Shade's Children (12 page)

They heard the grenade explode when the boat was just heading away from the island, the outboard straining at full throttle to push them through the swell.

Ella looked back over her shoulder after the boom of the explosion, but fog had already cloaked the island and its fateful towers. She couldn’t see or hear anything, save the crash of the surf on rocks and, below that, the muffled battle sound of enraged Myrmidons.

Like many others before him, Drum was gone.

He had been a good teammate, and Ella had even let him become a friend. Perhaps, if he hadn’t been both fiercely shy and chemically emasculated, they might have been lovers. But that possibility had never been discussed; thoughts of it had been buried deep beneath their respective tough exteriors. The friendship was what leaked out between the chinks of self-protective armor. Now that friendship was gone.

It didn’t pay to have friends in your team, Ella thought, or friends anywhere. Taking your friends was another way the Overlords beat you. If you had no friends, you had no vulnerabilities, no openings for sorrow.

Part of her mind was thinking this, but the rest was continuing on autopilot. Ella watched her hands checking the compass, hands on the tiller changing course. She felt as if they were moving without her consent, as if most of her was still back on the island. Back with Drum.

With an effort she forced her mind to the task at hand. Escape and survival. The eternal duo that ruled her life.

“Drum?” croaked Gold-Eye from his position on the floor of the boat. Color was returning to his face, and he seemed to be regaining the use of his hand—which was fortunate, since the other one had two fingers splinted together and a purpling bruise halfway up to his wrist.

“He stayed behind,” Ella said after a few seconds, when she realized Gold-Eye had asked a question. Saying it made it suddenly seem more real, so she didn’t say any more. Instead she looked over Gold-Eye’s head at the dark of the sea, telling herself she was searching for buoys or a sign of lights.

“Someone had to slow them down,” explained Ninde slowly, after Ella didn’t answer. The younger girl was uncharacteristically subdued, the conch-shell device sitting on her lap like some self-satisfied entity. Ninde couldn’t help feeling that, whatever it was, it should be back in Fort Robertson and Drum should be sitting here with them.

Gold-Eye lapsed into silence for the rest of what seemed like a very long journey back to the Submarine. Ella and Ninde were quiet too, wrapped up in their own thoughts, bodies curled up almost fetally, as much for some shred of comfort as protection against the wet cold of the fog.

None of them noticed the red eyes in the water following them back, the rat robot using the last of its power to keep up with the boat.

It, in turn, didn’t notice the dark shape flying twenty feet above the waves, keeping just enough foggy airspace between it and the boat to remain well hidden.

Not that it would have been seen even if it had gotten closer. After all, Wingers never flew at night. At least, they didn’t normally. In any case, no one bothered to look up.

Back at the Submarine, Ella had to still her shaking hands with an effort of will as she flicked the outboard into neutral and lifted the mooring rope onto a rusty stanchion at the same time. The boat drifted on for a bit, then swung back against the Submarine, till Ella could pull it against the bow. Gold-Eye made no move to help and Ninde just sat there, cradling the Overlord device and humming something to herself.

“Come on,” said Ella, her voice flat. She rapped on the torpedo-tube hatch and waited, without having to stand up, for the Eye to come out. The tide was rising, and in an hour or so they would have had to spend the night outside. Knowing that made it easier to climb into the tube. She pushed Gold-Eye ahead of her, and Ninde brought up the rear.

They all got changed together, Gold-Eye mechanically removing his wet suit, not even bothering to look at Ella and Ninde’s momentary nakedness, nor hide his own. Both his hands ached, his ears hurt from the cold, and there was a sort of numbness in his head, a sense of dislocation he hadn’t felt since Petar and Jemmie were taken away. In a way Drum had already become a replacement for Petar, and now he was gone too….

But there was a pressure on his head he could do something about, and he took off the useless Deceptor and threw it on the floor, followed by the power cord and battery. If they’d lasted for another five minutes, Drum might have survived, he thought, looking down at the steel-and-gold circlet.

Five minutes. He felt nauseous at the thought of Drum standing there alone, and then suddenly dizzy, as the familiar rush of the soon-to-be-now seized him. The Submarine’s metal walls faded, and he saw a strange, red-walled room—a vast red room, filled with row after row of shelves. They were people-sized shelves stretching up a hundred feet from floor to ceiling, farther than he could see. Full shelves, piled with motionless people, stacked up like some perverted library.

As Gold-Eye watched, two creatures he’d never seen before came into the room, wheeling a trolley. They were more humanlike than most creatures, though their faces were flat and noseless and they had no ears. They were as white as the room, like pallid grubs that lived all their life underground.

