City of the Cyborgs (10 page)

“What’s the matter, Rainor?”

Rainor did not answer. Then he broke into a run toward a group of female cyborgs.

Reb took off after him. To his amazement, he saw the tall boy go up to one of the cyborgs, a girl with brown hair and brown eyes, and put his arms around her.

“Well,” Reb said with a broad grin. “I reckon he’s done found his sweetheart.”

Rainor held Mayfair’s arms and looked directly into her eyes. “Mayfair, don’t you know me?”

The girl did not answer him. There was a cyborg blankness in her stare, and she stood perfectly still.

“Mayfair, speak to me!”

“I reckon she can’t do that,” Reb said sadly. “This is Mayfair, is it? Sure enough?”

“Of course it’s Mayfair! Reb, we’ve got to take her with us. We can’t leave her now that we’ve found her.”

“Wait a minute. We can’t just carry her off. I’m pretty sure they’d be able to trace her through that thing she’s got on her head. That Peacemaker’s probably got some kind of a board that shows where every one of these cyborgs is located at all times.”

“I don’t care! I’m not leaving her!” Rainor’s lips were tight as he stared at Reb.

“Now let’s think about this. Let’s follow her—see where she goes—and then we’ll always know where to find her,” Reb said.

But Rainor was past reason. “I’m not letting her go, Reb,” he said. He suddenly reached out and grasped her antenna and began to tug at it.

Mayfair let out a pitiful cry and pulled away from him.

“Wait, Rainor! You might kill her that way! We don’t know how those things are attached.”

“But Cee Dee was all right.”

“Hers is still attached. It’s just disconnected somehow. Gone bad. But this one’s not.”

At that moment Reb saw a troop of six annihilators approaching from down the street.

One of the annihilators said loudly, “Unit Rd63 is being attacked by insane units.”

“Annihilate insane units at once!” The command fairly crackled in the air.

Rainor drew his sword, but Reb grabbed his arm. “There’s too many of ’em. And there’s more on the way, I’ll bet. We’ve got to get out of here, Rainor.”

Rainor hesitated. His face was twisted with the agony of indecision.

But Reb pulled at him, saying, “Come on! Come on! What good would it do Mayfair for us to get killed? We couldn’t save her then, could we?”

Clearly, Rainor hated the idea of running, but the annihilators were approaching quickly. “I’ll be back for you, Mayfair!” he promised. “Don’t worry! I’ll save you from the Peacemaker!”

Reb said, “Let’s skedaddle out of here.”

Both boys were fleet runners and quickly outdistanced their slower pursuers.

“One good thing is that those annihilators aren’t much at running,” Reb said as they twisted and turned.

Finally they lost the cyborgs.

“We’ve got to get her out somehow,” Rainor kept repeating.

“Let’s go back to the hideout and see what the others think. We’ll have a meeting.”

And they hurried to the abandoned cafeteria.

“I found Mayfair!” Rainor cried, and the Sleepers gathered around him.

“Where is she?” Abbey asked.

Quickly Rainor explained what had happened. “I wanted to just pick her up and bring her, but Reb said that she’d be traced.”

Cee Dee nodded. “That is right. All units are attached to a large board. Wherever we are, it shows up on that board.”

“Good thing we didn’t bring her, then,” Reb said, “or we’d have a whole army of annihilators in here.”

“She couldn’t understand anything I said, and her eyes were dead looking,” Rainor moaned. “She’s just like the other cyborgs.”

Abbey put her hand on his arm. “Don’t worry, Rainor. Somehow we’ll get her out of this.”

“That’s right,” Wash said. “We’ve spent half of our time here in Nuworld either getting thrown into dungeons or saving somebody else who’d been thrown in. We’ll get her out.”

Dave began to ask questions rapidly. “Where was she, Rainor? Do you think you could find her again?”

“I know where she was, and we’ll just watch until she shows up again.”

“But what will we do when she does?” Jake asked.
“It’d be the same thing. The minute we try to take her off, the Peacemaker will trace what’s happening.”

“I don’t know,” Rainor said stubbornly. “I just know I’ve got to get her out of that terrible life.”

