Ironheart

by Allan Boroughs

  ‘Let’s make this easy on everyone, shall we?’ said Stone. ‘Tell me, tin man. I want to know where your friends on The Beautiful Game are heading. Where do they expect to find Ironheart?’

  ‘Let me persuade him, Pa!’ said Sid, moving away from the wall. He pulled the pistol from his belt and pointed it at the android’s chest. ‘I reckon a bullet through that old metal plate will kill him stone dead if he don’t cooperate.’

  Stone placed a restraining hand on Sid’s shoulder. ‘You know, boy,’ he said affectionately, ‘you are my only son and I love you dearly but you are without doubt the biggest moron in Angel Town, I swear it!’ He struck Sid with the back of his hand, sending the boy reeling. ‘Why do you think we went to all this trouble to capture him alive?’ he shouted. ‘A job like this requires more finesse than you can provide, boy.’ He turned back to Calculus and pulled up a stool. ‘Now then, tin man,’ he said. ‘The eastern valleys will become impassable within days and I have no time to waste on asking you politely. Tell me what I need to know or I will allow Dr Cirenkov to carry out some . . . experiments.’

  Calculus noticed that the doctor was connecting some electric wires to a heavy steel probe. ‘I would have thought that your spy would have already told you everything you wanted to know,’ he said.

  Stone chuckled. ‘Ah yes, poor Pieter, one of my best operatives. May he rest in peace. It’s good to see you can still be a creature of violence when you want to be, tin man. That will serve us very well.’

  ‘I will not serve you at all,’ said Calculus. ‘I am a military droid and I am programmed to resist enemy questioning. My systems are secured with a quantum cryptograph and you will never be able to change them.’

  Dr Cirenkov smiled and puffed out her chest. ‘Ordinarily that would be true. If we tried to crack your programs we would still be at it a hundred years from now.’ She gave a nasty chuckle. ‘But not if we had access to your base codes.’

  ‘My base codes?’ he said, trying to keep his voice neutral.

  Dr Cirenkov sounded very pleased with herself. ‘The key to your root programs,’ she said. ‘The ones that govern your concepts of right and wrong. If we had access to them, anything would be possible.’

  ‘But how could you get access to my base codes?’ he said, fearing he already knew the answer.

  Stone leaned in close to the android’s visor and spoke in a low growl. ‘You might think nothing can touch you, tin man. But I can take it away, I can take it all away.’ He nodded to one of the men at the door who slipped out and returned with a dishevelled and dirt-caked figure.

  Calculus felt a small surge of what he supposed was joy in his circuits when he saw her, but it was immediately tinged with regret. ‘Hello, Mrs Brown,’ he said, ‘it’s very good to see you again.’

  ‘Hello, soldier,’ said Verity, managing to raise a smile. ‘I’m sorry about this, I really am.’

  CHAPTER 22

  IRONHEART

  India ran her fingers lightly over the surface of the iron door. It was almost completely featureless save for two brass pins in the centre that stood proud of the surface. ‘Jumper pins,’ she murmured to herself. ‘That’s what Verity called them. Quick, Thaddeus, let me see that pendant.’

  She snatched up the pendant from Clench’s trembling fingers and located two identical brass points on its upper edge. Then she placed Verity’s bag on the ground and fumbled around inside, pulling out the little black meter and several lengths of wire. Struggling to remember how Verity had done it in Mrs Chang’s dining room, she used the wires to connect the pendant to the meter and then to the pins on the door.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘We’re nearly out of time here,’ called Bulldog from the mouth of the cave, where he was keeping the torch trained on the advancing Valleymen.

  India stared down at the pendant in her hands. She could feel the panic beginning to rise in her chest. ‘A spark,’ she said suddenly. ‘That’s what it needs, a spark!’ She fumbled through her pockets and pulled out the shock stick. Clench winced visibly when he saw it. Trying not to touch the exposed metal, she pressed the end of the stick lightly against the pendant. There was a brief snap and a curl of blue smoke rose from the metal. For a moment there was nothing, then came a clattering of relays inside the door as the ancient locking mechanism kicked into life. There was a hiss like escaping steam and a series of hidden bolts released their hold.

