don’t say that!" Festina snapped.
"The nanite sludge… it flowed back into place."
"I can see that." Festina held the torch close to the wall, running it around the edges of the doorway to look for a gap. I couldn’t see the skimpiest irregularity — the door had neatly fused itself to the surrounding rock.
And Muscle had melted the control panel on the other side. Even if rescuers thought to search for us down here, they couldn’t break through with anything less than a laser cutter or high explosives.
"But this wall is made of nanites, right?" Festina said. "And in Mummichog, we could just push through."
"That was when Xe inhabited the world-soul," I told her. "Things are always easier if you have friends in high places."
"At least try."
I set down the Muscle and pressed my hands against the cold false granite. Not the tiniest budge — like pushing against a mountain.
"This isn’t…" I stopped. Something was humming somewhere. In my fingers? My brain? I planted my hands on the wall again and shoved with all my strength.
The wall shoved back. Starting to inch our way.
"Uh-oh," I said.
"Uh-oh what?"
"The Greenstrider defense system has another trick up its sleeve."
"Uh-oh."
"I already said that."
The wall kept advancing — up the corridor, forcing us back toward the bottomless pit. Nano-granite nudged against the Muscle where I’d set him down; in no great hurry, it started to push him along the stone floor, scraping him over the rock. I picked him up again, as if I cared whether he got raspberry rug burn from the rough surface. Lugging him along, we retreated as the wall plugged forward.
"Pity the Muscle isn’t awake," Festina muttered. "He was the one who wanted to find out what defenses were still working."
"If we’re forced onto the bridge," I said, "and guns shoot at us from the far side, would it be god-awful non-sentient to use this chump as a shield?"
"Tough call," Festina replied. "If we convince
ourselves he’d want to die nobly, defending his fellow humans…"
I thought about it. "No. He’s not the hero type. But he was definitely interested in learning about Greenstrider weaponry."
"Best way to learn is firsthand," Festina agreed.
When the wall finally forced us out onto the bridge, I was holding the Muscle between us and the line of fire.
The wall stopped moving, right in the mouth of the corridor. That sealed off our only retreat, leaving us vulnerable and exposed on that narrow bridge across the abyss. Festina and I exchanged looks — one of those moments when you hope your eyes are saying something because you know speech won’t work. If we were about to be chopped to chutney by gunfire, I didn’t want to die with banal last words like, "If only we had more time together…"
At the far end of the bridge, the wall slowly dissolved into another doorway. A tall man in white stepped out: a perfect twin of the African android back in the other room. Another robot, naturally; he carried a jelly gun.
Behind him was a shortish woman with white hair. She stared straight at me, and said, "So, Faye, we finally meet. Bitch."
EVIL BITCH
Maya Cuttack hailed from Indian ancestors — she’d made a point of daubing a blobby red caste mark in the middle of her forehead. Her brown skin looked crinkled and paper-dry, at least on her arms… which I could see because even in this chilly bunker, she wore a half-sleeved blouse, the kind that goes under a sari. The blouse was jade green silk; and on it, someone had hand-painted dozens of peacocks.
Talk about a deliberate statement.
But if you wanted a real statement, you had to look at Maya’s face. Her nose and chin might be the same brown as her arms, but the edges of her face had gone fish-belly white: chalky sickness seeping out from her hairline, creeping down her forehead, across her temples, in over her cheeks.
Hello, Pteromic C.
Her ears were now as yellow as butter, a jaundicey contrast with her snow-pure hair. But even that hair showed signs of the plague; it was frazzled wild, not just uncombed but unwashed and curdled, with enough head grease to hold scraggly bits as if they’d been moussed: cowlicks jutting out, churned into mad snarls.
Maya Cuttack: tico, nago, wuto. And diseased, diseased, diseased. Christ, hadn’t Mother and Voostor noticed? Or were all these outward symptoms recent, the final cataclysmic collapse of someone who’d been crumbling flake by flake for a long time?
"Aren’t you going to speak, Faye?" she asked me. "Bitch, bitch, bitch." Muttering the "bitch" stuff in an undertone, as if it weren’t really meant to come out of her mouth. A subconscious chant… but Maya couldn’t keep her subconscious as "sub" as it should be.
"You’re sick," I said.
"I’m afraid you’re right (bitch, bitch). And it’s all your fault, Faye (bitch), Faye (bitch)."
"How?"
"Because, Faye (bitch), you’re the great (bitch) evil of the world. Your father (bitch) was evil, and you, Faye, inherited it."
Her voice was delicately polite, all genteel and ladies-auxiliary… except for those guttural "bitches" that kept slipping their way in. Pteromic talk. Brain breakdown.
"What do you know about my father?" I asked, keeping my voice soothing calm.
"Your mother told me he glowed," she replied. "Possessed by an alien thing. Bitch. Bitch. Bitch. I’ve studied this planet. People get possessed here. You’re possessed, Faye, I know you are. Your mother (bitch) told me all the evil things you did. She defended you (bitch), sometimes she did, but you hurt her so badly… I realized I had to kill you."
"How long ago was that?" I asked. "A month or so?"
"Perhaps. I have perhaps, perhaps, lost some sense of time." She smiled sweetly. "But not my sense of urgency. Your mother is my dearest (bitch), dearest (bitch), dearest friend, and you caused her so much pain you had to die. You see that, Faye, don’t you? Don’t you, Faye? Whatever it took (bitch), you had to die."
