Gabriel’s Watch - Book One: The Scrapman Trilogy, page 21
The memory of finding the cat swinging from our trip-line eight years before swept through my mind, along with the eerie sensation of it being a planned or mediated meeting. It was a decidedly unpleasant revelation, one that sparked an anger in me.
“This whole time,” I started, releasing Alice and stepping toward Mohammad, “this whole time we were just some experiment for you?”
“ ‘Experiment’ is a harsher term than I would use,” Mohammad said, looking rather offended, “although we did want to keep it as controlled as possible.”
“And who’s we, Mohammad?” I approached him. “Who else has been spying on us?”
“We’re not the enemy, Miles,” he said, calm and collected, trying to ease me back. “I have always helped you, gave you everything you wanted, and all this time I have wanted nothing more than to be your friend.” He took a step closer. “I was there, you know, that day you met Saint John—the day they threw you in the freezer. I was in the diner with you.”
“A lot of good you did me, then.”
“I was instructed to wait,” Mohammad insisted. “It might not seem like it to you, but there are rules to follow here—protocol.”
“Who’s we, Mohammad?” I repeated. “Who’s making the rules?”
“You can call him Gabriel,” Mohammad said, tilting his head up toward the Vahana.
“An alien?”
“They prefer to call themselves Travelers, but yes.”
“And what does he want with us?” Alice asked, still keeping Dinah close to her chest.
“To survive,” he said.
“Survive?!” Alice came to stand beside me. “Survive?! Where was your leader ten years ago when we were slaughtered?!”
Mohammad let out a deep and saddened sigh, training his eyes back to the robot on the floor. “Again, there are rules, Alice,” he said. “The Travelers came to assist this planet, but the planet has the right to ... deny their assistance. The Travelers could not interfere with that.” Mohammad then raised his eyes to us once again. “And, as you know, their assistance was rejected—save for one.” He pointed to her. “And Gabriel is impressed with you.”
“Then he should tell me himself,” Alice insisted, “instead of sending one of his creations.”
Mohammad smiled. “You must understand that it was never planned for you to find out about our involvement here. Only in the gravest of circumstances could we let that be known.” Mohammad placed his boot on Zeke’s chest. “But, then again, we never expected you to build such a chaotic device.”
“That’s why the Vahana came here,” Alice said, piecing it together. “Somehow you knew Zeke would become dangerous.”
“We expected as much,” Mohammad concurred, “but the Vahana, as you call it, didn’t just come here. It’s been here the whole time. It’s only just shown itself to you.” Mohammad pointed to Zeke, still just an assortment of inanimate machinery on the floor. “As advanced as that thing was, it was still far from perfect. Once the chimera method had proven unstable, we knew the core personality alone could not support the collapse of that brittle pyramid system.”
Alice nodded, then looked to me, the guilt she felt creeping back into her green eyes.
I reached out to take her hand.
Mohammad then held out his, a gesture of goodwill. “And this, I’m afraid, is where I leave you two.”
I hesitated for a moment, then reached out to embrace the gesture. I could not deny him the fact that he’d saved our lives, and that alone was worthy of my respect. Whatever being had conjured Mohammad into existence must have had a purpose larger than anything I could currently comprehend, and something from which the Fijian could not be swayed, even for the sake of friendship. It would be unfair of me to hold that against him, for it had surely been carved into the marrow of his bones. It seemed the two of us had been keeping our share of secrets.
“I’m sorry if I have damaged your trust in me, Miles,” he offered. “I know, like you said, it is a lot to absorb.”
“I understand,” I said, releasing my grip.
“Good,” Mohammad smiled. “Very good.”
He then turned toward the wall, readying the device on his wrist.
“What if we need to speak with you?” Alice asked. “How can we contact you?”
Mohammad looked back, reaching out to place a hand atop Dinah’s head and tussling her fur a bit. “Just tell the cat,” he said. “We will hear you.”
He triggered the device and passed again through the wall. I watched as it swallowed him whole, and then pressed my hand to it shortly after, finding it as solid as ever.
“I wonder how many times they’ve been in here,” I said. “This whole time I thought I was keeping you safe ... and they were babysitting me.”
“Neither of us had any idea,” she said, letting Dinah jump to the floor. “I feel the same way.”
“Makes me feel kinda sick,” I admitted. “And where was he when I got my ass kicked by Crayton and his gang?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but he was the one that told you they were coming.”
“That is true, dammit.”
“And it wouldn’t have done Crayton any good to kill you, as far out as you were. He was the kind of guy that liked an audience, and this junkyard is too far from the city to make an effective demonstration of it, so they kicked your ass and moved on.”
“And somehow Mohammad knew they would do that?”
“Apparently there are rules,” she mimicked the Fijian.
“There’s always rules,” I scoffed, pointing to Zeke. “And what are we supposed to do with him?”
“I don’t know,” Alice shrugged, bending over to rap her finger against the robot’s cranium. “But he was beautiful, wasn’t he?”
“While you’re down there,” I’d started, ignoring her previous statement, “you should yank out whatever makes him tick. I don’t want him comin’ to.”
