The Boy at the End of the World (12 page)

CHAPTER   21

Fisher expected Greycrown to order him tossed outside the dome, naked and alone with no food or water or supplies. So he was surprised when the captain of the guard presented him with a tube of hammered metal connected to a Y-shaped shoulder brace.

“Is blaster ball launcher,” Red Top said. “See trigger there? Pull it, blaster balls fly, big boom. Here is pouch of blaster balls. Here is water bag. And here is pouch of food.”

Fisher opened the food pouch.

“Dried fish?”

The captain grunted. “Zapper is saying you like.”

“Where is Zapper?”

The captain snarled, as if the question made him angry, and he didn't answer. All he said was, “Follow. Is one more thing to give you.”

Strange prairie dog vocalizations echoed through the tunnels as the captain led Fisher to the passage back up to the shopping mall, a whining yip-yip that sounded like pain.

“What's all that noise they're making?”

“Is the Cry of Leaving,” said the captain. “Is song for the dead. Is for Nailer.”

Nailer. That was the littermate Zapper had mentioned, the one who'd died trying to escape the gadgets with her.

Fisher didn't understand the point of making noise for the dead. If he made noise for every dead human—all those destroyed in his Ark, the ones killed by the Intelligence in the Southern Ark, the Stragglers—he'd never stop yipping.

From behind Fisher came a whirring sound. Then a click. “Ah, Fisher, here you are. I see you are ready to depart.”

There stood Click. Or parts of Click. His head was patched with a plate of shiny metal. In place of his missing eye was a big, round multi-faceted lens. An entirely new chest plate was bolted onto his front.

“Click—are you …
you
?”

“The prairie dogs' weapon was designed to disable gadgets, not destroy them. That way, they are able to use their spare parts for new weapons of their own and other useful machinery. They say they have repaired the damage done to me.”

“Robot is easy to fix,” said Catches-Big-Bugs, who came down the corridor chewing a moth. “Is just wheels and rods. Is having to hammer some pieces to make fit, but now machine is stronger than before. Better. Faster. We is making him a good machine man.”

“All very nice,” said Red Top. “Now is time to go.”

“What about Protein?”

“Yes, yes, is taking human and robot to big dung-dropper. Come.”

Leaving behind the mournful Cry of Leaving, they climbed up another tunnel and emerged in the shopping mall. There, another patrol of prairie dogs kept their distance as Protein worked at reducing the size of a big mound of grasses and tree roots. He looked fine. The mammoth stopped eating and came over to Click. He offered Click a root, and Click clicked, a very comforting sound to Fisher.

“Hokay, hokay, you leave now,” said the captain impatiently. With Click and Protein, Fisher followed the armed prairie dogs out of the mall, to the edge of the dome.

Zapper was waiting there, her zap stick on her shoulder. Fisher hadn't expected to see her again.

“I thought you were in the colony, doing the Cry of Leaving thing.”

“Is already cried,” she said. “Robot human is all fixed up?”

The captain grunted a yes.

“I am in superior working order,” Click assured her.

“Is finding any … strange things … inside?”

Fisher had been wondering about that himself, but he didn't say anything.

The captain gave Fisher and Click a skeptical squint. “Mechanics say is finding sand and dirt and rocks and junk. Is something else?”

“No,” Zapper said. “Zapper is hokay with what mechanics is finding.”

Red Top opened the door in the dome and Fisher hurried ahead to be the first one out. The sun was sinking in the west, and a cold wind blew across the plain.

Click came out just behind Fisher. And following him came Zapper.

“What are you doing?” asked Fisher, confused.

“Zapper is traveling far, is seeing world that colony is hiding from. Is a world of cowering beasts, staying in the dark as rovers hunt them down, species by species. Human apes died because is refusing to change.” Her sharp gaze focused on Red Top. “How is prairie dogs any different? Is entire world locked up in Ark, and we is too scared to look? Is a big dumb. You is telling Greycrown what Zapper says.”

The captain gave Zapper a cold nod.

“Besides,” Zapper said to Fisher, “we is sharing frog. Zapper goes with you.”

Something told him to put a hand on Zapper's shoulder. “Thank you.”

Red Top bared his teeth and stepped so close to Zapper that Fisher was afraid he'd bite her. “You is trying to find Ark for human?”

“Ai,” said Zapper.

“Is mistake, sister.”

