by Geoff Palmer
She lay on the unyielding surface, panting, her racing heartbeat slowly returning to normal, amazed that she was not only still alive but in one piece as well.
She sat up and looked around but the darkness was complete. She waved a hand in front of her. Nothing. A centimetre from her eyes and she couldn’t see a thing. With no idea whether she was about to step off a cliff or walk into a wall, she decided it was safer to crawl and began feeling her way around.
A faint rustling made her pause. A second later it was followed by a slithering, sliding, hissing sound. The blood froze in her veins. Her heart, which had only just started behaving itself, immediately resumed practising the drum-kit.
It sounded like a gigantic snake.
‘But there aren’t any snakes in New Zealand,’ she reminded herself.
‘No,’ another part of her brain replied. ‘And there aren’t supposed to be aliens from other planets here either.’
For one full minute she barely dared to breathe. Whatever it was, it seemed as wary of her as she was of it.
Slowly rising to her feet, she tried an experiment. She gave her ankle a sharp twist, causing the rubber sole of her sneaker to squeak against the glassy surface. Instantly the rustling resumed, as though whatever it was had backed away. She squeaked again, louder this time, and smiled grimly. For now at least she had the upper hand.
Suddenly the earth trembled and lurched and the space around her rocked. She dropped back to her hands and knees as the ground shuddered and shifted beneath her. It stopped for a moment, then gave an enormous jolt.
In spite of her spread-eagled position she was lifted several centimetres from the surface. She landed back on all fours — banging her knees painfully — and gave a faint whimper of surprise.
Bracing herself, she waited, but nothing further happened. There was a bitter saltiness in her mouth. She’d bitten her lip. Wiping it with the back of one hand she realised the only shaking now was coming from inside herself.
Once again she thought of Tim standing on the sunlit river bank where she’d left him. Why hadn’t she brought him with her? If she had to be stupid enough to fall into this hole at least there’d have been someone on the outside who knew what had happened. Now she’d simply disappear without a trace. They’d probably make one of those awful TV documentaries about her; Never Seen Again: The Coral Townsend Story. There’d be grim-faced policemen, pictures of search teams sweeping the countryside, her weeping parents, and Tim, who used to drive her mad in ways only a little brother could.
She’d never see him again ...
‘Stop it!’ she told herself, angry now. Feeling sorry for herself wouldn’t get her anywhere.
Suddenly the sly hissy slither sounded again and something in its sneakiness set her alight.
‘I’ve had enough of this!’ she shouted. ‘I don’t care who you are or what you are, let’s just get this over with. Come on, come on. Show yourself!’
There was a moment’s silence then a frightened voice croaked, ‘Coral?’
33 : The Opposite of Albert
It might have been funny if it hadn’t been so urgent. Glad tried first, striding out purposefully across the ferny clearing but then veered left, returning to say she’d been drawn towards the sound of the sea and that carrying on had suddenly seemed pointless. Norman giggled and tried himself, veering right. He returned blinking and perplexed. ‘So how do we get in there?’
Tim shook his head. He didn’t know. All he did know was that he had to think of something.
It all seemed to revolve around the school. He put the points to Norman, counting them off on his fingers as Glad tried once more.
‘The last place we saw Alkemy and Ludokrus was in Cakeface’s office.’
Norman nodded.
‘Cakeface lied about Albert picking them up. He couldn’t have because he’s gone to Queenstown.’
‘And Albert is ...?’
‘Their syn ... their uncle.’ Best not complicate things, he thought.
‘Coral left the nature hike and went back to look for them,’ he continued, ‘then she disappeared too. And Cakeface lied about that.’
‘Any other clues?’
‘Only Romany Jones,’ Tim sighed. ‘I asked him if he’d seen Coral when we got back. It turns out he followed her a little way when she left Quail Creek, and he said it looked like she was heading for the Gap.’ He shook his head. ‘But that would take her into town, and no one there’s seen her.’
Glad returned shaking her head. ‘How do we get in there?’
