by Steve Perry
“There’s a whole wing over there,” whispered Attila, discreetly pointing toward the north, “devoted to cages, many of them empty so far.”
“The beasts to be set free and hunted.”
“Precisely.”
“Nothing here to cause alarm to my perspective,” she said as they went to a drink dispenser and pretended to fish for credit vouchers.
“That’s just it According to my data catalog, these vast rooms have got everything they need for a fully functioning biolab factory.”
“So?”
“So much of the operations of such are patented secrets and usually kept secreted away. However, they’re out here for all to see.”
“Which means—?”
“Think about it.”
It didn’t take long.
“Which means what the hell have they got locked away, if they’re allowing most people to see all of this?”
“Exactly.”
She looked around again. She heard the murmurings and burblings of bubbling beakers, the slurpings and drippings of liquid, the tapping of retreating footsteps. It all smelled mysterious and acrid, like the entranceway to some chemical amusement-park ride.
Only they had no ticket for the next part.
“So, what now?”
“Down this hallway here.”
They waited until there was no one around.
This time there was no pretense of who was leading and who was following.
Attila went first.
They moved down a corridor that eventually bent to the south. Doors lined either side.
“Storage rooms,” Attila explained.
“Open and innocuous.”
“As far as I can tell.” The hallway was totally deserted. “This, though, was what I was telling you about—down here at the end of the hall.”
Another slant to the hall, and they were there.
Machiko was taken aback.
At the end of the hall was a round, vaultlike door of hard, shiny alloy. It was more than apparently extremely locked.
“What—is this the gold supply here?”
“Looks like it, doesn’t it?”
“What do your sensors perceive?”
“It’s an alloy they can’t get past.”
“Hmmm. But you think we can pick this lock?”
“Oh, yes. It’s an electronic locking device, and I made sure to bring a probe.” He held up a long metal device.
“Looks like a coat hanger.”
“I’m sure it could be used as such. In any case, by inserting it into this aperture here”—he did just that—“I can change polarities and reroute electrical flows in such a way as to cancel out the necessity for codes and thus gain access.”
“In other words, we can get through.”
“Precisely.”
She looked around. “Nobody coming?”
“No.”
“Problem is, there could be someone inside.”
“True—however, shifts are changing, and an entry would be presumed to be authorized. We can take a quick look. I can store data through visual and auditory means, as well as my usual sensory panoply. Thus we can nip in and then duck out, without causing undue notice.”
“Sounds good to me.”
She was happy there wasn’t much security there; but then again, why should there be? It wasn’t as though an intelligence agency was necessary in Livermoreland; it was much too far removed from anything. The security forces seemed more interested in their war recreations than in actually patrolling the colony. Evanston’s people must have reasoned that these simple precautions would do.
For Machiko they would have done quite nicely.
However, they hadn’t reckoned on having a talented android picking their locks.
Attila did his stuff, slipping his device in. Machiko heard a few clicks and whirs and then watched Attila’s concerned expression change to one of relief.
“There we go. That should be it.”
He stood and pulled a latch.’
The door opened.
Machiko leaped to action, helping Attila pull the hatchway open with the minimum of noise. It eased back as though it had just been oiled.
Machiko peered into the next room.
It was a large chamber that stretched off into the distance. Along its upper sides were catwalks and pulleys and waldos. Racks of laboratory equipment hung below these. The lighting was quite low, the dominant colors being deep reds and lambent yellows.
Burblings.
The acrid smell was even heavier here, and there was a new scent to the air: something dreadful, something familiar, and yet Machiko could not precisely place it.
In the distance was the quiet sound of voices, yet this part of the long chamber seemed absolutely deserted.
Ahead of them were the familiar tanks, only these seemed noticeably larger. From the two intruders’ angle, however, there seemed to be no viewports into the contents.
Machiko quietly pointed this out. “Could be that what they’re brewing in there, they don’t want us to know about.”
“I was thinking the exact same thing. Just a moment here.” Attila placed a small piece of metal between door and doorjamb. “This way we can exit quickly, I think, which may prove most fortuitous.”
Machiko was in a hurry, but she took the precaution of moving as quietly and warily as possible, as they made their way around the tank.
“There was a porthole on the other side, and she was able to peer through the murky liquid, and into the contents.
“Oh, my God,” Machiko said, and though she was not particularly religious, it was as close to a prayer as she ever got.
18
Back in Boring-World, with so much time on her hands, Machiko Noguchi had done a great deal of reading. Fortunately, the Company had been considerate enough to vest its mining world with an excellent library of varied files on their Comp-Access.
One of the books she’d read was a large picture book concerning the history of human freaks, and there had been some horrifying anomalies indeed, from pinheads to geeks and other abnormalities of human and bestial natures.
However, nothing in the book could match the horror of what Machiko stared at now through the glass, through the milky nutrient bath.
