Shade's Children (20 page)

It was Drum’s pack that Ella had salvaged. Still done up and waterproof, it had dry clothes for both of them, though Ella had to roll up sleeves and trousers and belt the middle in tightly.

The pack also had food, which Drum attacked with unusual rapacity, eating four cans of peaches in syrup and three big packets of oatmeal cookies in about ten minutes—the equivalent of three meals. Ella didn’t intervene, knowing he was replacing energy lost using his Change Talent to slow their fall.

Both had lost their swords in the river but still had small knives and some of the equipment from their belt pouches. The explosives kit was gone, though—still on a spider robot’s back, following faithfully in Shade’s footsteps.

They also had their old, battery-operated Deceptors.

“Shade turned these off on us, didn’t he?” asked Ella as she ripped the newer model off and stored it away in a pouch. “And he controlled Ninde’s so she couldn’t check the train—and Gold-Eye’s, too, so his vision couldn’t come through.”

“Yes,” replied Drum. “He obviously knew what was going to happen. All that stuff about listening in to the Overlords…he meant talking to them as well.”

“But why?” asked Ella, slapping the twisted trunk of the willow she was leaning against. “I don’t understand it. Shade has his faults, but he was always against the Overlords. And why tell us about the Grand Projector if he was just going to hand us over to the Overlords anyway?”

“I think he’s probably still an enemy of the Overlords.” Drum sighed. “But not a friend of ours anymore. Shade has never been afraid to throw people away to gain information or something that he wants. I think that’s what he’s doing now. Gold-Eye and Ninde…paid whatever the price was for what Shade wanted to know.”

“Yes,” replied Ella somberly, thinking back to Gold-Eye and Ninde, so briefly happy under their blankets in the railway carriage. To go from that to a sudden death at the hands of a friend…her own hands…

Ella shook her head, trying to forget what had happened. To move on, as she always had to…

“So what he told us about the Grand Projector is probably true,” she said, biting her bottom lip. “It is on top of Mount Silverstone, and destroying it will make everything right again.”

“Not right, Ella,” said Drum softly, his high voice just audible above the wind whispering through the willows and the burble of the river. “But it will put things back the way they were. Give everyone…all the kids in the Dorms and the Training Grounds, the wild ones in the city…give them a chance to make their own lives. To live them, to grow up, to grow old…”

“Neither of us will grow old if we don’t move on from here,” said Ella. “How many batteries have you got for your old Deceptor? I’ve got three.”

“Twelve,” said Drum, smiling and reaching into his pack. “I collected everybody’s and there was a box of charged spares in the carriage. I thought it might be a good idea—just in case.”

The two Overlords sprang down from their kneeling Wingers at the same time but didn’t even look at each other as they marched across the field to Shade. The two Myrmidon Masters with him knelt, but the large spider robot made no move that could be construed as a polite greeting. Obviously Shade considered himself the Overlords’ equal.

The Overlords stood facing the spider robot for several minutes, communicating. Red Diamond seemed agitated, gesturing with flame-gauntleted hands at Shade, and pointing to Gold-Eye and Ninde. In contrast, Black Banner stood quietly, its only movement the flutter of small black flags along its ebony-metaled arms.

They were still at this discussion when two large shadows zipped across Gold-Eye and Ninde. Looking up, they saw two more giant Wingers circle in for a landing—with two more Overlords on their backs.

One was clad in such dazzling armor that it was hard to look at—armor of bright mirrors, blinding in the sun. The other was relatively drab, wearing a flexible suit of green metal and a closed helmet topped with crownlike spikes of emerald glass.

“Silver Sun and Emerald Crown,” whispered Ninde. “I wonder what they want.”

“Us,” said Gold-Eye, watching the two new Overlords. Ignoring Red Diamond, Black Banner, and Shade, they were walking straight over to the captives.

Red Diamond, obviously surprised by their arrival, was the first to react, moving quickly to cut off the new arrivals. Black Banner and Shade followed closely, trailed by Myrmidon Masters.

A few minutes later they were all standing in an antagonistic bunch five yards away from where Gold-Eye and Ninde lay on the ground. Facing each other, the four Overlords started waving their arms and stamping their feet. Shade left them to it and stalked over to Gold-Eye and Ninde, his spiky limbs sinking into the soft earth.

“You are popular,” he announced, all eight legs bending in the middle as he lowered the central ovoid down to their eye level. “Silver Sun wants to take you to some sort of meeting of Overlords and then kill you. Emerald Crown advocates killing you now and claiming it was an accident. Black Banner and Red Diamond want to breed you and use the babies for genetic examination—What am I saying?”

Ninde spat on him then, her gobbet of spit sliding down the crystal facing of his body. Strangely, it seemed to shock Shade. He rocked back and the fiber optics inside the ovoid sparked with mad activity.

“What…who…Robert Ingman…is that you, Robert? A girl just spat on me…. I have killed children…. I can’t believe I/you said that babies…babies! will be used for…no…I cannot…personality integration error…shut down and restart.”