  India whooped with delight and she and Clench heaved on the door, pulling it just wide enough to allow a person in.

  ‘Both of you get in there, now!’ shouted Bulldog.

  India squeezed through the gap, with Clench following gingerly behind. Then Bulldog abandoned the entrance of the cave and charged after them, shoving Clench roughly out of the way and hauling the door firmly shut behind him.

  There was much cursing and fumbling around in the pitch darkness of the tunnel. Bulldog struck a match and then inspected the door in its flickering light to make sure it was properly closed. A faint scratching could be heard on the other side of the metal. ‘Well, we can’t go back that way in a hurry,’ he said.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Clench, jabbing him with a finger. ‘Me and India have got a deal. See? Anything valuable in here is mine, you understand?’

  ‘Steady on, Archie,’ said Bulldog, lighting up another match. ‘You may not have noticed but I just saved your miserable pelt!’

  ‘Shut up, both of you!’ shouted India, snapping on the torch. ‘You’re like a pair of kids.’ She took a deep breath and turned to Bulldog. ‘Captain, thank you for saving our lives.’ He nodded graciously. ‘But what are you doing here? And how did you find us?’

  He leaned back against the wall. ‘After you disappeared I took the snow bike and followed your tracks. I lost the trail and was about to give up when I met the hunters that had brought you here, high-tailing it in the opposite direction. My Yakut is a bit rusty but I could understand a few words and they told me how to get here.’

  ‘Well hurrah for your rusty,’ Yakut,’ muttered Clench.

  ‘I left markers for The Beautiful Game so they could follow on. I’m hopeful that they will get here by tomorrow.’

  ‘Tashar agreed to come and rescue us?’ said India incredulously.

  ‘Well, not exactly,’ said Bulldog, scratching his head. ‘I had to do a deal with her. But don’t worry about that now, I still have high hopes that this little jaunt is going to pay off big time.’

  India shone the torch along a dim concrete corridor that descended towards the heart of the mountain. ‘Do you think this is really the way into Ironheart?’ she said uncertainly.

  ‘Only one way to find out,’ said Bulldog, hoisting his bag on to his shoulder.

  They followed the downward slope of the corridor until they emerged into a wider space, shrouded in darkness. Bulldog flicked a heavy switch on the wall and the ancient circuits crackled before the harsh white lights snapped on and a stale breeze began to blow from the air vents.

  They stood in a large dining hall, carved from the solid rock. There were long wooden tables and chairs for a hundred people. At one end of the hall, a pair of swing doors led to an empty kitchen with rows of gas cookers and stone sinks. A dusty dormitory was filled with rotting bunk beds and old mattresses with the springs sticking out.

  ‘It looks like there were dozens of people living down here,’ said India in a whisper as they picked their way through the broken furniture. ‘What do you suppose they all did?’

  Bulldog shook his head. ‘I dunno,’ he said, ‘but let’s stay close together, this place gives me the creeps.’

  They found an office, smelling of decay and showing all the signs of having been abandoned in a hurry. Chairs were overturned, papers were strewn and one of the lights blinked on and off like a bad stutter.

  ‘Look,’ said Bulldog, pulling a tattered sheet from the wall. ‘It’s a map of this whole place.’

  ‘It’s in gobbledegook,’ said Clench,
squinting over his shoulder.

  ‘It’s old Russian,’ said Bulldog, running a finger over the yellowed paper. ‘I’ve got a smattering of it.’

  ‘Rusty Yakut and a smattering of old Russian,’ muttered Clench. ‘It’s a wonder he’s still single.’

  Bulldog whistled. ‘These tunnels go right underneath the mountain. This level is labelled “Administration, Staff Quarters and Vaults”. There’s another level below this one which says “Restricted Area, Authorized Personnel Only”.’

  Clench’s ears pricked up. ‘Vaults, eh?’ he said. ‘That sounds like where we need to go.’

  Next door to the office was a guard room with ragged uniforms still hanging from the pegs, and beyond that a pair of double steel doors. The damp air had taken its toll on the ironwork and the bolts were welded shut with a thick coat of rust. Bulldog rummaged through the drawers in the office, found a hammer and, with much bashing and cursing, forced the bolts. The doors yawned open, revealing a tunnel with rough chiselled walls and a high vaulted ceiling.

