Shade's Children

by Garth Nix

  The other four Myrmidons carried broad-bladed axes. All seven wore black, banded armor, unadorned save for the fluttering squares of black metalcloth on their mighty shoulders, declaring that they belonged to the Overlord known simply as Black Banner.

  “Help!” screamed Ninde as the catch rope went taut. Effortlessly the Myrmidon at the other end began to pull her up, while the other net throwers reloaded their tubes to have another shot at Gold-Eye.

  “Gold-Eye!” screamed Ninde again. She had her sword out but couldn’t flip up enough to get a good swing above her rapidly ascending ankles.

  “Gold-Eye!”

  Gold-Eye looked at the other net throwers. They would be reloaded in a few moments…but Ninde…the Meat Factory…

  With a shout, he flung himself onto the walkway and rushed toward Ninde, the narrowness of the way forgotten, sword in his hand…and then he was jumping up, hacking at the rope, screaming at the Myrmidons….

  Ninde was screaming too, the Myrmidons boomed louder…and still the rope wouldn’t cut….

  Then another sword whistled over his, cutting through the catch rope with a crack! that seemed to stop all other noise…and Ella was there, and Drum, picking up Ninde like a small kitten under his arm…and…

  “Run like hell!” shouted Ella, her sword blade glittering gold in the witchlight from above. “That way!”

  ARCHIVE—SELF-EXAMINATION SESSION #256,328,974

  If I were merely a computer, I could not think as a man. If I were still only a man, I could not exist. But I am only an electronic reality—or am I? No physicality. No glands. No hormones. No sudden pleasure from the sun warming my face…or a woman smiling for me alone…

  But these memories are part of me. Is this the same? Does the memory of stimulus act in the artificial persona as a real stimulus?

  I have sent many children to their deaths.

  When I was a man as other men…inhabiting a body…I could not have done so. But I did not live then in the times I do now. War changes the breathing man. How could it not change me?

  Have I lost compassion? Or is there no use for it in these times?

  I cannot feel pain as the children do. And the memory of pain is not the sharp, senses-blotting focus….

  But that is not important. There is only one goal. The Overlords must be defeated and the world returned to normality. My normality. The wind cool and fresh, stinging eyes; the shock of the surf on skin; a soft kiss, lips just touching soft skin below the ear, her long hair held back…

  Irrelevance. Whatever the cost, we will regain humanity’s kingdom. Children’s lives…a soul tarnished beyond redemption, washed in blood…this is not too high a cost.

  Any means must be employed. Victory is the only permissible end.

 

  CHAPTER NINE

  They didn’t stop running until they were a hundred yards down South Drain Twelve. Ella had picked it unerringly, despite their mad, splashing rush almost halfway around the entire Main Junction, pursued by the shouts of the Myrmidons on the crosswalk and the soft popping of their net guns.

  Twice they’d almost been netted, but always the swords rose and fell and the catch ropes parted—leaving them to hobble on as best they could with the matted plastic dragging on hands or feet. And Drum still carried Ninde, whose legs were totally encased in the foul stuff.

  When they finally stopped, he laid her down across the drain, so the water poured over her legs. Gold-Eye wondered at that, expecting her to shriek again, but she was silent. Then he realized that Drum wasn’t punishing her—the running water was slowly dissolving the net material. Small pin-holes were appearing. Over the next ten minutes, they would become larger holes, joining together until what had been a solid mass of plastic was no more.

  “So you decided not to wait,” panted Ella. She stood with her sword in hand, facing back the way they’d come. “I presume your Talent told you we were still alive?”

  “Yes,” said Ninde very quietly. “Sorry.”

  She moved her legs a little, and the plastic snapped farther apart. Impatient, she struggled to get up, but Drum pushed her back down with one finger.

  “Let it all dissolve,” he piped. He had one foot in the water too, where the corner of a net had struck his boot.

  “We’ll talk about what you should have done when we’re back at the Sub,” Ella continued curtly. “You too, Gold-Eye. Just be thankful that we weren’t washed too far away to help you in time. Or drowned.”

  Gold-Eye nodded vigorously, eager to show that he totally agreed with Ella. Ninde didn’t say anything. Head down, she watched shreds of plastic fall apart in the flowing water.

  “I don’t suppose anyone managed to count manholes?” Ella asked. “No? I guess. I’d better go back to the junction and do it myself.”

  “I go,” volunteered Gold-Eye, keen to make amends.

