Rage Against the Machines Page 10

  BANG!

  "Where?"

  "It really will not do any-"

  BANG! BANG!

  "THE INVENTION EXCHANGE!" Number 5 shouted. Blackblood holstered his gun. He pounded towards the exit. Number 5 skittered after him, repeating one phrase over and over again: "Don't say I didn't warn you."

  TEN

  The Sweet Dreams Motel sat thirty kilometres to the west of the Trans-Martian Highway, on a side road that might as well have been sign-posted "Nowhere". It consisted of a reception building and a line of ramshackle cabins, the dubious delights of the latter teasingly withheld by a crooked hoarding that when fully lit read "No Vacancies". Or at least would have done, had the bulbs that made up its lettering not kept randomly shorting out. It was as if the sign had become bored by not attracting customers and had taken to playing word-games with itself to pass the long and lonely nights. So the glowing sign advertised variously to the darkened desert, "No Vacs", "Nancies", and "Novacane".

  Only occasionally did the sign hit on the truth of the matter, reading "Vacancies", for the Sweet Dreams Motel had a lot of vacancies these days.

  Even more so since a "youthanasia" drive, instigated by Medusa herself, had ensured its more recent customers had departed its accommodation for good. The Sweet Dreams Motel was utterly devoid of people, living ones, anyway. But this was something Mongrol couldn't know.

  "Perfect," he said to himself. He was running an X-ray surveillance scan of the entire structure, verifying that there were indeed no inhabitants in any of the buildings. From the stacks of old oxygen cylinders that he detected to the buildings' rear, he realised that the motel must have been an Oasis at some point in its past, which more than likely explained its isolated location.

  Isolated was good. There was less chance of a tripod patrol stumbling across the humans.

  "We'll shelter from the storm here," Mongrol said to himself.

  The ABC Warrior turned to face the blackness of the desert night and waved an arm in the air, beckoning his companions forward.

  Rumbling slowly out of the night came Mek-Quake and the rag-tag convoy made up of the last survivors of Viking City. One of the children, who was sitting comfortably on Mek-Quake's head, pointed out the flickering sign.

  "Look," he cried. "A shining beacon called, er..."

  "Nancies," Mek-Quake said excitedly. "Mek-Quake knew a girl called Nancy once. She was niiiiiice. Maybe Mek-Quake can say hello?"

  "I hate to disappoint you, my cerebrally-challenged friend," Mongrol said, "but that is just a trick of the light. I'm afraid that the only Nancy you'll find around here is-" He hooked a thumb back at the president's wife.

  Mek-Quake rumbled ominously. Then, his attention span reaching its rather short limit, he hung his head. "Not Nancies?" he said disappointedly.

  "Sorry, old friend." Mongrol lifted a crate of food and a crate of medical supplies from Mek-Quake and tucked them under his arms. "Listen up, everyone!" he shouted to the humans who were waiting expectantly. "There is a sand-storm coming so we need to make shelter indoors for the night." What Mongrol said was true: the sandstorms of the Saharan Desert could travel at up to five hundred kilometres an hour, every grain they contained cold and dry, glittering like ice and feeling just like powdered glass. It was by far more than enough to strip paint - it was enough to strip flesh. If any of the humans in the convoy remained outside, the way that most of these people were dressed, Medusa and her tripods would not need to look hard to find any of the survivors - there'd be a long, red smear pointing the way.

  "Get yourselves into the cabins," Mongrol continued, "and batten down the hatches. Each of you take some of the injured. Post a guard. With luck there should still be a biol supply in the cabins but I will make food and medical supplies available to anyone in need. Whatever you do, do not go outdoors. Does everyone understand?"

  The humans nodded and began to group off, moving to the cabins. The children clambered down from Mek-Quake's neck and looked at him with concern. Until they had pulled up for the night, Mek-Quake had been telling them another story, a chapter from something called "The Martin Chronikills".

  Or at least that's what Mek-Quake thought it was called, his memory dump being notoriously... unreliable.

  He had just reached the part where Mr T told Captain Wilder to "Get away from me, fool!" and pulled out his machine-gun. He had made it clear that The A-Team didn't like his kind in their town.

  "Will you be all right by yourself in the sand, Mister Mek-Quake?" Nathaniel Nibletscratcher asked. He shuffled his feet. "Only I want to find out who Mister T blows away next."

