by Kir Lukovkin
Those were not their pursuers, but they were definitely soldiers, who might have been lookout or another unit searching for them in a different area. They saw the escapees so they would soon report it to their commanders.
Darkness surrounded Rick again as he slid went back into the open mouth of the tunnel on his back. The tunnel almost became horizontal, so he climbed out onto a small concrete platform, where he saw Black Ant in the gloom, digging around inside a control panel on the wall.
He was getting used to running away by sliding down channels. Rick went on one knee and raised his blaster, but he could not see his pursuers. It seemed that Lucio did not want to risk a journey into the unknown, however great was his anger and his desire to have revenge for his murdered comrades.
There was a lout creak, so Rick glanced over his shoulder. The boy waved at him to follow him through an open circular door.
“Yes, you're right, we should not stay here.”
However, he did stop to listen for a second. Some sort of barely perceptible vibrations that he noticed at the last moment made him take pause, and when Black Ant grabbed him by the arm to pull him along, gesticulation wildly Rick understood that they were being threatened by another very serious danger. The round door led them to the highway, and they set off at a run.
Black Ant did not look back anymore and ran as fast as he could, followed by Rick who could hear a rumble and feel a growing vibration in the floor. There was no mistake; they were being followed by a roller, possibly more than one.
The boy soon started to run out of breath. He tripped, so Rick caught him and dragged him along, looking for some sort of side street or passage where they could hide like rats to escape their pursuers. However, the highway went on, stretching out as it rose at an incline above the quarters of the city, with the roofs of buildings and aerial masts sprawled out on both sides. They could have climbed onto the barrier at the side of the highway, but where would they go next? The height was so great that they would fall to their deaths and trusting fate in the same way as they did with Olivia when they were escaping the spider was definitely a bad idea. The chances of there being an open body of water below them were slim.
The rhythmic vibration suddenly changed to a weak humming noise. Rick let go of the boy's hand, checked the blaster as he ran and took a look over his shoulder. Three silvery spheres were following them. That was too many — he could not stop three at the same time.
Black Ant wheezed loudly and fell, almost smashing his face into the rough surface of the highway. Rick stopped, quickly took aim at the first of the approaching rollers, but did not pull the trigger. Suddenly, teardrop-shaped cars came tearing around the bend, one after the other.
As silvery as the rollers, the teardrop cars easily overtook the spheres at high speed, with one making a tight turn to block the road and the other stopping by the runaways. The rounded canopy at the top of the car slid to the side.
“Do you want to live?” asked a bald man in a light colored and tight fitting jumpsuit from the cabin. He had a good-natured face with a serious expression and looked Rick straight in the eye.
“Yes!” Rick replied without pause.
“Then get in!”
The closest roller increased its speed. Rick stared at the unusual car which had no wheels and just hung above the road, with air currents weakly moving below.
“Hurry up!” the stranger ordered.
The escapees got inside the cabin, which was so tight that there was barely enough space for the two of them in the compartment behind the cabin. They still had a great feeling of confidence and safety once the canopy slid shut.
The cars immediately took off, but there was a sudden vibration that ran through the hull.
This was not the rollers, but something else.
“What's happening?” Rick leaned forwards towards the pilot.
“The canal!” he replied, as he ran his fingers through a three dimensional projection schematic that appeared in front of him. “The canal is filling up! It's happened again! Hold on!”
With an unbelievable burst of speed, their teardrop-shaped car raced upwards along one of the flyovers. Rick looked back and saw that there were a lot more spheres, with some rolling out of side passages and hidden hatches in the walls. This was not what scared him, however — it was the foaming wall of water that filled the flyover to the edges that followed them.
The wall easily crushed all of the rollers and almost caught the car that was following them. It was only now that Rick realized at how high the speed at which they were flying over the road was, but the wall of water was still gradually catching up with them.
“Fasten your seatbelts!” the pilot shouted. “We're about to change our angle of incidence!”
Rick was experienced in the piloting of ancient flying machines, so he was quick to work out how to use the seatbelts, first ensuring the safety of the boy and then himself.
Their car and then the other quickly came close to the edge of the flyover and rose high up, sliding along with one side in parallel with the floor.
Rick guessed that gravitational compensation plates that interacted with the surface of the highway which was covered with a special layer of conductive materials were installed in the bottom of the cars. This knowledge somehow appeared in his head, which made him feel a sudden headache and dozens of voices began speaking inside his consciousness, making him grimace and grit his teeth so that he would not cry out. Rick barely managed to control himself and choked as the pain receded.
Ouch... He wiped the sweat from his brow and looked at the water which was only an arm’s length away from the side of the car, overtaking it.
It was incredible, but the pilots had saved everyone's lives with their sudden maneuver. The pilot touched the hologram in front of his face again and the car lurched to the right, as it stopped being inclined and continued along the flyover that rose up and to the side of the main highway which was under the deadly stream of water.