He recognized them from one of the training sessions. Drones. Harmless, save that they were never without guardians, and never seen far from a barracks, an aerie, or a lair.

They lifted a body off the trolley, and Gold-Eye realized it was Drum, unconscious but not dead. His massive chest was rising and falling with the slow regularity of sleep. The two Drones lifted him easily, displaying unexpected strength, and pushed him onto a vacant shelf at waist level. One then touched a button or control, and the shelf rose twenty feet. There were twenty full shelves above him, and room for eight more below. As Drum’s shelf rose, an empty one came up out of the floor and stopped at waist height. The Drones stepped back and pushed their trolley on, down the corridor of shelves and unconscious people.

“Come on!” Ella was saying, obviously for the second or third time, but without her usual commanding tone. She was holding the hatch open for him, and Ninde was waiting on the other side.

“Drum alive!” blurted Gold-Eye, rushing over, grabbing Ella’s bare arm in his excitement, ignoring his injured fingers.

“What?”

“Drum alive,” repeated Gold-Eye. “I saw in the soon-to-be-now. Sleeping, put in a…a store…”

Even as he said it, he realized where Drum was.

The Meat Factory.

Ella realized it too, and the shock that Drum could still be alive was almost greater than the shock of his death. The Myrmidons nearly always killed when one of their number was injured. Drum must have killed some and injured many, and he would have fought to make them kill him. How could the Myrmidons have restrained their tempers?

“Exactly what did you see?” she asked, plans already forming in her mind as Gold-Eye described his vision. If Drum was still alive, he could be rescued. The Deceptors had worked, even if the batteries had been insufficient. They could get into the Meat Factory….

When Gold-Eye finished, Ella found that the sense of being disconnected from reality had vanished. Drum was alive; his rescue must be given absolute priority.

“Let’s go tell Shade,” she said, her voice decisive again. “One of the other teams might even be ready to go and rescue Drum right now.”

“Absolutely not,” said Shade, shaking his handsome holographic head from side to side. “The risk is too great and the reward slight.”

“Getting Drum isn’t important?” asked Ella, an edge to her voice that was rarely heard by Shade.

“Of course that would be important,” replied Shade. “But not at the risk of losing three or four others. And no great intelligence would be gained. I know what goes on in the Meat Factory in general, and I doubt that specific information would be particularly useful.

“But let’s not dwell on an unpleasant subject. It would be better to direct our attention to what you’ve found at Fort Robertson. Perhaps, Ninde, you’d be kind enough to put it on the floor for my little helpers?”

“What about Drum?” Ella began, but Shade cut her off. Two of his spider robots were already clicking their way across the floor to take the conch-shell device from Ninde.

“We’ll discuss it later, Ella. Now, how did you know this was worth picking up, Ninde?”

Ninde looked at Ella before replying, as if expecting a further outburst. But Ella was silent, looking away into the dark corners, away from the bright hologram of Shade.

“As soon as the Deceptor battery went flat, I could hear the Myrmidon Master’s thoughts,” Ninde explained. “It was really easy there—really clear. The Master was thinking that we were creatures from some other Overlord, that we’d broken the…Compact…like the rules. And we’d come to steal the Thinker. That thing there, because not every Overlord had one, but they all wanted one. So I thought if they all wanted one, we should take it…so I did.”

“Quite right,” said Shade, his smile expanding to show an even greater expanse of white teeth than normal. A greedy smile.

“Now I think you should all go and rest,” he said, “while I examine this…Thinker.”

As soon as he finished speaking, Ella got up and left without a word. Ninde hesitated for a moment. She watched the spider robots taking the Thinker away, then followed Ella. Gold-Eye got up too. He stood there looking at Shade, trying to find some words that might encourage Shade to order Drum’s rescue.

But the hologram was already dissipating and the spider robots were carrying away the Thinker to one of the corners, where more spider robots were coming out of the conduits, carrying instruments and trailing cables.

As the light from the hologram faded and no others came on, the room darkened. Gold-Eye headed for the hatch, but missed it in the dark and had to feel along the bulkhead. His ears seemed more sensitive with the lack of light, and he heard the spider robots clicking across the floor and the faint hum of electrical power above the soft breathy sound of the Submarine’s ventilators.

For some instinctive reason he crouched as he felt along the bulkhead. His hands quested for the sill of the hatch, but found fur instead—the wet, furry shape of a rat robot, lying in the corner. One of its legs twitched as Gold-Eye touched it, and he leaped back, but no further movement followed. It was inactive, all power gone, red eyes dimmed.