Norman suddenly grabbed Tim’s arm, a look of breathless excitement on his face. For a moment he was too worked up to speak. ‘Not town,’ he gasped. ‘Coral didn’t go to town. She went to the prefab!’
Tim frowned.
‘It’s the perfect hiding place. Don’t you see? No one ever goes there. That’s why Cakeface gave us the afternoon off. To get rid of everyone early. Give her more time to ... do whatever. There’s probably an alien spaceship heading there right now to take them away.’
Tim swallowed.
‘Oh man!’ Norman’s face was flushed with excitement. ‘This is like a real adventure!’
’“Oh man” indeed,’ Tim thought. Norman was right, he was sure of it. They had to go back. But they couldn’t just go barging in. That’s what Coral must have done. What they needed was a plan. A world-class, fail-safe plan ...
‘The mice!’ he cried. ‘We’ll go as mice!’
* * *
Coral couldn’t stop crying. Stupid really since she’d just found the very people she was looking for. But then from the sound of it neither could Alkemy. And Ludokrus kept saying ‘Man, oh man, oh man!’ in a laughy, shaky sort of voice, wrapping his arms around the pair of them as they huddled in the darkness
‘We did not know who you were,’ Alkemy blubbed. ‘You scare us.’
‘You were scared!’ Coral half-laughed, half-cried. ‘What was that noise? ’
There was a hissy rustle underfoot which she suddenly recognised as the sound of Alkemy’s nylon jacket on the glassy surface of the hole. They’d been using it as a cushion.
‘What of you?’ Ludokrus cried. ‘Squeak, squeak, squeak like giant rat!’
‘My shoe!’ Coral twisted one foot to demonstrate.
‘Oh god, we think the Emissary send something after us.’
‘The what? You mean Cakeface?’
Alkemy hesitated.
‘It is Cakeface, right? She is controlled by the Sentinels?’
‘Yes ... we think ... But it was not her ...’
‘But I saw her leaving the prefab.’
‘You see thing in the long black robe? Where did it go?’
‘Back towards the school,’ Coral said, thinking of the fleeting glimpse she’d caught of the figure. It had looked like someone in a skirt, though a long robe could be mistaken for a skirt she supposed.
Ludokrus took a breath. ‘We make mistake,’ he said. ‘We are much stupid. We think the Sentinel must call for help. We even make the calculation; will take two days at least. We do not think! Why do we not think?’
‘Think what?’
‘What if this help is already here? What if it is waiting?’
‘Oh my god!’ Coral said. ‘You mean that thing’s a Thanatos?’
Ludokrus still had his arms around them. Coral felt his muscles tense. ‘Worse,’ he said. ‘Not Thanatos. Much worse ...’
* * *
Running worked best. And holding hands. And shouting. So that’s what they did. This was deadly serious, Tim told them, a matter of life and death, and focussing on that thought seemed to do the trick.
The three of them staggered into the no man’s land between the Don’t-Come-This-Way ray and the Make-You-Feel-Sick field. Norman and Glad collapsed amongst the ferns, gasping.
‘We made it. We made it!’ Norman cried.
‘Not quite,’ Tim said. ‘This is only the half-way point. Come on.’ And with that he dragged them to their
feet.
* * *
‘What was it then?’ Coral asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.
‘One moment,’ Ludokrus replied, prompting his sister. ‘She will explain. From the begin.’
Summoned to the principal’s office, Alkemy and Ludokrus were told their uncle was on his way to collect them.
‘She does not say what for. Maybe, we think, there is problem with the car and he need the calculator to fix.’
‘You weren’t worried?’ Coral asked.
‘A little. Maybe. But remember, is Albert,’ Ludokrus said. ‘Always there are problem.’
After morning break, when the rest of the school had trooped off to Quail Creek, Mrs Millais left them alone in her office where they sat blinking at the unpleasantly pink walls. Nothing happened. Ludokrus tested the principal’s chair. Alkemy checked and rechecked the calculator for signs of damage after Tyler Thuggut’s kick. (Cushioned by her gym gear it was perfectly OK.) Still nothing happened. Eventually she took out a book and started to read. Ludokrus was so bored he started on his homework.
