Then she remembered: Dirk Brendan, the transportee from Vista, leader of the Shades, in the Underground. The Shades had tried to blast through Sydney’s outer Wall, but instead had leveled half of Paddington, where Keith’s lover lived. Now here they were, in the very heart of the Hive, prowling the home of the Earth’s overlords like mice behind a barn wall—or like waxworms in a honeycomb.
Isabel found her voice. “You can’t do this to me. I’ve got to get back before—” She winced as pain shot through the arm twisted behind her back.
“We’ve no time to lose,” Dirk said, “before the rovers catch up. Get moving.”
The Shades scrambled on down the uneven passageway, dragging Isabel with them. At last they went out again into the corridor, their torches lighting up the fog. Another pylon appeared, glowing within its airwall.
“Halt,” shouted Dirk. “I don’t like the looks of it. Face masks, quick.”
Something resembling surgical masks came down over their heads, covering their mouths and noses. The woman thrust one onto Isabel.
“A snake!” Someone screamed. There was a blue flash from a cylinder and a sickening stench in the air. “Got it all right, but look out for the rovers.”
A keeper appeared, its six legs moving up and down a bit faster than usual. A second keeper arrived from the other side of the pylon. Dirk aimed his cylinder at the near one. The polyhedral body vaporized, leaving behind only a sort of skeleton, interlocking plates of “bone” that had extended at right angles to the faces of the polyhedron. Then the skeleton, too, blackened and crumbled away.
Within a few seconds, it seemed, the keepers were demolished and their goatsnakes nowhere to be seen.
“Bob, keep an eye out for the rovers. Everyone else—hunt for their rayguns.”
The torches swung back and forth in a hasty search of the floor where the goatsnakes might have left cylinders.
Dirk shoved Isabel toward the pylon. “Get inside, we’ll be safe.” He aimed his cylinder at the airwall, and the hemisphere sizzled all over with jagged sparks. “That should do it.” Still pulling Isabel, he and the woman walked straight through. After a few seconds, a lush forest appeared outside. Another burst from the cylinder, and they all walked out.
Isabel recognized the greenish sky as the sign of a hypersphere. But the air was hotter than where she came from, and the foliage was entirely foreign, trees with wispy green crowns and dense impenetrable grasses below. Something shrieked raucously as it flew overhead, while brightly colored parrots stood out in the branches.
They hiked down a path through the trees, arriving at a fortress wall built of jagged stone blocks. The cut surface of the blocks had the fused look of stone sliced by the beam of a keeper’s cylinder. A thick wooden door swung back, revealing a campfire surrounded by several more men and women in mirrorshades, and a great heap of cylinders in one corner. There was a smell of burnt meat, and some kind of animal carcass hung from a pole.
“Hullo, we’ve got a new recruit,” called Dirk. “The girl’s name is—” He stopped and looked at her inquiringly.
“Isabel Garcia-Chase,” she said in a small voice.
“Welcome to the Front. Get her some shades, Meg, and put her through orientation. We’ve got a raid tonight.”
Isabel was too dazed to respond. Meg, the woman who had come with them from outside, beckoned Isabel to join her, offering a seat on a blanket. “My name’s Megan Connelly,” she said. “I know, we seem rough at first, but then we’ve got a rough job to do. Here, have some shades.”
Isabel shook her head at the mirrored sunglasses in Megan’s hand.
“You’ve got to,” insisted Megan, placing them on her face. “Otherwise the space cockies will read your mind, from the temperature of your eyeballs.”
Taken aback, Isabel blinked at her. It sounded like something the Herald would think up. “Look, Megan, I’ve had enough of this. You just dragged me here and—”
“Shh, before they hear; Dirk has a short fuse. See here, hon, it’s your duty to join us. We’re the Liberation Front, the leading edge of the Underground.”
“Well, it’s not my kind of Underground.”
“We’re the best. We’re the only unit to penetrate the Hive. We actually got sent here, to this space-warped prison, because we were such a serious threat. But we turned the tables on them. We captured their weapons and found our way out. We’ve cleaned out a dozen rovers’ nests so far. We’re committed to the liberation of the human race. To do that, we have one ultimate objective: to destroy the Queen.”
