“It’s complicated,” said Molly.
“I want to know what it is!” insisted the Sarjeant.
“It’s rogue armour,” I said. “Created by a previous Armourer to be intelligent, self-aware and to operate on its own. It rebelled and killed a whole bunch of Droods. That’s why it was imprisoned in the hedge Maze for so long. But I made a deal with it: service in return for freedom. And since I spoke with Drood authority, Sarjeant, you will abide by my decision in this matter.”
The Sarjeant scowled at Molly’s torc but said nothing.
“How did you get here, Eddie?” said William. “How did you find us?”
“The Merlin Glass, combined with some useful information I picked up along the way,” I said. “Which I really do need to get to the Armourer. Defend the Hall, Sarjeant. Buy us time to get the dimensional engine working again. Regent, Patrick, Diana: You come with me and Molly. You’re about to see a part of the Hall we don’t normally show people.”
“Not back in the Hall ten minutes, and already you’re barking orders,” said Molly.
I led them all down to the Armoury, that great stone cavern set deep in the bedrock underneath the West Wing. It felt weird, hurrying through deserted workstations and abandoned firing ranges, with not a single overenthusiastic lab assistant to be seen, doing something unwise with something dangerous. It reminded me too much of the deserted Armoury in the ruined Hall. I found the trapdoor lying open at the far end of the Armoury, and we all gathered around it. Nothing to be seen but the top part of the iron ladder leading down into an impenetrable darkness. I didn’t give any of them time to think about it, just started down the ladder without looking back. I was quietly pleased that one by one they followed me down, without saying anything. There was no light anywhere, and several times I had to stop and feel for the next rung in the ladder with my foot. The ladder seemed to descend for ages, long enough that my leg muscles had begun to cramp painfully by the time I reached the bottom. The moment I stepped away from the ladder, a bright light flared up, dazzling me for a moment. The others quickly joined me, and then we all waited patiently as the Regent took a moment to quietly massage his old leg muscles.
We had arrived in a truly massive stone cavern stretching away in all directions. It looked to be bigger than the whole Hall itself, and I wasn’t even sure exactly where under the Hall we were. The huge stone walls were covered with line after line of carefully delineated mathematical symbols, none of which meant anything to me. The Armourer had called them mathemagics, the bastard child of supernatural equations and description theory. When people start telling me things like that, I usually just nod and move on because I know that even if I do ask questions, I’m not going to understand the answers.
Strange machines rose everywhere, set out in no obvious pattern, packing the great cavern from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling, with only narrow walkways left in between. Technology so advanced that none of it meant anything to me. Just brutal and ugly shapes, with no obvious function or controls. Some of the machines appeared blurred or indistinct, as though human eyes couldn’t properly perceive or understand them. The result of one Armourer’s mad wisdom. Along with gifts from other worlds, dimensions, realities. Our best and craziest Armourers have always been pack rats, putting things we pick up along the way to good use. Drood knowledge is older and weirder than most of us care to admit. Mile upon mile of colour-coded cables held everything together and hung in a complicated web between the upper levels of the machines and the uneven stone ceiling. Sometimes they twitched dreamily, like a dog’s legs kicking in its sleep.
I called out to the Armourer, and his voice rose from deep back in the cavern.
“Over here! Whoever you are. Unless you’re a monster, and then I’m out. Leave a message.”
I headed for his voice, past colossal machines whose intricate workings were constantly moving, rising and falling, turning this way and that in endless variations, in pursuit of unknown purposes. Some of the structures seemed to lean and slump against one another, half melting, combining into some new and even stranger thing. Some changed shape right before my eyes, as though unable to settle, humming loudly to themselves in complex harmonies. And all the time I had the feeling of being watched and studied by unseen cold and thoughtful eyes. The cavern was comfortably warm and well-lit, but there was a bristling static in the air and the smell of iron filings and something burning, and I couldn’t escape the feeling that I just wasn’t welcome.
