by Adam Carter
No one would ever sit at the tables again, for the dinosaurs had killed them all.
“Mr Hawthorn, it would be a good idea to move.”
There was one other door from the room and I rushed across to turn the lock. Behind the counter there would be a kitchen area and it was to this that I headed next. Here I found a small room containing enough equipment to prepare several dozen meals at once. There was no other way out from it, so I did not have to secure anything. All I had to do then was wait for the citipati to enter the room, rush past them and lock them in.
I heard a high-pitched squawk and ducked behind the counter. A citipati had entered the dining room and was bobbing around like a turkey. It did not recognise anything in the room and did not peck at anything. Instead I could see from the large, staring eye upon the side of its head that it was searching for something specific; that something had to be me.
A second beast entered and I held my breath as it paused in the doorway, uncertain. But then it walked right in and trotted across the room to examine something at the far end. I did not know how many of the creatures were outside, so I waited some more. I did not have to entrap them all, but to rid myself of at least a few would have been a good start.
A third appeared and as it entered it headed straight for me. I did not move, did not breathe, but the creature was not looking directly at me so it was clear it was just heading towards me through coincidence. It stopped at it reached the counter and I desperately wanted to move my head, but to do so would have been to bring all three beasts upon me. Its rounded, flint-like head was bare inches from me, yet it was gazing into the kitchen area and did not notice what was directly beneath it. For one terrible moment I feared it was going to come round the counter to investigate the kitchen, but instead it turned off and headed after its fellows.
I breathed again. If there were any more of the things, I was going to have to face them in the corridor, because I did not intend to stay in that dining area a moment longer.
Dropping as low as I could, I peered around the counter. The three dinosaurs were not doing much of anything so I began to crawl across the ground, making as little noise as possible. I reasoned if I kept myself low they would be less likely to see me. All it actually meant was that I moved more slowly so as all their heads snapped about to look at me I had little hope of getting away.
Yelling, I scrambled to my feet even as I pulled out my pistol and squeezed the trigger. The blast shocked me so much I dropped the gun, which went clattering on the floor. The single gunshot was enough to give the dinosaurs pause, but only for a moment. With an enraged caw they were bolting across the room towards me. Somehow I managed to stumble through the door. Slamming it shut, I fumbled with the lock, but could not find anything on the outside. It seemed if there was a bolt it would be on the inside.
A citipati collided with the door, almost sending me flying, but I held firm in the knowledge that if the dinosaurs proved the stronger they would peck me to death. Placing my feet against the opposite wall and my shoulder to the door, I braced myself as much as I could for every impact.
“Wraith!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Do something.”
“What would you like me to do, sir?” the computer asked calmly. “I can play a haunting melody for you.”
“What? Lock the door!”
“Which door would you like me to lock, sir?”
“This one would be good.”
“One moment.”
Whatever Wraith was doing, it took decidedly longer than one moment. The citipati collided with the door again and the shock juddered down my leg, but I did not release my hold. Another collision caused the entire door to shake and I swore I could feel flecks of dust fall upon me. Another collision, and another, and another, and I was screaming aloud at the pain in my shoulder.
“All done.”
I fell to the floor, a shuddering wreck. The dinosaurs still pounded upon the door, but Wraith had set the electronic seal. Short of breaking the metal door from its hinges, those dinosaurs were trapped.
“What took you so long?”
“I was having trouble with some of the finer points of …”
“Never mind.” Picking myself up, I was glad to see there were no more dinosaurs in the corridor waiting to kill me. On shaky legs, I made my way back to the infirmary. Wraith seemed reluctant to light me the way, but I was in no mood to deal with his opinion and gave a few choice indications of what a real engineer could do to screw him over.
Still, it was several minutes before Wraith managed to lead me back, and I was glad to see no trace of a struggle as I wandered in. I was all ready to collapse into a chair, but my heart froze at the sight that greeted me. The room was precisely as I had left it, minus one important factor.
“Wraith, where’s Arowana?”
“Miss Arowana is in the … It seems Miss Arowana is not in the bed.”
“I know she’s not in the bed – I can see she’s not in the bed. I didn’t ask you where she wasn’t, you stupid computer.”
“A computer knows only what it has been programmed to know. A computer is neither intelligent nor stupid.”
“Find her.”
“Searching.”
“Find her quickly.”
“Still searching.”
Getting angry with Wraith would not solve anything, but if Arowana had woken up and gone wandering, in her wounded state she would not last two seconds against random dinosaurs she might bump into. That she could even be conscious was amazing, yet the facts spoke for themselves. There simply was no other …
I remembered how reluctant Wraith was to lead me back to the infirmary the first time, insisting the dinosaurs might kill her; then Wraith had taken ages to lock down the door; then Wraith had again been hesitant to bring me back here. Almost as though it was stalling.
Arowana had not wandered out the room. Wraith had kidnapped her. It had sent repair robots or something to pick her up, but why? Did Wraith need a human being for something? And if Wraith had indeed taken her, did it also need me? Or was I expendable?