‘I remember nothing else,’ he said. ‘Then I wake up here, in perfect dark. Always I say homework is no good for me. Now I think it make me blind.’
In the office, Alkemy noticed her brother dozing. Then, with her usual caution, she checked the calculator for the umpteenth time. A strobing yellow light appeared in one corner of the screen, an indicator that some sort of artificially intelligent machine was rapidly approaching. Assuming it to be Albert, she tried to rouse Ludokrus, but then felt groggy herself and drifted off.
‘Some sort of gas?’ Coral asked.
‘Maybe. If so, they do not use enough.’
Alkemy came to halfway to the prefab.
‘I wake, but I am wrapped with heavy cloth. My brain is blurry and I cannot think. I feel that I am being carried, but is like dream.’
Once inside the old classroom, a faint cry from Ludokrus alerted her and she struggled, tipping from the cloak she was wrapped in on to the wooden floor. Still woozy, still with one arm through her backpack, she saw the gaping hole, guessed what was coming, and tried to run. But a hand shot out, grabbed a trailing strap of her bag and jerked her off balance. The bag went flying while the momentum spun her around and left her teetering on the edge. She almost kept her balance but then she glimpsed the face of the thing that had carried her there. In that instant she almost welcomed the inky oblivion below.
* * *
Tim looked uncertainly from Glad to Norman as they stood in a loose semicircle around the dull-looking spacecraft. He remembered his own disappointment on first seeing it.
‘It’s really only an escape pod,’ he explained. ‘Their proper ship’s out at the edge of the solar system.’
‘No, no, it’s perfect,’ Norman breathed, kneeling to examine the blackened, pitted underside. ‘Look Mum, this must be from coming through the atmosphere.’
‘Watch out,’ Tim said, hoping Ludokrus hadn’t changed his secret knock. He gave the hull one smart tap then three in quick succession.
There was a faint click and a loud gasp from Norman as the upper saucer separated from the lower one. Tim worked his fingers under the rim and heaved.
* * *
‘Awful. Awful. I cannot describe,’ Alkemy shuddered. ‘It have no face, just rusted metal, pitted and pocked like craters. There are things like eyes, but many, stretching half-way round the head. Also other eyes, smaller, larger, above and underneath. No mouth, just grilles in cheeks, maybe for the air. And all those eyes. They focus on me, look at me. So cold. So cruel ...’
‘What was it?’ Coral gave her friend a reassuring squeeze.
Alkemy shuddered. ‘A Death Machine.’
* * *
Norman poked a finger through the cage. The mice approached and sniffed it suspiciously. ‘And you say we actually become these guys?
Tim bit his lip. He wasn’t sure about letting Norman tag along. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘this is really serious.’
‘I know.’ Norman said. ‘So am I.’
‘You don’t have to,’ Tim said. ‘She’s my sister.’
‘But I want to help,’ Norman countered.
‘It could be dangerous.’
‘So? So can crossing the street. So ...’ he hesitated, ‘... can confronting Tyler and Amber.’
Norman stared at Tim, quietly determined. Tim hesitated. It would be good having a companion, but how would Norman take to mouseness?
‘As long as Mum says it’s OK,’ Norman added.
‘It’s your decision, son,’ Glad reached out and touched his shoulder. ‘You do whatever you think’s best.’
Tim shoved a hand into the blue gel, took out a second walrus mask and handed it to his friend.
* * *
‘There are stories we grow up with,’ Alkemy said. ‘Full of monster and bad people ...’
‘You mean like fairy tales?’ Coral said.
‘Just so. Most scary of these stories is call Legend of the Emissary about bad peoples living underground who want to conquer our planet. They are clever but not strong, not good at fight. So they make many Emissary — Death Machine — to make fight for them.
‘Robots?’ Coral said.
‘Yes. But most frightening part of this story is the evidence in our museum that maybe it is true. From all over our planet come many ancient writings and drawings about these machine. All writings say similar, all drawings look similar. Could they be true? We do not know. Maybe now I think they are.’