  “No,” said Ella. “There’s a slim chance those Myrmidons might risk the lower walkway. They will enter shallow water sometimes. I’ll be back in five minutes. If you hear me screaming, run.”

  No one said anything as she splashed away from them, back toward the Main Junction. Her body melded with the darkness until only her witchlight was visible—a ball of golden light that seemed to dance of its own accord across the tunnel.

  “How water not get you?” Gold-Eye asked Drum in the now oppressive silence. The big man was as obviously unimpressed with Ninde and Gold-Eye as Ella was.

  “Held on to the ladder till it broke,” Drum replied after a long pause. “Most of the first rush was past then, so we could swim. Grabbed another ladder about half a mile east.”

  It sounded simple, the way he said it so matter-of-factly. But Gold-Eye had been farther up the ladder. He could imagine the terrible force of the water hitting full-on, the lack of air, the ladder breaking—and the frantic struggle to break through to an air gap, not knowing if one even existed…

  He didn’t ask any more questions, so they sat in silence till they heard Ella coming back, counting manholes.

  “Fifteen…sixteen…okay, on your feet! Drum, check my count from that last one, sixteen.”

  The drain grew smaller and seemed to slope upward after manhole twenty. At manhole twenty-seven, Ella stood on Drum’s shoulders and lifted the manhole cover a few inches, just enough to let sunlight stream in through the crack. Noise came too—the three-part whistle of a pair of red parrots, and the distant chuckle of wibewa birds.

  There were no creature sounds. No crash of Myrmidon hobnails or Trackers whistling. Just the birdcalls and the breeze. Even those faded for a minute or two, leaving an eerie silence.

  Ella lowered the cover, and Drum knelt so she could jump down.

  “It seems okay,” she said. “Ninde, see if you can pick up anything.”

  Ninde complied in silence. This time she did break the skin on her knuckle, blood slowly welling out of the joint to mix with spittle, running into the corners of her mouth.

  “Nothing,” she said finally, without her usual confidence. “Maybe the water…”

  “We’re a fair way from the Main Junction,” said Ella. “So unless we’re right next to the University Lake—which we shouldn’t be—I think we can assume that Shade was right about the Death Markers.”

  “Rest for a while?” asked Drum, though it sounded more like a firm suggestion than a question. He didn’t wait for an answer before leaning back against the tunnel wall, his knees bent to keep everything but his boots out of the water.

  Ella hesitated, seemed about to say something, then knelt as well and fumbled at one of the pouches in her belt.

  “I’d better take care of those cuts in your hands,” she said, rummaging in her first-aid kit for disinfectant and adhesive bandages. “We’ll rest for half an hour.”

  Thirty minutes later, she was standing on Drum’s shoulders again, pushing the manhole cover aside and blinking in the full glare of the noonday sun.

  Shielding h
er eyes with her hand, she did a quick 360-degree scan of the area, looking for any sign of creatures.

  But there were none. Not even Wingers in the bright-blue sky. No black dots cruising like miniature storm clouds.

  The manhole was on the side of one of the narrow roads that ran right through the campus. Here, the road was lined by centuries-old oaks that cast a shade on road and footpath.

  Behind Ella, the Great Hall rose above the trees, its stone walls, slate roof, and grinning gargoyles a strangely fitting setting for the Myrmidon Barracks it had become. But there should be no Myrmidons there today…no sentries on the steps, no banner bearers in the clock tower….

  Newer buildings rose up in front of Ella—ten or so, mixing the architectural styles of sixty years or more. She looked at them carefully, mentally matching them to the map she’d memorized back at the Sub.

  Shade’s old laboratory was in the Department of Abstract Computing, an ugly six-story block of gray concrete and mirrored windows. It was about two hundred yards away through the maze of mismatched buildings, twisting, narrow roads, hedges, and lawns.

  There was another building Ella’s eye lingered on, though it was not part of her mission. The University Regiment armory, a triangular sandstone building positioned at the edge of the campus. The Overlords’ creatures collected and presumably destroyed pre-Change weapons when they found them. But there were weapons locked away securely in underground armories, Ella knew. She had studied books and manuals on everything from machine guns to explosives in the hope of getting some one day. Even in the absence of creatures, though, she couldn’t get into the armory….

  “All clear?”

  Drum’s high-pitched reminder made Ella start guiltily. She answered by pulling herself onto the road, quickly tying her rope around an adjacent steel bicycle rack, and lowering it back down.

