Menagerie Part 26

The Dugraq nodded.

'Then we won't need to run away?'

'Let's hope not,' said Defrabax.

They allowed themselves to be surrounded by a ring of chattering apes. After a few moments an enormous grizzled creature pushed its way through the crowd and made straight for Defrabax. Its stare was fixed on the old man.

'You have come down to us,' it stated as the other creatures became quiet.

'I have,' said Defrabax. 'Things did not go well on the surface.'

'We know,' replied the Rocarby leader. 'You have come to explain. There will be no explanations now. We shall go up.

Take the light that we want.'

'No,' said Defrabax. 'You mustn't. You must -'

'You tell us nothing now,' said the creature. 'Rocarbies take their share of the light!' The creatures behind the leader began to jump up and down, whooping in delight.

'That's not why we came down here,' said the Dugraq.

The leader turned to examine Jamie and the scout for the first time.

'You are with this bad man.'

The Dugraq realized that the Rocarby was asking a question. 'We're here to help you,' he replied.

'Defrabax was here to help us,' said the Rocarby bitterly.

'You don't understand,' said Jamie. 'There are some creatures down here that have been . . . brought back to life.

They will kill you.'

'They can try,' said the Rocarby. 'We not concerned.'

'But you must listen to us,' said Jamie. 'Your lives are in danger.'

The Rocarby ignored the protestation. 'What we do now.

Go up to the light. And Defrabax. Came down to the dark.

He stay here forever. Rocarbies not happy. Cheated.'

'But I didn't cheat you!' shouted Defrabax. 'My intentions towards you were entirely reasonable.'

The Rocarby leader shook its head in a strangely human way. 'We will kill you. Keep you here forever.'

'Please, sit down,' said Araboam, holding a blade at Cosmae's throat. 'Treat this house as your own.'

Cosmae sat in an armchair, the young knight a shadowy presence behind him. 'What are you doing here?' he asked.

'My lord and I decided that after the final meeting of the Brotherhood of Rexulon we would come here. We want to ensure that Defrabax's homunculus will be powerless against the Mecrim.'

'And you're happy with what Zaitabor has done? That he's released these creatures simply to cause carnage and punish the world?'

Araboam walked around the room, his fingers clenching nervously around the hilt of the small sword he was carrying. Cosmae could see that there was unease in his movements, whatever he said with his lips. 'There are always things that we do not understand. I must trust my lord.'

'And what has he done to secure this trust?'

'He is Grand Knight and leader of the brotherhood. Under him our entire world will be restored to true observance of the decrees of the Higher.'

'What decrees? The knights believe nothing, elevate meaninglessness to an art-form!'

Araboam grabbed Cosmae's throat and held the point of the sword against his lips. 'Such casual blasphemy will not go unpunished.'

'Maybe so,' said Cosmae quietly when the knight pulled the blade back. 'But do you think you will escape what Zaitabor has planned? Perhaps these creatures will destroy everything.'

'Perhaps,' nodded Araboam. 'But perhaps the Higher has something better to take our place.'

'Then you're as mad as he,' said Cosmae. 'Insanity has eaten into you like a disease. People have said that you were once a gentle and kind child. You've been corrupted!'

'Refined would be a better word,' said a voice from the doorway. Zaitabor stepped into the room, his red Rexulon robes hanging over his Kuabris armour and blue Commander's cloak. His face was as calm and pale as the plaster mask that had covered the automaton. 'What you call madness, I call insight. It depends on where you are looking from. In the light of the Higher, what seems to be insanity is perfect sense. Without the guidance of Kuabris and Rexulon, all actions are base and reprehensible.'

Araboam straightened up, and bowed before Zaitabor.

'My lord, I had hoped that you would come here as planned.'

'I am pleased that you alone remain faithful to me,' said Zaitabor. 'That rabble should not have acquiesced so quickly. And to the City Guard! Mere brutes with no knowledge of the ways of Kuabris.'

'No one really fell under your spell,' said Cosmae.

Zaitabor walked up to the young man and smashed him in the face with one armour-clad arm. Cosmae felt his nose give and suddenly his lips were salty and wet.

'Magic spells have nothing to do with it,' said Zaitabor, wiping his armour on a scroll from the table. 'And the homunculus of your master is no clay golem. What know you of the creature?'

'I know nothing of it,' said Cosmae, blinking back tears.

'Only that it obeys my master and him alone.'

'And yet now that has changed. It was the Doctor who sent the creature after me.'

'Why is the homunculus important to you?' asked Cosmae.

'It is strong enough to cause problems,' said Zaitabor. 'I was only just able to lose it in the dark city before coming here.' Zaitabor threw the parchment back onto the table and idly flicked through the books and papers there. 'You see, the Taculbain reports on your master's plans were most thorough. But it does seem that he had an unexpected change of heart. He planned to replace our own despised Furnace with something from beneath the surface. Why did he not do so? I believe everything was in place. And why now allow the Doctor to control the creature?'

'He would seem to have lost faith in his own judgement,'

commented Araboam.

