Villainic was getting to his feet, looking dazed.
“Nice save,” I said to him. “It was clumsy, and you should probably avoid announcing your attacks by screaming first, but still. Thanks.”
He smiled at me. “That is what brothers do for each other.”
“I hate to say it,” Tamret said, “but I think you two are stuck with each other.”
I looked at her. She was smiling shyly at me. I just didn’t care about her rules and her castes and her vows. I took her hand and felt the warmth and softness in mine. “I am having a really bad day,” I said. “And I have a feeling we’re not done yet. I need you to be with me, Tamret.”
She met my gaze. “I’m right here.”
“I have not authorized touching!” Villainic shouted from somewhere in the distance, but he was far away, like the rules and the promises and the obligation. It was all far away.
“How about we go into that fortress, get what we came for, and get out of here before Ardov wakes up again?” Steve suggested.
And because it was a great idea, we made our way toward the fortress, but not before taking some wrist restraints off the fallen peace officers and using them on Ardov. They were made of denser metal than anything we had on Earth, and I hoped they would hold him for at least a little while, because, really, I didn’t want to have to deal with him again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
* * *
The walk through the field of deactivated misshapen robots was a little bit creepy. Given everything that had already happened, no one would have been terribly surprised if they had suddenly activated and started shooting us or chasing us with knives and forks or exploding. It had been one of those days.
We reached the fortress, which was shiny and strangely luminescent, almost shimmering, as though made out of mercury. There was a rectangular space in the center that, which clearly looked like a door, but we couldn’t find any means of opening it.
“What now?” I asked.
“How should I know, mate?” Steve said, folding his arms.
“I was asking Smelly,” I told him.
Steve sighed. “I think I speak for the rest of us when I say that you should probably address your invisible friend by name so we know when you’re speaking to him and not to us.”
Tell that alligator handbag that I don’t possess a gender. They are beneath me.
“Smelly says that’s a great idea,” I told Steve. “He says you’re very clever.”
“Yeah, you can tell him I said he can sod off, too.”
I can hear him!
“That’s great, Smelly,” I said. “You and Steve can bicker later. How do I open the door?”
With brainpower! I guess you’re out of luck. It’s a good thing you have me.
I didn’t hear or feel anything I could name, but I had the distinct sense of Smelly doing something, almost like a mental push. Then the door slid upward, and the Hidden Fortress opened before us.
“Speak, friend, and enter,” Charles observed.
The interior was brightly lit, and there was an almost cacophonous mix of sounds coming from inside: the hum of machines, liquids bubbling, electrical things zapping, computers beeping. It sounded like a busy, working laboratory. Could it have been active all these countless centuries without all the machinery breaking down? It was possible. Former technology was capable of amazing things. After all, Smelly had expected we would be able to find a buried Former spaceship on Earth that still functioned after millions of years of neglect.
The more reasonable possibility, though, was that someone had activated the facility more recently.
I took out my PPB pistol, and the others followed suit. We stepped cautiously into the facility.
I’m not sensing any hostile life forms, Smelly told me.
“Nothing hostile?” I asked. “Does that mean there are nonhostile beings here?”
It means you can put your pistols away. Given your jumpy state, you are likely to shoot one another.
I slipped my pistol in my jacket pocket and indicated that everyone else could do the same. “It says we’re safe.”
However, Smelly now added, there is a single life form ahead.
I felt myself tense.
Trust me. This being is harmless. You might even be happy to see it.
Maybe it was one of the beings who had come in search of the fortress before us. Maybe it was someone who needed help. I moved deeper into the lab, which was enormous, the size of a football stadium. There were machines everywhere. Some were standing dormant, but others whirred and beeped and flashed. Liquids of every imaginable color and brightness moved through complex mazes of transparent tubes. Spinners spun. Grinders ground. It seemed like a thousand operations and processes and experiments were running at once.
I started walking over to one of the consoles and pushing buttons.
“What are you doing?” Alice asked.
It was, in my view, a decent question. I had no idea what I was doing. Smelly had taken control of my body. “Stop that,” I said.
This is why we are here, it told me.
“The skill tree?” I asked.
Try to keep up, genius. You have the skill tree, remember?
“But we can’t extract it,” I said.
Sure you can. Duplication is a snap. That’s why Dr. Roop gave it to you. After your father gave it to him.
“But you said—”
I say a lot of things. What, are you going to believe all of them? But this is one of the bigger things I lied about, Smelly explained while making my fingers slide across the console controls at dizzying speeds. Sorry about that, but would you want to be stuck in an inferior creature’s head for the rest of your life? No, don’t answer that. You already are.
“Wait,” I said. “I need to know what else you lied about.”
How much time do you think we have? Smelly asked. I’ve pretty much been lying nonstop since I woke up in your head. I mean, not about the good-and-evil stuff. I’m not like a bad guy or anything. I’ve just lied about goals and purposes and stuff like that.
A metal door began to slide down now, disappearing into the floor. It revealed a chamber about ten feet tall and three feet wide. This chamber contained exactly nothing.
At last! Smelly cried out from inside my head. OMG, Zeke, I am so happy. Are you ready to weep tears of joy for your special pal?
