Route 666

by Jack Yeovil

  She had let him live. She had taken his dark glasses and let him live. Two mistakes, she thought.

  Bad ones, her phantom father whispered.

  “Wagons roll,” she said.

  VI

  9 June 1995

  More damfool deadfolks, Tyree thought, surveying wreckage. Well, arguably folks. And, until bagged and tagged, only arguably dead.

  Burnside, always a backdrop buff, was struck silent by Canyon de Chelly. No matter how many times he patrolled Monument Valley or the Painted Desert or the Petrified Forest, the trooper was compelled to waste valuable minutes staring. He should buy a book of postcards and get it over with. He kept on his skidlid, glareproof visor down, as he looked up at the free-standing column. Despite the technology wrapped around his head, he shaded his eyes with his hand.

  As Burnside gazed up at the wonders of nature, Tyree rooted down in the dirt for the detritus of man.

  “The place scans like an amnesty point for robo-bits,” she said into her intercom. The Quince, a few miles back in the cruiser and gaining, grunted at her commentary.

  Turning over a durium arm with her boot, she continued her report.

  “We’ve got brand-new prostheses scattered like seashells. I’m no expert, but I think some of the smaller contrivaptions are doodad hearts and kidneys and the like.”

  She picked up a glass eye. Its pupil dilated and she dropped it like a slug.

  “And we have abandoned ve-hickles, some with trace blood in their treads. Plus what looks to me like explosive charges wired around the base of a national monument.”

  The cruiser was in sight now, growling up an ill-maintained access road. Few tourists ventured this way nowadays. Out in the Des, you were more likely to pick up a permanent disability than a novelty hologram. Besides, once you’ve seen one acre of sand…

  “Looks like a bird of prey,” Burnside said, pointing out a circling black bird, “a hawk or something.”

  “Probably a vulture,” Tyree said. “A disappointed vulture. There’s no meat around here, just metal.”

  Burnside tore himself away from the grandeur and started poking around amongst the robo-junk. Some remains were almost complete, like empty suits of armour.

  Dried smears of oily substance were all over the show, coating the abandoned doodads but also streaking the sand and rock. It had a faintly nauseating odour. Tyree had no idea what the stuff might be, but didn’t care for it.

  Quincannon ambled over from the cruiser, Yorke trotting behind like a faithful terrier. They looked like a father-and-son team; the young trooper trying to copy the older, bulkier sergeant’s Cav swagger. Yorke was OK for a kid.

  “Have you pulled wires on the infernal devices?” the sergeant asked.

  “We thought you’d like to take a scan, Quince.”

  Quincannon raised a disapproving eyebrow at the arrangement of detonators and charges.

  “It’s just demolition equipment,” he said. “You couldn’t even call it a bomb.”

  Tyree agreed, but it was never a good idea to perform surgery on Blastite without a second opinion.

  “Burnside, disable and collect the fireworks.”

  Burnside saluted and snapped to, scurrying around the base of the column to unfasten the packages.

  “We’ll put ’em under Captain Brittles desk for the Fourth of July,” Quincannon said.

  The Sergeant squinted at a decal on one of the abandoned cykes. It showed Pinocchio making obscene use of his liar’s nose.

  “Knock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots,” Quincannon said.

  Tyree agreed. Yorke needed the full explanation.

  “A cyborg fraternity. Renegades from GenTech BioDiv’s New Flesh programme. They aren’t really even a gangcult. There’s a semi-official Hands Off note posted on them. BioDiv wants to observe them in the wild, see how they survive the environment.”

  “Not too snazz, I guess,” Tyree said.

  “Good call, Leona. Scans like a back-to-the-old-drawing-board situation to me.”

  Canyon de Chelly was an android graveyard. Maybe the ’bots always crawled here to die. In the future, poachers would recover a fabulous fortune in circuit boards and brain-chips from the shifting sands. All they had to do was cripple a toaster and follow the tracks.

  “What happened?” Yorke asked. “They all go bughouse and tear out their robo-bits?”

  Tyree imagined a religious frenzy falling upon the ’bots. Her Daddy had been a small-time preachie, specialising in Biblical excoriations like “if thine glass eye offend thee…” But theory didn’t fit the picture.

