Come Back

by George Erlynne

  For long minutes they stood there, apparently not talking but staring at me. Then they came to a decision and began to spread out. It was a decision I didn't like so I shot the big guy, his body jumping back as the high velocity rounds from my rifle hit him. The slope was steep so he rolled down, arms flailing until he stopped and turned into an untidy heap. The rest, meanwhile, were frozen in their tracks but I stimulated their mental activities by placing aimed shots round their feet. It took them a good two seconds to get the message but they scurried back to gather round the corpse, shooting glances my way. I let them pick him up and retreat down to the edge of the woodlands just as loud breathing in my ear heralded Mike and Mary who scrambled up to join me with a torrent of questions and reproach.

  "Do you have to kill every damned thing you see?" Mary's tight comment whistled past my ear but I paid no attention, watching the welcoming party disappearing into the forest.

  "What did you get?" I enquired, glancing from Mary's frozen face to Mike's slightly shocked expression.

  "Mm it tell about where all peoples are." Melanee explained breathlessly after I pulled her up to join us.

  "Damned right." Mike agreed, tearing his eyes from the distant forest. "This thing obviously links all the underground complexes, it must be some kind of a connecting station, that's why the bastards haven't hit it, because if they do they lose contact, it's all run by those satellites still up there, hundreds of the buggers." He gestured vaguely at the sky.

  "Why?" Mary asked sharply. "The whole world is covered with these beacons."

  "Because some of them don't work, didn't you see the layout on the screen?" Mike sat himself on the wall and let his legs dangle over the edge. "We'll ask it details but I've got the picture and I don't like it."

  "Peoples ready to live again." Melanee stated, making them gaze at her with surprise.

  "You don't need me." Mike muttered. "She's got a bigger brain."

  "What's the picture?" I asked Mike. His frown and general air of deep despair was getting worse day by day and even Mary wasn't helping him too much.

  "You're not going to give up, are you?" She said, holding on to his arm like a drowning sailor. "You're going to kill them, Mike told me. Hasn't there been enough killing?"

  "No." I replied evenly. "Tell me the story."

  He sat staring at the horizon, leaning against Mary, both of them exuding revulsion mingled with defeat but after a long pause he began to explain. "There's underground nurseries like the one at Quissac scattered all over the planet. How they got them through the budget I don't know but it means someone with muscle played along and it doesn't matter. Inside those buried laboratories they have thousands of male and female children ready to be born, to come to sentience, it's the same technology as the Deep Sleep for space travel but the biology is complex. Each one can be nurtured until they can walk and talk but before then they have to be given the final dose of the controller that turns them into androids. Living beings but nothing more than obedient machines."

  He finished and sat looking out at the silent scene while I turned over the idea in my head. Melanee was off the mark quicker than I was. She switched on her hypnotic gaze and smiled a smile of comprehension and cold intelligence.

  "This Max and mm Selena, yes? They want to bring all peoples out into the world. They want to make world full of slaves."

  "My God." Mary whispered. "They knew, they must have known."

  "But how!" Mike exploded. "It doesn't make sense even if they're mad as hatters! They could not have known everyone was dead!"

  "Ask it about history. Find out how the orders have to be given to start the process off. What does Selena have to do and why hasn't she done it already?" I told Mike, thinking hard. "What does that terminal connect to? Other terminals? Montana? Get it to match Max Sorenson with Selena Hampton and Mark Delaney, find a common factor. They can't turn it off, they daren't, so let's use it before they come up with a plan."

  Mike and Mary stared at me with set faces but we either gave up and joined Marie and Jules in Neolithic squalor until we died or we used our brains and fought on. "It's an hour since we went on line, so they know already." Mike said, bringing a look of alarm to Mary's eyes. He stood up on the wall and took her arm. "Come on. He's a bastard but he's right." Mary gave me a cold glance but scrambled down with him as did Melanee, leaving me as the gun guard.

  Slowly, the afternoon passed away, with occasional chatter coming up from below while I sat and mused. We come back, find the world is dead but stashed away in convenient spots there's a multitude of incipient slaves just waiting for the right button to be pushed to swarm out and repopulate the Earth and Max and co wanted them to do it. They knew about the slave program, Mary was right, but did they know about the death of Man? Before we came back? And the big one, how did it happen? And why? And why have thousands of brainless slaves? No future there, surely. But wait, Melanee was one of them and she was no android, so someone, somehow pressed her button and she emerged like a butterfly. She had free will and a big brain so they weren't all slaves-to-be, but then she hadn't had the final treatment. Were some going to be the masters or mistresses? Was the world going to be like an ant's nest? Soldiers, workers, child producers and over them all a strata of brains, of people who would be close to Gods, people who ordained who would be what before they were even born. Was that the plan? I could see why Mike didn't like the prospect. But suppose we let all of them loose without the treatment? What then? Would they grow and breed and in time become what we were: fragile, imperfect, emotion ridden humans? It seemed likely but that begged the question of why Max's empire didn't want it to happen that way.

