Frey looked to Ugrik for confirmation. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It was in the case, and the case was open. Best put it back just the way I found it, I’d say.’ Ugrik held out the black oblong case containing the relic. ‘You ought to do it.’
Crake checked the sky through the break in the wall. It was a deep blue-velvet. ‘It’s not yet full dark,’ he said, with relief in his voice. ‘Despite your lax attitude to deadlines, Cap’n, you might actually have made it in time.’
They took off their bulky packs and put them aside. Frey put the relic case on the ground in front of the pillar and began feeling around its edge. ‘That’s good,’ he muttered. ‘Except it usually takes me quarter of an hour to find the thingummybob that opens it.’
Crake assumed he was exaggerating. He hoped so, anyway.
Ugrik hunkered down next to the Cap’n, offering useless advice and occasionally attempting to interfere until Frey slapped his hands away. Crake left them to it and let his eyes wander the room. Beneath the vines on the near side of the room, where they were not so dense, he could see more shelves and alcoves in the wall, with more objects hidden there. Nearby, he caught sight of a pedestal in the foliage, overturned by the growth of the plants.
Once more he found himself trying to understand his surroundings, to brinings, tog this dead culture to life and connect with it. Was this a trophy room of some kind?
He moved away from the others and began searching the thicker tangles of vines, looking for more clues.
There! he thought, peering into the gloom. What’s that? It looks like Suddenly the shape made sense to him. A white, haggard face loomed out of the dark and he recoiled with a shout of alarm.
‘What? What?’ Frey had his pistol out and was casting around the room for danger.
Crake stared, his heart decelerating. The figure trapped in the vines didn’t move. He began to feel foolish.
‘It’s nothing, Cap’n,’ he said. ‘I thought…’ He decided he’d only dig himself a deeper hole if he explained. ‘Never mind.’
Frey shook his head angrily and went back to the relic case. ‘I’m wound up enough as it is, Crake. Yell like that, I’m liable to put a bullet in you.’
Crake wasn’t listening to Frey’s grumbles. He was peering through the vines again. There was no dead man in there, only a suit of some kind. A black body suit that seemed to be made of tiny scales. There were gloves hanging by its sides, and presumably boots down there somewhere. It must been standing on display once. Some kind of armour, perhaps, but thinner and more flexible than any he knew.
And of course the white, haggard face he saw had been his own, reflected in the blank, smooth faceplate of the helmet. Spit and blood, had he deteriorated so much that he startled himself now? These recent days had worn him down with sleeplessness and care. His beard, which he’d once thought pleasingly rugged, made him look like a hobo in conjunction with those baggy eyes and gaunt cheeks.
Grayther Crake, he told himself. You need to smarten up.
He studied the helmet more closely. It fitted over the whole head, sealing in the wearer. Tubes ran from the jawline over the back. While puzzling over its purpose, his attention drifted to the reflection in the faceplate. In the light from the doorway, he could see the Cap’n and Ugrik, still fiddling with the box.
‘Wait…’ the Cap’n was saying. ‘Got it!’
A small movement made Crake shift his gaze minutely. His eyes widened.
Something was in the doorway, unnoticed by Ugrik or Cap’n. Something that was gliding silently into the room. A glint of tarnished metal.
He spun around with a yell, fumbling his pistol free of his belt. t.
‘What is it this time?’ Frey cried, then went pale as he saw that Crake was waving a gun in his direction. He and Ugrik lunged out of the way, more because they were afraid of Crake than through any awareness of the danger behind them.
He caught only the briefest impression of it. It floated in the air a half-metre off the ground. A ring of long, grasping arms surrounded a cylindrical torso topped with a flat round head, with two lenses of different sizes to function as eyes.
An automaton.
He fired wildly out of panic, blasting off all five chambers as quickly as he could pull the trigger. Bullets caromed off the automaton and ricocheted away. He might have closed his eyes after the first shot; he wasn’t sure. What he was sure of was that the recoil knocked his aim all over the place, and it had been abysmal to begin with.
Frankly miraculous, then, that when he opened his eyes the Azryx thing was lying on the floor, with one of its eye-lenses smashed. Crake let out a disbelieving gasp.
‘I hit it!’ he said.
‘You almost hit every bloody thing else as well!’ said Frey, as he got to his feet from a cringing position. ‘Including us!’
Ugrik cackled. ‘Looks like he bagged himself an Azryx toy, though.’
‘Exactly! I saved your lives!’ Crake said, indignantly. He strode over to the fallen automaton, slightly miffed that the Cap’n wasn’t more grateful.
Ugrik was already studying it. ‘You sure it was goin’ to hurt us?’ He lifted up one of its arms. What had seemed a fearsome claw at first was actually rather delicate-looking.
‘Well, I…’ Crake began. He swallowed. ‘Er.’
‘I’m just forwardin’ the possibility that you might have just destroyed a ten-thousand-year-old Azryx automato-’
‘It was going to kill you!’ Crake protested. ‘It was pawing the air and stuff!’ He pawed the air to demonstrate, in what he hoped was a sufficiently frightening manner.
‘Aha!’ Frey crowed. ‘ Now who’s the vandal? All that rubbish I smashed back at the Mentenforth institute wasn’t half as old as that !’
In fact, now that it was lying inert, it didn’t look very threatening at all. It began to sink in that this was, well, an automaton. A metal being capable of movement. Quite possibly it was the caretaker that had looked after the bodies in the tanks all this time, which would indicate some kincate somd of complex mechanical thought. And that put it far above anything the best of Vardic scholars could even dream of right now.
‘But… I…’ Crake blustered, horrified by what he’d done. The thought that he might have shot the single greatest scientific discovery since aerium was refined made him nauseous. ‘What do you mean, rubbish?’ he demanded, in a feeble attempt to throw some kind of blame back on to Frey.
‘Vandal,’ Frey said with a smirk. He swept past Crake and knelt down next to the relic. The case had come open, and inside was the double-bladed weapon, resting in its wrought-metal cradle. Crake stared at it, stunned by this terrible turn of events. It lay there, unmarked and pristine, untouched by the calamity and tragedy it had brought. The cause of all their strife and labour. Spit and blood, he’d be glad to never see that thing again.
‘Put it where it belongs,’ he said. ‘Let’s get that damned curse off you and get on with our lives.’
‘Right,’ said Frey, scooping up the case. ‘Where did you say it went again, Ugrik?’
The Yort got up and pointed. ‘Right… er… there.’ He trailed off.
‘Oh, no,’ Frey said quietly.
Something in the tone of his voice send a slow dread creeping into Crake’s belly. All the Cap’n’s cockiness was gone. What was left was fear.
Crake looked at the pillar. Where there had once been two arms reaching out to hold the relic case, now there was only one. The other was lying on the floor, in several pieces.
Smashed by a bullet.
Frey dropped to his knees and hung his head. It was as if all the strength and vigour had suddenly gone out of him, like air from a balloon. ‘Of all the luck…’ he muttered. ‘Of all the shit-eating luck in the world…’
The sheer defeat in his voice terrified Crake. He was suddenly desperate to offer hope, desperate to make amends. Desperate not to be the one responsible.