Rick almost cheered up, but then the flyover arced downwards to rejoin the highway and they almost collided with the rushing water. The pilots managed to keep the cars on the edge at the outer border of the canal, dangerously close to the border. The stream of water eventually touched the canopy and gave their car a push, but the pilot managed to maintain their previous course. There was another push which was stronger, almost pressing the car into the wall. Something howled beneath the bottom of the car and started emitting irritating clicking noises. Rick held on to his seat, gripping so tight that his knuckles went white. The highway suddenly divided into many branches that went in different directions and the pressure of the water became significantly weaker as a great mass of water went downwards along the flyovers with only a little going on ahead and disappearing through the grilles of the drains.
The pilots lowered their speed, driving the cars along the highway that stopped at a dark and sheer wall in the distance. Rick became worried again, but a secret opening in the wall slid open and let the car into a well-lit and spacious tunnel, closing immediately afterwards. Rick and Black Ant let out a breath of relief as they got out of the cabin.
Rick looked around. They were in a huge hangar with a high ceiling and sturdy walls. Dim lights hung overhead. Rick jumped off onto the floor and inadvertently rested his hands on his weapons as he carefully observed the people approaching them. He did not point the blaster at them, but he noticed that the strangers slowed down when they saw the way he moved the weapon. After a brief pause, they continued confidently walking towards him.
The people meeting them were dressed in the same type of form-fitting jumpsuits as the pilots. Their heads were completely shaven, with smooth skulls, smooth faces and no sign of growth on their pale skin.
“Who did you bring, Hans?” a woman with large blue eyes stepped forward and asked strictly.
“I had no time to look at them,” the pilot replied, uncertainty creeping into his voice. “I thought that they were shamblers and
almost took their heads off. And then...”
“It looks like our guests are gray rats,” the pilot of the other car interrupted. “Put the weapon down,” he turned to Rick and demanded.
The strangers looked at the newcomers carefully. Rick nodded, slid the strap of his weapon over his head and put the blaster on the floor, showing his hands palms upward to demonstrate his good intentions.
“We don't want to do you evil,” he added, stepping back a pace.
“Those are the words that precede the darkest evil,” the pilot of the second car noted.
He had a hard, elongated face and narrow brown eyes. He stepped up to Rick and tore the Division patch from his shoulder.
“I am being honest with you!” Rick exclaimed indignantly. “I have nothing to hide and nothing to lose! I have risked so much over the past few days that I am not afraid of anything. I am tired of running.”
Silence fell.
“There is not fear in his eyes,” the woman agreed.
Some of those standing behind her nodded approvingly.
“And why is the boy silent?” she asked, pointing at Black Ant.
“He can't speak,” Rick told her. “Some narrow minded and stupid people tore out his tongue, thinking that they will cure him of possession. You call those who lost their mind “shamblers”, is that right?”
The woman nodded.
“We are not shamblers and we are not possessed. The boy is called Black Ant, his settlement has been destroyed and his parents have died.”
The woman looked at Black Ant with calm indifference and then turned to the pilots and said, “Hans, upload the information into the database. We will speak to the newcomers later.”
N
RICK TURNED the Cluster medallion key around in his hands — it was an exact copy of the one that Paul from the Maus worshiping Retreat had. Black Ant had brought this thing with him. It was unknown whether this was Paul's medallion or not, as there was no external difference between them.
Yet again, they were awaiting the decision of the leaders of a commune. Rick had not found out its name yet, but he did not particularly want to. Why hurry if these people live outside the confines of the tower? They possessed ancient knowledge and unusual high-speed cars, but they were not living in the tower for some reason, which meant that something was preventing them from getting inside or there was some sort of mysterious reason that stopped them.
The room where they brought Rick and Black Ant was small — a pair of beds, a plastic bedside table and nothing more. They were fed with synthesized concentrate. Black Ant ate two portions at once and now sat one the bed, trying to use gestures to explain how he managed to get into the city.
Rick did not understand anything. Sign language was like the programming language which he sometimes saw on the monitors in Thermopolis. However, Rick still tried to clarify what happened by asking probing questions. Suddenly, he had a moment of inspiration so he took the piece of graphite pencil he had saved back in the Division and offered it to Black Ant.
“Here you are. Draw your path on the wall.”
Black Ant got up off the bed and turned to the wall, deep in thought. And then the rough and clumsy drawing of a stick man appeared from underneath his hand. Then the boy drew two long parallel lines above him. Black Ant pointed to the man and to himself and then at the lines.
“The highway?” Rick asked. “You walked here along a wide yellow road.”
Black Ant nodded.
“I see. Please continue.”
Rick sat more comfortably on his bed. It seemed that it was working. Black Ant was drawing a new picture on the wall with the pencil. He continued the lines of the highway but made them wavy, then turned around and pointed at himself, then at the wavy lines, running his fingers up and down them.
“The rocky hills!” Rick exclaimed. “You traveled through the rocky hills.”
