The Age Atomic (17 page)

Hall glanced down at the folder of briefing papers in front of him. He flipped it open and, leafing through, found a summary of the fusor's blueprints. It was a cylinder, and not a very big one either, about the size of a small artillery shell, no more. The General didn't know the expected yield of the device, but he had to assume they – and the good people of New York – were far enough away from ground zero.

“Ten… nine… eight…”

Then Hall looked at Evelyn, and she turned to look at him. She stared into his eyes, and he felt the cold spread. Through his goggles her eyes were aflame, glowing,
smoking
coals, tendrils of energy drifting out of the featureless sockets. Her lips parted as she smiled, and Hall saw she was glowing inside, smoke wafting out of her mouth.

Hall's chest felt tight. He couldn't breathe… he couldn't think… she was beautiful and she was dead and she was… she was incompatible, and she was not here, not really. These thoughts crashed through Hall's mind. He didn't know anything about her, but he could
feel
it, feel her presence like waking up in the middle of the night to find the covers being pulled off and a dead, cold weight sitting on the middle of your chest. The eyes under the bed, the something evil in the closet, the creaking floor downstairs.

Hall wanted to run, to grab a boat and get to Swinburne Island, where he could go up with the test, end it all, his very existence unendurable misery. And still he looked at her, and still she smiled, and Hall remembered the fear and remembered the dark when he'd got lost in the wood when he was four years old.

“Three…two…”

She turned back to watch. Hall felt the tears pooling inside his goggles.

“One!”

There was nothing for a second, and then the test rig – Swinburne Island itself – vanished into a featureless white light. The staff around Hall flinched, some even looking away as others, despite the goggles, raised their arms in front of their faces to shield themselves from the brilliant intensity. Hall's eyes were wide, as was his jaw, as he watched. He'd seen atomic tests – most people under the marquee had – so he knew what to expect: the flash, the roar, the pressure wave, the heat, and then the spectacle of the expanding spherical cloud that would evaporate in seconds as the famous mushroom cloud of death slowly rolled skywards.

This… this was different. The flash of light was brighter, but the explosion was quieter, the pressure wave not so intense. Standing in the light, the Director was suddenly a person, her skin pale but alive, her clothes no longer monochrome but blue and green, her scarf white. She was wearing make-up: the lipstick a bright red, matching the nail polish on her hands. The blue halo was gone, and for a second it looked like she was standing on the ground, not floating above it.

Hall turned back to the test. The white light faded, replaced by rolling oranges and reds as the explosion cloud collapsed and a column of smoke rose directly upwards. As Hall watched, he saw lightning flicker within the column, arcs shooting both up and down. Of the other artificial island in Lower New York Bay, there was no sign.

Through his goggles he could see the blue glow of the Director beside him; she was as she was before – not a woman, but a ghost and a god.

Then the pressure wave arrived, and Hall didn't see anything else for a while.

 

THIRTY-TWO

 

When Rad opened his eyes, all he saw was green.

He sat up with a yell and rubbed his eyes, but the green was still there. He ran his hands over the ground beneath him: it was smooth, like glass, a little wet under his fingertips, and very cold. Ice. It was a dark night. He was outside. The King's magic lantern was back on.

He shook his head and looked around. He was lying in a narrow alley in Harlem, and there was a man standing in front of him, wearing a tight, leathery coverall. A helmeted head tilted as the man regarded Rad on the alley floor.

Rad swore and pushed himself backwards until he hit something soft. He turned, sliding on his backside, and saw the prone form of Jennifer Jones lying next to him on the sidewalk, up against the wall.

Rad spun back around, and tried to replay the last few minutes. He remembered the light, he remembered Kane getting out of the box, and then…

He looked up at the man standing over him wearing the leather base of the Skyguard's suit – without the armor plate, or cloak. The Corsair must have been wearing it underneath the chauffeur's uniform.

“That better be Kane Fortuna in there.”

The man waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, that guy?” he said, and then he laughed.

Rad raised an eyebrow, and returned his attention to Jennifer. In the green light her form was completely grey. “What happened?”

“I got you out of there, didn't I?”

Rad frowned as he reached forward. He dug around Jennifer's collar and found the pulse on her neck, which was going just fine, although her skin felt cold. As he pulled away, his fingers brushed the edge of her metal face, and he hesitated.

“I found some things in the theater that I really think we need to talk about,” he said.

“We need to get moving first.”

Rad nodded and pushed himself to his feet. He was a little unsteady and the ground was treacherously slick, but he balanced himself against the brick wall with one hand.

