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

on to describe how I had buried the bartender and left the doctors body in the street for the dogs to dispose of, and they nodded in approval. It was as if their hatred had fed on the invincible Doctor Payne, and they were disoriented now that the center of their universe had vanished. At a sign from the Face, they tied our hands and dragged us to a battered old bus. The bus was a poor cousin of the wreck that had transported John and myself Topside. It coughed and hacked and ground its gears, gasping and creaking through ancient sewers, scraping through narrow cellars, all the time shuddering like an animal in its death-throes. Faithful Kay, loping behind, had no problem keeping up as they carried us on our tortuous journey to their camp.
The camp was like an underground factory, lit with oil-soaked rags stuffed in big pots. I suspected that it was the deepest basement of one of the ruined towers above us, and that we were back where we started, under the center of the city. All in all, there were about fifteen of them, a couple only a little more doctored up than John. The news of the Doctors death had a strange effect on them. It was as if they had arrived at the gates of Paradise after a long, hard struggle, and were just realizing that there was nothing left to struggle, or live for. A couple of them muttered unconvincingly that they didn’t believe it.
An oddly graceful android squatted beside us. It had not been one of our ambushers. “Try not to worry too much,” it said in a soft contralto, and I realized with a start that this was a woman. She smiled. “My name’s Olive. This news about the Doctor has taken the wind out of their sails. They don’t know what to do.” She untied our hands, waving away the tractor-man, who had been casually guarding us. “They’re not a bad bunch,” she looked around at the strange collection of half-humans who were talking animatedly amongst themselves. “You know, Dr Payne experimented on at least fifty people.” She stroked Kay, metal on metal. “A few animals, too.”
“This one can talk,” I told her, and she nodded seriously.
“The bastard kept telling me that all his experiments were for the good of humanity,” she said. “I fantasized for years about doing to him some of the things he did to us.” She looked at John. “You were lucky. You got away before he did too much harm.”
John nodded and I said, “It’s possible that we can get help at the Warren. There’s been a lot of research done on tissue regeneration and organ cloning.”
“We could have all used something like that,” she told me, the Topsiders, too.”
I sighed. “We have a lot to answer for, don’t we?” I looked at the half-humans, arguing in the flickering light of the torches. “We didn’t know, we didn’t think.” John grunted, and, on impulse, I started to tell her about Dee, and her ideas of dragging us all topside, sharing some of our hoarded goodies.
“Can she do it?” Olive asked.
“I’m beginning to think we need you more than you need us,” I answered obliquely.
She looked at me. “Are you lumping us monsters in with the normal people up there?” She nodded toward the city above.
“Things are changing,” John told her.
She looked at me again. “Will this Dee be able to convince all the Moles?”
“No,” I told her, “only the ones with something left to offer.”
“What sort of people will they be?”
“The ones with talent,” I said. “Some, like Dee, who should have gone to the stars. We have doctors and scientists and researchers down there who have done some marvelous things. Some who aren’t afraid to hope and think. They’ll come up to breath fresh air again, if the Topsiders will allow it.”
“Won’t the others stop them?” Olive asked.
“No,” I surprised myself by saying. “I don’t think they will.” Not so long as we leave the money and the power down there. They won’t realize that the talent they let go is far more valuable than anything they have. And if we can make it in Chicago, it’ll happen with all the Warrens”
Olive stretched out her silver arms and looked at herself. “You really think somebody down there can turn us back into real, live humans?”
John ran his hand gently down her arm. “It’s just the skin, isn’t it? Inside he didn’t touch you.”
“Some chemicals,” she said, quietly. “He messed around with my blood. But basically, I’m just a woman in a silver suit that I can never take off.” She stood up. “I’m going to get Stretch. Tell him what you just told me.”
The face came over to us, his almost invisible body shaking gently. “Can you fix me?” he asked skeptically, “or the tractor over there?”
“Maybe not,” I told him. “It might take decades for someone like you.”
“I won’t wait for decades,” Stretch told me. “I’d sooner die.”
“How long,” I said. “How long have you been like this?”
He laughed shortly. “I was one of the first. Just after the Star people came and went.”
“Now you want to die.” I looked at him coldly. “Why?”
He seemed surprised. “Well,”…
“Dr Payne is dead,” I told him. “There’s nothing left.” He looked at me expressionlessly. “How long have you plotted to kill the Doctor? A century? Two? Three?”
“It kept us alive,” he told me. “We had meetings,” he said. “Made plans. Even tried to carry them out sometimes. I lost a couple of good men. We used to spend hours telling each other what we’d do when we captured him. Right up until you told us he was dead.”
“It was your idea?”
“Yeah. Kept us alive,” he repeated. “I made them believe we could do it. When they started to doubt, I’d cook up some new, crazy scheme, and we’d be off, making plans like kids. Sure.” He looked at me. “I know what you want. But it won’t work.”