“Is my mistake to make, Red Top.”

Red Top turned now to Fisher. “Is mistake that brings death and destruction not just to humans, but to all. That is the way of human mistakes.”

By their postures, Fisher thought the prairie dogs would fight. Instead they gently rubbed their muzzles together. Then, abruptly, Zapper turned away from her captain and led the companions away from the domed city.

CHAPTER   22

Zapper led them through the night, taking them into a mazelike network of canyons, where the walls grew so high the sky appeared as nothing more than a dark seam above their heads.

“My geography program has an entry for the Grand Canyon,” Click said, his feet crunching over sand. “Is this it?”

Zapper shook her head. “Nai. Is old sewer system. Roof caved in many, many years ago. Earth fills it, water washes away, again and again and again. Is tricky land.”

“You are navigating it with great confidence,” said Click. “You have been here before?”

“Nai,” said Zapper. “But elder dogs is coming here in earlier days.” From her belt pouch, Zapper took a worn square of soft brown leather. She unfolded it to reveal a map. Little black paw prints marked prairie dog colonies. A convoluted line was the sewer-canyon. And at the end of the canyon was drawn a prairie dog skull. Zapper touched it with one of her claws. “Is where we go now,” she said. “The Ark.”

“You're risking a lot to take us there,” Fisher said.

A confusion of things tugged his insides in different directions. He remembered when Click stepped between him and the rat, so many months ago. And when Fisher himself had run into the clearing to save Protein from the parrots. He still didn't understand what that was all about, why one person or animal or machine should risk its own life for the benefit of another. If survival was every living thing's goal, then shouldn't instinct or imprinting or programming prevent one from taking that kind of risk?

“Why are you doing this?” Fisher asked.

“Is bigger things than Zapper,” said the prairie dog.

Plodding alongside Click, Protein came to a halt. The mammoth growled and shivered. Fisher knew what that meant. He held up a hand, and his companions stood still and quiet until the now-familiar whine of a gadget engine drew their gazes skyward.

A squadron of gadgets screamed overhead.

Without a word, Zapper surged ahead in a mad scamper. Rushing to keep up, Fisher fumbled to load blaster balls in his ball launcher. He'd counted eight gadgets flying over. If they destroyed the Ark before he even got there … No, there was no point in thinking that far ahead. Just focus on hurrying and getting ready to fight.

The canyon broadened into a round boulder field a few hundred yards across, ringed by high cliff walls.

“Is here!” Zapper shouted.

The gadgets hovered before a huge steel door set into one of the walls, their under-rotors kicking up clouds of dust. Truck-sized guns mounted above the door—the Western Ark's defense system?—aimed at nothing in particular.

A long silent moment hung in the air like smoke, and then the gadgets opened fire. The staccato hammering of their guns echoed off the walls, and soon a bitter stench of gun chemicals stung Fisher's nose.

He allowed himself one tiny breath of relief. If this was the Ark, he'd gotten here before the gadgets destroyed it. But just barely.

Click touched Fisher's shoulder to get his attention. “Fisher, this is the worst possible place for you. If the gadgets and the Western Ark's defenses engage in battle, you will become vulnerable to—”

The rest of Click's warning was cut off by the shriek of the gadgets launching their missiles. The projectiles struck the door and exploded, sending dirt and rocks tumbling to the valley floor. Smoke and dust cleared to reveal the door, now scarred and dented.

A low hum from somewhere rumbled, like a great engine, and the Ark guns swiveled on their turrets. They coughed into life, and the valley floor shook with artillery fire.

“Take out those gadgets!” Fisher called. He ran for the cover of a potato-shaped boulder, Protein and Zapper and Click right behind him.

Fisher took aim at a flying striker. His blaster ball would have struck a bulls-eye, but the gadget separated into a dozen smaller gadgets. Well, okay, Fisher thought. Big things, small things, it didn't matter to him, as long as he could make them dead things.

Something whizzed by his head, nearly scraping his temple. Fisher twisted around and fired. He laughed in satisfaction when his blaster ball struck the minigadget and it exploded in a puff of shrapnel and flame.

“Is how we kill them!” shouted Zapper, batting a minigadget out of the air with her zap stick. “With gnashing teeth and anger! Ai!”

A piercing whistle tore through the air, and on instinct, Fisher flattened himself, face in the dirt. There was a chest-thumping boom, and shattered rock rained down on him.