None of the others said anything. They just stuck very close to me as I led them through narrow wandering walkways. Just as well, because I didn’t know what I could have said in return, except, Yes, I know. It creeps the hell out of me, too.
And finally, at last, we came to Alpha Red Alpha itself, which looked just as complicated and disturbing and overwhelming as I remembered it. Big as a house, bigger than most houses, rising all the way up to the ceiling, so you had to bend your head right back to see the top of it. It looked mostly like a plunging waterfall of solid crystal with glowing wires running through it like multicoloured veins. Etched all over with row upon row of inhuman symbols. And all of this surrounded a massive hourglass, some twenty feet tall or more, fashioned from solid silver and glass so perfect you could barely see it. The top half of the hourglass was full of shimmering golden sand, with not one golden mote falling down into the lower half.
The Armourer’s lab assistants were crawling all over Alpha Red Alpha, clinging precariously to outcropping parts, making adjustments, taking readings and occasionally just hitting it with hammers in a hopeful sort of way.
The Armourer himself came bustling forward to meet us—a tall middle-aged man with too much intelligence and nervous energy for his own good, wearing the usual stained and slightly charred lab coat over a T-shirt reading Eat, Shoot and Leave. He was quite bald, apart from two tufts of white hair jutting out over his ears, from where he kept tugging at them while he was thinking, and bushy white eyebrows protruding over steely grey eyes. He also had a permanent stoop, from years of leaning over workstations for long hours, designing useful dangerous things for the family. He beamed happily at me, nodded happily to Molly and then stopped dead as he saw who was with us. The Regent stepped forward to smile gently at him.
“Dad?” said the Armourer. His mouth worked for a moment, as though he couldn’t figure out what to say. And then he plunged forward and hugged the Regent close. It did look a bit odd from the outside. There was a lot of hugging going on today, and we’re really not a touchy-feely kind of family on the whole. The Armourer finally let the Regent go and held him at arm’s length so he could look him over properly.
“It’s been such a long time, Dad! I did my best to keep in touch, but it hasn’t been easy. I did think you might come home again when Mum died.…”
“It would only have complicated things,” said the Regent. “At a time when you really didn’t need…distractions.”
“You’re looking great!” said the Armourer. “I told you that serum would work.”
And then he finally looked past the Regent, at Patrick and Diana, and his whole face just shut down, as though it didn’t know what to do. He looked blankly at them, and they just looked quietly back.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” the Armourer said finally. “I can’t believe you’ve come back at last.” He broke off, looked at me and then back at the Regent. “You haven’t told him, have you? Why haven’t you told him? He has a right to know!”
“Because it isn’t the right time,” the Regent said firmly. “Far too much going on right now. He doesn’t need to be distracted.”
“I’ll decide what I need to know and when I need to know it,” I said just as firmly. “What’s going on here?”
“I will tell you everything once this mess is over,” said the Regent. “I give you my word.”
The Armourer frowned at Patrick and Diana and then nodded slowly. “He’s right, Eddie. You need to focus on what’s in front of yo
u. We all do. Just…trust us. For now.”
“All right,” I said. “For now. Talk to me about what’s happening here.”
“We’ve been working on Alpha Red Alpha nonstop, ever since the bloody thing started up for no reason and dumped us here,” said the Armourer, giving the dimensional engine his best There’s going to be trouble scowl. “Power levels are fine. Everything’s doing what I think it should be doing, but…”
“You don’t have the proper return coordinates,” I said. I ran quickly through what Crow Lee had done and handed over the remote control and the Merlin Glass. The Armourer gave the remote a quick look and then handed it off to a hovering lab assistant, who hurried off with it. The Armourer scowled thoughtfully. “There’s a lot of useful information to be found in that thing, no doubt, but this…Eddie, this isn’t the Merlin Glass I gave you. I know that for a fact, because the original Merlin Glass is still lying on a bench up there in the Armoury, cracked from top to bottom and waiting for me to do something about it. This…is a whole new Merlin Glass. Where did you get it?”