Alice nodded, opening the machine’s chest cavity and removing the drive, the housing place of the chip I’d taken from the old man at the Zolaris building, the item he’d been using as a bookmark. Alice held the drive up to examine it, as if she could locate the exact point of its circuitry that had gone terribly wrong.
“It’s gone,” she said.
“What’s gone?”
“The chip, the chip’s gone.”
“The chip’s gone?” I scooped up Dinah and lifted her, looking directly into her diamond-eyes. “Mohammad, where’s the chip, you thief?”
“Miles.”
“What?”
“Put the cat down,” she demanded. “I’m sure they’re going to destroy it. It’s probably part of their protocol.”
I dropped the feline reluctantly as Alice knelt to retrieve her busted Hellburner from beneath a cascade of books and portions of wooden shelf. She pulled it out in pieces.
“Think you can fix that?”
Alice brought the broken bits to the workbench, stepping over her fallen masterpiece, and placed the pieces of the Hellburner on the table. “That depends on what I find when I open it up.”
I nodded and turned down the hallway, rediscovering my strange, yet comfortable, attire as I rounded the corridor. I turned into the alcove of my room and found the clothes I’d been wearing earlier, folded neatly and placed at the foot of my bed. My boots were on the floor, with the socks rolled into a ball within the one on the right. I bent and scooped up the folded t-shirt, finding it cleaner than it had been in years.
They did my laundry? I thought to myself. They took the chip and then did my laundry?
I went into Alice’s room, wondering if I would find anything out of the ordinary there, anything that would reveal the presence of someone that had passed through. But nothing had changed since last I’d seen it, which was when Zeke snapped Dinah’s neck. The memory of that terrible moment sent a shiver through me. The panic I’d felt still seemed to be present in the room, painting the walls in a blood red that I could feel crawling across my skin.
I left there abruptly, trying to remind myself that all was well, although I didn’t know how I’d ever be able to relax in my own home again. For reasons ranging from homicidal robots to beings moving in and out of the cavern at their will—beings over which I had seemingly no control—it would be all I could do just to fall asleep on this night.
I knew Alice would be working on the Hellburner nonstop until she managed to make it useable again; I only hoped it wouldn’t take too long. I was pleased when she informed me of its completion. It was night by that time, and both of us were ready to retire. We said our goodnights and split in the hallway, both of us climbing into our separate beds. But Alice returned to my room later that night. I sensed her presence in the doorway and opened my eyes to see her there. She was silhouetted from the gloom cast off the display cove as she rested against the wall, her reflective eyes taking me in.
“Alice?” I said, half asleep. “What’s up?”
It was awhile before she answered me, but soon she’d said, “You almost died today.”
“Yeah.” I wiped my eyes and propped myself up on my elbows. “But I didn’t, remember?”
“You would have, if not for Mohammad.” She removed herself from the wall and stood before me. “We both would have.”
“Alice, are you okay?”
She stepped toward me, placing her hands at the bottom of her shirt, and then peeled it off. Her dark hair rose upon its removal, and soon settled back upon her shoulders and along the sides of her bare breasts. She stood there for a moment as my eyes adjusted, dropping the shirt to the floor. Then, granted with the beautiful sight of her topless body, I watched as she placed her hands on my bed and climbed over me, pressing our bodies together—her skin on my skin, and her lips on my lips.
We lost ourselves to something powerful—something we’d allowed to blossom until it was no longer bearable. We tossed and rolled, ignited in this primal and instinctive dance, reduced to vessels of breath and heat, of flesh and sweat, as what had been left of our clothes seemed to melt away. Just like the trances of her work, there were no words in this place. They did not exist. There was as little room for them as there was space between us.
And when it was over ...
When we found ourselves bound and panting in an aftermath of twisted linen ...
There were still no words.
She stayed with me for the remainder of the night—there, tangled together, until the early morning. Yet, oddly enough, I awoke to the smell of freshly brewed coffee, an aroma I’d very nearly forgotten.
I entered the workbench area to find Mohammad sitting there, a steaming cup in hand.
“Good morning,” he whispered, somehow knowing that Alice was still asleep. “I brought you a cup, too.”
I sat across from him as he passed me the joe; I thanked him as both of us began to sip from our cups.
“You’ll find that it has its perks,” he said before lifting the mug to his lips, “being in league with the Traveler.”
I found the coffee to be quite good, but even then I knew I’d had better.
“I believe it,” I said. “I always wondered how you could obtain just about anything.”
“And now the cat’s out of the bag.”
“I don’t want to talk about the cat.”
“Fair enough,” he smiled.
“So what’s with the wakeup call?”
“I thought you might have some more questions.”
“Too many to count.”
“So start with the first one that comes to mind.”
That question was easy. “Why did you take Zeke’s chip?”
“Because Gabriel wanted it.”
“Why?”
“That’s one of the reasons I’m here,” he said. “So let’s wait for Alice before I reveal that to you.”
