Shivers (37 page)

He was about to reach out and pull it down when he heard funny scrabbling sounds behind him.

Renegades!
A whole group of slavering human rejects. There were about a dozen of them, filthy, gibbering, advancing on him with devious intensity.

And they could see him!

At least he had an answer to his question.

Quick! Pull the switch!

The renegades were too fast. Before he could make a move, one had jumped on top of him and brought him to his knees. He tried to get up, tried to fight back, but his arms and legs were pinned.

The switch was just above his head . . .

He felt the renegades surrounding him, breathing down his neck, their eyes mad and hungry, their mouths open wide to taste his flesh.

. . . a million miles away.

* * *

His time was nearly up.

Brad Everson saw by his watch that he would not be able to fool the master much longer. He had to be present at the ceremony—the damned emotionless creature was going to make him watch! It was not programmed in any natural or mechanical, real or artificial, way to feel guilt or remorse, love or sorrow or sympathy. It just coldly did what it had to do. It was a machine, that was all. A monstrous organic machine.

But Everson had still managed to build up a resistance to it. And he had a plan. If Steven could defeat the beast on that larger level,
he
would defeat it on the more personal one. He would save his son. It would take every inch of will power that he had, but he could do it. He’d wait until the very last second. And then it would be too late for the biocomp to stop him.

He started to walk back toward the complex. He always spent some time during his “free” periods in the natural cavern at the edge of the barracks—or one of the others they’d unearthed—giving food, comfort (and medical assistance, which was otherwise never provided) to the drones building the various chambers of the underground city. The biocomp had them working right up until the appointed hour—when it would grant them rest because of the “ceremony.” Hundreds of hungry, tormented men and women were digging out and streamlining three separate caverns which would one day—
never!
—be home to the first 
Marikai
settlers. Miserable moles! Groundslugs!—for all their advancement, that’s all they were, burrowing into the earth and shunning the sunlight. And if the buildings of Manhattan were to tumble to the ground, what did they care?

He found the current members of the committee in the complex’s operations room. They gave each other silent greetings. The others walked about checking dials and levers, computing energy levels, making ready for
the moment.
The moment when the grid would reach full power and the city would die. The beautiful thing was he’d
doctored
the system so that if Steven was successful no one would know it until it was too late to do anything about it.

The biocomp was expecting him. He walked down the hall that led into what he had come to call the creature’s lair. They had attached Earth computers and data banks to the machinery which in part made up the biocomp’s superstructure so that they could more easily deal with it on a human level. They spoke to it in
fortran.

His son Joey had been kept from him, secured somewhere in the barracks adjacent to the complex.

The afternoon the drones had snatched him from the park had been the worst day of Bradford Everson’s life.

Tonight he would see his son for the first and final time.

Steven thought he was drowning when the waves suddenly receded. He opened his clouded eyes and wondered what was wrong with the movie. The picture was running in reverse. The ogres, the goblins, were moving away from him instead of toward him. The ogres, the goblins, were going the wrong way.

He could still feel the pressure from the fingers that had been around his throat, still feel their tongues and teeth upon him.

He shuddered, pulled himself up to a sitting position.

Yes, it was true. The renegades were moving backwards. Why hadn’t they finished him off, devoured him?

One of them detached himself from the others and came stumbling back.

Steven looked around for something to defend himself with.

“Are you all right?” the man asked.

He
spoke.
He was disheveled, but apparently sane.

“My name’s Eric Thorne. Another moment and they would have had you, I’m afraid.”

Eric Thorne was about Steven’s age, shorter, mustachioed. Cakes of clotted blood were sticking to his face and his clothes were torn in several places. He held out his hand and pulled Steven to his feet.

“How did you—?”

“Oh, them? They almost got me too. Yesterday. At least I think it was yesterday. I’ve lost all track of time. What day is this anyway?”

Steven brushed himself off and checked for wounds. Finding none, he replied, “Sunday night.”

“Sunday night. It
has
been over a day.”

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Steven felt the fabric of his mind being wrenched ninety degrees.

“The same thing you are, I imagine. Yes—I did read your mind just then. Being down here in close proximity to our alien friend has done that to me.” He tapped his head. “Expanded my consciousness. Opened up some of that other ninety percent of the brain. Increased my paranormal abilities. I’m even more adept at reading thoughts
and
transmitting them too.

“That’s how I escaped from our friends . . . and saved you. I filled their feeble minds with fear and panic. Fear of me, panic over what I might do to them. I discovered I could do that quite accidentally yesterday—when they were about to do to me what they were about to do to
you.
The first group of people I ran into down here were only drones who wanted to capture me. The renegades snuck up on me later while I was hiding and resting in a tunnel.”

Steven didn’t understand all of it but he thanked Eric anyway. During that brief moment when their minds had touched, all information, everything, had passed between them. All Steven had to do was sort it out gradually as they went along.

His rescuer looked over at the transformer. “It’s lucky I ran into you. Well, actually it wasn’t luck as I’ve been trying to find my way out of here for hours. But anyway, if what I picked up in your mind is true, I can do what I’ve been wishing I could do—shut down this whole operation—just by pullling that lever. Or do you want the honors?”

Steven checked the time.
“Yes!”

He pulled the lever.

At first there was no reaction. Then the transformer stopped humming. Steven looked up at the silver blue tubing and saw that it had turned a solid black in color.

“I think we did it, buddy,” Eric said. “ ‘Cept what’s to prevent them from turning it back on?”

They got their answer in the next second. The transformer began to smoke and whistle. The black tubing was crystalizing and crumbling onto the floor of the passage. They stepped back. There was a loud whine and the whole trembling contraption collapsed into itself, turning into a heap of molten slag.