  “No, they’re still here,” said the Quince. “Scan those stains. I’ve seen sludge like that before. When the Virus Vigilantes launched a bioweapon against the Road Runners back in ’92, that was the kind of stuff left behind. It’s human compost. They tagged the effect the Meltdown Measles.”

  Yorke did a little dance, scraping black goo off his boot-soles. Tyree couldn’t believe that human flesh and bone deconstituted to such an extent, but Quincannon knew best.

  “The air tests clean,” Burnside put in, a satchel of Blastite and fuse equipment under his arm. “I ran the check first thing. No out-of-the-way bugs.”

  “This doesn’t feel viral to me,” Quincannon said. “Scan the way the works are scattered around…”

  There were robo-bits strewn in a wide circle, as if they had been wrenched apart and thrown to all points of the compass.

  “This feels violent to me. This feels late 20th century.”

  “Very late,” Burnside said.

  “Should we call it in to Fort Valens?” Yorke asked.

  Quincannon nodded. “Trail runs out here. The way I picture it, the perps ran into natural justice. The ’bots zotzed the pilgrims then something bigger came along and totalled them. Case closed, and we should get back to our route.”

  There was a distant whup-whup-whup. Tyree saw a sleek shape in the sky, some sort of mutant helicopter. The thing did a circle of the rock column and she tagged it as Private Sector. There was a discreet Japanese GenTech logo.

  “Visitors,” Burnside commented.

  “Best behaviour, boys,” Quincannon said, heavily depressing the irony pedal. “We don’t want a diplomatic incident.”

  There was bad blood between the Quince and the Japcorps, Tyree knew. There was a dead girl in the story.

  The spidercopter made a neat landing and withdrew its blades. It was a gleaming white and had no obvious windows.

  “You expect them to troop out behind a robot and say ‘we come in peace’,” Yorke said.

  “They don’t need that,” Quincannon said. “They’re the new owners.”

  An aperture appeared and steps unfolded. Two figures stepped down precisely. They did look like aliens. Their Self-Contained Environment suits were sexless and slimline, with filter-mask helmets that resembled samurai armour. They bowed formally and advanced.

  “This equipment is the property of GenTech,” a computer-generated voice advised the patrol. “Thank you for protecting it. Your welcome assistance is now surplus to requirements.”

  It was impossible to judge whether the voice came from either of the SCE figures or the spidercopter.

  “With all respect,” Quincannon said, not bowing, “serious crimes have been committed. We’re not rightly sure whether this junk is evidence or the perpetrators.”

  The figures froze and inclined heads towards each other. A tiny buzz indicated a conversation.

  “The air’s clean,” Burnside said, helpfully. He held up his test print-out.

  The SCEs took a moment. One raised an arm and punched buttons on a wrist-band. Tyree guessed the equipment was several generations in advance of the wheezy old contrivaptions Burnside had to lug around. There was a ping which, she assumed, confirmed Burnside’s tests. As one, the figures touched buttons at their necks and hoods were sucked into their collars, rolling back like foreskins. Anonymous faces emerged, a Caucasian man and a Japanese woman.

&n
bsp; “You will please help Dr McFall-Ngai and Engineer Huff gather the GenTech property,” the helicopter said. Tyree didn’t quite like its tone.

  “It’s just junk,” Yorke said, kicking a stray leg. The Japanese—Dr Shimako McFall-Ngai, her breastplate read—cringed. In that moment, Tyree found some sort of fellowship with her; it was irrational to think a prosthesis felt pain, suggesting a welcome streak of human idiocy.

  “If you will kindly have care,” Dr McFall-Ngai said. “Delicate recording instruments are concealed.”

  “You’re looking for the black boxes?” Quincannon asked.

  “Indeed,” the woman confirmed.

  Tyree didn’t understand.

  “The company has been letting its experiments loose,” Quincannon explained. “The ’bots must have imagined they were renegade, but they’ve been monitored all along.”

  The GenTech officials methodically went through the detritus, retrieving specific doodads.

  “Why didn’t they use the off switch when it scanned like they were killing people?”

  “There is no off switch,” the helicopter said.

  “Don’t be so sure of that,” said Quincannon, raising his voice unnecessarily. “Something sure found a way to pull the plug on the ’bots.”

