The Pilgrims of Rayne tpa-8

by D. J. MacHale

  Siry was right behind me. Or right above me. Or… something. You get the idea. If he lost his footing, he’d come sliding right down onto me and bye-bye both of us.

  “You okay?” I called up.

  “I’m still here” was his answer. Good enough.

  I always had four choices of where to go next. Between my two hands and two feet, one of them kept finding a lower perch. It was working. We were moving down. I was beginning to think our biggest worry was going to be Saint Dane discovering us creeping down the outside of the building, totally defenseless.

  It wasn’t. I heard a wrenching crack sound.

  “Ahhh!” screamed Siry. He lost his grip and started to slide. A moment later he shot right past me. I reached out to grab him. Bad move. The moment I let go with my left hand, I felt myself sliding too. I had to quickly pull my hand back and grab on, or I would have gone down right after him. I watched in horror as Siry picked up speed. Looking down, I realized the idiocy of our plan. Seeing him slide away, and looking beyond him to the ground so far away, brought the vertigo back. The only way I could keep from losing my grip was by closing my eyes and pressing my cheek against the skin of the pyramid. I wanted to pound my fist against it in anger.

  I heard a crash and a scream from below. It didn’t sound good. Do crashes and screams ever sound good? I took a few deep breaths and looked down to see… nothing. gone. That seemed impossible. No way he would have fallen out of sight so quickly.

  “Pendragon?” I heard a dazed voice call.

  “Are you all right?” I called back.

  “The wall caved in. I’m inside.”

  He was alive, at least for the moment. I started moving again. Slowly, gradually, I made my way down toward Siry’s voice. I had gotten only a few yards when I realized that the surface of the pyramid was becoming unstable. Before I could think of some way to deal with that, the panel beneath me cracked and caved. I fell into the pyramid, tumbling down in a shower of black tiles. I landed next to Siry, who was sitting up, alive but dazed. The two of us stared at each other.

  “Let’s not do that again,” he said.

  We were fine. Stunned. A little cut up, but fine. I saw that we were in one of the cubicles that held two jump tubes. “What are those?” Siry asked.

  He pointed to the two round hatches on the wall that covered the tubes. They were closed. I wasn’t about to open them. I didn’t want to know what was inside. The control lights were dark. The jumps had been over for a long time.

  “Jump tubes,” I explained. “Where the people entered Lifelight.”

  “People are in there?” he asked.

  “Not anymore.” I didn’t go into any more details.

  I stood up cautiously, making sure my bones were intact. I had a few scrapes, but that was all. Siry got away even easier. We had lived through an impossible stunt, but were still trapped inside a dado-infested pyramid.

  I gently pushed the door open. The first thing I saw were two dados marching by. I froze. Had they seen me? No. Or they weren’t looking for us. Either way, they didn’t stop.

  Peering out showed me that we had slid about a quarter of the way down the pyramid. My idea ended up not being that crazy after all. Sort of. Okay, maybe we were nearly killed, but it helped us to get away. At least for a while. We were in the dead center of the long balcony, with jump rooms spread out to either side of us. The balcony was about six feet wide and looked out over the center of the pyramid. The place was alive with dados. They walked slowly and methodically along the balconies that ringed the inside of the pyramid. Many more marched along the catwalks leading to the center tube and the elevator.

  “We’ll never get past them,” Siry sighed.

  I glanced around looking for… I didn’t know what. Anything. Looking back inside the room with the jump tubes, I saw a few pieces of clothing were folded neatly in the corner.

  “There’s a start,” I declared, and jumped back into the room. Lying in the corner neatly folded were a couple pairs of dark pants and some light-colored shirts. There were shoes, too. They looked every bit like the kinds of clothing people wore on Veelox… three hundred years before. When I picked them up, they shredded in my hands. The sick thought hit me that these clothes belonged to the two people who were probably still in the jump tubes wearing the green coveralls that all jumpers wore. There wouldn’t be anything left of those coveralls. Or the people for that matter. The only thing left of them were the clothes they wore before their jump.

