by Pam Uphoff
Haruki pinched the bridge of his rather small nose. "I know. He laid a compulsion on you. You'd think a mentalist at his level would know better." He muttered something in some foreign language, and walked away.
Frost glanced toward the incubator room, where no mentalist embryos, or any others for that matter, had been started.
She exchanged glances with Norma. "We'll keep it up as long as possible."
The reproduction tech nodded. "Every day we deliver sixteen babies and stockpile another sixteen artificial wombs. With a bit of luck, we won't have to deliver any of our babies prematurely, let alone kill babies too young to survive on their own."
Frost nodded, and turned away before her expression broke. Sokalov is so strong. I . . . really wish I had some proper witch training. I need to work with Halberd more. Teri trained her better than the rest of us. Her little pet of a granddaughter. I need to learn everything I can. Because sooner or later it's going to come down to a fight.
***
"Morning!" Halberd peddled past the cyborg . . .
"Vait! Come back here."
Drat. Now I'm going to have to bubble another one . . . She circled around and glided to a stop beside the cyborg.
"Vat is that thing?" The cyborg was studying the bicycle, not her.
"It's a bicycle. They don't have them where you come from?" Halberd took a deep breath and stepped off into the deep end. "Want to try it?"
They—Halberd and about two dozen cyborgs—had shifted down to the store for full-sized bikes and were wobbling around the parking lot and up and down the street when Mentalist Sokalov showed up.
Halberd faded slowly back and out of sight as Sokalov screamed at the cyborgs in some nasty language. She slipped back into the store and peeked around to watch Sokalov form up his cyborgs and march them off, leaving bicycles laying all over.
The store clerk clicked her tongue. "Now isn't that a shame! That's the first time I've seen those poor things having any fun. In fact, I didn't realize they could!"
"Yeah. Me neither. I'll go pick up the bikes and leave them parked outside in case they come back for them later." Halberd bounced out, grinning. Now that was properly subversive! I need to get word around to everyone to be really nice and friendly.
She racked the bikes neatly then rode her own home.
And studied the two bubbles on her wall.
"Why was that cyborg alone down there in the tunnel? Sokalov came looking for the four in the alley, but not the one in the tunnel." She reached and plucked that bubble off the wall. "Let's go have a little talk, Mr. Tunnel Cyborg."
Halberd coasted the awkward small bike to a stop in the northernmost tunnel of the city. As far away from the cyborg camp as possible.
She got another bubble ready, and reached to rip and pop the old bubble.
Cyborg and bike crashed to the curved floor of the tunnel.
The cyborg scrambled away from the bike . . . froze and stared at her.
"What are you doing down here? No one is supposed to be down here!"
He sounded panicky, darting looks around.
"Huh. I'm skipping school. What about you?"
The cyborg slumped. "I'm skipping work . . . but Sokalov will find me as soon as I leave here. Or sleep and can't keep him out of my mind. Go away kid. I'll try to not give you away."
"You're a mentalist, like he is?"
"Oh hell no. I'm not like him. I won't be like him. All suave and smiles in public, what he does behind closed doors . . . Oh, never mind, you're just a kid, too young to know about that stuff." He sagged and sat down, thumping back against the curved wall of the tunnel. "I'm just a . . . spare kid my mother volunteered for the army, to get the tax credit."
Halberd frowned. "They pay taxes in kids?"
"Yeah, sort of. You give your son to the Drei Mächte Bündniss, you don't pay taxes that year. As soon as I hit eighteen, they handed me over to this." He glanced at his mechanical arm and away. "My mom didn't care, and my stepfather was delighted to get rid of me."
"Wow. Not that my Mom was anything to brag about. But you're enough of a mentalist that Sokalov can mentally locate you?" Halberd sat down beside him.
"Locate me, talk to me, give me orders, and if I don't follow them, take me over and do it himself, using my body. It's horrible."
"Being possessed or what he does with you while you're possessed?"
