The Great Brain Robbery, page 22
“Perhaps not,” said Suzy. “I think it’s just moved house.”
“It transferred its brain waves out of the cloud and into the crystals,” said Rayleigh. “But why? It’s stuck in there now. It’s got nowhere left to go.”
And that was when the vault began to rise.
It started slowly, with a tremble that made Suzy think another earthquake was starting. But then the whole structure lurched upward several yards, throwing everyone off their feet.
“Run!” shouted Reggie, but before they could move, the vault began to close over them. The two halves were knitting back together as if they had never been parted.
Wilmot and Frederick were nearest the opening and managed to scramble through. Rayleigh was close behind them and, with Suzy pushing and the others pulling, he, too, squeezed through. He reached back for Suzy, but the gap narrowed and he had to snatch his hand away to avoid losing it.
“Suzy!” she heard Frederick shout. She looked up and saw Tenebrae hanging in mid-air above the dome. Then the vault closed and she, Stonker, and Reggie were plunged into red flickering darkness.
* * *
Wilmot helped the others scramble to the edge of the cavern as the vault rose up. The cave floor was moving with it, melting and running like warm butter. The forest of stalagmites bowed and shrank.
“What’s it doing?” he said.
“I don’t know,” said Rayleigh. “But I don’t like it.”
The summit of the vault was almost at the cave roof now, and Wilmot could see that it sat on top of an even larger metal dome that was pushing up through the liquefying cave floor beneath it. The walls of the cavern began to bow and sag.
“Whatever it is, it’s big!” said Frederick.
“Too big,” said Rayleigh. “It’s bringing the whole cave down.” He turned and pointed to the tunnel leading to the landing platform. “Come on!” They ran.
“But what about Suzy and Mr. Stonker?” said Wilmot.
“Whatever that thing is, it’s heading for the surface,” said Rayleigh. “We’d better get up there to meet it.” They hurried onto the platform, and he flung down Bertha’s briefcase. It sprang open, and Bertha began to emerge.
* * *
The vault trembled slightly as it met the cave roof, but to Suzy’s surprise, there was no grinding of rock or tearing of metal. Instead, there was an increasing sense of speed, as though the vault—or whatever it really was—was swimming through solid rock.
She thought back to everything Wilmot had told her about how Troll Territory had been formed, eons ago. “Your legends say that the ancient trolls used incredible machines to help build your world, don’t they?” she said.
“If you believe such things,” said Stonker.
“I do now,” she replied. “Because I think we’re standing in one.”
“What, this?” Reggie looked around the inside of the vault. “But it was just supposed to be a dome full of money.”
“Because that’s what the Brain Storm wanted you to think,” she said. “Whatever this machine is, the Brain Storm seems to be controlling it now, and it’s heading for the surface.”
“To do what, precisely?” said Stonker.
“To conquer the Union,” said Suzy. “And I think it’s going to start with Trollville.”
24
RISE OF THE TITAN
Wilmot gripped the side of Bertha’s basket as the balloon shot up out of the darkness of the Uncanny Valley and into the golden light of dawn. Beside him, Frederick cheered.
“We made it,” said Rayleigh, slowing their ascent. “But what about the vault? Does anyone see it?”
Trollville lay stretched out before them, the streets of the Overside like rows of broken teeth. The whole city was smoking and silent.
The sight of it hit Wilmot like a punch to the stomach, and for a moment, he could look at nothing else. Then Frederick pointed to something in the middle of the city.
“Look,” he said. “What’s that?”
A trail of glittering green smoke arced high into the air. It burst into thousands of dazzling emerald lights that drew together to paint a gigantic arrow in the sky, pointing down at the city. Wilmot followed it, and his eye arrived at Grinding Halt.
“Who’s launching fireworks at a time like this?” said Frederick.
“That’s not a firework,” said Wilmot. “That’s a standard-issue railway distress flare. Someone’s in trouble.” He turned to Rayleigh. “We have to go and help.”
“But we can’t!” said Rayleigh. “What about the vault?”
