by Paul Stewart
But the Fulcrum’s different. So far as I can see, cyclops outnumber humans here two to one at least.
Two women, their long hair tied back, are crouched down beside a square of silver tarpaulin, shearing a couple of cyclops. As the clippers pass over their bodies, they’re transformed from shaggy-looking to lean and muscular. Others stand in a row waiting their turn. A mound of thick, dark-blue fur grows bigger on the tarpaulin.
When I look more closely, I see that the women’s clothes are dark blue and woven from this fur. In fact, everyone is wearing clothes made of the same homespun. Including Ellis.
The women look up as Ellis passes by. They greet him. He nods back, but does not stop. The cyclops flinch and shuffle back as Belle passes them, and the women’s curious gaze rests on her for a moment, before they return to their task.
We enter a third pod. This is more familiar to me. Moist smell. Humid air. Rows of hydroponic troughs. It’s like the gardens back at the Inpost, though on a much grander scale. Blue-clad men and women are busy tending to the various towering plants that grow inside the long metal containers; pruning, pinching out buds, harvesting nuts and fruits . . .
But there’s also a difference.
The troughs are so large that the furthest gardens are out of reach to the human gardeners. Instead, a bunch of cyclops are carrying out the work for them. Long-limbed and nimble-fingered, they’re doing exactly what the men and women are doing. Pruning. Pinching out. Harvesting.
It’s impressive how well they’ve managed to train the cyclops. I’m about to say as much to Ellis – but we’ve reached the end of the troughs and he’s turning left into a narrow passageway that takes us through into yet another pod.
Ellis stops and turns to me and Belle. ‘Wait here. I’ll be back in a moment.’
I look around the pod. It’s the biggest one so far. And, with its high-intensity overhead lighting, the brightest. It must be situated at the centre of the Fulcrum as, all around, it connects to other pods. Eight in all. There’s seating for upward of a hundred people – moulded plastic chairs clustered round circular white tables – and I guess that this must be some kind of meeting chamber.
But it’s empty now.
Then I notice something at the far side of the pod. It’s standing on a plinth. A familiar black dome-shaped structure.
A Half-Life.
I walk over and greet it, but it doesn’t reply. On its surface, the image of the face – a woman, her steel-grey hair up in a bun – is coming and going on wave after wave of flickering light. There’s no voice. Just white noise, distorted and echoing.
I move closer. The Half-Life seems to focus on me, then her gaze slides away. Her mouth is moving. I put my ear closer, but hear nothing but the hiss and crackle of the white noise.
This must be the thought-fatigue Atherton told me about, the same condition that afflicted our Half-Lifes at the Inpost. The face fades, then returns again. This Half-Life is in an even worse state. Certainly it explains why Atherton has lost contact with it.
‘She hasn’t spoken for as long as any of us can remember,’ comes a voice from behind me, and I turn to see Ellis coming back into the pod.
There’s a woman standing at his side.
‘This is Jayda,’ he says. ‘Jayda, this is Belle and York.’
The woman smiles. ‘Welcome,’ she says.
She’s tall, with yellow-white hair that hangs down in stubby braids. She’s wearing a long coat that’s made of the woven cyclops fur, toggled at the front, and that flaps as she strides towards us.
There’s a critter perched on her shoulder.
It’s like nothing I’ve seen before. Covered in white fur, it’s got two legs and six arms; three on either side of its long thin body. Its face is small and round and dominated by a cluster of eight eyes that blink back at us from behind strands of white fur. As it comes closer to us, it pulls its thin lips back to reveal a mouthful of transparent fangs that look as sharp as shards of visiglass.
It hisses. It snarls.
Jayda stops in her tracks. Her smile fades.
The critter is staring at Belle with its eight eyes and emitting a series of staccato, high-pitched shrieks . . .
Men come running into the dome from different entrances.
Screeching furiously, the critter suddenly leaps from Jayda’s shoulder and launches itself at Belle, flailing at her with its six arms. Quick as a blink, Belle jumps back and shoots out her arm so fast it’s a blur. She catches the critter by the throat. The screeching turns to a strangulated squeak.
