“You know why we came down here!” Eric shouted back. “It’s not stupid! We’re trying to save the museum. How many times do I have to explain before it gets through your thick head?”
“Should have listened to my friends,” Chris said. “They were right, you know. Know what they say about you?”
“I have a pretty good idea, but go ahead.” His heart was throbbing like a gyroscope. This was it, he thought; this was how it would end, with a big fight, right here on the storm drain.
“They’re always saying what a loser you are. They’re right, you’re a total wimp loser.”
“At least I’m not the one whining every step of the way like some blond Neanderthal!”
Something dark and sleek brushed past Chris’s head and swooped up into the cavern.
“What the hell was that?” Chris yelled, clutching his face.
Eric could make out a cluster of the dark shapes, darting erratically through the air.
“Bats,” he whispered.
They were wheeling, swooping back. There was something terrifying about them, even the thought of them, flying around your face, their leathery skin grazing you. Here they come. Eric threw his arm up over his face and turned his back. They whistled by, and he could feel the tips of their wings brush against his hair. Beside him, Chris shouted and cursed.
Then they were gone.
Chris had fallen to his knees with both arms covering his head.
“It’s all right, they’re gone,” Eric told him shakily.
Chris’s breathing was fast and shallow, and his eyes were widened in panic.
“You all right?” Eric asked, slumping down beside him. “They’re gone. Just bats. They’re harmless.”
“I can’t breathe.” Chris’s eyes darted frantically around the cavern and Eric was afraid he was about to bolt and run. “Can’t breathe!”
“Yes, you can,” Eric said, trying not to let his own fear show. “You’re just scared. Take a deep breath; go ahead.”
Chris shook his head desperately.
“I’m gonna die!”
“No, you’re not. Come on, Chris. You’re all right. You’re all right.” He didn’t know what else to say, so he kept repeating the same three words over and over until Chris’s breathing slowed and his eyes lost their terrified gleam.
“I thought I was going to die,” Chris finally said. “That was utterly scary.” He looked quickly up at Eric, embarrassed. “That’s never happened to me before.”
Eric just shrugged—it didn’t matter. He never thought he’d see something like this: sports superstar Chris, so afraid he couldn’t take a deep breath. But, it didn’t give him even a glimmer of mean satisfaction. He suddenly felt frightened himself. What were they doing down here?
Trying to save Alexander, he told himself as calmly as he could. Trying to save the museum, the Chinese tomb, the dinosaur gallery. But somehow the memories of those visits with his father weren’t the same anymore. Eric’s jaw tightened. The two of them had probably wound up there just so Dad could brood over Mom, think about her while looking at all the old things.
“He’s crazy,” Eric said, choking out the words. “Dad’s such a freak.”
Chris was looking at him in alarm.
“What d’you mean?” he stammered. “He’s okay.”
Eric shook his head. “No, he’s not. He’s some kind of freak, just the way everyone thinks. Remember I told you my Mom died in an accident? That’s a lie. He lied to me. She jumped in front of a train—that’s how she really died. He never told me until a couple days ago.”
There, he’d said it. He felt numb.
“It’s been thirteen years and he still can’t forget her. He enjoys being unhappy. He’s crazy.”
“Must be a hard thing to forget,” Chris mumbled, as if he didn’t know what else to say.
“Thirteen years!” Eric exclaimed. “And why are you sticking up for him? He hates you; he thinks you’re an idiot!”
He was sorry the moment he saw Chris’s face.
Chris shrugged. “So do you,” he said coldly.
“What? That’s not true!”
“Every chance you get, reminding me how stupid I am!”
Eric felt a sick swirling in his guts. It was true.
“Why do you think I’m doing this, anyway?” Chris stormed. “So you won’t think I’m a moron. That’s the only reason—so maybe you’ll think I’m not just some sports dork with no brain!”
Eric stared at his knees; he couldn’t look at Chris. He’d never stopped feeling like a skinny geek around Chris—so he put Chris down to get even. He felt another wave of queasiness crash over him.