  Tyree got the impression the helicopter was sulking. She noticed Dr McFall-Ngai shudder when the Sergeant shouted at it. Whoever generated the voice was a high-level suit. Also, a high-level creep.

  Engineer Huff found something and signalled urgently. The Japanese bowed to the Cav and hurried over.

  “This one still functions,” Huff said.

  The woman knelt like a paramedic and started working on an opened chestplate with chopstick-like implements. She was attending to what looked like a complete android. Its soft green plastic face was a Boris Karloff mask. It even had bolts in its neck.

  As Dr McFall-Ngai worked, sparks flew. She muttered in Japanese.

  Tyree cautiously approached, careful not to get in the scientist’s light. The Frankenstein monster’s eyes opened and closed like goldfish mouths. The scientist left the ’bot’s chest alone and shifted attention to the head. She found a seam and pressed, opening the flat skull. A glittery crystal ball was exposed, sludged with what the Quince called “human compost”. Lights fluctuated inside.

  The scientist whistled.

  “Ambitious,” she said, “but unsuccessful.”

  “Can it still think?” Huff asked.

  She slipped her tool into a hole in the ball. A light in the implement’s butt flashed.

  “Point debatable. It can calculate but it cannot intuit. Therefore it cannot be classed sentient. It may retain limited motion controls and be programmed for repetitive functions, but this is at best a robot. As a human being, he is dead.”

  Suddenly, the Frankenstein monster sat bolt upright, hinging at the waist, arms outstretched like a sleepwalker.

  The scientists were pushed aside.

  The ’bot’s chin dropped and it rasped “I live!”

  Its heavily Added eyes were half-alive.

  “That’s not possible,” Dr McFall-Ngai said, not unkindly. “You have no brain, merely storage cells.”

  An arm lashed out, tossing the woman away. She yelped surprise.

  Tyree had her side arm out. So did the rest of the patrol.

  “Be warned it is an offence to damage GenTech property,” the helicopter shouted.

  The Frankenstein monster stood, a giant-sized Aurora Glow-in-the-Dark hobby kit. It wore shredded black coveralls. Its body was metallic. Offence or not, it scanned as if it couldn’t be damaged.

  “Does this thing have civil rights?” Quincannon asked Dr McFall-Ngai, who was scrambling upright.

  She thought a moment, “I would have to say no.”

  Quincannon spanged a bullet off the Frankenstein monster’s face, shredding plastic over its forehead. Undented metal gleamed.

  The robot, no longer organic in any sense, looked up at the sky and reached out, grasping for the sunlight. It might have been smiling, it might have been worshipping.

  “What’s it doing now?” Tyree asked.

  Dr McFall-Ngai shrugged but made a suggestion. “Having a religious experience?”

  The Frankenstein monster staggered towards the spider-copter. The aperture nervously contracted shut.

  “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

  To mould me man? Did I solicit thee

  From darkness to promote me?”

  The creature was imploring. The spidercopter was silent.

  Tyree was baffled, but Dr McFall-Ngai told her, “Milton, Paradise Lost. The epigraph to Frankenstein. All cyborgs revere the book, and the films Pinocchio and The Wizard of Oz. For obvious reasons.”

  With a Karloffian roar, the Frankenstein monster attacked the spidercopter. Its large, ungainly hands found no purchase on the smooth machine surface.

  “It’s molecule-locked ceramic,” Huff explained. “Three times as resilient as durium alloy.”

  “That thing’s a pot?” Tyree exclaimed.

  The Frankenstein monster’s fingers scrabbled and broke. An arm extruded from the spidercopter and a needle-beam sliced through the ’bot’s neck, shearing away the head.

  The thing fell dead.

  “That shouldn’t have happened,” Dr McFall-Ngai said. “With no graymass, it could only follow programs. It could not act independently. It could not quote Milton.”

  “It did a pretty snazz job, missy,” Quincannon said.

  “Dr Zarathustra acted prematurely,” the Japanese woman said. “The specimen should have been maintained in its state until a thorough examination could be conducted.”

  Tyree looked again at the featureless spidercopter, impressed Zarathustra was a household name, a force in Gen-Tech’s BioDiv. If anyone born of woman lived forever, it would be his fault.

