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Vasily exited the tower through the arcade walkway that communicated with the tram terminus. Little sun peered over one side, while great sun sprayed luminous tentacles from a massive cloud on the other side, the morning horizon. Vasily emerged at the platform just as a tram car glided to rest at the bumpers, as if intending to meet him. Vasily looked at it suspiciously, then roved his eyes around the vaulted terminus area. Lights glowed — unnecessarily, given the light bleeding in from the suns. The tram was hovering, with its usual gentle hum. But all was ominously vacant and quiet otherwise.
Vasily shrugged and stepped onto the car.
The tram whooshed away and sailed past the service buildings, depots, interchanges, coatings and finishes shops, and then the drop-off for the main manufactory. It never slowed. Vasily stood worriedly, but the tram went on about its business. He was relieved when he felt it slow as they neared the warehouse, whose mean, saw-toothed roof erupted from the grounds of the Works like a colossal tire shredder. He exited the tram, which gave a sigh and dropped into idle mode.
The silent walk through the stilled, shadow-filled warehouse cast a pall over his spirits. He was accustomed to warehousemen and visiting factors moving about or conversing in clusters over the squeals of loaders’ tires and amidst the fumes of farting, liquid-gas engines. Quiet didn’t suit the Works.
Just past the towering supports that reached up to the roof, and the lashed crates and bales that girdled each, Vasily was surprised to come upon a different smell, the reek of his prototyping printer. That made no sense, since he hadn’t been to his lab since the multicore crash. But unmistakably, the final stage of emplacement gel dissolving had run. A model had been “birthed” (as Vasily was fond of saying) and was ready to come out.
Vasily went over and pushed aside the clear, overlapped vertical slats of the jury-rigged metal shed that stored the printer, its exotic power regulator, its tubes and exhaust filters, and its various tubs of plasticizing pastes and impreg metals and emplacement gels. The “ready” light glowed happily on the top of the printer. Vasily made a quizzical face and opened the door.
“That’s odd,” he said.
He pulled out an elaborately detailed model composed of two rings, each bisected by a bar into which a short connector spindle fit.
“It’s a bar-weight,” he murmured. “Or a toy.”
He stepped out of the cage and into the soft light of the open warehouse. Inspecting the object further, his hand barely squeezed into the narrow length of spindle between the two wheels. Handling and turning the thing, the wheels spun freely, independently, frictionlessly, at each end of the spindle. He examined it still more closely. The surface was overworked in exquisite miniaturized bumps, dashes, ridges, figures, and gizmos that he recognized.
It was a spacecraft. Or a space dock. A station, perhaps. But considering the tiny surface detail, a station far larger than any that existed in Empire space.
“Terminal?” Vasily called out.
There was no answer. Something flickered in the corner of his eye, and he turned to his worktable. His terminal node display was on, and it was displaying something he couldn’t quite make out. Still holding the model, he stepped closer.
“I am to be met most fully within the infirmary. Come unto me.”
The words on the screen made no sense to him. Where had they come from? Where was his regular display control interface for the multicore?
“Terminal?” he spoke aloud again. Still no answer. He read the message again. The terminal node chirped loudly, making him start.
He looked again at the model in his hands. He looked around the room at the haphazardly placed models he himself had prototyped. They looked crude by comparison to what someone else had done, stealing prototyper time and materials just before Vasily had arrived. Someone else?
“Inchrises,” Vasily mouthed. “You were the only one here.”
He got a worried look. The sequence of events didn’t quite work out.
The node chirped shrilly again. He looked at the display.
“Vasily Alexseyev: you are needed urgently at the infirmary. Come unto me.”
His first thought was for his mother. Could she be . . . ? No, of course not. Inchrises, had he been hurt?
“If you won’t tell me why, I won’t come.”
“You cannot stay here,” flashed the text. “They will find you out, and then it will be too late.”
Comprehension dawning, Vasily required no additional encouragement. Toting the model, he hurriedly left the lab and made for the main shop. Once again, the tram rose on its invisible field to greet him presciently and whisk him away.
Vasily & The Works (Tales from the Middle Empires Vol III) Page 13