“Let’s go back,” he said.
He felt empty and alone. It was pointless. Even if they did get the scroll and stop Coyle, things wouldn’t be any different. His father would still think about Mom and never love him as much. And he’d keep on getting hurt. And Chris would still hate him. Nothing would change.
“No way!” Chris said, scrambling to his feet. He still sounded angry. “No friggin’ way am I going back now! We got all the way down here. And besides, I don’t want to give up my chance at being a big hero. You never know, I might even get on Split Second News!” He smiled a little, as if it was a joke. “You don’t want to go back, either.”
It was true. Eric nodded wearily. Had to try to save the museum, save the dates. They were the only things you could rely on. Invention of photography, 1827. Michelangelo’s David, 1501. He pushed himself up from the damp concrete and they started walking again.
Up ahead, a blue glow shimmered along the shore of the storm drain—pale at first, suddenly brightening, then fading again.
“Look,” said Eric, nodding his head in the direction of the gleam. In the distance was a huge, conical silhouette at the edge of the storm drain, backlit by the blue flicker. Chris, one hand steadying his gun, led the way deeper into the tangle of cables and pipes against the wall; Eric followed behind him.
“What is that?” Eric whispered as they drew closer.
It was unlike any machine he’d ever seen, old and new at the same time. It was shaped like the spire of a Gothic cathedral. It bristled with copper wires and electronic components, multicoloured bundles of cable, tiny video screens, panels of twinkling lights, long levers and pistons like something from the undercarriage of a locomotive. Turning cog-wheels meshed like the insides of an old-fashioned clock. A spiral of steaming tubing surrounded the base of the machine, funnelling water in from pipes along the storm drain.
As Eric and Chris watched, one of the contraption’s massive levers began to turn slowly— one, two, three clanking, deafening revolutions, and then a huge burst of black smoke exploded from its innards into the cavern.
“I don’t know,” Chris was shaking his head in amazement. “I don’t know what that is.”
Blue light flickered over the machine, over the water’s tumultuous surface. Eric moved cautiously forward for a better look, ducking around the cavern’s steel undergrowth. He shoved a cable out of his way.
About twenty metres beyond the machine tower sat a pyramid of fifteen televisions flashing out commercials, soap operas, game shows, Split Second News spots, a video shopping program. In front of the TV pyramid, at a long table covered with electronic equipment, stood Coyle, staring intently into a glowing computer monitor. Occasionally, without looking away, he would type something onto the keyboard, adjust a switch. He stood very still and straight, his whole body bathed in the light of the screen. Bars of green flickered across his chest, red symbols danced over his face. Then the colours changed, sweeping over him in broad swaths so that he seemed to be made of light, a projection from the screen itself.
Beyond the television pyramid, Eric could see rubble and metal debris strewn across the floor, and a dark, jagged opening blasted in the cavern wall. Right into the cellar. Tools were spread out nearby—a jackhammer, picks and crowbars, a sledgehammer. Must have had dynamite, too, to make a hole th
at big.
“Amazing.” Chris’s eyes were darting over the machinery assembled on Coyle’s table.
“Explain all this to me,” said Eric, his voice all but drowned out by the roar of water. “What’s that?” He pointed to a large machine that looked like a photocopier. A slab of light moved rhythmically back and forth across the glass surface.
“Optical scanner,” Chris told him. “It’s bigger than any I’ve ever seen, too. Must be really precise. Look, he’s got the scroll feeding through it. The scanner reads it—all the letters, or whatever it’s written in—and shoots it all back into the computer.”
“Where it gets translated, right? Is that the computer there, the screen he’s watching?”
“Part of it, anyway,” Chris answered, squinting. “There’s got to be more than that, though. He’s got a couple of external drives, maybe some decent hard memory inside …” He shook his head, confused. “Not enough. For what he’s doing, there’s no way it’s enough.” His face went blank for a second. “Geez,” he muttered.
“What?”
Chris nodded at the huge tower of machinery on the shore of the storm drain.