  “Put ‘em on,” I ordered, taking off my own colorful Ibara clothes. “They might think we’re Flighters, and we can blend in.”

  We both quickly changed out of our Ibara clothes and slipped on the ancient clothing of Veelox. We had to be careful, because the fabric crumbled in our hands. But good too. The raggier we were, the more we’d look like Flighters. Siry’s clothes were too big for him and mine were too small, but that was okay.

  “What do you think?” Siry asked, standing up for me to see.

  “You’re a mess,” I said. “Perfect.”

  The clothes were as uncomfortable as hell. Not just because they felt like sandpaper, but the idea of wearing dead people’s clothing was kind of creepy. The only thing we kept of our own clothes were our sandals. The crumbling shoes were no good, and we might have needed to run. Our hair wasn’t very ratty-Flighter-looking either. Still, it was the best we could do.

  “There’s gotta be another way down besides that central elevator,” I said.

  “Let’s find it,” Siry answered.

  We slipped out of the room and out onto the balcony. Most of the dados had left the balcony and were walking along the catwalks toward the elevator. More interesting were the dados that walked toward either end of the balcony.

  “I’ll bet that’s our way down,” I declared.

  I stepped forward and looked over the edge. What I saw made my gut clutch, and not just because we were so high up. Far down below, on the floor, the dados were gathering. They streamed out of the elevator and the four corners of the pyramid.

  “Look where they’re coming from,” Siry exclaimed. “There must be a way down at each corner.”

  He was right. We would find our way down. But that’s not what struck me. More and more dados were arriving on the floor and stepping into military-like formation. They were falling in to precise groups of twenty across and forty deep. In between each of these groups, another dado marched, making sure the formation was perfectly correct. The robots stood at attention, as if waiting for orders.

  “It’s an army,” I said quietly. “An organized army. They’re getting ready.”

  “For what?”

  “To attack Ibara.”

  “Pendragon, even if we get out of here, how are we going to get back to Ibara to warn them?” “That’s the easy part,” I answered. Siry gave me a confused look.

  “I can get us to Ibara,” I said with confidence. “All we have to do is figure out how to get past a swarm of killer bees.”

  (CONTINUED)

  IBARA

  It was all about getting back to Ibara.

  The people had to know an attack was coming that would be like nothing they’d seen before. Heck, like nobody had seen before. Fighting off a handful of grungy Flighters was one thing. Protecting the island from thousands of killer dados was another ball game. I remembered those automatic guns that blew the Flighters’ gunboat out of the water. I hoped there were more of those bad boys around Ibara. Fighting the dados with poison blow darts was going to be worse than useless.

  Siry and I ran along the balcony until we reached the first corner. Sure enough, there was a doorway that led to a staircase. We quickly charged down. Did I say quickly? It took forever to get down those stairs, because we weren’t going straight down. It was a pyramid. The stairs were on a flatter angle than normal stairs. We were moving away from the center of the pyramid as thought we were Flighters. Or maybe they weren’t thinking. They were robots after all. They reminded m
e of the mindless security goons of Quillan, with their square heads and oversize bodies. Their eyes were just as dead as the dados from Quillan, too. For all I knew, these were the dados from Quillan. Saint Dane had gotten these dados from somewhere. From what I’d seen of Veelox, they weren’t able to manufacture clothes, let alone sophisticated robots. The walls between the territories were nearly down.

  I was too busy running to worry much about the larger implications. I’m guessing it took us about half an hour to finally hit the bottom of the pyramid.

  “This is where it gets tricky,” I said to Siry, as if everything up to this point hadn’t been tricky at all.

  As we got closer to ground level, we started seeing Flighters mixed in with the dados. They may have all worn the same raggy clothing, but there was no mistaking the two. The dados were tall and powerful looking with scary-big square heads. The Flighters were much smaller than me, probably a result of centuries of lousy food. Or no food. I don’t think any of them had cut their hair. Ever. And they smelled. At least the dados didn’t have that foul odor. That would have been gruesome, times many thousand.

