“Can’t spare any?” mused Rictus, standing and patting his chest. “I feel better than I have in centuries. I’m sure I could spare a few drops of sangre, a couple million of my bloodbots.”
Enoch shook his head. “I’m sure you feel great, Ric, but that’s because your blood . . .” he struggled to remember the terms he had learned in Babel, “ . . . your circulatory and your respiratory systems are functioning again. But before I blacked out, I saw the nanites swarming into your gut. I think they’re spending their extra energy to rebuild your digestive system. After that runs out, they’ll shift back to maintenance—and I can’t stop it. That’s part of their cycle, one that has been long overdue. But losing any right now would leave you with a half-finished digestive system, and that . . .” Here Enoch shrugged, not really familiar with the anatomical terminology.
Rictus finished for him, patting his stomach. “. . . that would be bad. The funny thing, Enoch, is that in a few hot minutes you were able to synthesize disparate engineering and biological technologies in a way I’d never imagined. Imagine how much more dangerous Váli would have been with the focused nanite healing power harnessed to his explosive cell generation.”
A fully-mutable, rapid healing warrior who could shape himself to look just as monstrous—or as beautiful—as he wanted to. That is a frightening concept.
And a powerful one.
Thoughts like this sprung into Enoch’s head from time to time, and he didn’t like them. The fear that he might be helpless against an ancestral destiny as a power-mad dictator weighed heavily on him sometimes.
He pushed himself to his feet and walked to the doorway that Sera had left through, gathering his derech and iskeyar.
“I’m going out to exercise,” said Enoch. “I don’t want to be tired out by cutting off tentacles when we meet Váli’s brethren. Do you want to spar?”
Rictus stood up and brushed sand off of his leather pants. “Sure,” he said, “although I get the feeling that he was kind of a collector’s item.”
The morning sun made them both blink as they exited the den, although Rictus enjoyed the sensation much more than Enoch. The shade from the metal towers—antenna clusters is what Rictus called them—slanted away from the entrance at this hour.
The previous occupant of this artificial oasis had not been concerned with upkeep, apparently—Váli’s sense of hygiene matched his physical form. There were piles of desiccated garbage, bones, and assorted refuse scattered all around the pond. Many of the mounds were more than twice as tall as Váli had been. Rictus said the place had probably been a very advanced, automated entry point to the caverns below, but now it looked very much like a monster’s dwelling place, a den. So that’s what they had named it.
They had made some attempt to clear the space around the entrance, and Sera had helped G’Nor construct some drying racks to preserve the meat and skins that the Ur’lyn’s hunts brought them. Nobody knew how long they’d be here, but it seemed wise to plan for the worst. On a corroded metal platform just past the racks, Enoch had begun gathering bits of useful—or seemingly useful—odds and ends that they found as they cleared away the garbage. Some water containers, a small folding knife, rolls of that silvery cloth, and a tiny lantern the size of an apple which Rictus claimed could take energy from the sun and store it to generate light.
Enoch had wanted to take the lantern and explore deeper into the den, but both Rictus and Sera had overruled that—they said it was time to heal and recover. Enoch had protested, claiming that they might be able to find some way out of this desert. But he didn’t have enough fight in him to overrule their worry.
Fine then. Let’s get healed.
He walked to the edge of the lake, followed by Rictus. It was a warm morning, but the full heat of the day hadn’t set in.
The Pensanden grabbed his swords by the scabbards and handed them to his friend, hilt first. “Which do you want? You prefer the straighter blades, as I recall.”
Rictus reached around to his back out of habit, forgetting that his trusty sword was long gone. He closed his eyes when the memory hit and frowned.
“Naw, you’re best with both of those little swords, kid. I don’t want you to lose your edge just because I got declawed. Besides, Váli taught me that I’m next to useless trying to wield your toys. Let me see if I can find something more fitting to swat at you with . . .”
