“The nanites,” she hesitated, feeling her way through the maze of ideas, “provided protection from the time quake we experienced. They threw up a shield around this room.” How had they known what to do? It had been classified by the Time Service, so no one would know how to breach it. And no one, no thing, in this time should know what to do.
The Chameleon nodded, her look edging into the “so what” zone.
You protected her before. That’s why you and she remember what happened in those alternate time lines.
No sense of denial or an admission from him and she didn’t have time to call him on it.
“But it’s more than that.” She looked around. “This place is infused with nanites.” She paused. “There’s no history, no time line of how the Council came to be. Who discovered what? No time trail to follow.”
“Wouldn’t that be classified?” The Chameleon asked it, her tone that of one fishing for information, while at the same time wary of getting it.
“Or lost in a reset.” Ashe felt Lurch bracing inside her. She braced, too, but for a time paradox to stop her. Or end her existence. “Or perhaps that knowledge was locked away by the scientists who figured it out, because they knew it was too dangerous to get out. They were so focused on learning, they forgot to ask if they should do this, if it was wise to know. When they realized it, they locked it and fled. Locked it, when it should have been destroyed, because what can be locked, can be unlocked.”
Time didn’t even flinch. Which meant what?
“Perhaps,” this from the man, “they couldn’t bear to destroy it. For good or ill, it was their life’s work.”
She’s the one, isn’t she? She figured it out. Or you all helped her figure it out. Silence. You know. You know, right now, inside her, inside you, how to do it all. You could turn this into a time base right now. Set the time shields. Another silence, longer this time. From him she felt an odd sense of shame and relief. What had he been afraid she’d figure out? What was worse than this? You can do all of it. It’s all here. Maybe you learned a few new things, but the core of it is there. Isn’t it? And whoever is doing this knows it? Knows it all came from the nanites? He just doesn’t know when.
Yes.
THIRTY-TWO
You need to chill, Em.
Emily knew it. Managed to stop the thin, high-pitched wail, though not the jumping up and down. Or the trying to shake it off. And the wail was totally ready to make a comeback. “It’s a bug.”
You’ve like, been through it, girlfriend, during this ride with Robert-oh-my-darling. This is easy beans, Wynken pointed out, managing to sound both anxious and incredulous. And a bit something else that if she didn’t have a bug on her finger, she’d try to figure out. But she did have a bug on her finger.
“It’s a bug.”
Blynken also seemed stuck in incredulous. Girl, you helped capture the airship and kicked zombie ass. No big deal.
No big deal? “It’s a bug!”
You escaped an automaton with your wits and the Wonder Wrench 2000. Wynken was now completely living in incredulous with Blynken.
And, girl, you ninja defeated three zombies, Blynken said, then added, it’s not like it’s a real bug.
It’s a brass, mind-controlling, zombie making, “BUG!” She shook her finger. And it could be sucking my brains out right now! She switched to whine-one-one mode because that always worked with Ed. “Getitoffmegetitoffmenow!”
Emily knew her freak out was a bit over the top, that trying to shake it off her finger wasn’t accomplishing that much, and that hyperventilating did nothing to clear her head, but it was a bug and she wanted it off her finger now.
It’s clamped to your finger, not your brain, Em.
“It’s a bug!”
The huge, hulking automaton didn’t scare you but the tiny little bug does? Seriously, girl, you need to get a grip.
Emily got a mini-grip, but felt compelled to point out that, it’s called a phobia. Lots of people have them.
Interesting.
It is not interesting. “It’s a BUG!”
“We do understand that it is a bug,” Carig said, trying to mash through the wall at his back.
“It’s not just a bug! It’s a BUG!”
The word bug seemed to echo and echo and echo some more. It echoed so much Emily had to pause the panic attack and wonder why, though not enough to ask, of course, not that the two girls were in the same country as an answer to any question. She didn’t have to anyway. She followed the sound to the window. She eased back a filthy curtain, using the bug finger, since it was already hosed, and peeked out.
The zombies were all doing this strange, hopping dance and yelling, “It’s a bug!” Then they yelled, “Getitoffmegetitoffmenow!”
It was enough to distract her from the bug. “They’re mocking me.”
They are mimicking you.
Emily wasn’t sure what the difference was, and it didn’t matter because another question was bubbling up and trying to crawl out her lips. Something along the lines of how did they know what she was doing so they could mimic her, only without a question mark at the end. She was also sort of aware that both Glarmere and Carig sat up, their backs to the wall, looking less pale now that the zombies had mysteriously vanished, though still a bit wide-eyed about something. Maybe they didn’t like metal bugs either.
Girl, they’re afraid of you. The nanites seemed to like that a bit too much and they weren’t doing anything to get her free of the bug. They could fix a butt, but not de-bug finger, it seemed.
Outside the zombies had quieted down. Now they stood staring at their fingers. Their index fingers. She looked at her finger, gave it a wave. It took a few seconds—twenty-five according to Wynken—and they all waved their fingers, too. In slow motion, she lifted an arm and wiggled it. Same interval later, the zombies echoed the move. She tried some dance moves. They did them.
