Shade's Children (8 page)

“I’m Ella. Who are you?”

“I am Associate Professor Marcus Leamington,” replied the image. “And it seems I must repeat myself. What are you doing in my laboratory? And why are the lights off? I suppose there has been a power failure…while I was…harummm…taking a nap in my lunch hour.”

“Shade sent us to collect some equipment,” Ella said, slowly edging into the room as she spoke, the others moving in behind her. The image didn’t turn toward her as Shade would have, or seem aware that she had moved.

“I’m warning you…I will call security if you don’t leave at once. Where’s that damn phone?”

Fretfully the image reached out with one hand, groping in empty air for a phone that wasn’t there. In the light from the hologram they could see the whole laboratory: a long, thin room lined with benches, and the benches stacked with computers and plastic cabinets, joined by ribbonlike cables and topped with blinking red and green lights. Only the back wall was empty. The hanging cables indicated that it too had once been full of computing equipment.

“I said I’ll call security,” the image—Leamington—whined. He seemed to have pulled a phone out of the air and had the handset up, one finger on the touch pad. “How did you get in, anyway?”

“Go to sleep, Professor Leamington,” Ella said, slowly and carefully. “We’ll take care of everything.”

“Oh, all right then,” grumbled the image. It wavered for a moment, put the phone down, then disappeared, plunging the laboratory into darkness.

“What was that?” asked Ninde as Ella pulled out her witchlight and squeezed it on.

“Shade Mark One?” said Drum, only half questioning.

“Sort of,” Ella replied, walking along one wall, looking at the identifying labels on the computers and other plastic or metal boxes. “Shade didn’t think it would still be working, but he did mention it as a possibility. It’s just an artificial intelligence, though—there’s no human personality. The phrase I used turns it off.”

“Sounded grumpy to me,” said Ninde. “That’s pretty human—”

“I only know what Shade told me,” interrupted Ella impatiently. “Now we need to get all the compact discs out of this storage silo—there should be sixty in all. You can do that, Ninde. Put them in the boxes from the shelf over there. The gray plastic ones, ten CDs to a box. And there’s an instrument pack on the roof we have to detach. Apparently there’s a tool kit—a white metal box about this big…. Yes, that’s it…thanks, Gold-Eye. You come with me up to the roof. Drum, watch the door….”

Gold-Eye watched the sky as Ella unbolted a metal ball about the size of his head from the roof. It had been lit up inside when they first approached, and faintly whistling, but Ella had unplugged several cables that led out of it and down through the roof. Now it was just a heavy lump of metal.

“See anything?” asked Ella, straining at the stiff bolts with a wrench as long as Gold-Eye’s arm.

“No,” replied Gold-Eye, turning a complete circle, shading his eyes with both hands cupped against his eyebrows. “But I can’t see against the sun.”

“Keep looking as close to either side of it as you can,” Ella said absently, kicking at the spanner with her heel. “Should have brought some sunglasses—’cause that’s where they’ll come from, if they do.”

“What are you doing?”

Ninde and Drum both started, for the voice didn’t belong to either of them. Ninde almost dropped the silvery disc she had just taken out of the open CD drawer in the storage silo.

“You’re working for Robert, aren’t you?” continued the disembodied voice, becoming clearer and more recognizable as the one they’d heard before. Professor Leamington. Only now there was no image to go with it.

“Go to sleep, Professor,” said Drum slowly. “We’ll take care of everything.”

“I’m not sleepy anymore,” said Leamington. “Robert’s stealing my data, isn’t he? Planning to publish before I do, stealing my life’s work. I dare-say he wants the new radiation to be named after him. But he won’t, he won’t! He’s gone too far this time. I’ve called security, you see. And the police.”

“Ninde,” said Drum suddenly. “Hurry up.”

“And I’ve set off the burglar alarm,” Leamington continued. “You’re not the only one who’s good with gadgets, Robert. I’m not just a theoretician, oh no. I know how things work. It’s all in the Projectors, Robert….”

His voice continued to rave on, descending into meaningless chatter as he talked about tenure and chairs, grants and committees—and his arch-enemy Robert, who seemed to stand out among many enemies.

“What’s the hurry?” asked Ninde, raising her voice over Leamington’s whiny ramblings.

“Some phones still work,” said Drum. “Alarms too. Overlords listen.”

“But the Death Markers will keep them out….”

“Overlords can ignore them. Hurry up!”