Cee Dee spoke up suddenly. “It must be awful for her. It was bad enough for me, but I was very young when I was made part of the One.”

“Are you starting to remember your other life now?” Reb asked. Her memory had been very bad. “Can you remember when you were brought here?”

“It’s beginning to come back,” Cee Dee said. A longing came into her eyes as she said painfully, “We had a nice house, and my mother and father were there. My mother would sing to me, and my father would take me with him sometimes out in the woods. And then the annihilators came. My father tried to fight them, and they killed him and my mother too. They brought me here with them. I cried and I fought, but it was no good.” Tears came into her eyes. “I remember how nice it was when I was a child, and now all that is gone.”

“Don’t worry, Cee Dee. We can’t give you your parents back, but you’ll never have to go back and be a cyborg again,” Abbey said quickly.

“But what about this antenna? If I take it out, I’ll die. Somehow the Peacemaker made it like that. That way he never loses his slaves. They either stay, or they die.”

At that moment Josh burst through the doorway. His face was pale, and he was trembling.

“Josh, what is it?” Abbey asked. “Are you hurt?”

“No, but they’ve got Sarah!”

“What!” Dave said, his jaw dropping. “How did that happen?”

“The annihilators just surrounded us. I fought as long as I could, but more of them kept coming. I was gonna stay and fight until they killed me, but Sarah said to run for help. That I couldn’t help her if I was dead.”

“She was right, Josh,” Jake said. “You did the right thing.”

“But I feel rotten.” Josh gritted his teeth. “I had to run off and leave her with those monsters.”

“What will they do with her?” Abbey whispered.

It was Cee Dee who answered. “She will become part of the One.”

“They’ll make her a cyborg?” Josh almost wept. “No!”

Rainor nodded. “I know how you feel, Josh. I found Mayfair. They’d already made a cyborg out of her.”

Josh listened as Rainor related his encounter with Mayfair. Then he said, “We keep
saying
we’ve got to do something. But I just don’t know what.”

“They’re going to get us one by one,” Jake said thoughtfully. “The way things are going, sooner or later we’ll all be cyborgs.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Reb said as cheerfully as he could, “There’s one good thing about all this.”

“I’d like to know what!” Abbey glared at him.

Reb pulled off his Stetson and scratched his head. “I remember a few times when we had to decide whether we would stay and fight or whether we’d run off.”

“I remember a few of those times myself,” Josh said, “but what’s cheerful about that?”

Reb forced a grin. “The good thing is that we don’t have any decision to make this time.”

“What do you mean, no decision?” Jake asked with astonishment.

“It means we can’t get through that fence, so we’ve
got
to stay here and fight.”

At the mention of the electronic fence, all of them appeared to be remembering what had happened to Josh when he’d tried to pass through it. Wash put everyone’s thoughts into words. “I don’t want to get barbecued on that thing.”

“So that leaves just one thing to do,” Josh said firmly. “That shield is controlled somewhere, and I’m betting if we get to the Peacemaker, we’ll get to the controls.”

Rainor turned pale with anger. “I’m going to get my hands on that Peacemaker one day, and then I’ll give him peace all right. A long peace.”

“Calm down,” Dave said quickly. “We’ve all got to think sanely about this. There’s just a few of us, so we’ve got to move carefully. We can’t afford to lose any more of our number.”

“That’s right, Dave,” Josh said. He appeared to calm himself by an effort of will. “All right, let’s talk about this. No idea is too wild for me.”

“Well,” Jake said, “I have about forty great ideas a day with gusts up to seventy-five. I’ll come up with something.”

T
here is no Sarah
. The voice seemed to come from far away and was like a dream. It was soft and gentle but very insistent.

There is no Sarah
.

Something in her struggled to thrust this aside. She knew somehow that what the voice was saying was terribly wrong, and yet she seemed unable to resist. It was as if she were being drawn into a whirlpool where she was losing everything. And still the voice went on.
There is no Sarah
.

On and on the voice whispered. It was not so much that the words came to her ear. They seemed to originate deep inside of her, and there was no relief from them.

“There
is
a Sarah!” she cried out.

