Century Rain Part 68

He eased his head from the floor, then peeled the rest of his body into a sitting position. He looked around and found Auger sitting in a chair, slumped into it with exhaustion, but still awake.

"Floyd?" she asked. "Are you all right?"

"Copacetic," he said, rubbing his head.

"When you went through that thing...how was it?"

Floyd spat out a bloodied tooth before answering. "It's funny. I'm sitting here now and it seems like it was only a couple of seconds ago that we were on the other side. But to another part of me, it feels as if I haven't seen you for half a lifetime."

"So it happened to you," Auger said. "The thing that never happened to me. You got it, on your first trip through." She sounded impressed and envious at the same time.

"All I remember," Floyd said, "is that I felt as if I was made of gla.s.s, and there was light shining through me. It was as though I was hanging in that shaft of light for the whole of eternity. I wondered if it was ever going to end. Another part of me didn't want it to end, ever. I saw...colours, colours like I'd never imagined before. And then it was all over, and I was lying here with a pain in my mouth. You know, if you could bottle that sensation..." He managed a self-deprecating shrug. "Guess the d.a.m.ned thing isn't so picky after all."

"Did you feel a mind? More than one mind?"

"I felt very small and very delicate, like something being looked at through a microscope."

"It was an experiment," Auger said flatly. "No one like you has ever come through before. It was something no one had ever tried. I just didn't expect you to have that experience on your first trip."

"Lady, one trip through that thing is enough for me." He looked around, taking in the complexities of the room in which he had landed. Unlike the last chamber, this one at least looked something like the underground spy lair he had been imagining. It was very large, filled with machines and equipment that he could not begin to identify. "Please tell me this is some kind of film set," he said, steadying himself against the edge of a desk.

"It's all real," Auger said, strugging to her feet. "The only problem is that my friends aren't here yet. But there's good news, too."

"There is?"

"The ship's back. I just don't understand why no one else came with it. They'd only have had to keep one seat vacant."

Floyd dug into his mouth, extracting the last few chips of his ruined tooth. Somehow, dentistry was the least of his worries. "Did you just say 'ship?'"

"That thing," Auger said. She pointed to the central feature of the room, the thing you couldn't miss. It was a giant gla.s.s bulb, as wide across as a house, suspended at eyelevel over a kind of pit filled with more machinery, equipment and desks. The bulb was encased in an arrangement of curving metal struts, bracing it to the walls of the chamber. On the other side from where they were standing, the bulb's surface extended out, forming a cylindrical shaft that pushed through the wall. Where the shaft met the wall, there was a thick, intricate crusting of the same weird substance Floyd had already seen framing the censor. As he looked more closely, he realised that the crusting covered the interior walls of the chamber completely with a dense, twinkling plaque. Portions of it had been sheeted over with metal panels, but large areas were still exposed.

There was something inside the bubble. It was a dented and battered object about the size of a truck, seemingly formed from sheets of metal that had been hammered into shape by enthusiastic cavemen. It was cylindrical, with a bullet-shaped nose. It had windows and was covered with odd projections-most of them bent and mangled-and unfamiliar symbols in faded and scorched paint, and the whole thing was encased in a kind of harness, like the cradles used to load bombs into aircraft.

"It's taken a beating getting here," Auger commented.

"That's a ship?" Floyd asked.

"Yes," she said. "And don't sound so disappointed. It happens to be my ticket out of here."

"It looks as though it's been around the block a few times."

"Well, things must be getting pretty hairy for it to have accrued that much damage in one trip. I just hope it can cope with the return leg."

"Where will it take you?" Floyd asked. "America? Russia? Somewhere I haven't even heard of?"

"It'll take me a long way from Paris," Auger said evasively. "Right now that's all you need worry about. I'll be back in just over sixty hours, or if not me, then someone else you can trust. Whoever it is will have reinforcements-enough help to get you back to the surface in one piece."

"Is that a promise?"

"It's the best I can do. Right now, I don't even know if that thing is going to hold together long enough to get me home."

"Is there an alternative?"

"No. That ship is my only way out of here."

"Then we'd better hope Lady Luck's on your side."

Floyd looked around the rest of the room, his attention skating from one unfamiliar object to the next. The many desks were all inlaid with arrays of typewriter keys, but grouped densely together, with many more keys than seemed necessary. They had cryptic codes marked on them-arrangements of letters, numbers and childish scribbles. There were many switches and controls of a kind he didn't recognise, made of some sort of smoky, translucent material. There were flat, upright sheets of tinted gla.s.s arranged on the desks like sunshades, upon which text and ill.u.s.trations-charts and diagrams-had been printed in bright, luminous inks. There were grilles and lights and slots, and racks holding oblong things that might have fitted into the slots. There were microphones on stalks-those at least he recognised- and clipboards, left strewn across some of the desks. He picked up the nearest clipboard and leafed through sheets of silky paper marked with rows and rows of gibberish, but gibberish clearly laid out according to some careful scheme, interspersed with elegant, sloping cascades of brackets and other typographic symbols. Another clipboard held pages and pages of labyrinthine, gridlike diagrams, like the street map of some insane metropolis.

"Who exactly are you?" he asked "I'm a woman from the year twenty-two sixty-six," Auger said.

"You know, what really worries me is that you sound as if you believe it."