“That wasn't gadget fire,” Fisher screamed, coughing. “That was from the Ark's guns.”

The guns thundered away, their blasts coming as close to Fisher and his companions as to the gadgets.

“It does stand to reason,” Click agreed. “The Ark defenses are treating everything before them as a threat. Including us.”

“So it thinks I'm like a Straggler?”

“Perhaps,” said Click, barely audible above the bursts and clatter of weapons fire. “Or perhaps it never expected a human to show up in the company of a custodial robot, a cloned pygmy mammoth, and a weaponized prairie dog.”

Humans sometimes built the most cleverly idiotic machines
, thought Fisher.

A whizzing sound came from his left. He turned just in time to see a dart, no bigger than a hummingbird, zeroing in on him. He fired, missed, fired again, and this time hit it.

He glanced around to see Zapper reduce a gadget to charred bits. Meanwhile, the Ark's guns pounded away.

A second wave of gadgets came over the canyon wall. There was a whole mob of them: spinning turtle machines, all-terrain gadgets on treads, machines that looked like knives on wheels. They moved like a fish school in a mass toward the Ark door. All the Ark guns turned on them, but even though they delivered heavier firepower, they were slower than the gadgets and hit few of their targets.

Fisher left the shelter of his boulder and ran after the gadgets, zigzagging his way from rock to rock and firing blaster balls. Sleeker and faster, Zapper raced ahead of him. Fisher heard Click sprinting, urging him to stay hidden, to stay safe.

“Stay with Protein,” Fisher called over his shoulder, but the robot continued after him, and Protein pounded after Click. “Stop following me!” Fisher shouted, but it was no use. Click was determined to obey his programming, and he caught up to Fisher. They hid behind a rock just barely large enough to conceal Protein.

“What is your physical state, Fisher?”

“Annoyed!”

“Ah, you are confusing the emotional with the physical. Not to say that there isn't a close connection between the state of one's physical health and—”

“I'm fine,” Fisher spat, shoving the robot down as a gadget missile streaked overhead. Protein laid his protective trunk over Click's back.

It was no use. His friends would not leave him.

“Just stay close to me, okay?”

“Well, yes,” Click said. “That was always my intention.”

Through all the explosions and fireballs and smoke clouds, Fisher caught another glimpse of the Ark door. It remained standing, but cracks were forming in the steel. It couldn't last forever. It might not last another five minutes.

A dome-shaped gunbot gadget rolled by with Zapper riding on top. Digging in with her claws to stay on, she used her one free paw to strike it with her zap stick, but the gunbot must have been well shielded, for the stick had no effect. Changing tactics, Zapper went to work with some screwdriver-like tool.

“We have to get between the gadgets and the door!” Fisher shouted after her.

“Just a few more connectors!” Zapper shouted back, and she leaped away as the gunbot rattled into disconnected pieces.

A chorus of yipping barks pierced the air, and with it came prairie dogs, rappelling down the canyon. Led by Red Top, the war party carried zap sticks and guns. They carried lances and hand-held catapults and grenade launchers. They carried knives and throwing darts and ammunition. In a furious surge, they rushed into the canyon with fierce cries. All around, prairie dogs darted out from behind rocks and smoking machine carcasses to take shots at gadgets. Missiles and bullets whizzed overhead.

Zapper let out a vicious flurry of barks that sounded like celebration. She dove deep into the fray, Fisher firing blaster balls beside her.

The prairie dogs were skilled fighters, but it soon became clear the gadgets had them outnumbered and outgunned. For every shot a prairie dog got off, the gadgets drove them back to defensive positions with strafing runs and bombardments. And when it wasn't the gadgets pushing them back, it was the Ark guns.

Through bursts of flame and smoke balls, a reddish-brown streak dodged and dove across the field, finally reaching Fisher and his friends. It was Red Top. An ugly red gash marked his shoulder, fringed by crispy black fur. His wound did nothing to lessen his ferocious glare.

“You're helping us?” Fisher asked, astonished.

“No. Is coming to take back map Zapper stole from Greycrown. Is coming to bring her back and punish her.”

Zapper clucked a bark that sounded like laughter. “If we is not killed first by rovers, Zapper is going back with you. But first?”

Red Top showed his teeth. “Ai, ai. First, we is helping you. Is plan yet?”

