time the handle moved toward him.
Should I keep pulling? he wondered. It seemed the only natural
thing to do. He had to pull hard on it, but eventually the handle
came flush with the wall. When Edgar let it go it wanted to slide
slowly back into the hole, so he pulled it back and turned it to
the left. This locked it into place, where it stayed.
Edgar had no idea what he'd just done. He turned toward the
back wall, once so hard and immovable, and saw that it was
changing before his very eyes. The thick yellow veins of light
had turned molten red. The veins widened more and more, until
there were no veins at all but a throbbing wall of heat.
"What have I done?" said Edgar, his voice trembling and
unsteady. The place seemed to have come to life and he feared
for his life all over again.
Edgar scrambled for the handle and tried to turn it back, but it
had locked into place. Whatever Edgar had set in motion would
continue whether he liked it or not. He could wait and let the
room dissolve into lava or run down the passage and face a
monster waiting to tear him to pieces.
The center of the back wall began to melt. Edgar expected it to
flow across the floor and overtake him, but instead the section
of wall slid down into the ground. It appeared to be hollow
below the back wall, so that the liquefied stone simply fell away
and left a wide opening that could be passed through. Under
the opening lay a wide, bubbling orange cauldron of lava.
Edgar approached the opening cautiously and felt the heat
grow with each step. It became so hot he could barely stand it
and thought his clothes would ignite into flames. The thin hairs
on his forearms shrank and twisted as if beaten down by the
destructive power of heat. A charred black rim surrounded the
opening, and whatever lay on the other side was hidden by a
layer of hissing steam.
Edgar stepped back, away from the heat, and tried to think. If he
jumped through the opening he might well be leaping into an
open oven on the other side. Or, just as horrible, the weight of
gravity might pull him down as he tried to cross over. He didn't
even want to think about what it would feel like to sink into a
boiling vat of melted Atherton.
Edgar looked in the direction from which he'd come and knew
he couldn't get out. He gathered all his courage, took two deep
breaths of hot air, and ran as fast as his legs would go.
I can't turn back! I can only jump with every thing that's in me.
And so he did.
CHAPTER 74200
Station Seven was a metal and glass building that hovered over
a lifeless, rock-encrusted cove on the Dark Planet. A web of
entangled steel beams suspended the station in the air, where it
was safe from the toxic sludge that drifted in and out each day.
At the vast window of Station Seven sat a woman looking at the
shadows of a forsaken wood outside.
"It's quiet tonight," she concluded. "Too quiet."
The woman brushed a hand across her brow and returned her
arm to rest on the rail of her chair. There was a coldness about
her, as if the Dark Planet had made her heart turn to stone. She
held a vacant but powerful stare into the night beyond the
window.
"What will you do?" she asked. As usual there was no one in
the wide open room to hear her. She had long ago fallen into
the habit of speaking to herself. There were few others for her to
hold a conversation with, and besides, she preferred to be left
alone.
The woman was having one of her frequent recollections of a
conversation with Dr. Luther Kincaid. Eight years ago--had it
been that long? Eight years of silence, and in those eight years,
the Dark Planet had grown much darker still. And Station
Seven? It was but a shell of its former significance. Almost
everyone had fled with the arrival of the Spikers.
"You will bring him back," the woman said forcefully, replaying
the words she'd said in that distant conversation. "You will find
a way."
There was a visible change in her face--a cringing of hate and
regret--as the face of Atherton's maker came into her memory.
single second without being overcome with anger. For a long
time she had gone every day down one of the three passages
to visit his laboratory.
"He'll come back and finish what he started," she would say.
After a year of waiting she grew bitter. She had trusted Dr.
Kincaid. Every resource at her disposal had been freely given,
all of her formidable powers of persuasion put to the test to
gather anything and every thing he requested. But a year more
had passed in devastating silence. Not a sound or a signal.
Nothing!
Her anger turned a sharp and treacherous eye toward everyone
who had been involved in the making of Atherton. Thousands of
others had once walked the halls of Station Seven. She turned
on them, hating them for their failure to find a solution.
And then, all at once it had seemed, something had died inside
the woman at the window. Her moral will collapsed and she
sank into grief. It happened on the day of the third year passing
without a sign. A new bitterness filled her eyes, and everyone
saw. She drove all but the most hardened away and set her
course in a new and cruel direction. From that point on, Station
Seven was, for all intents and purposes, abandoned and
forgotten like so many other places on the Dark Planet.