  ‘After you, Captain,’ said Clench, slipping behind Bulldog’s bulk.

  Bulldog stepped into the tunnel and they all jumped as a single overhead light clanked on. They took a few tentative paces into the tunnel. Every few steps the next light would come on and the first would go out so that they walked continually in a pool of light, surrounded by blackness.

  The walls of the tunnel were lined with iron bookshelves, so high that they disappeared into the gloom above their heads. The shelves were tightly packed with pulpy, leather-bound books, including technical manuals, medical textbooks and dense novels written in foreign languages.

  ‘They must have every book in the world in here,’ murmured India, examining the spine of a scientific text written in Russian. On a low shelf she spotted a row of children’s story books and a small volume in a green cover caught her eye. ‘I remember this!’ she cried, pulling the book from the shelf. ‘My dad used to read it to me and Bella when we were little.’

  Clench and Bulldog had moved on down the tunnel and didn’t hear her. She looked at the book again, then quickly slipped the little volume into her satchel before hurrying to catch up.

  In other corridors the shelves were stacked with lifeless computers and racks of shiny plastic disks that reflected rainbow colours in the light. There were dim alcoves with pieces of machinery under tarpaulins and side passages that twisted away into even more remote corners of the mountain. India wondered how she would ever find her father in this maze.

  After they had descended for about fifteen minutes, they reached a set of clean white doors. They opened smoothly with a faint hiss and a rush of warm, moist air, and India gave a cry of surprise.

  They stood at the top of a flight of stairs above a very large, rectangular chamber. The air was humid and overhead lights warmed her skin like the sun. The chamber floor was divided into sections by low walls, each one filled with thick, chocolatey soil and kept moist with a fine mist from overhead sprinklers.

  The room was a living patchwork of vibrantly coloured plants, bushes and trees, growing in neatly manicured lines. She was fascinated by a small tree laden with fuzzy yellow fruits and a twisted vine draped with plump, purple clusters that held the promise of sticky sweetness. Even the fruits she did recognize bore no resemblance to their stunted and shrivelled cousins back home. The tomatoes were a rich, glossy red and the apples were large and crisp. Everywhere the air shimmered with the movement of insect wings.

  ‘It’s a garden,’ she said, remembering the soggy and barren patch of earth they had at home. ‘It’s the most beautiful garden I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘It’s not a garden,’ said Bulldog squinting up at the ceiling. ‘High-intensity ultraviolet lights, automatic irrigation and enough insect life to pollinate the plants. It’s a farm! As long as there is power and water, this place could run forever.’

  ‘Fruit and vegetables!’ spluttered Clench. His face was aghast. ‘Are you kidding me? I’ve come halfway around the world to visit a bleedin’ greengrocer?’

  ‘Take it easy, Archie,’ said Bulldog with agrin. ‘Vegetables are very healthy, you know.’

  ‘Do I look like I need the vitamins?’ he hissed. ‘I thought this was the vaults. So where’s the treasure?’

  India laughed. ‘I think this is the treasure,’ she said. ‘Or at least part of it.’ She ran lightly down the stairs and walked among the fruit trees, gazing up into the branches.

  Bulldog pulled down a bright orange fruit. ‘I saw one of these once when I was a kid,’ he said breathlessly. ‘We had to share it between eight of us but I thought it was the most wonderful thing I’d ever tasted in my life. Here, try this.’

  He dug his thumbs into the flesh and pulled it apart, handing India a segment of the dripping fruit. It tasted sharp and sweet at the same time and she laughed as the juice ran down her throat. Soon she and Bulldog were laughing like children as they gorged themselves on sticky fruits and India wished she could have taken some of them home for her sister.

  ‘Don’t eat the yellow ones,’ said Bulldog, with a pained expression, ‘they’re as sour as hell.’

  A movement in the undergrowth caught India’s eye. She pulled apart the leaves and saw a tiny silver machine trundling between the flower beds. It stopped beside a tree and extended one of its wiry steel arms to pluck an apple from a low branch, then it deftly sliced it in two with a thin blade. They watched as it used a narrow tube to suck out the seeds and deposit them in a foil envelope.

