Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [4]
Silas didn’t switch on the landing light until the door was safely closed behind him. He didn’t want to wake the girl from what he hoped were pleasant dreams. He went swiftly down to the hallway and stepped into the tiny room beneath the staircase. He activated the house’s night eyes, bringing a dozen different images to the bank of screens mounted on the wall. He picked up the VE hood, which would give him a far clearer view once he had selected the right pair of artificial eyes—but there was no way to make the choice.
The foot of the cliff, limned in red, was stubbornly bare. The shadows in which he had glimpsed movement were empty now.
One of the screens blanked out, and then another.
That did alarm him; in the circumstances, he couldn’t believe that it was a mere malfunction. He lifted the VE hood, but he still had no idea which connection he should make—and if the screens were going down, the hood would be just as useless as they were. Someone was blinding the house’s eyes, and must have come equipped to do it—but why? He had no enemies, so far as he knew, and the rewards of burglary had long ago sunk to the level which made the risk unacceptable to anyone but a fool. The quaint outward appearance of the house might, he supposed, have indicated to juvenile vandals that it was poorly protected, but he couldn’t imagine anyone scaling the cliff face in the dark merely to do a little gratuitous damage.
He watched, helplessly, as the screens went out. When six more of the night eyes had been blinded without his catching the briefest glimpse of a hand or a face, he knew that it was not the work of children or foolish thieves. He became afraid—and realized as he did so how strange and unfamiliar fear had become.
A rapid dance of his fingertips sealed all the locks that were not routinely engaged, activated all the house’s security systems and notified the police that a crime might be in progress. That, at least, was what his instructions should have accomplished—but the confirmatory call which should have come from the police didn’t arrive; the telephone screen remained ominously inactive. He knew that there was no point in putting the VE hood over his head and he lowered it onto its cradle.
Several seconds dragged by while he wondered whether it was worth running to his study, where the house’s main workstation was, but when he emerged from the cupboard he didn’t head in that direction. Instead, he stood where he was, watching the door at the end of the hallway. It was obvious that his links with the outside world had been severed, and that the door in question was the only security left to him. He wondered whether the threat might be to her rather than to himself, feeling a pang of bitter resentment because a near perfect day was about to be ruined at the eleventh hour—but that was just a desperate attempt to pretend that the danger wasn’t his danger.
The simple truth was that his communication systems were very nearly the best that money could buy, and that someone had nevertheless overridden them with ridiculous ease. Whatever reason they had, it couldn’t be trivial.
When the door burst in, Silas couldn’t quite believe his eyes. In spite of the failure of his artificial eyes and voice he had not believed that his locks could be so easily broken—but when he saw the human figures come through, wearing black clothes and black masks, the outer layers of his patiently accreted, ultracivilized psyche seemed to peel away. He knew that he had to fight, and he thanked providence that he still knew how. In his innermost self, he was still primitive, even feral. He had no weapon, and he could see the foremost of the invaders had some kind of snub-nosed pistol in his hand, but he knew that he had to go forward and not back.
His rush seemed to take the intruder by surprise; the man’s eyes were still slightly dazzled by the bright light. Silas lashed out with his foot at the hand which held the gun, and felt his slippered toes make painful connection—but the pain was immediately controlled by his internal technology.
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