'That arrogant old man? It would seem impossible, and yet you are right. What other explanation is there? The charlatan must have been exposed. And I can only conclude that there was some danger in what he had planned.'

Zaitabor smiled. 'If this is true then perhaps we should complete his work. The Higher might well have yet more destruction planned for this place.'

Zoe's fingers ran over the door sensor pad. 'I know you're normally good at locks, Doctor,' she smiled, 'but I think that I can sort out this one soon enough.'

The Doctor sat next to the twins on the ramp that led up to the bunker's main doorway, sucking his burnt fingers. He stared at the hole in the fence through which they had come.

'I was sure that was going to work,' he complained bitterly.

'It worked in the power station.'

'This is a bit more fool-proof,' said Zoe, choosing her words carefully. She made a final couple of adjustments, and then replaced the plastigla.s.s panel. 'That should do it,'

she said, running her hand over the sensors.

The huge door grated open. Only a slight whine hinted at the great age of the place.

'It's incredible,' said Reisaz. 'This still works after so long.'

'Unlike civilian equipment,' said the Doctor, 'military hardware is built to last.'

They stepped into a dark reception area, a ceiling with mock skylights yards above their heads. Various doors and corridors led off in turn. Zoe walked to the main desk, and sat behind a small console. 'I think I can bring the lighting and heating on from here,' she said. 'There's not been much power loss in the backup batteries.'

'We probably have Defrabax's experimentation to thank for that,' said the Doctor. 'The Dugraqs were clearly interested in preserving the status of the Mecrim, too.

Anyway, just concentrate on bringing the computer systems and lighting on line.' The Doctor strolled up and down. 'I was going to suggest that you only instigate dim lighting, but as these Mecrim creatures can see in the dark . . .'

The lights flared around the building. Even the Doctor and Zoe were forced to shield their eyes for a few moments.

'Now, we need to find the cryogenic control area. We must undo whatever it is the Taculbain have done.'

'Doctor,' said Raitak, 'how did they get past those doors?'

'I can only a.s.sume that the Dugraqs have some entrance of their own that the Taculbain also used. I really should have asked the scout before he went haring off. Anyway, we're in now.'

Zoe was tapping at the console. 'I've got a map of the installation. The cryogenic control centre is almost exactly beneath us, two storeys down.'

The Doctor ran for the stairs, Zoe and the twins following. 'I would have suggested the lift,' said the Doctor, 'but there are limits to my trust of old technology.'

The stairway was crudely constructed and very dusty.

Even when the building was in use it must have been no more than an emergency backup. The Doctor went down the steps two at a time with amazing speed. Soon he was at the bottom, waiting for the others to catch up.

'It's this way,' said Zoe, leading them down the corridor.

She paused for a moment at the door sensor, but this one proved much easier to open. 'The digits I input manually,'

she explained to a bemused Raitak and Reisaz, 'correspond to the palm print of a service engineer.' The twins nodded to cover their ignorance.

The door hissed open and they walked inside. The room was large but the walls and much of the floor s.p.a.ce was taken up with computer equipment. The far wall was a huge window that looked down upon some sort of hangar. Strip lights flickered, illuminating the metal corpses of tanks and attack craft. 'A mere side show,' announced the Doctor. 'The cryogenic areas themselves are some levels below us.'

He sat at a console and brought it on-line. He asked Zoe to do the same with an adjoining one. The computer system was in some sort of sleep mode, but both screens soon glowed with menus. As the Dugraqs had indicated, the wisdom of centuries was just waiting to be tapped.

The twins sat in a chair and watched the Doctor and Zoe work. 'Try to find the cryogenic diagnostic program,' said the Doctor. 'I'm going to see if I can access the security cameras from here. We might be able to . . . Ah, there we are.' The software on the Doctor's screen vanished to be replaced by a sequence of small squares. A number were blank or showed nothing but static, but most contained grainy video images of empty rooms or featureless corridors. The Doctor moved a cursor into position and a single frame expanded to fill the entire screen. The image was very blurred, but it did show a bare room that contained about fifty metal caskets.

Zoe glanced at the image. 'Yes, that's the right room. The units exactly match the one I saw in the freak show.'

'Good,' said the Doctor. He pressed a few keys and the image began to expand, showing more detail of one particular casket. Many of the electrodes had been ripped from the side of the machine, and a huge hole had appeared in the plastigla.s.s covering. A severed tube poured white fluid on to the floor. 'Well,' said the Doctor, 'I'm not sure whether that's good news or not. The Taculbain were clearly instructed to attack the machinery rather than switch the whole lot off. I'm not sure that even with the large number of backup systems built into cryogenic units we can do much from this end.'

'I'm boosting input and output to maximum,' said Zoe. 'In some cases the field generated might be enough to encapsulate even a broken unit.'

'Good,' said the Doctor. 'If we can avoid going to the units in person then I'm -'

There was a sudden rending sound from the doorway.

The Doctor and the others turned to see the impression of a claw moving down the closed metal shutter. The material warped and bent and finally gave way to admit a huge four-p.r.o.nged claw. In a blur a viciously hooked arm came through. The creature was straining against the door.