Instantly there was a stab of pain in her temple. Reaching up she touched the electrode that was fastened there.

Do not touch your antenna. You will die if it is removed
.

A silence filled her head then, and the pain gradually subsided.

There is no Sarah—that is a dream. You are 6r9g
. The voice penetrated every part of her being.

Sarah Collingwood was vaguely aware that she was sitting in a room. Others were moving around her, but she did not seem able to focus on them. The voice went on. It was gentle, insistent, hypnotic.

You are 6r9g. There is no Sarah. There never was a Sarah. You are now part of the One
.

“I am part of the One.” She found herself saying this. Was her will leaving her? It was as if water were dripping out of a leaky, leather bag. There was little enough of her will left, she knew, and now she tried to steel herself to take back her words. “I
am
Sarah!” she cried, her lips moving but making no sound.

Again the sharp stab of pain struck her so that she gasped and could not catch her breath.

Just relax, 6r9g. You are part of the One. There are no others. There is only the One, and you are part of the One
.

How long this went on, Sarah never knew. At times she would struggle and cry out her name, but the pain would always come. She cried out for pity. But always the voice would come, that soft hypnotic voice that sprang up deep inside of her from somewhere.

You have been ill, but now you are part of the One. There will be no more pain and no more doubts. Everything will be peace. I am the Peacemaker
.

Time ceased to exist for Sarah. There were no clocks, there were no calendars, there were no glorious sunrises or beautiful sunsets.

At times she was dimly aware of others moving about her. They had numbers such as she herself had, but she was not interested in them. They seemed to be faceless and voiceless, and she paid them no heed whatsoever.

At some point, the Peacemaker’s voice came like soothing oil, saying,
It is good to work. Insane people do not work, but you are part of the One, and you will work
.

The voice gently repeated over and over again any
action she must take. In obedience to that voice, she walked down the street and turned into a building. As she stepped inside, the voice said,
You will work in this place
.

Sarah found herself standing at a long table. A moving belt was carrying long green beans past her, and the voice said,
6r9g, you will break the beans into small pieces and put them into the sacks
.

How long she stood there, Sarah did not know. She watched her fingers breaking the beans into small pieces over and over and over again. There was no sense of time passing, but finally the voice said,
You must eat now
.

She ate at the direction of the Peacemaker, and then the inner voice said,
You must rest now. You will go to Station 26r. That will be your place
.

As in a dream, Sarah made her way to the building that the voice indicated. Stepping inside, she was directed to one of the pads on the floor.
Lie down and sleep
.

Obediently she lay down and closed her eyes.

When the voice came again, she rose from the pad, she ate, she went to work. The routine seemed to be repeated many times, but she was not easily conscious of it.

Once, however, as Sarah broke the beans into small lengths, she suddenly was conscious of a memory stirring within her. It was something out of her past. It was the face of a boy. He was calling her name.
Sarah! Sarah!

She cried, “Josh!” and instantly pain drove into her temple. She bowed her head and gritted her teeth. “I am
Sarah!”
she cried out. “I am not a cyborg!”

And then the headache became unbearable. She
lost consciousness and fell in a heap on the floor. As the blackness of unconsciousness rolled over her, she knew only the pain and that Sarah was ceasing to exist. And she wept.

The room was large and airy. It had a high ceiling. The furniture was covered with something like fine silk and was of many colors—scarlets, emerald greens, dark blues. Pictures hung around the walls in gilt frames, and standing against one wall was a beautifully carved and glowing table, set with vessels of silver and crystal and gold.

The Peacemaker looked about his apartment with a sense of satisfaction. He raised his voice and said, “More of this wine.”

A female cyborg dressed in a white gown came at once, picked up a bottle, and brought it to him. She filled his glass. When he said, “Now, back,” the girl returned to her station and stood there as still as a statue.

“When are we ever in this world going to make another journey, Makor?”

The woman who spoke was much younger than the Peacemaker. She was small with large brown eyes, widely spaced. Her hair was brown with glints of red. She was a beautiful girl indeed, and the rose-colored gown that she wore emphasized her beauty.

“What did you say, Cybil?”