by James Kahn
“What are you talking about? Stop this bartering, man, these are your final moments.”
“I swear, I swear,” Gabriel begged, “there is no such animal. It was an invention, a figment of our imagination, we of the Inner Circle. These experiments are our doing, no one else’s. The ‘new animal’ is just and only the computer-integrated accumulation of all the Human brains we’ve appropriated—” “Stolen!”
“Stolen, if you will. But I swear by my final moments on earth we are creating an intelligence with these linked brains that we can apply to the good of all—”
“Murdered,” Josh rasped.
“—and I swear by the stars that those with the most to gain are those fortunate creatures whose brains are in the circuit.”
Isis bit him again on the ankle. He winced, pulled his leg back: and in the same motion twisted, throwing Josh down. He brought his hands up to the back of his head, to dislodge the syringe, but Josh and Isis were on him in a second. He fell back: his head hit the wall, depressing the plunger on the syringe: and he was dead.
Josh hugged Isis quickly but warmly, then carried her into the next room and set her down. Rose had just finished unplugging the last Human.
“Well, that’s done,” said Rose. “They’ll wake up in a few minutes, I think. And look, I found a drawer full of these.” She held up a little oblong, black lid that she placed against the outlet at the back of her head and with a snap capped the plug-opening. “We’ll have to leave quickly,” she went on. “How did you get in?”
Josh showed her the trash tube and shaft to the sewage tunnels below. “What about them?” he indicated the rows of unconscious Humans, some of whom were lethargically starting to awaken.
“They’ll know what to do,” Rose assured. “But with all these brains disconnected, alarms have gone off. Guards will be here any minute. We can’t wait.”
Josh clenched. He ran over to a Human sitting up, a few feet away, who appeared fully awake. “The tubes,” Josh said to the man, pointing. “Escape down the tubes.” The man nodded understanding; Josh ran back to Rose and Isis. “Come on,” he said, putting the little Cat on his shoulder. He lifted the lid on the upright tube, and they climbed down the shaft.
At the bottom the water ran fast and shallow. A dim bulb glowed at the junction of three tunnels. Josh could see his last chalk arrow, thirty feet downstream at the shaft he’d originally gone up. Otherwise, the tunnel was empty.
“Beauty,” Josh called out in a loud whisper. No answer.
“Beauty is here?” Rose gripped his arm in fearful anticipation.
“He was supposed to be,” Josh said, heartsick at the Centaur’s absence. What could it mean? Had something else gone wrong? “Beauty!” he called louder.
More silence. Then: “Here!” echoed a voice in the darkness.
“Where? Where are you?” Josh yelled. They ran toward the sound.
“Here, I am here! I ran out of vine, I can go no farther. You must find my voice. Is Rose safe?” the Centaur called.
“I am here, my love, yes, I’m well, we’re coming!”
They called back and forth for ten minutes, turning down blind cross tunnels, backtracking, rerouting. Finally, they found each other, probably more lucky than clever. Beauty and Rose hugged with a great passion.
“We’ve no time to lose,” Josh whispered to Beauty. “Take Rose out with you, upstream. We’ll meet where the river leaves the jungle, just before dawn.”
“Come with us this way,” urged Beauty. “It is shorter and safer.”
Josh shook his head. “I can’t, I promised Lon I’d meet him in the tunnels. He’s hurt, and he may need help.”
They clasped hands. “Until soon, friend,” said Beauty.
“Until soon.”
Rose hopped on Beauty’s back and he began following his trailing vine back up against the current. Josh walked swiftly in the opposite direction, closely following the arrows he’d drawn on the wall. Isis remained on Joshua’s shoulder: she felt totally safe there; and she hated the water.
It didn’t take long to get back to the rendezvous point. Lon was there waiting.
“No luck?” asked the Vampire.
“Rose is safe. She’s with Beauty now, on their way out. And you?”
“I shuttled most of the orphans three at a time to the spot we agreed upon, where the river meets the jungle. We lost some, though.”
“Ollie?” Josh didn’t hide the fear in his voice.
