Sly Mongoose (23 page)

“Let’s suit up anyway,” he growled. “See how she moves.”

The assistants moved around him, like squires from the days of old, and started taking the groundsuit apart.

They began with getting his leg in, and then the stump of his other leg. He stood on his own in the heavy device for the first time as they encased his trunk in the next sections. Pepper raised his arm out, and they started strapping the upper section on.

He smiled.

Segmented gauntlets on, and then the familiar prickle of contact via his lower spine as the suit asked permission to meld itself to his body’s own information systems.

Pepper nodded, and he no longer needed the visor. The suit’s diagnostics appeared over his own vision. Boot-up went smoothly with the suit’s designer logo splashing over his entire visual cortex and then fading after some brief pyrotechnics.

As the workshop’s interior faded back into view Pepper gave the command to conform, and the suit snipped and snapped as currents gave the metallo-ceramics commands to shrink, stretch, and flex until the suit felt fitted: a bulky second skin.

“This brings back memories.” Pepper he clenched his good fist, flesh and metal acting as one.

Now for the moment of truth. He clenched his other fist, and the empty metal curled up.

Heutzin grinned as Pepper reached out and tapped his shoulder with the nonexistent arm. “Not bad.” The movement jerked a little. It’d take some practice to get used to it, but it would work.

Pepper took a few tentative steps forward, then back. As each footstep hit the grated floor, tools jumped off the benches.

He hopped into the air. This time he dented the floor when he hit, and knocked boxes of parts onto the floor.

Four hours of freedom.

Pepper walked out of the workshop, then jogged down the catwalk outside toward the edges of the docks. The walkways shivered and shook underneath him, and people going about their business stopped and stared.

He threaded his way out, holding his breath as he broke out into the open areas. The acidic air bit at his face and made his skin crawl. His dreadlocks slapped the collar ring of the suit.

Back inside, he cycled through a set of doors into air. He walked over to an observation window. The giant body of a docked airship wallowed at the end of a twisting tube, and far below, the dreary clouds mocked him.

The surface of Chilo was just as far away from him right now as when he’d started working on the suit.

He bent the rail in front of the window as he clenched his hands. Heutzin and his assistant mechanics burst through into the room, air masks held over their faces.

Heutzin panted. “What now?”

Pepper was still thinking about it, reaching for some plan. He enjoyed the surprised faces as he stormed down the walkways, and then he thudded over to a mechanic. He snatched an air mask from him. “Let’s go say hello to the pipiltin.”

Maybe this time he could shake them into doing what he needed.

A
fter the first hour of being shoved along by the machines, Timas and Katerina relaxed. As the strandbeests rose, the lower ones bumped the balloon from below, and Timas or Katerina would yank on the ripcord to add air and stretch their balloon out further and rise with the flock.

By the second hour the great bumps of the clouds receded into tiny crenulations. They’d discussed triggering the beacon, but it was too early. They didn’t want the pirates getting a strong signal, and the strandbeests hadn’t hurt the balloon.

“This about as high as we can go,” Timas said, looking at the altimeter.

“Look, they’re thinning.” Katerina pointed up above them.

The strandbeests fell away to reveal a great raftlike triangle, festooned with platforms and canvas wings, cranes and antennae and all sorts of junk. Half of a strandbeest hung suspended from the center of the triangle by a web of ropes and pulleys.

A large net dropped out and enveloped them, then pulled them up into the structure next to the desiccated strandbeest. The net fell away, and a thin man in plastic coveralls and an air mask with round goggles scrambled his way across ropes, nets, and walkways toward them.

He pressed his mask against the bubble and looked in at them, then pulled a pair of masks out of a pouch dangling off his waist.

“Take a deep breath, then,” Timas said. He waited until Katerina did, and then he grabbed the zipper at the top and ripped it open.

He closed his eyes as the balloon deflated and fell around them. Their host shoved a mask in his hand, and Timas pulled it on.

Then the man gestured for them to follow him. Timas kept a hand on the various lines that were draped everywhere.

From below, with the strandbeest trapped in its center, the triangular floating platform hadn’t looked too large. But Timas realized the strandbeests were just as big, and the platform could have housed fifty people.