  Ninde and Gold-Eye came up first, using Drum as a ladder. Ella motioned them into the shadow of the nearest oak, just in case Wingers did pass overhead.

  Drum pulled himself up last, the rope straining. He looked about, then lumbered across to the shade of another oak nearby.

  Ella recovered the rope and joined him. Gold-Eye and Ninde looked at her expectantly from the other tree, awaiting orders.

  “That’s the building we want,” she said, pointing. “The gray one with the weird windows. Shade’s old lab is on the top floor. There shouldn’t be any creatures around, but we still have to be careful. If anything does happen, try and get back here and then return to the Sub. Just make sure you wait till after sundown to cross the Main Junction, so the Myrmidons will have gone. And try and stay in the shadows when moving here. We don’t want any Wingers dropping in.”

  “Pity we have to stay in the shade,” said Ninde, looking out at the sunshine reflecting from the windows, sparkling down through the leaves, lighting up everything so cheerily. “I’d like to get a tan.”

  “I’m glad to see you’ve recovered,” said Ella, only half sarcastically. She touched the trunk of the oak, feeling the carved scar where two students had declared their undying love on some long-ago sunny day. That was all gone, she told herself, and trying to half live in those times like Ninde only got you a ticket to the Meat Factory. Still, Ella sometimes envied the ability of the younger girl to just forget and enjoy the sunshine….

  “Let’s go. Stay close to the buildings.”

  They made it to the Abstract Computing building without mishap. As Shade had said, the Death Markers—steel poles adorned with the dead Myrmidons’ insignia—were up all over the University. A small cluster of them was driven into the footpath right outside the building. Many more of them bloomed like strange plants on the lawns that ran down from the Great Hall to the University Lake. In a day or two, they would be collected up and the insignia taken to who knew where.

  The main doors to the Abstract Computing building were locked, but Ella—well briefed by Shade—took them around to a side door, which was propped open with a brick.

  She opened it—and recoiled, startled by sudden hissing.

  “Ferret!” she exclaimed, stepping back to free her sword. Then, “No…cat…” as a large ginger tomcat streaked past her, zigged at Drum, zagged between Gold-Eye and Ninde, and disappeared under a hedge across the road.

  Swords went back into sheaths, but everyone’s heart was beating more than the exercise demanded as they climbed up the stairs to the sixth floor, the reek of a tomcat’s proud home filling their nostrils. Fluorescent lights, activated by motion sensors, flickered on as they climbed.

  At the fifth-floor landing, a rusted ovoid with jointed metal legs lay in one corner, a hole in its middle revealing circuit boards and plastic cable.

  “One of the robots Shade used to get himself out of here fifteen years ago,” commented Ella, turning it over with her foot. “Or to get the computer out of here, I mean. It’s smaller than the ones he’s got now.”

  “Less legs,” said Gold-Eye, shuddering. This one had only six. The ones he’d seen in the Sub had eight.

  The fire door on the sixth floor was closed and locked, but Ella produced a key from an inside pocket of her coveralls with a flourish.

  “Proper planning,” she said, turning it in the lock and pushing the door open—just as the fluorescent light in the stairwell went out, leaving them in darkness. If the room beyond had windows, there was no sunlight coming through.

  As Ella reached for her witchlight, a red laser flicked on from ceiling to floor, lighting both room and landing with a red glow.

  Motes of different-colored light followed the laser down—and there was Shade. Except he didn’t look quite the same. Less real, more like an out-of-focus photograph in three dimensions. More like an electronic thing…

  His voice was different too. Flatter, without human timbre and somehow rather whining.

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  ARCHIVE—TRAINING LESSON B34 • NEW CREATURE

  If you see a creature that you don’t recognize, it is vital that you report it to Shade. Do not assume that it is a creature known to other people. If you don’t know what it is, report it!

  There are three basic things to remember when you see an unfamiliar creature:

  LOOK

  COMPARE

  REMEMBER

  LOOK at the creature for as long as you can without putting yourself in danger. If you can, observe it from different angles.

  COMPARE the creature with ones you do know. Is it taller than a Myrmidon? Does it have a nose like a Tracker? Does it wear armor like a Myrmidon Master? Thinking of comparisons will make it easier to describe the creature later.

  REMEMBER everything you can about its appearance, behavior, and location.

  You are now going to see some pictures of made-up creatures. Remember to LOOK, COMPARE, REMEMBER. There will be a test following this lesson to see how well you can describe these new creatures.

 

  CHAPTER TEN

  “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.