“He is safe,” Lon touched Joshua’s shoulder. “Let us join them.” He stood up, and almost immediately doubled over.
Josh came to his aid. “You’re hurt. You’re bleeding again.” The wound in the Vampire’s side had reopened; blood freely trickled.
“No, I’m fine. But we must hurry.” Without pausing, he started down the tunnel. Josh followed, with Isis on her perch.
They walked in silence. Lon was already rather familiar with the route by now, and his night vision was good enough that they made steady progress.
Pausing to get their bearings in what must have been a peripheral cross tunnel, they first heard the rumbling.
“What’s that?” Josh wanted to know.
Lon and Isis both twitched their ears. “I don’t know,” said Lon, “but it seems to be getting louder.”
Indeed, the walls were beginning to shake, the air to vibrate and then blow with a low, ominous thunder. All at once, the water hit.
In an instant, the entire tunnel was flooded, floor to ceiling, with a crush of wild rushing water. The three friends were violently torn apart and carried like so much flotsam down the raging tide. Josh saw Lon catch the bottom rung of a vertical shaft and pull himself up out of the deluge. Isis, who never coped well with water, was rapidly carried, legs askew, down a battering surge through the largest tunnel; and was not seen again.
Josh was tumbled under the water for a time—in the tunnels themselves there was no way to get above the flow. He held his breath as best he could but in the constant buffeting he kept losing air. Several times he was slammed against jagged walls or protruding corners; twice, he almost lost consciousness.
At the very nadir of his strength, his foot snagged in a bar, and pulling himself to it, he found it was a rung leading up a shaft. With his last energy he pulled himself up, found another rung, and pulled again. One more rung, and he was out of the water, coughing, sputtering, and lost. He hung for a long time on the ladder in the shaft—the water rushing below him—resting, recovering, retching.
He wondered briefly why the tunnels had suddenly filled with churning water, but did not dwell on the matter. Their luck had soured, it remained only to survive. He silently wished his friends well, climbed the shaft and slipped over the top.
Night in the Outer City. A lost breeze found its way over the wall to cool Joshua’s face, as he ran across the street he’d emerged on to crouch in the shadow of an empty wagon. Street lamps made concealment difficult. In addition, jolly groups of Vampires and Neuromans roamed everywhere in search of night pleasure. As a Human, in dripping Human clothes, Josh was thoroughly conspicuous.
He waited until the area cleared somewhat, then surreptitiously inched his way toward the outer wall. Through alleys, against buildings, under causeways he darted. The moon was hardly more than an intimation behind black autumn clouds, but the street light brazenly followed his progress, tagging him with his own shadow wherever he turned. He was halfway across a wide street when the alarm came.
“Halt! You there!” yelled a voice from a doorway.
“Look! There! A Human!” shouted another.
And then another: “After him!”
This was followed immediately by the rattle of numerous feet over the cobbles, but Josh didn’t stick around to see which feet belonged to which voice. He dove into a shadow, and ran.
“Auxiliary Power check complete,” said Neuroman One.
“Auxiliary Power function normal,” said Neuroman Two, returning the Auxiliary Power switch to
the Off position. It was a test they ran at 0400 every night, to check for malfunction in the Auxiliary Power system—a substitute power source that diverted the major force of the river through the sewage tunnels to alternate turbines in a different part of the city. Tonight, as always, the standby engines clicked in on cue, then shut down again as the test was concluded.
“Back to Standard Power,” said Neuroman One.
“Standard Power,” echoed Neuroman Two, rechecking all the switch positions.
Jasmine stood silently behind a relay box, out of sight of the two technicians, measuring her moment. She’d hidden in the shaft for hours, then gone undetected from the shaft to the console to this box, waiting only for an opportunity to strike.
Opportunity knocked.
Neuroman One lit up a cigarette. Neuroman Two said, rather curtly, “Go out in the hall if you have to smoke that thing.” Neuroman One replied in tone and went into the hall. Jasmine tiptoed up behind Neuroman Two, popped his head valve, and blew fifty cc’s of air in before the creature knew anything was happening. He slumped forward at the desk, never to move again.
