Z14 (22 page)

“You can share your cell matrix fluids with us, you know…” said Classic Melon.

“I can?” I said. Oh cyber-god, no: My nozzle.

“Yes,” said New Melon. “Although all the cyborgs have the D.N.A. of their original humans, it’s been modified; improved to be compatible with the D.N.A. of all other cyborgs from the same origin species. You just need to secrete the fluid onto us using your excess discharge hose.”

“Maybe I don’t have any excess to spare,” I said. Oh, look: Churlishness – chalk up a new human trait for Zed. Or is it Zach now? No, I’m Zed. Zach’s dead, baby.

“You have just consumed enough protein to restore a dozen cyborg’s outer layers,” said Classic Melon.

“Don’t be greedy now, Zed my dear boy,” said New Melon.

I summoned up a sigh. “Tell me how,” I said. They told me. I shuddered and dropped my trousers.

I don’t have a penis. I can’t say I’ve ever needed or wanted one, and they seem to cause trouble – as well as causing more humans, which is something I generally frown on. What I do have is a flap of skin in my groin area which can be moved to one side to reveal a small, orange hose-like nozzle. Many of my functions are unknown to me, and the Purpose Of The Nozzle is one of my greatest inner mysteries. I think the gaps in my self knowledge can probably be blamed on Melon hacking my code apart and deleting shit willy-nilly. Or nil willy in my case.

With my trousers and pants around my ankles I shuffle-limped over to Classic Melon, batted him to the floor with my stump, did the same to New Melon and began ejaculating spare stem-cell fluid all over their heads.

As the thick, milky-white fluid began to coat them both, running down their battered faces, Oxley, of all people, wandered over, diverted from his mission to raid the Kambulance for beers for the lads. He stared at the scene with his mouth hanging open and a strange look in his eyes that I did not like one bit, no sir. If he started touching himself I’d make him pay. Cash. Nobody should get a show like this for free.

“Ox, what’s the hold-up?” called Kam from the poker game.

“Zee’s got his little orange pecker out and he’s jerking off over the Docs,” said Oxley. “He’s giving them both a dirty great spunk-bath.”

There was only the briefest of pauses, before Kam said, “Well, are you joining them or getting the bloody beers?”

The Kon Ramar and Doctor Harold Melon had robbed me of my childhood memories, so for all I knew this was the first time I’d ever felt like a pubescent teenager being caught having a crafty wank by his mum. I terminated those human thoughts and went to ‘sleep’, wondering why I could feel warmth in my cheeks.

We spent ten hours resting, leaving us with another five to get back to the bunker and prepare an ambush for the two inbound Wardens, looking for T9. Both Doctor Melon
’s heads and I healed up nicely – not my arm and foot though, of course; oh how I missed being whole – and I think even the poker fanatics got a few hours sleep.

It was half an hour before midnight, on a cloudless, moonlit night, when we secured the now much lighter load aboard the Kambulance – Kaboom had been quite a hefty chap, even if he had been like a feather compared to the cyborg corpse he had shared his deathbed with. We were still going to cart T9’s corpse around with us in case I could figure out a way to steal her arm and foot, and use them to replace my damaged bits. Neither Melon was aware of any kind of cyborg skeleton repair procedure, but logic dictated that I, as a machine, could be repaired.

Lothar and I climbed aboard the Kambulance bicycles – each choosing a Melon to travel in our handlebar baskets, and Kam and Oxley took up the free-roaming bikes. We set off with the light from Deliverance’s small, suspiciously Earth-like moon – anyone doubting the terraforming theory was an idiot, I reckoned – more than adequately lighting our way. Coming down from the lower portions of the Heights, where we had originally abandoned the bicycles, made for very easy going, with more free-wheeling than pedalling. We’d definitely get back to the bunker long before T9’s pals showed up there.

I played back and reviewed the conversation I’d had with the doctor about how I’d been part of a team of scientists, studying the theory of cybernetics. Right before the Kon Ramar had showed up on Earth.

“Melon?” I said, as we all but flew down a steep slope.

“Yes?” they both replied.

“You say the Kon Ramar thought it would be amusing to turn all of the human cybernetics scientists into cyborgs…”

“Yes,” they both replied.

“So, would it be logical to presume that all of the Deliverance cyborgs came from that same research team?”

“Yes,” they both replied.

“So, the rest of the cyborgs are my former colleagues? Old friends, even?” I said.

“Yes,” they both replied.

That was bad enough, but I was thinking that if I had had a son, then, well, scientists aren’t always the most socially minded examples of human-kind, so I may not have looked too far afield when choosing a mate. Was my son’s mother stomping around Deliverance at this very moment, unaware that she was anything other than a weapon pretending to be human? Had I already ‘met’ her? Was the skinless cyborg I watched get executed by the grey-skins a former lover?

“Holy shit,” I said. “You mean the plastic bimbo that punched Kaboom’s ticket was a real person?”

“You mean lead scientist Doctor Tessa McClusky?” said Classic Melon. “Oh yes, according to Zed’s own memories, such that I pried into, she was very real indeed.”

“And I think I look rather fetching, now that my hair and ears have grown back,” said New Melon using T9’s voice as it was before she was annexed by him.

“Could she have been – ” I started to say.

“No,” said Classic Melon. “I didn’t get all that much from your memories, but Tessa was not the mother of your child.”

“Damn shame,” said Kam, cycling close to the Kambulance. “You’d have been well out of your league, though, Zed.” He laughed and swerved aside as I tried to clout him with my stump.