All around us, the men – Ellis included – have drawn their pulsers.
Jayda points at Belle. ‘Kill the zoid!’ she commands.
‘Don’t shoot!’ I cry out. ‘I can explain . . .’
The critter dangles from Belle’s stranglehold. It gives a shudder and lets out a pitiful whimper.
‘First, tell the zoid to let Gimbel go,’ Jayda demands.
I hold her gaze. ‘Then we talk,’ I say, the words sounding bolder than I feel.
Jayda glares back at me, then looks at the critter. She nods, the slightest incline of her head. ‘Lower your weapons,’ she tells the others.
They do so.
I turn to Belle. ‘Put it down,’ I say.
Belle looks at me, then at the men surrounding us. I can see she’s thinking through her options. Even unarmed, she could take these men on. But I wouldn’t fare so well. She seems to have come to the same conclusion.
‘Belle?’ I say softly.
She stoops down and places the critter gently on the floor. It limps over to Jayda, who gathers it up in her arms. She straightens up and glares at me.
‘Explain!’ she commands.
‘I am a scavenger,’ I begin. ‘From Quadrant 4. My people were attacked by the zoids, captured—’
‘Captured?’ says Ellis quizzically. ‘Not killed?’
‘No,’ I reply.
Jayda’s eyes narrow. She’s listening to me, but staring intently at Belle.
‘They’ve been taken to Sector 17.’
I see Jayda flinch.
‘We know of that place,’ Ellis confirms.
‘I was headed there when I met a man called Dale in the dead havens. He’s a cybertech. He scavenged a hub of ancient robots from the Launch Times – unmodified, still controlled by the old protocols to protect humans – and he . . . he . . . modified them himself . . .’
I’m not sure I should go into the details, but Belle’s existence is at stake.
‘How did he modify them?’ Jayda’s voice is low, thoughtful. But her expression is hard as she continues to stare at Belle.
‘The robots he took were humanoid. Domestic models,’ I say. ‘He covered them in new synth-skin and enhanced their memory banks and brain function . . .’
I swallow as the image of the frozen heads in Dale’s cold store comes back to me.
‘Why?’ says Jayda.
Belle has turned and is also looking at me.
‘He . . . he was lonely,’ I say. ‘He was the only human left in his sector . . . He wanted company.’
It’s not a lie, but it’s not the whole truth either.
‘Belle is one of Dale’s robots. She has downloaded the Sector 17 coordinates and is guiding me there. She has protected me; she’s saved my life, not once, but twice now . . .’
‘But it is a zoid,’ Ellis interrupts. He sounds incredulous.
Technically he’s right. Belle is a zoid. A robot that has been modified. A machine. And yet she has become so much more than that to me . . .
‘And this Dale,’ says Jayda. Her voice has softened, and she’s looking at me now. ‘What has become of him?’
‘He’s in his Clan-Safe with his other zoids. They protect him – just like your cyclops protect you. Belle decided to come with me.’
‘It decided?’ Jayda is astonished.
Belle turns to her. ‘York and I are friends,’ she says.
No one says anything, an
d I can see the disbelief in their eyes. I want to say to Jayda, ‘Like you and Gimbel.’ Or ‘Like Caliph and me.’ But I know that this is different . . .
Jayda lets out a small, non-committal grunt, then reaches up and strokes Gimbel, who is back on her shoulder. The others exchange glances, raise eyebrows, shrug.
It’s Ellis who speaks. ‘We’ve never had a functioning zoid in the Fulcrum before.’ His gaze flits between me and Belle. ‘But, well . . . I did invite you here. So I think . . .’ He looks at the others and, one by one, they nod back at him, ‘in this instance . . . we are prepared to make an exception . . .’
I breathe out. It’s like a great weight has been taken off my shoulders.
‘Sector 17 is a dangerous place,’ Ellis continues. ‘If you’re to stand any chance of rescuing your people, you’re going to need more than a zoid, however friendly it is.’