Jasmine repositioned herself. In a few minutes, Neuroman One re-entered. “Wake up,” he growled to his immobile co-worker. When Two didn’t stir, One walked over and shook him. Jasmine slipped out, popped One’s valve and applied her deadly syringe. She then tipped over some furniture, twined the bodies arm in arm, their hands on each other’s valves, and let them bleed onto the floor: set piece of a mock death struggle. Now the room was hers.
First she broke all the levers off the Auxiliary Power switches. Then she turned all the Main Power switches to the Off position. Then, in the blackened room, with her flashlight on, she broke or removed all the levers on the Main Power switches. Then she walked out the door of the defunct room, locking it behind her, as the sounds of frantic commotion began to well in the corridors all around.
The lights went out. All over the city. Josh was hiding under a bush when it happened, and with grave relief, heard his pursuers run on by in sudden and equilibrating blackness. From all directions he heard shouts of alarm, dismay, confusion. No streetlights, no searchlights. No longer afraid of exposure, Joshua became bold. He left his bush.
He walked quickly but assuredly down a main walkway toward the outer wall. Vampires and Neuromans ran in all directions around him, but none paid him any heed. He could taste his imminent escape, smell it on the wind.
At the same moment, another nose was raised to the air. Cerberus, the drawbridge guard dog, had wandered inside the compound when the lights went out, to see what the trouble was. He flared his nostrils hotly, now, and bared the teeth in all three of his heads. “I smell Human,” he said to himself, and walked stealthily toward the smell.
Lon flew to the top of the outer wall when the lights went out. With his razor-nails he began cutting a large hole in the electrified net that covered the city. Large enough to fly through, even if the electricity came back on. He felt woozy from blood loss, but put the feeling out of his mind for the more important matters of the moment. Far below him, the city writhed in turmoil. Methodically, he continued cutting the wires.
Jasmine walked out of the castle’s main gate and into the Inner City. Patrols swept the ground, each with an emergency station to defend. Some, with flashlights, examined every face they passed; but Jasmine, still in stolen uniform, was ignored. She walked calmly through the chaos, like a slow boat through fast waters.
Beauty and Rose held their breaths; Rose held tightly on to her champion’s back. With all his strength he dove under and swam with long powerful strokes against the steady current. When she could hold her breath no longer, she tugged on his mane, and he surfaced.
They were in midstream, now, perhaps thirty yards from the castle, floating, slowly back toward it, back to where it emptied into the tunnels, out of which he’d just swum. He breathed deeply a few moments, then submerged again and redoubled his efforts swimming against the flow of the river, away from the castle.
When he came up again for air he found he’d hardly gone twenty more yards: he was tiring rapidly, and the river was too strong for him. All around them the city was dark, and creatures ran every direction in mounting hysteria.
“We’ll have to walk,” Beauty whispered to Rose. She nodded, feeling both tremulous and safe. He let himself drift to the river’s edge, and stood as soon as his feet touched bottom. The dropoff was fairly precipitous, and he found himself standing chin-high in the river only a few feet from shore. Slowly, constantly watchful of losing his footing, he began walking upriver, the water lapping around his neck and that of his love, holding on behind him.
Only their heads showed above water, as if they were bobbing slowly east. And in the lightless city, under the cloud-covered moon, they were almost impossible to see. But then, no one was really watching the river; they were all running to their battle stations, to their labs, to their homes.
Slowly, Beauty made his way toward the inner wall.
The Human smell was strong now to the Cerberus. He drooled as he stalked, the spittle running down his three long, canine chins. The wind shifted momentarily, confusing his sense of direction. He stopped, listened, sniffed again: there it was. Much stronger now, from just behind that corner building. The Human!
The gap in the mesh was complete, and Lon flew down again into the city. He paused to rest against a tree, for he was sweating, and beginning to chill. The sun would be nearly up in an hour. All about him the city spun like beetles around an open drain: he wanted to leave before he got sucked in. But he wanted to find Josh and Jasmine first.