  Five hours had gone by. I reckoned that a hypersonic, atmospheric aircraft could be nearly here by now from Montana, so I peered down and gave a small shout. "Finish up!" I stood and flexed stiff muscles. "We could have visitors soon!"

  Instant activity said they got the message and Melanee emerged into the light, holding up her hands for me to boost her up to the top of the wall. "We have much story." She said breathlessly. "I know where I come from." She added, although she didn't seem too pleased about it. "It is not good, David, and think you will need to stop it."

  My answer to this was cut off by Mike and Mary climbing up the wall. Mike wiped sweat away from his forehead and sighed heavily. "We've got what we want except for one thing." He looked across at me. "What do we do now? There's nothing in Iceland, the beacon there is dead."

  "We've got to get into that complex." Mary appeared to have recharged her mental batteries and was looking determined. "Before they do, and we think they're coming."

  "Coming?" I repeated stupidly. "Who's coming?"

  Chapter 19

  BACK IN TIME

  The data box confirmed our suspicions. The ship said we had visitors due in less than an hour and the aircraft was much bigger then the drones used previously. This expected but depressing information caused us to stare gloomily at the displays on the aircar as if the answer ought to spring out of the screens by sheer will power.

  "Big plane." Mike muttered. "How much hardware have they got in that damned mountain?" He sat back and eased his shoulders against the seat. "But why come at all?"

  "It's going to be an orbital lander." Mary said positively. "The Americans had dozens of them, remember? It can come down on any spot and it doesn't need a runway."

  "Hm." I grunted. "What sort of detection gear do they carry?"

  Mary ran her fingers through her hair, a habit that I was glad to see she had started up again, showing her cortex was sparking nicely. She was the expert on vehicle equipment and she had been cleared to high levels in the U.S. military, so she should know what the hell these things could do. "Depends." She shifted herself and began to tick points off her fingers. "There were strictly military versions, not much more than orbital bombers and satellite interceptors but they didn't have a big passenger payload. I don't think they would have put any of those in deep freeze, too specialise
d. If they have the normal mark then we face a vehicle that can scan with Doppler radar, infra-red, movement and deep ground radar plus high definition television sweepers. No target acquisition stuff, they would have short range automatic weapons maybe, wing loaded missiles but nothing with more than ten miles range and probably not even that."

  Her dismissive description of the oncoming enemy was not so comforting as she seemed to think. It couldn't plant guided bombs on us from orbit but if it could find us we were in deep trouble. Pondering over options, I pointed out that we could cope with most of the radar and other stuff. "We don't move, no Doppler effect. Put tree cover over us and the telescanners won't see a thing." Mike was nodding moodily but still looked like a man facing execution.

  "The infra red." He muttered, hitting our personal nail on the head with precision.

  "Yeah." I agreed. Infra-red shows up heat sources and our engines were going to be like searchlights in a coal mine.

  "Fifty minutes and they're in range." Mary stated, her voice calm.

  "Hide car." Melanee said crisply. "Sink in water."

  Everyone stared at her as if she had just proved Pythagoras. "Christ!" Mike exploded. "It's the only answer. Put it in water!"

  "Not salt water." I said. "We walk if we do." Air cars can be immersed in fresh water, the design allowed for heavy handed soldiery to make mistakes and sink the damned things, but they weren't supposed to be submerged for long or the seals on the engines would go. "Right!" I yelled, making them all jump. "Scotland's full of bloody lakes. Mike, make sure the winch cells

  are fully charged, Mary, go check the cable fittings. Starting up!"

  "Where?" Mary yelled in my ear.

  "Loch Ness." Mike shouted from the back. "Plenty of monsters there!"

  Loch Ness was deep, far too deep but around the Inverness end it narrowed right down to where the canal had been. We had no time to fart around so I blasted us off the ground and to hell with the take-off checks. Five or six miles as the crows flew, skimming only feet over a green canopy of fir mixed with towering pine trees. As expected the narrows where the canal had been were greatly over grown, the trees extending long fingers over the water. Down near the surface, we found the water full of dead branches and assorted rubbish but I put us as close to the bank as I dared while Mike bellowed out depths from the screen readout.

  "Twenty minutes!" Mary cried but we had found the spot or at least we found the only possible spot and if it wasn't the right one we would soon know about it. A bunch of birch trees surrounded by an army of pines leaned over the Loch where a storm must have played havoc with the area not too long ago. Loud hissing penetrated the deck as the lower hull smacked down on the surface, Melanee gripping my arm in a distracting way as I nosed us up to the bank and shoved the radar dome in the trees.

  "Mike! Open the valves on three and four! It'll sink the stern!" I shut the engines down, hoping there was no current to float us out into the open water. Mike was manipulating the flooding valves by the rear bulkhead. Of course, they were really pumping valves for getting water out that stupid soldiery had let in but the dual function was allowed in case of disastrous fire, a piece of forward thinking that amazed me. The car wallowed turgidly but lurched down with a distinct list to port, the stern angled down by thirty degrees.

  "I've only flooded the cargo deck." Mike told me breathlessly. "Should be enough."

