Shivers (36 page)

“I can’t imagine why it would.”

“I’m afraid it has already. Harry Faulkin, Lina Hobler, and John Albright are dead. Albright had been treated, of course. The other two died of ‘natural causes.’ And that man who tried to see you—Gregory Olsen—he was killed too.”

Steven was thunderstruck. Harry dead! And the others. And his father had recited their names so coldly and mechanically. And to think that Albright had been one of the master’s “drones” all along.

“No time for sorrow, Steven. Every war has casualties. And make no mistake about it. This is a war. Our entire planet is at stake.”

Steven felt his blood pressure rising. “Even if we stop this damned biocomp, what’s to prevent it from trying again?”

“I have plans. Once Joey is safe, I’ll have nothing to lose. Trust me. If I fail—”

“Then I’ll take over. I’ll still be invisible to it? If anything—happens to you?”

His father paused. “Hopefully.”

That was not encouraging.

“Who were the members of this ‘committee’ you spoke of earlier?” Steven asked him.

“Myself, Jessup. Herbert Peterson. Others you don’t know. Jessup tried to get his wife to help us, but all he did was get her
involved.
Jessup was responsible for immunizing the biocomp to earth mico-organisms. We all had our jobs. Peterson and Olsen prepared its food supply of nutrients and proteins.”

“Why didn’t Vivian take her husband’s place after he passed away?”

“Somebody else was judged more qualified. Besides, she had washed her hands of the company. It would have looked suspicious. At times the biocomp allowed us—or so we believed—to make day-to-day decisions ourselves.”

The car was slowing down. Steven looked out the window and saw row upon row of dark, neglected warehouses. They were on the edges of Tribeca. Now and then, beyond the metal fences that surrounded the warehouses, Steven could see small four-legged shapes growling and barking, scrambling up against the barriers, shouting at the car as it went by. The whole area was bleak and forbidding.

Steven had lost track of time. He had no idea how long they’d spent talking, traveling. The pitch-blackness outside wasn’t even relieved by an occasional streetlamp. There were no pedestrians. He wanted to ask exactly where they were, but his father—if it truly was his father— seemed so distant and preoccupied that he found it impossible to disturb him.

For some strange reason, Steven was no longer frightened.
Living computers, cities sacrificed, invaders from the stars; how could he take it seriously until he saw it for himself?
Perhaps he was letting his subconscious take over, reverting back to childhood, letting him become once again the small boy in his father’s loving care.
Daddy will take care of it. Daddy can take care of everything.
Or could he? He didn’t know any longer. He didn’t remember when it was that he’d first realized parents weren’t infallible; not invincible. That they were just as frightened and alone in the world as he was.

Mr. Everson pulled over to the curb and parked.

“There are several special entrances to the underground complex HGC built for the biocomp—all clearly marked—as well as several other ways to gain entry. Of course, you could enter the subway or sewer system at any point and eventually make your way to the complex, but you’d have to know which way to go. This is HGC’s New York office, by the way.”

Steven remembered that this was the building Ralph and Valerie Horton had been talking about. He was afraid to ask his father about
them.

They locked up the car and went over to the entrance to the warehouse. As they stepped into the foyer, Mr. Everson pulled out a key, which he fitted into the lock of the office door.

He went over to the cluttered desk and pulled out the side drawer. There was a piece of equipment inside, a small box like a geiger counter with a small screen filled with lines and dots. “Though the regular subway system has come to a halt due to the blackout,
our
trains are still running.” He pointed to the lines and dots. “I can tell where each of the work trains are located from this.” He studied the screen. “Good. One should be arriving at our platform downstairs in a few minutes. The HGC built a whole new line, its own stations, for its own purposes.”

He led his son down the corridor to another doorway at the far end. He opened it, motioned for Steven to follow him inside. They were in a small office. Footprints in the dust on the floor indicated that people had been here before. Mr. Everson pushed a desk to one side and pulled open a trapdoor. Steel rungs led down to another narrow hallway.

As they walked down the lower corridor to a dimly lighted platform several yards distant, Mr. Everson told his son what he would have to do. “Remember, you’re invisible.
No one
can see you. All you have to do is throw the switch. And your part is over. Leave the rest to me.”

The platform was no different from the ones in the normal subway system. A train was even now pulling in. Wordlessly, his father motioned Steven toward the back end, while he went in the opposite direction. Steven hid behind a pillar and waited for the train to come to a halt. His father had said no one would be able to see him, but until he was sure of that he intended to stay out of sight.

The train jarred to a stop. The doors slid open, and several greasy types got out. Mr. Everson had already disappeared into another passageway down the platform. A very last car of the train was an open flatcar full of garbage cans and other maintenance equipment. Making sure no one was looking in his direction, Steven scrambled over the rusting side of the car and ducked down out of sight. Still crouching, he made his way toward the next car, which was a regular one. No one was inside.

He stepped up and over the connecting brace and entered the car, relieved to find the back door open. The door to the little engineer’s room was also unlocked and ajar. He found the compartment empty and went inside, pulling the door closed behind him. Now all he could do was wait. He kept repeating his father’s further instructions over and over in his mind, wondering if this was a trap or a fantasy—but not caring. He suspected his father had “done” something to him to make him more pliable, to cut through the layers of fear, disbelief, and incredulity and help him relax and
accept.

About five minutes went by and the train finally started to move. It was not going to be a smooth ride. His father had explained that this and other special HGC trains were going to pick up drones from various points in the system to prevent them from inadvertently going up to street level at midnight. Afterwards, after the city had been murdered, the master would still need its workers. Tonight they would sleep safe and sound in the barracks. The master’s control of its slaves was spotty due to its preoccupation with more important matters.