“Why?” I asked him.
“Because I don’t believe you can change us back. Not in a million years.”
“Did you believe anyone could ever kill the great Dr Payne?”
The pale face on the ridiculous body looked down at me. “No,” he said, wonderingly. “I never really believed he would ever die.”
“You’re the leader,” I told him. “What if you take us to the Warren? We may get Dee and some doctors and scientists out. We Moles may start to cooperate with the Topsiders. We may not forget you. We may even figure we owe you.”
He grinned faintly. “It may even take years for us to lose faith in your promises. Then we can plot against you for a couple of centuries: I’ll talk to them,” he said, unconvincingly.
“Stretch,” I called, and he turned back.
“I know Big Dee,” I told him. “She won’t forget. You’d be surprised what our doctors can do, especially for someone like Olive.”
The silver woman put her hand on his narrow back. “I like you just the way you are,” she said.
____________________________________________________________________ Olive stared thoughtfully into the shadows beyond the fire, where the Cyborgs gestured jerkily in the flickering light. Her silver skin flickered dimly in the dancing flames, the classic bone structure underneath conquering the alien metal skin. She must have been beautiful before Dr Payne got his hands on her, and she was beautiful still, sitting on a stack of rusty fuse boxes, staring thoughtfully at the monstrous shapes of her companions as they argued our fate in the flickering light of the oil fires. On impulse, I walked over and sat next to her. I saw Stretch glance angrily in our direction. “How can you stay with them?” I asked. “How can you stay with these monsters.”
She looked at me calmly. “they’re people, and I’m one of them,” she answered. “They’re still human. Thanks to Stretch, they’re alive, and reasonably sane. Like I said, I’m one of them. We’d all be dead if it wasn’t for Stretch.”
“They’re going to kill us,” I told her. “John, and Lawrence, and me.”
“Why not,” she murmured. “After Dr Payne turned us into monsters you normals drove us underground to starve and die.”
I wanted to tell her that it was the Topsiders that had done this, but she was right. The Cyborgs were untouchable. We Moles would have done the same. To the Cyborgs, there was no difference between Morons and Moles. We had all condemned them to a life in Hell.
_________________________________________________________
Stretch and his band of Cyborgs must have talked for a couple of hours, while I tried to contain my impatience. I watched them in the flickering light, waving tentacles and metal stumps at each other. They were apathetic at first as Stretch floated among them broodingly. As a man, he must have been a politician or an evangelist, because he played them like so many tin fish. One by one, they started to wake up. At first they were angry. Up from despair and a readiness to fade away and die, they were being dragged back into their painful lives. He let them get angry. He let them feed on each other’s anger, and when the juices were flowing he gave them hope. Olive went over to join them then, and I knew that Big Dee had some fresh allies.
For all of the bizarre situations I had experienced in all my roles as a soap star, I’d never thought to be a party guest of a bunch of drunken half-machines. Most of them still had internal organs that responded to alcohol, but Tractor, for instance, dosed himself with a lethal looking concoction that looked and smelt like a combination of industrial waste and battery acid.
“I worry about Tractor, sometimes,” Stretch confided in me over a table full of bourbon and beer. That stuff rots his fuel lines and clogs up his intake valves.” He looked around at the others. “Still, I’m glad they’re having a good time. God knows what I’m getting them into.”
The light of the flickering oil-rags glinted in the human eyes of the Cyborgs. Dr Payne had never managed to synthesize the delicate lenses through which we all see our surroundings, and even Tractor had startlingly blue eyes which he could cover with a tough Plexiglass shield.
“How can that stuff get him high?” I asked Stretch, sipping meditatively.
“Psychological. It disturbs his balance and throws off his sense of direction, and afterwards he feels like shit. So he’s convinced himself that he’s having a great time. Not a lot different from drinking this stuff.” Stretch took a huge gulp of bootleg beer.
A couple of the revelers were laying out a makeshift race track, contoured by oil-rags on sticks. A man with metal spider-legs and a wheeled giant with a barrel chest seemed to be the favorites to win the race. Over in a corner, John Doe was demonstrating his quick draw shotgun arm to a circle of admirers. He was pointing out the latest features of Dr Payne’s surgical skills, and one of his listeners started to sketch excitedly.
“What did you do, Stretch?” I asked. “Before” I stopped, embarrassed.
“Before Dr Payne?” He shifted his narrow body, and sipped bourbon. “Same sort of job as you, really. I was a traveling preacher-man. Used to fill the big tent in five minutes. Served up lies to the yokels, took a few pennies, sent ‘em home feeling a little better than before. He looked at me with his piercing eyes. “That offends you, doesn’t it? A two-bit con-artist comparing himself to a famous soap star like yourself.”
I pressed my back