At first it just seemed another beast, some hapless genetic code from some far-flung alien clime that had been appropriated for hunting purposes by Evanston’s henchmen.
Claws.
Teeth.
Mandibles.
However, as she looked closer, she saw other things in the brew.
A shell that would become chitin.
Legs.
Arms.
And at the ends of those arms, digits.
Digits with opposable thumbs.
The result was obscene beyond belief. A combination with aesthetics from hell, but doubtless incredibly deadly.
Machiko took a sharp intake of breath.
“What is it?” asked Attila “Besides really, really ugly.”
“You can’t tell?”
Of course he couldn’t, she immediately told herself.
He hadn’t had experience of the things. He hadn’t gone through what she’d gone through. He wouldn’t appreciate either species, much less the juxtaposition.
And then the realization hit her, so hard that she was stunned.
She would have invoked a deity’s name again, only something had stopped her vocal cords.
“Well? Communication would be helpful,” he said sharply.
“It’s… it’s the most incredible warrior ever designed… and Jesus, Attila…” She pointed. “Look… behind the neck there. Is that what I think it is?”
He peered closer. “My goodness. It does look like some sort of electrical neurotransmitter link-ups.”
“As in cyborgs…”
“As in cyborgs, precisely.”
She tapped the window, pointing. “Attila. What you’re looking at is… well, apparently, and I don’
t know how—but these crazies have been able to warp the genetic code of the bugs… and add their own twists.”
“What—to create some kind of ultimate target for guests to hunt?”
She shook her head vehemently. “No, that couldn’t be. One of these… linked up to Buddha knows what… could tear apart a bunch of hunters. It could outhunt, outkill anything Hard Meat with brains and weapons!”
“Some sort of bug/yautja hybrid?”
“Thank God, no. Just an improvement on the bugs.” She snapped her fingers. “What’s the root of any army, Attila?”
“Warriors, of course. Soldiers.”
“Smart bugs. Incredible, resilient… well, put some of these down and breed them on a world and you’d—”
“Why, you’d dominate the world!”
“Yes, and through the computer interface of cyborg connection…”
“Of course. You’d be able to control those warriors!”
They stood for a moment in silence, staring at the oxygen bubbles forming around the growing creatures and then floating up to the surface. A mad mélange.
“But why?” she murmured.
“Power, presumably,” said Attila. “Why else? Evanston doesn’t want just a world. He wants worlds.”
“That was what we saw out there—one of these creatures. It wasn’t a pile of different creatures and some machinery. It was a single creature… somehow on the loose. That had somehow been killed.”
“By the yautja?”
“I guess so. That would make sense… but who knows?”
Thoughts were twisting and turning inside her head. She wasn’t sure what she had expected to find inside this part of the biolab factory… but it certainly hadn’t been this.
“What now?”
“Are you taking all this in?”
“Yes.”
“Sufficient data?”
“Yes.”
“Then now we get the hell out of here and figure out the next step. Now we—”
Inside the tank the creature’s eyes opened.
A bug with eyes!
The head of the thing was a terrible and ungainly amalgam of the banana-insect helmet of a bug and the chromium sheen of complex cyborg implants. But the eyes looked just as sharp and intelligent as any that Machiko had ever seen in a warrior’s head.
Despite herself, she jumped.
“Damn. It’s looking at us.”
Attila said, “Time to depart, indeed. In fact, I hope it’s not too—”
A siren started to sound.
“Late.”
“Go! Go!”
They tore away, heading back toward the vault door they had entered. They were just pulling it open when the security men rounded the corner about thirty yards away.
“Halt!”
Yeah, right, thought Machiko. Or you’ll shoot.
They didn’t halt, of course. They dived through the opening and began running, Machiko hoping against hope that they hadn’t been recognized. This would certainly take some explaining… Well, Mr. Evanston… I was just looking for the ladies’ room…
They were out into the main section of the biolab and still running when the other troop of security came around the other corner, cutting them off.
They dived behind another tank, not pausing for a moment, but scurrying away like pursued rats in a maze.
“Alternative exit?” said Machiko.
“Yes. Follow me.”
Attila ran down another aisle, the end of which was a door. With absolutely no ceremony or precaution, he banged against that door, pushing on the latch simultaneously… hurling himself into the outside.
Machiko followed.
They were out on permacrete now, in some sort of empty parking lot. Beyond was a perimeter fence, and beyond that a gate yawned open invitingly.
They ran for it.
“Stop,” screamed someone from behind them.
“Run ahead of me,” said Attila, positioning himself between her and their pursuers. “I can take bullets a lot better than you can.”
“Thanks,” she puffed.
There were explosions behind them, and the whizzing of fired ammunition to their sides and over their heads.
Something blasted to the left. An incendiary impact nearly tore them off their feet.
