Saving the Cyber Soaps, Mike Morris [story books to read TXT] 📗

have seemed like owning a private plane to the Topsiders. Lawrence told the Captain of the Guard that we might all three be taking a trial run between offices, and that his men were to keep us covered as we rattled up and down the main corridor. Then we shut the door and took a good look at the machines. Two of the gas tanks were just over half-full, and one had a quarter-tank. I shook my head dubiously, but Lawrence told us the gas consumption of these little machines was fantastic. So we wrestled the little scooters over to the gravity well and eased them into the shaft. They floated down like butterflies. “These might come in useful,” Lawrence said, handing us three flashlight helmets from a storage bin. I began to see that, self indulgent turncoat though he might be, he was struggling to do a good job for his adopted home. “It’s going to be a piece of cake,” I whooped. “An hour from now, we’ll be in the Warren with Big Dee.” It turned out I was wildly optimistic.
I floated down first and came to rest gently in the subway tunnel. Apart from Jonesy’s tracks, barely visible in the dim green light of a single bulb, the place looked as if it had been deserted for centuries, which was probably the case. The tunnel, which used to carry thousands of people per day, split into two and wandered off into the rubble-strewn gloom. The old platform was slippery and damp, and a pair of eyes looked at me inquisitively from a cave in a pile of rocks. “Awa, Bo” a cracked voice creaked from a mouth that was not human, and looked like it belonged to no animal I’d ever seen. And then the eyes were gone, and I took a deep breath. I settled the helmet gingerly on my bandaged head and switched it on. The three scooters lay on their sides on the platform. The one nearest the cave-creatures hole glugged out a feeble drop of gasoline. The creature had obviously seen a use for the missing gas-cap.
I picked up the little scooter and shook it. There was a faint splash, about half a cupful of gas was left. When Lawrence and John landed beside me I told them what had happened. John peered thoughtfully into the gloom. “Damn,” he muttered. “I’d forgotten about all this down here, under my city.”
“I was going to reactivate the subway system,” Lawrence said a little sadly, and John glared at him.
“Sure, after you fixed up your palace on the twentieth floor.”
Down in the gloom of the dead station, my idea seemed crazy. I had pictured us zooming through wide, well-lit tunnels until we reached the Warren. I was used to underground life being warm and dry and full of good things – I hadn’t imagined these bleak, abandoned tunnels fanning out into the blackness under the earth. Jonesy’s car would have fitted nicely on the twin tracks, but from what I could see our remaining scooters would have to cruise along a narrow shadowed platform that ran along the side of the tunnel.
“One of you will have to go back,” I said. “The scooters won’t carry more than one person.” They started arguing at once. “No turning back, now,” somebody said, and we argued indecisively in the dim damp light of our helmets, like miners trapped deep underground. The shadows cast by our helmet lights caused our shadows to dance like goblins and I wondered how long the batteries would last. Glancing around, I noticed that the creature was back, watching us warily. It looked like a small dog with scales. I watched giddily as it stretched out a thin metal arm and laid the gas cap at my feet.
“Orry,” it said. “Kay?”
I looked into the bright, intelligent eyes, realizing that its scales were made of some sort of overlapping metal plates. “Alright, Kay,” I told it. On impulse I bent down and scratched the metal head. After an initial flinch, it crooned happily. “Dr Payne,” I muttered.
“You know him?” John flexed his shotgun arm. “He saved my life, in a way, and just after that I escaped.” He bent down and looked at the creature. “This must be one of his experiments.” He straightened up with a sigh. “What are we going to do?”
“If we can find something to siphon the gas,” Lawrence said, we can split it between the scooters. The three of us could still just about make it.” I looked around helplessly and John laughed.
“I got a pipe in this arm of mine. It keeps the joints oiled up, but I can do without it for a few days if I have to.” He grabbed at his arm and started to yank out a flesh-colored tube. I winced and he grinned. “Don’t hurt none,” he said. “Not any more.”
We got organized and shared out the gasoline. I shone my helmet anxiously into my tank. “There’ll be enough,” Lawrence said. We wrestled the scooters onto the narrow strip of concrete. There was room to travel single file, with the wall close by on one side, and a six-foot drop to the inky black of the tracks on the other. I thought about Jonesy, in his well-lit, warm electric car. He was probably at the Warren by now. I started up my motor and the metal dog jumped agilely into the little document carrying basket up front.
“Kay seems to like you,” John chuckled.
The tunnel rushed past as we rode the narrow walkway. My helmet light bobbed and danced, lighting up odd parts of the way ahead, and the occasional red eyes of a rat. Other, stranger eyes flashed briefly in the light, and once I could have sworn I saw a pale human face hanging in midair above the abandoned tracks. Lawrence, who had turned out unexpectedly practical, had in addition to the helmets provided a couple of luminous dial compasses. We had started off going due west, but the gentle curve of the tunnel was gradually forcing us north, and I looked anxiously for tracks from Jonesy’s electric car. There was no sign that anyone had been in the tunnel for years.