Rictus dug through a nearby pile, lifting a bleached human thigh bone, hefting it for weight, and then discarding it with a “tsk tsk.” He dug a bit deeper and finally found something that felt better. It was a long steel bar, once part of a support structure, from what Enoch could tell. With a snap, it came loose, and Rictus staggered back a few paces. The bar was almost as long as he was tall and had a jagged point at the end where it had broken off. Rictus eyed it with a grin and then looked over his shoulder at Enoch, laughing maliciously.
Unfortunately, the bar had been supporting a critical point in the stack of refuse. There was a shifting sound and then a loud “galumph” as a wall of garbage avalanched down around Rictus’s shoulders. When the dust cleared, the one-time specter was standing waist-deep in junk with a bucket on his head. But he was still holding his bar.
Enoch tried not to laugh. He really did. But the look on Rictus’s face when he took the bucket from his head was just too priceless.
“That’s right, enjoy yourself,” Rictus said, brushing his shoulders off. “You’ll be whining in a minute.” He bent over to pull himself out of the mess and then paused. “Enoch, come check this out.”
The pile of garbage had been stacked on top of—and concealing—a low building. A building with the same sturdy construction Enoch had noted in the den. It was wide, windowless, and—like everything else here—half buried in sand and garbage. It was entirely unremarkable except for the broad, slatted door that covered its face. It wasn’t the type of door meant for people to move through. It was much larger.
Rictus was looking at Enoch with an eyebrow raised. “Did you know this was under here? Did you rig this to fall on your poor Uncle Rictus? I thought you couldn’t use your powers without popping a lobe.”
Enoch shook his head. “I thought this was all trash, I swear. Even thinking about looking to see what’s behind that barn door is giving me a headache,” he said, frustrated.
Now it was Rictus’s turn to laugh. “That’s right—you’ve never seen a garage before.” He waded through the garbage and dug down through the base of the door. “Here we go—looks like this piece of junk gets to be my sword and crowbar today.”
Enoch walked over to help Rictus dig around at the base until they uncovered a lock securing the door to some aged and crumbling cement. Then Rictus wedged his bar between the lock and leaned backwards, pulling the rod back and forth. There was a pop and the bar swung loose. It didn’t take much longer, with their combined efforts, to pry the door from the base and slowly slide it up into the ceiling.
The cool air that crumbled out from the garage was stale and smelled of oil—this place had obviously been sealed away for a long, long time. In the shadows, covered in a layer of that same metallic cloth, was what Enoch could only surmise was a vehicle. It was larger than a shipping wagon and perched on four knobby wheels that splayed out from under the tarp, each plated with steel scales.
Rictus whistled, a habit he had taken to now that he had lips, and grabbed the tarp by one corner. He pulled it from the vehicle with a flourish, sending a cloud of dust into the air. Enoch coughed, blinking tears from his eyes.
The vehicle crouched low in the warm light, a powerful, almost feline shape formed of steel and artistry lost to this world centuries past. Enoch could not help himself, and with a hissing intake of breath he opened his mind to the working soul of the thing. It was beautiful. All of the layered intricacy of the Silverwitch he had met back in that graveyard, but with the power and simplicity of a well-honed sword.
“Enoch . . .”
Rictus was trying to get h
is attention, but Enoch couldn’t look away from the vehicle. The four large wheels were balanced on oddly jointed rods, like spokes on a wagon that could move independent of one another. The chassis was a combination of aerodynamics and structural strength, balanced to allow the vehicle to move swiftly and nimbly without putting too much stress on any one point. There were weapons fitted to the chassis as well—weapons of focused light and ballistic intent.
“Enoch. Kid . . .”
It was all driven by a compact yet powerful engine nestled in the heart of the machine—a machine which had been left oiled and prepared for a long wait. It was waiting here for him, Enoch knew. And it was perfect! It just needed . . . needed . . .
The floor came up to meet Enoch’s face, but luckily Rictus had been moving towards him and caught the boy just in time.
“Enoch! Get out of your trance, kid!” Rictus shook Enoch gently, cursing as the Pensanden shuddered.
