Shade's Children (6 page)

Shade didn’t say anything for a moment after Drum left. He just sat there behind his desk, watching Gold-Eye—who had the uncomfortable feeling that he was somehow being measured or analyzed.

“Your eyes have less gold in them than they did outside,” Shade said finally. “Which is very interesting. We’re underwater here, and water does seem to have a damping effect on Change Talents, Change side-effects—and on creatures.”

“I not…creature,” Gold-Eye said hastily. He’d been accused of that before, on the rare occasions he’d met other people.

“No, you’re not,” said Shade decisively. “Just visibly affected by the Change, which is quite rare. But not unheard of. I have seen other cases. Now, Gold-Eye, I’m going to ask you some questions and I’m also going to tell you some things. Okay?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve heard me talk about the Change and Change Talents. Do you know what I mean?”

Gold-Eye frowned in thought. History as such wasn’t taught in the Dorms, but there were always children who seemed to know things and would tell the others. He wasn’t sure about details, but the general picture was pretty clear.

“Before,” he replied slowly, “there lots of people, who could get old. Then the Change. Grown-up peoples go. Overlords come. Creatures come. Dormitories. Sad Birthdays. The Meat Factory…”

“Good.” Shade smiled. “That’s about right. Almost fifteen years ago, something happened or was made to happen. For an instant everything stopped. Everything moving halted, every machine, every car. In that instant every person over the age of fourteen vanished. Destroyed…translated into another reality…translocated…I don’t know…. And then the Overlords came and herded the survivors into the Dorms. A few weeks after that, the first creatures appeared—built with teenagers’ brains—and the Overlords began their ritual battles….”

He paused, and Gold-Eye raised his hand, remembering the treatment meted out to Ninde for her unauthorized question.

“But you?” asked Gold-Eye, after he was sure Shade had noticed the upraised hand.

Shade smiled again and leaned back in his chair, hands linked behind his glossy black-haired head.

“Yes, everyone disappeared—except me. Or including me, depending on how you look at it. You see, Gold-Eye, I’m not really a person at all!”

As he said that, Shade vanished and the lights went out. Gold-Eye shot up out of the sofa, heart drumming, then subsided back into the cushions. It was pitch-black and he knew he couldn’t find the hatch. The thought of stumbling across one of the spider robots or rat things….

Then Shade spoke again, his voice echoing from every corner of the room.

“What I am, Gold-Eye, is a human personality stored in a computer’s memory. I have the memories of that real person. I think like a real person. To some degree, I still have the feelings of a real person. But no flesh, save the holographic appearance you have seen—which I must confess is partly based on a twentieth-century actor—so I look rather better than I did in the flesh. A conceit that possibly shows my continuing humanity…

“Do you understand what I’m telling you, Gold-Eye?”

“Yes. You live in machine, show yourself in pictures,” said Gold-Eye, nervously directing each word to a different part of that night-dark chamber, as if a sound would strike the real Shade and make him reappear.

“Good. Very good,” said Shade. He sounded surprised; then his voice returned to that confident, bass tone—only growing much louder as he continued to talk.

“You are quick to grasp the idea. However strange my physical form, I am a mature adult, complete with the sophisticated education of the pre-Change years and equipped with some of its best technology. And as the only educated adult left, perhaps in the whole world, it is my duty to fight against the intruders who have destroyed what we had…my duty to restore humanity…my duty to turn back the Change!”

With this last word, the green laser suddenly stabbed back on. Gold-Eye screamed, flinging himself back into the cushions, an arm covering his face.

When nothing awful followed, he slowly lowered the arm—and the hologram of Shade was back behind the desk, calmly drinking an equally holographic glass of water.

“Ahhh,” said Shade, putting the glass down. “I’m sorry if I scared you, Gold-Eye. I feel very strongly about our struggle…no…our war…against the Overlords. Not for myself so much—but for you, and all the other children in the Dormitories, in the Meat Factory. Those of us who can do something must do something. You agree with that, I trust?”