“Wraith?”
“Still searching.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll go look for her.”
I did not reveal my fears to the computer, since that would have ended in the thing killing me. Instead I located an energy control box in the infirmary and tore off the side panel.
“Mr Hawthorn, what are you doing?”
“I’m an engineer. There may be clues.”
“What sort of clues?”
“You do the computer stuff, I’ll do the heavy work.”
The control box was standard throughout the system. It consisted of a few wires of varying thickness which entered the box and drew power from it. This in turn fed the various systems in the room. They were especially popular on caravans and in spacecraft due to their portable nature. A good engineer could use them for other things, however, and I had always been a good engineer.
Within but a few minutes I had a few lights flashing on the box inside. There was a lot I could tell from flashing lights, especially since I had rerouted the box so it was now drawing and supplying power to other areas of the tower. Because of this I was able to isolate the location of heat signatures. It was telling me there were lots in the basement, some in the dining area, and two other very small clumps – one in the infirmary and one in an entirely different place. I had found her.
“Still searching,” Wraith said.
“You do that,” I said as I stood. “I’m going for a walk.” I knew where Arowana was. Now all I had to do was reach her before Wraith cottoned on and fried me. As an afterthought, I even took Arowana’s metal case with me. Depending on what was actually in there, it might well come in handy.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Mr Hawthorn, I can no longer see the corridor you are in.”
“That’s all right, Wraith, I’m powering down some of the systems so the dinosaurs won’t be able to track me.�
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“Mr Hawthorn, please stop interfering with my systems.”
“Cool it, Wraith. Trust me, all right?”
After a long pause, the computer said, “Very well, Mr Hawthorn. Still searching.”
I wandered in a seemingly aimless path, and every so often I would rip out the side of a control box and shut Wraith’s sensors off. He could still mostly see where I was going, so he should not have become too bothered about my actions, but as I progressed I intended to blow more and more of them. I checked Arowana’s location each time I accessed a box and had worked out a good roundabout way to reach her. Now it was just a matter of playing for time.
We did not speak for a long while. Eventually I decided enough time had passed and when I accessed a control box fairly close to Arowana I shorted out everything for several floors.
“Darn,” I said. “Wraith, can you hear me?”
“Mr Hawthorn, what have you done?”
“Blown a fuse, I think.”
“I can’t see you.”
“All right, I’ll try to fix that. You can still hear me fine, though?”
“You are scratchy, but yes I can hear your words.”
“Great. Leave me alone with this panel for a few minutes and let me see what I can do.”
A pause, then, “Understood.”
I rapped a piece of metal against the side of the box so Wraith would be able to hear me at work; then I carefully set the piece of metal down and ran for all I was worth. If I hurried I knew I would be able to reach Arowana before the computer noticed I was gone. Then I would have to deal with whatever defences Wraith had placed upon her, but that was something I could play by ear.
Rounding a corner, I saw a door and knew she was inside. Not even slowing, I slammed into it with my shoulder and crashed the thin metal door inwards. A woman shrieked from within, but even if Iris Arowana was prone to shrieking I never believed she could emit such a truly terrified sound.
The room was fairly small and filled with computer equipment and monitors. There was but one seat in which sat a single occupant, but it was not Arowana. It was not even a woman. The man was aged somewhere in his forties, with a thin wiry frame and several years’ growth of beard. He stank like he had not washed for all that time, but I ignored the smell in my utter shock.
“Who the hell?”
“No, no,” the man said, struggling to rise. “No, you can’t be in here.”
I recognised the voice. “Wraith? You mean … You mean you’re not a computer programme after all?”
“Of course I’m not a computer programme, you idiot. You can’t talk to computers. Well, I suppose you could, but it’d be pointless since they can’t talk back.”
I grabbed him by the scruff of his collar. “Where’s Arowana?”
“I don’t know,” he rasped, fear in his eyes as I shook him. “I’ve been searching for her, but she stays off my systems. I can’t track her.”
“But she’s here. She has to be here. There weren’t any other heat signatures.”
“I swear I don’t know. Please don’t kill me,” he wailed.
“Kill you? I’m not going to kill you.” I dropped him in disgust at what he was, but a brief look about the room revealed he was indeed telling the truth. Arowana was not in the room, which meant she had to be with the dinosaurs. There was no other explanation that made any sense.
“Gordon?”
I span around to find her standing in the doorway. She was leaning against the doorframe, weak but alive. There were questions in her eyes but I did not feel much like speaking. Rushing to her, I enveloped her in such a tight hug that she gasped and I remembered her injuries.
“Sorry,” I said. “Just glad to see you.”
“I thought you hated me,” she said wryly.
“I got over it.”
“So, what, we’re frustrated potential lovers now?”
“Can’t you just be happy to see me?”
“I never said I wasn’t happy to see you.” She paused. “Thanks for saving my life, by the way. I assume you did, since I’m still alive to say it.”