“Yes,” said Fisher, surprising everyone. “The plan is, you help me get inside the Ark.”

Now it was Red Top's turn to cluck a bark that couldn't be anything but laughter. “Human is crazy, sister,” he said to Zapper, not even bothering to look at Fisher. “Red Top is thinking best plan is to let rovers have human, and while they is taking him apart, we is making our retreat.”

“Hear me out,” said Fisher. “There's no way we can beat the gadgets, and no way they'll let us out of here alive. And even if they did, then it'd be the Ark guns' turn.”

As if to illustrate Fisher's point, a gadget missile struck the rock they were standing behind, sending a spray of pebbles and grit into their faces. Fisher and the two prairie dogs ignored their stinging flesh and took aim at the offending gadget. Together, they blew it out of the air.

“Like I was saying,” Fisher continued. “We can take cover inside the Ark. Maybe Click can take control of the Ark guns.”

Fisher couldn't read Red Top's expression. It was too prairie dog.

“Human is right, brother,” Zapper said, pausing to fire at a striker. “Is smart tactics.”

Fisher was only going to give Red Top three seconds to make a decision before breaking off for the door on his own.

“Prairie dogs is not retreating,” Red Top said. “And Red Top is never leading his dogs into forbidden place. Nai, we is finishing these rovers, once and for all. But getting you inside Ark so you can use big guns … Ai, is making sense.”

Red Top let out a series of yips. Other prairie dogs took it up and repeated it, and with great efficiency, a plan went into effect. Fighters converged on Fisher and his companions and formed a circle around them. As a group, they all ran for the Ark door, Click rattling and Protein trumpeting. Gadgets honed in on the group, concentrating their fire, but other prairie dogs shot at them from outside the circle. The Ark guns, taking advantage of the clustered gadgets, took out more of them.

The prairie dogs ganged up on the most lethal gadgets, blowing them up on the ground, shooting them out of the sky. Catches-Big-Bugs, armed only with a steel-tipped lance, jammed his weapon between the treads of a rolling metal monster with scorpion claws. The treads came loose and the gadget ground to a halt. The big prairie dog ripped open a panel and chewed circuitry until the gadget was dead.

The canyon was now littered with broken gadgets. Many of the remaining ones were out of ammunition, their guns uselessly clacking. There were still enough to pose a great threat, but maybe Fisher
could
save the Ark. Maybe without any prairie dogs losing their lives.

They'd almost reached the door when Fisher heard a sharp squeal just to his right.

“Zapper!”

She was down, clutching her leg with both forepaws. Blood streamed between her fingers.

Fisher rushed over to help her, but Zapper waved him away. “No, keep going,” she gasped. “Finish your mission.”

“I will,” said Fisher, hoisting her over his shoulder. “But first I'm getting you to safety.”

The Ark door was set back several feet into the cliff wall. Fisher found a nook in the rock and carefully lowered Zapper. Red Top got out a medical kit and began examining her wound.

She shivered. “Leave me here. Zapper is defending this position.”

Fisher shook his head. “No, I'll find a way inside the Ark. You'll be safer there. All of you.”

But leaning on her weapon, Zapper forced herself to her feet. Her legs shook, and her face expressed her pain. But she wouldn't relent. “We each has job to do. Fisher is protecting Ark from inside, Zapper is with her colony, protecting from outside. Now, go, before you is killed and all is for no purpose.”

“Stay with her,” Fisher said to Red Top.

The prairie dog captain nodded once, spread his legs, and with bristling fur, stood before Zapper. Fisher couldn't imagine anything getting past him.

Reluctantly, he turned his back. The door loomed before him, cratered and scorched, but still standing.

“How do we get in?”

“I do not know,” said Click. “This Ark's entrance is as different from ours as the Southern Ark's was.”

Looking closely, Fisher noticed an unmarked panel to the side of the door, shaped like a hand.

He knew what to do.

He spread his fingers and placed his palm flat against the panel. There was the barest hum as light from the panel outlined his fingers. Then, a sharp poke. Startled, Fisher pulled his hand away. Pin drops of blood beaded on each of his fingertips.

“Ah,” said Click. “I believe your DNA has just been sampled. The builders of this Ark must have designed it assuming that someday an Ark-preserved human from somewhere else would find this place. It makes sense that they would give you the ability to make contact.”