"Yeah. Both. At the same time." He leaned his head back. "Down here he can't locate me by radio. But I'll have to sleep sometime."
"Huh. I had a problem with four other cyborgs. They weren't very nice. Was that Sokalov's doing?"
He shook his head. "No. Most of us are pretty nasty, right from the start. The voices in our heads, the radio is almost worse than the mental chatter. At least I can block that. Unless Sokalov notices. He's . . . threatened to get me retested for worse things than this."
"What could be worse than this?" Halberd eyed the monocular in his right eye. Some brassy metal, sticking out an inch, with a glass lens at the front.
"The gate makers. They're wired into the machines that make the gates, they're a part of the machinery. They don't ever let them go, they die there inside the machine. Five, six years of living hell." He hunched his shoulders, the right better than the left. "I had guard duty at a gate once. You can hear them scream and cry. They asked me, begged me, to kill them."
"Oh." Halberd pulled her knees up and hugged them. "So you're trying to run away."
"Yes . . . this isn't the same tunnel is it?"
"Nope."
"There was just a split second of blackness . . . how long was I unconscious? How did you do that?
"Five days. I can keep you safe until we deal with the rest of you cyborgs."
"What's your name?"
"Halberd. What's yours?"
"I'm just a number, now. I . . . once I was Robert Grey."
"All right, Robert. Just . . . sleep." Halberd swooped her bubble back over him and sealed it.
So. Sokalov can control cyborgs mentally, all the way up to Possession. And a lot of the cyborgs are crazy, and mean, all by themselves.
So we have to get rid of Sokalov and Von Cratz. And then sort through the cyborgs and . . . what? There are twenty thousand of them. How do we deal with that many?
***
"Oh good. There you are."
Frost looked around. "Halberd. Haven't seen much of you lately. Still hanging around with Napalm's friends?"
"Sometimes. Frost? How are the cyborgs controlled? Do you have any idea?"
"Umm . . . I think it would be very dangerous if Sokalov discovered you trying to control one of his cyborgs."
"Huh. I'll bet. But . . . have you tried to listen in?"
Frost frowned. "Lower my shield around that thing?"
"Just to incoming, not outgoing. Didn't Teri and Jade teach you anything . . . oh. Of course not. Because you're so powerful you might have threatened their positions. Huh. Good thing I was too young to be a rival."
Frost heaved a sigh. "I really wish the first Western Witch I encountered had been honest. Someone who'd have sent me to Ash."
Halberd's turn to sigh. "Yeah. I almost wish Disco had caught me. I mean, they wouldn't hurt a kid, right?"
"Maybe . . . maybe once we've cleared up this mess we can figure out how to make gates and you and Napalm can go back. I can't. I was there at the assassination, even though I didn't know they were going to kill anyone.' Frost shrugged. "After that they were quite frank about killing people for money."
Halberd looked away. "I, umm, I hope they caught Jade and Teri. My Mother, too. But I'm not even going to think about it until we've solved the cyborg problem."
"So I need to figure out how to eavesdrop on Sokalov." Frost hunched her shoulders.
"I guess we'd better do some more training. Where's Napalm? I'll show you guys some stuff that you can do with shields."
***
"Still nothing."
Napalm patted Arthur's shoulder
. "Stop trying so hard. This is just meditation exercise."
Annie stretched her back. "Boring. I think we should find a vacant house and practice that bubble-a-huge-thing thing."
"No. We have to be careful . . . until it's time to stop being careful."
But everyone was pretty bored by then. So they rode around the tunnels, spied on the Barracks construction from the broken, open end of the tunnel she and Halberd had repaired.
Just as well the cyborgs broke it. It made it easy to extend all the utilities from here out to the barracks.
"They've got enough barracks to house them all now. Why are they building more?" Evelyn scowled at the big machines placing walls and the people locking them in place. "Yuck, what a horrible way to live."