Black Ant nodded again and smiled, feeling proud of himself. Then he climbed onto the bed and continued drawing. A sizable oval appeared on the wall and Black Ant drew another inside it and then another. Rick almost whistled in surprise. It turns out that Black Ant knew the way the city was arranged in rings around the tower. But the boy did not stop, as he filled the space inside the ovals, separating it into clusters and segments, marking them with letters and numbered symbols. He did not draw particularly well, but it turned out that he had a fantastic memory — Rick would never have remembered this number of symbols and markings.
Interesting, where could the boy have seen a plant like that?
Suddenly, Black Ant was still, turning to Rick with disappointment written on his face and showing his dirty fingers.
“Did the graphite run out?” Rick asked.
“Uh-huh,” the boy replied.
He was not to be deterred, so he wet his finger with saliva and drew a line from the stick man figure to the large oval. Rick was watching the route and the further the stick man went, the more his eyebrows shot up and the more his mouth hung open in surprise. Black Ant then took the medallion from Rick's hand, approached the door, placed the medallion against it and pushed.
“You did it!” Rick exclaimed.
“What exactly?” The pilot of the second car appeared in the doorway, accompanied by Hans and another man unfamiliar to them.
Black Ant deftly hid the medallion in his wide sleeve in such a way that no one noticed it. However, the strict pilot had not been looking at him for a long time.
“By the great wheel!” he exclaimed, looking at the drawings on the wall. “What's going on here?”
The surprise on his narrow face changed to suspicion.
“We are trying to figure out where we are,” Rick explained, nodding at the diagram.
Hans entered the room and looked at the wall.
“Hmm, this is rather detailed. Isn't it, Klaus?” he said to the other pilot. “Especially this,” he pointed at segment F.
“Where do you have this information from?” Klaus asked harshly, scaring the boy.
Black Ant moved closer to Rick.
“You forgot that he can't speak,” Rick told them, “you're scaring him.”
“Then the question is for you,” Klaus moved his intense gaze to Rick.
“It seems that he saw this diagram somewhere before.”
“He did? I thought you traveled together.”
“Not quite.” Rick understood that he would need to tell them everything from the very beginning in order to avoid needless suspicion and overcomplicating the situation. “I doubt that you will believe us, but we came here from the outer limits.”
Klaus and Hans looked at each other.
“Where from?” the stranger standing in the doors asked.
“What does that mean?” Klaus asked. “Are you trying to say that you came from the outer ring?” pointed at the biggest oval on the diagram.
“No, even further away,” Rick got up and pointed at the stick man at the beginning of the highway. “We went here, along the road through the wastelands and the rocky hills.”
“That's impossible!” all three men declared simultaneously.
“It's still true.”
“How do we know that you're not lying?” Klaus looked at Rick with suspicion.
“You will have to trust me,” he replied.
“Trust is too much of an expensive pleasure in our times. Do you know how many infiltrators we caught over the last two dozen days? Twelve! Do you know how to count? Do you know what that number means? They were all gray” He poked Rick in the shoulder that once had the Division patch. “All armed and wearing this uniform. They were also telling us all sorts of fantastic tales and swore that they said the truth.”
“They changed their opinions when they had a meeting with the shamblers,” the stranger in the doorway added. “Maybe...”
“It's too early,” Klaus interrupted.
“Hear me out,” Rick replied. “Take me to the woman that met us in the hangar and then decide what to do
next. If you let us go, we will travel on towards the tower. If you want to kill us, we will fight.”
“Iron logic,” Hans nodded.
“Rather well said,” Klaus confirmed. “Let's go and see Margaret.”
They left the room and rode an elevator to an open walkway, where Black Ant shivered in the cold wind and rubbed his shoulders with his hands. Rick strode after him, looking around curiously. It looked like they were on the roof of one of the hangars as rows of oblong dark structures that were connected with similar walkways stretched out as far as the eye could see. It looked like one gigantic covered cluster.
“Our segment does not have the structures you would be used to seeing,” Hans confirmed as he walked behind Rick. “We only have transport vehicle hangars here. The gray ones don't know how to open the gates, but sometimes get in here through the utility ducts. That's how we live our lives.”
Rick wanted to ask about the transports, but Klaus turned and told Hans to be quiet. They found themselves in an elevator again and descended into another hangar, where they were brought up to a wall that showed a relatively clear map of the city with the same markings, symbols and numbers that Black Ant used in his drawings. The diagram was several times better and more detailed.
Several men stood here waiting, lined up in a semicircle with the woman that Rick had met before in the center.
“May I have a word, Margaret,” Klaus asked her, taking the woman to the side.
He whispered something to her for some time, and then the woman exclaimed, “Are you serious?” and stared at the outsiders.
Klaus nodded and started to whisper something again. Rick stopped trying to listen in and stared at the diagram. Three concentric rings, divided up into segments and clusters. The circle with a cross in the middle and the adjacent sectors were the Citadel.
“We have diagrams of this kind everywhere,” Hans quietly explained as he stood by Rick's side.
“It looks like a world map,” Rick remembered the diagrams of his native Thermopolis and looked for the Omega sector.
“It seems that you wanted to tell us something,” the woman called out as she joined the rest of the men together with Klaus. “I'm all ears.”