It was said that she had lost her soul in the making of Atherton.
The woman at the window could have gone to another station
and continued to lead and to work. She had certainly been
asked. She had been president and supreme ruler in better
times; she was brilliant, and she knew how to control people.
But she had long ago made her choice. Her reputation was
sullied by the failure of Atherton. In the failing world of the Dark
Planet, this remarkable woman at the window had been
forgotten along with Station Seven.
Her name was Commander Judix.
Every corner of the Dark Planet is failing, she thought to herself.
Of those who remained, scattered on the bleak surface of the
Dark Planet, no one went outside. And no one ever visited
Station Seven. Dr. Harding had seen to that by filling the
forsaken wood with Cleaners and Spikers.
Commander Judix was the only person who occasionally
visited Dr. Harding's abandoned laboratory at the end of a
darkened passageway. She would allow no one else to enter.
In the five more years that had passed without the slightest sign
of life from Atherton, Commander Judix had taken to visiting the
lab less frequently, a nearly forgotten disaster from a more
optimistic time. There were more pressing matters at hand.
And so it was that a small and distant signal could have been
detected but was not. Inside the laboratory there was a little
blue light blink
ing on a slick black surface. Soon the blue light
would move, but would anyone from Station Seven even know
it had appeared?
Commander Judix sighed and touched a pale yellow button on
the arm of her chair.
"Shelton," said Commander Judix. "Come to the window."
Commander Judix heard the faraway echo of approaching
footsteps. It would be a while before the footsteps reached her.
Station Seven was a place made for thousands, but only a few
dozen remained. When someone moved, the place became
haunted by the long echo of metal-soled boots on an endless
metal floor.
She had made a decision about the Silo and needed someone
else to share the bad news. There was guilt over what needed
to be done, though to be fair, this was not what kept her awake
at night. Where the children were concerned there were always
those who would try to oppose her. In the face of a dying world,
Commander Judix shared no such feelings. It was a matter of
hanging on as long as one could by whatever means
necessary. A person's age had nothing to do with it.
Hanging on wasn't easy, either, since the world had become
fragmented beyond all reckoning. There were the seven
stations, separated by great distance and failing lines of
communication. Commander Judix hadn't formally heard from
any of the other stations in over two years. There were human
outposts scattered every where, gigantic metal buildings filled
with people trying to survive in the daily onslaught of so many
threats. One such outpost was but twenty miles inland from the
beach where Station Seven sat alone.
Sometimes there were stragglers--mostly children--who slipped
into the forsaken wood and couldn't find their way out again.
The older a person was, the more devastating it was to be
outside at all. But there was a magic age, or so it seemed, in
which a person could be out quite a lot and still survive.
4200 days old and you could be outside for days at a time and
still live. It wouldn't even bother a twelve-or thirteen-year-old.
Before that, the human body was too fragile and there were
awful side effects to overexposure. And after 5000 days--almost
fourteen years old--things started to swing the other way again.
The eyes would begin to sink deeper and darker. Soon, these
children couldn't go outside at all without goggles and masks,
which weren't always easy to come by.
It was this magic age of 4200 days that had kept Station Seven
afloat as the Dark Planet grew darker and more dangerous.
Commander Judix finally saw Shelton's watery reflection in the
glass.
"Yes, Madam?"
Shelton was a grave, humorless man. He hadn't always been
that way, but the circumstances in which he found himself
seemed to have drained all happiness from him. He had
resigned himself to waiting for the end and knew it would
come--probably sooner than later.
Commander Judix spun around in her chair. She was the only
person at Station Seven who could not be heard moving
around, because she had no legs. She rolled from place to
place in complete silence and was fond of sneaking up on
people because it was something she could do that no one else
could.
"How many 4200s at the Silo?" she asked. Eleven and a half
years old sounded so young. Commander Judix was much
more comfortable calling them by the number of days they'd
been alive. 4200 days sounded like a long time to have lived in
a fallen world.
Shelton was terrified by the sound of her voice. She had ruled
the most powerful hemisphere, then commanded the entire
world as it fell apart before her very eyes. She had been
powerful beyond imagining, controlling armies and weaponry
he couldn't calculate. And in this isolated world of Station
Seven she remained the supreme ruler. It was an inescapable
fact that, like King Henry or Queen Elizabeth, she controlled
every thing within her realm from the wheelchair throne she sat
on.