Only the nearest were visible. Napalm had snuck out a couple of times at night and watched the guards around the blasted area. The beacon, that will summon a new gate. I hope Mirk did enough damage on the other side to keep them away for years.
"Yeah." Ben shrugged. "But maybe they give them lobotomies or something. That thing on their heads? I heard it has wires into their brains."
"I think that mentalist guy can control them with telepathy." Arthur turned away. "Race you to north end."
Napalm got home in time to join Halberd and Frost in witch exercises. Weird shields and stuff. Meditation and trying to grab the slippery bubbles. At least she could make them bob and push them away now. I will figure out how to grab one. Soon. And not have to ask Halberd to make more for our big traps.
But the other two witches were talking about mentally spying on the Sokalov guy. Napalm kept her mouth shut and thought about being unnoticeable. And listened. Hmm, mental spying. Might be useful.
And slice. Wow that was an awesome way to defend yourself. Frost as really impressive, cutting up targets from across the room.
"It's the pits being ten years old. I can't advance for years."
Halberd nodded. "At least two for me, and six or seven for you."
Frost scowled at them. "Make that ten years and fifteen years. We're not a wild gang of outlaws any more. You guys might even fall in love and marry."
Napalm snorted. "I've been worrying about accidentally killing someone, when I do it the first time. So I figure I need to get it over with before we get rid of all the cyborgs. I wouldn't feel guilty if I accidentally killed a cyborg rapist."
Frost yelped. "No, no, no. It's all about control. You have to learn how to control that first flash of power, and especially how to not drain the man on the return flow, when he comes. That's when you'll learn how to channel power around yourself. Oh . . . it's going to be tough, all these nice normal men."
Napalm looked over at Halberd. Who shrugged. "There's always Mirk, if we get desperate."
"Eww! Stop being so disgusting!"
Frost rubbed her temples like she had a headache. "So, to change the subject . . . I need to try this one-way shield on Sokalov, and see how he controls cyborgs."
"I think we should start carefully. Not with Sokalov." Halberd looked over at Frost. "What about that friend of Mirk's who got halfway changed into a cyborg? How's he doing? Nexus?"
"Felix Pierce is still in the hospital. He is suffering from depression and attempted suicide three days ago."
Frost shivered. "I'll go talk to him."
"Me too." Napalm jumped up from the bare floor where they'd been sitting. "Let's go."
***
"I just can't stand having people in my head all the time. They hear me, there's no privacy."
The poor guy had a big white gauze square taped down over one eye, and of course, the arm was gone. The doctor hovered, worried.
Halberd eyed the plate on his head. "I thought it was, like, healing?"
"A bit, then it stopped." The guy tried to smile. "So I'm not back to normal, nor can I be a proper cyborg."
"Hmm, are they dosing you regularly with that, umm, MRM medicine?"
"Certainly not!" The doctor snorted in disbelief. "Regular dosing with alcohol is a major risk factor in addiction."
Frost glared at him. "Not giving it to him appears to be a major risk factor in him trying to kill himself. Next time he might succeed."
The doctor scowled. "Well, perhaps in this case . . . I'll get some. We've locked it up while we try to determine a safe disposal method."
Mr. Pierce snorted. "Thanks Frost. Not that it'll probably do me much good, but it makes me feel better for a brief while."
Halberd looked away. The man had always been nice when they'd come for dinner and games. "How's Nancy been?"
"She divorced me and I had to move away."
"Oh. I'm sorry. Mr. Pierce? May I try something? I'm slightly telepathic, and I'd like to try to listen in to these voices of yours."
"You want them?"
"No, I want to learn about them."
He nodded and she touched his temple, lowered her mental barriers to incoming thoughts.
There was something . . . way up there, where she'd never worked before.
A rushing stream of incomprehensible babble. A few distinct voices. One talking about patrol schedules. Another was gossiping. ". . . and they haven't found a trace. They're just gone."
A looming presence, holding it all in his mind. Sokalov.