  ‘A robot gardener,’ said Bulldog in wonder. The little machine jumped at the sound of his voice and promptly turned to scuttle in the other direction. ‘Quick, follow it!’ he said.

  The robot beat a hasty retreat down the rows of crops. When it reached the far wall it pushed its way through a thin plastic curtain. The room beyond was chilled and full of high shelves stacked with plastic boxes. When the robot found the box it was looking for, it deposited the foil pack inside and headed back out to the garden.

  ‘There must be enough seeds in here to plant a garden like this in every country in the world,’ said India, gazing up at the shelves.

  ‘More than enough,’ said Bulldog. ‘According to the map there’s at least a dozen other garden chambers like this one.’

  ‘It’s the most wonderful place I’ve ever seen, Bulldog,’ said India. She tried to imagine how John Bentley would have felt seeing it for the first time, and the opportunity he would have seen to feed the world. ‘My dad’s here somewhere, I just know he is. We have to keep looking for him.’

  When they got back to the garden Clench was in a state of high agitation and India was amused to see a herd of the tiny silver robots whirring and chattering around his feet. He crashed around in the shrubs trying to shake them off while they tried to repair the damage he left behind. When he aimed a kick at one of them they scattered like frightened chickens.

  Without warning, the bright lights were suddenly extinguished to be replaced by a soft red glow.

  ‘Must be night time,’ said Bulldog, glancing up.

  ‘Night time!’ said India with a start. ‘Oh no! Nentu said we only had two days before something terrible was going to happen and that’s one day gone already. Come on!’

  Bulldog looked as though he would happily have remained in the garden all day but, after much cajoling, she forced him and Clench out of the chamber. Back in the corridor, Bulldog found another switch and the lights surged on in the concrete stairwell. ‘Level Two, restricted area,’ he said with a grin. ‘Sounds like my kind of place.’

  They descended dozens of flights of stairs and India felt increasingly aware of the weight of the mountain above them. A door at the bottom opened into a room filled with pale green cabinets where the atmosphere hummed with electrical energy. Every surface was covered with switches and dials and needle-thin pointers that pulsed to an unseen current.

  ‘It’s a generator room!’ said Bulldog, inspecting one of the panels. ‘It’
s using geothermal energy from deep underground. It could have been running on its own like this for a hundred years.’

  A row of windows in the control room overlooked a factory floor where a big turbine hummed powerfully amidst hissing steel pipes and red-wheeled valves. One end of the turbine hall was taken up with a set of huge hangar doors.

  ‘According to the map we’ve travelled right down through the heart of the mountain,’ said Bulldog. ‘Those doors open out by the lake.’

  The cavern also provided storage for hundreds of dark brown wooden crates stacked in high rows, each one stencilled with a red star. Clench’s eyes nearly popped out when he saw them. Before they knew it he had scurried to the nearest one and was lovingly running his hands over it. ‘It’s treasure,’ he said breathlessly, ‘I know it is. Find something to open it with, quickly.’

  Bulldog pulled out the hammer and used it to smash his way through the wooden panels. Clench looked on with eyes as round as plates as he thrust his hands inside the crate and pulled out stacks of pristine banknotes, bound with gummed paper strips.

  ‘Roubles,’ said Bulldog, stuffing a stack of notes in his bag. ‘One of the old-world currencies.’

  ‘This is no good,’ cried Clench. ‘We can’t spend this anywhere.’

  The crates in the next row contained gilt-framed paintings packed in straw. They showed angels and saints with golden halos painted in dark oils and decorated with splashes of gold leaf.

  ‘Religious icons,’ said Bulldog. ‘Priceless, actually, or at least they would be if you could find anyone to buy them.’

  ‘Boring!’ shouted Clench.

  Other crates held portraits of generals on horseback, kings and queens, landscapes and pictures of ancient cities. Pretty soon the floor was littered with wood splinters and wisps of straw. At the sight of each crate filled with fine art, Clench would curse loudly before stomping off to break open another one.