Inside an airlock leading into the nearest pontoon the thin man pulled his mask down. His skin cracked like leather left out to cure too long, with a strong ebony tinge.

“Hello, hello.” He ran a hand over his shaved head, then changed his mind and pulled at a scraggly beard. “Van VerMeer’s me name, and you two, look at you, you just kids. You’re lucky I’m not hiding in the clouds today. They sting. They rot the canvas wings, even with my protective paints, so they don’t like it. But we’ve never liked the big cities.”

Katerina stepped forward and introduced herself and Timas, and explained that they were fleeing pirates as Timas looked around.

There was little rhyme or reason to the chaos. Machined parts, light tubing, rubber, canvas: all the basic elements of the strandbeests cluttered walls, floors, and any available counterspace.

The old man wobbled over to a bench. “I am deeply sorry, I don’t get many visitors.”

“We’re not visitors, we were dragged here, by the machines.” Timas moved over to Van’s side, trying to distract him from the parts he fingered.

Van cocked his head to regard Timas. “Machines? Machines?”

“The strandbeests,” Katerina said.

A big smile. “Strandbeests. They’re good-hearted.” He looked wistful.

Katerina and Timas glanced at each other. “Why did they bring us here?” Katerina took the man’s leathery hands in hers.

“You were spare parts.” Van switched to looking at her. “You were in a bubble. They look for spare parts, they scavenge from whatever they find out there. Bits and pieces off cities, old dead airships, passing through airships. I barter for what I can here. Not a lot of flotsam anymore, they’re all slowly dying from lack of parts. One day soon there won’t be any.”

“Well, thank you for letting us come aboard.” Timas said each word carefully. “Can we use your radio, or whatever you have, to call for help?”

“Help? No . . .” Van shook his head. “No outsiders. Not now, not until that last one is repaired. See the trick is that no one knows I maintain them, and maybe they’ll be able to do it for themselves, some day, but for now, they still need me.”

“And how long will that be before the repairs are done?” Katerina asked.

A shrug. “A month?” Van smiled. “There are new things to put in its brain.” He held up a complicated series of tiny cogs and wheels.

“A month!” Timas looked at Katerina, but she was moving through the benches, eyes narrowed, taking everything in. “We need to call for help sooner.”

“Maybe more!” Van pulled in close. “You know how to program in analog-varient-viscous?”

“Viscous?” Timas shook his head.

“V.I.S.C.O.U.S.” Van sighed. “A lost art. Used to be a popular hobby among academic artificial intelligence researchers. Using gears to model more precise neural decisions, not just ones and zeros, right? Babbage machines. The most complex behaviors can be modeled by a series of simple sets. Oh, what do you care, you’re a regular, outsider, boring.”

He meandered back through his bits and pieces, and Timas walked down toward Katerina. “He’s been on the platform by himself too long.”

“Yeah, longer than you think.” She pulled a small paper brochure off the wall and waved it at him. “This shows him building similar things in orbital habitats. A hundred years ago. He’s one of those spacers with alien technology in him. He’s probably hundreds of years old.”

Timas looked back at the doddering, odd man with a bit of awe. “And he’s been building these things all that time?”

“I have.” Van looked sideways at them with a grin. “The machines, they were first built by Theo Jansen.”

Katerina walked forward. “I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of the man.”

Van grinned. He looked sharp now, not so dreamy and focused on the work. “He lived on Earth, a very long time ago. Before Earth shut itself away and hid, destroying the wormhole there. Bit of a drag that. It stranded me. I was a traveling performance artist, resurrecting the greatest of the old Earth peculiarities for my alien owners.”

“He built these things?” Timas asked.

“Machines that took the wind and converted it. They would walk across the beaches. Beach machines. Strandbeests. He did those. The Satraps kept me in an artist’s zoo, had me build them strandbeests for
their beaches. When the Raga freed the habitat I was in, I flew here. Now I build them around floaters, let the wind hit their wings and power their coils inside, and release the energy when they need it. They float and fly around, seeking spare parts. You see: I freed them.” His eyes got wet and shiny.

“You did free them.” Katerina folded her arms. “Congratulations.”