"It's telepathy. Sort of. I was expecting radio."
"That stopped the third day. Pity, really. It nearly drowned out the rest."
Telepathy. Felix is a little bit magic. Probably no power gene, but what they did to him has sort of activated it. Or something.
"Huh. Well, please? Hang on for just a couple of weeks more. We've got some ideas about how to make them leave, and I think that will shut up the voices. And keep taking that MRM medicine."
She slipped out, and left Frost chatting to him.
Soon. We dare not wait too much longer. If there's a beacon . . . We have too many cyborgs already. We need to make sure the beacon's not working. And that's the one thing they really, seriously, guard.
Chapter Twenty-two
Winter 1400 px/30-2-3517
St. Louis, Utopia
Mirk eyed the incredibly huge elephant.
Incredibly huge and pissed off. And Von Cratz is enjoying the thrill of danger. And I'm hardly immune. But my hunting generally involved bears and wild boars at the most dangerous. But however thrilling, whatever the rush after, I need to not give myself away.
He eyed the animal. Where would the brain be, in that huge skull? Can this little rifle that Von Cratz thinks I can handle penetrate that skull?
They'd found old skeletons, bones scattered and gnawed. They'd studied the skulls, admired the tusks and broken them loose to take with them.
This fellow . . . must be at least half again as large.
I ought to have practiced more magic. Especially that pinpoint push spell. Tiny cross-section, long reach. I wonder if that also increases penetration power?
I wonder if I could find a more obvious way to attract Von Cratz's attention?
The troops split up, the usual four guards stayed with Von Cratz, the other dozen walked to the left, flanking the elephant.
The big bull swayed, ears flapping. He kicked up dust as he turned to watch the larger group of these puny animals that dared confront him. Raised his weird snake-like nose and trumpeted.
Charged the troops.
Von Cratz raised his gun and fired.
The elephant stumbled a bit, a red bloom on its shoulder. It swung toward the sound, then back as the movement of the scattering cyborgs registered.
At least the cyborgs still have some sense of self-preservation!
But insufficient speed and the elephant charged.
The bull's snake nose grabbed a cyborg, lifted him, beat him on the ground and tossed him.
All without breaking stride. Two others were run over.
Von Cratz's gun fired twice more.
Mirk could see the hits, but they weren't penetrating or maybe the creature was just too large to bleed
out quickly. The elephant was definitely limping, the first shot must have hit the shoulder blade and been deflected. Red blood poured down its odd head from the other hits.
Can't say I'm impressed with the big gun. But then the rest are completely ineffective. And maybe it is fatally wounded, but it's not dying fast enough . . . Oh shit!
The elephant charged straight at Von Cratz.
Mirk had been standing well behind the big cyborg. Now he sprinted to the right, cut forward as if trying to attract the beast's attack.
Von Cratz's tragic death-by-elephant would be a hopefully reprisal-free start on doing something about this invasion. But I'd better make it look as if I was trying to save him.
He stopped and fired three times into the animal's side as Von Cratz and his guards scrambled away, trying to get behind the air cars.
The bull's tusks hit the nearest aircar and flipped it. Rolled it across the ground. Across one of the guards.
Mirk fired again, and this time attracted its attention. It turned and charged straight at him.
He gathered power; heat and sunshine. The push spell, narrowed down, a quarter of an inch. Closing his eyes he could see the glow of the living elephant, the brightest glow of its brain. He threw the spell right at it.
Opened his eyes and leaped to the side as the beast fell right in front of him.
He stepped away as the dust settled. Spotted Von Cratz getting up.
No sign of injury, or damage. Drat.
The troops . . . six were still down. Half the ones on their feet looked a bit shaky, limping. A couple of right arms cradled, and one mechanical arm bent where it wasn't designed to bend.
Von Cratz circled the elephant, grinning. "Now there was a fight! A beast worth hunting, eh?" He clouted Mirk's shoulder and staggered him. "And you! I have misjudged you."