  Strangely, none of them gave us a second look. I was beginning to think the Flighters didn’t have much more brainpower than the robotic dados. If all it took to fool them was a change of clothing, then three hundred years of evolution didn’t do much for improving intelligence. Dopes. When we entered the central area of the pyramid, I saw signs that the Flighters had made the Lifelight monolith home. Several slept along the walls. Garbage was everywhere. Smelly, rotten rags were piled up in random areas. It was probably their laundry.

  Their clean laundry. The smell was pretty rank. There wasn’t a whole lot of hygiene going on around there.

  “Look,” Siry whispered, pointing toward the center of the large area.

  It was Saint Dane. He was walking in front of a line of dados with his hands clasped behind his back, like a general inspecting his troops. I’m not sure whether to describe the army of dados as pathetic or frightening. They weren’t dressed like an army. There were no uniforms. They all wore threadbare rags, like the Flighters. Many of them wore shredded coveralls that were red, or dark blue, or dark green-the coveralls that had once belonged to the vedders, phaders, and jumpers of Lifelight. They had no weapons, either.

  But they were dados. They couldn’t be killed. Each one was an exact duplicate of the other. They stood over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and big hands. They looked like muscle guys, though I guess robots don’t really have muscles, technically. And those big, square heads made them look like an army of Frankenstein monsters. More intimidating than anything was that there were so many of them. They could throw a thousand dados at Ibara, lose every one, and have thousands more to take their place. They didn’t have to be good or experienced or have any great tactical plan. All they had to do was keep coming.

  I guess the best word to describe the sight was… “overwhelming.”

  “Why isn’t Saint Dane looking for us?” Siry asked.

  “He probably thinks we’re trapped up in the pyramid. He’d never think we’d be crazy enough to slide down the outside.”

  Siry added, “I can’t believe we were that crazy either.” We ducked down, waiting for enough away so he wouldn’t catch sight of us. We quickly moved along the wall, headed for the glass corridor of the core, and the exit. We dodged in and out of Flighters who were sleeping or gnawing on bones (I didn’t want to know where the bones were from), or watching the spectacle of the dados being assembled. They didn’t care about two semiclean Flighters who had no interest in anything other than getting the heck out of there. We made it around the perimeter and back into the core with no problem. Quickly we moved through the glass-walled control rooms of Lifelight. The monitors were still lit. It was amazing that after three hundred years they still had power in the pyramid. I didn’t stop to try and figure out why or how.

  The last step before leaving the pyramid was a grisly one. Remember I wrote about the sticks we kicked aside in the long corridor on the way in? Now that the lights were on, we saw what they were. Bones. Human bones. Lots of them. I knew they were human because there were a load of skulls, too. Siry froze. He’d never seen anything like that before. Come to think of it, neither had I. The closest I’d ever come was in the quig pen under the Bedoowan castle on Denduron. I’ve been calling Rubic City a place “of the dead.” Until that moment we’d never actually witnessed the physical remains of those who didn’t make it. I’d just as soon have gotten out of there without having had that pleasure.

  “This is Saint Dane’s grand plan for remaking Halla,” I said. “Do you need to see any more?”

  Siry’s eyes were glassy. He gingerly stepped through the scattered bones, trying hard not to disturb them. Moments later we were back out in the warm sunlight of Rubic City.

  “I didn’t think we’d make it,” Siry said.

  “We haven’t,” I cautioned.

  “So how do we get back to Ibara?”

  “That’s the easy part,” I said with a smile. “There’s a flume in Rubic City. C’mon.” I took off running.

  This was a no-brainer. The flume could put us back on the island in minutes. I’d never traveled within a territory, but since the flumes always put us where we needed to be when we needed to be there, I was totally confident that we could step into the tunnel in Rubic City and step out on Ibara. Okay, maybe it was more like semiconfident, but we had to try. The more time the people of Rayne had to prepare for the attack, the better. All we had to worry about was getting past the quig-bees. Oh, that. One step at a time.