‘You mean that’s what you saw in the prefab?’
‘Exactly like,’ she shuddered again.
‘And the bad people living underground,’ Coral said, her mind racing ahead. ‘Sentinels!’
‘We think this too.’
‘So ... so what do these Emissary things do?’
‘They are machine. Very good machine. The best.’
‘You mean like Albert?’
‘No, actually. The opposite ...’
Albert wasn’t a robot in any sense of the word. He really was a synthetic person; part machine, part living tissue. True robots on the other hand were simply machines designed and programmed to do delicate, dangerous or repetitive tasks. The Eltherians had used them for centuries until the development of nanomachines made them redundant.
‘In our legend the underground peoples send the Emissaries to destroy all the peoples of the surface. These machine do not grow tired or make mistake. They do not care if they kill a baby or a man. They do only what they are told. Bring death.’
* * *
Norman weighed the walrus mask in one hand.
‘Mum ...’ he paused then blurted, ‘Tyler Thuggut and Amber Sauvage have been nicking stuff from the shop. I caught them doing it last weekend. Only ... only they said if I didn’t keep quiet they’d tell Terry and Todd and ... and ...’ He stared down at the mask.
Glad pursed her lips.
‘I ... I wanted to tell you. But I couldn’t ...’
Tim felt a stab of guilt. That’s what Norman had wanted to talk to him about on the nature hike.
‘I wondered what was bothering you,’ Glad said quietly.
‘Eh?’
‘I could tell something was up. I always can. I was hoping you might trust me enough to tell me.’
Norman swallowed lumpily.
‘And there I was thinking mice had eaten all my Mallow Puffs.’
Norman gave her a bashful grin. Glad grinned back and hugged him briefly. ‘Come on,’ she said, nodding at the mask, ‘let’s see how that thing looks on you.’
* * *
‘That’s horrible.’ Coral exclaimed. ‘How could they do that? How could they make machines to kill people?’
‘Easy. Maybe they say, “I only make small part for this machine” or “I only do this to get paid”.’
‘Horrible,’ she repeated. ‘And they just keep going till they’re finished?’
‘Is what happen in the story.’
‘But you beat them in the end, right?’
‘Yes, but very difficult. In legend they are strong machine. Every part is program separate. If you blow it up and there is only one working finger left, still it will try to stab you.’
She shook her head in dismay.
‘But you must see it also,’ Alkemy said. ‘You did not?’
‘Only from behind.’
Coral explained how she’d caught sight of Alkemy’s bag while peering through the window. How she’d crept into the building, found a section of the floor cut away, and been fooled by an image of stairs that turned out to be a projection.
Ludokrus grunted. ‘Thought so.’
‘What?’
‘He is using a displacer.’
‘A what?’
Before he could reply, the earth beneath their feet gave a sickening lurch and threw them to the ground. The glassy surface bucked and shuddered and the air filled with the odour of fresh graves.
34 : The Unreachable Room
Gladys Smith was behaving strangely. She drove straight through Rata without glancing left or right and didn’t seem to notice Rambob’s cheery wave or the glare from Joe Collin’s cat as it leapt from its sun-warmed square of roadway just in time. What’s more she seemed to be talking to the old leather shoulder bag lying on the seat beside her.
On the far side of town she parked her red Mini in the shade of an ancient macrocarpa, took up the shoulder bag as carefully as if it contained an unexploded bomb, clambered over the wire fence and set off across a gently undulating sheep paddock.
‘Halfway there,’ she told her bag when they reached the shade of a narrow winding track.
Her back didn’t reply.
Several minutes later, out of breath from the climb, she paused at the school-side exit. The playing fields were empty, the main school building silent.
‘We’re here,’ she said.
Her bag didn’t seem to care.
Pretending she was in a movie, that a distant camera was following her movements, she stepped casually from the track and ambled to the front of the old prefab before setting the bag down and nudging it with her foot. ‘There you go,’ she muttered.