Steven wondered how the biocomp intended to follow up this massacre. Surely the slaughter of the entire population of Manhattan would attract the attention of authorities. How would the creature hope to fight off the Army, the National Guard?

But it would and it could, he knew. Anyone who came to investigate, it would dominate.
One after another after another,
his father had said. Government officials, soldiers, reporters —all under its spell, all working with its “offspring” to prepare the world for colonization. It was staggering; in theory the biocomp could spread its consciousness across the entire planet; every single organism would have the same mentality!

Minutes later the train was still heading in a downward direction. Steven chanced to look out the window, but could see nothing but the narrow tunnel and the progression of dim, yellowed lightbulbs along the wall. He was about to sit back down on the grimy floor, when he heard a sort of
squealing.
The train had slowed to maneuver a curve, and something had jumped up over the side of the flatcar. A man. Two men. Several men . . . and women.

Steven smelled an odor of sewage and chlorine. The people—if they could still be called that—began to burrow into the uncovered cans and stuff refuse into their mouths.

Steven pulled back out of sight. These must be the hungry “renegades” his father had mentioned, unmanageable workers driven crazy by the master’s mental probing. But if they were not under its control, did that mean that they could
see
him? He lowered his head. This was no time to find out, not while they were gobbling up that garbage. Not while they were
feeding.

A few minutes later when it was silent outside he took a cautious look. The renegades were gone. All of the garbage on the back car had been consumed. The train had resumed its former speed. Clearly the renegades knew precisely at which points the trains were forced to slow down.

The men on the train hadn’t bothered to corral those starving semi-animals. They were of no use to the master anymore.

The train continued to wind its way through the catacombs of New York, traveling along special tunnels the HGC had constructed in the bedrock. Steven felt like he was trapped in somebody else’s nightmare.

He could see now that there was another track next to the one he was traveling on. Through the pillars that separated his track from the one adjacent to it, he could see that another train was approaching from the opposite direction. It looked exactly like the one he was in, the kind of train that went daily through the regular subway system. Steven looked through the dirty, spray-painted windows of the other train and saw that the cars were packed tight with writhing figures.

People! Then that must mean that they were traveling the regular byways of the system. That the power had gone back on!

No.

He realized that he had been wrong, terribly wrong. That was no normal passenger train passing by. It was packed to capacity with people, yes, but the people were screaming, crying, tearing at each other in a desperate attempt to get out. And each one of those terrified human beings was almost completely naked.

No wonder so many workers went crazy. No wonder there was such a rapid turnover. They were treated like concentration-camp prisoners. That garbage had been meant for them. They were dragged around from place to place and forced to work until they dropped or died, given only enough food to keep them breathing. But if the power grid—and the bio-comp’s complex—were already finished, what were these bedraggled drones working on?

Hundreds of men and women were crammed together in those small cars, reeking of urine and vomit, their bodies covered with blood and sweat, their faces wet with tears. Steven was utterly sickened. A full five cars were filled to the brim. So many people, stuffed into those sweltering metal containers. Some of the windows were open, and he could see arms flailing out of them, people struggling to jump out and onto the tracks. Anything to get out, get out,
get out!

Some of the people were still aware of what was happening, still aware of friends and family, of the life they had been taken from. They knew what had been done to them.

Now the two trains were directly opposite each other. Although he wanted to look away, Steven found himself unable to shut out the horrible sight before him. The screams were unbearable to listen to. Stuffed together so tightly they could barely move, the people still managed to bang against the walls of the car or at each other. They were all crazed beyond reason, tomorrow’s “renegades.” The biocomp simply
dumped
them when it was through with them.

He saw a woman, her naked body covered with dirt and a multitude of dripping scratches, banging with her fists against one of the windows. She struck at it repeatedly until it cracked. She continued to beat at the shattered glass, causing blood to gush from her wrists and run down along her arm. She was oblivious to the pain and the danger. It took Steven a moment to understand the significance of her distended, sagging belly.
She was pregnant!
Putting on a burst of speed, the train shot forward, pulling away the woman and all the others.

Steven sunk back to the floor of the tiny compartment. He wished that he had never seen it, that it had never been there. All a trick. A figment of his imagination. That’s what it must have been.
But it wasn’t.

The train was slowing down.
The first stop,
his father had said. This was it. He got up and stepped out of the compartment. Everything was up to him now.

He made his way back to the flat car and again crouched low behind some garbage cans. The track ahead was getting lighter—they were coming into a work station. The train stopped and the men he’d seen before disembarked, directing several drones who were milling about to get into one of the cars. They walked around the enclosure making sure no more slaves were in the area.

Steven waited several minutes until he was certain the men had gone back into the train, then climbed out and stepped onto the platform.

He heard footsteps.

Too late!
Two other HGC maintenance workers were coming out of a corridor to the left. He was right out in the open with nowhere to hide.

The two men walked right past him.

It was true. They couldn’t see him.
No one could see him.

Down here Steven Everson didn’t exist.

The two men boarded the train and it started to move. Steven checked his watch. A quarter to eleven. He had better hurry.

He saw part of the power grid over his head as he walked down the hallway—a large circular tube of silver blue metal. The drones had been making last-minute maintenance checks. In several strategic points under the city, according to his father, those tubes converged into huge transformers. It was to one of those transformers that he now headed.

There was no way he could have missed it. It was the size of a boiler, a cylindrical black object that hummed and hissed. Steven bent over and looked for the lever that was hidden on the far side of it.
There!

It seems incredible. All I have to do is pull this lever and I’ll save several million people!