He looks across at Jayda. She looks furious, and for a moment I think she’s going to overrule Ellis. But then she nods.
‘The Fulcrum will help you, York,’ Ellis continues. ‘I’ll gather our best scavengers—’
‘Oh, but I can’t expect you to do that . . .’
‘Like I always say,’ Ellis says, cutting short my protest, ‘we humans gotta stick together.’
The inhabitants of the Fulcrum gather in the central pod, and we sit at the tables and eat. All of us, that is, except Belle. She watches us. And Jayda, and her critter, Gimbel, watch her.
The meal is more than good. It’s delicious. Better than anything I ate back at the Inpost. Better than Dale’s supper. And certainly a very welcome change from my recent diet. There’s meat that is tender and juicy. There are fresh vegetables. I even try a glass of something they called sable milk. It’s delicious; creamy and sweet – and I don’t ask where it’s from.
Afterwards, Ellis shows us to where we’re to sleep. ‘Early start tomorrow,’ he says.
The sleep pod is on the outside of the cluster that makes up the Fulcrum. The inner walls are made of the same matt-black metal as the rest. But the outer walls have tinted visiglass panels.
I look out.
There’s a view of convection lakes, just like the ones above the Inpost, the water still and black and with tendrils of steam coiling up from the surface. Lightning bolts flash and crackle overhead, sometimes zigzagging between the fork-pylons; sometimes touching down on the water itself, sending jets of steam shooting up into the air. Around them, the tube-forest extends in all directions. Pipes and tubes. Critters. Vegetation. The ground far below – where even now a tangler is passing by, unaware of the human settlement high above its head.
Belle has joined me at the window.
‘It’s so odd seeing it all from up above,’ I say. ‘The Inpost was underground. But it amounts to the same thing. We’re all hiding from the killer zoids.’
I turn to Belle, and see my glum expression mirrored in hers. Then I nod towards a line of beds on the far side of the pod.
‘I’m going to get some sleep,’ I say. ‘And I shall recharge,’ she tells me. ‘There’s a power source by the vapour shower . . .’
I yawn, which seems to puzzle Belle, but I’m too tired to explain.
I cross the pod, pull off my boots and flakcoat, and climb into the end bed.
I’m asleep in an instant.
The next thing I know, something wakes me. It seems like only moments later. But when I check my scanner, it’s showing 06:53.
There’s a noise coming from the far corner of the pod. It must be what woke me. Without moving, I look around, and see Belle standing beside the vapour shower, her back to me.
She’s been tapping into the power source that operates the vapour nozzles. Her tunic is hitched up high. I can see her back – the curve of her spine; the caramel-coloured skin; the knots of arm and shoulder muscles that move as she presses against the power source. She looks so human. But I know that, if she was to turn, I would be confronted by a square of silver-grey urilium.
Her zoid power plate.
Then she does turn. Three-quarters on. And I’m wrong. There is no metal plate. At least, not that I can see. Only synth-skin. Dale has taken the trouble to make her look completely humanoid.
I know she’s just a zoid, but . . .
‘York?’ She’s speaking softly. ‘York, it’s seven hours.’
I pretend to wake up. Murmur sleepily. Stretch. Open my eyes.
‘Belle,’ I say. She’s pulled her tunic back down.
‘Are you rested?’ she asks.
I smile. ‘Fully recharged.’
‘Recharged,’ she says, and smiles. ‘Like me.’ She has got the joke.
I sit up, swing my legs down to the floor.
Belle is frowning. ‘You move a lot when you sleep,’ she says. ‘First this way,’ she says, hunching to the left. ‘Then this.’ She leans to the right. ‘And sometimes this.’ She throws her head back. ‘Which was when you did this,’ she says, and lets out a rasping, rattling noise from the back of her throat.
I laugh. ‘Are you saying I was snoring?’
Belle laughs back. ‘If that –’ she makes the rasping noise again – ‘is snoring, then you were snoring. You talked too. And your eyelids kept fluttering.’