Wow, did not know I looked like that. If I get out of here, I will so have to get some new moves. She tried a different set, added some Ice, Ice Baby lyrics. Stopped as soon as she could. Felt like it took the zombies took too long to stop. That feels way different than it looks.
Girl. Your pitch. Hurts the ears something fierce.
Something was definitely going on with Blynken. I’m better at loud. She felt their agreement, though neither was unkind enough to express it. She’d heard worse slams on her pitch from Ed and most of her friends, so was able to shrug it off as she continued her experiment in seeing herself as others saw her. They probably just aren’t as good at it as I am. She almost had the sensation of whistling in her head. Okay, so I suck at every form of dancing. And I can’t carry a tune, but it’s still hilarious making them do stuff—oh!
“Oh, oh, oh!” The kernel of an idea formed inside the brain the peeps so admired. She wasn’t getting admiration vibes from Glarmere and Carig, but despite the fact that their association was recent, she’d already learned not to expect to. It almost felt like the nanites sat up and clapped as they processed her thoughts.
The dude was with two zombies at last sighting.
Her zombies had vanished, but even if his had vanished, too, there were all the zombies in the street. If they all started singing off key, he had to notice that. Of course, there was the airship engine, but if she sang really, really loud, which they’d already established she could—outside the zombies started to shamble, their movements sort of in the normal range, if a zombie had a normal range. They’re getting away. She launched into New York, New York. It was a belt-it-out kind of song, practically demanded some moves. The zombies stopped their sort of normal progress and started to sing and dance. I really thought that one was, you know, pretty good. So all her moves needed work. She could handle a critique. Probably. Both men tried to become one with the walls at their backs and clapped their hands over their ears. What a couple of girls.
I knew I was off key, but didn’t realize I was that off key.
Do you think that the du
de will catch a clue with just singing?
Maybe you should tell him. Using, oh, words?
But anything I say that the zombies say would also tell the evil overlord—
Oh! She grinned at the girls. “I have a plan.”
They did not have to look so horrified. They’d so done that look to death.
* * * *
No one knew what to expect when the ex-zombie opened his eyes. There’d been no way to clean up the blood, so the scene looked a bit gruesome, though the peeps had left him without a scar. It would be disconcerting to open your eyes and find yourself surrounded by the motley crew, so Robert wasn’t surprised when their test subject exhibited alarm.
“What do you remember?” the Colonial asked, reassuming his role as titular leader of the group. The rest of the men hovered between helping and pouncing as they awaited his response.
The man touched the back of his neck, frowning, then finally shaking his head. “Not much.” He looked around. “Not this.”
“Are you a pin or a tracker?” this from Purple guy.
“We are all pins,” the Belle added, as if to reassure him.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about it.”
“You’ve been diverted, dude. Talking about it is the least of your problems,” Biker said, flexing his huge arms. His confidence appeared to be on the rise.
It had to help knowing that what had been done to the zombies could be reversed. If there was someone around to reverse it. It didn’t seem a good idea to point this out, when Robert’s main desire was to get shed of them.
“A pin.” He sat up, with a little help from Purple, and looked around. “And this is not my destination point.”
“It’s not anyone’s destination.” The Belle started tart, but ended with a simper, perhaps at the introduction of another male to the group.
Robert was not surprised this didn’t reassure him, nor did the sight of the bedraggled belle initiate the desired physical response from the former zombie.
She needs a look in a mirror to cool those jets. Nod started and ended with tart.
Robert could almost see the guy consider—and discard—several questions. Which question he might have settled on got lost when they heard shouting—not close. Out in the street perhaps?
“They found us!” the Belle looked wildly around, as if planning to bolt.
Their hiding place suddenly felt more like a trap than cover. Always leave yourself a way out. Robert fought his way clear of the drooping envelope, determined to meet any attack out in the open, but the rooftop was empty. He angled his head, listening. No thump of footsteps on wooden stairs or banging on the roof access door. It almost sounded like chanting. He went to the edge, aware the motley crew, including the new member, followed, though at a few paces behind. Nice of them to let him be the first to engage any enemy. He peered over, cautiously at first, but then realized none of the zombies were paying any attention to anything. Instead they seemed to be engaged in some sort of synchronized hopping.
“What are they doing?” Purple asked what everyone was thinking. “What are they shouting?”
All of them angled their heads, trying to figure it out.
“It’s a bug. Get it off me now.” He looked at the mind control device. He’d brought it along, still clasped in the tweezers, forgetting about it until now. It looked like a bug. It had to mean something that they’d all freaked out at once, but what? Was the evil overlord having some strategic shift in his plans? Okay, the change from panic to dance moves was on the freaky side. How could all of them be off key and off key in the same way? He hadn’t heard singing that bad since—his thoughts splintered. Em. He hadn’t heard anything so off since Em back in the bowling alley. He looked at the bug. Then he looked at the zombies again. The dance moves seemed like hers, too. Kind of cute and kind of awful. The pause made hope drop like a rock. His thoughts spun and dived on theories and speculations and ideas and possibilities, all of them with the device and Em at their heart.
“What are they doing?” The colonial guy looked and sounded rattled.
