Divine Flu
.. as realAlbert confronts unpleasant news …
The self-made army of stolen war-golems finally broke through. While Ritu and I were shepherded over the last shattered robot defenders, a dozen of Beta’s scarred veterans hurried the other way, rushing to help the rear guard. How long could they resist the force battling toward us from the Base?
Not long. I had a feeling things would start happening fast.
They had better. I may not have much time.
Smoke fumed around the edges of an armored door with a big hole burned through. Waves of heat still poured from recently molten metal as we passed into what must be the buried lair of Yosil Maharal. Ritu and I found ourselves standing on a parapet overlooking a scene that was altogether bizarre—a grotto filled to bursting with equipment, much of it jerry-rigged by stringing together hardware with familiar UK logos.
Surely this must be the hoard of electroceramic gear that Kaolin accused Maharal of swiping from work. What on Earth was he trying to accomplish here? I wondered. No doubt some avenue of research that Aeneas forbade him to pursue in the company’s R&D department.
Flooding to me came foreboding words, “the curse of Frankenstein,” followed by a clipped image of a mushroom cloud.
Huge antennalike coils funneled from all angles toward a pair of
humanoid figures, splayed at opposite ends of the room, facing each other with arms pinioned wide. One of these dittos was dark red, the other a specialized shade of a gray that I sometimes wear myself. Ornate inloading apparatus festooned all over their clay bodies, though I couldn’t imagine what so many souped-up linkages could be for.
Between the pair of dittos, some kind of giant clockwork mechanism kept time to the swaying of a huge pendulum. And damn if there wasn’t a golem there too, riding back and forth like a child on a swing!
That one was yelling its head off.
Those were some of the features my eyes saw. More interesting were things that eyes weren’t meant to see.
First, was I already dying of some awful fever? I had felt better crossing into the lab’s bright light and cooler air after that bloody tunnel. Only now, nausea waves skewered my viscera, like those gut-churning sensations that astronauts used to report, back when realfolk actually risked their lives in space. Bowels clenched, nearly as hard as my teeth, which barely let escape a reedy moan.
This is it, I thought. Some fast-acting super-virus. Death in minutes.
Too bad. I came so close to finding out what was going on here.
Should I have stayed home instead, and get blown up? At least it would have been quick. I never achieved my real goal, setting out on Tuesday night.
Clara, I’m sorry. I really tried—
More symptoms teemed, clouding the senses. I could swear the space between the captive golems, which had seemed as clear as air moments ago, now rippled and fluttered like some dense fluid! The undulations had a dreamlike quality, impossible to pin down, like a smoke-sculptor’s interpretation of manic mood swings.
I had a brief impression that battalions of identical ghostly entities occupied the confined zone, thronging in limitless multitudes, yet somehow uncrowded, with plenty of room in their well-ordered ranks for more. Except when the pendulum passed through. Then brusque waves roiled, transforming many of the marching figures, giving them a face.
Floating before me, I pictured the visage of Yosil Maharal.
“Albert, are you all right?” Ritu murmured, but I shook her hand away. Let her take it as anger for getting me into this fix. I just didn’t want to infect her.
I didn’t want anybody infected. So, despite stomach convulsions, apparitions, and disorientation, I forced myself to look away from shenanigans in the center of the lab, aiming instead at the support machinery lining the grotto walls, seeking any clue about those germ agents. They were all that mattered.
There.
Bleary-eyed, I spotted a computer. One of those expensive AI-XIX models. Damn smart for silicon. One of Maharal’s chief tools, surely, maybe even a master process controller. And just the sort of thing that a fellow like me could smash to bits, without having to know specifics of how or why.
Can I make it all the way down there and do it quickly?
At least it was a goal.
A nearby Beta—perhaps the very same war-dit who spoke to us in the tunnel—grabbed the balcony rail and shouted in a voice whose suddenly plaintive tone surprised me. I never heard the like from Beta before.
“Yosil! Father, stop … we had a deal!”