“What the hell are they shooting at us?” said Machiko.
“Nothing good, I promise you. Hurry, we’re almost through the gate.”
She put on a burst of speed, her attention fixed on her goal.
Another explosion, immediately behind her.
This time she was lifted off her feet. With a combination of instinct and training, she rolled with it, coming to rest with a minimum of scrapes and bounces.
“Come on,” she called to Attila “Let’s go—”
“That would be very hard,” said Attila, ahead of her.
She looked around.
Attila’s headless body lay behind her, front down, back and chest section a burnt mangle, oozing fluid.
Some kind of bazooka shell had hit him, exploded, and now the android was in tatters.
“Til!” she cried. “Til!”
“Quiet! Over here!”
Still in front of her.
She looked toward where the voice originated from, astonished. There, lying in the gutter, upended, was Attila the Hun’s head.
Mouth moving.
“Well don’t just stand there, Machiko. Pick me up and let’s get the hell out of here!”
She got past her astonishment.
Her reflexes went to work.
She dodged over, picked up the head, tucked it under her arm, and started to run.
Another spray of bullets swept past her.
“Over there—that car. That’s our only hope,” said Attila.
She raced over. It was a four-wheeler, open.
She hopped in. There was no key, and no time to hot-wire it.
“Stick me up to the ignition,” said the head.
Not thinking, just obeying, Machiko did just that.
Something whipped from Attila’s head, slotting into the ignition.
The car kicked to life.
“Now go,” said Attila “Go!”
She put the car into gear. Bullets whanged into the side.
She pushed on the accelerator and got the hell out of there, Attila’s head hanging like a bizarre key chain from the ignition.
She zoomed off into the night, headlights flicking on.
Off and away, escaping.
But to where? crashed the thought inside her head.
To where?
19
Dawn crept up warily on the horizon.
By its new, thin light Machiko Noguchi cupped her hand and dipped it into the river.
She drank.
The water was cool and sweet.
She’d tasted it early, by the light of two moons, and it had tasted even better then.
She looked up into the sky, as though expecting company at any moment. Nothing. No thropters or skimmers or any of the other number of airborne vehicles that could be pursuing them.
She sighed and stood up. Her back was stiff, but otherwise the couple hours’ rest had been fine. She walked back up to where the four-wheel-drive vehicle was sequestered, in a bowerlike assemblage of riverside and trees. Here it was neatly hidden from sight… but, then, who knew if there were other ways of detecting it?
With no other place to go, she headed out to the wilderness.
She couldn’t exactly hop on a starship and race off for the safety of light-years-distant planets. She couldn’t barge into the barracks and holler for help from men who didn’t really know her from Eve and who were being paid royally for their loyalty. The thought that she should somehow contact Ned Sanchez crossed her mind; however, she nixed it immediately. No way would that work now.
No. She had just one hope.
With what she knew now, there was another chance.
With her added understanding it
was a slim possibility but one that she had to take. Oh, she supposed she could have simply allowed herself to be caught. Evanston most likely would not indulge in simple Death; her talents and abilities were too valuable. No, most likely he’d just do a selective mem-wipe. Of course, some of her personality might get pulled up by the roots in the process, but hey, that was too bad. Make her a little more docile and less likely to poke her nose where it didn’t belong.
She went back to the car.
In the passenger seat was the head.
“How ya doin’, short stuff?”
“S’all right.”
Attila winked at her.
She remembered her shock and grief at his seeming demise.
However, as interesting and valuable as the android’s body was, it would seem that his actual consciousness circuits were in his head, and apparently capable of operation for quite a while on their own batteries. For his part Attila seemed oddly resigned to his new state, merely glad to be still in existence.
“What do you think? Shall we keep going in this thing?”
“If speed is what you want, then we should. However, it would be risky.”
“Yeah. They’re bound to have copters out looking for us now.”
“Not necessarily. Wouldn’t that be admitting that there was some secret they were keeping?”
“No. All Evanston has to do is claim we were snoopers for some rival company. I’m sure he’s well within legal rights to seek us out and kill us.”
“Or he can cover up.”
“So the question remains.”
She thought about the issue for a moment.
Decided.
“They must be watching. They know we’re here.” She looked ahead. “That clearing there. That will do.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then we’ll get back in the car and raise such a ruckus, they’ll find us.”
“I’m glad you know what we’re doing. I certainly don’t. But I’d be glad to back you up.”
“All I can say is that I’m just glad you’re still around, Attila—in whatever form.”
His mouth managed to form a smile. “Thanks.”
She put on the backpack she’d found in the car, and then she tucked Attila under her arm and set off.
“Looks like it’s going to be a nice day,” said Attila.
“Yes,” she said.
She marched.
It took ten minutes to get to the clearing. She strode across it, toward the trees that ridged the other side.
