Saving Thanehaven (8 page)

“I’m working on it.”

“How?” Without waiting for an answer, Noble continues. “Perhaps there’s some way of freeing all those gargoyles, and making them fight for us—”

“Listen.” Rufus cuts in. “The way things are now, we don’t stand a chance against that AV. Believe me; I know. Even if you manage to get rid of your next replacement, more of them will just keep coming and coming.” Rufus edges away from the door, until his dark silhouette vanishes behind a stack of crates. “The same goes for Lord Harrowmage.
And
for Princess Lorellina. And for Doddypoll, too. It’s a losing battle.”

“But—”

“That’s why we need reinforcements. From
outside
this program. We need an army that can’t be replicated.” There’s a long pause as Noble ponders. At
last, Rufus inquires in hushed tones, “Are you going to come and hide with me, or what?”

Noble, however, is still turning things over in his head. “You’re saying that we need reinforcements from a place
beyond
Thanehaven?”

“Yes. You’ve nailed it.” Rufus sounds quite pleased. “See, the AV has special powers because he’s been sent by the Colonel. And the Colonel runs this whole show. He’s totally in charge.”

“The Colonel?”

“Look …” Somewhere behind his shield of wooden crates, Rufus heaves an impatient sigh. “Don’t just stand there like an idiot. Come over here and I’ll explain. If I don’t keep my voice down, the AV will hear us talking when he comes back.”

“He’s coming back?” says Noble.

“Of course! When he can’t find me out there, he’ll go searching somewhere else. And that’s when we’ll recruit our reinforcements.”

Noble grunts. Though still feeling dazed, he gropes his way through the dimness and squirms into the narrow slot that Rufus is occupying, between the crates and the wall. It’s quite a squeeze for someone of Noble’s dimensions. What’s more, it’s so dark behind the crates that he can only just make out the glint of Rufus’s eyeballs.

“Okay. It’s like this,” Rufus whispers. “The world that you know—everything you’ve seen outside this van—is called
Thanehaven Slayer
. It’s a program that’s
been loaded into a computer by an operating system.” When Noble doesn’t respond, Rufus adds, “But that won’t mean anything to you, so just imagine a big country full of little fiefdoms. Fiefdoms like Thanehaven. And they all have their own low-grade bosses running them, like Lord Harrowmage. Plus there’s a big boss called the Colonel, who runs the whole country, and he’s a real tyrant. He’s got it all set up so that everyone has to follow his rules.”

Noble thinks for a moment. “Was he the one telling Smite what to do? The one you called a dingbat?”

“Uh … n-n-no,” Rufus confesses. “That was someone else. But it’s the Colonel who made sure that Smite obeyed the dingbat. It’s the Colonel who doesn’t want you thinking for yourself.”

“Why not?”

“Because he likes things the way they are. If there’s any kind of change, it has to go through him. Otherwise he’ll send in the AV to root out whoever’s giving him trouble.”

“Like you?”

“Like me,” Rufus confirms.

“I don’t understand.” The diagram in Noble’s head still isn’t complete. “If you’ve been making trouble, why didn’t the AV replace
you
?”

“Ah.” Rufus shifts around on the hard floor. “Well, you see, I’m not a local. I suppose you could call me an illegal immigrant, though I prefer the term
revolutionary
.” He makes an odd snuffling noise, before
adding, “I’m here to free every captive program in this computer. That’s why the Colonel doesn’t want me around. He can’t replace me. He can only destroy me. Or put me in quarantine.”

Noble doesn’t know what the word
quarantine
means. “But—”

“Shh!”
Rufus’s bony frame stiffens against Noble’s. “Do you hear something?”

Noble listens, holding his breath. “No,” he finally murmurs.

“I thought I heard something.”

“Well,
I
didn’t.” Noble isn’t interested in what Rufus might have heard. He still has questions to ask. “I can see why we need to bring back reinforcements, but how long will that take? Because Princess Lorellina doesn’t have much time—”

“Shush!”

A slight vibration is followed by a more vigorous jolt, then a muffled
thump
that sounds like a nearby door slamming. As Noble presses his ear against the wall, a low, rumbling roar makes him gasp.

“It’s okay!” Rufus hisses. “It’s just the engine!”

Noble doesn’t know what
that
means, either. He’s about to ask for an explanation when the whole van begins to tremble. Then it jerks forward, bouncing slightly.