It was Gold-Eye and Ella’s bad luck that the closest flight of Wingers included one with a mind-call. Receiving urgent instructions from their Overlord, they banked to the left and started to descend below the high cirrus—ready for the long dive down. Down to the University.

“That’s it,” said Ella, pulling the last bolt out of the concrete. “Sky still clear?”

“Ye—” Gold-Eye began, and then as his soon-to-be-now vision flashed, with a single picture of Wingers plummeting onto the roof all around them, “No! Wing—”

He had the word only half out when a shadow whisked across them—the wide, long leading shadow of an attacking Winger. Instantly Ella grabbed Gold-Eye and pulled him onto the concrete, just as the Winger shrieked overhead, taloned hands raking the air where Gold-Eye had stood.

In shock he watched it pass, seeing over and over again the human body stretched out with arms stretched longer still; the taloned hands; the stumpy legs ending well above the knees; and the great leather-bellows bat wings spanning twenty feet or more.

And the face, or lack of it. The shrieking, saw-toothed ear-to-ear mouth. The lower jaw thrust out beyond the reach of any lip; the empty socket where once a nose had been. And the bright, shining eyes, twice the size of any human eye but still somehow human.

He didn’t have long to look. Ella grabbed him with one hand, picked up the instrument ball with the other, and sprinted for the stairs.

“Lead Winger,” she gasped as they crashed through the door and down several steps. “Fastest in the flight. Others will be close. Come on!”

Drum heard the Winger scream above and was almost at the door when it burst open to admit Ella and Gold-Eye. Leamington was still raving on about income tax and academic salary reviews, and Ninde was still no more than halfway through removing the CDs from the storage silo.

“Wingers,” said Ella unnecessarily. “Ignoring the Death Markers. What’s that noise?”

“The artificial intelligence,” replied Drum. “Leamington. He…it called the police and set off an alarm.”

“An Overlord?” asked Ella, and then answered her own question. “Has to be, doesn’t it? Gold-Eye, Drum, look out a window—if you can get one open. I’ll help Ninde.”

Putting the instrument ball down, she took a folded nylon backpack out of one of her belt pouches, shook it open, and started packing it with the boxes of CDs. Ninde caught her sense of urgency and worked even faster, pulling the CD drawers out of the silo without waiting for their slow, powered extrusion.

“Forget the cases,” Ella said as she dropped one putting it in. “Just chuck them straight in the bag. Come on!”

Across the room, Drum and Gold-Eye wrestled with a window that had been stuck shut and painted over. Or more correctly, Gold-Eye got in the way until Drum wrenched it open, showering them both with flakes of black plastic paint.

Fresh air, sunlight…and sound came in the open window. Myrmidon marching chants, the whistle of Trackers, the scream of Wingers flying low over the building…

Looking out, they saw two columns of Myrmidons marching across the lawns toward the Abstract Computing building. Three maniples in all, with a Myrmidon Master marching at their head, the black feathers from its plumed helmet cascading down its back. Black squares fluttered on the Master’s sleeves, and one of the Myrmidons carried an ornate battle standard fringed with gold. It had no device, just a plain black field.

Trackers coursed in front of the Myrmidons, noses pressed against the grass. Every few yards, they leaped into the air and whistled, catching the human scent wafting from the building several hundred yards away.

A shadow passed across the window as they watched, and Gold-Eye flinched, but it was gone in a moment—only to be followed by something worse. The shape that had cast the shadow.

An enormous Winger, easily twelve feet tall, with wings forty feet or more across, glided lazily in to land in front of the Myrmidon Master. The Winger knelt, and a smaller, man-sized figure in jetblack armor leaped easily off its back, striding over to the Master. That creature knelt before it, and the Myrmidons behind sank to their knees in rows. The Trackers practically fell down where they were, tongues lolling, and the Wingers ceased their screeching.

“An Overlord,” Drum said, bleakness sounding even in his strange voice. “Black Banner.”

Drum’s words chilled Gold-Eye, even standing in the sun. Suddenly he felt very afraid, more afraid than he had ever been of anything, even a Ferret. He felt dizzy and he heard words over and over again in his head.

“Now, what will we do with you? Now, what will we do with you? Now, what will we do…?”

The Overlord spoke with the Myrmidon Master for a moment. Then it turned toward the building, and the spreading horns on its helmet flashed from black to deep wine-red.

“It sees us,” said Drum, pulling the window closed with a final-sounding thud. But not before Gold-Eye saw the Overlord raise one spike-gauntleted hand and point—straight at him.