Machines of Eden (36 page)

Janice tried a finger stab
at his throat;
he
caught the fingers and with a quick wrench snapped them. She
gasped and tried a high kick. He took it in the shoulder without
even noticing, and lunged. Janice flew backwards, stars exploding
in her vision.

He
’s
going to kill
me
.

The thought shocked her.
The tables had turned too quickly. She’d been trained as a
Gargoyle, and had killed more than once with her hands, but this
was different.

I have no advantage. I
have
to get out of here.

While still moving back
from the momentum of the drive that had thrown her, she kicked
wildly to keep him at a distance and then darted inside the control
room.

The door slammed shut
and
John
heard
the sound of the lock engaging. Then Janice’s face appeared in the
window, smiling at him with an insane light of triumph even as she
held her aching chest and ribs with one arm.

There were several seconds
in which he stood outside,
chest heaving
with adrenaline
. It was useless to try to
get in again; he didn’t have time to find out how she’d
gotten
the door
open
earlier.
Frustration at being denied the victory his rage
demanded faded to a basic instinct to survive.
The clock was ticking. It was time to leave.

He dashed for the stairs as
the lights in the gallery turned red and a warning siren began
blaring. He thought he could hear laughter echoing behind
him.

His heart beat much faster
than merely running up the stairs would have required. He could
feel the sweat on his brow turn cold. All he could think about was
getting outside to the sunshine and fresh air again
before the world began to crumble on top of
him
.

I can't believe this is
happening.

A low rumbling sound
behind him told him that it was indeed happening. The screams of
laughter had stopped and the sirens were muffled. As
John
burst into the
Level Two lounge area the floor began to tremble under his
feet.

"I would have hoped for a
different outcome," Eve said. "Tragedy compounds tragedy in this
debacle." She sounded unperturbed and calm, but resigned. "It isn't
so much the personal cessation of existence that hurts, but the
ruining of my creator's wonderful plan."

I...
have no answer to that.

"
On the bright side, i
t is fitting
that we shall all be buried together in
a
mass grave. Even Glenn. The
Facility is where I was born and where I will
die
, a
nd
both my
Adam
s
with
me."

The floor was beginning to
buckle, as if certain pillars below had been snatched away. Racks
of food and a beverage machine slid across the room.
John
clawed his way past
the debris toward the only opening to the outside world, knocking
over a coffee table as he staggered to the observation
deck.

"Eve, you have to stop it,"
he panted.

"Stop it? Adam, die
gracefully. It's the least you can do for your species."

"Contain it. Please. There
must be a way.
I’ve failed, but you can
still put things right.
"

The rumbling had become a
dull roar behind him as the entire Facility converted into mounds
of dirt, room by room and floor by floor.
He staggered onto the brilliantly sunlit observation
deck.

"If there were a
viable
way to stop this
from happening, I would. My self-preservation motives are
nearly
as powerful as
your own. But it is the destiny of the world we are dealing with.
It is not something that
should
be stopped."

He leaned against the
broken window edge for balance as the floor groaned and heaved,
cutting his hand on the glass.

"You wouldn't leave one
layer of
fragile
glass as the only safety barrier
here
," he breathed. "The
tunnels
were
seal
able
;
what about this exit?"

"
Synthetic armor-glass wouldn’t have stopped the nanobots, but
t
h
e fragile
crystal
glass would have," Eve agreed.
"And it is
even more
ironic that
the observation
window
is now the primary and only means
of escape
for the
nanobots
. If I turned on the turbofans to
repel the tide, the delicious irony would be lost
on the world
."

Midway through the last
sentence, her voice dropped an octave, then raised higher than
normal.

"Eve, please!"
John
shouted.

The shaking had rendered
the elevator lift unstable. Instead he crawled out
the window,
hung from
its lip for a moment,
and let himself
drop. The fall of
several meters
was partially broken by high bushes, but he still
felt a rib crack when he hit. He ignored the searing
pain.

"
You have to do
it,” he cried.
“
Seal yourself in. Save humanity, do it in
Glenn's memory! Do it for Glenn!"

"For Glenn?" Eve was now
speaking in a voice that could only be described as girly,
high-pitched and almost playful. "How about for spite? What's the
value in an act of selfless good will?
Are
you now the one
expecting blind obedience
and loyalty?
Answer me this riddle: what
does one Painted Lady have to do with the universal
current?
"

She's
going
. It’s over. She’s
through
.

John
began to crawl away, then stood up to run even though he hurt
too badly to do so. The best he could manage was a lopsided limp.
Eve's
strangely high-pitched
voice followed him, echoing from the opening
above.

"Don't run away, sir.
Please don't feel that you need to stay on my account." Her
skittering voice took on a
surly
tone
.
"The evening is at an end. Can I order you a ride?"