“That’s the memory.”
“That?”
“The computer feeds right into it. Look, follow the patch cables. It must have eight or ten stacks. That’s big, Eric, really big. Enough to hold, I don’t know, an entire library—more, even.” There was admiration in his voice. “It all makes perfect sense. Unlimited power supply from the electrical grid, lots of water to cool the thing. Perfect. I can’t believe he built this thing himself. He must be some kind of genius.”
The optical scanner emitted a rapid series of beeps, and the bar of light slowly faded out. Coyle lifted the shield and pulled out a long scroll of parchment. The live-forever machine.
“Is that it?” Eric asked, worried. “Is it finished?”
“The scanning is, yeah. Everything’s gone into the computer, but it can’t all be translated yet.”
Coyle quickly rolled up the scroll and slipped it back into the white canister. He looked back at the monitor, touched the keyboard and then walked away from the table, towards the hole leading to the museum cellar. He disappeared through the gap.
“We’ve got to grab the scroll,” Eric said.
“Not that simple,” Chris told him. “It’s in there now, too, remember?” He jabbed a finger in the direction of the memory tower.
“Can we shut it off?”
Chris snorted. “Even if we could, it wouldn’t help. A memory like that would still hold onto everything. It’s like a vault.” His eyes moved slowly up and down the machine. “Yeah, it must be smart as anything.”
“Well, maybe you could figure something out if you’d stop gazing at it so lovingly!”
“It’s an incredible piece of machinery, that’s all!”
“Sorry.”
“Yeah, well.” He was still looking at the machine. Its huge levers were turning again; clank, clank, clank, and then the billowing smog. “A power surge might do it,” Chris said.
“Would that erase the memory?”
“Maybe, but there’s no way we could pull it off. You’d need to send a lot of extra voltage through the power lines.” Eric followed his gaze to the machine’s base, encircled by corrugated tubing. It glistened darkly, wet with moisture, pulsing slightly from the water pressure.
“The water,” Chris said. “Cut it off.”
Eric nodded slowly. “It’ll overheat.”
“Yeah. And something that big, when it overheats, it’ll probably melt the memory boards. Don’t know how we’d do it, though.”
Eric’s eyes flicked back to the hole in the cavern wall. Coyle had reappeared, carrying several small oil paintings under one arm, and a clay statuette under the other. He set the artifacts down by the table in front of the televisions and proceeded to rip the paintings apart with his bare hands, snapping the wooden frames across his leg, clawing the canvas into rags. Then he hefted the statuette, looked at it contemptuously for a moment, and hurled it against the wall, where it exploded into dust.
Anger smouldered inside Eric. This was a hundred times worse than what he’d seen in the medieval armoury. Coyle’s twisted face, the sound of splintering wood, ripping canvas, disintegrating stone—it was completely insane.
He looked back at the machine, steaming by the storm drain, its electronic innards translating languages thousands of years old. Chris was right, they had been idiots to come down here empty-handed. What was wrong with them!
He pressed his palms against his exhausted legs and felt the bulge of Jonah’s junk in his pocket. He reached in, grabbed it. Chris craned his neck to look. Eric blew away the clots of dust and shredded paper and was surprised at how little there really was. In his cupped hands he held a small metal paperweight and a nail.
He drove the nail in with the flat of the paperweight. Three fast blows and the sharp tip pierced the rubber tubing. He yanked back the nail and a narrow jet of warm water spurted out.
“One,” he whispered to Chris.
It hadn’t been difficult to reach the memory tower. Coyle’s back was almost fully turned to them, and the cables and pipes had hidden them as they darted in, crouched low. Eric was amazed at the thing’s size—it was much taller than it had looked from the distance, maybe four metres high. Oil lines glistened like snakes across its dark surface. Cog-wheels meshed with a whisper. Eric could feel the heat from its metal innards. A black smell poisoned the air, thick as tar. His skin tingled; the hairs on his forearms stood on end.
“Electric charge,” said Chris, watching the hairs on his own arms. “This thing really puts out.”
