The Age Atomic (7 page)

“Yes, Director. The fusion reaction is stable, and the power output exceeds our estimates by a considerable margin. More than adequate for our needs, but–”

There was a whining sound, a low thrum like the engine of an aircraft slowing down. The lights in the laboratory flickered. In the cage, the Project twitched against the slab, banging its back into it loudly. The light in the chest cylinder flared again, then faded. Two seconds later it was out.

The Director glided closer to the cage.

“But there is still work to be done. Progress remains slow, doctor. The fusor must be fully functional if we are to go into production on schedule.”

“The test was successful,” he said, puffing out his chest a little. “I said the reaction was stable. I didn't say it was sustainable.” He glanced down at the console. “How long this time, Dr Richardson?”

“Eighteen seconds.”

The doctor looked up at the Director, a wide smile on his face. Eighteen seconds was a vast improvement, twice as long as the previous test. He was pleased with his work; producing nuclear fusion in a portable, virtually hand-held reactor was quite a feat. Eighteen seconds of stability was incredible.

The Director was smiling too. The doctor's expression faltered. He didn't like it when she smiled.

By the time Doctor X drew breath, the Director had vanished into thin air.

He watched the space where Evelyn McHale had been just a moment ago, and then slowly removed his glasses and rubbed his forehead with shaking hands. His skin was hot, slick with a thin layer of sweat. He closed his eyes, squeezed the bridge of his nose, and finally sneezed. It was a nervous reaction. He sniffed loudly and dropped his glasses onto the console.

“Laura, detach the fusor and prepare for reset.”

“Yes, doctor.”

The doctor turned to the cage. The Project's eyes were on him.

“Philo, my friend, we could do great things together, you and me.”

Doctor X blinked as the Project used his first name, and wondered if it had been speaking the truth all along.

 

THIRTEEN

 

“Quite a set up you've got here.”

Rad was lying. He exchanged a look with Jennifer, but their tour guide didn't seem to notice the sarcasm in his voice.

The King's 125th street “castle” was a theater, it was as simple as that. Leading them first through the main double doors, the King had turned quickly through a side passage, taking his guests through a series of narrow, twisting corridors filled with random doors and random intersections, and even random spiral staircases rising up in dark levels above. Most of the walls were brick, and most were painted thickly in a dirty white or equally dirty black.

The King laughed and kept marching forward. Rad stopped and wondered several things: what the hell he was doing here, what the hell this wacko with a beard and a blue velvet suit had to do with not just robots but anything at all, and where the hell was Kane Fortuna?

“You planning on standing there all day?”

Rad turned. Jennifer was right behind him, wry grin on her face, but he noticed that her finger was resting on the trigger of her gun.

“You expecting trouble?” he asked.

She adjusted her grip on the weapon. “Always.”

Rad huffed and nodded down the now-empty corridor. “He sure doesn't look like a criminal mastermind.”

“Looks can be deceiving,” said Jennifer.

“You mean it's an act?”

Jennifer waved her hand around. “Well, we are in a theater.”

The King appeared again at the end of the corridor. Even from this distance, his broad smile was easy to pick out.

“You're dawdling! There's still plenty to see, plenty! This way!”

Jennifer squeezed past Rad in the narrow corridor.

Rad sighed and stuffed his hands into his pockets. At least it was warm inside. In fact, it was getting warmer. Frowning, he pulled out a hand and placed it on the painted brickwork on his left. His fingertips prickled at the contact. The wall was not quite hot.

The King waved like a showman from the doorway at the end of the hall. As Jennifer approached, he bowed and gestured for her to step through. Halfway across the threshold, she shot Rad a look over her shoulder.

Rad raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“I think you're going to want to see this.”

Jennifer turned back and stepped through the door.

 

The King had led them to the main stage. Rad paused in the doorway, and swept the hat off his head. He looked around, rubbing his scalp absently.

“You've been busy, your majesty.”

They'd entered from stage left. The performance space in front of them was a vast platform of polished wood, sweeping out towards the orchestra pit and a row of footlights, all but one blazing in the dark space. Beyond, lost in the gloom, the theater stalls stretched back and up before disappearing into the darkness. Above, the theater circle – Rad could see it still had seats, all red velvet and gold painted wood. Unlike the stalls.