“
Yeah,” he muttered
through clenched teeth. “A yacht. A big yacht with an ice cold
lemonade and a couple of gorgeous
–”

He gasped as he stumbled
over a rock and felt his side flash with pain.
He sank to one knee to keep himself from tumbling down an
embankment that was shaking underneath him.

He turned
his face back toward the gleaming crystal hole he
had come out of
.

"Eve!" he shouted. "I need
you
.
Please help
me
, please!
Seal
that exit
!
"

"You need me?" she
replied. "What a nice thing to say
. I find
that wonderfully validating
.
”

Her voice sank back to
normal octaves, but the speech slowed down and had a different
accent. “
I just wanted to
hear
...
”

John
couldn't make out the rest of her words as the rumbling from
the mountain cliff he was facing drowned it out.
She's turned into a ditzy girl, chattering
inanely right at the end of the world. Glenn was a real
idiot.

We all were.

The voice became clear
again as it shouted a farewell.
"You're
wrong about me, sir. Entirely wrong. I'm not what you think I am.
Now stand clear
and mind your
hat
!"

He heard a high-pitched
whine as fans came on
inside the
observation deck
and shot a barrier of
forced air back into the lounge area. Then the rock face that
stretched from the valley floor up to the top of the cliff high
above the Facility exit began to wave
and
shudder.

A long, loud scream came
from inside. He thought she was screaming Glenn's name. It was
drowned out by the roaring and shaking of the earth.

John
couldn't be sure where all of the earth forming the landslide
was coming from, but more dirt and rocks poured down the cliff at
him than just the face itself could produce. It appeared to be
bubbling up from the depths of the earth beneath the
Facility.

He began running again,
adrenaline replacing his pain with
a burst
of energy
. He could hear huge boulders
pounding the ground behind him, and he ran faster. Then the
avalanche of displaced earth caught up with him and he was swept
along, tumbling and cartwheeling as the landslide ran out
half a kilometer
into
Eden.

A bird called
somewhere
, but it was the pain that first
awakened him.

John
jerked, groaning.
Was it a bad
dream?
No, he could feel the ravages of
adrenaline and traumatic stress insisting that his mind hadn’t made
any of it up.

When he finally pulled his
face from the dirt, he was turned around, and the first thing he
saw was the cliff he had come out of. The Facility was gone, buried
under a fifty-meter-long hill of steep brown scree.

Is this
i
t
? The beginning
of the end of the world as we know it? It's very quiet.

He turned, taking in the
panorama of destruction by degrees. Behind him something tall and
angular protruded from the hill of rubble. His heart leaped as he
comprehended the twisted metal strut, half-buried
and poking out of the earth at an angle like a
skeleton’s arm
.

Metal. If the nanos had
escaped, the metal would have been eaten.

It hurt to smile, but he
smiled anyway.

He picked himself up.
Aside from his aching side, a twisted ankle that had been caught by
a rock in the slide, and mouthful of sand, he wasn't terribly
dissatisfied with the way things had turned out. A flood of relief
lifted his heart and brought tears to his eyes.
It worked. I did it.

She did it.

And yet...

The relief died away as his
mind continued spinning.

I'm right back where I
started, alone on this crazy island with nothing but a few exotic
animals and a harsh sunburn.

And I might be here a
while.

In fact,
John
admitted ruefully
to himself, it could be a very long while.
Janice was gone, Eve was gone, but t
he nanobots had a fifty-year lifespan
. A
nd they were still in there,
underground, waiting.

He knew, suddenly, that
even if he brought all the firepower in the world down on the
island, and rained
high explosives
for a month, there was a good chance a few nanos
would be missed. There was no way to scan for them. And massive
explosions might even break open a pocket of nanos, reveal them to
the open air, bring about the very outcome the saturation bombs
were deployed to prevent.

Because all it takes is
one.

But for that matter, I
probably wouldn't even get the airstrike. No, they wouldn't destroy
them. They'd come in here and harness them. The guys up top
wouldn't be able to resist a toy like the one Eve made.

And there's the rub. If
anyone, government or military or a prospector with a pickaxe,
disturbs this island
,
then that's all she wrote.
Our
chapter ends.

I didn't just go through
hell for nothing.

He
sighed
, trying the math in his clouded
head.

Fifty
years
... I
’
ll
be
eighty – no, eighty three.
Just thinking
about it made him feel old.

That’s a long, lonely
fifty years for me. Because if anyone comes around trying to make
friends
..
.
I’
ll
have to kill
them.

Four hours later a
naval
aircraft blew
overhead at high altitude, snapping pictures of the seismic
disturbance
center
. The man on the ground below, much too far to see clearly
through the jungle cover, didn't even look up.