To THE LAND OF THE ELECTRIC ANGEL: Hugo and Nebula Award Finalist Author (The Frontiers Saga) (32 page)

Blake closed his eyes a moment and sighed. "All or nothing, huh?" He looked at Urban, who nodded.

The old man had ceased to smile, and he leaned closer to Blake to speak. "I deplore the blood that will be shed today. I have prayed over this for days, seeking guidance. But not to fight for freedom seems also a sin. It is very perplexing. Not all of my advisers feel the same as I do and I'm afraid the days when a pope's word was law are long gone." He pursed his lips, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the slaughter in the arena. "Perhaps that is best. Not every man in my position has made the best possible decisions every time." He smiled wanly. "The doctrine of infallibility put us in a corner, I'm afraid. Ah, Pius was a Ninth, just as I am. He confirmed that albatross in 1848. Paul the Sixth started the Second Great Schism, you know, with his bull on contraceptives, back in the twentieth; and Benedict the Sixteenth made it worse in the twenty-first." Urban stared at the bloodied sand below, but did not see it. "You inherit what you inherit, and you do your best."

They sat in silence for a few moments while the survivors were taken off. The sandcombers raced around, sucking up bloodied sand and spraying out fresh.

The old man looked at the clock on the tower at the end of the stadium. "It's almost time," he said.

Blake looked back at Rio, then at the bishop's box, where he saw Voss chatting amiably with a bishop and with a man in an expensively cut suit. His fingers crept toward the laser beneath his tunic.

A port in the Arena wall opened and a single girl in a simple white dress emerged. Something about her was familiar. Her head was down as she walked out into the center, her red hair bright against the beige sand.

The crowd stirred restlessly.

"What's this?" snarled a man near Blake. "Not one of them blessed cultural readings, I hope."

The lone figure stopped in the center of the arena. She did nothing for a moment, then she raised her head.
Doreen!

Blake looked quickly back at Rio and saw that she had recognized their fellow traveler in time. Rio looked at Blake with a plea in her eyes. Blake shot a glance at the clock.
Too soon to start now. Everyone's timing would be off.

Suddenly there was screaming from high up in the stands, around the top rim of the stands. People were standing, pointing south and crying out. Many started to run down and some fell.

Blake stood, as did thousands of others. His hand was on his laser, and he looked frantically around for Constantine.

"Blessed Mother of God!" Urban said, and crossed himself.

His outlawed gesture went unseen as thousands of San Franciscans stared in horror at what appeared over the lip of the open air arena.

First it was a black, furry dome, then a thick brow ridge and beady bright eyes. Finally a black hand grasped the edge of the wall. Concrete broke as the monster heaved itself up.

"Kong!" the mob screamed.

The gorilla robot was almost eight stories high. It stood on the Arena wall on bowed legs – black, hairy, and an incredible symbol of primitive strength. It raised its long arms and beat on its chest in thunderous thumps as it screamed out a savage cry. People fainted and fell, others ran, some sat petrified.

"King Kong!"

Kong lumbered down, stepped over the wall and into the Arena floor, five meters below. Doreen stared at him and all life seemed drained from her.

The great robot ape's feet made deep depressions in the sand as he waddled toward her. He reached down and seemed about to touch her, then stopped. He bent closer, seemed to sniff at the solitary figure; then sniffed again, closer. Doreen was swaying on her feet.

Even if she knows the script,
Blake thought,
the sight must be paralyzing!

An idea came to him at that moment, and again he searched for Constantine in the excited, standing crowd. Some cheered now and the cries of fear had almost ceased, although some men and women were still sobbing from their initial shock. Individuals were starting to shout out suggestions.

"Eat her, Kong!"

"Step on her, she's a heretic. Step on her!"

"Pick her up!"

Blake looked back up the aisle and saw Constantine coming down. He stepped around two men and grabbed the leader of the witchcraft cult.

"Let's go now!" Blake said loudly, to carry above the din.