  Grunting agreement, I opened the hatch to alarmed cries from Mary, but we had to make damned sure the hull didn't slide down into deep water. Mike was with me, he knew the danger. We totally submerge this thing and we walk back to Quissac. He paid out the cable from the nose while I climbed the bank with the shackle and wound the wire round the biggest trunk I could find.

  "Quick!" Mary yelled out of the hatch. "Six minutes!"

  Hastily we clambered back on board and shut the hatch. The trees were well over the forward part of the hull which was the only segment out of the water but more to the point the hot engine exhaust was under the surface causing a rush of bubbles and clouds of steam to rise in the still air. Mike and I gazed at this with worried frowns but there was nothing we could do.

  "Ship says it's overhead." Mary reported.

  We sat in silence, the outside mikes turned on to hear any rumbles of approaching aircraft. I shut down everything except the sensor outfit, telling them to make no noise or talk. If that damned lander had a military sensor pack installed, they would be able to pick up a squirrel farting let alone people talking inside a tin box. Melanee looked apprehensive but confident and began to read Mary's notes, a talent she had been practising for days now, laboriously poring over letters and numbers. Soon, like a whisper in a graveyard, we became aware of a high-pitched whine that slowly grew louder.

  "Bastards." Mike whispered, staring at the displays.

  "The ship says it's circling." Mary hissed in my ear. Circling? They knew we were around somewhere, they knew we were tinkering with that terminal less than an hour ago and that meant we couldn't be more than a hundred miles off even if we'd howled away at full speed and at that range they would have picked us up so where were we?

  How much fuel did they have? They'd already come six thousand miles so they couldn't stooge around forever. Mike suddenly sat up, rigid, staring out of the forward screen. Following his gaze, I saw what had caught his attention. Our Scottish friends were back, standing in the trees, gripping their spears and regarding our high technology with unfriendly glares.

  "Shit." I muttered.

  "Yeah." Mike agreed.

  We could set the forward cannon on them and reduce them to blood stained rags in seconds but our ever loving ex-companions up in that damned lander would see the commotion instantly and draw the right conclusions. The crowd of hairy men edged closer until they were clustered around the tree I had tied the cable round.

  "If they undo the shackle." Mike whispered urgently in my ear. Mary hissed alarm at the thought of us sliding gently down into the depths of Loch Something, but the faint whistle picked up by our outside mikes told us the curiosity of Max and Selena was unslaked. The men outside heard it as well and they all looked up, waving arms at each other, pointing first at us and then up. Obviously, they connected the arrival of Gods with more of them floating about upstairs. The welcoming committee was in two minds what to do next but I recognised one or two from my last encounter. They must have run like marathon men to get here from that mountain top but then I supposed they had nothing better to do.

  "If they stay there much longer that bloody lander will pick them up and come and find out what the hell they're doing." I muttered.

  "Those clothes." Mary hissed. "You see? They're not just skins, they're sewn together and look at their feet! Shoes, sort of, and the spears have metal points."

  The standoff outside was solved by one man slithering down the steep bank, clinging on to tree trunks as he came, ending up with his nose practically pressed up against our forward screen. We could hear his heavy breathing through the mikes as he fended himself off the car's front plating with both hands and peered in at us.

  "Where do you come from?"

  The voice was hoarse and the accent atrocious but the question was clear and astounding. He could obviously see us all sitting like lemons because he bared his teeth in a grin of combined rage and fear while the brotherhood behind him muttered and fingered their spears. We had to do something and soon. Grabbing my rifle and making sure my sidearm was well secured I palmed the hatch before the others could do more than open mouths in protest.

  "Shut it behind me." I said quietly and struggled up the incline, wetting my feet in the process until I was face to face with the spokesman who looked as if he wanted to depart promptly. But he didn't, he stood his ground as we examined each other at a distance of three feet. The man was clean shaven with long dark hair gathered in a tie at the back. The rest of his tribe had a moment of excited conversation but quietened down quickly although I noticed that the spears were now held ready
. "Well, well." I said quietly, pointing up. "You hear that?"

  He glanced up as the whisper of turbines high up went over us. His bright blue eyes gazed at me with startling intensity as he threw out a hand and dramatically pointed at his pals. "You kill. Old Gods kill."

  I could feel the weight of condemnation flowing out of the hull behind me as my lot took in the meaning of his remark. If I hadn't been so decisive in my dealings earlier with this band of well educated wanderers then they wouldn't have followed us, I could almost hear the furious reproof being passed from eye to eye in there - except Melanee of course. It was time to bring my new friend up to date with the latest news.

  "You all move away. Go back up to the top of the hill, understand? Or that noise up in the sky will kill you all."

  Seconds passed while obviously painful translation went on in his head. His glance flickered over my rifle and the handgun in its holster as well as the fighting knife I had but it didn't stop there. The clothes were all noted plus the boots. This was no savage, this was a guy who would shoot me as soon as he found out how the gun worked. Having completed his survey he spat out several short sentences to the audience ten yards off and was answered by one of them, a grey haired man with a small spear and a big scowl.

  "Hm, we die from noise in air." He smiled revealing white well cared for teeth. He paused and seemed to be selecting the right phrase. "You first." He added finally, with a much wider grin than before.