“So you gonna tell me what happened? You got the suit off that guy. Where is he?”

Kane turned away and began pacing the alleyway. “Trust me, I dealt with him and I got us out.”

“Hey, you didn't…”

Kane stopped pacing and turned around, hands on hips. His face was completely hidden behind the black metal mask, which Rad didn't like. He didn't feel like conducting such an important conversation through a piece of metal.

“Kill him?” asked Kane, and then he waved his hand again, a casual dismissal of a joke over a drink. “We can pick him up later, once we get more agents back here. First up, we need to get downtown.”

Rad looked Kane up and down. “You seem to be OK.”

Kane nodded, still pacing, restless. “It's the suit. It's even better than the machine. If anything, it was the machine that was making me sick. Draining off the power of the Fissure.”

“Not to mention the sweet little something they were feeding you.”

At this Kane stopped again, looked at Rad. “Some kind of drug? A sedative?”

Rad nodded. “Dope of some kind, could be. Keep you docile, cooperative. The fever and delirium are probably just side effects. Maybe he thought if you knew the power you had inside you, you would have caused problems. You could just have blown yourself out, without my help.” Rad looked around, at the walls of the alley and the buildings around them. They were at the side of the theater; looking up, silhouetted against the sky, he could see the branches of the King's lucky tree as they stretched up through the roof at the back of the theater. The tree was in full leaf, untouched by the winter outside.

“Huh,” he said.

“What?”

“The tree. The King said it brought luck. Seems he was right.” Rad turned back to Kane. “So… suit working OK?”

Kane laughed, then placed both hands on his chin. Using his thumbs for leverage, he lifted the edge of the mask. Immediately a brilliant white-blue light shone out, forcing Rad to look away, shielding his face with his hands.

“Neat,” he said. “We're gonna have to figure out how to get all that back where it should be and get the city plugged in again.”

“First things first,” said Kane.

Rad nodded and looked down at Jennifer just as she groaned. For a moment it sounded like the mechanical voice of a robot, but then she mumbled something and it was her, albeit muffled behind her golden mask. Rad offered his hand.

“You OK, agent?”

Jennifer pulled herself up, and dusted her coat down. As Rad watched, her hands went to her face, and she trailed her gloved fingertips over the contours of the mask. Then she nodded, and looked at Kane. “Where's the Corsair?”

“He's fine,” said Kane. “Secure. The police can collect him.”

Jennifer took a step forward. “No! We're going back to get him. Now.”

Rad reached out for her arm, but she shook him off and spun around. Rad jerked back from the mask. “She's right,” he said. “We should bring him in now, not wait.”

“And what about the robots, Rad? This whole place is crawling with them.”

Rad shook his head. “We're safe out here so long as the green light is on.” He pointed, and immediately the green light went out, leaving the alley in darkness.

Kane sighed. “You were saying?”

There was a sound from the other end of the alley, from 125th Street itself – a shuffling, metallic, meshed with the organic rustling of ordinary people. The robots were moving.

“There,” said Jennifer, pointing. Rad turned and saw long shadows dancing on the street, thrown from around the corner of the alley. Lots of shapes, people – robots – moving in their direction.

“Kane, can you fly in the suit?”

Kane shook his head. “No. Jets are all missing. Whole system has been stripped out.”

“You got anything that can hold them back?”

“Not sure.” Kane examined the watch-like panel on his wrist.

The sounds from the alley increased.

“We gotta get out of here.”

“Here we go,” said Kane, and his wrist panel began emitting a faint pulsing sound that Rad thought was more than a little ominous. “No,” said Kane. “Wait a minute–”

“That thing going to blow up now?” said Rad, not sure if he was joking.

“No, it's the communicator. Hold on…”

Rad turned back to the street. As he watched, the shadows cast by the robots came to a halt and stood swaying in the streetlight. Then they resumed their march, changing direction. They were heading straight for them.

“Dammit, Kane, those things are homing in on the signal.” Rad spun around, scanning the alleyway. “Hey, where's Jennifer?”

The alley was filled with a roaring sound, so loud Rad ducked instinctively. From the other end of the alley, a brilliant green light flooded the road. Rad stumbled in surprise and turned towards it, but could see nothing except a green light speeding closer. He shielded his eyes from the glare and saw two lights, mounted on the front of something.

The King's car.

Rad and Kane jumped to opposite sides of the alley as the huge machine came to a halt between them, the rear end snaking on the icy roadway. The passenger door was flung open, Jennifer leaning over the wheel.

