City Of The Living Dead

Chapter 16

Blade waited until Sela was so deeply asleep in the great bed that an earthquake couldn't have awakened her. Then he slipped out of the bed, went out into the corridor, and ran to the room where he'd left his equipment.

He quickly pulled it on. There was a complete combat outfit, from helmet to boots, including a shock rifle, grenade thrower, sack of extra grenades and power cells, and a Watcher control. It was just possible that by morning every man and woman in the city of Mak'loh would be ready to kill him on sight and there would be nothing he could do to change their minds. In that case, staying around would be a singularly pointless form of suicide and a quick retreat over the Wall into the Warlands the only sensible thing to do.

Neither androids nor human beings paid any attention to Blade as he walked down the corridor and rode up the shaft to the roof of the building. Some of the people in the Houses of Peace were vaguely aware that there was a stranger in Mak'loh, a man said to be from another of the Cities of Peace where life was very different from what it was here. More Physical, or so the rumors ran. However, no one had been sufficiently curious about this Physical stranger to speak to him.

That would certainly change tonight. By dawn everyone in Mak'loh would have heard of Richard Blade of England, no matter what they thought of him.

He stepped out on the roof, walked to his flyer, and checked it carefully. He'd loaded it with extra food and water, extra power cells for the fan motors, a tent sewn together out of old robes and blankets, and a sleeping bag. He might be able to fly out of Mak'loh tonight, if he did have to leave. In that case, why not fly out ready to live as comfortably as possible until he returned to Home Dimension? Blade was not a man to run around naked and live on raw meat merely for his own amusement.

He lifted the flyer into the night sky and climbed until it would be impossible to see him and hard to hear him from the ground. Then he set a course for the field-generator building and flew slowly and levelly.

He would have to succeed the first time, or not at all. Even if he personally survived a failure tonight, he would have lost the necessary advantage of surprise. All the vital installations would be heavily defended and the Authority on the alert. The soldier androids might not be very good, but there were far too many of them for one man to face if they had orders to deal with him.

Over the industrial area of the city, Blade dropped to rooftop height and slowed down until he was practically drifting along. At last he saw the six-hundred-foot tower that held the generators for the force fields looming out of the darkness ahead. He climbed slightly, skimmed in over the edge of the roof, and landed. Instantly he was out of the flyer and flattening himself on the rough pebbled surface of the roof. He lay searching the darkness until he was certain that the roof was empty.

Blade had landed on the roof because he expected it to be unguarded, not because it was closest to the control room. That lay five hundred feet down a spiraling ramp. From the control room, another ramp led to the ground level. A dozen androids guarded that ramp. It was assumed that no one could possibly come down from above except other members of the Authority, and they could not possibly be dangerous to anything or anyone in Mak'loh.

Blade fixed his bayonet, raised his rifle, and began to descend the ramp. The rifle was set to stun, and he carried two fused gas grenades in his belt. Over his nose and mouth he wore one of the Authority's gas masks, a transparent sheet of plastic-like filtering material no heavier than a pocket handkerchief. Yet it would protect him completely from a gas that could kill an unprotected human being in thirty seconds.

The ramp was well-lit, and Blade could have gone much faster than he did. Instead, he waited at each turn, listening for the slightest noise from ahead. He heard only the distant pulsing of the field generators that came steadily through the solid walls. He saw only the ramp and walls, bare except for small doors that led into the generator compartments. He was able to measure his downward progress by reading off the markings on the doors.

A hundred feet down from the roof. Two hundred. Three hundred. It began to seem impossible that there could be anyone waiting for him, when all the lights went out. He hit the floor before the after-images faded from his eyes. As he stretched out, he heard feet climbing out of the darkness toward him. Blade unhooked one of the gas grenades from his belt and, without pulling the pin, sent it rolling down the ramp toward the oncoming footsteps.

It clattered away into the darkness. The footsteps halted. Then the white flare of rifle fire lit up the ramp. He'd drawn the fire to the approaching people, as he'd hoped to.

Aiming by sound in the darkness, the unknown rifleman made a good shot-good enough to burst the grenade. It went off with a sharp crack, followed by the spannnng of flying fragments and the wsssssh of escaping gas. A woman screamed.

Blade leaped to his feet and followed up the grenade. He rounded the bend as the lights came back on again. The ramp ahead was hazy with the yellow-green gas. Beyond the cloud of gas were two people in Authority coveralls. On the right a woman sat leaning against the wall, clawing at her throat. Her head was thrown back, and her eyes rolled frantically upward. A fragment of the grenade had torn open her cheek and her gas. mask, letting a lethal dose of the gas into her lungs.

On the left lay a man, staring as Blade came around the bend. With skill and precision, he snapped up his rifle and fired. Blade was already diving for the floor, squeezing the trigger of his own rifle, as the beam cracked past his head. Blade's own shot took the man in the leg.

Before the man could fire again, Blade rolled over and came up on his knees. They were too close now to fire. The man brought his rifle up to guard against a blow at his chest or throat. Blade went in over the man's guard with his bayonet, thrusting at his face and ripping open his mask. The man screamed. Blade reversed his rifle and cracked the man across the jaw with the butt, stunning him. He slumped back against the wall, dying more quietly than the woman as the gas ate into his lungs.