He began walking toward the predetermined rendezvous point. He would have flown, but he wanted to save his strength for the flight out of the city. And his side was hurting again.
Jasmine stopped short. A crowd bearing torches ran past her, hounding some invisible saboteur. In the distance, back at the castle, a bell began to toll.
She breathed deeply, continued walking. Somewhere to the west, a bonfire sprang up. It made Jasmine jump; she was getting jumpy.
Two hundred yards up, the final, outer gate came into view. The sight of it made Jasmine quicken her step, quicken her breath. Three Vampires flew low across her path, toward the conflagration. Their wind lifted her hair like fire for several seconds. Faster, still, she walked.
She was almost to the gate. Suddenly the full moon came out from behind its cloudy refuge, washing the city in frigid, white light. Jasmine began to run. Thirty steps from the gate, twenty, ten. She ran through, raced over the bridge, out into the dusty night beyond. And she was gone.
Beauty dove under the inner wall, came up again in the Outer City, kept walking. Briefly, the moon came out, then hid again. In its crystal glare, there appeared to be two bodyless ghost heads floating somberly, effortlessly against the moving current.
Neither spoke, they were concentrating so hard on maintaining low profiles. Ten feet from the wall, though, they were spotted; and the alarm was raised.
“Ho there. Creatures in the water!” someone shouted.
“Look! You there, in the water! Come out!”
“Stop them! Over here!”
At the first yell, Beauty dove underwater and swam doggedly upstream toward the outer wall. Muffled shouts rang out above them. He reached the giant underwater hole in the wall through which the central tributary of the river poured—reached it just as a massive, rusted iron gate was beginning to fall closed over it. With all his might, he grabbed the descending lip of the gate and pulled himself past it to the other side of the wall. He let go of the iron grating just before it clamped down hard against the sandy bottom, and floated gently back up to the river’s easy surface. They were outside the city.
Rose slipped off his back, lightening his load a little. “My strength is returning,” she said, treading water. “I can swim myself, now.”
From inside the wall came the sounds of shouts, orders, splashes. Beauty and Rose smiled at each other, push
ed off the wall, and with unhurried, steady strokes began swimming east up the black river, under the cool black night.
Josh saw the Cerberus in the moonlight just as it started its final run for him. He hadn’t the strength to fight anymore, so he tried to get away; but with his every step, the Dog-man gained. Josh reached for his knife, only to find it was gone. He felt the creature’s breath on his neck; and then the creature’s fingers, grabbing at his flowing hair, pulling his head back. He fell to the ground at a roll, just ahead of the Dog-man’s snapping teeth.
With a whoosh, the shadow of a Vampire descended on them, separating the Cerberus from Josh in a single motion. It was Lon. There was a frenzy of indistinguishable snarls, growls, and yelps, and then all was still. Slowly, Lon stood. The Cerberus did not.
Lon wobbled and fell. Josh ran over to him. His left arm was torn ragged, his face pale as moonlight. He stood again immediately, though, dismissing Joshua’s concerns. “We must hurry,” he whispered.
He took Joshua in his right arm, spread his wings and flew. His failing strength was evident in his flight, however—he rose, he fell, he almost spun out of control. He barely made it to the top of the outer stone wall, in fact—to the hole he’d cut earlier in the wire mesh. There he stopped, panting badly, and set Joshua down. Together they rested atop the heavy granite barrier, a hundred feet up, surveying the scene.
“I need but a moment,” the Vampire breathed. His blood ran thick off his shredded arm, then slowly down the stone wall.
“You need more than that,” Joshua inspected his friend’s wounds fearfully.
Lon looked down at his arm, then nodded grim agreement. “My strength is bled away. I need time to rest, and there is no time.”
They looked at each other for a long moment of understanding: then Josh bared his neck to the Vampire. Lon tore away the dressings from Joshua’s throat wound; and with an expression that bore the agony of both compassion and desperation, sank his ivory teeth into the boy’s neck and drank.