“It’s from another Drood Hall, from another reality. Long story you really don’t need to know for now. But this Glass can do anything the old one can, and then some. It should be able to point the way home for Alpha Red Alpha. It’s very eager to please.”
“Not necessarily a good thing, with anything made by Merlin Satanspawn,” sniffed the Armourer. “But never look a gift whore in the mouth.”
“Language, Jack!” said the Regent.
“Sorry, Dad,” said the Armourer. “But you’re right, Eddie. Let me work on the Glass. If you and the rest of the family can just keep the monsters at bay for a little while longer…till I can get this heap of junk working…Yes, I’m talking about you, you oversized egg timer! Don’t think I don’t know you’re listening!”
We left him to it and went back up into the Hall. Which might have been under attack by an army of nightmarish monsters, but was still less disturbing than the cavern below.
Back in the main hallway, we all crowded together in the open front doors, looking out into the clearing. The monsters were pressing closer than ever to the Hall. The shimmering barrier that contained the Earth-normal conditions had been forced back right across the clearing and was now only a few yards away. The creatures seemed bigger and madder and more determined than ever, rising to fill the sky with huge slabs of angry shapes. The armoured Droods defending the perimeter had been pushed back, too, till they were only just outside the Hall. They were hitting the monsters with everything they had, but even the combined clamour of all their weapons was nothing compared to the howls and screams and roars of the massed monsters.
“According to some short-range scanners the Armourer rigged up for me,” the Sarjeant-at-Arms said tightly, “these creatures give off dangerous radiations and toxic emissions. As if they weren’t ugly enough already. Together, just their presence is enough to overwhelm our poor Earth-normal conditions. The monsters have been pushing the barrier hard, and it can’t stand against them much longer. Soon enough the clearing will be full of those monsters, and we’ll have to fight from inside the Hall.”
“Could they push the barrier back inside the Hall?” I said. “Push their world’s conditions in here with us?”
“I don’t know,” said the Sarjeant. “The Hall has all kinds of protections, but most of them don’t seem to work here. As though we’re so far from our own reality that even the laws of physics are different.”
“Where are the Librarian and Ammonia Vom Acht?” I said.
“Planning some kind of psychic attack,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms, making clear what he thought of that idea with a very expressive upraised eyebrow. “It’s a sign of how desperate our situation is that I’ve encouraged them to try. It keeps them out of the way.…”
“Just how desperate is this situation?” said Molly, peering out the door while tapping one finger idly against her silver torc.
“We’ve had to ground all our air forces,” said the Sarjeant. “The skies were getting too crowded. All that’s protecting us from death from above are the gun emplacements on the roof. And just like everyone else, they’re running out of ammunition. It’s been centuries since we had to withstand a siege; we’re just not prepared. A lesson for the Future, if there is a Future. Any idea how long it’ll be before the Armourer can fire up Alpha Red Alpha and get us out of this hellhole?”
“He didn’t say,” I said.
“Of course he didn’t. He never does.”
Pushed back by the monsters, their backs set against the front of the Hall, golden-armoured figures stood side by side, firing every kind of gun I’d ever seen. Doing remarkable amounts of damage to the walls of flesh before them, but not enough to stop or even slow them. Vicious steaming fluids fell down to splash across the golden armour, only to fall harmlessly away. The stench drifting in through the doorway was unbelievably vile. I wondered if I should raise the question of the Armageddon Codex with the Sarjeant-at-Arms. He’d noticed I was carrying Oath Breaker, but he hadn’t said anything. I wasn’t looking forward to explaining to him just who had taken the ironwood staff in the first place.
He didn’t need to know about the Original Traitor for now.
And then we all jumped and cried out as the shimmering screen slammed back several feet to right inside the hallway. We all fell back from the open doors as harsh air and heavy gravity filled the doorway. The Sarjeant yelled for all the Droods on the perimeter to get back inside, and they lowered their weapons and ran for it. Many of them threw themselves through the open windows, rather than get caught in the crush at the doors. Patrick and Diana each got a chair to stand on and calmly laid down covering fire over the Droods’ heads to discourage the advancing monsters. I looked across at the Regent, who just shook his head sadly.