“I’m glad you found the empty box you were looking for,” I said, “but we still need to talk.”
We’ll chat when I’m done with my mental happy dance, Smelly said.
There was a glowing within the metal chamber, the pulse of what I recognized as some kind of amassed golden energy surge that grew and contracted, like a piece of clay trying to stretch itself into a particular shape. Then a kind of liquid metal-like material began to lengthen and stretch and take form—a torso, limbs, a head. It finally settled as an impossibly thin humanoid form, almost eight feet tall, with spindly arms and legs and a distended head that curved backward at the tip. A few denser spots of energy created the illusion of eyes and a mouth.
I reeled back, as if slapped and pushed at once. Something had happened to me, but I couldn’t figure out what. All I knew was that Smelly was no longer in my head.
Meanwhile, the new shiny and silver creation stepped out of its chamber, taking a few lumbering steps like a freshly-animated Frankenstein monster. The metallic feet landed surprisingly quietly on the floor even though the legs seemed stiff and barely functional. It stopped, then turned right and left, pivoting slowly, regarding us with its impassive Iron-Man-like face. Then, as though a switch had been flipped, it began to move quickly and gracefully. It was dancing, like in one of those old black-and-white movies, but so much better. It was the most dazzling, spectacular footwork I’d ever seen. It then broke briefly into that Russian folk dance with the crossed arms and leg kicking. It ended up in a crouch, one arm raised in the air.
“In your face, biological containment!” cried t
he thing in a voice I’d never heard before but instantly knew was Smelly’s. Its mouth didn’t move when it spoke, but the voice didn’t sound mechanical. It sounded strangely normal, like an ordinary adult’s. I would have been more comfortable with a robot voice.
I stepped forward, but I didn’t want to get too close. For all I knew, if I touched this new form, I might get fried like a mosquito in a bug zapper. It sure looked dangerous.
“I need to know what’s going on here,” I said. “I’m starting to get a pretty clear sense that the only reason we’re here is so that you could do what you just did. Am I on the right track?”
“Spot on, you pathetic lump of degrading tissue,” Smelly said. “Though, look on the bright side. I’ve led you to a treasure trove of Former technology. There are a lot of pretty great toys to play with.”
Tamret was already on another console. “There are ships here,” she said, “and a functioning launchpad. There are weapons and medical instruments and I don’t even know what else. There’s a ton of bio-upgrade software, but I can’t make any sense of most of it.”
“Is there a self-destruct protocol?” Charles asked.
Tamret’s fingers danced over the console. “Yeah. It won’t give us a cool fiery explosion, but there’s a way of neutralizing everything here. But I don’t see the point in destroying what we’ve just discovered.”
“I think we must consider it,” Charles said. “Junup is dangerous. Colonel Rage told us that Junup was considering handing Earth to the Phands, which means he’s willing to deal with them. And then there’s Colonel Rage himself. He is not going to be asleep forever. We attracted a lot of attention when we came to the Forbidden Zone, and I suspect the worst beings in the Confederation will want to know exactly what we’ve found here.”
“He’s right,” Mi Sun said. “Our escape was on the news outputs, and you’d better believe the Phands have been monitoring what you’re up to, Zeke. It’s better this stuff should be lost than fall into the wrong hands.”
“I judge that creature to be correct,” Robot Smelly said. “Don’t be dissuaded by its body odor.”
Mi Sun sniffed under her armpit. “I haven’t showered in days, so ease up.”
“Oh, all of you always stink; don’t worry about that. Hey! I’m sensing a being approaching from elsewhere in the fortress. So listen, Zeke. It’s time to come clean about something else. I feel kind of bad about this one. You kept me alive and brought me to my proper containment vessel against all odds, which makes you okeydokey in my book. Since I’ve said something nice about you, you can return the favor and try not to be too angry with me.”
“About what?” I asked through clenched teeth.
From across the lab, a door hissed open and a being entered. He froze at once upon seeing us. He was hundreds of feet away, but I saw him stoop slightly and lean forward, extending his neck as he tried to make out who we were.
And then he ran toward us, a huge grin on his protruding, snouty face. He wore a dark, boxy Confederation suit with a handkerchief neatly folded into one pocket.
It was Dr. Roop, and he was most definitely alive.
• • •
He lunged forward and hugged me. He then reached out to lightly touch Steve, Tamret, Charles, and Mi Sun. It was clearly some kind of greeting for his kind. “I am so glad to see all of you, though, if I’m to be honest, you are the last beings I expected to find here. Who are these other beings?” he asked, gesturing toward Alice and Villainic. “And why is there a Former consciousness vessel standing there?”
“How are you even alive?” I asked.
“I eat a very healthful diet and exercise regularly. Why should I not be alive?”
“But I saw you fall from that roof!” I exclaimed.
Smelly made a curiously realistic coughing sound and scratched its metal head bashfully. “Just because you saw it doesn’t mean it happened,” it said, somewhat sheepishly. “I may have manipulated your sensory input to make you believe you were talking to someone who was not, in the strictest sense, there. Also, that bush creature was made up too. I pulled that weirdo right out of your memories. You were just kind of talking to yourself those times as well.”