“It just needs some power, Ric.”
“And you need to snap out of it. I thought you were more cautious than that. Here, drink some water.”
He took the pouch Rictus offered him, drinking deeply. The pain in his head was already waning, but Enoch had seen enough.
“We have a way out of this desert. That vehicle is ready to carry us, Rictus. It just needs a power source.”
Rictus chewed on that, trying to look less concerned about Enoch’s condition than he actually was. “Well, it shouldn’t need much of a one—most of the cars from this era had solar cells worked into their skin, similar to that lamp you found. The battery just got them going when the sun was down—or if they’d been in the shade for millennia. I’m sure there’s another one kicking around down here somewhere.”
Enoch got to his feet, wiping his hands on his pants. His head felt a little foggy, but the feeling was already fading. He walked around the vehicle, waving off Rictus’s muttered concern.
“I’ll keep my mind out of the car, Ric. I just want to see what else is in here.”
In the warm light that slanted through the opening, it was clear that the building was meant for vehicle storage and nothing more. There was a panel on the rear wall with a cracked glass screen, and several inert hoses and steel arms hung from the ceiling. Even without using his mechanical site Enoch could tell that it had been used for analysis and upkeep of the vehicle. But there was no battery.
“Odd that they didn’t keep a power source here,” he said. “Seems like the most convenient location.”
“Not really,” said Rictus, who had followed him to the back. “This was a military facility. That was certainly a military vehicle. It wouldn’t make sense to leave the keys to the daddy’s sexy new wartank sitting on the dashboard.”
Enoch rolled his eyes—Rictus might now look like a young man with oddly gray hair, but he still spoke like someone from a bygone age.
Sera poked her head in—she had come out to see what was going on—the noise of the falling garbage had alarmed her. When she saw the vehicle, her mouth went wide. Rictus answered her insistent questions on how they had found the thing and mentioned the missing battery.
Her earlier anger at Enoch was forgotten—this was obviously a topic that excited her. Like the rest, she had been worrying about how they were going to escape this desert. And she knew that this was the solution. Apparently Sera’s mentor had shown her schematics of vehicles like this, and she eagerly bent over and used her finger to draw a schematic of the battery in the sand.
“This shouldn’t be too hard to recognize. It’s a cylinder about the size of your thigh,” she said, “with a steel handle on one end and a thicker knot of circuitry on the other. It should be heavier than it looks and will most likely be stored somewhere cold.”
Enoch nodded, engrossed with the picture. After his exploration of the vehicle’s makeup, he knew exactly where the battery fit and even how it functioned . . . and that thought only made his brow ache a tiny bit.
Rictus pointed to the surrounding piles of refuse. There were at least a dozen other piles around the den that could be hiding similar garages. “It’s possible that one of these holds a refrigerated unit storing the batteries, but my guess is that they are held deeper under the facility. Easier to keep them cool and more secure.”
“Let’s see what else we can uncover here,” said Sera, standing up from her drawing. “Rictus, can you find me another one of those pry bars?”
The specter-made-man smiled and started digging into the refuse around where they stood. It was a dashing smile, thought Enoch, and he caught a glimpse of the “international heartthrob” status that the specter was always reminiscing about.
“I’m going to go back inside and lay down,” Enoch said. “My head is still ringing.”
Rictus waved as Enoch stumbled back to the den, hearing the sound of Sera scolding the specter for letting Enoch near machinery in his weakened state. Even in the scolding, Enoch could hear a new energy and hopefulness. They were going to get out of here.
And I’m going to find that battery.
For his part, Enoch hoped that his feigned weakness was convincing. He knew where he could find a battery, and he knew that Rictus and Sera were too distracted to stop him.
* * * *
The doors at the back of the den had been easy to pry open with his derech—the locks had corroded over time, and it appeared that Váli had not cared to reinforce them. Time had not left much of a mark on the space. Apart from some dust, the pale floor and walls seemed much like Enoch imagined they had looked centuries ago. They were paneled with a pale, lightly textured material that didn’t appear to corrode. The ceiling was more utilitarian—pipes, cables, and more structural pieces naked to the eye.