"Too early," Constantine shouted in his ear. He pointed at the clock.

Blake pulled him closer. "I know that girl out there! She came with us! I must save her!"

Constantine shook his head and tapped his wrist. "Not yet, not yet." He broke away from Blake, cut through the audience – now shrieking with excitement – and headed toward the bishop's box.

"Screw you!" Blake said and turned back to the pope. He grabbed the old man's thin arm. "We're going
now!"

In the Arena, Kong had picked up Doreen, who was futilely fighting his grasp. The great beast stood and brought her close to his face to examine.

"We're too early," Urban protested.

"That's Doreen!" Blake shouted, pointing up at the eight-story robot's prisoner.

Blake ran down the aisle, twisting and turning around excited spectators. The guard at the base was facing the Arena, and Blake gave him a savage blow on the side of the neck. He squeezed between the spear-point fence guarding the edge, then leaped into the Arena.

The five-meter drop shook him up. He jumped from his ungraceful sprawl and raced across the sand.

Bring down the iron, Sergeant White always said. But bring it down without hurting Doreen.

Blake tugged his laser from beneath his tunic as he ran. He knew his small hand weapon was not powerful enough to slice the legs from the enormous robot, but he had to try something.

Hamstring it. Cut the motor wires. Bring it down!

Blake ran to the legs. He sprang back as one of the more than two-meter-long feet shifted. Oblivious to the cries of the mob in the stands, he leveled his weapon at the right ankle. He fired, but little happened, except for a small, smoldering fire that started in the thick fake fur.

Blake ran closer, aimed again, then stopped. The fire had burned away some of the imitation gorilla hide around the ankle, and Blake saw a hinge.
A door! An access panel to the robots interior.

He ran now to the foot and jumped up on the instep just as the sand bubbled and turned to steaming glass a few inches away. Another long gash appeared in the sand near Kong's foot and ran up into the side of the foot, where the great metal monster absorbed the energy of a laser being fired from the stands.

The foot lifted, carrying Blake several meters into the air. He clung to the fur as he sought to find the outline of the access panel. The foot came down, jarring him loose; but he caught on before the foot moved again. Just above his head the fur started smoking in a pinpoint patch, and he heard Kong's roar.

Sensor circuits,
Blake thought as he groped wildly for the door, seeing several figures running out from the Arena wall, he redoubled his search. Suddenly he felt a lump, and lifted a patch of thick black fur to grasp a handle. He turned it, and almost at once a door swung out. He scampered in, scraping his shins, and jerked the door closed behind him. He was in a tube about two meters in diameter, with a ladder up one side, and labeled access panels all around. Blake put his laser to the lock, held it on target as Kong's leg moved, and fused the door shut.

Next, he stuck his laser in his tunic and grasped the ladder, climbing as quickly as he could. He had to get to the control room, which he assumed was in either the head or the chest, and he had to get there quickly! He navigated the knee joint with more luck than skill, and then climbed steadily up the interior of Kong's thigh.

The pandemonium of the multitude was now muffled, but Blake could hear the squeak and thump of the ponderously moving robot clearly. He heard relays open and close and selsyn motors whine into usefulness; he smelled lubricating oil and heated metal. As he climbed, Blake kept looking up – and that saved his life. For as he neared the hip, he saw in the socket opening the flash of a green-clad arm and a hand briefly seizing a hold as Kong lurched.

Blake swung away from the ladder, holding on with only one hand and one foot, and pulled the laser from his tunic. The green-clad woman who stuck her closely-cropped head over the hipjoint opening had a big laser in her hand and was already pointing it down the ladder. Before she could correct for Blake's unexpected position, he fired.

The ruby beam sliced into the side of her face, through her brain, and nicked the upper edge of the opening. She fell limply across the opening, the laser dropping from her fingers and tumbling down the interior of the thigh with a metallic clatter.