“A good troll never refuses a call for help.”
“I’m not a troll,” Rayleigh muttered, but he angled his thermometer toward the city. “Perhaps I can fix at least some of the trouble I’ve caused.”
“Thank you,” said Wilmot. “Spoken like a true troll.” He thought he saw the glimmer of a smile on Rayleigh’s face.
As they drew closer to Grinding Halt, Wilmot saw a lone figure standing on top of the great sphere, still holding the flare gun aloft. It was someone he recognized only too well. “Lord Meridian.”
“What?” Frederick jumped so sharply he almost fell out of the basket.
Aybek saw the balloon approaching and waved with the hand holding the flare gun. His suit was tattered, but he seemed unharmed. “Hello again, Cloudwright,” he called. “How nice to see you survived the quake. And you’ve brought some old friends of mine for a visit as well. How lovely.”
“I’m no friend of yours,” said Frederick, vaulting out of the basket as Rayleigh set Bertha down on top of the station.
“Me neither,” said Rayleigh. “I’m here to conduct a rescue, but I find myself having second thoughts.”
“I’m sorry to have put you to the trouble,” said Lord Meridian. “The signal was meant for someone else.”
“Who?” said Wilmot, climbing out of the basket.
A low growl made them all turn as Ursel emerged onto the scene, her fur streaked with grime. Crepuscula rode sidesaddle on her back, her chin up, looking for all the world like a queen on horseback. Her dress was spotless, Wilmot noted, as though dirt were something that only happened to other people.
“Ah,” said Lord Meridian. “Hello, Selena. I was hoping you’d get here in time.”
Crepuscula slid down from Ursel’s back. “We might have taken longer if you hadn’t advertised your position to the entire city,” she said. Her shadow stretched out toward him.
“A necessary step, unfortunately,” said Lord Meridian. “You see, I’m catching a lift from a friend of mine and I wanted to let him know I’m here.”
Crepuscula scoffed. “I hardly think the Cloudwright is going to save you.”
“You do say the most hurtful things,” said Lord Meridian. “But I wasn’t talking about the Cloudwright.”
“Then who?” said Crepuscula.
There was a noise like the sucking of a gigantic vacuum cleaner. It came from the south, beyond the city, and when Wilmot turned in that direction, he saw one of the nearby foothills start to melt. It collapsed in on itself in a maelstrom of liquid rock, and as they all watched, something emerged from it, surfacing like some enormous sea creature.
“Ah-ha!” said Lord Meridian. “Here he comes now.”
Rayleigh stared, agog. “Is that it?”
“Yes,” said Wilmot in an awed whisper. “Yes, I think it is.”
It was a gigantic robot, even taller than Grinding Halt, sporting four many-jointed arms that it flexed experimentally, as though stretching long-dormant muscles. Instead of hands, each arm ended in an oversized piece of digging equipment: a drill, an excavator’s scoop, a set of pincers, and what looked to Wilmot like the nozzle of a fire hose. Its head was the blank dome of the vault.
It stepped out of the collapsing hill and approached the city with a deep, rhythmic pounding of footsteps.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Wilmot watched, horrified, as the robot reached the outermost streets of Trollville and crushed a building beneath one mighty foot. I climbed on top of that thing, he thought.
“What the devil is it?” said Crepuscula.
“Ancient technology, long thought lost,” said Aybek. “A troll titan! Isn’t it magnificent?”
The titan walked on two towering legs, and its feet were a giant pair of metal boots, each taller than a house. Wilmot watched one come down on a street corner, flattening a bank.
Ursel bared her fangs and roared in anger.
“I don’t suppose for a moment that it’s friendly?” said Crepuscula.
“Only to me,” said Aybek. “But then, the driver and I are of one mind.”
He spread his arms wide to welcome the titan as it stomped through the center of the city toward them, kicking buildings over as it came.
* * *
Suzy staggered across the floor of the vault as it tipped and shook beneath her. Stonker and Reggie were both grappling with the small control panel that Wilmot must have used to open the dome.
