Paycheck (2003) (28 page)

All this was visible for a split second; then the intrusion was discovered. Robot relays came into play. The blaze of lights flickered and dimmed. The assembly line froze to a halt, stopped in its furious activity.

The machines clicked off and became silent.

At one end, a mobile unit detached itself and sped up the wall toward the hole O’Neill and Morrison had cut. It slammed an emergency seal in place and expertly welded it tight. The scene below was gone. A moment later the floor shivered as activity resumed.

Morrison, white-faced and shaking, turned to O’Neill. ‘What are they doing? What are they making?’

‘Not weapons,’ O’Neill said.

‘That stuff is being sent up’ - Morrison gestured convulsively - ‘to the surface.’

Shakily, O’Neill climbed to his feet. ‘Can we locate the spot?’

‘I - think so.’

‘We better.’ O’Neill swept up the flashlight and started toward the ascent ramp. ‘We’re going to have to see what those pellets are that they’re shooting up.’

The exit valve of the conveyor tube was concealed in a tangle of vines and ruins a quarter of a mile beyond the factory. In a slot of rock at the base of the mountains the valve poked up like a nozzle. From ten yards away, it was invisible; the two men were almost on top of it before they noticed it.

Every few moments, a pellet burst from the valve and shot up into the sky. The nozzle revolved and altered its angle of deflection; each pellet was launched in a slightly varied trajectory.

‘How far are they going?’ Morrison wondered.

‘Probably varies. It’s distributing them at random.’ O’Neill advanced cautiously, but the mechanism took no note of him. Plastered against the towering wall of rock was a crumpled pellet; by accident, the nozzle had released it directly at the mountainside. O’Neill climbed up, got it and jumped down.

The pellet was a smashed container of machinery, tiny metallic elements too minute to be analyzed without a microscope.

‘Not a weapon,’ O’Neill said.

The cylinder had split. At first he couldn’t tell if it had been the impact or deliberate internal mechanisms at work. From the rent, an ooze of metal bits was sliding. Squatting down, O’Neill examined them.

The bits were in motion. Microscopic machinery, smaller than ants, smaller than pins, working energetically, purposefully - constructing something that looked like a tiny rectangle of steel.

‘They’re building,’ O’Neill said, awed. He got up and prowled on. Off to the side, at the far edge of the gully, he came across a downed pellet far advanced on its construction. Apparently it had been released some time ago.

This one had made great enough progress to be identified. Minute as it was, the structure was familiar. The machinery was building a miniature replica of the demolished factory.

‘Well,’ O’Neill said thoughtfully, ‘we’re back where we started from. For better or worse … I don’t know.’

‘I guess they must be all over Earth by now,’ Morrison said, ‘landing everywhere and going to work.’

A thought struck O’Neill. ‘Maybe some of them are geared to escape velocity. That would be neat - autofac networks throughout the whole universe.’

Behind him, the nozzle continued to spurt out its torrent of metal seeds.

At ten in the morning a terrific horn, familiar to him, hooted Sam Regan out of his sleep, and he cursed the careboy upstairs; he knew the racket was deliberate. The careboy, circling, wanted to be certain that flukers - and not merely wild animals - got the care parcels that were to be dropped.

We’ll get them, we’ll get them, Sam Regan said to himself as he zipped his dust-proof overalls, put his feet into boots and then grumpily sauntered as slowly as possible toward the ramp. Several other flukers joined him, all showing similar irritation.

‘He’s early today,’ Tod Morrison complained. ‘And I’ll bet it’s all staples, sugar and flour and lard - nothing interesting like say candy.’

‘We ought to be grateful,’ Norman Schein said.

‘Grateful!’ Tod halted to stare at him. ‘GRATEFUL?’

‘Yes,’ Schein said. ‘What do you think we’d be eating without them: If they hadn’t seen the clouds ten years ago.’

‘Well,’ Tod said sullenly, ‘I just don’t like them to come
early
; I actually don’t exactly mind their coming, as such.’

As he put his shoulders against the lid at the top of the ramp, Schein said genially, ‘That’s mighty tolerant of you, Tod boy. I’m sure the careboys would be pleased to hear your sentiments.’

