The Live-Forever Machine (17 page)

“Maybe, but there’s no way we could pull it off. You’d need to send a lot of extra voltage through the power lines.” Eric followed his gaze to the machine’s base, encircled by corrugated tubing. It glistened darkly, wet with moisture, pulsing slightly from the water pressure.

“The water,” Chris said. “Cut it off.”

Eric nodded slowly. “It’ll overheat.”

“Yeah. And something that big, when it overheats, it’ll probably melt the memory boards. Don’t know how we’d do it, though.”

Eric’s eyes flicked back to the hole in the cavern wall. Coyle had reappeared, carrying several small oil paintings under one arm, and a clay statuette under the other. He set the artifacts down by the table in front of the televisions and proceeded to rip the paintings apart with his bare hands, snapping the wooden frames across his leg, clawing the canvas into rags. Then he hefted the statuette, looked at it contemptuously for a moment, and hurled it against the wall, where it exploded into dust.

Anger smouldered inside Eric. This was a hundred times worse than what he’d seen in the medieval armoury. Coyle’s twisted face, the sound of splintering wood, ripping canvas, disintegrating stone—it was completely insane.

He looked back at the machine, steaming by the storm drain, its electronic innards translating languages thousands of years old. Chris was right, they had been idiots to come down here empty-handed. What was wrong with them!

He pressed his palms against his exhausted legs and felt the bulge of Jonah’s junk in his pocket. He reached in, grabbed it. Chris craned his neck to look. Eric blew away the clots of
dust and shredded paper and was surprised at how little there really was. In his cupped hands he held a small metal paperweight and a nail.

He drove the nail in with the flat of the paperweight. Three fast blows and the sharp tip pierced the rubber tubing. He yanked back the nail and a narrow jet of warm water spurted out.

“One,” he whispered to Chris.

It hadn’t been difficult to reach the memory tower. Coyle’s back was almost fully turned to them, and the cables and pipes had hidden them as they darted in, crouched low. Eric was amazed at the thing’s size—it was much taller than it had looked from the distance, maybe four metres high. Oil lines glistened like snakes across its dark surface. Cog-wheels meshed with a whisper. Eric could feel the heat from its metal innards. A black smell poisoned the air, thick as tar. His skin tingled; the hairs on his forearms stood on end.

“Electric charge,” said Chris, watching the hairs on his own arms. “This thing really puts out.”

Spray from the torrent surging through the storm drain hung in the hot air. Eric blinked to clear his eyes. He moved the nail over and hammered it in farther along the corrugated tubing.
Another stream shot out, drenching his shirt. He smiled, repositioned the nail and drove it home again. The roar of water drowned out his hammer strikes.

Chris peered cautiously around the base of the machine.

“Where is he?” Eric asked.

“Still there at the monitor.”

“How many holes do we need?”

“A lot. It’ll take a while to overheat. It’s not going to happen right away.”

Eric didn’t say anything. He kept on hammering the nail through the piping. His arm fell into a robotic rhythm; his mind emptied itself. All he was aware of was the water, pooling around his knees, arching through the air. He hardly noticed that the fingers of his left hand were bleeding, battered again and again between the paperweight and head of the nail.

“Listen, listen,” Chris was saying.

“What?” Eric felt as if he’d been jolted out of a daydream.

“It’s starting.”

The machine’s buzz had changed pitch slightly, the sound of meshing gears a little more laboured now. Eric brushed a hand across his forehead, sweeping away sweat.

“It’s getting hotter, too,” he said. “Will he notice?”

“Might. Depends if he gets a warning on the monitor.” He looked around the machine again. “Hang on. I think he’s going back to the cellar.”

Eric leaned over and watched as Coyle disappeared through the hole in the cavern wall. His eyes flicked back to the long table where the white canister lay, gleaming in the wash of television light.

“How much longer before it overheats?” he asked Chris urgently. Chris shook his head. “No idea.” “I’m going to go grab the scroll.” He pressed the nail and paperweight into Chris’s hand. “Keep hammering.”

Crouched low, he scuttled out from behind the memory tower and along the storm drain. He hardly felt attached to his own body; he was just a set of eyes scanning the cavern as his legs moved him closer to the television pyramid. Still no sign of Coyle. Quick. Quick. He darted over to the long table. The noise from the televisions swirled around him like a dust tornado.

