Vigiant (26 page)

Who? What?

But no time to mull over questions. Suddenly I was spat clear out of the tube, onto a scratchy heap of carpet moss—one of those thin beds that grew along the edges of the tunnel. As soon as I rolled to my feet I could see the surface only a few paces in front of me. Gray daylight seeped down from the outside world, mixing with the purple, blue, green glow of the peacock tube that stretched back into the mine...

"Waaaaah!" Tic cried, spurting out of the tube. His gliders were half-spread; he shot forward through the air, nearly flying straight out of the tunnel before he managed to stop himself. As he landed, he sputtered a ripping-blue dictionary of Oolom words I'd never heard before—vocabulary that somehow didn't come up when I'd learned the language in junior school.

I'd have to ask him what the words meant. Always eager to learn, our Faye.

Paulette squirted next from the tube, landing bang near my heels. Before I could help her, she forced herself to her feet; but then she got the wobbles and had to catch her balance against the tunnel wall. "Stay back!" she croaked as I stepped toward her. "You'll get burned."

Smoke still streamed off her. The armor had so many wet gummy patches smeared across its surface, there couldn't be any place safe to touch her. I reached out anyway, but she jerked away, and growled, "Don't be witless. I can walk."

She stumbled forward, heading outside. I called to Tic, "See that she gets to the skimmer. I'll wait for..."

Festina barreled out of the tube. Before she even touched the floor, she had tucked into somersault position; she rolled silvery-smooth with the impact of landing and was on her feet in a split second, fists up in a boxer's guard position.

"Gone through Sperm-tubes before?" I asked.

"Too many times," she said. "Now move. I'll wait for Daunt."

I didn't budge. If Daunt needed one person to help him, he might need two.

He came through three seconds later, armor smoking with acid. The androids must have got off another round of jelly shots before he escaped. Where he landed, the carpet moss began to smolder; but he pushed himself up, and said, "I'm all right. Let's go."

I turned for one last look at the peacock tube. It was gone, vanished, who knows where. But from far down the tunnel came the slam, slam, slam of android feet running full tilt toward us. "Move!" Ramos shouted, giving my shoulder a shove. But I had figured that out for myself.

When we'd walked in from the skimmer, it had seemed like a short trip. Running back was a whole lot farther.

Paulette did her best, but she couldn't move near as fast as the rest of us. Now and then, stabs of pain made her groan—trying to race in that burning armor must have brought skin into contact with spots where the acid had eaten through. We could tell she was in blazing agony, no matter how she fought to hide it. She staggered forward, doing no better than a slow jog while the rest of us on foot kept pace with her.

Tic circled overhead keeping pace too, but Daunt ordered him to bolt full speed for the skimmer. "Get it open, get the engine running. That's what we need." I could see Tic wanting to argue; but someone had to get the skimmer ready, and he could zip ahead faster than us
Homo saps.
Proctors don't waste time fighting the necessary—he trimmed his gliders for maximum speed and shot forward toward the lakeshore.

Muffled thumps sounded behind us; the androids had reached the surface and were thudding across the carpet moss. "Damn," I muttered. I'd hoped the robots might be programmed not to come out into daylight—that the bad guys, whoever they were, worried about the robots being seen. Apparently not. The androids' highest priority was eliminating us witnesses.

"Leave me," Paulette gasped, teeth clenched against the pain. "Ridiculous everyone dying."

"No one's going to die," Daunt told her. But he was speaking for the sake of form: the skimmer was too far away, the androids too close. We weren't going to make it.

Xé, Xé, Xé,
I thought desperately.
Peacock, whatever you are, we need you again.

No response.

Looking around for a weapon or something to use as a shield, I noticed Ramos wasn't with us anymore. She'd stopped back a ways and was fiddling with something in her hands.

"What are you doing?" I yelled.

She didn't answer, still concentrating on whatever she was holding. The second she finished with it, she wheeled back toward us, running. "Hope it's still in range," was all she said as she caught up with us.

Paulette stumbled on. The rest of us kept right at her back, ready to stand as a barrier between her and the androids.