  By my clock it had only been a few years since I’d been to Veelox, so I remembered exactly where to find the manhole that led down to the underground train tunnel and the flume. We jogged quickly along the deserted city. I wasn’t even afraid of being jumped by Flighters, because we looked like them now. Idiots. In no time we arrived at the street that held the flume. There was only one problem.

  The street was gone. Well, not exactly gone, it was probably still there, only it was buried under the rubble of a collapsed skyscraper. I looked around, thinking-no, hoping- we were on the wrong street. I quickly realized it wouldn’t have mattered. The whole block was under a three-story pile of broken stuff.

  “Maybe we can dig to it,” Siry suggested.

  “With what? Our hands?”

  We stared at the warlike ruins of what had once been a street lined with pretty brownstone buildings and trees. The flume was a no-go. We both knew what we had to do. Without another word we took off for the pier. It was Plan B time. We had to find a boat to get us back to Ibara. We quickly ran to the block where we had first entered the streets of Rubic City and got a view of the pier. Tied up alongside it was our yellow pirate ship. Though it wasn’t yellow anymore. It was a smoking, charred-black wreck that listed hard to the right, with its bow sticking up as if gasping for air. Siry and I stood at the edge of the buildings, staring at the sad remains.

  “Do you think any of them are alive?” he asked.

  “They could be,” I answered with absolutely no confidence.

  “We didn’t find Twig, either,” he added sadly.

  “We were lucky to get out ourselves. When this is over, we’ll look for them. All of them.”

  Siry said, “When this is over, Rayne could end up like Rubic City.”

  We exchanged grim looks. “Let’s find a boat.”

  The rusty gunboats that had attacked our yellow ship were gone. I scanned the harbor, looking for any other usable craft. There was nothing. Zero. Not a ship in sight. Besides the pier with our smoldering ship, two more piers jutted into the harbor. Neither had any boats tied alongside.

  “This makes no sense,” I said thoughtfully. “If Saint Dane’s going to send thousands of dados to attack Ibara, how are they going to get there?”

  Siry’s eyes widened. He took off his belt with the pouch that contained Aja Killian’s ancient map. He unfolded it for both of us to
see.

  “We’re here on this peninsula,” he said, pointing to the map. “According to the map, the coast looks pretty rugged on either side.”

  I scanned the harbor. The water was flat and calm. “Why would they keep their ships anywhere but right here where it’s close?” I wondered out loud.

  Siry said, “It would take a very big ship to move those dados. Probably more than one. They could tie them right up here to the piers.”

  The piers. I looked at all three. Something was off. Two looked the exact same, but the one to our far right looked slightly different. It was built higher. Where the other two piers had steel pilings beneath that could be seen when the tide was lower, this pier looked more like a solid structure, with sides that reached down under the water.

  “I want to get a closer look at that pier,” I said, and started walking.

  We moved quickly across a few hundred yards of debris. The closer we got, the more the pier looked like an enclosed structure.

  “There could be something in there,” I declared. “Inside the pier.”

  Siry was skeptical. “Like what? It’s not tall enough for a ship.”

  The mystery deepened a few seconds later. Two Flighters appeared from behind a pile of debris at the beginning of the pier. I grabbed Siry and pulled him down behind a pile of twisted steel. The Flighters continued to walk casually along the width of the pier.

  “What are they doing?” Siry asked.

  “I’ll bet they’re guarding whatever’s inside.”

  Siry took a cautious peek at the pier. “There really might be something in there.”

  The only way for us to find out would be to get past the Flighters. I needed a weapon. There was nothing around but piles of rubble… and lengths of ancient steel. I grabbed a section of pipe around six feet long and a few inches thick. I tested its strength, felt its weight, then spun it around and snapped it back into fighting position. Perfect.