“… and would you believe the swimming pool alone cost over three million …”

“… streets flooded …”

“… I’ll take Rock Stars for a hundred …”

“… luxury as you’ve never …”

“… disaster struck again …”

“… won a brand new …”

“… latest in high fashion …”

“… blockbuster smash …”

“… hundred victims …”

Eric grabbed the white canister.

“… I can see you …”

Eric felt his skin prickle with terror. He slowly looked up at the array of flashing screens. On the television at the top of the pyramid was Coyle’s face, eyes looking straight into his own.

“Gotcha,” Coyle said, and the screen went black.

Eric whirled, a cry bottled in his throat, his fingers tightening convulsively around the canister. Coyle had emerged from the hole in the cavern wall, a rifle readied at his shoulder. In his paralyzed panic, Eric almost laughed: everyone wanted a gun, he thought. But this one looked real.

“Drop it,” Coyle called out, striding towards him. “Hands in the air where I can see them. Freeze. Don’t try to run for it or I’ll blow your head off.” Coyle must have gotten his lines from a
TV
cop show, Eric thought. “You know what this is?” Coyle went on, giving the rifle a little shake. “It’s a lightning gun. Ever seen one? It shoots out a stream of negative ions, then builds up a positive charge. The spark leaps. Lightning. Hurts more than bullets.”

At least with Alexander there had been clues of his age—his speech, his musty smell, his emaciated body, his cough. With Coyle there was nothing. Except, Eric now noticed, the eyes: they were an unreal neon blue.

“Alexander sent you,” said Coyle, darting glances around the cavern. “Right?”

Eric nodded. What other reason could he give for being down here, hundreds of metres below the city?

“Where is he?”

There was alarm in Coyle’s eyes. Maybe Alexander was right, Eric thought; he hadn’t expected anyone to find his hiding place so easily.

“He’s going to unmake you.” He took the chance and blurted it out, watching Coyle’s face for a reaction. The immortal’s eyes darkened to the colour of deep sea water and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

“Old Alexander’s told you a lot, hasn’t he?”

Eric said nothing.

“You’re wrong, you know. He won’t unmake me. He’s afraid to do it. He’s had his chances, hundreds of them.” Coyle raised his eyebrows. “Where is he now? Is he here?” When Eric didn’t answer, Coyle tapped the hot muzzle of the gun against his chin. “Is he with you?”

“No.”

“He sent you to do his dirty work, didn’t he? To steal my scroll?” He studied Eric carefully for a moment. “But I suppose he said it was his. We worked on it together, didn’t he tell you? It’s mine as much as his.”

“He said you were his research assistant. You stole his working notes.”

Coyle’s pupils contracted like dark whirlpools. For a moment, it seemed he was trying to remember something, but quickly gave up. “Well, that’s wrong,” he said harshly. “He lies a lot, you know. You can’t trust him. We were partners. But when we finished, he wanted all the credit for himself. We weren’t even going to try to use it. But he broke his promise, and tried to hide it from me.”

Eric’s stomach felt queasy. Had Coyle really forgotten everything, as Alexander had said? Was he just making this up? He said it with such conviction.

“He was the first to make himself,” Coyle said again. “He didn’t tell you that, did he? That cough of his? It’s TB. Tuberculosis. He was sick. He knew he’d die soon if he didn’t make himself immortal.”

Eric thought of the blood on the handkerchief. The wasting illness, Alexander had said. It made sense. Anyone would do something drastic if they knew they were going to die otherwise.
Was that all it was? Coyle’s version made sense, too! How would he ever know who was telling the truth?

He let his eyes flick to the computer tower. How much longer before it overheated?

“And there was another thing,” Coyle said softly. “Greed. Did he show you his private hoard in the cellar? He just keeps it all to himself, doesn’t he?” Coyle tapped the side of his skull. “He’s crazy. That stuff was just falling apart.”

Eric was beginning to feel lightheaded. He thought of Alexander, walking through his cellar, speaking Latin to his treasures—the things he was letting tarnish and rot in the damp.

“At least he didn’t smash them,” Eric said hoarsely. He had to talk, to convince himself that Alexander wasn’t mad. “I saw what you did to those things.”