Mohammad lifted a book from his lap and set it on the table. He opened the cover and allowed the pages to flop apart. He skimmed through them with no apparent destination in the book, like he just enjoyed the feeling of its thin paper on his fingertips.
“I’ve seen you reading this,” he said, “but you’re not really a religious man, are you?”
“Not really,” I admitted.
“Neither was I,” he said. “But now I can’t help but wonder.”
There was a pause, time enough for me to ask, “Wonder what?”
“Wonder if there is something to all of this after all. You can’t deny the similarities.”
“What similarities?”
“The ones involving the end of the world,” he said. “Eerie similarities.”
This was not our first conversation regarding religion, far from it actually, so I felt as though I’d heard this before. Still, like a proper host, I thought I’d humor him. “You’re talking about the four horsemen and the seas turning red?”
“Yes,” he said, “but one other in specific.”
“What one?”
“It says the dead will rise.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I used to think about that as a child, imagining all the dead climbing out of the earth, clawing their way to the surface. I used to imagine the dirt under their fingernails and their skin as it hung loose from their bones—their cold and sunken eyes. They would come, single file with the living, waiting for the final coming of God.”
“That sounds pretty horrific.”
“It used to be, yes, but not anymore, not to me. I now find an immense pride in that.”
I shook my head. “Pride?”
“Yes.” Mohammad smiled, leaning forward. “The dead are not made of millions of rotting souls, as I had once thought. They are the elite, and they are healthy; the dead is a gift, you see, a privilege.” He pointed again to the Bible before him. “This book says the dead will rise ... and alas ... here I am.”
Alice entered the workbench area a minute later, her eyes still half in a dream.
“Alice,” Mohammad greeted her, pouring some more coffee, “I’ve brought you a cup as well, but it’s possible you won’t like it. It’s a bit of an acquired taste, I’m afraid.”
“That’s funny,” she said, waving away his offer of coffee, “I didn’t hear a knock.”
“You’re in trouble,” I warned the Fijian.
“Just because you can walk through a wall doesn’t mean you can come into our home whenever you feel like it,” Alice exclaimed.
“That’s true,” I agreed. “We have to rig up a doorbell for you or something.”
“I do apologize,” Mohammad said, most humbly, “and I usually do practice such common courtesies, but something has come up that requires our immediate attention.” He passed her the coffee as she crossed her arms. “Hence this morning’s meeting,” he finished.
“And what urgent matter is this?” Alice wondered aloud, still harnessing a bit of her snarkyness.
“Before I get to that, there is more you need to know.”
Alice squeezed my shoulder, coming to sit beside me, as we waited for Mohammad to continue, her presence warming me better than any cup of coffee ever could.
“As you know,” Mohammad went on, “the war has altered the fate of this planet, and this will be the final generation of humans, as we know them, to occupy it—that much is unavoidable.”
Alice and I nodded.
“But there has been a favorable change of circumstances.”
“How so?”
“My species, following Alice’s, was put here for the very same reason—to bring a new form of life upon this planet. But human reproduction has grown increasingly fragile since the war. For years there have been complications, and although pregnancies have taken place during this time, no babies have been born alive.”
“Sounds like the planet is rejecting the Travelers’ assistance yet again,” I observed.
“It would seem, but Gabriel is different than the Travelers you might remember; he is more prone to ... overstepping bounds.”
“I’ve gotten that impression.”
“Pregnancies have been rare, to say the least, and we have only observed them from a distance, once we’d become aware of the growing life.”
“Someone is pregnant,” Alice followed.
Mohammad nodded. “And given the woman’s living conditions, Gabriel wishes to keep a ... closer eye on her. He wants to take a more direct approach while aiding this life.”
“Who’s the lucky girl?” I asked.
“I don’t know her name,” Mohammad revealed, somewhat embarrassed, “but she currently resides at the Land of the Damned.”
23
GYGES
Mohammad pulled Zeke’s chip from his jacket pocket, “And that is where this will come in.”
“You fixed him, didn’t you?” Alice asked, reaching her hand toward the small device.
Avoiding her silent request, Mohammad lifted himself from his chair and approached the floor-bound machine, slipping the chip into the thing’s chest-drive. He placed his gloved hand on the machine and sent a wave of electric energy into it. Zeke’s body jostled with the sudden onset of power—knees buckling, fingers curling inward—before it sat up and turned its head to look at Mohammad, who was standing much closer than I would have been. Even Alice strapped the Hellburner back to her wrist, ready to take the machine down in just a moment’s notice.
“That won’t be necessary,” Mohammad said, signaling her to lower the weapon as he turned back to the dazed machine. “You’re a changed man, aren’t you, Zeke?”
The robot looked around the cavern, then climbed to its feet. “What happened?” it asked.
“You went a little ballistic there, Scraps,” I told it.
The machine looked to me as I spoke, and then to Alice. “I don’t remember,” it said, shaking its head.
“What did you do to him?” Alice asked, coming closer to the machine.
“Gabriel corrected the faults by solidifying the system, and uploaded a stabilizer program,” Mohammad said, shrugging slightly. “But when it comes to programming, I’m not the best person to ask.”
