The Siren Project (52 page)

The sound of a key being inserted in the
lock was like a thunderclap through the stillness of the storeroom. She pulled
her legs in hurriedly, clawed the vent closed with her nails, then silently crawled
into the shadows of the vent and around a bend.

Two security guards, dressed in military
fatigues and carrying assault rifles, stepped into the storeroom. They held
powerful flashlights, which they used to supplement the feeble bulb in the
ceiling to pick out the pile of clothes and hair lying on the floor beside the
surgical trolley.

From her hiding place in the vent, Christa
heard one of the guards speak into his radio. “Corporal Garsoni here, we’re in
. . . Room N34, repeat North 34. Found clothes and a stretcher. Someone was
here. It's empty now.”

The radio hissed back, “Roger that, N34.”

The crack of a gunshot shattered the dark
silence of Christa’s hiding place. She flinched, thinking the shot was directed
at her, then she heard surprised swearing and a burst of automatic fire. Adrenaline
pumped her awake, spurring her to scurry silently into the black void of the shaft,
not knowing where it led, wanting only to put distance between herself and the gunshots.
Down the vent, muffled echoes of shouts and gunfire resounded hollowly, then as
suddenly as it had begun, the gunfire ended. Not taking time to look back, she
crawled forward, around bends and along shafts, not knowing or caring where
they led.

Behind her in the storeroom, the second guard
fell onto the floor. Close by, the first soldier lay slumped against the wall,
blood oozing from several bullet holes in his chest.

Mitch stepped into the room, gun leveled,
taking in the room at a glance. He saw the empty trolley and the clothes on the
floor, but no Christa.

The guard's radio hissed, “Report in once
you’ve searched all the rooms in that corridor.” A pause, then, “Corporal? Acknowledge.”

Mitch looked down at janitor 04 standing in
the corridor behind him. “Where is she?”

The small robot captured the question with
its optical sensor, reading Mitch’s lips, then EB spun the robot left to right,
signaling he didn't know.

“I thought you knew everything.” He stepped
out of the storeroom and looked uncertainly down the north facing corridor. The
robot rolled forward and extended its small claw arm to grip his trouser leg,
pulling Mitch south. “We came that way. She’s not down there.”

The robotic janitor extended its floor
polishing brush, raised it vertically and rotated it, mimicking a dish antenna.

“I know, you want to phone home. Are you
sure you don’t know where she is?”

It lowered the floor polishing brush, using
it to point south.

Reluctantly Mitch nodded. “You tell me as
soon as you see her. Deal?”

The robot released his trouser leg and rolled
down the corridor without responding.

“Guess so.” He picked up the soldier's
radio, then started after the little machine.

* * * *

Robotic janitor 04 stopped before the
intersection of two corridors, barring Mitch’s way with one of its telescoping
arms, then it extended a circular brush and began polishing the floor. The
little machine circled into the intersection, examining the way ahead with its
optic sensor, so EB could determine the next move. Seeing the corridor was
clear, the floor polishing brush ceased spinning and its telescopic arm
retracted, then it zoomed off down the passageway.

Mitch hurried after the little machine, along
a corridor marked by an absence of doors and a left wall buttressed by heavy
steel girders. When they'd covered barely a third of its length, Mitch became
aware of a low hum that reminded him of the monotonous drone of a ship’s
engines.

“Heavy machinery?” he asked, but the robot
didn't acknowledge his question. He rested his hand on the left wall and felt
warmth. “The tank’s on the other side of this wall, isn’t it?”

The robotic janitor made no response, but
continued to whir its way toward the end of the corridor. When it neared the corner,
it stopped and again extended its telescopic arm signaling Mitch to wait. He switched
off the radio and waited as the robotic janitor rolled slowly forward,
polishing the floor and turning to observe the passageway ahead. Mitch realized
the janitor was continuing to scrub the floor, and was now rolling back and
forth, systematically covering the entire corner area as if following its basic
programming, but keeping its optic sensor aimed down the corridor. It was then
he heard a distant voice and the sounds of boots on polished floors running
toward them. Mitch took several steps back from the corner and readied his gun.

The robotic janitor extended another arm which
it used to vacuum the corners, while it continued polishing. The click of the
soldier’s boots on the floor panels grew louder, then as they rounded the corner,
the robot propelled itself into the middle of the corridor and rotated. Its
vacuuming arm struck the first soldier’s shin while its claw arm shot out and
clamped on the second soldier’s ankle. Both men stumbled, the first falling on
his face, dropping his weapon when his hands came up to break his fall. The
second soldier fell only to his knees using one hand to steady himself against
the floor while his other hand kept hold of his weapon.

Mitch leapt forward and struck the kneeling
soldier on the side of the head with the butt of his gun, sending him crumpling
to the floor, unconscious. The second soldier rolled away, reaching for his
rifle. Mitch lunged over the unconscious soldier, aiming the butt of his pistol
at the second guard’s head, but the guard blocked the blow with one hand as he
brought up his rifle with the other. Janitor 04 spun on the spot, extending its
telescoping claw arm to block the rifle barrel with a clang as metal struck
metal. Mitch wrestled the soldier's blocking arm aside, then crashed his pistol
butt into the soldier’s forehead, sending him reeling back, out cold.

“Good job, Hoover.”

Mitch pocketed his pistol, deciding to
scoop up one of the M16s. He switched the radio back on, once again monitoring
the periodic transmissions of two man security teams all over the base as they
reported the progress of their searches.  So far, the two guards he'd shot
hadn't been found, but it was only a matter of time before a search party was
sent.

The robotic janitor tried retracting its
telescoping arms, but its vacuum arm was now bent from the collision with the
guard’s shin. It hung partly extended at an odd angle from the little machine,
as its tiny servo buzzed helplessly, trying to retract it, then fell silent as
the controlling program recognized a malfunction.