Of the three of them, Sam Regan was the last to reach the surface; he did not like the upstairs at all, and he did not care who knew it. And anyhow, no one could compel him to leave the safety of the Pinole Fluke-pit; it was entirely his business, and he noted now that a number of his fellow flukers had elected to remain below in their quarters, confident that those who did answer the horn would bring them back something.

‘It’s bright,’ Tod murmured, blinking in the sun.

The care ship sparkled close overhead, set against the gray sky as if hanging from an uneasy thread. Good pilot, this drop, Tod decided. He, or rather
it
, just lazily handles it, in no hurry. Tod waved at the care ship, and once more the huge horn burst out its din, making him clap his hands to his ears. Hey, a joke’s a joke, he said to himself. And then the horn ceased; the careboy had relented.

‘Wave to him to drop,’ Norm Schein said to Tod. ‘You’ve got the wigwag.’

‘Sure,’ Tod said, and began laboriously flapping the red flag, which the Martian creatures had long ago provided, back and forth, back and forth.

A projectile slid from the underpart of the ship, tossed out stabilizers, spiraled toward the ground.

‘Sheoot,’ Sam Regan said with disgust. ‘It is staples; they don’t have the parachute.’ He turned away, not interested.

How miserable the upstairs looked today, he thought as he surveyed the scene surrounding him. There, to the right, the uncompleted house which someone - not far from their pit - had begun to build out of lumber salvaged from Vallejo, ten miles to the north. Animals or radiation dust had gotten the builder, and so his work remained where it was; it would never be put to use. And, Sam Regan saw, an unusually heavy precipitate had formed since last he had been up here, Thursday morning or perhaps Friday; he had lost exact track. The darn dust, he thought. Just rocks, pieces of rubble, and the dust. World’s becoming a dusty object with no one to whisk it off regularly. How about you? he asked silently of the Martian careboy flying in slow circles overhead. Isn’t your technology limitless? Can’t you appear some morning with a dust rag a million miles in surface area and restore our planet to pristine newness?

Or rather, he thought, to pristine
oldness
, the way it was in the ‘ol-days’, as the children call it. We’d like that. While you’re looking for something to give to us in the way of further aid, try that.

The careboy circled once more, searching for signs of writing in the dust: a message from the flukers below. I’ll write that, Sam thought.
BRING DUST RAG, RESTORE OUR CIVILIZATION
. Okay, careboy?

All at once the care ship shot off, no doubt on its way back home to its base on Luna or perhaps all the way to Mars.

From the open fluke-pit hole, up which the three of them had come, a further head poked, a woman. Jean Regan, Sam’s wife, appeared, shielded by a bonnet against the gray, blinding sun, frowning and saying, ‘Anything important? Anything
new
?’

”Fraid not,’ Sam said. The care parcel projectile had landed and he walked toward it, scuffing his boots in the dust. The hull of the projectile had cracked open from the impact and he could see the canisters already. It looked to be five thousand pounds of salt - might as well leave it up here so the animals wouldn’t starve, he decided. He felt despondent.

How peculiarly anxious the careboys were. Concerned all the time that the mainstays of existence be ferried from their own planet to Earth. They must think we eat all day long, Sam thought. My God … the pit was filled to capacity with stored foods. But of course it had been one of the smallest public shelters in Northern California.

‘Hey,’ Schein said, stooping down by the projectile and peering into the crack opened along its side. ‘I believe I see something we can use.’ He found a rusted metal pole - once it had helped reinforce the concrete side of an ol-days public building - and poked at the projectile, stirring its release mechanism into action. The mechanism, triggered off, popped the rear half of the projectile open … and there lay the contents.

‘Looks like radios in that box,’ Tod said. ‘Transistor radios.’ Thoughtfully stroking his short black beard he said, ‘Maybe we can use them for something new in our layouts.’

‘Mine’s already got a radio,’ Schein pointed out.