  "Mek-Quake very strong robot," the killdozer replied after a moment. "Stronger than Mister T is Mek-Quake. He used to Big Jobs."

  "If you're sure," Nathaniel Nibletscratcher muttered hesitantly. He began to turn and then turned back. "I'm not really bothered about Mr T," the added quickly. "I just wanted to make sure that you'd be all right. In the storm."

  "GET AWAY FROM ME, FOOL!" Mek-Quake imitated.

  The boy laughed, then stopped once more.

  "Mister Mek-Quake?" he asked. "Do you think I've got a funny name?"

  "No," Mek-Quake said honestly, but only because it had too many syllables for him to cope with. Nathaniel smiled and ran to a cabin.

  Mek-Quake thought he was alone, then. It was only when a small hand draped a cardigan around his serpentine neck that he realised one was left: a small girl.

  "To keep you warm," she said. And then she kissed him on the neck. Then she too was gone.

  Mek-Quake stared after the girl. And after Nathan... After Nath... After the boy. He watched the cabin doors close, feeling relieved.

  Mek-Quake realised that he also felt really quite odd, in a way that he had never felt before. Despondent and down after the break-up of the ABC Warriors, he had been starting to wonder what he could do next. He wondered what to do now that he had lost his only friends. The friends he had known for two thousand years.

  He hadn't really been able to think of anything and he hadn't been able to cope with that. But he realised with a sudden warm feeling that he had new friends. Friends with whom he had laughed and joked on the desert trek; friends he had vowed to protect, but friends who wanted to protect him, too.

  Different friends. Little friends. His Little Jobs.

  Mek-Quake began to feel quite sentimental. He began to shudder and realised that he wanted a little cry. Sadly for Mek-Quake, he had no tear ducts. Instead, he dribbled. In the morning he would have to tell his little jobs how much he-

  THWAAACK!

  "Sorry, buddy," Mongrol said. "Noticed the old dribble there. With everything that's been going on, I forgot to give you your daily upgrade."

  Mek-Quake stared at him. "Up... grade?"

  "Yeah. You remember - every day in every way Mek-Quake get more?"

  "Stupid?" Mek-Quake finished, heavily.

  "Yeeaahh," Mongrol replied slowly. He wasn't sure if it was him, but there appeared to be something a little different about Mek-Quake tonight.

  "Something the matter, Mek-Quake? The, er, little jobs all right?"

  Mek-Quake paused. He looked down at his neck.

  "LITTLE JOBS GONE!" he said, startled.

  "They're in the cabins, Mek-Quake. It's all right."

  "Little jobs safe then," the killdozer said, relaxing. He looked troubled suddenly. "Only Mek-Quake want to tell them something, but Mek-Quake not remember what."

  "Oh, I'm sorry. Was it important?"

  Mek-Quake shrugged. "Mek-Quake not know."

  "Well, I'm sure it'll come back to you," Mongrol said reassuringly. "The important things always do."

  "Yehhh," Mek-Quake said.

  Mongrol continued to busy himself and felt his arm grabbed from the side. He turned to see President Cobb and his wife staring at him.

  "You don't actually expect that we share the facilities with these other people?" the first lady said with an undisguised disgust. "They're filthy and those cabin
s will be crowded. I need to shower, to change, to make myself presentable."

  "The best of luck," Mongrol muttered to himself.

  "Look," the first lady continued, "I don't expect a mere robot to understand, but I demand that you at least allocate us a cabin of our own."

  A mere robot, Mongrol thought, bristling. Biol! This woman was seriously behind the times. He took out a cigar, placed it in his mouth and clacked open the lighter concealed in his right fore-digit. The cigar was an affectation he was really getting to like, allowing as it did time for dramatic pauses. This was a very good time for a dramatic pause.

  He raised the lighter and watched the wind that always preceded a sandstorm tug at the flame. Interesting analogy, that, he thought. This woman had no idea how close she was sailing to the wind right now; her husband they needed - she they most certainly did not.

  "Lady," he said around the cigar as he puffed it to life, "do you know what a wind-sock is?"

  "Of course."