Ahead of me a station loomed, and I screeched to a stop. This station had never been completed, and the tunnel ahead was blocked. The others pulled up beside me, the little motors cut out, and we slowly dismounted in the gloom of the unfinished station. Three beams of light illuminated the blocked tunnel. There was no way to go but back. In the basket, Kay had been sniffing cautiously. Now she jumped down and loped slowly towards the blocked tunnel. “Come back, Kay,” I shouted, and she glanced back, but continued to advance. She reached the wall and disappeared through it. With startled shouts we forward. The gray looking rock was stiff cloth, attached with Velcro.
“Well, this is new,“ Lawrence murmured. “Maybe it’s Warren territory behind here.”
Behind the false wall, the unfinished tunnel stretched into the darkness. Kay was sniffing at some faint tire marks. There were no rails this side of the fake wall, and we drove our scooters on the bare rail-bed. It should have been easy after that, but a few minutes later the tunnel split. One leg, barely wide enough for an electric car, continued north. The other, wider, went west. I couldn’t see any tracks, but the tunnel to the west seemed an obvious choice, despite twittering objections from Kay. “Come on,” I said confidently. I thought we should have gas enough to reach the Warren. We started down the broad unobstructed tunnel, opening up to the scooters’ maximum speed of 40mph, with Kay yipping anxiously in the basket in front of me. I figured, fifteen, twenty minutes, we should be in the Warren.

CHAPTER 10 – The Cyborgs
The thing stepped out of the darkness, apparently impervious to danger, and I swerved round him, bounced off the side of the wall, and slid down the rocky tunnel, scraping skin from my arm. When I sat up in a cloud of dust, we were all three surrounded by things that reminded me of the bartender in Dr Payne’s den. The pale face I had seen hovering over the tracks loomed towards me, and I made out his body, narrow, roughly humanoid, in dull black plastic. His companions were not quite so photogenic. There were eight of them, trailing cables, metal limbs broken, soft jelly oozing from cracked plastic. “Good of you to drop in,” the face said softly. “Welcome to the zoo.” The thing shifted, arthritically. “Shame you won’t live long enough to take the full tour.”
My mouth was dry, and John cut in before I could find words. “Hey, brother.” He advanced on the face. “We’re not so different,” he waved his arm. “I had a run in with Dr Payne, had to be twenty years ago.”
The Face snickered. “Looks like you’re the one that got away.”
“You all got away,” John said levelly. “Maybe not as quick as me, but are you going to kill us all because we only got cut up a little.”
The Face looked at Lawrence and me. “Why are you traveling with real people?” he said. “Brother.”
John grabbed my arm and advanced on the creature. He took off my helmet. “See that,” he snapped, pointing to the bandages. “He’s one of the latest. The old doctor decided the brain was the ultimate challenge. Look at him,” he pointed dramatically at my head. “Most of the time he’s as normal as you and me, but sometimes, one of those little relays clicks shut, and blam! It’s not a pretty sight.”
A humanoid with thin metal limbs peered intently into my eyes. “I don’t think so,” he said. We appeared to be losing the battle to convince them that we were their kind of humanoid, and John went on desperately, describing the prejudice, ill-treatment and death threats from the Topsiders that had driven us down here. They muttered, skeptical, amongst themselves.
“What about this one, then,” a half-man on metal tracks said, pointing to Lawrence.
The Face shone my helmet light onto the perfect features of Lawrence Blake, ex leading man and Soap star, a man who even I had to admit was remarkably free of physical defects. Lawrence blinked and smiled sheepishly.
John tried his best. “You can’t see what the doctor did to him,” he said loudly, waving his metal arm. “But it was pretty bad.”
“Look,” I said, “you want to kill us because of what the Doctor did to you. He was an evil man, believe me, I know, but killing us won’t help. He’s dead now, and we’re all safe from him.” I had an inspiration. “We’re trying to get to the Warren. They may be able to help there.” I looked at them and barely repressed a shudder. “Maybe some of you..”
But the Face grabbed me, squeezing my shoulders with vice-like claws. “Dead,” he cried. “How. He can’t be dead, that bastard’s the Devil himself.”
I told them about the laboratory, and the crazy TV screens, and the electronic equipment, and some of them nodded, remembering their days of imprisonment and torment. Then, I told them about my futile attempt to escape, and about the bartender, who had grabbed the Good Doctors neck, and refused to let go and who had died in the act of killing Doctor Payne.
“That was Harry, Harry Kolbeck,” one of them muttered, and a couple nodded in agreement. “He was a bartender all his life. Before the star travelers came he worked a fancy bar in Manhattan. Good old Harry, you sure he did it?” They were shocked, uncertain, as if something fundamental had just disappeared from their universe.
I went