Gold-Eye left it and continued along the bulkhead till he found the hatch. But the smell of salt water and the feel of the artificial fur stayed with him. It had obviously been out in the sea very recently, or the spider robots would have already picked it up for recharging.

What did that mean?

And why wouldn’t Shade let them try and rescue Drum?

Gold-Eye opened the hatch as quietly as possible, somehow afraid of Shade’s attention while he was thinking these thoughts, and went out into the light.

Ella and Ninde were waiting for him, silent and grim. Gold-Eye started to speak, but Ella held her finger to her lips very quickly, almost as if by accident. Again, almost accidentally, she pointed toward the bow.

It was a slight movement, but Gold-Eye had no doubt what it meant. Clearly Ella meant to ignore Shade’s orders and go back out.

To the Meat Factory, to rescue Drum.

The robots had already cleaned and racked their equipment. The wet suits had been taken away for drying, and clean coveralls hung on the hooks, with T-shirts and underwear in the baskets underneath. Eight Deceptor crowns were laid out neatly on a shelf, with batteries stacked next to them. Swords hung in scabbards, freshly cleaned and lightly oiled.

Ella went in first and wadded a towel into the top right corner, obviously blocking one of Shade’s Eyes. Then she put her finger to her lips for silence and waved Gold-Eye and Ninde in.

This time she made Gold-Eye turn away as they got dressed, pushing him by the shoulder till he blushed and looked at the gray steel of the bulkhead.

They all put on extra layers against the cold, the only noise the rustle of their clothes and the occasional faint clink as equipment shifted on a belt.

Gold-Eye found it difficult to do up his belt with his injured hands, and for a second almost dropped it—but Ninde caught it at his hips and buckled it up for him, causing his blush to deepen as her hands deftly fastened the catch just below his navel.

When they were ready, Ella shoved a box of clothing against the conduit used by the spider robots and wedged it with a couple of swords. Then she spun the locking wheel on the hatch to the torpedo tube.

Instantly, Shade’s voice filled the room. He sounded cross and distracted, as if his attention had been taken from something of great importance.

“What are you doing?”

Ella didn’t answer. Instead she clambered into the torpedo tube and crawled to the outer hatch. Gold-Eye and Ninde followed her, and Shade’s voice followed them.

“Ella! I know it’s you. And Gold-Eye and Ninde, too. I expected better from all of you. Come back at once!”

Ninde shut the inner hatch, but Shade’s voice now echoed within the tube itself.

“Don’t be stupid, children. Drum will be long gone by the time you get to the Meat Factory. You’ll just be volunteering yourselves to be cut up. Think of that! Your brains removed, your lives thrown away for nothing! Nothing!”

Ella opened the outer hatch, letting in cold spray and wisps of fog. The tide was still rising, and the sea was only just below the rim of the hatch, with little wavelets breaking across the sill. The inflatable boat bobbed a few feet away, its black shape almost invisible in the night.

“Don’t go,” said Shade. “I forbid it.”

Ella squeezed her witchlight on and reached out and snagged the inflatable’s bowline, dragging it close enough for her to crawl out and half roll, half sprawl into it.

“No Lottery for you, Gold-Eye,” continued Shade as the boy reached the outer hatch. “It would be tomorrow if you stay.”

Gold-Eye frowned, as much at his own instinctive excitement at the thought of the Lottery and sex as at Shade’s heavy-handed bribery. But he didn’t hesitate and climbed out into the boat.

“No films, Ninde,” added Shade as the last member of the party reached out to the rubber side of the inflatable. “No videos of all those television series you love. No films. Just life out in the streets, out in danger. Real life, all the time.”

Ninde hesitated. Then she pulled herself forward into the boat.

“You’ve made your decision,” said Shade, his voice picking up metallic echoes from the torpedo tube, making it less human. “Don’t bother trying to come back.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Shade,” said Ella finally, almost shouting back down the tube. “We’ll come back—but with Drum. You need us as much as we need you!”

Shade didn’t answer, but there was a sudden, angry blast of compressed air and the outer torpedo hatch slid shut.

“Door slamming,” said Ninde with some satisfaction. “Just like in the films.”

Gold-Eye looked at her with concern. She didn’t seem at all worried that they’d been thrown out of the only safe refuge he’d ever known. Ella didn’t seem too worried either, as she started up the outboard and turned them toward the entrance to the Main Drain.

“Where…what will we do?” he asked plaintively.

Ella looked at him, seeing the anxiety in the tight skin around his eyes, eyes like gold sparks reflected in the witchlight.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “First we have to get Drum, but Shade will take us back. He can’t afford to lose a trained team—and despite what he said, he will want to know about the inside of the Meat Factory. He’s just angry, that’s all. Like a normal person. It will pass. Forget about it for now. We all need to concentrate on getting into the Meat Factory, finding Drum—and getting out again….”