“Tough break. You’re the first vacuum
cleaner in history wounded in the line of duty.”

Oblivious to the remark, the robotic
janitor whirred off down the corridor to a metal security door with a
rectangular name plate reading, Switch Room. The electronic key pad’s numbers
glowed in sequence as EB released the lock, then Mitch pushed the door open to
find a room lined with metal cabinets housing banks of control switches. The
low pitched mechanical hum was much louder now, and seemed to emanate from
beyond the door on the opposite side of the room. The door’s name plate
identified it as the Filtration Room.

The robot trundled over to a gray cabinet
labeled Satellite Communications and stopped. Mitch opened the cabinet door to
find rows of switches labeled numerically from 001 to 120. Almost all the
switches were set to the ‘OFF’ position, except for those which permitted the
base commander to remain in contact with his superiors. He began flicking all
the switches to the ‘ON’ position, unable to determine which switch opened the
link between EB and the satellite dish. When he'd finished, he turned
expectantly to the robotic janitor for confirmation, but instead the small
machine turned toward the door, ready to leave.

“Guess that got it.”

Mitch let the robot out, then stopped when
he saw two soldiers running toward him. A third soldier, one of the men he'd
pistol whipped, followed slowly, holding his head. He darted back into the
Switch Room, slamming the metal door shut and leaving janitor 04 in the
corridor with the approaching soldiers. A volley of bullet’s raked the metal
door, ricocheting back into the corridor, some striking the robot. The impact
knocked it off its wheels, shorting out its electrical system, but not before
it transmitted images of the security men. EB immediately sealed Mitch into the
Switch Room for his own protection, then unlocked the Filtration Room door. Mitch
heard the inner door unlock, reading it as EB signaling it was his only escape
route.

The Filtration Room was a hot and humid
rectangular space with a towering ceiling, dominated by four large recycling
machines. They were connected to the immersion tank by the same heavy pipes
that enveloped the southern wall of the building. The machines hummed busily,
purifying, reprocessing and warming the immersion solution, before returning it
to the tank through the myriad of pipes that rose to the ceiling high above and
fanned out through the walls.

Mitch hurried past the recycling machines
to a metal ladder bolted to the southern wall. He slung the M16 over his
shoulder, then climbed the rungs two at a time all the way to the ceiling where
a metal pressure hatch barred his way. He tested the hatch’s central locking
wheel, finding it spun open easily due to frequent use. He pushed the heavy
hatch up until it rocked back past the vertical and stood propped up by a
hydraulic arm. A cloud of hot air and steam wafted down onto his face as Mitch
clambered up through the hatch onto a metal landing in the south west corner of
the giant immersion tank.  He was struck by the humidity, which reminded him of
the tropics during the wet season.

Stretching off into the shadows was the
placid surface of the immersion solution, broken only by the central black towers
of the nodal superstructure. The towers were linked by narrow metal walkways
and were secured to the tank’s walls by lateral girders. Where the walkways
reached the walls, platforms similar to the one Mitch now stood on rose just
above water level, each with an access hatch mounted on it. At regular
intervals, pipes angled down from the roof providing outlets for a hundred
streams, purified by the filtration system and filling the entire tank with a
multitude of trickling sounds. Suspended from the low roof was a crane mounted
on tracks, that could position itself over any point in the tank, and was
strong enough to lift a node or a cross-beam.

Mitch stepped to the edge of the platform
and peered down into the shadowy depths, past the four layers of nodes, to the gray
metal at the bottom of the tank far below.  A few weak lights scattered through
the superstructure was all that broke the darkness below. It was enough to
reveal small torpedo like objects, equipped with tool using arms, that cruised
at varying depths through the complex steel structure below. He realized if a
node’s life support system failed, the person attached to it would be dead, so
the maintenance robots worked constantly to prevent malfunctions. Halfway down
the north wall of the tank, was the vast glass window of the control room,
fitted between the second and third layers of the node superstructure. He saw
Mouse sitting at the computer console, strangely illuminated by the flickering
light of the computer screens facing him, oblivious to his appearance in the
tank.

Mitch started across a narrow gantry,
taking barely a dozen cautious steps before he heard the metal clang of a hatch
opening, ahead and to the left. Several soldiers climbed out of the hatch, onto
the maintenance platform. They leveled their weapons on him, but held their
fire while Mitch made no attempt to unsling his M16. On another platform far
off against the eastern wall of the tank room, two more soldiers emerged from a
pressure hatch, and took up cross fire positions.

Finally, McNamara clambered out of the
nearer hatch and strolled to the edge of the platform, glancing down at the
hundreds of unconscious bio processing units below. His gaze lifted to Mitch,
then he said with a sense of self satisfaction, “So, what do you think of our
little fish tank?”

* * * *

Christa's mind was clearer now. She no
longer fought the urge to sleep, and the lack of tell tale presences nearby
told her she was safely alone. She slipped out of the white surgical gown and
pulled on the clothes her mother had left her. Fully dressed, she pushed the
bag to one side and began crawling silently along the enclosed air conditioning
duct. Several times she sensed the guards passing nearby, and occasionally she
passed outlets into deserted laboratories, but she refrained from climbing out,
preferring instead to put distance between herself and the storeroom to the
south.

Christa worked her way north, slowly
sensing the presence of others. A highly intelligent mind, a strangely
quiescent presence and several others she could not quite register. Her first
reaction was to continue on, avoiding contact, but there was something in the
quiescent presence that made her curious. She tried focusing on that dilated
mind, but it was oddly empty, yet utterly impenetrable at the same time. It was
unlike anything she'd ever encountered before. Cautiously, Christa moved closer
to the unusual presence to gain a deeper understanding of it.