“The Queen?”
Megan turned her head, and her eyelashes appeared behind her glasses. “Look, the rest of the party’s back. How many guns?” she called.
The men who had stayed behind to search the floor were entering the fortress wall. Bob held aloft a cylinder. “Only one lousy raygun. You’d think they’d know better by now.” Laughter greeted this remark.
“Meg, get the barbie on,” someone called out.
Megan got up. “Supper’s early, since there’s a raid tonight. Come on, you can help out.”
The mention of supper reminded Isabel that she was starving, and that her unborn child needed nourishment. She followed Megan past the pile of cylinders to the cooking area, her mind racing. How could she slip out of here unnoticed? How would she ever find her way back without her angelbees? She fought down a sense of panic. Megan commenced cutting up meat and skewering it on a long stick. Warily Isabel picked up a scrap of red meat and looked it over. “What is it?”
“Wallaby. We had good mutton, the first few weeks, until the sheep ran out. Now we’re down to roos and wombats.” Megan pushed several pieces down the skewer. “Dirk says if we run out, we might have to raid the China town again for provisions. It’s just down the hall, isn’t that weird? I don’t like the idea, but—we’ve got a rough job to do.”
“If you do get the Queen,” Isabel ventured, “what do you suppose the—the rovers will do about it?”
Overhearing her, Bob called, “The rovers are nothing, Izzy. Come, we’ll explain.” He and Dirk were studying something on a large wrinkled piece of paper.
Dirk said, “The Queen is everything. All the rovers, cockies, and snakes exist solely to serve the Queen. It’s the ultimate statist system.”
“And when the Queen goes, the rest falls apart.” Bob’s fingers mimed an explosion.
Isabel approached, noting that the paper appeared to be a map of some sort. “Why do you think they came here?” she asked curiously. “Why did they come, if only to destroy Earth?”
“To destroy us, not Earth,” said Bob. “To settle our planet. Because they had already nuked their own planet beyond repair.”
Dirk said, “Nukes are nothing to them. They blew their own planet to bits using space-warp, the same technology that built this inside-out prison.” His hand rose, gesturing about the hypersphere. “They came here to nuke us out so they could resettle Earth.”
Isabel digested this. The logic was chillingly plausible. The keepers would have kept a few Earth creatures, out of remorse, like Indians on a reservation.
She turned to Bob. “So what exactly are you trying to do?”
“Clean out the Queen’s nest.” Bob pointed to the map. Isabel saw what appeared to be the outline of corridors through the Hive, with many X’s and scribbled notations. “Here are the main rovers’ nests—here, and here,” said Bob, pointing to the map, his beard nodding up and down. “The X’s mark where we’ve cleaned out the nests already. Look how all the nests seem to cluster around this one spot. That’s where the Queen’s nest must be. We know what it looks like: it’s a special cell, built like a geodesic dome, like this.” He sketched a pattern of hexagonal roof tiles, extending down and around to form a dome.
“But—I don’t understand. How do you ‘clean them out’?”
“Simple. Just go in and burn them. Then pick up all their rayguns and clear out, before help comes with the sleep-gas. Occasionally the
y snare a few of us; that’s why we need new recruits.” Bob looked up at her reflectively. “You’re a good looker, you know that?”
Isabel stepped back warily.
“Bob, come on,” called Megan. “It’s her first night, and she’s preggo.”
Bob shrugged and turned his back, while others joined him in planning the foray into the Hive. The sky darkened, and the cries of animals grew louder around the fortress, a cacophony of foreign croaks and whistles. Isabel tried to eat but could barely manage a bite. As she crouched on the blanket, she felt something attached to her foot. It was a black sucking thing the size of her thumb.
“Just a ground leech. You never saw one? Where’re you from?” Megan applied a flame to its head to burn the leech off. She tossed it in the fire; a burst of sparks cascaded down.
