City Of The Living Dead

Chapter 17

Blade's first thought was that either his hearing or his brain had been damaged by the grenade explosions. By sheer reflex he dropped the third grenade into the thrower. In the silence after the explosion, the click echoed all around the chamber.

The man above heard it. «Get back, you fools!» he shouted. «He may fire again!» Blade heard the sound of several sets of retreating feet. «Damn you, Blade,» came the voice again. «I told you we're friends. We're from the Authority.»

Blade took cover behind a metal cabinet standing on end. «That's not enough,» he shouted back. «I've already had to defend myself tonight against four people in Authority clothing. How do I know that I can trust you?»

«We know about the fight,» the man said. «We've got the people you put in the elevator. I swear it; you've nothing to fear from us.»

By now Blade recognized the voice. It was Geetro, a member of the Authority Council and the man in charge at the main power station. He was one of the more alert minds, even among the power-plant tenders.

Yet that didn't mean he could be trusted. Something was going on in Mak'loh that seemed to have produced open warfare among factions of the Authority. Which faction was Geetro's?

«Turn on a light,» Blade shouted. «Then leave it on and come down here. We'll talk privately.»

«You want us to give you a target?» shouted another voice from behind Geetro. «You're a damned fool if-«

«Oh, be quiet, the whole lot of you,» said a woman's voice. The voice was Sela's.

«Sela!»-Blade shouted.

«Blade! It is all right. I swear it. Geetro is the leader of-«

«Enough, Sela! We'll talk of that in private, if you don't mind. Blade, will you come up now?»

Blade still had no idea what Geetro might be planning, but if Sela were willing to trust him that would have to be enough. Blade stepped out from behind the cabinet, walked to the ladder, and climbed up to the balcony.

As he reached the top, somebody turned on a powerful light, revealing the whole chamber. He saw a cluster of armed men and women in Authority black standing in the control room. As they saw the shambles Blade had left behind him, some shouted furiously, while others turned toward Blade with dark looks on their faces.

Geetro and Sela restored order and came toward Blade. Geetro held out a hand, and Blade noticed that the hand was sweaty and trembled slightly. The man was not quite as much in charge of the situation as he pretended to be. They shook hands, and Geetro looked down at the wrecked control equipment with a sour smile. «Well, Blade, I could wish we'd been able to get by without you doing this, but-«

«Geetro, you know how little hope there was of that,» said Sela briskly. «So stop trying to prove how mild you are. We've gone too far for that to make any difference, and it certainly won't impress Blade. Not after he's done this.» Her hand made a sweeping gesture that took in the whole chamber.

«I suppose you are right,» said Geetro. «Will you come with us, Blade? We will not force you. But I think you will want to find out what is going on, and I know you will be safer with us and our androids guarding you.»

«Very well,» said Blade. «I came here in a flyer though. It's up on the roof, with my-«

«Blade,» said Geetro, an edge in his voice. «Forget your flyer. This building will be guarded from the ground and from the roof as soon as the androids of the Power Guard arrive. Besides, it is no longer a target that Paron-that the other people will be attacking. You've done your work so well that it's no longer worth anything.» A couple of the men growled in irritable agreement, then fell silent at a glare from Sela. «Blade, come.»

Blade fell in behind Geetro and headed down the ramp.

They led Blade to a truck and followed a zigzag course through back streets and alleys to the power plant. The plant was guarded by androids standing almost shoulder to shoulder. Some of them wore the badge of the Power Guard on their coveralls, and these seemed to be giving orders to the others. All the androids had the usual shock rifles and truncheons, and some of the Power Guard were carrying grenade throwers.

«That is against the old laws,» said Geetro. «But we are now in a time of new laws for Mak'loh. It is a time we hoped might come sooner or later. You have brought it many years sooner than we expected.» He said nothing more to explain those cryptic words until they were all safely inside the main control room of the power plant. Then they sat down, took off their weapons and gear, and ate a light meal. While they ate, Geetro and Sela talked. By the time they'd finished the meal, Blade had a fairly good idea of what was happening in Mak'loh.

Not everyone in the Authority accepted the decline of the city as passively as Blade had believed. Twenty years before, Geetro conceived almost the same idea as Blade. Attack something vital in Mak'loh, something so vital that its destruction would bring about a crisis in the city. Then the people would have to choose between death and setting aside the life of the Inward Eye.