Coyle’s smooth face tightened. “They were old and ugly and broken,” he said in a dangerously soft voice. “There’s no
point
to them anymore. Alexander doesn’t see that. He’s crazy. What else has he told you, what other lies?”

“Everything about you,” Eric said contemptuously.

“Really?” There was a look of amusement on Coyle’s face. But the smile contracted into a snarl. “Did he tell you about this?” With his free
hand he reached for his T-shirt hem and yanked it up. A broad, jagged line of scar tissue ran from his navel to his breastbone.

Eric felt his stomach rise.

“He didn’t tell you about that?” Coyle said, letting his shirt drop again. “He was waiting for me in the dark. He slammed me through with a spear. I was pinned to the wall like a bug. It didn’t kill me, but the pain! He wanted to see me suffer, kept twisting the blade in my guts. Then he locked me in a cell.”

The Louvre. Alexander had trapped Coyle, and sealed him in an underground vault. But he hadn’t said anything about stabbing him. That scar. Eric tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry and he thought he might choke. Could Alexander really have done that?

“You were trying to steal the scroll,” Eric said, locking his eyes on his sneakers. “You wanted to unmake him. He was just trying to protect himself—the museums, too.”

“No,” Coyle said. “He’s dangerous. He’s got to be unmade. Don’t you see that? He’s lost his grip.” His voice was like a whisper in Eric’s ear now. “How can you believe anything he says? He sends you down here alone to steal back the scroll, to do his dirty work! Why didn’t he come himself? Didn’t he tell you the danger? He’s a coward. He’s using you.”

Eric had known as much all along. But he’d still decided to come down and try to stop Coyle from translating the live-forever machine. Why? He forced himself to go over the reasons. For the museum. For the old things. Discovery of King Tut’s tomb, 1922. War of the Roses, 1450. And for the first time he wondered if he was doing it for his father, too. Would Dad be proud of him, wanting to save all the things he talked about his whole life? Would doing this change anything between them?

“The live-forever machine,” Coyle said, poking at the white canister with his rifle. “Did Alexander tell you that’s what he called it? He doesn’t know what a machine is! This is just crumbling paper. I could tear it to pieces! A machine is metal guts, it’s steel cable, it’s silicon chips, it’s heat and smoke!” He nodded in the direction of the memory tower. “That,” he said, his neon blue eyes gleaming, “is the true live-forever machine.”

Eric looked at the technical manuals stacked on the table—thick coil-bound volumes on electrical engineering, computer languages, artificial intelligence—sheaves of paper covered with columns of numbers and complex formulae. Coyle had built the thing himself.

Some kind of genius—wasn’t that what Chris had said?

“Poor Alexander,” Coyle said patronizingly. “Spending all his time slinking around rotting old things! They’re useless to us now; their time is over and done with! How can we plunge ahead into our glorious future if we’re always looking back over our shoulders, being pulled back by the dreary, dead past. Alexander hates the present and fears the future. The future! Bigger, faster, better. The glorious future soars forward at a million kilometres a second. The past stands still, frozen. We must press ahead! Forget everything. Destroy it all!”

Coyle shouted out his words with the ferocity of a fanatic, sweeping his arms back and forth, waving the lightning-maker. Maybe he was right, Eric suddenly thought. What use was the past? Look at Alexander, coughing up sixteen-hundred-year-old blood, trying to remember everything, treasure everything—except people. He didn’t know what being alive was. And you, Dad, he thought: wouldn’t it be better if you could stop thinking about her, dying over and over again in your mind. Just forget her.

“Do you see it?” Coyle cried out. “The world is new and improved every day. There are machines all around us, wonderful, beautiful machines that power cars and jets, build buildings, open doors, send images across the world! Forget about the past! Let me tell you about
optical fibres, genetic engineering, super aluminum and space probes! I’m talking about androids and artificial intelligence, machines that can talk, shop and walk the dog. I can see cities a thousand storeys high. I can see vehicles faster and sleeker. I can see the future bigger and brighter!”

Perspiration beaded his forehead. Spit was collecting in a white rim at the corners of his mouth. Television light played over his face.

“We have to start right away! Right now!” Coyle roared. “The glorious future awaits us. We have to build and rebuild new cities—the towering triangles of steel and titanium. We’ll start with the museum! Think of how many buildings we could put in that space! All old things must be destroyed! Jettison the past!”