by J. J. Green
Carrie leaned over for a look. “What’s wrong? Is it broken?”
“I hope so.” There was a worried tone to his voice.
“Huh?” Carrie read the numbers on the briefing screen, and her mouth turned dry. The numbers showed how much time they had left before the Council created the time shield and sealed the placktoids into this period. “I-I don’t understand. How can that be right? We haven’t been here that long. It’s impossible.”
Dave shook the tablet. “There’s got to be a mistake. Gavin said we had two weeks. He wouldn’t have lied.”
“No, he would never have lied, but...”
Her friend turned to her expectantly, his eyebrows raised.
“I was just thinking, he said the calculations were really difficult. The engineers never normally send people back this far in time. What if they got it wrong?”
“Wrong as in...?”
“Wrong as in sending us back later than they intended. They wanted to give us two weeks, but I didn’t check that we’d arrived at the right time. Did you?”
“No. I seem to remember someone telling me there was no point in checking anything and hurrying me along.”
Carrie swallowed. “Sorry. But, if they did make a mistake, that would explain what we’re seeing now.”
“You mean this could be correct? But our task’s impossible then. We’ll never do it. We won’t have time before they cut off our only route back.”
It seemed hopeless. “I don’t know what to say. Without the gateway device we aren’t going back anyway. What else can we do? We have to try.”
The briefing tablet fell from Dave’s hands. He passed a hand over his eyes. The tablet lay on the hot sand, figures blinking on the display, showing the time they had left. 8 hours, the device read. Eight hours to prevent the placktoids from destroying the future.
Chapter Sixteen – Over to the Dark Side
“I’m not so sure this is a good idea anymore,” said Dave as they slipped back inside the mountain. “I mean, we were only just turfed out of here. Maybe we should try somewhere else.”
“This has to be our best bet. You said yourself that Harriet might be a clue to something. She’s probably still here. And the placktoids must think this is where the Liberator might be. That’s why their High Commander’s here. So this is where we have to look, too.”
“But the placktoids are also looking for us.”
“And the Liberator. We’re in a race to find it now.” Carrie paused and adjusted the strap of her bag from over one shoulder to across her chest. They were moving quietly down an empty tunnel and speaking softly. Neither Carrie nor Dave knew exactly what it was that attracted the silver machines and triggered their eviction response, but it was clear that once they identified something as broken or foreign they tried to remove it or seal it away. The two humans couldn't take any chances that the sound of their footsteps or voices would give them away.
Carrie hoped they would find Harriet. She didn’t agree with Dave’s idea that the robot might have been affected by the Liberator, but if she’d helped them once she might do the same again, and they needed all the allies they could get in this place.
They went silently deeper into the mountain. Time was of the essence. The mountain was huge and they could never search it in eight hours, but they had to try. And that would mean going right to the wire on their deadline to activate the gateway to the future. They walked as quickly as they could. After twenty minutes or so, however, Carrie was compelled to stop. She tugged on her friend’s arm and they paused. “Have you noticed something?” she whispered.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Dave replied softly. “Where are all the robots?”
There hadn’t been a sign of one in all the time they had been walking.
“And look at that,” said Carrie, pointing to a fan in a side tunnel. Its blades were hanging awry and it had stopped turning. The air in the mountain seemed thicker and warmer than before. She wondered how many more fans were broken and waiting to be fixed. “Do you think the placktoids destroyed all of them?”
“I hope not. I’d rather be thrown down the mountain again than meet another placktoid.”
They went on, following the twists and turns, going deeper and deeper, away from the upper regions the placktoids had occupied. Carrie's curiosity about the place was piqued. It reminded her of something but she couldn’t put her finger on it. As well as the tunnels and fans and liquid streaming through the walls, they passed vast caverns with walls spongy enough to sink a hand into and other areas riddled with small holes. As in the chamber where the High Commander sat, there were sections where the sound of the rushing liquid was loud, sometimes so loud they had to cover their ears.
Carrie would have loved to spend more time investigating the odd place. Gavin hadn’t mentioned anything about the strange mountains when he had told them about the planet, and in the hologram they had looked quite ordinary. What had the archaeologists found when they had investigated the placktoid planet? Had they even gone deep below the surface of the mountains?
“Watch out,” hissed Dave. They were about to emerge from a tunnel into another, but he forced her back. They huddled against the wall and peeked out. Finally, there were some silver robots. They were gliding in group, heading towards Carrie and Dave. Instead of their usual random formation, however, these robots were flying in a regular pattern, equidistant from each other.
They were heading towards Carrie and Dave’s tunnel. As they drew nearer, Carrie and Dave backed away. There was nowhere to hide. “Run,” whispered Carrie, and the two sped off in the direction they had come. With luck, the robots wouldn’t spot them, and wouldn’t take the turn that led them to the humans.
Carrie and Dave were not lucky. Carrie glanced over her shoulder to see the leading robot of the formation take the turn. “Damn, they’re after us.” She had eaten and drunk and was well rested. She sped away from the approaching robots, hoping that if she put enough distance between them they would lose interest and give up the chase. Glancing over her shoulder again, however, she saw that Dave was already starting to lag.