Van gathered up an armful of parts, still teared up. “Thank you, sister.” He passed them both on his way deeper into the pontoon.

“He’s lost it,” Timas whispered to her.

“Come on.” Katerina grabbed his sleeve and whispered back, “I know he’s a bit out of it, but he has moments of clarity, and he’s harmless.”

“I wonder if it’s just because of so much time and his being alone for so long?” They followed the old man, hanging back to continue their hushed exchange without him hearing. The old man flipped on lights as he went along.

“Maybe, but if aliens held him for a long time, and gave him life-extension technology, I can’t imagine his life was too great before he came to Chilo. The Satraps were wicked.”

Timas nodded. He didn’t have much schooling, but one thing almost all humanity knew, it was that. And then it hit him. “That’s how we get him to let us use his radio.”

“What?”

“Tell him aliens are attacking.”

“Good idea.” Katerina grabbed him as Van ran back at them, spilling nuts, bolts, and slender shafts to the ground. They clattered about at their feet.

“Aliens? Where?” His eyes bugged out.

Timas stood still, nervous. “The cities. There’s an infection, it’s . . .”

Van grabbed his shirt and pulled him close. “An
alien
infection?”

Timas nodded. Katerina had her hand on a pipe. “It turns people into something else. It’s called the Swarm. And now they’re attacking. Haven’t you been listening in on the airwaves?”

“I’m a hermit,” Van said. “I don’t listen to
people
. I don’t care what they’re doing. I’m my own empire, my own thing. I’m not even supposed to be paying attention to you. You’re wasting my time and making
it longer to do this. I can’t even think the programming straight. How can I concentrate with all this crap going on around me?”

He let go of Timas, and Timas took the opportunity. “We want to get out of your way so you can continue. The best way is for us to get off the platform. Can we use your radio to call for help?”

“You don’t need to call for help.” Van shook his head. “Come, we’ll get you the hell out. You’ll go with the miners. They’ll know what to do with you. Yes.”

Timas looked at Katerina, but she was just as mystified as he was.

I
t turned out that even an eccentric hermit like Van needed contact. Food, parts, medicine. He refused to allow people to venture aboard his domain, but he did venture out. In a disguise. “You have to understand”—he slapped the side of his head—“it’s sideways up there, after the aliens were done crawling around in it. Don’t want them around again.”

He donned an air mask with silvered lenses, grabbed a wig of frizzy hemp, and shrugged on a giant, heavy leather coat that dropped to his ankles. He looked like a tiny child, lost in the coat’s weight.

Railings, mounted haphazardly all over the place, let him hang on as he walked. Timas followed suit. The platform occasionally
leaned
when a very strong gust hit it.

Maybe that explained the messiness.

“Hey.” Van popped his mask up off his mouth to speak. “Get masks, let’s go. What are you waiting for? We have a schedule to keep.”

Right. Timas fumbled about for the masks he’d given them when they boarded.

Back outside, with acrid Chilo air forcing itself around the edges of the mask, Timas followed the old man across the surface of the pontoons to a tiny hangar.

Inside, revealed by the doors Van swung aside, hung a small airship. It was just large enough for the three of them to cram into.

The envelope, a dull metal globe, lay nestled between four very large rockets strapped to it.

“That can’t be safe,” Katerina said.

“Fast.” Van walked up to the tiny cab underneath. “That way no one is sure where I came from.”

Timas looked at Katerina. This was their only way back. She seemed to think so as well. They both climbed in the one door into the small cab.

The tiny bench seat inside forced them all together, elbows and knees touching, facing forward to look out several industrial-looking portholes at Chilo’s cloudy yellow-orange horizon. Timas was the last in. He shut
the door, spinning the wheel to seal it until he couldn’t force it any farther.

Pumps forced Chilo air out and filled the cab with breathable air. They removed their masks.

Katerina’s skin was dry. Timas was very conscious of her arm touching his. He did his best not to move and draw attention to the fact. He liked it.

Van slapped a switch and the platform fell away from them as they shot up. Timas bit his lip and pushed his face against the tiny window to his right and looked at the triangular platform get smaller and smaller.