“It worked for the Postmaster!” Stonker said, hammering his fists against the dials. “Why isn’t it working for us?”
“I don’t know!” said Reggie. “These controls are all dead.”
“It’s because the Brain Storm is in control now,” said Suzy. “We won’t be able to get out that way.”
Reggie gripped the ends of his ears in a panic. “Then what do we do?”
The vault lurched again, and Suzy went reeling across the dome. Her foot caught on something sticking out of the floor directly beneath the glowing cortex crystals, and she tripped over it.
She sat up, rubbing her shoulder, and saw what had tripped her. It looked like a metal steering wheel, and it was set into a trapdoor in the floor. “We need to get this open!” she said.
Stonker and Reggie reached her on their hands and knees and immediately set about turning the wheel. A moment later, the vibrations shaking the dome softened considerably.
“I think we’ve breached the surface,” said Suzy. “We have to hurry!”
“We’re doing our best,” Reggie replied. Sweat was standing out on his forehead.
“Call yourself a safe breaker?” said Stonker. “Come on, Reg, old boy. Show us how it’s done.”
Reggie muttered something rude under his breath and gave another heave, his face turning beetroot red with the effort. The locking wheel turned slowly and painfully. Then the hatch popped open with a whoosh of old air, to reveal a metal ladder leading down into the innards of the titan’s body.
“That’s the stuff!” Stonker clapped Reggie on the shoulder.
They descended the ladder into a low, circular room lined with old-fashioned banks of computers. A large metal chair, like a throne, stood on a low dais in the center, and a narrow letterbox window was set into the wall in front of it.
Suzy ran to the window and looked out.
“It’s Trollville!” she said. “We’re heading for Grinding Halt.” She saw the glowing green arrow hanging above the station and wondered where it had come from. She turned to call the others over and gasped in horror. Sitting in the throne-like chair was the skeleton of a troll, dressed in a strange uniform of gold chain mail and leather. It stared blindly at her with its fixed grin. It wore something like a crown on its bare scalp, she saw: a polished metal frame in which a series of neatly cut cortex crystals had been set.
“Great Scott,” said Stonker, seeing the skeleton. “The driver, do you think? The captain?” Very tentatively, he reached out and touched the skeleton’s arm. The whole figure crumbled to powder in front of them, leaving nothing but the crown resting on top of the empty clothes.
“If he was the driver, then this must be the cab,” said Suzy, looking around the rows of instrument panels. “Maybe we can use these controls to stop this thing. Quickly! Help me look.”
They spread out to examine the panels, but Suzy realized with a sinking feeling that she hadn’t a hope of understanding them. They were a complex series of screens and dials, labeled in a strange script that meant nothing to her. Worse still, she couldn’t even find any controls. Not one of the panels she examined had a single switch or button.
“They’re readouts,” she said with sudden understanding. “They’re not for controlling this thing; they’re for telling you what it’s doing. But I can’t understand a word of it.”
“I think I can follow most of it,” said Reggie. “Drilling arm, magma cannon, left leg, right leg, seven-league boots … They’re all body parts.”
Realization dawned on Suzy, and she put her head in her hands. “Why didn’t I see it sooner? Lord Meridian told me that the Brain Storm was drilling for the one thing it really lacked.”
“What?” said Stonker. “A magma cannon?”
“A body!” she said. “It was looking for a body all along. And now it’s got one that could demolish Trollville in minutes. And if it’s fitted with seven-league boots, it’ll just move on to the next city, and the next. Nowhere’s safe.”
“So those cortex crystals in the dome up there,” said Stonker. “They’re acting like the machine’s brain?”
“Exactly,” she said. “The Brain Storm is controlling the whole machine from inside them.” She looked at the crown sitting on the pile of clothes and had a flash of inspiration. “That’s why there are no controls in this room!” she said. “The driver doesn’t need buttons or levers because she sends her mind into the crystals and does it all from there.”
“You what?” said Reggie.
