Filaria - Brent Hayward [32]
“A man of the cloth.” Philip laughed, a scornful sound rather than one of amusement. “The cloth was actually a ribbon. Cut, in fact, during the grand opening ceremony. The engineer read from his notes and cleaved the ribbon with a pair of oversized scissors. People clapped, cameras flew about. Permanent residents, temporary guests, dignitaries filed in — staff was already in place, you see. Then events beyond the sky transpired, on the third day. The rest, as they say, is history. No one could ever leave. Only because I am representative,” he lowered his voice: this was secret, apparently, “I have a piece of that very cloth. Look here.”
A scrap of red fabric had been sewn into the inside of Philip’s dirty jacket, which he now held proudly open. The grubby, threadbare fragment hardly appeared to be a noteworthy artifact. Though Phister wanted to keep the conversation going, he could think of nothing to say about the rag. Instead he stared at it as if its significance were obvious and astounding.
Quietude closed in once more. Shadows took on ulterior motives and stalked the car. Phister had hoped to dispel these, and maybe discern what the stranger’s agenda might be, yet he understood very little of what the man had said and now felt no better for the brief discourse. There was a part of him that wanted to prove to McCreedy that he was not easily sucked in — that he didn’t buy, outright, the dandy’s slick lines and confidence. Another part of him suspected it was too late, that he had already blown his and McCreedy’s chance to get out of whatever situation they were in —
McCreedy shouted: “Holy shit!”
Swerving, tires squealing, the car fishtailed, bumped over something — front wheels, bump, back wheels, bump — before sliding sickeningly, sideways, to an abrupt halt.
Silence. Lingering, absolute silence.
“What the hell was that?” Phister asked, breathless, heart racing. He looked back to see settling dust. “Did we hit something?”
The other two men looked back also. Philip’s fingers dug into Phister’s shoulder.
Nothing. Boxes. Narrow aisles. Roiling dust —
There. In the murk, a dull glimmer. A silvery glare. Bigger than Phister’s forearm, trying to get to its feet, clearly crippled by the accident — hips, possibly spine crushed — a tiny silver man, struggling to drag himself away. Miniature legs trailed uselessly. No cries or moans issued from the resolute figure; for Phister, that was the eeriest part.
“A picker,” Philip finally said, letting out his breath. “That’s all. Just a picker.”
“What the fuck is a picker?”
“Workers, down here in the warehouse.”
“But what is it? Is it alive?”
“Alive? Like you and the boy? No. It’s like a machine, mostly. With a rudimentary intelligence. They work down here, in the warehouse. Like all devices with a little bit of a brain, they get told what to do by their supervisor. They pick items from crates when orders come in. You really shouldn’t have run it down.”
“The fuckin thing fell off a box right in front of me. It fell under the tires.”
Phister was half out of his seat but Philip pushed him back down.
“Leave it. There are multitudes. Others will come get it, reintegrate it. We should move on.”
“Look,” Phister said, pointing, “there’s two more.”
From the lip of a crate high overhead, the tiny pair peered down. The pickers did not retreat or pull back, though it must have been clear to them they had been spotted. Their heads were about the size of a rat’s egg: no features to be seen, no eyes to belie expression, no mouth, no nose. Nonetheless, the two aimed their dully gleaming faces down at the car with obvious intensity, and Phister knew, with certainty, that they were interested in him.
“I wonder what they’re up to,” Philip said, asking himself the question. “Making something? Changing something in the world? What have we stumbled on?”
Phister looked back once more to see the picker they had run over, yet only a trail remained, dragged clean through the dust.