“Gwynwood. Gwynwood, USA.” The remembered phrase leapt off of Peace Hope’s stamp into her fevered brain. Peace Hope was out there, still, somewhere; somewhere, out of this valley of the shadow of death. And Daniel might have reached home by now…
Her wits came back into focus again. She cleared her throat and looked earnestly up at the woman. Megan’s glasses mirrored twin images of the flames of the campfire. “Megan, do you see—I know what you’re trying to do, but I can’t help you. My husband is sick and my people are dying. I have to get back home.”
“We’re all dying,” said Megan. “Poisoned by the bloody space cockies.”
Isabel shuddered, wondering whether Daniel was right, or was Dirk? Then a thought occurred to her. “Do they—the snakes—do they ever burn you, with those cylinders?”
“No, they’re too slow moving. They can’t aim well enough. Instead, they put us to sleep and do creepy experiments on us.”
“Really? Like what?”
“How should I know? They’d never show me.”
Isabel pondered this. “What do you suppose will happen, after you clean them out and get the Queen? Your friends are just the sort to start building missiles again.”
Megan shook her head. “That was all a myth, you see. All that stuff about humans having nuclear missiles—does it make sense to you? Why would we nuke our own planet? It’s a myth made up by the government, to trap us in guilt and dependency. To keep us from rebelling. But it won’t succeed. When the space cockies are gone, there will be no more nation-states: just free men and women, protecting their own.”
Isabel absorbed this recital in startled silence.
“Are you really married?” Megan asked suddenly. “Can I see your ring?”
Isabel shook herself out of her thoughts to look at Megan. Then she removed her wedding band and held it out to her. “It’s from Daniel’s folks, actually. See their initials and wedding date, May sixth, twenty-oh-three.”
“I mean your diamond.”
“Daniel’s mom was a plain Friend. She didn’t wear diamonds.”
“Oh,” said Megan, disappointed. She turned the ring over a few times, then returned it to Isabel. “What’s it like to have a baby inside? Does it know when you’re patting it like that?”
Isabel realized that she had been stroking her belly without thinking, a habit she had acquired. She flushed slightly. “I don’t know. She kicks back sometimes, I think.”
“Is it kicking now?”
“Yes. You can feel her, right here.”
“Can I really?”
“Sure.”
Megan leaned over and tentatively touched Isabel’s overalls stretched taut over her belly. Isabel guided her hand to the spot where the left leg was kicking now and then with an insistent thump. About half a minute passed. Then Megan’s lips parted as if startled. “Wow, that was a sharp one. That must hurt bad.”
“Not really. It’s comforting, actually; it means the baby’s okay.”
“That’s some pushy kid you’ve got in there. You put up with that for nine months?”
“She only started kicking about the fifth month. She’s due in another month.”
Abruptly Megan sat up. “You can’t have it born here. There’s nobody to deliver it.”
“That’s right,” agreed Isabel, suddenly hopeful. “You see, that’s why I have to get home.”
“We’ll take you to the China town.”
“There won’t be time. The labor may take less than fifteen minutes.” This was unlikely, but not impossible.
Megan considered this. “They’ll make me deliver it.” She took off her mirrorshades and rubbed a hand down her face. Her dark eyes were surrounded by tired wrinkles; she looked suddenly ten years older.
“It’s very tricky,” Isabel assured her. “If you don’t loop the cord over the head just right, it gets caught around the neck, and the baby slowly strangles to death. Then it gets caught halfway out, and the mother bleeds to death.”
Megan grimaced. “Those dags, recruiting a girl who’s preggo.”
“So you see, I really do have to go now.” Isabel started to get up.
“Sit down, hon. You’ll get nowhere past the guards. Besides, they’ll kill me if I let you go.”
Her hopes dashed, Isabel sank back on the blanket and closed her eyes. Above her some night creature called and chattered from its perch on the stone wall.
“Rovers!” From somewhere came a hoarse shout.
Megan leapt to her feet. “We’re under attack! And we’re shorthanded; Dirk’s out on a raid.” She tossed Isabel a cylinder. “Pull on your mask and man the back lookout, right up these steps. You see snakes or rovers—burn them.” With that she ran off.