“Sorry, Eddie. Lateral thinking and tricks of the trade are fine against my usual enemies, but this is all a bit beyond me.”
“Ethel?” I said.
“Yes, Eddie,” the disembodied voice said immediately. “I’m right here.”
“The elderly gentleman here is my grandfather Arthur. I say he is a Drood in good standing once more, so please be so kind as to grant him his armour again.”
“Of course, Eddie. What about the other two?”
I paused. “What do you mean, what about the other two? You mean Patrick and Diana? What about them?”
“Well, they’re both Droods, too. Do you want me to give them armour, as well?”
I looked at the Regent and then at Patrick and Diana. And just like that, I knew who they were. Who they had to be. And why they’d always seemed so familiar. Age had made a big difference. They didn’t look anything like they used to in the only old photo I’d had of them. Hell, Patrick was bald with a beard now, and that’ll disguise anyone. Diana’s hair was grey.…They’d both changed so much, but even so, deep down I’d recognised both of them the moment I saw them. It had just taken till now, this moment, for me to see them clearly and admit to myself who they really were.
“Mum?” I said. “Dad?”
Emily and Charles Drood smiled at me. The Regent stood between them and put his arms across their shoulders.
“My children…” he said. “Don’t blame them, Eddie. They wanted to explain everything the moment you walked into Uncanny. I persuaded them not to. Because you already had so much on your plate…But they still insisted on meeting you and working alongside you.”
I put up a hand, to stop his talking. “All right,” I said. “I get it. But there will be a hell of a lot of questions afterwards.”
“Yes,” said Charles. “We’ll tell you everything. Afterwards.”
“There is quite a lot of it to tell,” said Emily.
“You abandoned me,” I said. I hadn’t meant for it to come out that harshly, but I couldn’t hold it back. “How could you leave me here?”
“We didn’t want to!” said Emily.
“We had no choice,” said Cha
rles.
“You see?” said the Regent. “This is why I didn’t want you to know yet! We can’t do this now, Eddie. We have to concentrate on the matter at hand.”
The front doors exploded inwards as a massive monster’s head slammed right through them. A great battering ram of a head more than twenty feet across and half as high, it forced its great bulk into the hallway after us as we scrambled to fall back. Long jaws slammed together in their eagerness to get at us. Charles and Emily opened fire on it, blasting great chunks of its face away, but it just roared deafeningly and pushed more of itself into the hallway, expanding the opening it had made in the doors with brute force. Molly armoured up and punched the head with as much force as the armour could deliver, but still she could only damage it, not hurt it. I yelled for everyone to fall back, and advanced on the snapping head with the ironwood staff in my hand. Huge dark eyes followed me, and the jaws gaped open. I hit the head a mighty blow with Oath Breaker, and the whole head exploded. The force of the blast threw bloody fragments the whole length of the hall and back out the doorway, and in a moment the entire space was empty again. Dark blood and other fluids coated the walls and dripped down from the ceiling, along with misshapen gobbets of flesh.
I was just lowering Oath Breaker and starting to relax when a long snakelike head shot through the gap where the doors had been, grabbed me in its jaws and hauled me out into the alien world. I armoured up instinctively, so the heavy teeth just ground uselessly against me, but I was still held firmly as the great snake head hauled me high up into the air and waved me back and forth. The world spun dizzyingly around me. I jabbed at the front of the snake’s head with Oath Breaker, and all its front teeth shattered and blew apart. The huge alien creature screamed deafeningly, spraying dark blood by the gallon, but it released some of its hold on me. I punched holes into the scaled flesh of the upper jaw with both my armoured fists, and then used the precarious handholds to pull myself out of the mouth and up onto the top of its head. I stamped my golden feet into the head to anchor myself.
Live and Let Drood: A Secret Histories Novel Page 39