‘Well, build an electronic self-directing lawn mower with the parts,’ Tod said. ‘You don’t have that, do you?’ He knew the Scheins’ Perky Pat layout fairly well; the two couples, he and his wife with Schein and his, had played together a good deal, being almost evenly matched.

Sam Regan said, ‘Dibs on the radios, because I can use them.’ His layout lacked the automatic garage-door opener that both Schein and Tod had; he was considerably behind them.

‘Let’s get to work,’ Schein agreed. ‘We’ll leave the staples here and just cart back the radios. If anybody wants the staples, let them come here and get them. Before the do-cats do.’

Nodding, the other two men fell to the job of carting the useful contents of the projectile to the entrance of their fluke-pit ramp. For use in their precious, elaborate Perky Pat layouts.

Seated cross-legged with his whetstone, Timothy Schein, ten years old and aware of his many responsibilities, sharpened his knife, slowly and expertly. Meanwhile, disturbing him, his mother and father noisily quarreled with Mr and Mrs Morrison, on the far side of the partition. They were playing Perky Pat again. As usual.

How many times today they have to play that dumb game? Timothy asked himself. Forever, I guess. He could see nothing in it, but his parents played on anyhow. And they weren’t the only ones; he knew from what other kids said, even from other fluke-pits, that their parents, too, played Perky Pat most of the day, and sometimes even on into the night.

His mother said loudly, ‘Perky Pat’s going to the grocery store and it’s got one of those electric eyes that opens the door. Look.’ A pause. ‘See, it opened for her, and now she’s inside.’

‘She pushes a cart,’ Timothy’s dad added, in support.

‘No, she doesn’t,’ Mrs Morrison contradicted. ‘That’s wrong. She gives her list to the grocer and he fills it.’

‘That’s only in little neighborhood stores,’ his mother explained. ‘And this is a supermarket, you can tell because of the electric eye door.’

‘I’m sure all grocery stores had electric eye doors,’ Mrs Morrison said stubbornly, and her husband chimed in with his agreement. Now the voices rose in anger; another squabble had broken out. As usual.

Aw, cung to them, Timothy said to himself, using the strongest word which he and his friends knew. What’s a supermarket anyhow? He tested the blade of his knife - he had made it himself, originally, out of a heavy metal pan - and then hopped to his feet. A moment later he had sprinted silently down the hall and was rapping his special rap on the door of the Chamberlains’ quarters.

Fred, also ten years old, answered. ‘Hi. Ready to go? I see you got that ol’ knife of yours sharpened; what do you think we’ll catch?’

‘Not a do-cat,’ Timothy said. ‘A lot better than that; I’m tired of eating do-cat. Too peppery.’

‘Your parents playing Perky Pat?’

‘Yeah.’

Fred said, ‘My mom and dad have been gone for a long time, off playing with the Benteleys.’ He glanced sideways at Timothy, and in an instant they had shared their mute disappointment regarding their parents. Gosh, and maybe the darn game was all over the world, by now; that would not have surprised either of them.

‘How come your parents play it?’ Timothy asked.

‘Same reason yours do,’ Fred said.

Hesitating, Timothy said, ‘Well, why? I don’t know why they do; I’m asking you, can’t you say?’

‘It’s because—’ Fred broke off. ‘Ask them. Come on; let’s get upstairs and start hunting.’ His eyes shone. ‘Let’s see what we can catch and kill today.’

Shortly, they had ascended the ramp, popped open the lid, and were crouching amidst the dust and rocks, searching the horizon. Timothy’s heart pounded; this moment always overwhelmed him, the first instant of reaching the upstairs. The thrilling initial sight of the expanse. Because it was never the same. The dust, heavier today, had a darker gray color to it than before; it seemed denser, more mysterious.

Here and there, covered by many layers of dust, lay parcels dropped from past relief ships - dropped and left to deteriorate. Never to be claimed. And, Timothy saw, an additional new projectile which had arrived that morning. Most of its cargo could be seen within; the grownups had not had any use for the majority of the contents, today.

‘Look,’ Fred said softly.

Two do-cats - mutant dogs or cats; no one knew for sure - could be seen, lightly sniffing at the projectile. Attracted by the unclaimed contents.