“Yes,” muttered Gold-Eye, who would have agreed to anything Shade wanted him to. However, it was obvious that the Overlords and their creatures were enemies of people, so it didn’t take much to agree with that. Still, he wished it was Ella or Drum explaining everything to him. Not this fearful man-computer person…

“Excellent,” said Shade, drawing his lips back as he pronounced each syllable slowly. “Ex…cel…lent. I won’t have people here who don’t participate in the war against the Overlords. We’re all soldiers, Gold-Eye, doing whatever we can. And like soldiers in the time before the Change, we must be trained to fight well. Don’t you agree?”

“Not sure meaning?” Gold-Eye replied nervously. The school machines in the Dorms gave you electric shocks if you gave the wrong answer more than once. And Shade was sort of a school machine too….

“You have to learn to fight!” Shade said, stabbing his forefinger at Gold-Eye. “Much of what you will do here will be learning. Learning how to fight the Overlords’ creatures, learning combat skills. And learning for its own sake too. English—where I think you need some work. History. Science. We must preserve and use knowledge in human minds, Gold-Eye. Not just on disks and tapes and in books. Knowledge must be used! Used first to fight the Overlords, of course. Active in mind and body, that’s the ticket. Do you have any questions?”

The sudden question, on top of a monologue that was largely meaningless to Gold-Eye, shook the boy. Once again, he looked from side to side like a frightened rabbit and his mouth opened soundlessly.

“No? You should always have questions, Gold-Eye. Asked in their proper turn, but there should always be questions. Now, what are we going to do with you?”

“Do with me?” asked Gold-Eye, voice squeaking almost as high as Drum’s. That was the phrase the Overlords’ voices spoke on Sad Birthdays, when these enigmatic beings came to oversee the latest crop of fourteen-year-olds, checking the collated school and physical reports to see if the person’s brain, nerves, and muscle were to be used in Winger, Myrmidon, Tracker, Screamer, or Ferret.

“Ah. Apologies,” said Shade, smiling that brilliant white smile again. “I mean, what are you going to do right now? Do you remember how to get back through the Sub to the changing room?”

“Y-y-es,” stuttered Gold-Eye, getting to his feet, relief making his muscles so shaky, he clutched at the armrest for support.

“Go back there,” said Shade. He seemed to think for a moment, then said, “Sim will meet you there and show you where you will sleep and so on….”

He stopped as Gold-Eye raised his hand again nervously, arm shaking.

“New person?” asked Gold-Eye anxiously. “Not Ella, Drum, Ninde?”

“Sim looks after everyone new here. He’ll show you the ropes…show you how things are done,” Shade replied. “But…yes…I think you will work with Ella’s team. Your precognitive talent, your seeing things in the ‘soon-to-be-now’ will be a useful addition to that team.

“So. You will go and meet Sim now. He will guide you through the Sub and fit you out with the standard equipment. You will then return here. I want to record your experience of escaping the Dorms before…before you go out again tomorrow. After that, you will report to Ella, and perhaps there will be time for a lesson before sleep. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” said Gold-Eye.

“Good,” replied Shade. He leaned forward and made a fluttering motion with his right hand. “You may go.”

Gold-Eye needed no encouraging. The lights still hadn’t come back on, but the image of Shade himself gave off enough light for him to find the hatch. As it clanged shut behind him, he let out a small sigh of relief—then jumped in panic, hitting his head, as Shade’s voice echoed through the corridor.

“I forgot to say something, Gold-Eye,” the disembodied voice whispered from roof and floor and walls.

“Welcome aboard.”

After a single, bewildering night in the Submarine, Gold-Eye found himself outside again soon after dawn the next morning. Under the finger wharf, up to his armpits in extremely cold seawater.

This time his rags were gone, replaced with the dark-green coveralls the others wore. From his wide leather belt a sword and other equipment hung, including a length of rope, added to the basic equipment after the team’s recent experience. His hair was also greatly changed; he had practically none left. Just a thin layer of fuzz remained after an electric razor had removed months of hair and matted dirt.

Ella, Drum, and Ninde were there too. Uncharacteristically quiet, in Ninde’s case. She stood as far away from Drum and Ella as she could and didn’t look up at anyone.