Suzy held up the crown. “Cloudwright Rayleigh used something like this to transfer a copy of Lord Meridian’s mind into the Brain Storm,” she said. “And the driver of this machine does the same thing. Her mind becomes the machine’s mind!” She swept the clothes and dust off the chair, making Stonker and Reggie cough. “I know how to stop the Brain Storm,” she said, and took a seat in the driver’s chair.
“How?” said Stonker.
Suzy put the crown on.
She had braced herself for a rush of sensation, but she merely blinked and found herself standing over Trollville. She was gigantic, thousands of feet tall, striding across the streets like a colossus. Even the tallest buildings barely reached her waist, and she ground smaller ones to dust beneath her feet.
No, not her feet, she realized. The machine’s feet. Because the machine was her body now, and she could sense every nut, bolt, and rivet of it as though it had always belonged to her.
But she couldn’t control it.
Fear fluttered in her chest as she tried to divert her course and found that she couldn’t. The feet smashed down on streets and buildings, no matter what she did to try to stop them.
“What’s this? An interloper?” Brain Storm Meridian’s voice echoed in her head. “Why, it’s the postie! How did you get in here?”
“The old-fashioned way,” said Suzy. At least her voice was her own.
“Come to wrench control away from me, I suppose?” said the Brain Storm. “I applaud your creative thinking, but I’m afraid you’re outmatched. Mine is the greater intellect. You cannot overcome it. Observe.”
Suzy could only watch, helpless, as the Brain Storm raised the machine’s booted foot and brought it crashing down on an ornate department store. She focused her mind, willing the foot to lift, to turn, to do anything, but the Brain Storm’s will was too strong for her. She was nothing but a passenger in his mind as he marched on through the city toward the fading green arrow above the dome of Grinding Halt. She saw Bertha hovering close by it and caught her breath.
“No!” she said. “Leave them alone!”
The Brain Storm laughed as he plowed on through the city, emerging onto the broad expanse of railway lines. Locomotives and rolling stock splintered to pieces beneath him. “And what have we here?” he said, looking down.
With a renewed chill, Suzy saw that they were approaching the abandoned Express. “Stop it!” she screamed. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know,” he replied. “But I very much want to.” He reached the Express, raised his right foot high in the air, and brought it powering down.
Suzy shut her eyes and pushed, pouring every ounce of mental strength she had into the leg.
The foot crashed down with a thud that shook the whole city.
“What?” exclaimed the Brain Storm. “What have you done?”
Suzy opened her eyes and saw that the foot had come down just a few yards to the right of the Express, which remained untouched.
“How dare you?” raged the Brain Storm. “This is my body, not yours!”
Suzy laughed with relief. “You sound very certain,” she said, “but I think you’re in two minds about it.” She focused again, straining forward and feeling the machine’s body move with her. She took a few ponderous steps beyond the Express, swaying unsteadily as the Brain Storm fought her for control.
“Stop this!” he said. “You can’t win! I’m too strong for you!”
Suzy couldn’t bring herself to reply. It took every piece of her to drag the gigantic feet forward, one after the other, away from the Express. Ahead of her, Grinding Halt and Bertha waited. She turned her attention to the east, and the edge of the city. There was nothing beyond it but the drop into the Uncanny Valley.
“No!” The Brain Storm sensed where her thoughts were turning, and she felt his sudden panic. “I will not let you destroy us!”
Step by tortuous step, Suzy turned them to face the drop. Half a dozen strides and they would be there. If the machine had had teeth, she would have ground them together with the effort. “I don’t matter as much as Trollville,” she said. She could no longer lift the heavy feet, so dragged them along the ground, plowing up the railway lines. Her head began to ache.
“I will not stand for this!” the Brain Storm roared in her mind. “Not from the likes of you! Not from anyone!”
The ache became a stabbing pain, and Suzy felt her control slipping away. She shut her eyes again and grasped for it. The pull of the Brain Storm’s will was incredible. She tried to ignore the involuntary twitching in her legs.