Blake quickly ran up the last of the ladder rungs, his weapon at the ready, but he found no one else.

The ape's pelvic area was wide and empty, except for a heavy-duty fusion engine and many black boxes. Blake ran toward the ladder at the center of the space, which continued all the way up the torso. He peered up the ladder well suspiciously, waiting for another green-clad protector, but none appeared. Blake grabbed the laser in his teeth and started up the ladder, past some kind of big tanks and twin gyroscopes.

Poking his head up cautiously, he came onto another floor in what he guessed was the chest area. He had found the control room.

In the center was a clear-plastic inertial-guidance sphere, three meters in diameter, which rotated in gimbals to stay always level. A man stood on the rock-steady stable platform within the sphere. Sensors were attached to his arms, legs, and head. Before him was a big screen, and on it Blake could see Doreen clearly, as she was held by a giant black hand. On either side of the screen were smaller screens that showed different views of the ground around Kong's feet. Blake could see a small crowd of angry police trying to force the door in the leg. A man was bulling through the cops with a meter-long laser.

On another screen – evidently carrying a picture taken by some camera in the stands – Blake could see the full length of Kong. Looking at the man in the sphere, Blake saw that he was in the exact same position as Kong.

Blake approached the sphere and pointed his laser at the man. "Get us out of here. Don't drop the girl or you die."

The man did not move, only stared wide-eyed at the intruder. Blake raised the gun and pointed it at the man's face.

"Do as I say, or die. Then I'll attach the sensors and do it myself."

"Uh ... I..." The man seemed frightened but his two weak syllables were translated into a booming Kong-voice.

Blake took a step closer, his weapon pointed right into the man's face. The controller of the huge robot nodded, and on the full-length screen Kong nodded.

Kong, at Blake's bidding, raised his foot, and several men fell from the instep. Blake turned a bit so he could watch the screen, but kept his gun on the man in the sphere. In the screen he saw Kong walking in a perfectly normal ape-like manner toward the spot in the Arena wall at which he had entered. The sphere remained balanced, but the man looked quite frightened. Then he jerked, twitching as if someone had stuck a pin in his back. He jerked again, and Blake saw that they were firing at Kong's back.

"Cut the sensor circuits!" Blake shouted to the man.

"Uh!" The man pointed at one control panel in a series around the outer circumference of the sphere, and on the full-length screen Kong pointed.

Blake ran around and found the panel labeled EXTERIOR SKIN SENSORS and turned it off. The man nodded gratefully, then his eyes grew big.

Blake's gaze snapped to the big front screen. He had forgotten about the other part of the re-enactment of the King Kong legend. Fragile, rickety planes were coming in, zooming over the Circus, their guns blazing. Blake ducked, then realized he had neither heard nor felt any bullets strike.

Blanks, of course!

Blake got up from his defensive crouch. "Ignore them!" he called to the Kong-controller. "Keep going! Over the edge!"

Blake watched in the lurching control room as Kong climbed the Arena wall, and lumbered up the empty section of crushed seats. He heard the planes coming in again and saw the fear in Doreen's face.

"Hold her close to your chest!" he ordered. "But don't crush her, or you're a dead man!"

The planes flew past, guns noisily blasting Kong, who was now poised on the top edge of the stands. Blake saw the man trying to see his footing in the screen for the difficult task of getting down. Blake saw several crushed groundcars in a small parking lot, and a long section of wire fence that Kong had snagged earlier and dragged along.

Suddenly Kong roared, and Blake looked at the big screen. One of the planes was heading directly for them, and evidently one had just tried to ram the robot.

Blake cursed.
Robot ships!
"Get it!"

Kong's mighty hand struck out. The ship was half crushed and fell like a rock.

Another plane was coming in from the rear; Blake saw it on a screen. "Behind you!"

Kong turned, but not quickly. The plane struck its shoulder and Blake was thrown across the control room. He heard the plane falling down the outside of the gorilla-robot as he pulled himself erect.