The Man of Bronze

by James Alan Gardner

“Father Emil says you’re good with codes. What do you make of this?”

  Amps played back the signal he’d picked up: a white-noise gush that reminded me of surf washing onto the gravel of Brighton Beach. “Did you get that?” I asked when the playback finished.

  No answer. I repeated my question. Still no answer. I looked at Amps, but he murmured, “Our link is still open. Your friend must be too busy to talk—probably feeding the message into a computer. There’s no way human ears can understand encrypted transmissions.”

  I was tempted to say Bronze’s ears weren’t human . . . but I hadn’t shared that part with Unauthorized Intervention’s crew. Lord H. knew the story, but as far as Amps and the others were concerned, this was just about precious antiquities. I’d told them Urdmann had killed a friend of mine in connection with a hunt for ancient treasure; they accepted that as justification enough for our trip into the Sargasso. Like good soldiers, they cared more about the enemy’s capabilities than the reasons behind the operation. I’d provided all the details I could, including the possibility of facing monsters and the undead. None of the crew showed surprise at the notion of walking corpses . . . but then, this was the sort of ship that often sailed into strange waters.

  Twenty seconds passed before Bronze finally spoke. “Where did you pick up this message?” There was something sharp in his grating voice . . . a surge of emotion. Could an android feel excitement?

  “We’re in the Sargasso Sea,” I said. I read Bronze our current coordinates from the GPS on Amps’s control panel.

  “Who sent the coded signal?” the metal man asked.

  “We think it was Lancaster Urdmann.”

  “Lancaster Urdmann,” Bronze repeated. He spoke the name as if it was a puzzle he keenly wanted to solve. Back in the monastery when I’d talked with Bronze face-to-face, he’d told me Urdmann was responsible for the bomb that killed Reuben; but after that, Bronze seemed to lose interest. He’d behaved as if Urdmann was just another criminal, a routine villain to bring to justice. Now, though . . .

  “Who are Urdmann’s associates?” Bronze asked, his harsh voice tense.

  “All I’ve seen are run-of-the-mill mercenaries,” I said. “But you’re the one who reads Interpol files. They must have a full dossier on Urdmann. Who do they say are his cronies?”

  “No one who’d know that code.”

  “What’s special about the code?” I asked. Bronze didn’t answer. Father Emil had warned that the android could be closemouthed. “Look,” I said, “we’ll be facing Urdmann in the near future. If you know something that will help us . . .”

  No answer. Finally, I sighed. “Can you at least tell us what the coded signal said?”

  “Yes,” Bronze replied. “The message reads ‘Requesting intervention against bogeys at . . .’” He gave a set of coordinates not far from our own location. Amps jotted them down.

  “Is that all?” I asked. “Nothing about the nature of the bogeys? Or what constitutes an intervention?”

  “That is the complete message,” Bronze replied. “Please keep me apprised of any further signals. Signing off.”

  “Oh no, you don’t,” I said. “If you recognize the code, tell us where it comes from, who uses it, what we might be up against . . .”

  But Bronze had disconnected. No matter how often Amps tried to reestablish the link, we got no answer.

  Night on the ocean can be black as tar . . . especially when the stars vanish one by one behind slow accumulations of cloud. The darkness increased when Unauthorized Intervention turned off its running lights—Lord H. preferred a stealthy approach. We’d gone to total silence, even shutting down our active sonar and radar. Our passive receivers still functioned, so we’d hear other ships shooting beams our way . . . but our ship’s muffled engines and wooden hull made us difficult to pick up. With no lights on deck, we’d be practically undetectable until we were atop our quarry.

  Or at least that was the theory. We hadn’t counted on the sea starting to glow.

  Dim phosphorescence is common at sea. A ship’s wake can glow a faint blue green, thanks to billions of microscopic plankton shining slightly as they’re churned to the surface. But this was different. At first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks: imagining light that wasn’t there, perhaps in response to the extreme blackness. The farther we went, however—the closer we got to where Urdmann had called for “intervention”—the more we could see that the ocean emitted a soft turquoise luminance: an eerie aqua luster that lit everyone’s face from below. It reminded me of a party I’d attended in Beverly Hills, where the only light came from bulbs underwater in the swimming pool . . . the same blue-green underlighting. It also reminded me of a certain Pacific island lagoon where I’d faced, and killed, the nightmarish horror of a risen Méne. I tried to keep my thoughts on the Beverly Hills party. What with all the Hollywood types in attendance, it had been almost equally vicious but a lot less bloody. While the crew went about their business, Lord H. and I stood at the rail staring into the depths.