The stalls had been emptied, torn out, replaced with what looked like a junkyard, metal scrap collecting against the edge of the orchestra pit like frozen waves. At first Rad thought the theater's roof had collapsed, bringing with it rubble and tons of roofing lead. But as his eyes adjusted, Rad could see there was some kind of order, pieces stacked according to size or shape. Several clear paths – the theater's original aisles – led straight out from the stage to the back of the room.

“I think we're in the right place,” said Jennifer. Rad frowned and shook his head, rolling his hat in his hands.

The scrap was robot parts. Rad saw arms and legs first, then torsos and breastplates, some intact, some in halves like clamshells. Large elliptical waist joints were racked over poles like hula-hoops. There were limb components, individual feet and hands and elbows, and smaller parts that looked like shoulder collars or articulated elbow joints.

And heads. Stacked like coal scuttles, one inside the other in teetering, curved towers. Robot heads, or the external shells of them anyway.

It was a robot graveyard.

The huge stage was filled with materials too, but here the order was more regimented, the space a workshop. Trolleys, racks, shelves, and workbenches were arranged around three large tables, which looked to Rad like the slabs from a hospital mortuary. Every surface but the slabs was covered in more of the robotic parts, most in considerably better shape than the junkyard collection in the stalls. Metallic body parts that were not stacked and arranged neatly were held in various bench clamps and cradles, some opened like fruit, tools ranging from giant wrenches to fine surgical clamps protruding, wires thick and thin trailing out to the banks of equipment ranging from small tabletop boxes to floor standing cabinets. The equipment buzzed and the smell of ozone was rich in the air, and lights flashed red and yellow and blue.

“Rad, look.”

He felt Jennifer's hand on his arm as she spoke breathlessly. He turned, and whistled.

The back of the stage was occupied by a tree, growing out of the floor on the left side, the trunk curving up towards the center. The tree was enormous, the branches starting just below the remains of the stage lighting rig hanging high above them. The branches spread out evenly and thickly, obscuring the ceiling in a mass of leaves that glistened wetly in the dark. It looked to Rad like the tree was growing into the structure of the building, the curve of the trunk almost penetrating the wall, some of the back branches growing flat against it.

“What the hell?” Rad whispered. He replaced his hat as he looked up at the tree. Jennifer turned to him, her eyes wide, a smile flickering across her mouth.

“Welcome to my workshop!” said the King, strolling towards them. He ignored the pair of them staring at the tree, and instead moved to one of the nearby benches, on which sat a phonograph, complete with large horn. The King flicked the machine on, and the workshop was filled with jazz. “As you can see,” he continued, “I have rather a lot of equipment, but the space here is more than adequate.”

Rad and Jennifer exchanged a look.

“Some hobby you got,” said Rad, while Jennifer walked over to the tree.

“Not a hobby, Mr Bradley, a vocation, a calling! My work here is very important, very important indeed. Believe me when I say that the future of the Empire State itself depends upon it.”

“The tree,” said Jennifer, looking up at it. “It's… it's beautiful.”

The King walked over to her, his hands clasped tightly behind his back. “The tree brings me luck. It was here before me, of course. The theater belongs to it, I think.” He pointed to a patch on the trunk that was worn smooth and shiny. “There. Rub it for luck. Go on!”

Jennifer looked at Rad but Rad just shrugged. Jennifer rubbed the patch on the trunk as the King watched.

“How does it grow inside, with no light, or rain?”

The King shrugged. “It was here before me. It's part of the theater.”

“I think we got more important things to worry about,” said Rad. “Like the fact we've found the source of our robot problem.”

“Ah yes, the
robots
,” said the King, rolling the “R” like a circus magician. “I'm sorry you got tangled up in that, but I did warn you not to come until very late. I can only keep the lantern lit for a few hours a night, and then it takes the rest of the day to recharge the power battery. You were lucky – my instruments reported movement a few blocks south, so I dispatched the Corsair to investigate. It seems like he reached you just in time.”

Jennifer scratched at the slab in front of her with a gloved finger. “The Corsair?”

“Ah, the Corsair!” said the King. “My… ah, assistant, shall we say? He's not very talkative, but he is possessed of certain skills that come in useful.”

Rad raised an eyebrow. “He'd make a good getaway driver.”

The King clapped his hands. “Oh, isn't that car something else? I built that as well. My own design, of course.”

Jennifer said, “What does the green light do, exactly?”