«It took me nearly all those twenty years to find thirty people I could trust,» said Geetro. «I did not want to try anything with a smaller number.»

Blade tactfully refrained from asking why Geetro hadn't realized that one man in the right place at the right time could do the job. In any case, he knew the answer. A man of Mak'loh had enough trouble conceiving the idea in the first place. There was no point in blaming Geetro for not doing something he would have found almost completely impossible, for psychological reasons.

«Eventually I had my thirty. I also knew there were about fifty more among the Authority who would be on my side once I had taken the first vital step. Sela was among them.»

«I see,» said Blade. He gave Sela a hard look. «Did you know anything of what Geetro had in mind when you were showing me around?» He did not care for the possibility that she'd been systematically deceiving him.

«I did not know,» she said calmly. «I suspected that he had a plan. I suspected that, if he did have a plan, it would be something like this. He was not the only one with the wits to understand what Mak'loh needed. I will admit he was the only one with the courage necessary-until you came. Yet I did not show you around the city with the idea of helping you to do what you have done tonight. I believed what you said, about bringing in your comrades to help us. I thought that would be a much better way, and we would not have to destroy anything.» Her shoulders sagged. «Blade, did you lie to me-about being one of many explorers from England?»

«I did not lie about that,» said Blade. He realized he was going to have to make a few changes in his story now that Sela was politely calling his bluff. «I was. Three parties set out from England, with six men in each one. We traveled separately, and my party was the first to reach Mak'loh. I do not know where the other two parties are. They may be dead.»

«How is this?» said Geetro, surprised. «It has been a long time since anyone in the Warlands could harm people from the Cities of Peace.»

«Times have changed,» said Blade. «The Warlands beyond Mak'loh's Wall are ruled by a man called the Shoba. I do not know what kind of man he is, but I know what kind of army he has.» He repeated to Geetro what he'd told Sela about the Shoba's army.

«They were good enough to kill two of my comrades and wound two more so that they could not travel. I left one man with the wounded and came on myself, into the Warlands Villages where I met the girl Twana. Then we came on, over the Wall and into Mak'loh. I have no way of calling my comrades. I do not even know that the Shoba's men have not found them and killed them. Here in Mak'loh I was alone, and I knew I would be alone for a long time. I knew that I could do what was necessary alone, and that the sooner I did it the better. The rest you have seen tonight.»

«We have,» said Geetro, «and I suppose we must be grateful to you for it.»

«You certainly ought to be,» said Sela. «The job is done, without you having to gather your own courage to do it or dirty your own hands by doing it yourself.»

«You've spoken truly,» said Geetro. «The job is done, and by a man who-«He broke off suddenly, but not before his voice had taken on a tone that Blade recognized and distrusted. Quietly Blade dropped one hand to the butt of his rifle and shifted in his chair so that he could leap to his feet in a hurry.

Sela also recognized Geetro's tone and finished the sentence. «And by a man who is not of us, and can therefore be blamed-and punished-for it without danger. That is what you think. That is what I see on your face and hear in your voice.

«Think again, Geetro. You will not prove how clean your own hands are by washing them in the blood of this man. Not when he had the courage to do alone what you did not have the courage to do with thirty people behind you.»

Geetro sucked in his breath. «Is there-love-between you and Blade, Sela?» Blade hadn't expected to find plain, simple jealousy in Mak'loh, but it was all over Geetro's face. He sincerely hoped Sela would answer, «No,» and be telling the truth when she did.

«No,» said Sela, with a thin smile. «You do not need to worry about that, Geetro. But you do need to worry about what may happen if you try to kill Blade. He has proved that he can deal very well with any attack coming at him from the front. As for taking him from the rear-any blow at his back must pass through me to reach him.» She laid her rifle across her knees.

Blade had the strong feeling that the meeting was about to degenerate, if not into violence, at least into pointless squabbling. He raised his voice. «This is not telling me much of what I need to know, Geetro. Or have you decided to kill me so that I will not need to know anything more? If so, Sela is right. I will not be easy to kill.»

Geetro clutched his hair with both hands, as though he wanted to pull it out by the roots in large handsful. «No, no, no! Blade, Sela, enough! We are not going to kill you.»

«Very good,» said Blade. «So let us talk of other things. Who is Paron?»