“Come on,” she called.
“My side’s killing me,” panted Dave. “I landed on it when I got thrown out.”
Damn. Carrie eased up a little, but the robots were gaining on them. “Run through the pain,” she shouted. “You don’t want to get thrown out again.”
But Dave’s face was twisted into a grimace. He hadn’t said anything about being hurt. He’d been underplaying how much the fall from the mountain had affected him. She remembered laughing at him and winced with guilt.
“You go,” gasped Dave. “I can’t keep up. Better they only catch one of us.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“This isn’t about you and me, Carrie. We’ve got a job to do, and one of us has to be able to do it. Run, or they’ll get you. It’s okay. They’re only going to throw me out again. You go ahead. I’ll stop and let them pick me up. You keep out of sight and follow, then come to me if you can. If you can’t, just go on.”
It hurt Carrie to admit it, but he was right. It was hopeless. He would never outrun them, and she couldn’t help him. If he got hurt, maybe she could put him somewhere safe while she continued to search for the Liberator. She raced ahead. In a few moments, she heard Dave’s shout as he was caught. She grimaced. A narrow side tunnel was just in front of her, so she slipped down it and waited, checking around for more robots. When they passed her, she would follow Dave and the robots that had captured him.
Seconds ticked by. There was no sign of Dave or the robots. Carrie poked her head out of her hiding place for a better look. All around her was empty and silent. Looking around cautiously, she left her hiding place and returned the way she had come. She half walked, half ran for several minutes without sight nor sound of her friend. She was sure she was going the right way. It all looked familiar. Yet Dave and the robots seemed to have vanished.
She sped up
her pace further, following the passages that led deeper into the mountain. Were the robots taking a different route to the surface, or were they lost? A horrifying thought struck. Did they have a different plan to dispose of Dave?
Carrie began to sprint. The tunnel walls flew past. How long had she waited for Dave to appear, carried by robots? How long had they been travelling away from her? Only a minute or two, she thought, but the robots glided quickly. Quick enough to catch a running human. She cursed herself for waiting so long.
After racing around a bend in the tunnel, she slid to a halt, barely avoiding plunging into a cavern. It sank into darkness above and below. Around the edge was a narrow path Carrie and Dave had skirted carefully only fifteen or twenty minutes earlier. On the far side were two robots carrying Dave’s struggling legs. The last two in the formation that had captured him. She wanted to shout and tell him she was coming, but she didn’t dare attract the attention of the robots. She pursed her lips and flew round the cavern’s edge, paying barely enough attention to prevent her from plummeting into its depths.
As she reached the other side and the exit Dave had disappeared through, voices murmured in her mind. Her translator was picking up some form of speech. Her heart sank at the sound. It was the voice of the placktoid High Commander.
The robots hadn’t taken Dave to dispose of him, they had taken him to the placktoids.
Carrie stopped and bent over, holding her sides while she caught her breath. Her brow wrinkled. The robots had tried to get the placktoids to leave the mountain. Why were they helping them now? Then she remembered the High Commander creating robots of its own. Of course. Neither she nor Dave had seen a difference between the machine the High Commander made and the robots of the mountain, except for a malformation. If the High Commander had perfected the replication process, the robots that had captured Dave belonged to the placktoids. How many had the High Commander made? Had the placktoids destroyed all the original robots and taken over the mountain, filling it with their own?
Carrie slumped to the floor. She rested the back of her head against the wall. She didn’t know what to do. Her friend was back in the clutches of the placktoids, but she had a mission to fulfil, to save the future of the galaxy.
Chapter Seventeen – Carrie's Choice
Ten minutes later, Carrie was in the same spot. She was sitting on the tunnel floor with her arms wrapped around her knees, frozen in indecision. She was sure the right thing to do was to abandon her friend and search for the Liberator. What was one life against the trillions that existed across the galaxy of the future? But Dave was her best friend. He’d helped her so much. She might not be around if it weren’t for him.
Dave had been the one who’d made her realise her habit of making impulsive, reckless decisions put herself and others in danger. And she didn’t want to go back to her old ways and follow what her heart told her without thinking things through. She was trying to follow her friend’s advice. But she’d thought this through until her head ached, and all she wanted to do was to try to rescue Dave. All those trillions of lives were in the future. His life was here and now.
She grimaced as she remembered the placktoid High Commander’s threat of torture. Was that still its intent? Had it already started? Tears sprang to her eyes. It was no good. Sometimes you just couldn’t do the sensible thing. She couldn’t give up on Dave, no matter how much she tried to argue herself into it.
Her decision made, Carrie stood and turned, only to bump into a hovering robot that must have come up behind her silently while she was thinking. She backed away, imagining it was about to grab her, but then she paused. This robot was alone. Normally they travelled in groups—organised groups under the placktoids’ instruction. And it wasn’t doing anything. It wasn’t trying to grab her and remove her, or fixing something. It was only hovering, expectantly it seemed.