I had this horrible vision of me standing on that roof, talking to no one. I’d watched absolutely no one plummet to his death. I’d been heartbroken and grieving for no reason, just so Smelly could manipulate me into risking my life—risking my friends’ lives—for its own selfish reasons.
“You’re getting angry,” Smelly said. “I did ask you not to get angry. Everyone heard that.”
“What else?” I demanded. “What else did I see that wasn’t there? How else did you trick me?”
“That was really the big one,” he said. “Those scaly people who fed you dinner were talking about this Roop creature, so I made it sound like they were describing a different sort of being.”
“But everyone heard them talking about aliens like Urch,” I said.
“They were talking about aliens like Dr. Roop,” Alice said, clearly fascinated.
“Then this Smelly being could change what Zeke saw and heard in real time,” Charles said.
“Yeah, I’m pretty amazing. Right? Anyhow, I had to scramble with that one because otherwise you might have suspected I’d fooled you into thinking Roop was dead.”
“What else?” I demanded.
“Hardly anything worth mentioning. One or two things. Like remember how you overheard those same reptilian things talking about how they were working for Junup? That didn’t actually happen. I just didn’t want you heading to the old spaceport. Which does exist, by the way, and you could have gone there and left for your homes without any problems. So, yeah. That was kind of uncool. Sorry, bro.”
“Are you telling me,” Steve said, “that I shot a cute girl off a sandworm because you lied to Zeke?”
“It was strapped on pretty well,” Smelly said. “I think it’s an exaggeration to say you shot it off a sandworm. I mean, it was still on the worm.”
“How long have you been here?” I asked Dr. Roop.
“About three months. I underwent extensive genetic therapy to allow me to enter the Forbidden Zone, and I came in search of the Former technology that you already possessed.”
“And why did you do that?”
“I did not trust Junup, and I couldn’t risk the technology falling into the wrong hands, not when I knew I was going to be under scrutiny. I thought it might be my last chance to get it to safety until I could be sure it would not be misused. But once I became a fugitive myself, I wanted to learn more about the skill tree. Rumors of the Hidden Fortress have circulated for centuries, but it is so difficult to get to, not to mention illegal, that, to my knowledge, no one had ever successfully found their way here. I had nothing to lose, however. Especially with you gone. You had the only other copy of the software that I knew of.”
“So you did give it to me,” I said.
Dr. Roop stared, incredulous. “Zeke, I touched your face and said ‘remember.’ It was a direct allusion to one of your father’s favorite entertainments.”
“Do you not recall Spock placing his katra within Dr. McCoy during Star Trek Two: The Wrath of Khan?” Charles inquired. “It is a famous moment.”
“They totally played on that in Into Darkness,” said Alice. “How could you miss that?”
I was in no mood to be schooled about Star Trek by these two. “Did you know you were giving me Smelly, too?”
“That I did not know,” Dr. Roop said. “Its consciousness must have been interlinked with the software somehow.”
“I guess that answers some questions,” I said, “but we can talk about all that later. We’ve got more important things to catch up on. If you’ve been stuck down here for three months, there’s a lot you don’t know.” I started to tell him what had happened with Director Ghli Wixxix and how we came to be on Confederation Central.
“I knew much of that. I am able to monitor news outputs from here, an
d I have gotten quite good at finding illegal ways to access to restricted government communications as well.” He turned to Tamret. “You would be quite proud of me.”
“So, you know about the Kind Disposition?” I asked. “And Urch and Nayana?”
“Yes, most distressing,” Dr. Roop said, almost casually. “Urch can take care of himself, but Nayana isn’t made for that sort of thing.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “They’re dead. They died in that explosion.”
“Of course!” Dr. Roop smacked himself in the head. “I’ve known almost from the beginning, but I forgot that the information isn’t public. They made it to the life pods, Zeke, and were picked up by a Phandic cruiser. According to the Phandic media outputs, the director, Captain Hyi, Urch, and, an insignificant alien, were taken prisoner. That alien is, of course, Nayana.”
I couldn’t believe this. Watching Urch and Nayana die in that explosion had been one of the worst moments of my life. Could they really have survived?
“You are saying that they are actually alive? Right now?”
“Oh, yes. The Phands sent their ransom demands to Junup, but Junup doesn’t want them back, because they can testify as to what really happened on that ship.”
“We’ve got to go get them!” I said.
Steve took out his pistol as if ready to raid a Phandic compound right now. “I’m with you on that, mate.”
“Here we go,” Mi Sun said with evident exasperation. “That’s a great idea, Zeke. Let’s go get them from inside an empire. We don’t have empire infiltration on our résumés yet. Only an idiot wouldn’t rush right after them. So what if we don’t actually know where in an entire galactic empire, made up of who knows how many planets and moons and space stations, they might happen to be locked up.”
“We’ll figure it out as we go along,” I said.
“Zeke’s right,” Tamret said. “We have to rescue them. If we can bring them back to the Confederation then Junup will be finished. He can dismiss Zeke’s claims pretty easily, but when Ghli Wixxix and a Confederation starship captain start telling the same story, then it will all be over.”