  "You wanna be one?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I said," Mongrol repeated, slowly blowing out a cloud of smoke, secretly rather pleased that he had managed to make a smoke ring, "do you wanna be one?" He leaned forward until his face was fully in hers and growled, the anger in his voice barely constrained. "Because if you don't get inside now, I'm gonna strip you down to your no doubt not so hot hot-pants, hoist you from that sign over there with this cigar jammed in your gob, and let the sandstorm blast you clean from the inside out. Capice?"

  "How dare you," President Cobb interjected. He motioned to his bodyguards then huffed and puffed when they shuffled around, staring at the night sky.

  "Then," Mongrol continued, ignoring the protest, "when finally there's just your skin left, fluttering about like the old bag that it is, we'll all be able to look out of the window and know when the hot wind's died down, won't we?"

  The first lady gaped at Mongrol.

  "You'll pay for that," President Cobb said. "Do you know who I am?" He paused, feeling foolish; of course he did. "George C Cobb promises you that-"

  "MOVE!" Mongrol snapped. They moved.

  As the door to their chosen cabin slammed behind them, Mek-Quake rolled slowly to his companion's side.

  "Mek-Quake think Mongrol use very strong words. Maybe not good with Mrs of the president."

  "Frag the Mrs of the president," Mongrol snapped. "And anyway, since when were you the diplomat, Mek-Quake?" He dropped his cigar on the ground, crushed it with his heel and gave his fellow ABC Warrior a robotic wink. "Besides, you ought to have heard what I really wanted to say."

  Mongrol felt the first grains of the sandstorm carried in the wind. He gave a quick internal command and all of the external vents in his armour snapped shut.

  "Better close up and find some shelter," he instructed Mek-Quake. "Keep those supplies protected." He hefted the two crates that he was carrying himself. "I'll drop these in reception, then mount a patrol."

  Mek-Quake's T-shaped head swivelled around, scanning the dark horizon. "Mek-Quake detect nothing," the killdozer said.

  "Mongrol detect nothing either," he said, imitating his friend. "But in deserted old motels like this one, nasty things have a habit of popping up out of nowhere when you least expect them. More often than not when you're in the shower."

  Mek-Quake nodded slowly as if Mongrol had imparted to him a great wisdom. "Mek-Quake remember seeing 'Sicko'."

  "That's 'Psycho', you moron. It has a 'P' in it."

  "Mek-Quake not remember a pea-"

  "The letter," Mongrol emphasised. Mek-Quake stared at him blankly. "Oh, forget it."

  With that, Mongrol moved off towards the cabin marked "reception", leaving Mek-Quake to ponder heavily on his friend's recently rediscovered mastery of the richness and complexity of the English language. He reckoned Mongrol wasn't as good as he thought. Indeed, to put it his way, Mek-Quake thought Mongrol was talking "phit".

  The sandstorm became stronger. The door to the reception was locked, so Mongrol kicked it in. Behind the desk, a rusty robot receptionist jumped up clumsily, as if caught in the middle of something. A magazine, which was spattered with oil, fell from his lap. Mongrol frowned, wondering why he hadn't picked up the robot in his scan. He realised why - he had mistaken it for an old generator, the way it was vibrating away.

  "Good evening, sir," the robot said, a little taken aback. "I am Google. How may I be of service?"

  As he spoke, there was a scream from one of the cabins. Google put his head in his hands and shook it slowly. "Oh, not again," he moaned. "How, tell me, how is a robot meant to stay in business?"

  Mongrol raced for the cabin from which the scream had come, as did Mek-Quake, switching to humanoid form. They burst in through the door, weapons primed. Amongst the crowd occupying the room, a terrified woman was pointing at the window overlooking the rear of the motel.

  "Outside," she said. "Something horrible was looking at me from outside!"

  "It wasn't me," Google said, appearing in the doorway. "I swear to Gaia it wasn't me."

  Mongrol peered out through the glass. He saw nothing because of the hammering sand. Then suddenly - a face! Hands! The hands clawed at the glass.

  Mongrol had seen this kind of thing before.

  "What did you mean?" he demanded of Google. "When you said 'Oh, not again'?"

  "That Medusa woman," Google said. "She keeps murdering my customers."

  Mongrol had an uneasy feeling about this.

  "And these customers?" he asked slowly. "Where are they now?"

  "Oh, you know," Google said in a quavering voice. He spread his hands, turned in a full circle. "Buried... all around."