“Don’t mention it. To be honest, I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Who’s this?” she asked, annoying me by not mentioning it.
“Some idiot who lives here. Someone who’s about to give us some answers.”
“Oh goodie,” Arowana said, wincing as she shifted position slightly. “I like answers.”
“I’m not giving you people anything,” Wraith said. “You barge into my home …”
“Uh,” I said, “you opened the door for us.”
Wraith closed his mouth, his argument dying. “Well, at the very least I saved your woman’s life. There’s no need to kill me.”
“I’m not his woman,” Arowana said, finding a console to sit on. “And why would we kill you?”
Wraith narrowed his eyes. “Because you found me out. I was lying this whole time.”
“So you were pretending to be a computer?” I asked. “So what?”
“I lied. Lying is a capital offence.”
“You really do come from a screwed-up world, don’t you? That stuff you told me about Captain Forest? Was that all true?”
“Yes. I watched that as it happened. We were all made to, it was an example to the rest of us. It was then that I decided to stay alive no matter what it cost.”
“So you killed the crew.”
“Killed them? No, of course I didn’t kill them. I’m a doctor, I don’t kill people. They went off, in ones or in groups, to fight the citipati. And slowly they were all killed. Stupid thing is, the citipati would never have attacked us otherwise. They’re defending their territory, having set up in the basement, but human beings are far too large to be their prey. Besides, no animal would continue to fight an opponent that was blowing away its relatives with automatic fire.”
I exchanged a glance with Arowana. “So,” I said, “the crew committed suicide by dinosaur? You seriously want us to believe everyone – everyone – went out there and died.”
“Not everyone, obviously.”
“Except for you, I mean.”
“Life is cheap on Carpo.”
“Carpo?” Arowana asked. “That moon’s half the size of Themisto, and the people there are nuts.”
“How large is Carpo?” I asked, having only vaguely heard of the place. I knew it was a natural satellite of Jupiter, but it was one of the small ones and I knew little about them.
“About two miles long,” Arowana said. “I’ve never been there but they apparently have very strict rules.”
“One mistake,” Wraith said, “and it’s your last. As Captain Forest discovered. We regard life so cheaply that the entire crew didn’t think twice about rushing off to fight the dinosaurs. We’re territorial, you see, more so than the citipati. With Carpo being so small, we tend to fight a lot for space.”
I imagined a whole society where the threat of nuclear war was not between nations but neighbours. No wonder the people of Carpo were weird. But it seemed Wraith had rejected his society, which probably made him the clever one.
“Pardon me, ma’am,” Wraith said, “but how did you not show up on my scans?”
“That’s right,” I said. “I couldn’t see a heat blip for you. I thought you were here, but you weren’t anywhere.”
“Clearly I was somewhere.”
“Iris, are you a robot?”
“You have a thing for robots, Gordon. No, I’m not a robot. I’m just very good at my job. You, Wraith, what happened to the bodies? If everyone was killed, where are the bodies?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I found where Forest had been set out for the dinosaurs, but there was no trace of her.”
“What, you think I want to have pieces of people lying around, attracting even more scavengers? I cleaned up. Took a while, but what else have I got to do?”
“And us?” I asked. “What do you need us for?”
“For one thing, I was using you to tak
e care of the dinosaurs for me.”
“And the other?”
He set his jaw firm, but answered regardless. “I wanted to use you as a hostage while Miss Arowana recovered. When she was better, I was going to use you as leverage against her, force her to pilot me out of here. I’m so useless in the air I can’t even fly a boat.”
“Boats sail on water.”
“See what I mean?”
I shook my head. “All right, but your plan was faulty from the start. She can’t fly worth a damn, either.”
“It’s sort of why he’s here,” Arowana added.
“No sort of to it. I’m here because you needed a pilot.”
“Better things to worry about right now, Gordon. Wraith, you say you want a pilot. That means you have a ship we can steal?”
“Ship? I thought you said boats needed water.”
“Cute.”
The entire tower shook and I almost lost my balance. I looked to Arowana, but she was just as confused as I was, so we both looked to Wraith. He swung back to his console and typed like mad. Images appeared on the screens above his head – images of armed people in uniforms running through the corridors. They moved quickly, posting sentries where needed, and I could see they were professionals. I could see something else about them, as well.
“Securitarn,” Arowana said.
Wraith looked up. “Who?”
“Our employers,” I said. “Arowana stole this briefcase from them and now they want to kill us both for it.” We knew Securitarn would have been heading for the tower but like fools we had dallied too long with Wraith.
“I’ll surrender,” Arowana said in a small voice. “If I give myself up, I can tell them you died in the woods. They won’t care about you enough to search for you.”
“Surrender? Iris, you’re not surrendering.”
“Then what? I’m physically weak and emotionally exhausted. If I fight I’ll split open my wounds when I throw the first punch. Are you such a good shot that you can take out an entire Securitarn squad?”