Blade sprang to his feet and plunged down the ramp at a dead run. It didn't matter whether or not there were anyone else waiting in ambush. He couldn't afford to waste a second. The noise of the fight must have alerted the people in the control room. He might have to kill them, and that would absolutely be the end of his chances for staying in Mak'loh after tonight. Damn it, he hadn't wanted anybody killed at all! There wouldn't have been, either, if these two clowns hadn't ambushed him-and where the devil had they come from anyway?

By the time Blade finished asking himself these questions, he was almost down to the level of the control room. He covered the last few yards of the ramp flattened against the wall. The control team was seated at the board, each man with a rifle across his knees. Only one had his eyes on the board. The other two were looking at the entrances to the upward and downward ramps. Blade raised his rifle and aimed it at the three. The movement caught one man's eye. He shouted and started to jump up.

At that moment, running feet sounded on the ramp from the ground floor. Two more armed men in Authority coveralls burst into view, and behind them six soldier androids. One of them saw Blade and shouted to the androids:

«Kill the Warlander!»

The time it took the man to shout was enough for Blade to act. He stunned the man who'd shouted, then dropped flat as the androids sent white fire crackling over his head. The walls and ceiling smoked and cracked where the beams struck. Those rifles were set to kill. Apparently those androids had been told Blade was no Master but a Warlander. That made him fair game.

Seeing androids firing on someone he knew to be a Master, one of the men at the control board sprang out of his chair, firing at the androids. He knocked out two of them and spoiled the aim of the other four. The second human attacker promptly shot the control man. The blast reduced his head to a charred ruin.

In the confusion, Blade dashed across the control room. The androids saw him but didn't fire. They couldn't risk hitting the control board or one of the Masters at it. Blade went over the top of the control board like a high jumper and dropped to his knees on the floor behind it. The two surviving control men threw themselves out of their seats, not sure what was going on but sure they didn't want to get killed in it. The surviving attacker had to climb over one of them to get around the control board at Blade. By the time he'd done this, Blade had his rifle aimed and fired with the muzzle almost against the man's chest. The man flew a foot into the air, then crashed to the floor.

The four surviving androids milled around without firing. They faced a situation not covered in their training, with no orders coming from their Masters or any others. Blade stunned one of them, and that persuaded the other three to turn and run off down the ramp toward the ground level. Blade took a high-explosive grenade, set the fuse for a delayed detonation, and fired it down the ramp after the fleeing androids. Silence followed the explosion.

Cautiously the two surviving control men rose to their feet. They looked at their dead comrade, the fallen humans and androids, and Blade standing by the board.

«What in the name of Peace is going on?» said one of them furiously. He started to sit down in his seat.

«There are going to be some changes made in this city tonight,» said Blade politely and tapped the man on the head with the butt of his rifle. Before the other control man could react, Blade fired and stretched him out on the floor along with everybody else.

On one side of the room was a large freight elevator that ran from top to bottom of the building. Blade opened the door and shoved all the bodies from both sides, human and android alike, into the elevator. Then he sent the elevator down to the ground level and locked the controls. That should keep everyone safe and out of his hair for the next few minutes. He could sort out who had been trying to do what to whom afterward.

The control room opened on one side onto a balcony that ran around a vast circular chamber, more than two hundred feet across and a hundred feet high. In the center of the chamber, a gleaming steel column fifty feet in diameter rose to vanish in the ceiling. Inside that column lay the working parts of various field generators, stacked one on another in a pile more than five hundred feet high. Around the base of the column was a glittering array of consoles, conduits, displays, switchboards, and piping. There were the essential monitors and power relays for the generators.

If they were destroyed, it would take five years to rebuild them. Until they were rebuilt, the field generators could no longer be powered or controlled safely. The three force fields would no longer protect Mak'loh. Its people would have to look to their own protection, however much this cost them in Physical activity. In five years it was possible that the city would be firmly set on a new course, freer of android servants and the pleasures of the Inward Eye.

It was no more than just possible, but it was the best chance Blade could give this city.

He went to the control board and carefully closed the master switches for all three fields. Every light on the board flashed from green to red, then died entirely. Wrecking the controls with the fields still active could do even more permanent damage, but it might also set off an explosion like an atomic bomb. Blade did not want to wake up Mak'loh by laying half of it in ruins.

Blade walked out on to the balcony, the loaded grenade thrower in his hands. He stood by the railing, sighted on the nearest console, and fired. He dropped to the floor as the grenade exploded, ripping the console to bits and spraying pieces of metal and circuitry in all directions.

Blade worked his way around the balcony as methodically as a farmer planting seed. Explosion after explosion ripped through the equipment below. The lights went out, and emergency lighting came on with dim glows like fireflies. A few more explosions, and the emergency lights also went out.

Blade pulled a flashlight out of his pack and went on shooting by its light.

Explosions blazed orange and circuits flared up blue-white in the darkness. Metal fragments rained down around Blade, skittered off the balcony, clanged and cracked into the walls. Smoke swirled around Blade like fog, carrying a stench of high explosive, burned insulation, and melted metal.

Blade ran out of targets long before he ran out of grenades. Then he climbed down a ladder from the balcony to the floor of the chamber. He'd done a very adequate job with the time and the equipment he'd had.

There was only one more thing to do. Blade flashed his light at the main control board high above. Then he aimed the thrower and fired. The first grenade blew the board off its mountings. The second blew it in half and threw two of the chairs off the balcony. Blade was reloading again when a voice called out of the darkness. He stopped, the grenade in one hand.

He wasn't surprised to hear voices. What the voice was saying did surprise him.

Sharp and demanding, the voice in the darkness called out, «Blade, stop firing! We're on your side!»