  The water was full of glimmering turquoise eels.

  Eels come every year to the Sargasso. They arrive by the millions to lay eggs, which will later drift back toward land and, through a complex life cycle several years long, mature into fresh-water eels in the rivers of Europe and North America. I had no idea if December was the usual spawning season, but I doubted it was common for eels, even in breeding frenzy, to shed light like long fluorescent tubes.

  “Are they supposed to shine like that?” I asked.

  Lord Horatio shook his head. “Some types of eel luminesce, but not the species in the Sargasso.”

  “Then we must be near the bronze leg. The presence of android body parts changes animals in odd ways.”

  “So it seems.” Lord H. glanced at me. “I confess I doubted your story, dear girl. I’ve seen queer things in rough parts of the world, but I still thought you might be exaggerating.” He looked at the eels again: a vast shoal of them lighting the water as far as the eye could see. “This is no exaggeration.”

  “It will get worse,” I said, “the closer we get to the leg.” I went to Ilya, still in his deck chair, and poked him to wake up. “Time for you to head inside. Things may turn nasty soon.”

  Ilya stood—refusing my help—and hobbled toward the bridge. “Have we spotted Urdmann?”

  “We think so,” I said. “He’s close.”

  Lord H. nodded. “About an hour to the coordinates in the message.”

  The ship sailed on, its engines muffled; Unauthorized Intervention had special audio bafflers for silent running. Eels teemed around us, slithering through the floating Sargassum. If I’d lowered a bucket on a rope, I could have pulled up a dozen glowing wrigglers . . . which is why I didn’t do such a stupid thing. Why would I want a bucket of eels that looked like they’d eaten plutonium?

  Dark shadows appeared in the distance: lightless bulks floating on the ocean. Lord Horatio handed me a pair of binoculars. “Ladies first,” he said—probably because he knew my eyes were decades sharper than his, but he didn’t want to admit it.

  I took the binocs and scanned the horizon. Even with light from the eels, I was hard-pressed to make out details. Shadowy forms lay low in the water. Here and there, bits protruded above their surroundings: a mast . . . a smokestack riddled with rust holes . . . a winged figurehead. Ships from all ages of history had congregated into a gridlocked mass, their hulls pressed against one another, debris from one craft toppling onto the decks of its neighbors.

  As we drew nearer, I began to identify individual vessels. A coal-powered steamer from the early 1900s. A Viking longboat, the carved wooden dragon on its prow glaring at me in a silent snarl. A tall ship from the Napoleonic Wars, cannon on its decks, dangling moss on its yardarms. A Nazi destroyer emblazoned with swastikas. A modern supertanker almost submerged, with only a bit of its hull above the surface . . . and who knew if its hold was empty or filled with floods of oil?

  “What do you see?”
Lord H. asked. I handed him the binoculars and let him look. “No haunts in sight,” he murmured. “Do you think they’re invisible?”

  “Those pirates in the 1700s saw them clearly enough. But the haunts didn’t attack until the pirate ship got close. Maybe they’re hiding belowdecks. Or in the water.”

  “That’s not a comforting—” He stopped. Our position at the rail was only a few steps from Unauthorized Intervention’s bridge. A crew member had just come out through the bridge’s hatch. “Captain, we’ve detected a yacht on the far side of the derelicts. They’re projecting both sonar and radar. Amps thinks it’s the ship that sent the coded message.”

  “What’s the ship doing?”

  “Lying still. We can hear its engines idling, but it isn’t moving.”

  “They must be waiting for that ‘intervention against the bogeys.’” Lord H. looked at me. “What do you think?”

  I asked the sailor, “How far is the yacht from the derelict ships?”

  “Half a mile.”

  “Maybe it’s hanging back far enough to keep clear of the haunts. Maybe this intervention can neutralize the undead.”