"At last count--that would have been four days past--there were
only two 4200's, a girl and a boy," answered Shelton in a shaky
voice.
"Are you positive that's all there is?" asked Commander Judix,
alarmed. "No one new in three months' time?"
"I'm afraid not, Madam. The wood has been very quiet as of
late. And we lost two more of Grammel's batch last week. Most
of what he's leaving behind isn't making it to 4000. He finds
them along the way, you know. They're too young to be
standing on the banks waiting for someone to save them. He
only wants them if they're old enough and strong enough to
work outside."
The number of new children had been dwindling fast for
months. Commander Judix knew this. Where once there had
been one or two children every week stumbling into one of the
traps in the forsaken wood, now there were hardly any. And
Captain Grammel was bringing nothing but 2000's who were far
too weak to survive life in the Silo. Only a year ago there had
been nine eleven-year-olds at the Silo, but they were gone now.
The pipeline wasn't filling up as it once had.
"Send the transport farther out, past the wood if you have to."
Shelton could already imagine the conversation he would have
with the dwindling transport team.
"It will be hard to convince them," he said. "They say the
Spikers and Cleaners are fighting over territory more and more.
The forsaken wood is a hazardous place, to say the least."
A mad rage boiled under Commander Judix's skin as she
thought of Dr. Harding and the mess he'd left behind.
"Grammel will be here in four more days. If we can't produce at
least three children, he's not going to leave us a hundred days'
worth of fuel."
Shelton was thinking of the children in the Silo. Only two
elevens, but there was a big group of tens. Six boys and four
girls. And there were nines and eights--at least a dozen of them
in all. That made... what was it? Twenty-four children. And only
two elevens!
"It's a shame Grammel won't take them younger than 4200,"
said Shelton.
Grammel used the same device as Shelton, Red Eye, and
Socket to measure the age of the children. If the tip of the device
was touched to skin it would produce a reading, right down to
the minute, of how old a person was.
"Maybe I could convince him. Captain Grammel's probably
finding it slim all along the coastline," said Commander Judix.
"He may well take whatever we can give him."
"Hope won't like this," said Shelton. "She'll make a terrible
fuss."
"Then do your job," said Commander Judix. She had turned on
him with an accusing tone, as if Shelton were the sole reason
for their troubles.
Had she heard him? It wasn't a few Spikers in the forsaken
wood, it was a pod of them, and that meant a queen. They
couldn't let anything that big near Station Seven, but without
Grammel's fuel the power station would stop running. What
then? The air would run out, and the water, too. But most
appalling of all, the electric shield would come down. They'd be
unprotected. The Cleaners and Spikers could get in.
"I'll make them go farther out," he said. And then, thinking like
the coward that he was, he added, "You know, a ten-year-old
could be almost 4000 days old. We have ten of those in the
Silo. I could check them to be sure."
Commander Judix didn't look at Shelton. She couldn't look at
him without wanting to run him down with her chair. Is this what
she was left with? Cowards and weaklings and fools! Everyone
else had fled long ago. But what choice did she have? Spikers
and Cleaners were rampant in the forsaken wood. She would
have to start conserving fuel, running the power station on
reserve. Soon, so very soon, the shields would fail and leave
Station Seven open to attack.
They took my legs before--and my family. What would they take
this time?
"See how many days old the tens are," she said. "And tell Red
Eye and Socket what's going on. Don't say anything to Hope
until we have to. You still have time to make this right."
The words stung in Shelton's mind as Commander Judix spun
her chair around on its wheels and rol ed away in silence,
leaving him standing alone in a giant, empty room.
Grammel. Shelton couldn't stand the captain of the supply ship.
Every hundred days, like clockwork, he would come on the
churning waters of the acid-soaked sea. Moored at the hundredyard tip of the stone jetty, he would pull the horn and send
bil owing plumes of black smoke into the air. Shelton could
actually imagine the man's face, completely covered in soot and
smiling from ear to ear, rows of white teeth flashing as he
plugged in the fuel hose. Grammel's ship was huge and ugly,
spewing a filth into the air that was as much liquid as smoke.
The ship left everyone and every thing in its path covered in
rancid soot.
"You'll take the tens," whispered Shelton. "You'll take them or
we'll have your precious ship and every thing in it."
But a ship without a captain wasn't likely to set sail again, and
eventually the fuel would run out for good. Then what would he
do?
A little while later Aggie woke with a start as she always did,
disoriented in the ever-present darkness of the Silo. She never