Finding the Meat Factory wasn’t a problem. Everyone knew where it was. Once a giant, steel-clad structure used for assembling aircraft, it was now painted in kaleidoscopic colors representing all the blazons of the various Overlords, to show it belonged to no single one of them.

Two double fences surrounded it, topped by razor wire—a legacy of its first use as an aircraft factory. There were two gates, each guarded by four maniples of Myrmidons, all drawn from different Overlords’ retinues.

Their tents—bell-like structures of bright silks and colors—lined the fence on either side of the two gates. At dusk the Myrmidons retired to these tents—and Ferrets rose up from the drains below to prowl the parking lots and open land around the factory.

Very occasionally, Myrmidons or Ferrets from rival Overlords would run amok without the sanction of proper claim fires or ordered battle. But this was rare and, even if it did occur, could not be counted on to cause enough confusion to allow entry.

The drains were also very risky. Most in the area were dry and infested with Ferrets. Northwest Eight was wet and ran right under it, but no one knew whether there was any exit from it into the Factory.

Ella ran over all this with Ninde and Gold-Eye in the same small chamber where they’d rested before, near the Main Junction. Without Drum it had been difficult to get a rope up to the bottom of the broken ladder, but Ninde had managed to stand on Ella’s shoulders, with Gold-Eye steadying both of them.

This time Gold-Eye welcomed the warmth and stuffiness of the room after the cold sea, even if it did make listening to Ella difficult, with sleep beckoning him. Sleep to forget the pain in his hand, sleep to wash away the memories of the day.

“Or we can trust to the Deceptors and just walk straight in,” said Ella, though her voice was so soft she might have been talking to herself, going over the choices in her mind.

She got up and looked at the mildewed map of the drains on the wall and added, “We have two batteries each, plus the spare crowns. It would take only fifteen minutes to go from, say, manhole twelve on Northwest Eight outside the Factory, walk up to the front gate, and then cross the parking lot. We could stop there—between some cars—and Ninde could turn off her Deceptor and—”

“What?” interrupted Ninde, suddenly attentive. “But they’d see me!”

“We’d be hidden under one of the buses or something,” replied Ella soothingly. “And it would only be for ten seconds or so. Just long enough for you to check if there’s a Watchward or some code we need for the doors.”

“I suppose it is possible….” said Ninde doubtfully.

“You’re the only one who can do it.” Ella spoke carefully. “Drum will be depending on you. We all will be.”

“I said okay,” replied Ninde, as if she’d never protested. “It’s no big deal.”

“Have you ever seen the Meat Factory, Gold-Eye?” asked Ella. “I mean the outside, for real, not in the soon-to-be-now.”

Gold-Eye nodded. He’d accidentally ended up near it once, after being driven by three trios of Trackers. He’d finally lost them by crossing the perimeter of an ongoing battle, with opposing Myrmidons raging and fighting through an enormous cemetery, each force trying to defeat the other and extinguish its claim fire.

Gold-Eye had avoided them by climbing up an ancient and thickly branched pine tree. From there he had looked over thousands of headstones, crosses, and mausoleums; over the heads of the battling, shouting Myrmidons; past the orange blaze and white smoke of the claim fires; across an eight-lane highway of dead cars. Over to the Meat Factory.

He’d seen the Wingers spiraling in, each with a net suspended below it containing a quiescent fourteen-year-old. He’d seen the Myrmidons marching around the fences, colors bright against the dark asphalt. He’d seen the Wingers reemerging through a vast, open door and flying away later—without their burdens.

“Yes,” said Gold-Eye. “I see Meat Factory.”

Ella looked at him as if she expected him to say more, but he was silent, thinking of that long-ago time when the Wingers had flown Petar and Jemmie through that giant door.

“I think we will have to walk straight in,” said Ella quietly. “At dawn tomorrow, just as the Ferrets go in and the Myrmidons are stirring. With the few minutes of changeover then—and the Deceptors—I think…I know we can make it.”

Ninde looked at her dubiously but didn’t say anything. Gold-Eye sat considering, thinking about the Meat Factory. Petar…and Petar’s knife. Finally he spoke.

“The grenade. Get another one?”

“I don’t know,” said Ella, momentarily surprised. “But I’ll try. Do you…want one for yourself?”

“Yes,” said Gold-Eye. “But you use it. No one to rescue us.”

Ella nodded and looked down at her hands, to see if they were still shaking. They were still, still without her having to force them into steadiness.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll try and get one later. And I’ll promise to use it. If we have to.”