“It keeps the robots away,” said the King. “It's not green; that's just how we see it. But to them, the light is something else – it interferes with their sensors. More than that, in fact. I have discovered they will actively avoid it, as if it causes them pain, in some way.”

Jennifer nodded like she understood. Rad just shook his head.

“You're gonna have to explain why there are robots roaming the streets in the first place. You seem to know a bit about that.”

“Oh yes,” the King said as he walked around the stage, bending down to inspect various readouts on the workshop equipment as he passed them by. He tapped his fingers along the bench tops in time with the music. “When Wartime ended the Naval dockyards were in full production for another Fleet Day. A day which, of course, will now never come. They claimed most of the robots were deactivated, but I think you and I both know that the crews of the Ironclads are not entirely mechanical. They are men –
were
men – and unable to be deactivated, short of killing them. So they were released.”

“Just like that?”

The King clicked his fingers. “Just like that.”

Rad and Jennifer exchanged a look, and she asked, “So why are they all up here? The Naval robot yards are a long way from Harlem.”

“Ah, that is my doing,” said the King. “I am from downtown, actually. One night, among the chaos, I had my own little encounter. I discovered the robots – all lost, afraid, hiding in the shadows.” He held his hands out. “I decided to help them.”

Jennifer stepped around the slab with a speed that surprised Rad. “Help them? How could you help them?” She leaned over him as she pressed her questions, her face pale.

“Ms Jones, please! I am both an engineer and a doctor. I thought there might be a way to reverse the process of robotization. If the mechanical and electronic parts of these poor creatures could be removed, maybe the men trapped inside their steel prisons could be freed, and return to normal life.”

Rad
hrmmed
. This sounded like the kind of endeavor Captain Carson would have had a hand in, being the guy who had helped invent the damn robot technology in the first place. The fact that Carson had instead vanished and this guy had set up what was starting to look like a crazy person's backstreet robot surgery crossed Rad's mind as not particularly good signs. He raised a hand, but stopped when he saw the look on Jennifer's face.

She was standing even closer to the King now, her eyes wide, her lips parted. Rad could see the rise and fall of her chest.

“Is it true?” she asked the King, her voice a breathy whisper. “Can you save these people?”

The King still had the smile on his face, and he nodded.

Rad jerked his thumb over one shoulder. “What about those robots outside? They don't look much fixed to me.” He stepped up to Jennifer and pulled her away from their host. When she looked at Rad there was a spark in her eyes: she was hot on the trail of whatever it was she was looking for. “And what about our erstwhile friend, the amazing Cliff? There's warehouses full of robots just like him downtown, all packed up like toy soldiers, waiting for something. That anything to do with you?”

Rad pulled the metal rod from his pocket. The King's eyes lit up and he smiled before holding out his hand. Rad pulled his own away and shook his head. “I met a guy earlier who didn't like the look of this little thing one bit. Was scared of it even. You care to explain why?”

The King raised an eyebrow and slipped his hands into the pockets of his velvet jacket. “Oh, probably thought it was some bad hoodoo. My work here makes some people nervous, although I can't think why.”

Rad sighed and held the object out. “OK, fine, knock yourself out,” he said.

The King took it slowly, his fingers wrapping around the cylinder. Then it quickly disappeared into a pocket.

“Kane Fortuna,” said Rad. “Now.”

The King nodded. “Come.”

The King walked toward the backstage door. Rad followed, but when Jennifer moved after him the King stopped, turning on his heel and holding up a hand.

“Ah, Ms Jones. Please make yourself comfortable here. Mr Bradley and I won't be long.”

Jennifer met Rad's eye. Rad frowned.

“Where are we going?” he asked. “Why can't she come?”

“Trust me,” said the King. Then he smiled the infuriating smile and turned away, vanishing through the door.

Jennifer sighed. “I don't like this.”

Rad adjusted his hat. Neither did he. He glanced around the theater, his fingers playing over the pistol in his coat pocket. He was armed… but so was Jennifer. The big silver gun still hung from her hand.

“We'll be fine,” he said, drawing in close, his voice low. “If I can keep his majesty busy, you can take a look around, see what you can find.”

“OK. But be careful.”

Rad flashed a smile and knocked the brim of his hat with a knuckle. “You too,” he said. Then he followed the King through the door, wondering what he was going to say to Kane Fortuna.