Filaria - Brent Hayward [88]
Just Young Phister, within whose head a layout of all these rooms, corridors, and chambers was currently being mapped.
He muttered, “They wanted to stop me . . .”
Stretching along one entire wall of the chamber, as they drove adjacent to it — as far as he could see — was a series of bodies, each trapped inside its own coffin-like cabinet. Men and women both, naked, twined with tubes and wires, each resting inert under a translucent cover.
There were hundreds of them.
The car cruised silently past.
Immersed in a milky fluid, the bodies appeared to be sleeping. Next to each cabinet, a panel of dimly lit numerals pulsed. He caught a quick glimpse of a woman — slim, with great, floating red hair — so familiar that he nearly stopped the car, nearly called out to her, but her name did not come to his tongue.
Voices whispered. Were these people whispering to him? Moans blew like wind through his body, through his veins. He knew these people. He said, “You are my flesh . . .”
And the dead boy said, “I don’t know about that, pal, but here comes the doc.”
At first, when Phister looked to his right, across the open floor (more cabinets of bodies out there, against the far wall), he expected to see a man riding in the very strange car that was quickly approaching, but as the vehicle neared he could see no passenger within, nor even a place for one, and he came to understand that the speeding car was not a car at all — at least not like the one he was driving — but yet another sort of machine, one with numerous limbs and tools bristling out every which way. The oncoming car was, in fact, the doctor.
Frantic appendages flapped, clattering like a chime, and wheels slid on the tiled floor. The doctor blared in a tinny voice, “You can’t be in here! Stop! Stop!”
Phister said, “My two friends here need to see you. They’re both dead. It’s quite urgent.”
“Urgent? There are contaminants in the air! There is smoke, and a fire. How did you get in?” The doctor had slowed and was pacing them, wheels almost touching. Its motor pinged loudly and the numerous thin arms and spindly growths — the low-slung body had thirty or forty emaciated elbows poking up all over its back — moved and rang together almost hypnotically.
“You must present me with identification. We have been vandalized recently and — ”
“Listen to me!” The dead boy stood up, holding onto the windshield’s frame to steady himself. “Listen. What’s left of the network has been fried. Understand? There was a breach in the sky. Do you understand me, doc? My supervisor and manager — SAM Fourteen — of Plantation Level, has gone offline. Like your boss probably has. I’ve been trying to tell this guy here but he’s got problems of his own. He says he’s from Public Works but he’s in transition now. You have to help us.”
“I’ll need a work order.”
“I’m giving you one!” The dead boy’s shout was raspy and echoed down the length and breadth of the vast chamber. “Didn’t you sign an oath or something? We need your help! The world needs your help! I just told you the supervisors have gone offline. And you’re looking at your new boss anyhow. This guy right here! He’s going to save all of us!”
Phister raised one eyebrow and glanced across at the doctor — who was still driving alongside — before turning his attention back to the faces trapped behind the curved covers. He was listening to their hissed and quiet tales of loves lost. Tales of children being born, of personal triumphs, of tragedies. He said, “These people are my ancestors. My descendants. They’re my team.”
The doctor replied, “I guess he should be