The androids: getting nearer. Two in front, two farther behind. The front pair pulling within jelly-gun range. Raising their pistols...

Roaring out of the sky, a sleek black missile speared down at the two robots like holy vengeance. One of Festina's probes. She must have signaled it to forget about its search pattern and come save our butts. I could feel the probe's triumphant glee a split second before it hit; then I was thrown off my feet by the earthquake impact of the missile ramming home, smashing the androids to metal confetti against the rocky ground.

Debris flew in all directions: robot guts, missile guts, a fierce hail of wreckage spraying around the forest. Chunks of shrapnel sliced into bluebarrel trunks, spilling out spring sap. The trees between us and the crash site blocked most of the flying shards... but still I could hear fragments whizz near my head as I hugged the dirt and prayed.

"Up, up, up!" Daunt yelled. "They aren't all gone yet."

Two androids were still left, the ones who'd been running farther behind. They'd got knocked down by the missile strike, but hadn't been close enough to ground zero to take damage. Now they were clambering up again, getting their bearings.

"What about the other two probes?" I asked Ramos.

"Far away. Never get here in time." She stood up, bold-angry-fierce, and planted herself between Paulette and the last two robots. "Stop," she shouted, "you're hurting us. Stop, you're cutting us. Stop, you're making us choke."

"That's so stupid!" Daunt snapped as the androids started to sprint toward us.

"It's all we've got left," Ramos replied, still facing the robots head on. "Stop, you're poisoning us. Stop, you're electrocuting us."

"Stop, you're corroding us," Paulette said weakly.

"Stop, you're shooting us," Daunt yelled angrily.

"Stop, you're hanging us," Ramos called. "Stop, you're crucifying us. Stop, you're beheading us."

"Stop," I shouted, "you're making us allergic!"

Whump.

Still life. Sudden silence.

No thundering android footsteps. Just our own panting. The soft drip of tree sap trickling out of gouged bluebar-rels.

The robots stood frozen on the carpet moss.

"You're making us allergic?" Ramos repeated in disbelief.

"It just popped into my head," I mumbled.

It just popped into my head.

"They've stopped," Paulette whispered. "They've bloody well stopped. Holy Mother of God."

"The bad guys missed a safeguard," Ramos breathed. "And no wonder. Who would ever... well yes, it stands to reason androids would be programmed to avoid people who were allergic. And the bad guys never thought to override that. But... holy shit." She laid her hand on my shoulder. "Faye. You're brilliant."

"Thanks," I said, feeling the shakes sneaking over me. I just wished I could be sure the inspiration was mine.

Fifteen minutes later, the first police reinforcements arrived—Sallysweet River's two constables. One was a boy wet-ink fresh from the academy, while the other was a woman pressing hard against retirement, if not a titch over the line. I'd seen them the night before as Cheticamp briefly touched base with them... but these two weren't the types for playing detective or ScrambleTac. They were bull-big village cops, well suited for breaking up bar fights and scaring the bejeezus out of teenage shoplifters, but not digging into planetwide conspiracies. Still, when a fellow officer radioed out a mayday, the Sallysweet River constabulary came running top speed, no questions asked.

By the time they arrived, we'd unlatched the ScrambleTacs from their armor. Daunt had got off lucky—a single round of shots. Paulette had taken two volleys: one that Swiss-cheesed her body shell and a second that splashed through the holes. She had dozens of vicious-bad burns, arms, legs, stomach, even one on her cheek.

Ramos gritted her teeth at the sight of that one.

We sponged down Paulette's wounds with snowmelt, trying to ignore the hiss of steam whenever we touched water to acid. All of us had trained in first aid, but Tic took charge of the treatment—the world-soul had linked him to a burn specialist down south, and now he was talking us through what we had to do. Soon after the Sallysweet River contingent landed, Paulette was stable enough to transport. We packed her and Daunt into the police skimmer, then dispatched the baby-boy cop to drive like a demon to the nearest hospital.

The retirement-age cop stayed behind to "protect" us. Mostly that meant she glared suspiciously at the motionless robots and occasionally muttered, "We should yank those guns out of their hands."