I’m embarrassed again. Belle seems to have been keeping a very close watch on me while I was asleep.
‘That’s what humans do when they’re having dreams,’ I tell her.
‘Dreams . . .’ Belle repeats.
‘They’re like downloads, but jumbled up,’ I explain. ‘In your head. Stories. Places. People. Conversations . . .’
Belle is nodding. ‘Then I have also had dreams,’ she says.
I look at her in disbelief. ‘You . . . ?’
‘When I was recharging,’ she says. ‘I had dreams.’
‘Dreams of what?’ I ask.
‘Data streams. Input vectors. Power pulses and –’ she smiles – ‘of you, York.’
Ellis is giving orders. His face is stern.
‘We need provisions for three days,’ he’s telling the scavengers who have gathered in the Fulcrum’s central pod. ‘And ammunition. More than the usual. See Garvey and Muldoon for the serious stuff.’ He nods across to a man kneeling down next to an open grille, who’s receiving weapons from a second man down in the under-floor store and handing them out. ‘Grenade launchers, laser rockets, cluster charges . . .’
The scavengers begin tooling up.
There are forty of them. Men and women. They’re wearing clothes made of dark-blue homespun. Flakcoats with coolant panels, combat breeches, hooded pad-jackets. They’re packing their backcans, checking their weapons and securing the larger items to lightweight packs on their cyclops’ backs.
No one speaks.
Belle and I have been given frack-grenades, gunkballs, pulsers – twice the size of the ones back at the Inpost – and straploads of grenbolts, which we loop over our shoulders. Caliph has taken refuge in the inner pocket of my flakcoat.
Ellis casts his eye over the assembled scavengers and their laden cyclops. He nods approvingly, then speaks, his voice low and grave.
‘We’re headed for Sector 17,’ he says. ‘I don’t need to tell you this won’t be just any old zoid-hunt.’
The other scavengers nod grimly. By the looks of it, all of them know the place – at least by reputation.
‘It’s going to be dangerous. I’ll not lie to you: some of us might not come back. But there’s humans there – York’s people – and the zoids have them. They’re being kept alive for reasons I don’t even want to guess at . . .’
He pauses to let the words sink in. The scavengers sigh and shake their heads. Some of them curse under their breath.
‘But whatever the zoids are up to, we’re going to put a stop to it,’ says Ellis. ‘We’re going to enter Sector 17. We’re going to find York’s people. And we’re going to get them out of there. The zoids have had things their way for too long. We have to put a stop to it.
‘
Humankind will not be exterminated! Together, we shall survive!’
The scavengers whoop and cheer.
‘You ready for action?’ Ellis demands.
‘We’re ready!’ the chorus of voices booms.
I can feel my own heart racing. Caliph stirs as if he can feel it as well.
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ he bellows. ‘Let’s go!’
Belle and I follow Ellis and Zabe out of the central pod. The troop of massive, shaggy blue creatures advances behind us, the scavengers walking beside them. We step into the next pod, then the next, making our way through the Fulcrum, the path lined with the rest of the tribe – hundreds of them – who have emerged from all corners of the pod colony to wish us well.
As we cross the last pod and approach the outer door, I catch sight of Jayda, with Gimbel perched on her shoulder. She’s standing by the exit, watching Belle intently. Her arms are folded as if she’s still to be convinced.
But then their eyes meet.
Belle nods. She looks kind of apologetic, concerned. It occurs to me that she’s no longer just copying the expressions she sees in others’ faces. No. She’s actually understanding what those expressions mean.
Jayda seems to see it too. She looks shocked for a moment, then turns away.
The outer door slides open and we step out onto the platform beyond. Quietly and efficiently, the scavengers climb onto their cyclops’ shoulders. Some scavengers ride solo. Some in pairs. Ellis helps Belle and me up, and I notice that Zabe is the only one with three passengers – four if you count Caliph – but he doesn’t seem to mind. He even seems to have got used to Belle.
He’s not the only one.
Ellis is looking at her. He smiles. ‘Take us to Sector 17,’ he says.