Spray from the torrent surging through the storm drain hung in the hot air. Eric blinked to clear his eyes. He moved the nail over and hammered it in farther along the corrugated tubing. Another stream shot out, drenching his shirt. He smiled, repositioned the nail and drove it home again. The roar of water drowned out his hammer strikes.
Chris peered cautiously around the base of the machine.
“Where is he?” Eric asked.
“Still there at the monitor.”
“How many holes do we need?”
“A lot. It’ll take a while to overheat. It’s not going to happen right away.”
Eric didn’t say anything. He kept on hammering the nail through the piping. His arm fell into a robotic rhythm; his mind emptied itself. All he was aware of was the water, pooling around his knees, arching through the air. He hardly noticed that the fingers of his left hand were bleeding, battered again and again between the paperweight and head of the nail.
“Listen, listen,” Chris was saying.
“What?” Eric felt as if he’d been jolted out of a daydream.
“It’s starting.”
The machine’s buzz had changed pitch slightly, the sound of meshing gears a little more laboured now. Eric brushed a hand across his forehead, sweeping away sweat.
“It’s getting hotter, too,” he said. “Will he notice?”
“Might. Depends if he gets a warning on the monitor.” He looked around the machine again. “Hang on. I think he’s going back to the cellar.”
Eric leaned over and watched as Coyle disappeared through the hole in the cavern wall. His eyes flicked back to the long table where the white canister lay, gleaming in the wash of television light.
“How much longer before it overheats?” he asked Chris urgently. Chris shook his head. “No idea.” “I’m going to go grab the scroll.” He pressed the nail and paperweight into Chris’s hand. “Keep hammering.”
Crouched low, he scuttled out from behind the memory tower and along the storm drain. He hardly felt attached to his own body; he was just a set of eyes scanning the cavern as his legs moved him closer to the television pyramid. Still no sign of Coyle. Quick. Quick. He darted over to the long table. The noise from the televisions swirled around him like a dust tornado.
“… and would you believe the swimming
pool alone cost over three million …”
“… streets flooded …”
“… I’ll take Rock Stars for a hundred …”
“… luxury as you’ve never …”
“… disaster struck again …”
“… won a brand new …”
“… latest in high fashion …”
“… blockbuster smash …”
“… hundred victims …”
Eric grabbed the white canister.
“… I can see you …”
Eric felt his skin prickle with terror. He slowly looked up at the array of flashing screens. On the television at the top of the pyramid was Coyle’s face, eyes looking straight into his own.
“Gotcha,” Coyle said, and the screen went black.
Eric whirled, a cry bottled in his throat, his fingers tightening convulsively around the canister. Coyle had emerged from the hole in the cavern wall, a rifle readied at his shoulder. In his paralyzed panic, Eric almost laughed: everyone wanted a gun, he thought. But this one looked real.
“Drop it,” Coyle called out, striding towards him. “Hands in the air where I can see them. Freeze. Don’t try to run for it or I’ll blow your head off.” Coyle must have gotten his lines from a TV cop show, Eric thought. “You know what this is?” Coyle went on, giving the rifle a little shake. “It’s a lightning gun. Ever seen one? It shoots out a stream of negative ions, then builds up a positive charge. The spark leaps. Lightning. Hurts more than bullets.”
At least with Alexander there had been clues of his age—his speech, his musty smell, his emaciated body, his cough. With Coyle there was nothing. Except, Eric now noticed, the eyes: they were an unreal neon blue.
“Alexander sent you,” said Coyle, darting glances around the cavern. “Right?”
Eric nodded. What other reason could he give for being down here, hundreds of metres below the city?
“Where is he?”
There was alarm in Coyle’s eyes. Maybe Alexander was right, Eric thought; he hadn’t expected anyone to find his hiding place so easily.
“He’s going to unmake you.” He took the chance and blurted it out, watching Coyle’s face for a reaction. The immortal’s eyes darkened to the colour of deep sea water and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.