With those words, all the lights in the spider robot’s central casing went out, and all around the field Shade’s lesser robots fell where they stood, spider legs flailing, rat paws shaking and clawing the ground.

Then the fiber optics sparked again, and Shade continued to speak, apparently unaware of what had just happened.

“Examination and multiple cloning. However…yes, Silver Sun seems to have some legal or traditional support for taking you before this Council. To the Battle Room, as they call it. And it seems I am to come with you. Naturally you will be prisoners, while I will be an honored visitor. Just remember that if you want me to help you later on, you must forget certain little head ornaments worn on the raid to the Meat Factory.”

Rising to his legs, Shade picked his way back to the group of Overlords, his lesser robots righting themselves and resuming their eccentric orbit around him.

“He’s mad,” whispered Ninde, watching the spider robot waving its forearms at the Overlords. “Totally mad.”

“Always was,” Gold-Eye whispered back. “Got worse with Thinker.”

But mad or not, Shade seemed correct about the Overlords’ having reached a decision. The four of them put out their right hands to meet in the middle, then turned away and went back to their waiting Wingers. Mounting them, they took off one after the other, the giant Wingers running almost the full length of the field, wings flapping furiously, before becoming airborne.

When the last—Silver Sun—had taken off, normal Wingers came spiraling down. These Wingers had captive nets hanging below them, the sort used to take children from the Dormitories to the Meat Factory.

Ella and Drum climbed out of the river canyon at dusk, old-style Deceptors on and senses alert for creatures.

Neither had any experience of farmland—parks and the thistle fields near the Meat Factory were their only prior knowledge of nature—so they proceeded warily, feeling far too exposed in the middle of all the open country.

Their first priority, they’d decided, was to find a map and work out an alternative route to Mount Silverstone. If Shade suspected they’d survived, he could easily tell the Overlords to patrol the Old Highway. And there was no way of knowing if they had enough Deceptor batteries to outlast a determined hunt. Nor would the Deceptors be of any use if Shade put his robots to work for the Overlords as well….

So they headed in the opposite direction from the Old Highway, hoping to hit a road with cars on it. Vehicles were always a good source for maps, and other things too, sometimes.

For hours all they crossed were pastures and single-lane roads devoid of vehicles. There were some tractors about, standing like forgotten mechanical scarecrows, stopped in the middle of some vital agricultural action.

The moon rose after a while, three-quarters full, so they didn’t have to use lights. But this moonlit night was no comfort for city folk. Owls were out hunting, their calls making Ella and Drum jump every time. Dogs—or something similar—were howling too, off in the distance.

Around midnight they stumbled on a treasure trove—a two-lane road suffering major construction. There, behind a set of portable traffic lights, six cars were lined up patiently waiting for the chance to get home after the holidays, a chance that never came. One of the cars was topped by blue lights, catching the moonlight to glow eerily in the darkness.

“Police,” said Ella. “Let’s check that one first.”

There was a map in the police car—a paperback road atlas. Drum studied it with his flashlight while Ella took the ignition keys and opened the trunk. He was tracing what he thought was their path from the river when Ella came back, holding a small steel box with a large padlock through the clasp.

Silently, she handed it to Drum, indicating the lock. Putting the road atlas down, he took the lock in one big hand and the box in the other. One sudden twist and the clasp came completely away.

“Easy,” said Drum, handing the box back and picking up the atlas again. “I think I know where we are, by the way.”

“Good,” muttered Ella, opening the box to reveal a shining, chromed automatic pistol. A target weapon, complete with optical sights. Two full magazines lay next to it, in their own holes in the gray packaging foam. Ella took the pistol out, checked it was empty, loaded a magazine, and put it through her belt—without working the slide to put a round in the chamber.

“What do you want that for?” asked Drum curiously. Both knew from experience that even a Tracker could take more than a dozen heavy rifle rounds before going down. The pistol was only a .22, maybe a .25.

“Shade,” replied Ella bitterly, tapping the butt of the weapon. “I bet that crystal and the Thinker aren’t bulletproof—though I’d be even happier if we could find a rocket launcher.”

“I hope we never even see him,” said Drum quietly, his voice carrying through the night. “He’ll go anyway, when the Grand Projector falls.”

“So where do you think we are?” Ella asked as the silence stretched on.

Drum looked up at her from the seat, seeing her face set and stern, white in the moonlight. Saint Ella, some of the others had called her back at the Submarine. Saint Ella, an avenging angel who had served her god well. Now that god had fallen to the enemy and was listed in the avenging angel’s category of wrongs to be righted. Whatever that might cost her personally.

“We’re somewhere on this road, I think,” he said, pointing to a squiggly black line. “If we follow it westward, we can take this road—Highway 107—up to Vanson. So we’ll come in from the opposite side to the Old Highway.”

“Sounds good to me,” replied Ella. She looked up at the moon and then back down at Drum. “Shall we go on now? Or rest here?”

“Go on,” said Drum. “The Deceptor batteries won’t last forever.”

“True,” replied Ella thoughtfully. “By the way, can you ride a bicycle?”

“A bicycle?” asked Drum. “I don’t know. Why?”