The long hallway slanted down into darkness, extending beyond the reach of Enoch’s lamp. The little device emitted a cold, bluish light that was surprisingly powerful. Enoch figured that he had several hours of illumination remaining. He was sure that he would be able find a battery in that time.
And the extra water, meat, and note I left back at the den were just . . . just a precaution.
Enoch smiled, finally able to admit the truth to himself—he had wanted to explore the depths of this place ever since he’d arrived. The mystery of it all! Why had Váli been so driven to keep Pensanden from discovering his den? Why the centuries of preparation and solitary vigil? And there was the memory of Master Gershom, who had suggested coming here for something. A key? The memory was too vague.
But there was something more. This place just felt right. It felt familiar. Enoch had somehow known that the doors at the rear of the den would lead down to . . . to something important. This wasn’t his metallic vision guiding him. This was a place which had been built by brilliant minds, minds which echoed his own. They were not Pensanden, but they had been people who understood numbers and systems.
The hallway continued down, then began branching to the sides. Again and again. Yet Enoch knew which path to follow. He felt a surge of adrenaline. He felt . . . welcome.
His head felt better the deeper he went into the facility. There was something about the layout, the precision of the place that just seemed to soothe his thoughts. It was the exact opposite effect of Váli’s number trap—a place engineered so soundly that it nurtured a mind bred to create order.
Enoch didn’t hesitate now to send his mechanical vision along the cables in the ceiling. The pain was gone. The cables led to junctures that led to more cables that led further down into vast generators nestled deep beneath the sand. Most of them were dead and cold, but not all. A pair of these engines still flickered with atomic life, could be brought back to full power with a shift here, some new cabling there.
The structure and design of Babel had been similar to this, but now Enoch understood why it had never resonated with him like this place—generations of city-dwellers had built over and around the place, spoiling the cleanly purposed order of a rocket construction site and turning it into a chaotic city. The conflicting
, incongruent layers had been jarring for his mind—still untrained at that point—and he instinctively drew away from exploring. That was why he had never really discovered the dark secret slumbering in those cold chambers.
The memory came with a pang of grief, and Enoch quickly shifted his thoughts back to the here and now. This place had remained untouched by the chaos. Even the horrific weapons that had transformed the land above into gray sand had been unable to penetrate the majestic order that reigned underneath. And it was suddenly obvious to Enoch that this had been the purpose of the place. It had been built by people who wished to hold something—to protect something. And to hide something from the Pensanden.
And I am getting closer.
Rooms branched off from the hallway now, and Enoch caught glimpses of incredible machinery in each of them. There was a room full of articulating arms and tools, a room that could build—or tear apart—anything one desired. There was a room with magnetized rails, which could lift, spin, and manipulate a metal object in any direction or speed. One room held hundreds of glass pistons, delicate cylinders that slid over and around each other in infinitely varied patterns. The purpose of these rooms was beyond Enoch’s ken, but the power and mystery they contained stoked his curiosity. He knew that he could spend an eternity here, wandering from room to room. But he had to reach the bottom of this facility. He had to find its purpose. He had to . . .
Ok, just one room.
He chose the smaller door to his right, one that seemed almost hidden beneath layers of bolted steel. At his touch, the layers folded back and parted—it was a simple matter to unlock the codes that held them shut.
He chose the room because it was small and because it felt like something he could pop in and out of without wasting any time. Just a taste of the fascinating machinery that filled this facility. But the room turned out to be fairly . . . disappointing. Just a simple steel table surrounded by twelve tall-backed chairs—steel chairs that resembled enormous ladles, with the handles coming down from the ceiling and bending into cupped cushions. Those were odd, but not very interesting. At the end of the room was a thirteenth chair, one that looked down over the others. It was empty, however.
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