Robert couldn’t blame him. He’d endured a lot before he and Emily arrived and it was unnerving to see the zombies go still. “Wait.” Surely, if it were Em doing this, she’d do something to let him know—
Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling, Clementine!
Thou art lost and gone forever
Dreadful sorry, Clementine
Bright he was but not my uncle,
And now I’m in a funcle
For my darling Clementine!
“They’re really awful.” Biker shuddered as they all failed to hit the high note.
“Yes,” Robert agreed, smiling for the first time since the automaton had taken Em. Wonderfully, amazingly awful. He sank down, his back against the parapet and looked at the bug, considering all that happened. Uncle? Was she trying to tell him she was free and heading for her uncle’s warehouse? He needed to let her know he’d got the message.
As if someone had flipped a switch, the singing stopped and the zombies started moving with less cohesion, but more purpose, clusters of them fanning out into nearby buildings.
“They are searching. For us.” Purple guy was pale lavender after all their adventures.
He is such a girl.
That sounded like something Em would think. He smiled. “Yes.”
What if it is a trick?
It’s possible, but even if Em were still captured, they wouldn’t be able to access her knowledge this fast. It seemed longer, but it had only been half an hour, maybe a bit longer, since the encounter with the automaton. With a new sense of fatality, Robert put his pinkie close to the bug. It grabbed the tip with metal eagerness, the pain about the level of a mosquito bite. It’s a bug. Get it off me. It made a kind of weird sense that the girl who had apparently escaped from an automaton was afraid of a bug.
“Are you crazy?” Colonial looked horrified.
The crew pulled back from him, as if they expected him to go zombie. They might not be wrong. In case they were, he started to sing. He sang long and loud, the song she’d sung when they first met, he sang that he didn’t feel like dancing, even though he totally did. Nod helped him with the lyrics and the tune.
“At least you can carry a tune.” Colonial sounded resigned.
* * * *
Just seconds after his virtual arrival, the tremor hit the research facility like the wrath of the god Faustus no longer believed in. The agony of the wrenching earth toppled the already wounded automaton. Doctor, who had been working to repair the broken hand, didn’t stand a chance. A half cry, cut off at the source before it could fully emerge, and he was gone, crushed under the massive body.
The automaton’s metal head breached the virtual reality field and passed through his body. Faustus couldn’t feel it, but it was still disconcerting to see red eyes staring at him from the middle of his own body.
More crashes, shrieks and cries of fear and pain as more tremors shook the facility. On his real time tracking board, lights went dark, like fireflies blinking out of existence. It wasn’t just Constilinium vanishing this time, but specimens. Hard to be sure until he did a count, but it looked like it might be as much as a ten percent attrition rate. A good thing he’d moved most of his key pins out of the facility already.
Tobias jumped into the doorway as falling debris added to the chaos. Faustus stared at him, saw him go out of phase, flickering like the bulbs on the map, for several long seconds, before he reappeared. Odd to feel relieved, when he knew he wouldn’t need him for much longer.
The tremors stopped as suddenly as they’d started. His tracking and monitoring equipment flickered and then updated. As expected, his lab was half its original size. Of most concern, were the losses in unsecured sections of the laboratory. Could Glarmere and Carig have escaped as time rolled back? And what would they remember about the trip? Even if their memories reset, it would only be as far back as their
retrieval, which would mean they would still remember he was behind the attacks. He tensed. What about the other members of the Council? If they were gone…he keyed in a search…and realized their section of the cages were gone. What would they remember about their abductions? Tobias had odd, bleed-through memories from the time resets he’d experienced. Not clear ones, but he’d sensed things and faced suspicion from those he’d encountered in previous realities.
According to the data, the epicenter of the tremor was his research facility. Did that mean a focused attack on him or was it directed at something—or someone—in the facility? Whatever the target—or lack of one—it was neither neat nor confined to the near vicinity. It appeared to be causing problems throughout his laboratory.
He shifted his virtual presence so it no longer intersected with the automaton, arriving back in time to see Tobias cross to what remained of Doctor. He knelt to check for a pulse. He rose, his expression typically blank, but he would not be mourning that loss, considering what Doctor had done to him. Unlike many of his specimens, Tobias remembered almost everything about his various surgeries. It had been necessary and amusing. None of the others offered as much entertainment as Tobias struggling like a bug pinned in a Petri dish. Now he wondered if it had been the best choice. He sighed—the man who could have fixed the problem was dead. What had been done could not be undone, at least not at the moment.
And then, when he thought the worst was over, strange arrived. The remaining controlled specimens began to hop or jump, their movements in unison, and they all cried out something. The acoustics of the former warehouse made the sound echo and blurred the sounds.
“What are they saying?” His connection with his laboratory had been degraded by the tremor, he realized, though he wasn’t sure why that had happened either.
“It’s a bug.” Tobias tipped his head. “Get it off of me.”
Then they started to sing and dance, doing neither particularly well, though still in unison. Even degraded, the singing was painfully out of tune. And the one man who could tell him what the hell was happening was dead. The jerky bits of singing shifted into two longer bits. One about miner. He remembered that song, not that he wanted to remember. But the dancing song? No. As abruptly as it started, it stopped.
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