But Auger wasn't listening. She had moved to the side of what was perhaps the strangest thing in the room, other than the ship and the censor. It was a kind of sculpture composed of many dozens of shiny metallic spheres organised into a pyramidal spiral that reached almost to shoulder height. In the lobby of a company building, it wouldn't have merited a second glance. But here, amidst so much equipment that was obviously designed for a specific technical function, it was bizarrely out of place, like a Christmas tree in an engine room.

Auger touched the topmost sphere. She mouthed a "What...?" and the thing moved, partially uncoiling until Floyd saw that it had the form of a snake made from many linked spheres. Auger took a nervous step backwards as the snake rose up, curving its body into a high, threatening arc.

Floyd pointed his automatic and clicked off the safety catch.

"Easy," Auger said, raising a hand in his direction. "It's just a robot. They must have sent it over in the ship."

Guardedly, Floyd let the automatic drop. "Just a robot?"

"A Slasher robot," she said, as if this made a difference. "But I don't think it means us any harm. If it

did, we'd be dead by now."

"You're talking about robots as if they're something you see every day."

"Not every day," Auger said. "But often enough to know when I should be afraid, and when I don't need

to be."

The robot spoke in a rapid, piping voice. "I recognise you as Verity Auger. Please confirm this identification."

"I'm Auger," she said.

"You appear to be injured. Is this the case?" While it spoke, the snake swayed the blank sphere of its

head from side to side, like a charmed cobra.

"I'm injured, yes."

"I am detecting a foreign metallic object lodged near your shoulder." The robot's voice sounded the way

Floyd imagined Disney might make a talking kettle sound. "Do you authorise immediate medical intervention? I am programmed with the necessary routines to perform an operation."

"I thought the bullet went through you," Floyd said.

"Maybe there was more than one," Auger answered.

"Do you authorise medical intervention?" the robot repeated.

"Yes," Auger said, and almost immediately the snake moved, its spheres sc.r.a.ping against the floor.

"No," she said sharply. "Wait. There isn't time for a full operation. I want you to stabilise me, make sure

I can last until we get back to E1. Is that possible?"

The snake paused, appearing to weigh the options. "I can stabilise you," it said thoughtfully. "But my recommendation is that you allow an immediate operation. Otherwise there is a significant risk of death unless you consent to UR therapy."

"I'll consent if it gets me out of here," Auger said. Then she turned to Floyd. "I've just had an idea, now that they've sent the robot."

"I'm listening," Floyd said.

She snapped her attention back to the snake. "Are you Asimov-compliant?"

"No," the robot said, with a sting of indignation.

"Thank G.o.d, because you may actually have to hurt some people. Recognise this man as Wendell Floyd.

Got that?"

The robot's blank round head swung towards him. He felt a weird interrogatory chill, as if he had been stared at by a sphinx.

"Yes," the robot confirmed.

"I'm authorising you to protect Wendell Floyd. People may enter this chamber via the censor and attempt to harm or abduct him. You are to defend him, using minimum necessary force. Do you have nonlethal weapons?"

"I have weapons that may be deployed in both nonlethal and lethal modes," the robot said proudly.

"Good. I want you to use whatever force is necessary to keep Floyd alive, but keep the body count down. No killing, unless you have to."

"It understood all that?" Floyd said.

"I hope so, for their sakes." She addressed the robot again. "Eventually-somewhere around sixty or

seventy hours from now-someone will return in the ship. They will a.s.sist Floyd in returning to the surface. You are not to obstruct them. Understood?"

"Understood," the robot said.

"Good. Were you given any special orders? Who put you aboard?"

"I was given special instructions by Maurya Skellsgard."

"Skellsgard made it?" Auger clenched her fist in obvious relief. "Thank G.o.d. At least something went right, for once. Can I talk to her? Is the communications link working?"

"The communications link is active, but unreliable."

"Can you patch me through to Skellsgard, if she's on shift?"

"One moment."

Elsewhere in the room, movement caught Floyd's eye. Across all the desks, the text-filled shades became clear as the luminous letters and diagrams vanished. Symbols jumped across the panels, followed by a jumble of numbers and diagrams that flickered past too fast to make out. Then the picture cleared to reveal multiple images of the same woman, looking at him from different angles around the room.

"Auger?" the face said. "You there, sister?"

The snake robot was already attending to Auger's injury. It had curled part of itself around her, forming a kind of couch upon which she was gently supported. The larger spheres, Floyd noted, were capable of bulging and softening to form cushions. Other spheres, cl.u.s.tered near the head, had opened little doors in what had appeared to be seamless metal. Many jointed arms had emerged through these doors, tipped with all manner of sharp, glinting devices.

"I'm here," Auger said. "I'm glad you made it back safely."

"All thanks to you," Skellsgard replied. "I owe you one, and I wish I was there to help. But the link's become too unstable since I made it back to E1. There was no guarantee we'd be able to get a ship back to you, let alone return."

"I noticed that the ship took a hammering," Auger said. The robot was nibbling away layers of her clothing, doing so with an astonishing gentleness. It reminded Floyd of a mantis chewing away at a leaf.

"It'll probably be even rougher on the way back. I wanted to come for you, but Caliskan refused to risk any more lives. That's why we sent the robot. Hope you weren't too surprised."

"I take it the Slasher conflict has become more extensive?"

"You could say that. Look, no point in beating around the bush. The news at this end isn't good: you're coming back to a war zone. The aggressive parties have finally made their move. Moderate Slashers are doing their best to contain them, but it's not clear how long they can last. We're not sure how long we