“Fantastic!” Rufus splutters. “He hasn’t seen us!”

“Who hasn’t?” Noble braces himself against the wall, which is pitching and lurching like a boat on
a choppy sea. “You mean the man in the white coat?”

“Who else?”

“If he hasn’t seen us, why is he shaking us around like this?”

Rufus gives a snort. “It’s not deliberate. He’s driving the van.” When Noble doesn’t comment, Rufus says, “We’re moving now! Don’t you get it?
We’re on our way!
”

“To where?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to see.” The swishing sound of skin against skin suggests that Rufus is rubbing his hands together. “Wherever it is, though, it’s bound to be a lot of fun. I can’t
wait
till we get there!”

T
he journey doesn’t take long. Before Noble can do much more than wonder if he’s made a big mistake, the van squeals to a halt—so abruptly that he knocks his nose against the pile of crates in front of him.

Then the noise stops, along with the teeth-rattling vibration.

“Wait,” Rufus says under his breath.

The whole van rocks as its driver alights. A door goes
thump
. Receding footsteps can be felt, rather than heard; it’s as if the van is sitting on some kind of spongy surface that wobbles beneath every impact, no matter how small.

Gradually, however, the rhythmic shudders fade away. The floor becomes still. Silence descends.

“Okay,” Rufus finally whispers. “Let’s get out of here.”

They both move very carefully, trying not to shake the van as they crawl out of their hiding place. Rufus reaches the roller door first. When he gives it a yank, light pours in.

Noble has to crouch down before he can peer outside.

“So far, so good,” Rufus observes, next to him. “I can’t see anyone, can you?”

“No.” All Noble can see is a sticky-looking pinkish wall. But as Rufus raises the door a little farther, more of the scene becomes visible. There’s a wedge of slimy ceiling just above them, ribbed with a network of pipes—or are they veins? Three large metal bins are parked close by. And the wheels of the van have left tracks in a slick, pulpy, purplish floor.

“Where
are
we?” rasps Noble.

“I’m not sure yet,” Rufus admits softly. “Let’s go find out.”

He slips beneath the half-open door and drops stealthily to the ground, then shuffles sideways until he can peek around the corner of the van. Noble does the same.

The sight that greets them both is utterly astounding.

“Are we inside a stomach?” Noble hisses.

“I dunno. I don’t think most stomachs are full of spacesuits.”

“What’s a spacesuit?”

But Rufus has already forged ahead. Noble follows
him along the side of the van, catching up just in time to see him stick his top half through the driver’s window.

“He took his keys with him,” Rufus mutters. “Pity. An AV’s keys would have got us into pretty much every part of this computer.” Then he drags something out of the front cabin. “Look,” he says, indicating a sheet of parchment attached to a small, thin, wooden panel. “He’s left his clipboard. See this? This must be his schedule. And
this
is where we are now. In
Killer Cells
.” After scanning the document in front of him, Rufus gives a satisfied nod. “I get it. Right. So it’s where a spaceship has turned into a living creature, and the crew are getting attacked by the ship’s immune system.”

He then replaces the clipboard, ensuring that he puts it back exactly where he found it. Noble, meanwhile, stares at him mutely. The word
clipboard
means nothing to Noble. Neither do the words
spaceship
or
immune system
.

“Okay,” Rufus continues, straightening up. “Our AV must have headed for the bridge, which is where this game actually starts. He’ll look for me there, and when he doesn’t find me, he’ll come back. So we’ll hide in here until he leaves.” After glancing around, Rufus points at the metal bins sitting nearby. “Those are perfect,” he declares. “Let’s see what’s in ’em.”

Noble frowns. “If I was searching for someone, they’d be the first place I’d look,” he argues.

Rufus waves this objection aside. “The AV won’t search for me in here,” he assures Noble, “because there won’t be any evidence that I’ve ever set foot in this game. After he works that out, he’ll head straight for the next one.”

“And then?”

“Then we’ll see what we can do for the poor subprograms stuck in this nightmare,” Rufus replies. As he moves toward the bins, the soles of his shoes peel off the gluey floor. “At least, we won’t have any trouble finding reinforcements,” he adds. “The people in here will be
begging
to leave.”

“Why?” says Noble. And Rufus snorts.