Classic Melon chuckled too. “She was indeed out of your league,” he said. “She used to look down on you because of her much higher I.Q. score.” Kam’s laughter redoubled.

“What was he,” called Oxley from just behind the Kambulance. “The janitor?”

I ignored him. “You’re sure there’s nothing left of her, or the others inside their Warden heads?” I said.

“Quite the contrary,” said New Melon. “Her full personality will have been recorded and used in the virtual reconstruction and simulation of her brain, just like yours was. Given time, I could make her as, well,
almost
human as I have made you.”

“Almost human?” I said. “Up yours Doc.”

“With your little nozzle?” called Oxley. “The doc wouldn’t feel a thing.”

“Quite,” said Classic Melon. “Time is one thing we don’t have much of. The Kon Ramar are on their way. Obviously, I’ve been here five years – rather than the seventeen I lied about spending on the colony ship in orbit – but the Kon Ramar, well, I’m surprised we’ve had five years grace, to be honest. the fact that Chester Boram is, somehow, activating cyborgs right now, implies he knows just how imminent the Kon Ramar’s arrival is.”

“And what’s going to happen when these guys show up?” said Lothar, puffing away alongside me – still letting out the odd fart whenever he had to strain in the saddle.

“I should imagine that they will take charge quickly,” said New Melon.

“Indeed,” said Classic Melon. “The unactivated cyborgs will activate, with their full Warden program in effect, the Kon Ramar will use chemical weapons from orbit to subdue the human population. It will be up to whatever forces we have managed to array against them to stop the Wardens from basically running around ripping the living brains out of people, and starting work on the next brain-construct monstrosity.”

Ah-ha.

“So, that’s the purpose of us Wardens?” I said.

“That’s your end-game purpose on any given planet, yes” said Classic Melon.

“Prior to that, however,” said New Melon. “Your mission is
supposed
to be to hide in plain sight, to observe the humans, and to act with a devastating, brutal and over-the-top level of response if any person, group or faction should make any unexpected technological leaps, or find a way to leave the planet. From that moment on, that particular planet will
know
it is a prison planet; has been all along.”

“And yet, most of Deliverance’s Wardens are still asleep,” I said. “Despite the humans having plasma weapons, and, apparently despite Chester having access to the colony flagship.”

“Indeed,” said New Melon. “That is the curious part. The Wardens never woke up. The obvious explanation is that there is something wrong with the command ship. It is supposed to control the Wardens, and to monitor the humans; to integrate into whatever information networks the humans established, such as the ‘net as you call it here. And yet, it doesn’t seem to have done its job at all.”

“Quite the opposite,” I said. “Chester – or rather the Boram family in general – got first their laser, and then their plasma technology from the computers aboard the flagship, or so he told me.”

“I find that unfathomably implausible.” said Classic Melon.

“And yet, it is also the only likely explanation,” said New Melon.

“Speaking of fathoms,” I said. “If the flagship is under water off the coast of Boram Bay, then you might find it’s been damaged by the rather voracious sea-life around these parts. There are things in there that find metal to be a tasty treat. They’d be far from averse to munching on a starship.”

“I see,” said both Melons together.”

“I suggest we deal with this next pair of Wardens as quickly as possible and then go and find the flagship,” said Classic Melon.

“At last, we agree on something, Doc,” I said.

We cycled on, stopping twice so that Lothar and I could swap places with Kam and Oxley. I was back to pulling the Kambulance with Lothar when a long lull in conversation was broken.

“Doc?” said Lothar. “And I don’t care which damn one answers, as long as it is just one of you.”

“Yes?” said Classic Melon, sounding hesitant.

“You said something about arraying forces against the Kon Ramar,” said Lothar. “What did you have in mind?”

“Well,” said Classic Melon. “Ah. Um. Well.”

“What my esteemed colleague means,” said New Melon. “Is that I had hoped Zed here would be enough.”

“Against a possible forty-two hostile Wardens?” I said.

“No,” said New Melon.

“I, well, that is to say,” said Classic Melon. “That when I arrived and found Zed aboard the stranded colony ship in space, and after I spoke to Chester Boram and realised he was already trying to use the cyborgs to his own ends, I decided to write off Deliverance.”

“You what?” yelled Kam. “Why?”

“Because, while the Kon Ramar were, albeit very briefly, subduing Deliverance,” said Classic Melon, “It would give Zed and myself a perfect opportunity to board their ship and simply have Zed wipe them out.”

“You call that a plan, Doc?” said Lothar. He sounded disgusted.

“It was a perfectly sound plan,” said New Melon. “If you know the Kon Ramar as I do.”

“Yes,” said Classic Melon. “Their leadership consists purely of their lead scientific research team, who are also the figureheads of the Kon Ramar religion – the religion that motivates every absurdity they’ve perpetrated around the galaxy – don’t get me started on the planet of the cyborg badgers. Uh, where was I? Oh yes. Their leaders travel on a poorly defended spaceship, and once Zed was aboard, it would be like setting a rabid wolf loose in a nursery.”

“Doc, I really, really hate your analogies,” said Kam.

“Well, never mind that,” said Classic Melon. “Zed could single-handedly defeat the Kon Ramar leadership, and then, with me able to use their technology, we could dictate the terms of their surrender to them.”

“It would be the first and only time the Kon Ramar came up against anything that even resembled opposition. They would be utterly floored by it,” said New Melon.

“Well,” I said. “It’s a shame we can’t go ahead with that plan.”