They waded in silence to the drain entrance, where Drum helped everybody up from below and then clambered up himself with the assistance of all three pulling on one thighlike arm.

“Okay,” said Ella, taking out her Myrmidon witchlight and squeezing it on. “Flashlights on? All working? Good. Now, we’re going to take the Main Drain to the Main Junction, then South Drain Twelve. We’ll have to count manholes from the junction—Ninde, I want you to do that to check me. We’ll exit at manhole twenty-seven, which is inside the University grounds.

“If we get separated for any reason, you’ve got two choices. If you’re not hurt and you think everyone else will make it, aim for the South Drain Twelve rendezvous. Otherwise, return to the Sub and report to Shade. Any questions?”

“Yes,” said Gold-Eye, mindful of Shade’s instruction that it was good to have questions. “How tell which drain?”

“Good question,” said Ella. “I forgot you’re new. Look over here.”

She walked a little farther up the drain, adjusting her stance to the curve of the tunnel and the patches of ambitious green slime that left the water to climb up the walls. About ten feet in from the entrance, she held the witchlight up to illuminate a bronze plaque.

Looking closer, Gold-Eye saw that it read,
ADIT 10 EAST. PCW
.

“Ten East is what we call the Main Drain,” explained Ella. “It leads to the Main Junction—which we’ll pass through—and becomes Ten West. For all the other drains, we use the exact names on these bronze plates—which are always this high and located about this far in from any junction or outfall. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” confirmed Gold-Eye, with a noticeable rise in confidence. He’d thought they all just memorized the entire storm-water drain grid and had extraordinary senses of direction—even down here in the dark, watery corridors.

“Okay. Check swords,” said Ella, drawing hers half out of the sheath to make sure it ran free. The others copied her action, Gold-Eye somewhat nervously. He’d been given it the night before by Sim, the cheerful older boy who seemed to look after an awful lot on the Sub, not just new arrivals.

Gold-Eye had had half an hour of practice with the sword the night before, but it was still the sharpest, heaviest weapon he’d ever handled. The steel blade was etched with gold in swirly lines that Sim had said “disrupt the creatures’ electromagnetic nervous systems.” He’d laughed and nodded when Gold-Eye had asked, “Does that help kill them?”

“Everybody ready?” asked Ella as Gold-Eye finally managed to put his sword back into the sheath. “Okay. I’ll go first—then Ninde—then Gold-Eye. Drum, you take rear guard. Let’s go!”

Her words echoed into the dark tunnel ahead and were lost in the soft burble of the descending waters. The four followed the echo, the gold pool of witchlight, and the harsh white beams of the flashlights bobbing and spinning as they jumped from side to side along the tunnel, seeking the best and fastest footing.

An hour later Ella called the first rest break. It was hard work walking in the tunnel, with one foot always higher up the curve and many patches of slime to jump over. Then there were the junctions with lesser tunnels, to be waded across using ropes or linked arms. Always there was the oppressive darkness, the sudden heat as hot water flowed in from a side tunnel—and the fear when the burbling water rose to a roar, fear subsiding as the water returned to its steady flow.

They rested in a small chamber above the tunnel, reached by a rusty steel ladder that rose up through the ceiling of the tunnel and on up another twenty feet. Remnants of pre-Change times filled it, arcane objects known to them from videos and training lessons: a mildewed map of the drains on the wall, next to a pictorial calendar of naked women, now clothed in mold; two hard hats on hooks; an open tool kit on the floor, filled with rusted objects.

“We’re pretty close to the Main Junction,” Ella said as she handed out bars of chocolate. These were still pristine in their foil wrappers, despite a fifteen-year wait on supermarket shelves, a wait broken only when they were retrieved by the teams Shade sent scavenging.

“There are two upper walkways well above the water—in addition to the walkways around the sides, which tend to be a bit submerged. We’ll be taking those. So we’ll stop a bit short to listen for Myrmidons, let Ninde concentrate, and so on. If you have any of your visions, Gold-Eye, speak up.”

They ate in silence after Ella spoke, sipping from their water bottles. It was hot and airless in the room, and Gold-Eye felt himself drifting off into sleep. As his head nodded forward, he felt the familiar grip of the soon-to-be-now—but just as the vision was about to come to him, Ninde shook him and it was lost.