She never actually tried it; we would have stopped her if she had. Let sleeping androids lie.

When Cheticamp arrived, he brought a whole platoon of ScrambleTacs... and they all wanted to blast the two frozen androids with robot-poppers. "Must you?" Tic asked. "They're no threat now. And a violent electric jolt will frazzle their memory. Possibly useful evidence."

Cheticamp grouched about safety first, protection of his officers, blah-blah... but he agreed to hold off till cybernetics experts could arrive to try a "sanitary" shutdown. The experts were already on the way—Tic had beeped them while we waited for the cops to show. (Naturally, Tic knew all the top boffins in the Civilian Protection Office; or at least he knew the top boffins as of seventy years ago, which was when he'd last had dealings with that particular branch of the government. Amazingly, a few of them were still alive... and tickled three shades of pink to be called into the field again.)

The boffins were headquartered (or perhaps nursing-homed) in Comfort Bight, halfway around the world... but sleeve travel got them to Bonaventure up-down-done, and from there it was only forty-five minutes to our position. Under the watchful eyes of the ScrambleTacs—dour as Judgment, robot-poppers trained and ready—the tottery old experts deactivated the androids with nary a whiff of excitement.

"No self-destructs on these," Cheticamp observed.

"No," I agreed. "And the androids down the mine didn't blow up either. Odds are, the killer never expected these ones to be found."

"Lucky for us," Cheticamp said. "Though we had to catch a break sooner or later. And maybe there's more to find down the tunnel."

"We'll see," I answered.

His eyes went squinty. "I hope you weren't planning to go with us underground. There's no place for civilians—"

"But there is for accredited members of the Vigil," Tic interrupted. "Proceeding with a duly authorized scrutiny of police methods. You know we're legally allowed to watch everything firsthand."

Cheticamp looked like he'd bitten a toad.

Tough titty.

Into the hole again. And just when Tic had lost his gray-blue hives from the last time.

This trip, we set our sights on a survey of that side shaft: the one where the androids had been waiting. No one wanted to jinx things by predicting what the side tunnel might hold, but we all expected to find something momentous. Even the ScrambleTacs, young bucks who desperately wanted to come off as grim servants of justice, occasionally let the corners of their mouths twitch up into we've-got-the-bastards smiles.

A short distance in, we passed a patch of moss that was crushed down and crumbled—the spot we'd all landed after tumbling out of the peacock tube. It occurred to me none of us had talked about that tube: not in the quiet before the police arrived or in the bustle after. Sure, Cheticamp had asked me what happened, and I'd given him the full rundown... but he'd just recorded that part of my statement without comment. None of the clarifying questions he'd asked about other parts of the story.

Tic hadn't talked about the tube.

Festina hadn't talked about it.

I hadn't talked about it.

I hadn't asked, "What in blazes is this peacock thing, and why does it keep following me around? When it showed up in the mine, why did it materialize in front of
me?
In Pump Station 3, why did it save
me
from the acid but not Chappalar? And if it
did
want to save my life for some reason, why did it disappear both times before the threat was actually over?"

No answers. No explanations popped magically into my brain.

So I continued to trudge downward, over the hard stone floor.

A dozen ScrambleTacs went into the side tunnel ahead of us, advancing with show-off military precision: at any given time, only two were moving forward while the rest held ready to fill the tunnel with covering fire. Oooo, those boys and girls loved to deploy. If there'd been any androids still on the hoof, those old bit-buckets would be wearing a bouquet of robot-poppers in the blink of an eye.

But we found no more androids—none but the conked-out bodies of the ones Daunt and Paulette had shot. They looked completely human: a teenage Asian boy, a grand-fatherly African man, a fortyish Frau not so different from me... down like corpses now, creepily motionless. We lifted our feet high-warily over them and moved on.

Some distance from the main shaft, the side tunnel ended in a chamber twenty meters square and two stories high. Clumps of rusty metal dotted the floor, junk an archaeologist might understand but I didn't. This could be the remains of a machine shop, a locker room, a bunch of air pumps, or any of the other equipment needed by ancient miners. Three thousand years had reduced everything to least common denominators: lumps and stains on the rock.