The campground inside the wall was a confusion of masked people running and shouting. From the top of the wall, blue streaks aimed down toward outside, presumably at keepers and their goatsnakes. Isabel searched the wall with her eyes, seeking the nearest exit. She spied a dark crack behind the kitchen area; perhaps she might slip out there.
With an effort, Isabel just barely managed to scrape through the crack. Now the problem was to find her way back down the path to the pylon. But in the dark she had no idea where the path began. Furthermore, the familiar fog from the keepers was growing in, canceling what little visibility there was. The best she could do was to creep out away from the fortress, wading through the tall grasses where she might escape the notice of both Shades and keepers until morning.
XXXIX
THE PINK FLOOR of wax lay beneath Isabel’s fingers as she awoke, just as on that first morning that she had arrived in the hypersphere. She looked up into Daniel’s face, his eyelids fluttering anxiously. “Isabel, is thee all right? And the baby?”
Isabel winced. “She’s still kicking.” The goatsnakes must have brought her back again, she realized. That was thoughtful of them, under fire from those dreadful Shades.
Daniel let out a long sigh. “They took so much longer to return thee. I thought perhaps thee had escaped after all. At least,” he added, his voice faltering, “I tried to think that.”
She shuddered, and she hugged him fiercely. “No, I got caught.”
“Was thee hurt? Did the keepers put thee to sleep?”
“Not keepers—the Shades. They’re people, but they’ve infested the Hive like wax worms.” She recounted her frightening capture, and how the strangers had dragged her off without the least consideration. “They kill everything in sight,” she told him. “Not just keepers; all their sheep, too, and all those poor wallabies hung up on meat hooks.” She shuddered. “I’ll never eat meat again.”
Daniel shook his head. “What was the purpose of this madness?”
“To find and destroy the Queen. To set us all free.”
“But the keepers saved us all and put back our ozone. Did thee tell them?”
“They said the Queen brought the keepers here to live after they blew up their own planet. We’re just Indians on a reservation, after all.”
Daniel looked away, and he thought about this for some time. Outside the window a hummingbird swooped down and up in its dance of courtship. “That could be so,” he said gently. “I
t is hard to know for certain what we see. We humans have always seen in the universe a mirror of our selves.”
Isabel realized suddenly that she was famished. She reached for a cupful of blueberries from the ledge on the wall. The sweet juice of the berries crushed between her teeth reassured her immensely. “Thank God I got out of that mess safe.”
“If only I had known,” said Daniel. “I hope Peace Hope stays home.”
Isabel looked up hopefully. “Did you ever reach her at the Gwynwood Pylon?”
“I ran down the corridor as best I could; it’s hard when the gravity drops off like that, it felt like my feet would fly away. I did reach the little airwall, the one that opens into Gwynwood. But there—” Daniel stopped.
“What happened?”
“The keepers were waiting.”
“Oh my God.” Isabel covered her face in her hands.
“I got through the airwall,” Daniel added. “The keepers are slow to react, and they seem reluctant to send their goatsnakes after someone awake. I made it into the Pylon’s domain, just in time for Peace Hope to see me. She—she looked surprised,” he said with half a smile. “But then sleep-fog closed in, and I lost consciousness.”
“Then she saw you—with the scales on your eyes! She’ll know how to see.” Isabel patted his arm. “That was well done, Daniel. You’re a fine member of the Gwynwood Underground. The real Underground,” she emphasized.
His cheeks colored. “I’m sorry, now, for her sake. At least they didn’t ship her out here. I hope she keeps safe.”
“She’ll do what she has to, like we did. You took your stand, once,” Isabel reminded him. It seemed only yesterday that Daniel had appeared at her door out of the cold, having just refused the summons of the Pylon. “So what now,” she wondered. “We know where Gwynwood is; but how to get there?” She frowned, thinking it over. “The keepers were there waiting for you.”
“With all their goatsnakes and angelbees.”
The Wall Around Eden Page 25