“Because there’s four of them in a van back there,” said Ella. “If we can manage them, we might be able to make Vanson by dawn. Shade won’t be expecting that!”

“I might be too heavy,” said Drum doubtfully.

“Let’s find out,” replied Ella. “The writing on the frames says they’re mountain bikes. I guess that means they’re strong.”

“Do you know how to ride a bike?” asked Drum as they wheeled their chosen steeds out of the van and looked at them dubiously.

“I had one…I think,” replied Ella, her eyes going vague. “But it had three wheels—and was about this high…”

She indicated a position somewhat lower than her knee and laughed, a sad sort of laugh for a childhood lost long ago.

“So I don’t think that it will have left me with any riding skills. Come on…let’s try it.”

The Myrmidons separated Gold-Eye and Ninde before force-marching them to the waiting captive nets and locking them in. Then the creatures took off, dragging their burdens along the grass before lifting up into the sky.

In other circumstances Ninde might have enjoyed the experience of flying, even flying about in a net under a stinking Winger, its sweat dripping on her as it flew. It was a unique experience, looking down at the world below, all patches of green and faded brown, with dark roads crisscrossing the color, the blue-brown swath of the Williams River and the endless rows of suburban houses beyond it.

She’d half expected the Winger to turn toward the city and then the Meat Factory—but it flew south, gaining height till they were so high Ninde was shivering uncontrollably from the cold, her fingernails blue, all interest in the world below lost as she curled up in a heat-conserving ball.

Finally the Winger stopped its steady, wing-beating climb and began to glide down, spiraling in a great circle after its flightmates ahead, who were carrying Gold-Eye and Shade’s spider-robot body.

Ninde uncurled. As they sank lower, she regained interest in the ground below. They were flying over a part of the city she didn’t know—somewhere in the southern suburbs—down toward a long crescent-shaped beach of very white sand, with the open ocean stretching out to the horizon behind it.

Their ultimate destination was easily identifiable—Wingers were already landing on its capacious lawns.

What had once been a large, old-fashioned house—or perhaps an old-style hotel—stood in the middle of the lawns and carefully tended rose gardens. But it was altered and strange, with walls of many different colors that shifted and crawled over the surface, and a roof of silver that moved like mercury, flowing bright reflections back and forth so it made Ninde queasy just to look at it.

The house was at least four stories high, with a broad, domed tower at one end, like an observatory. The silver globe of a Projector gleamed from atop the dome, still brighter than the shifting silver roof—and Myrmidons patrolled the ivy-grown walls that contained the gardens and separated the house from the beach.

The lawn got closer and closer, and Ninde braced herself for a bruising impact, but the Winger flapped back vigorously just before the net—and Ninde—hit the ground, making it a soft landing.

Myrmidons quickly took her from the net, forcing her across the lawn to an open door, thrusting her inside to the waiting hands of two Myrmidon Masters. Unlike any others Ninde had seen before, these wore no colors—just plain white armor of small interlocking plates, and snout-faced helms decorated with white plumes.

They acted just the same though, grabbing Ninde’s arms and propelling her through a door that opened like an iris, then down a gray, featureless corridor made of some softly shining material that suggested metal rather than wood or plaster. The floor sounded strange too, with the Myrmidon’s heavy hobnails screeching on it horribly.

They passed several doors along the corridor, each of many swirling colors loud and strident against the gray walls. Then they came to a plain white door and the Myrmidons stopped.

One of them touched the door and it slid open, revealing a small, brightly lit chamber painted completely white. Gold-Eye was sitting on a bed in it, looking totally dejected. He sprang up as he saw Ninde, catching her as the Myrmidons threw her in, the door sliding shut behind her.

Ella and Drum rode into Vanson warily and wearily a little more than half an hour after dawn. Good time considering the half hour lost learning to stay on the mountain bikes and then the further time lost using the wrong gears, throwing chains, and losing control going down hills. Not to mention doctoring grazes and swearing at their trusty vehicles.

Vanson seemed empty of all life…including creatures. A small winter resort town, it was snow-bound in winter and cold enough now. High-angled roofs characterized its architecture, which showed a fondness for ersatz European chalets. All the buildings were dominated by the Crookback Range, a dark mass that filled half the northern horizon. Caught by the rising sun, snow and ice were already gleaming in patches on it.

“Warm clothes…and socks,” said Ella, looking up at the ridge, studying the two chairlifts that climbed up from the town. Both had access roads under them, switchbacking from side to side between pylons. But she knew from the road atlas that only one chairlift went all the way to the top of the ridge—and only one access road.

And from the top of the range, there was only one trail to the summit of Silverstone Mountain. It was out to the west, she knew, but not currently visible, lost in a clump of cloud. Cloud that hid the mountain—and the Grand Projector.

Drum touched her arm and pointed. Ella looked where he pointed, expecting a creature or some danger—but couldn’t see anything.

“What?”

“Shops,” said Drum, pointing again at a metal signpost that said, in white letters against blue,
ALPINE SHOPPING CENTER
.

“Let’s get some warm clothes—and have a rest.”