Some of the goo came off onto the plastic. Straightaway, Festina edged back again. By the time Muscle looked in her direction, there was nothing to see.
Seconds later, Festina returned the favor for me by setting up another distraction — she shuffled over to one of the androids that ambushed us. It happened to be a handsomish African man, tall, dressed in white-on-white clothing: Oolom colors of mourning, exactly what the Dignity Memorial robots wore when they emptied the mass grave. I guessed this artificial man had been down here ever since that day; Iranu senior programmed these two to stay behind as guards. Now they were working for Maya, just as all the others had been.
Probably, none of the robots had left Great St. Caspian after bringing out the corpses. They’d been shipped to the nearest handy holding area, that bunker by Lake Vascho; and they’d stayed there till Maya and Iranu junior reactivated them years later.
Question: how many more androids did Maya have down here in this bunker? One or two at most; if too many robots had stayed behind after clearing out the mass grave, someone would have noticed. Maybe the androids in this room were the only ones in the whole bunker, and there’d be clear sailing from now on.
Ever the optimist, our Faye.
But Festina had caught Muscle’s attention as she strayed too close to the pseudo-African man. "Get away from that!" the Muscle snapped.
"I’m just making sure it’s shut down."
"And it never crossed your mind to grab its weapon." The Muscle lunged across the room and seized her by the arm. "Don’t underestimate me, Admiral. I’m not my partner."
"It was worth a try," Festina said, shuffling away from the robot again. She didn’t even look at me; she obviously had full confidence that while she kept Muscle busy, I’d pressed my plastic leg irons against Mouth’s acid blobs.
Festina was right. Tiny wisps of smoke were curling up from the plastic, as corrosive goo ate through the strap binding my ankles. In the dim light, I hoped Muscle wouldn’t notice.
"Let’s move," he said. Festina and I hobbled after him like good little captives… trying not to smile at the thought of kicking Muscle’s teeth out when the acid freed our feet.
The room we’d entered was almost empty — blank granite walls, with the usual rusty lumps junked about the floor. All the easier to notice the one thing that hadn’t moldered into anonymity: a palm-sized keypad embedded on the far wall. Sixteen white plastic push-buttons in a four-by-four grid. To my eye, it didn’t look modern, or even human — the buttons were too finicky small to be convenient for Homo sap fingers, and labeled with odd squiggles that didn’t look like any language I recognized. But if this was original Greenstrider technology, it was miraculously well preserved.
The Muscle peered at the pad. "What do you want to bet," he said, "if you key in the right sequence, one of these walls has a hidden door."
Neither Festina nor I bothered to answer. Obviously, this bunker was like the one in Mummichog; some hunk of wall was actually nano, ready to open for anyone who knew the right code. The door probably still worked too — if this bunker had enough self-maintenance capabilities to keep the keypad in good shape, important things like doors would stay in decent repair too.
The Muscle looked at me. "I don’t suppose Xe told you the right key sequence."
I shook my head. "This wasn’t Xe’s bunker; it belonged to the Peacock, her out-and-out enemy. Xe wouldn’t know the codes."
"Pity." The Muscle looked at the keypad again. "If I had enough time and the right equipment, I could crack this baby. But I’m not carrying tools for being delicate, so we’ll do this the messy way."
He strode back across the room and wrenched a jelly gun from one of the robots. "You might want to stand clear," he told us, taking aim on the keypad. Festina and I beetled away, as far as we could get from the pad… which was the opposite side of the room and still not far enough for my liking.
"This is a military base," I reminded the Muscle. "If you spew acid all over a security pad, don’t you think you might set off some defense mechanism? Like an explosion that’ll roast all three of us?"
"The defense mechanisms are thousands of years old," Muscle answered. "They’re bound to be dust by now."
"Oh sure, bound to be," Festina said. Out the side of her mouth, she whispered, "Get ready with another death certificate."
I whispered back, "Let’s hope we don’t need three."
The Muscle fired. His first shot was low: acid wad smacking the wall a handbreadth beneath the keypad. Some of the spatter glooped upward, but only a bit; the rest just hung from the granite, a few jelly drops plopping down to the floor.
Two seconds for the gun to repressurize, then Muscle fired again. This time he’d corrected his aim bang on — a gooey blob struck the keypad dead center, splotching thickly over the press-buttons. I could hear sizzle all the way across the room: buttons melting like wax, the metal container dissolving in heat shimmer.
For half a minute, nothing happened. Then an entire section of wall suddenly turned from stone to molasses, a thick fluid of nanites dribbling to the floor. The fluid was runny granite gray, with the slimy texture of raw egg-white gushing over the ground. Nano sludge.
In the gap where the nanites had been, there was now a dark passageway leading forward.
Muscle stepped back as the egg-whitey juice trickled toward him. "Admiral," he said, waving the jelly gun toward Festina, "if you’d be so good as to go to the doorway. Just to check what happens."
"You want to see if the sludge attacks me."
The Muscle smiled. "Exactly. It’s wicked-looking stuff."
Festina hesitated. Muscle gestured with the gun again, the smile gone from his face. Before either of them did something daft confrontational, I hopped forward myself, slopping into the slushy gray gumbo spreading across the floor. Nice puppies, I thought to the nanites, don’t hurt your old Mom-Faye. With Xe gone, the nanites didn’t answer… but they didn’t attack either. No dissolving my boots or climbing up my legs. Festina moved a second later, following in my gooey wake; with nothing more than sodden shoes, we both made it to the doorway.
"Happy?" I asked the Muscle.
He waited another full minute, giving the sludge time to take action. What scared me wasn’t the chance of nanites attacking… the problem was Muscle staring so precious keenly at my feet. By now, the acid from Mouth’s throat had eaten clean through the strap holding my ankles; if Muscle had good eyes, he might notice. Lucky for me, he kept well back, staying out of the nanite pool. And there wasn’t much light on my legs — Muscle still had the torch-wand rigged to his own arm, and its glow scarcely reached as far as me. I kept my feet tight together, looked chump-helpless, and hoped that would be good enough.
It was. The Muscle didn’t notice the corroded split in my ankle strap; and after a minute, he accepted that the sludge wasn’t going to turn homicidal. Delicate as a bird, he tiptoed through the pool and joined us staring into the passageway forward.
I could have kicked him that very second — broken his knee or swept his feet out from under him. But I couldn’t guarantee I’d take him straight out of the fight, and he had that jelly gun in his hand. Better to wait for a sure thing… especially if I could coordinate an attack with Festina.
Patience. Why do so many things demand goddamned patience?
"On we go," Muscle said. He waved the jelly gun to show who was boss, then led the way forward.
The corridor was only a dozen meters long. Then we came to the bottomless pit.
Oh, all right… it wasn’t honest-to-God bottomless. But it had to be at least ten stories deep, because torchlight didn’t reach the pit’s floor. Ten stories was still plenty enough that I didn’t want to take the dive; and diving was clearly what the Greenstriders had in mind when they built this place. A long stone bridge led forward across the pit, like a drawbridge across a moat. At the far side of the bridge sat another blank granite wall with another entry-code keypad.