  "Frag!" Mongrol shouted. "Mek-Quake, turn the lights out! Everybody keep down. Stay away from the doors!"

  He sprinted out of the cabin.

  It was like Night Of The Living Dead outside.

  The corpses came lurching and lumbering at Mongrol out of the raging storm, groaning loudly but oblivious to the sand that was tearing away their decaying flesh in grey flaps. Some were still recognisable for what they had been: a cyber-whale harpoonist, a trihimoth tracker and a pyromaniac.

  Mongrol's machine guns made them unrecognisable before obliterating them completely.

  A tattoo-covered girl faltered towards him, killed quite recently by the look of her. She was dressed only in knife-wounds and carried a cuddly toy. "Mr Fluffy wants to say goodnight," she said.

  Mongrol blew her head off.

  More came.

  Frag, Mongrol thought. Out of all the motels in all the desert why did we have to walk into this one? It wasn't the corpses themselves that worried Mongrol, it was the fact that they had been become corpses because of Medusa. Her reanimated dead were more than just zombies - they were the eyes and ears of Medusa herself. If the corpses knew the convoy was here, it wouldn't be long before she did too.

  The corpses stopped shuffling; their mouths were opened wide, their arms straight out, and they pointed accusingly.

  "Uuuulaaahhh!" they screeched.

  In the blackness of the desert, something answered.

  "Uuuulaaahh!"

  Mongrol heard the pounding of feet on the wind - very heavy feet.

  "Frag," he said. He made a dash back for the cabin.

  "Tripods coming," he said simply.

  "Are we leaving then?" someone asked.

  "No time," said Mongrol. He looked at Mek-Quake. "We have to make a stand."

  The tripods came, three of them as far as Mongrol and Mek-Quake could make out. They began to fire their heat-rays at The Sweet Dreams Motel. Taking up positions on either side of the cabin door, Mongrol and Mek-Quake looked at each other. There were, after all, only three tripods. Maybe, just maybe, they could win this. They launched themselves out of the door, guns blazing. It would have been a good moment for a freeze-frame. Unfortunately, neither of them had seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

  ELEVEN

  Tripolis: home
of the Martians. Home, more accurately, of the trimorphs, the three-eyed and tri-gendered natives of present-day Mars, and not the ersatz creations that occupied Medusa's tripods.

  Once it had been the capital city of the trimorph race, and of the planet. Now it was simply the Martian Capital as opposed to the Capital of Mars. It had been stripped of the latter distinction by Viking City, when the humans came.

  Just like the humans had stripped the trimorphs of so many things.

  Nevertheless, Tripolis remained the Capital City in the trimorphs' hearts, and they maintained it appropriately. There were not enough complimentary adjectives to fairly describe Tripolis. From its avenues to its temples, its crystal parks to its leisure malls, it was without doubt the most beautiful and peaceful city on Mars.

  Deadlock thundered towards it on his motorcycle, his crimson cloak flying behind him trailing dust, the razor swords that scythed from the bike's wheels still dripping gore from the creatures that Medusa had foolishly sent to intercept him.

  The Clone Ranger, he thought with some disdain. A Man Called Horse. Honestly. If Medusa was going to stop the mission on which he was engaged, she was going to have to do better than that. Deadlock retracted the swords as he approached Tripolis and the gore fell away. He switched the bike to silent mode.

  The main gate of Tripolis swung open to admit him.

  Deadlock noticed as he rode beneath the gate how some groups of humans from Viking City had made it here before him. He noticed how willingly the Martian inhabitants were welcoming the refugees, offering food and shelter to them as soon as they arrived. What was more, the more traumatized among them were already being attended to by groups of trimorphs, the mits of the Martian family units exuding their curious calming aura to sedate the victims.

  How willing, Deadlock wondered, would the inhabitants of Viking City have been to do the same for the Martians, had their situations been reversed?

  The ABC Warrior rode on into Tripolis, passing through the park districts and the residential areas filled with their ziggurats before arriving at last at the steps of Tripolis Cathedral, his destination. He dismounted his motorcycle. The awesome, three-spired building, the focal point of the Medusan religion and its spiritual heart, towered above him majestically, soaring up into the clouds. Deadlock thought that somehow appropriate. Because he was very much hoping that the cathedral would become his "telephone line to god". And inside the cathedral waited its operator.