Paron was, or at least had been, the chief of the Authority people responsible for the production, programming, and training of the robots and androids. He was also one of the very few really original and creative thinkers left in Mak'loh, although his originality and creativity had led him into strange and dangerous paths.

Paron's new programs for the worker androids had greatly increased their skills. He had even done some experiments with the training of the soldier androids, to make them more able to act without orders. Those new training methods could also make the soldiers much more dangerous to the human inhabitants of Mak'loh, or so the Authority had come to believe. They outlawed Paron's experiments and confiscated all his experimental androids. They hadn't dared to do more than that. Paron was too indispensable to the working of the robot and android factories. That was unfortunate. They had merely shamed and angered Paron, enough to give him a strong desire for revenge without depriving him of the ability to take that revenge when he chose.

Still, Paron was a man of Mak'loh. Like Geetro, he came very slowly to the idea of doing anything that would upset or force a change in the city's way of life. He acquired a faction of supporters, but neither he nor they had any clear idea of what they ought to do. He was vaguely aware that Geetro was forming a faction of his own, for some purpose or purposes, but couldn't begin to guess what those purposes might be.

At this point Blade began to wonder if either side in this fight were competent to run a dockside tavern, let alone a city or a revolution.

Enter Richard Blade. Paron realized at once that Blade was something new and unpredictable. At the very least he might be dangerous as a rallying point for Geetro's faction.

In any case he had to be guarded against. So Paron started putting some of his people secretly on watch around some of the key buildings in Mak'loh. (It was those people Blade had fought in the field-generator building.)

Geetro's people noticed what Paron was doing and became suspicious. Geetro himself began to wonder if Paron was not hatching some sort of counterplot. So he started having some of his own people on alert each night, ready to move into action on short notice. In another year he might even have worked up the courage to forestall Paron-and take over all the important buildings himself.

Blade prayed mentally for patience. These people had an awesomely advanced science and technology. When it came to politics, they were like frightened children cowering in the corner of a darkened room, afraid the bogeyman would get them.

Before anybody could get up the courage to do anything more, Richard Blade walked into the control room for the field generators and blew everything to bits. He smashed not only irreplaceable hardware but many years of planning by both factions. In plain language, he'd started a full-scale civil war in Mak'loh.

It was going to be a remarkably peculiar civil war, thought Blade. There might be no more than two or three hundred people fighting out of more than a hundred thousand in the city. Some of the people from the Houses of Peace might join in, but not many and not soon. Even when they did, how many of them would be of any use?

However, the situation could have been a great deal worse. He himself was still alive and no longer alone. Even the support of fifty or so well-intentioned amateur revolutionaries was better than nothing. If they would take his advice, he might be able to help them become a fairly potent force.

Except for the robot and android factories, all the important installations in Mak'loh were now held by Geetro's people or by androids who would take orders from no one but Geetro. The androids would stun any other Masters and kill their soldiers outright.

In fact, Geetro had a considerable edge in android fighting strength. By a strange irony, most of Paron's experimental androids had been assigned to the Power Guard after being confiscated. So Geetro had most of Paron's own android brain children as part of his fighting force. These androids were capable of using grenade throwers-at least on other androids. They could also act as sergeants and even officers to other androids.

Paron, on the other hand, had nothing except conventional androids on his side. «That's not entirely accidental,» said Geetro. «We were watching him rather closely for any signs of more experiments in android training. If he'd done anything unusual, we might have moved against him at once.»

«That would have been wise,» said Blade. «Also, what happens now, when Paron still controls the robot and android factories? You can no longer keep watch on him. What happens if he starts producing androids capable of killing Masters?»

That remark produced a dead silence. Geetro swallowed. «He would not take the risk. The people of Mak'loh would turn against him in a moment if he did.»

«The people of Mak'loh aren't going to be turning anywhere except over in bed for several weeks,» said Blade sharply. «Plenty of time for a desperate man to do a great deal of damage.»

«He could not possibly become that-«

«He certainly could become that desperate,» said Blade. «He has only two choices now-win or die.» He paused, then added in a level voice, «So do we.»

The others looked blankly at him for a moment, then slowly nodded. Geetro was the first to speak.

«Very well, Blade. You of England seem to know more of this sort of thing than we of Mak'loh. You promised us your help to save our city. Tell us what to do, and we shall listen.»