  “What could do that?” Lord Horatio asked. “One of those firefighting planes flying over and dumping holy water on the zombies’ heads?”

  “Holy water is for vampires,” I said. “Against zombies you use salt.” I smiled. “Get a priest to bless salt water and you’ve got the best of both worlds.”

  “Heaven knows we have enough salt water,” Lord H. replied. “But the only priest on board got himself defrocked for killing a parishioner. It’s rather a funny story—”

  “Save it for later,” I said. “For now, why not anchor at the same distance from the derelicts as the other ship? Wait to see what happens.”

  “A capital idea,” his lordship said. He turned to the man from the bridge. “Make it so.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  We went into the bridge to wait.

  I’ve never been good at waiting. I considered asking Lord H. if he had a Jet Ski so I could just scoot in and fetch the bronze leg; but getting the leg was secondary to getting Urdmann . . . and getting Urdmann meant dealing with however many mercenaries he had on his ship. Did I really want to drive up to Urdmann’s vessel on a big loud watercraft, making a target of myself for both mercenary sharpshooters and haunts? No. Nor was I likely to succeed by approaching Urdmann stealthily underwater—not with a thick mass of glowing eels making swimming difficult. Best to play it cool . . . at least until we knew what the expected “intervention” was.

  When the intervention came, it arrived fast and furious.

  “Incoming!” cried a lookout. “Missile from the southeast!”

  Urdmann’s ship was west of us—completely the opposite direction—so where had the missile come from? But there was no time to answer that question. The missile streaked toward us like a meteor.

  “It’s painting us with radar,” Amps called. “No . . . wait . . . it hasn’t locked on. Either it didn’t detect us, or we aren’t the target.”

  “No countermeasures,” Lord Horatio ordered. “Maintain silence. All hands brace for impact.”

  Neither he nor I were seated—the small bridge only had chairs for crew members who needed them—but there were grab bars fastened to the walls for just this kind of contingency. I seized the nearest in a death grip and whispered to Lord H., “Do you think the missile will hit us?”

  “Even if it misses, this could be a rough ride. A good-sized explosion might throw up waves—”

  Before he could finish, the missile burst in the atmosphere, high above the flotilla of abandoned ships: not with a thunderous bang but with a gentle pop that reached our ears several seconds later. By then, tendrils of silver mist were showering onto the derelicts below. They fell like streamers on New Year’s Eve, some dropping onto the derelicts’ decks, others reaching all the way down to the ocean. Each thread had the vaporous consistency of fog . . . yet the fog didn’t disperse on the breeze. Within seconds, the area was draped with ghostly silver filaments—an umbrella radiating out from the point where the missile went off. It reminded me uncomfortably of that lethal jellyfish called the Portuguese man-of-war, which floats placidly on the sea surface, but out of sight underwater, it reaches venomous tentacles a hundred feet in all directions.

  “What is that stuff?” a crew member murmured. “A chemical weapon? Nerve gas?”

  “No nerve gas I’ve ever heard of,” another man said. “Neurotoxins are designed to spread, not stay in coherent strands.”

  “Maybe the stuff is sticky,” someone else suggested. “Like a spiderweb.”

  “Captain,” Amps said, “the yacht has revved its engines. It’s moving toward the derelicts.”

  “So Mr. Urdmann isn’t afraid of that stuff.” Lord H. turned to me. “What do you think, my dear?”

  I said, “If Urdmann is going in, we should too. Otherwise, he’ll grab the leg and run.”

  “What about the, uhh . . .” Lord H. gestured toward the umbrella of silver threads.

  “They must be the intervention. A defense against the haunts.”

  “So you hope.”

  I smiled and drew my pistols. “If not, there’s more than one way to stop a zombie.”

  Lord Horatio sighed. “Very well. Action teams prepare for a sortie . . . and load up with silver bullets.”

  Our party numbered ten, plus Lord Horatio and me. The men carried chunky OICWs:—Objective Individual Combat Weapons—from Alliant Techsystems, combining the firepower of both an assault rifle and a grenade launcher.

