Route 666 df-1

by Jack Yeovil

  "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.

  "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 lidded 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 spidercopter. 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 pre
tty 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 GenTech'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 spidercopter 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, Cihulhu, Tzeentch, Nurgle, Sathanas, Ba'alberith, Klesh, Tsa-thoggua. 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.

  Sacrifices must be made. Elsewhere, the Nullifiers were intent For there was a balance to the darkness, a concentrated dot of light that would grow as the Last Days proceeded. The great game of infinite universes would be played out one more time, one last time.

  He felt the weight of years lifting from his mind as he developed the strength he would need to survive the few remaining moments of human history. Sometimes he wondered if he could remotely be considered a human being. The shape he wore was transient and deceptive: the labyrinth of memory that was his mind was beyond human imagining. Even geniuses and madmen had been unable to share his visions. His other selves, from the other continua – the masked sorcerer in his castle, the information-bloated leech in his pyramid – overlapped his mind briefly, flaring with their own purpose.

  Would the one-eyed girl come to appreciate the gift she had taken? She could no more use the spectacles than an ant could conceive of a whale, but she might discern a certain curvature of the landscape, a certain quality of shadow…

  In the near future, his hands would be red with her blood. His mind would be his own again. In the meantime, the ritual continued…

  VIII

  9 June 1995

  The patrol made good time on the pilgrim trail before making camp, returning to where they had buried the roadkill. The cruiser had a microwave for reheat-rations and an in-built recaffolator, but Quincannon liked to get a real fire going. He said the desert night didn't sound right without crackling. Also, flames kept unwelcome critters away. Every month, some straying patrol logged a sighting of something that shouldn't be alive.

  Yorke and Tyree spent half an hour rounding up scrubby weeds and wooden jetsam for the fire while the Quince and Burnside raised the wind-wall and the pup tents. With the sun falling rapidly, the task had some urgency. Under starlight, it was impossible to find anything.

  Half buried by the road was a bookcase, complete with paperbacks. There was a set of Margaret Thatcher's "Grantham" romances, which Yorke's mother devoured in the '80s before her father decreed that such slush should be burned in public, and a few pulps by Kenneth Livingstone, who turned out to be a Brit science-fiction writer.

  The bookcase and books were all the troopers needed to get a good fire going. Yorke stamped the furniture into fragments and made a pile. Tyree was nervy about putting books into the blaze, which Yorke couldn't understand. They were just dead old words on paper.

  While Quincannon boiled up a pot of recaff, hoping that real fire might improve the taste, Tyree hauled herself off to one side with a paperback called Newtworld and started reading. Yorke eyed her. She was like that in off-hours, withdrawn and a tad nose-in-the-air. She was seeing Nathan Stack, another trooper out of Valens, but the affair seemed on the wane. Yorke, who hadn't had himself a woman since his last leave in Tucson, would have liked a chance, but Tyree had a good five years on him, and he knew she didn't take him seriously. She had tiny lines around her mouth and eyes, but was in shape. A man could do a sight worse …

  "March over, Leona," the Quince said, "get your reheated taco and grits."

  Tyree scrambled nearer the fire and took a plate. With her helmet off, she had honeyish h
air that cleared her shoulders by a couple of inches.

  "What's the book about?"

  "So far as I can scan, it's set in the future when intelligent swamp creatures rule the planet and the Brit government are amphibians. Except the prime minister, who's a jellyfish. The first couple of pages are missing."

  Quincannon looked at the faded book-cover. It showed a man-sized lizard with a big gun and a British policeman's helmet.

  "I've heard enough strange stories not to be bothered with this stuff…"

  Yorke could tell the Quince was in a vocal mood. They'd be lucky to get to sleep before three, by which time the sergeant would have done his best to pack them off to dreamland on the nightmare express. If it was scary, it had happened to someone Quincannon knew.

  "Wasn't today strange enough for you?" Tyree asked. "You met the Frankenstein monster. And Dr Zarathustra."

  "Hell, Leona, today didn't even go off the Odd scale into Weird."

  Yorke bit into his taco. It was standard Cav rations, meat in one end and fruit in the other. You ate your way through to dessert. He washed down protein-intensive chunks with swallows of hot, muddy coffee-derivative. Everyone who remembered what they called "real coffee" bitched and pissed about recaff, but it tasted OK to bis buds.

  Quincannon poured himself half a mug, then fished a flask out of his britches' pocket and sloshed in enough Shochaiku Double-Blend to fill the mug to the brim.

  "The way I scan it," he said, "we're off duty. And off duty, our gullets and guts are no business of the United States Road Cavalry."

  He offered the flask around. Burnside and Tyree waved it away, but Yorke took a hefty gulp. Battery acid sloshed against his sinuses and seeped out his tear-ducts. Fire spread into his stomach.

  "Ah, but it has a powerful kick to it," Quincannon said, smiling like a proud father. The more whiskey he had in his blood, the more Irish crept into his accent.

  Burnside, having wolfed his rations down, untelescoped his travelling flute and began to blow scales. He liked to get his hour's practice in every day, even on patrol. Scales became a mournful improvisation, low and unobtrusive. Wash Burnside had a melancholy, wondering streak. He didn't talk much about his past.