“Come on!” said Ninde, switching on her flashlight. “We’re going.”

Gold-Eye followed her with the pressure of an unrealized vision throbbing at his temples and a sick swirling emptiness in his stomach. His glimpses of the soon-to-be-now were nearly always warnings of something bad about to happen—but not always. For a moment he considered telling Ella, but decided against it. Maybe he had felt like he was about to have a vision only because Ella had mentioned it….

But when they started walking along the drain again, the vision did come back. Gold-Eye let out a yelp and nearly fell against Ninde, who just managed to hold him up.

In his head, Gold-Eye saw water rushing along two tunnels, filling them both completely, speeding along in a frenzy of white froth—then cascading out into an enormous pool where many tunnels met. Trapped in his vision, Gold-Eye still realized that this was the Main Junction and the great rush of water was filling it. In moments it would begin a mad, headlong rush toward the sea. Along Ten East. The Main Drain.

“Water!” he shrieked, coming out of the vision. “Flood!”

Even as he cried out, a rumbling, deep roar vibrated through the tunnel, displaced air rushed past their faces—and the first small wave heralded the smashing waters to come.

“Back!” shouted Ella. “Back to the ladder!”

The others had already turned and in a second were running, dancing, slipping back along the tunnel. The sound of the water behind them rose as they ran, and the waves were soon slapping the backs of their knees and then their backs—and still the main flood was building in the surge reservoir they knew as the Main Junction.

“Up! Up!” Drum called as Gold-Eye arrived panting at the ladder. Holding the steel upright with one hand, he picked Gold-Eye up with the other and practically hurled him through the hole in the ceiling, and Ninde after him.

Then, with a ferocious, frothing howl, the flood hit.

Water geysered up the ladder shaft, exploding around Gold-Eye and Ninde as they desperately climbed higher. For a second, both were nearly plucked away, nostrils, mouth, and lungs filled with forced water. Then, as quickly as it came, the water disappeared, leaving them coughing and crying on the ladder.

Ninde’s flashlight still hung on its cord around her wrist. She fumbled her light downward, but it illuminated only the subsiding waters. There was no sign of Ella or Drum.

“They’re gone,” she sobbed. “Gone.”

Gold-Eye heard her faintly, the words fuzzy in his water-logged ears. He felt weak, unable to speak, barely capable of holding on. His hands hurt, the knuckles cracking, unable to relax his deathly grip on the worn steel rungs.

“We shouldn’t have come out,” Ninde sobbed. “I knew it was wrong….”

“Ninde…” Gold-Eye said, suddenly less worried about himself as her muttering and crying rose in intensity and volume. “Ninde!”

She stopped in mid breath, choked, and broke into a fit of coughing. When it stopped, she seemed calmer. Gold-Eye felt calmer too, as if his state of mind was directly dependent upon hers.

“Ninde,” he said again. “Can you do…mind-listen…people?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Ninde said, half coughing the words. “They’re drowned. I can’t hear what dead people think!”

Gold-Eye said nothing. Ninde coughed a few more times, then said, “I suppose I could try. Not from here, though.”

“Safe to go down?” asked Gold-Eye. He couldn’t see past Ninde.

“Yeah,” replied Ninde, shining her flashlight down again. “I guess…I guess it was a quick one. The water looks about w-waist high.”

“We go then?” asked Gold-Eye. “Look for Ella and Drum?”

“I suppose,” said Ninde doubtfully. She withdrew her elbows, which had been locked around the rungs. “I guess if it was the other way around, they’d look for us. And Drum is very strong. If they hung on to the ladder for long enough…”

She started climbing down, Gold-Eye following close behind—and then suddenly stopped, just at the top of the tunnel.

“What?” asked Gold-Eye anxiously.

“The last part of the ladder’s missing,” Ninde replied, her voice flat. “It’s just broken off. We’ll have to hang and drop.”

“Wait!” cried Gold-Eye as Ninde prepared to lower herself from the last rung. “Rope! We use rope!”