Whatever it took. Christ, that phrase gave me the chills. "Are you saying this was all about me? The robot attacks on the proctors…"
"Of course, of course, of course." Another of those sugary smiles. A teacher pleased with how fast her student catches on. "If I just killed you outright, the police would ask questions. (The bitch, the bitch, the fucking bitch.) They’d interrogate your next of kin, Faye. Perhaps they’d even accuse your mother, because she’d be so happy at your death. So blissfully, blissfully happy."
My mother blissfully happy to see me dead? No. Ma might have been appalled by the teenager I once was, but she wouldn’t dance on my grave. Look at the way she’d treated me when I suddenly turned up on her doorstep — wary but polite, ready to give me a chance. Perhaps even glad to see me, glad to find out I’d changed.
Maya was just a brain-sick madwoman who’d got a crazy idea into her head. Yes. Yes.
"You decided to kill me," I said, "but you didn’t want people to guess I was the specific target. So you knocked off a slew of proctors so it would look like a political thing. I was supposed to be one more corpse in the crowd."
"That’s right." She flashed me a proud-of-herself grin. "I could feel myself getting sick (bitch, bitch). Before I went, I wanted to give a present to my dearest, dearest friend. It wasn’t hard to post androids (bitch) all around the planet, ready to take on easy targets. Then I made friends with your supervisor, Faye, so I could track your movements."
Poor Chappalar: manipulated, then murdered. All because a poor plaguey lunatic intended to do my mother a favor poor Ma didn’t want.
"So what now?" I asked. "I suppose you want to walk us through this bunker… show off the fabulous things you’ve discovered." Actually, I doubted the idea ever crossed her mind; Maya just wanted to gloat till she’d worked herself into a lather. At some point, when she was keyed up enough, she’d tell the android to gun us down with acid. But maybe I could come up with some delaying step that would appeal to her tico mind. If she liked the notion of a guided tour, at least we’d get off this blasted bridge.
"It would be pleasant to show you things, Faye," Maya admitted. "I’m particularly proud of the control room (bitch) for this place. So much of it still works… and I’ve always had a knack for programming machines." She smiled and patted the shoulder of her android bodyguard. "Or maybe (bitch)… I could show you where your (bitch) father died." Her eyes twinkled, like she’d just told a joke. "Did you know this bunker stretches close to the Rustico mine? Or at least its outer defense ring does. And that so-called ‘gas explosion’ twenty-seven years ago (bitch)… the miners actually ran into an antipersonnel device intended to stop anyone from tunneling too near to the bunker’s wall. An explosive, Faye. The miners stepped on a mine in the mine."
She giggled. Or maybe I should say a giggle got away from her. Fell out uncontrolled. Giggle, giggle, bitch, giggle, bitch.
I wondered what she’d been like before the plague spackled her brain. Willing to trespass, to play fast and loose with the law… but not a bitched-up killer. Just a titch too ambitious for her own good. How could I hate her, seeing how pathetic she was now? Christ, it would have been nice to blame everything on some out-and-out monster. All the dead and wounded, Chappalar, Oh-God, even the Mouth. Wouldn’t it be fine to lay it all at the feet of a heinous villain? But in the Vigil I’d learned the universe is stingy with black-and-white wickedness. Even the devil has a story.
I stared at Maya with pity and horror. Which was a mistake — I shouldn’t have made eye contact.
"Bitch!" she suddenly screamed. All her placid conversation boiled off in a heartbeat. "You want to kill me, don’t you, bitch? That’s why you’ve chased me all over Demoth. That’s why you tracked me down here. You’re not human, no, you’re possessed… and you want to stop me because I know the truth. You destroyed the Green-striders, and you think you’ll destroy me."
"Maya, I don’t want to destroy…"
"Kill her!" Maya shouted to the android. "Kill her now."
"Stop, you’re ma
king me allergic!" Festina yelled behind me.
The android took a step forward.
"Uh-oh," I said.
"Do you think I wasn’t listening?" Maya asked. Shrill. Breathy. "There are monitors all through this installation, and they still work. I’ve been watching you people since you came down the tunnel. When you were stupid enough to destroy that keypad, I was the one who opened the door for you. And closed it behind you. I’ve had plenty of time to reprogram this robot not to be fooled by your ridiculous allergies." She slapped the android on the back. "Shoot the bitch. Now!"
The android lifted its gun and fired.
When I’d joked about using the Muscle as a shield… sometimes our Faye is all talk and no action. I dropped to the bridge, Muscle and me together, trusting Festina would also have the sense to duck the incoming acid. She did — a blob of jelly just doesn’t travel as fast as a bullet, and if the shooter isn’t at point-blank range, you’ve got time to get out of the way. The wad passed over our heads and splashed somewhere behind us.
Then Festina was firing her own jelly gun — a quick shot, snapped off as she bellied down onto the bridge. Maya shrieked and threw herself behind the android… who just stood there, dumb as a stump. Programmed for offense, not defense. When the acid splatted home, the center of impact was plumb on the robot’s gun hand: goo spraying over the pistol, the fingers, and halfway up the elegant white sleeve.
"Nice shooting," I said.
Festina muttered, "I was aiming for his chest."
"Shoot them!" Maya screamed at the android. "Shoot, shoot, shoot!"
The robot’s arm lowered, pointing the gun muzzle straight at my face… and nothing happened. Festina’s shot couldn’t have hurt the pistol itself — an acid-shooting weapon surely must be resistant to acid. But the android’s hand was smoking with corrosive gunk, not to mention a dozen burning patches all the way up to its elbow. With so much damage, something had buggered the robot’s ability to squeeze its trigger finger: a wire cut, a servo off-kilter, some crucial mechanism pitted to pate.
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