“Man, you think
you
had problems? Wait till you check out
Killer Cells
!”

It’s some time, however, before Noble can do anything of the sort. First he has to climb into the largest of the metal bins. Then he has to sit in the dark, without moving a muscle, until he finally hears the van start up again. And even after the noise of the engine has faded to silence, he
still
has to wait. Because Rufus has told him not to stir without permission.

Permission is finally granted when Rufus taps on the lid above Noble’s head. “All clear,” Rufus announces. “The van’s gone.”

“Gone where?” asks Noble. As he pushes the lid open, he adds, “How will we get back to Thanehaven without the van?”

“Don’t worry.” Rufus sounds unconcerned. “We’ll
go out the way we came in. Through that airlock.” He draws Noble’s attention to something that’s probably a door, though it’s not like any of the doors in Thanehaven. For one thing, it has no knob or handle. It’s also shaped more like a window than a door, with eight sides to it. But since it’s hard and smooth and flat—unlike the fibrous, fleshy wall in which it’s embedded—Noble manages to identify it as a door.

“Is that the way to Thanehaven?” he demands.

“Kind of.”

“And the man in the white coat just went through there? In his van?”

“Sure did,” Rufus confirms.

“But if that’s the way to Thanehaven, why did you tell me he was heading for the next game?”

Rufus sighs. “Look,” he says, “I know what I’m doing, okay? So you can sit here and wait, or you can come with me to the bridge. It’s your choice. I’ll go by myself, if you want.”

“No.” Shaking his head, Noble swings one leg over the side of the bin. “I’ll go. Where’s the river?”

“The river?” echoes Rufus. “What river?”

“If there’s a bridge, there must be a river.” Noble jumps down to the floor, which bounces under his feet. “Or maybe a ravine …”

“Oh,” says Rufus. He smiles crookedly. “Um … actually, it’s not that kind of bridge. It’s more like a room.”

Noble grunts. This doesn’t make much sense to
him. Why call it a bridge if it’s a room? “So you’ve already been there?” he asks.

“Nope.”

“Then how will you find it?”

“Let’s just say I’m good at following my nose.”

Rufus trudges away with his hands in his pockets, past an array of rubbery white garments dangling from hooks made of gristle, until he reaches what looks like a huge slab of muscle embedded in yellow fat. Only when this muscle parts at the center, flinching open like a valve, does Noble realize that it’s actually a
hatch
of some kind. On the other side of the hatch is a tunnel that vaguely resembles an enormous throat, with its rounded ceiling and moist, ribbed floor. Unlike most gullets, however, it’s very well lit. And it seems to go on forever, in both directions.

“Cool,” says Rufus, sticking his head through the hatch. “This
has
to be a main road.”

“It’s not a road. It’s a passage,” Noble points out beside him.

“Yeah, but only because we’re on a spaceship. If we were in a town, this would be a main road.”

“What’s a spaceship?” asks Noble, eyeing the pink jellyfish floating overhead.

Rufus replies in an absentminded tone, glancing from left to right. “It’s like an ordinary ship, except that it flies through outer space,” he says.

“What’s outer space?”

Rufus grins. “Nothing
you
need to worry about,”
he promises, before climbing through the hatch and slouching off down the tunnel. After a moment’s hesitation, Noble follows him. Together they pick their way along a raised path, some of it slick and smooth, some of it textured. At regular intervals, the wall to their left disappears as a narrower passage intersects with their tunnel. Each of these passages leads to another long tunnel in the distance, and each has more valvelike doors leading off it.

The air is full of drifting shapes, some pink, some blue.

“Don’t worry about those,” Rufus remarks. “They won’t hurt you.”

“What about
that
?” Noble stops abruptly, having caught sight of a much larger thing in one of the passages. It looks a bit like a giant gray shellfish, with suckers and beating tentacles. “Is
that
dangerous?”

“Not to you. Or to me.” Rufus keeps on walking. “It’s not programmed to attack us because we don’t belong here.”

Noble hastens to catch up, placing his bare feet carefully on the slick, spongy floor. “But do they
usually
attack people?” he inquires.

“Of course!” Rufus speaks with a certain amount of relish. “Most of the moving parts on board used to be run by the ship’s computer. But when the ship became a living organism, they turned into its immune system. Now they’re roaming around in search of foreign objects to kill.”