Shade’s Children. Garth Nix

APP. CUT IN. VISUAL DIAGNOSIS. COMPLEX

      FRACTURE OF HUMERUS. MAJOR BLOOD-VESSEL DAMAGE. EMERGENCY MEDICAL TREATMENT INDICATED.>

      I jumped… They almost had me… but I can’t crawl further… I can’t…

      <SOBBING.>

      A team could get me out. Ella or Stelo, they’ll come. They’ll come, won’t they, Shade?

      <MEDISCAN APP. CUT IN. PROGNOSIS: TREATMENT

      REQUIRED WITHIN 134 MINUTES. PATIENT IN SEVERE SHOCK. BLOOD LOSS SIGNIFICANT.>

      It’s pretty dry down here… Maybe… maybe dry enough for Ferrets… but it’s not far… not far. They’ll get here before dark. Yeah, it’s OK, they’ll get here… They’ll get here… Shade… help me.

      <INCOHERENCE. RAT-EYE BETA

       RESUMES PATROL 10:09:55.>

       CHAPTER SIX

      Shade didn’t say anything for a moment after Drum left. He just sat there behind his desk, watching Gold-Eye – who had the uncomfortable feeling that he was somehow being measured or analysed.

      “Your eyes have less gold in them than they did outside,” Shade said finally. “Which is very interesting. We’re underwater here, and water does seem to have a damping effect on Change Talents, Change side-effects – and on creatures.”

      “I not… creature,” Gold-Eye said hastily. He’d been accused of that before, on the rare occasions he’d met other people.

      “No, you’re not,” said Shade decisively. “Just visibly affected by the Change, which is quite rare. But not unheard of. I have seen other cases. Now, Gold-Eye, I’m going to ask you some questions and I’m also going to tell you some things. OK?”

      “Yes.”

      “You’ve heard me talk about the Change and Change Talents. Do you know what I mean?”

      Gold-Eye frowned in thought. History as such wasn’t taught in the Dorms, but there were always children who seemed to know things and would tell the others. He wasn’t sure about details, but the general picture was pretty clear.

      “Before,” he replied slowly, “there lots of people, who could get old. Then the Change. Grown-up peoples go. Overlords come. Creatures come. Dormitories. Sad Birthdays. The Meat Factory…”

      “Good.” Shade smiled. “That’s about right. Almost fifteen years ago, something happened or was made to happen. For an instant everything stopped. Everything moving halted, every machine, every car. In that instant every person over the age of fourteen vanished. Destroyed… translated into another reality… translocated… I don’t know… And then the Overlords came and herded the survivors into the Dorms. A few weeks after that, the first creatures appeared – built with teenagers’ brains – and the Overlords began their ritual battles…”

      He paused, and Gold-Eye raised his hand, remembering the treatment meted out to Ninde for her unauthorised question.

      “But you?” asked Gold-eye, after he was sure Shade had noticed the upraised hand.

      Shade smiled again and leaned back in his chair, hands linked behind his glossy black-haired head.

      “Yes, everyone disappeared – except me. Or including me, depending on how you look at it. You see, Gold-Eye, I’m not really a person at all!”

      As he said that, Shade vanished and the lights went out. Gold-Eye shot up out of the sofa, heart drumming, then subsided back into the cushions. It was pitch-black and he knew he couldn’t find the hatch. The thought of stumbling across one of the spider robots or rat things…

      Then Shade spoke again, his voice echoing from every corner of the room.

      “What I am, Gold-Eye, is a human personality stored in a computer’s memory. I have the memories of that real person. I think like a real person. To some degree, I still have the feelings of a real person. But no flesh, save the holographic appearance you have seen – which I must confess is partly based on a twentieth-century actor – so I look rather better than I did in the flesh. A conceit that possibly shows my continuing humanity…

      “Do you understand what I’m telling you, Gold-Eye?”

      “Yes. You live in machine, show yourself in pictures,” said Gold-Eye, nervously directing each word to a different part of that night-dark chamber, as if a sound would strike the real Shade and make him reappear.

      “Good. Very good,” said Shade. He sounded surprised; then his voice returned to that confident, bass tone – only growing much louder as he continued to talk.

      “You are quick to grasp the idea. However strange my physical form, I am a mature adult, complete with the sophisticated education of the pre-Change years and equipped with some of its best technology. And as the only educated adult left, perhaps in the whole world, it is my duty to fight against the intruders who have destroyed what we had… my duty to restore humanity… my duty to turn back the Change!”

      With this last word, the green laser suddenly stabbed back on. Gold-Eye screamed, flinging himself back into the cushions, an arm covering his face.

      When nothing awful followed, he slowly lowered the arm – and the hologram of Shade was back behind the desk, calmly drinking an equally holographic glass of water.

      “Ahhh,” said Shade, putting the glass down. “I’m sorry if I scared you, Gold-Eye. I feel very strongly about our struggle… no… our war… against the Overlords. Not for myself so much – but for you, and all the other children in the Dormitories, in the Meat Factory. Those of us who can do something must do something. You agree with that, I trust?”

      “Yes,” muttered Gold-Eye, who would have agreed to anything Shade wanted him to. However, it was obvious that the Overlords and their creatures were enemies of people, so it didn’t take much to agree with that. Still, he wished it was Ella or Drum explaining everything to him. Not this fearful man-computer person…

      “Excellent,” said Shade, drawing his lips back as he pronounced each syllable slowly. “Ex… cel… lent. I won’t have people here who don’t participate in the war against the Overlords. We’re all soldiers, Gold-Eye, doing whatever we can. And like soldiers in the time before the Change, we must be trained to fight well. Don’t you agree?”

      “Not sure meaning?” Gold-Eye replied nervously. The school machines in the Dorm gave you electric shocks if you gave the wrong answer more than once. And Shade was sort of a school machine too…

      “You have to learn to fight!” Shade said, stabbing his forefinger at Gold-Eye. “Much of what you will do here will be learning. Learning how to fight the Overlords’ creatures, learning combat skills. And learning for its own sake too. English – where I think you need some work. History. Science. We must preserve and use knowledge in human minds, Gold-Eye. Not just on disks and tapes and in books. Knowledge must be used! Used first to fight the Overlords, of course. Active in mind and body, that’s the ticket. Do you have any questions?”

      The sudden question, on top of a monologue that was largely meaningless to Gold-Eye, shook the boy. Once again, he looked from side to side like a frightened rabbit and his mouth opened soundlessly.

      “No? You should always have questions, Gold-Eye. Asked in their proper turn, but there should always be questions. Now, what are we going to do with you?”

      “Do with me?” asked Gold-Eye, voice squeaking almost as high as Drum’s. That was the phrase the Overlords’ voices spoke on Sad Birthdays, when these enigmatic beings came to oversee the latest crop of fourteen-year-olds, checking the collated school and physical reports to see if the person’s brain, nerves and muscle were to be used in Winger, Myrmidon, Tracker,