“Get in!”

Rad didn't argue. He practically fell into the passenger seat and scrambled to close the door behind him, while Kane did the same in the rear.

Jennifer released the brake and the car fishtailed again. Then it propelled forward fast enough to push Rad back into his seat.

“What the hell? How did you find the car?” he managed, glancing sideways at Jennifer. She had one hand on the wheel, one hand on the shifter, and her golden mask was staring dead ahead, tinged green by the car's headlamps.

“Found my way back to the garage when I was looking around the theater,” she said as the car cleared the alleyway and she pulled a sharp right. “It opens into the alley just back there. Now shut up, and let me drive.”

Jennifer pulled around another corner, and swore.

Dead ahead was the robot gang, so large it filled the street as far as Rad could see. The robots in front recoiled from the green light, and Rad was sure they were screaming in pain and in fright, but he couldn't hear anything over the roar of the engine.

“Hold onto something,” said Jennifer as she floored the accelerator and aimed the car directly for the center of the group.

 

THIRTY-THREE

 

In the ruins of the King's workshop, the Corsair lay unmoving, his body bloody and broken, partially covered by twisted metal still hot from the explosion of energy and movement that was Kane Fortuna.

Something clattered to the floor; the Corsair groaned, but the sound didn't carry past the ruin of his mouth. He coughed, and nearly choked on the blood and broken teeth, and then felt a slicing sensation of pain travel along his jawline, where the bone beneath was fractured in seven places.

He blinked, then realized his eyes had been open all along; they were just filled with viscous dark blood. He blinked again and some of it cleared, leaving his view of the workshop floor fuzzy and dark but unobstructed enough to see the carnage.

The slab on which Kane's machine had lain was split in two, collapsed in the middle of the room. The slab behind had been shifted out of position, but the third, which had so recently housed Jennifer Jones, was intact and untouched, save for half of a new robot's torso shell, the metal bright and unblemished, lying on its top.

More movement, out of the corner of his eye. The Corsair tried to move his head but the sudden pain was too much and when he opened his eyes again he was moving, sliding along the floor, leaving a trail of debris and thick blood.

“Master, I, Master, I…” said a metallic voice from somewhere above him. The Corsair let himself be dragged across the floor. Then he was pulled into a sitting position, his back to the wall.

There was a man above him, a short man in a blue suit that was torn and smoking. The man was standing by the intact machine, but was fumbling, moving his hands over the slab and the box on it like he couldn't see. As the Corsair watched, the hands finally found the lid and lifted.

The Corsair blinked, and when he opened his eyes he was inside the machine. He was in pain now, his whole body alive with it, brilliant and sharp and fiery. He looked up, seeing the blackened walls of the workshop. There was a fire, somewhere, lighting the otherwise dark room in a flickering light that threw long shadows. Then the Corsair realized the light was not orange and yellow but white and blue, and was coming from the door that led to the power room.

The Corsair cried out in pain, screamed as loud as he could.

The man who had saved him – why couldn't he remember who that was? He knew him, he was sure of it – was busy at the controls. The Corsair could just see the dark blue velvet over the lip of the machine. The man was hunched over, like he was in pain, like there was something wrong, like–

He turned around, and the Corsair screamed again. The man was the King of 125th Street, he remembered now, his faithful robot, the first one he'd made from a homeless person who had stumbled from the naval robot yard, not yet converted into an Ironclad sailor but put through the mental processing and then left, abandoned as Wartime ended suddenly.

The man's face was hanging in strips from a silver skull, the artificial flesh quivering as the machine man rocked slightly on its heels, the scalp peeled over to the left. The robot's eyes were two blackened, burnt-out holes, a liquid, thick and black and oozing, streaming out like syrup. The robot's jaw, still clad in fake skin, moved up and down as the blind machine struggled to help its master.

“Master, I, master, I…” said the robot. It shuddered as it spoke, its hands moving over the edge of the machine, fingers flexing, searching.

The Corsair tried to shake his head, but there was a thick leather strap over his forehead. He tried to move his body, but he couldn't even feel it. It was like it wasn't there at all or it didn't belong to him.

“Master, I, master, I… I will get them back. They. Can. Not. Escape.” Each forced syllable made the King rock. “Master, I, master, I… I will repair you save you make you well. Army the army the army has been activated. They. Can. Not. Escape.”

The Corsair screamed until his mouth filled with blood and his throat felt like it was being flayed with knives, as the blind robot King of 125th Street threw a lever and the lid of the machine slammed shut.