Carrie's eyes grew wide and she sank to her knees, placing her hands on the front of the robot. “Harriet,” she breathed, “you found me.”
Now that Carrie had finally figured out who it was, Harriet did a strange thing. She popped her lid. The whole upper half opened, rotating on a hinge on one of her longest sides, so that she looked like an open, lozenge-shaped book. Carrie had only seen the robots open their underbellies before. She leaned over to peer inside, and gasped. The upper half of Harriet, which slotted over her central tool mechanism, was empty. In the lower half Carrie could see the folded and slotted tools from above, but nestled in a space to one side was Dave’s Liaison Officer equipment bag. Somehow, Harriet had found it and brought it to her.
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” Carrie exclaimed as she lifted out the bag. Pulling it open, she checked for the single most important thing it could contain, and exhaled loudly when she saw it: the gateway-opening device. It was still there. All was not lost. If she could rescue Dave and they could find the Liberator before the deadline, they could go home.
Carrie quickly slung Dave’s bag over her head and other shoulder so that the two straps crossed over her chest. “Harriet, was it you who gave me my bag back as well? I don’t know why or how you’re helping us, but I can’t thank you enough. We owe you our lives. But I have to go now. I have to rescue Dave.”
The robot didn’t react or respond to Carrie's words. It hovered with its top half open.
Now that Carrie had made her decision—for better or worse—and she had the gateway device, she was determined to leave right away. With grim satisfaction she realised she now had Dave’s weapons as well as her own. But she wondered why Harriet didn’t go now that she’d given over Dave’s bag.
Carrie reached over and closed the robot’s lid, but it sprang open again. Whatever locking device it had, Harriet wasn’t activating it. Carrie gave up. “I’m sorry, I have to go. I have to help my friend.”
She turned to leave, but the robot bumped her. She turned back. “What do you want?” Carrie asked, her hands on her hips.
The robot lowered itself until it was hovering just above the ground. Carrie tilted her head. What was Harriet trying to tell her? The robot waggled, bumping her upper lid against the floor. Carrie frowned and studied the machine’s interior again. Did she have something else she wanted to give her?
The area around the central box, where Harriet had stowed Dave’s bag, was surprisingly roomy. Was it a crumple zone to protect the tools if the robot was in an accident? She rubbed her chin. Surprisingly roomy. Was it big enough for her to fit? It would be a squeeze, but if she curled around the box... “Do you want me to get inside you?”
Harriet still didn’t reply. There was only one way to find out. Carrie lifted her Liaison Officer equipment bags and tucked them into the recess on one side of the robot’s tool store, then lowered herself into the other side. The robot took the additional weight easily, rising a little higher.
Carrie waited. Now was the acid test. Would Harriet eject her? Or if she’d wanted Carrie to climb in she would...The lid swung up and over. It closed with a click, sealing Carrie in. That was it. She had placed her fate in an anonymous machine’s hands...or whatever.
Her stomach fell as Harriet rose and glided away. As far as Carrie could tell, the robot was heading towards the area the copies of her kind had taken Dave. For better or worse, they were heading to the placktoids.
***
Carrie quickly became uncomfortable cramped within Harriet’s shell. The close confinement was completely dark and stuffy, but she had no choice but to remain there until Harriet let her out—hopefully soon. As she was carried along Carrie tried to guess why Harriet had wanted to get in. Presumably it was to hide her from the placktoids. She must have known Carrie would never get through to Dave without being spotted. Now that they had the silver robots working for them, Harriet could slip in unnoticed. She was identical to the rest. It was only her behaviour that set her apart, so if she acted the same as the other robots, the placktoids would never guess she had a stowaway.
What would she do if Harriet managed
to get her to Dave? Carrie didn’t have a plan. Even if Dave was alone, she didn’t know how she would get him out. Harriet was barely large enough to hold her. Dave would never fit in as well. If there were some robots left who weren’t made by the placktoids, maybe Harriet could persuade one of them to carry Dave, but she doubted he would fit. She sighed. She would have to cross that bridge when she came to it.
Another question that bothered her was about Harriet herself. Why was she so different from the other robots? The rest were like automatons, incapable of independent thought and much less intelligent than their descendants, the placktoids. What had happened to Harriet to make her different? Had she been affected by the Liberator as Dave thought? Or had the Creators deliberately made her different? But why? Or was she the result of an automated production process operating over thousands of years without being checked or calibrated? The Creators seemed to have departed the planet, leaving their robots behind. The machines must have been programmed to create new individuals to replace those that broke or reached the end of their pre-determined lifespan. When robots were replacing themselves, had the process become corrupted, the information subtly altering, like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy? Had Harriet appeared like a random mutation in some weird facsimile of biological evolution?
Harriet stopped, and her lid opened. Carrie was flooded with welcome air. She lifted her head and peeked over the side. They were alone in a small, dim chamber, similar to the place where the placktoids had put her and Dave when they gave them the truth drug. Gripping the side of the robot, Carrie got out. She retrieved the two Liaison Officer toolkits and passed the straps over her head. She was determined not to become separated from either of them again.