  The Japanese was politely puzzled.

  “This has been an Unknown Event,” she concluded.

  “I’ve heard that expression before,” Tyree said. “I’ve seen it in reports.”

  The scientist looked almost afraid.

  “There have been many UEs. Things that should not be have been and continue to be.”

  “Didn’t we used to call them miracles?” Quincannon asked.

  The scientist nodded vigorously, fringe shaking.

  “The world is coming apart. Immutable laws have been broken. Laws of physics.”

  “Other laws have been broken,” Quincannon said. “Laws of America. Against murder, for instance. The ’bots killed a couple of pilgrims just over the Utah border.”

  The sergeant was looking at Dr McFall-Ngai, but was speaking to Zarathustra inside the spidercopter.

  “There’s a case that anyone claiming ownership of the robo-remains could be classed an accessory. Like a dog-owner who lets his pitbull savage kids. If BioDiv were monitoring the Knock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots’ actions and didn’t intervene, there could be hefty charges.”

  The aperture reappeared, wordlessly summoning the scientists. Huff had collected a string of egg-shaped devices in a clear plastic suitcase. Dr McFall-Ngai bowed rapidly and apologetically, then retreated with her assistant into the spidercopter. The machine snapped shut, extruded blades and rose vertically in parallel with the stone column.

  “That woman was worried, Quince,” Tyree said.

  All around them, left-over robo-bits ticked. A wind seemed to pass through. Valves still functioned, pistons clicked, joints locked and unlocked, cables contracted.

  “So she should be, Leona.”

  Yorke picked up the Frankenstein monster’s head, holding it as Hamlet held the skull. Dr Almighty God Zarathustra had left the anomalous thing behind. He wanted only evidence that conformed to expectations and would suppress anything that didn’t fit in with the rigidly maintained scientific world image of consensus.

  “This’d look fine in the mess hall trophy case,” Yorke said.

  The mouth opened, dropped
, and a voiceless buzzsaw whine came out. Yorke dropped the head fast and kicked it away, shivering.

  “Very funny, Yorke,” Quincannon said.

  Burnside scanned the painfully blue sky until the spider-copter was gone in the haze.

  “Remember clouds,” the trooper mused. “It’s been a long time since you saw a cloud.”

  Quincannon took a last recce of the site and ordered everyone back to their ve-hickles.

  “We should backtrack from the original incident,” he said. “Pilgrims don’t just come in pairs. There’ll be a whole load of folks, probably in trouble.”

  Trouble, Tyree thought: our job.

  VII

  9 June 1995

  Without the spectacles, the Summoner boiled with anger. The surface of his mind was still as glass but great rages tore and shrieked in the depths He wished to bathe in blood. As the half-human, half-machine abominations were smitten, the Path was blooded. Another move in the ancient rite. The one-eyed girl had disrupted the ritual. The Summoner saw something in her. She was young and foolish, but behind her face was something struggling to be born, something with row upon row of shiny teeth. There was a moment when he could have killed her, but he had let it pass. After so long a wait and so close to the culmination, he needed to leave loopholes. Or else where was the challenge, where the enterprise? He could regain the spectacles. He would wipe away the one-eyed girl. But first he would be tested and proved.

  He felt her tugging at the corner of his mind. Jessamyn Bonney was not yet aware she had impinged upon his consciousness. Doubts bothered her like butterflies, but she had not yet troubled herself to think too much of her prize. If she continued to wear the spectacles, she would of course be forced to think more deeply.

  At a swallow, he learned the girl’s history, probed her flaws, knew where she would bend, where break. Her years were so few, so brief, so banal. When they met again, he would know which points to pressure.

  In the Outer Darkness, the Masters stood still and silent, regarding the tiny bauble of the Earth with ferocious interest. The Summoner knew the Dark Ones would soon stir. The entities had many names, earthly and otherwise: Nyarlathotep, Cthulhu, Tzeentch, Nurgle, Sathanas, Ba’alberith, Klesh, Tsathoggua. Princes of Darkness and Blood and Fear, dimly perceived by every human culture that ever was. No man but the Summoner had any but the faintest idea of their true nature.