  Technically speaking, the OICW didn’t fire actual grenades, but 20-mm burst shells—big explosive rounds that detonated above a target, showering the neighborhood with frag—but enemies in the blast radius wouldn’t notice much difference between bursters and grenades. Not for long, anyway. Heaven knows how Lord H. got his hands on such guns. Last I heard they were only in the prototype stage, still testing the fire control system: laser range finder, night-vision sights, and targeting computer all in one. Urdmann’s prissy little Uzis would seem like toys compared to a full-fledged OICW. I, of course, had my usual pistols and a commando knife in a belt sheath, while Lord H. carried a Walther PPK. Everyone knows the PPK is small, outdated, and underpowered . . . but so are Scotch terriers, and who isn’t fond of Scotties?

  Ilya made a token effort to accompany us, but allowed himself to be dissuaded—he knew he was in no condition. The Carthaginian galley lay at the center of the derelict mass; reaching the treasure would require jumping from ship to ship, and Ilya’s injured leg wasn’t ready for such exertions. “No way you’re coming with us,” I told him. “It’s bad enough we have Lord H.”

  “What do you mean by that?” his lordship asked.

  “You’re the ship’s captain. You ought to stay here.”

  “When Sir Francis Drake attacked a Spanish galleon, do you think he stayed with the ship? No. He boarded the quarry beside his men.”

  “He had to,” I said. “Otherwise, Drake’s men would fill their pockets with the best Spanish treasures and by the time Drake joined them, he’d only get leftovers. One would hope that’s no longer the case.”

  “Well,” said Lord H. with a sheepish smile, “a wise commander tolerates a little plunder . . . just to keep up morale.”

  “And the captain is right there fighting with his men. For shame, my lord.”

  “Lara,” he said, “who’s the one who calls herself a tomb raider? Do you have permission forms from the pharaohs you’ve robbed? This authorizes Lara Croft to pry golden scarabs from my cold mummified hands.”

  I laughed. “Touché. But let’s keep priorities straight. Lancaster Urdmann first; looting the dead, second.”

  “Of course, my dear. We’re professionals.”

  9

  THE SARGASSO SEA: CROSSING THE FLOTILLA

  We didn’t bother lowering a boat. The pilot simply nudged our nose against the closest ship of the pa
cked-in flotilla. It happened to be a steamship, Canadian, pre–World War I: low enough in the water that our commando team could jump from Unauthorized Intervention to the steamer’s deck.

  As soon as we did, the haunts appeared.

  There’s a gray area between zombie and skeleton: a stage of decomposition where most flesh has withered but traces still cover the bone. Crispy hair dangles down sunken cheeks, swishing past empty eye sockets. Arms look anorexic, devoid of meat; chests are merely ribs and skin, so tightly wrapped it seems as if a pinprick would pop the epidermis like a balloon. Throw in tatters of clothing—ripped, ragged pants or unbuttoned shirts flapping in the wind—and you’ve got the haunts that rattled out to greet us.

  They came from deck hatches or out of inner cabins. One clambered up a ladder from the sea, Sargassum seaweed around his neck and a glowing eel drooping from one eye hollow. Most of the haunts were unarmed, but a few had simple weapons: a fire ax, knives, clubs of rotting wood. The commandos beside me sprayed every attacker with bullets. Bone chips flew as abundantly as shell casings. The skeletal haunts showed no sign of dying, but with their legs shot out from under them, they ceased to be threats.

  Then a haunt wearing a captain’s hat emerged from the bridge carrying a pistol. I fired the instant I saw him; he fired simultaneously. My shot would have punctured his heart, if he’d had one. As it was, the bullet passed through his chest cavity, leaving a modest hole but no other visible damage. His own gun did more damage—the rusty thing blew up in his hand, taking off his lower arm.

  The loss made no difference. Captain Haunt continued forward, holding out his stump as if it still gripped the pistol. I lifted my own gun, preparing to shoot again, when the captain thing brushed one of the misty threads still hanging in the air—the dangling strands of silver that had come from the “intervention” missile. For a moment, the undead man continued forward as if nothing had happened; then the haunt shriveled, its skin and bone shrinking like melting ice. The haunt made its first and last sound, a gasp filled with overwhelming sorrow. A heartbeat later, it was gone—no corpse, no dust, no residue, just the captain’s hat dropping to the deck.