His father had told him:
The destruction of this unit will knock out the whole system for an indefinite period. It will take hours to repair it. Long before then I hope to have put the biocomp out of action for good.

His father had not told him just how he was going to do that.

But Steven had a pretty good idea.

“Now what?” Eric said. “Is it over?”

“My brother. My father,” he reminded him. “I’ve got to save them, got to destroy that alien once and for all.”

“That’s impossible. You have no idea how powerful it is.”

“But like this system, it has a weakness. Two weaknesses to be exact.”

Eric looked at him.

“You—who can resist it. And me—whose existence it can’t perceive.
We’re
going to kill it.”

As his father had predicted, the work train came back to the station a half an hour after it had departed. The plan was for him to go to the complex in case his presence was needed. It was now eleven-thirty. They were cutting it close.

Eric and Steven waited until the train was pulling out of the station before they climbed into the garbage car. The workers could not see Steven, but they
could
see Eric, and his newfound psychic prowess might not work against the comparatively normal drones.

The other cars were now half-full with more of the pitiful workers. Steven tried his best not to think about them. Soon they would all be free. But for how many of them would it be
too late?

The train wound its way back to the platform where Steven had last stood with his father and came to a stop. Steven knew which way to go from here. The complex was only a short distance through the tunnel on the right. As Steven followed Eric out of the car he grabbed a large flashlight—a power lamp, it was called— and a wrench as an afterthought. They might come in handy.

Eric and Steven waited an appropriate time until the train had gone on, and until those who’d disembarked had left the station, before they came out from behind the pillars at the end of the platform. They walked into the tunnel that Steven’s father had gone into earlier.

The walls were made of white tiles. The fluorescent lighting made them shine. Everything was as bright and medicinal as a hospital. To think an alien consciousness had brought all this into being.

They reached the end of the corridor and came to a double door. The letters HGC and the words
For Authorized Personnel Only
were written across it. This was where they had to go. This was where Steven’s brother and father were. Behind the door was a short flight of stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs was another narrow corridor lined with doorways. His father had told Steven to walk the entire length of this hall. If anyone came upon them and saw Eric, Steven could always use the tools in his hands as weapons. They literally wouldn’t know who had hit them.

They heard someone coming around a bend in the corridor. Steven—his invisibility providing courage—was ready to fight if need be, but Eric insisted they duck into one of the rooms. Steven figured his companion was right. Why not avoid a confrontation if at all possible . . . save your strength for when you really needed it?

They were in a darkened laboratory. Tubes, vials, and machinery glittered in the light from the hall. The complex was certainly well stocked.

The footsteps went by. They felt it was safe to reenter the corridor.

They rounded the corner and approached a new set of double doors.

Steven held Eric back. “Let me go first. At least they can’t see me.” Eric didn’t argue; he was not as calm, as cocky, as he had been before.

Steven prepared himself. He had no idea what he was going to find behind this door.
Or how many of them.

He tightened his grip on the wrench with one hand, and placed one finger on his other hand above the switch on the power lamp. Using his four remaining fingers, he gripped the door handle and pulled it. He immediately smelled a strange and pungent odor, and his eyes began to tear. It was as if the room behind the door was full of ammonia. His eyes blinked involuntarily. He pulled the door open completely and was hit with a spell of nausea. He was afraid he might pass out.

The lighting was dimmer in this chamber. The walls looked red and sticky, but they were only covered with shiny pink paint. Eric and Steven advanced into the room.

A group of men and women in white smocks appeared but of nowhere.

At least two of the people were holding guns. The weapons were not aimed only at Eric.

A woman stepped forward and spoke. “Hello, Steven. Yes, we can see you. We could always see you. Except when the master didn’t want us to. Your father underestimated the biocomp. It
wanted
you down here. It wanted your father to bring you.”

“In case something goes wrong,” one of the men said.
“Then you will be the backup.”

Steven felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

At least they didn’t know that the power grid had been destroyed, did they?

“As for your father, the traitor,” the woman continued, “he will pay for his transgressions. After he has watched his son become one with the master. The fool—he was doing the master’s bidding even when he thought he was ‘rebelling.’ “

Steven wasn’t about to be intimidated by these zombies. “Where
is
my father? Where’s Joey?”

“You’ll see later.
If
you’re needed.”

Eric could no longer keep silent. “Why don’t you fight it, you people? Why don’t you fight back? You’re human beings, not slaves. Why don’t you resist while its attention is diverted!”

“We don’t want to die,” one of them said.

“The whole
city
will die. The whole world—”

“Except us.”

So that was it. It was safer to go along, to play their part and follow the leader. Life was so precious to them they were willing to live it in constant subservience.

“Wait here,” the first man said. “It will all be over shortly.” He pointed toward a corridor behind them. “Even now they are taking your brother to the biocomp.”

Steven knew he had to act. Flicking the switch on the power lamp, he held it up to the nearest gunman’s eyes and blinded him. The gun suddenly sprang to life, but Steven dodged the projectile. He lashed out with the wrench and knocked the weapon from the gunman’s hand. He heard Eric cry out.

The psychic had managed to disarm the other gun-carrying committee member, but had taken a bullet in the shoulder for his trouble. “It’s not serious,” he assured his companion. “Go after your brother before it’s too late!”

The others tried to stop him, but Steven would have none of it. He swung out with the wrench, enraged, slamming the heavy instrument into tender flesh and yielding bone. He ran away from the startled, injured group and darted into the hallway ahead, following the stench, fighting back the waves of nausea and the stinging tears that filled his eyes. His whole face was burning.