15
The next several days blurred into a long, dull trudge through tunnel after tunnel, punctuated with brief periods of interest or terror. Changeling accepted her new limitations, as she inevitably must. Xen was grateful for the packbot's lack of emotional range. A resentful AI would have been too much to deal with on top of everything else.
They crossed paths with two more parties of travelers, one of Ghouls and one of smoothskinned men and women. Both were immediately identifiable as neutral (if not harmless) by the fact that Charon did not immediately attempt to kill them. Both passed on without incident. Xen added to her ongoing catalogue of different human appearances. Some of the smoothskins were dark, like people she had only seen in pictures. One woman, black-haired and ivory-skinned, had an obvious epicanthic fold across the inside of each eye. Xen watched in fascination until she was out of sight.
"A human example of neoteny," she said, remembering her reading. "Are there very many of those?"
"There are numerous persons of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese descent in the Capital Wasteland, among other, less-common Asian and Southeast Asian groups," said Changeling. "If it is the genetic characteristic to which you refer, it has long been suggested that human facial proportions evolved as a neotenous characteristic when compared to earlier primates."
"Do I have neotenous characteristics?" Xen asked. "Besides the human ones?"
"Your third genetic contributor had a residual fourth finger bone but no thumb. Your adult retention of a thumb may be an example of neoteny from his genome, or may be a result of your human genetic contribution. Your second eyelid is undoubtedly a neotenous contribution of the xenoorganism. Adults of that species do not have it."
"Hm." Xen looked at the three long fingers and one thumb of her right hand. They still quivered slightly. "All right. Let's go on."
She spoke to Charon very little, at least until the incident at the buried station. It was at the end of a long day of walking. Xen had just glimpsed the light at the end of their current tunnel when Changeling said, "Mapping indicates there is a station up ahead whose surface entrance is buried under rubble. We will probably find supplies and functional plumbing there. I recommend it as a camp."
"All right," said Xen. As they came closer, she saw Charon raise his head.
"There may be danger here," he said.
Xen felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. "Changeling?"
"We are out of range of thermal scan," the packbot said. "I will report as soon as readings are available." Two minutes later, when they were close enough that Xen could see the open space gaping beyond the tunnel mouth, she said, "Infrared shows seven signatures consistent with adult humans."
Charon muttered something to himself which Xen did not understand. He reached for his shotgun.
"Charon, wait," said Xen.
"Iddis what you wish of me," he said, and lowered his hand. He continued to talk to himself as they approached the tunnel mouth. Xen, listening closely now, caught scattered fragments and phrases, some more heavily accented than others:
We'll get 'em. Tink dey can hide from me? Be cautious. We have not yet ascertained their armaments. Yeah, yeah. We'll get ya, ya bastards.
They came to the broad doorway. Xen rested against the doorpost as she looked at the usual cement pillars, dead escalators, and piles of rubbish. There was a small hole in the distant ceiling, letting in a dazzling beam of natural light. Somewhere outside, it was still daylight. A faint draft of air blew out into the tunnel from the large space.
With it came a charnel stink of blood, excrement, and rot. Xen turned quickly away, trying not to throw up.
"Raiders," she choked. "Can't we go around?"
"Negative," said Changeling. "The tunnel proceeds through the station. There is no path around it."
Xen shivered. "Charon, there are two more than last time, and this is a different kind of space. Will this be a problem?"
"It will not be a problem," said Charon.
Xen bit her own knuckle. She had no fingernails at the ends of her spatulate fingers, so she had no way to pick up that particular one of Dr. Montalban's personal tics. If I send him in there I'll be killing seven people. Never mind what kind of people they are, they'll be dead. Can I do that? Can I live with the consequences if he's wrong, and he gets killed working for me? Can I send Changeling in there if he fails?
Can I live with myself if I turn around right now?
She knew the answer to that one.
"Changeling, charge up your laser," said Xen. "Shoot anything we see that isn't Charon. Charon... go ahead."
"I will obey," he said, over the rising hum of the turret, and the shotgun whirled off his back with such speed that she thought he must have expected her to change her mind. He edged out into the open space and jogged toward the shadow of the escalator. She couldn't see any heat signatures, so the thick concrete of the platform must be between them and Xen. They're all upstairs. She could see a few plywood barriers sticking up over the edges, colorful with scrawls of paint. On the other side of the station, there were wooden walkways set up along the top of dead trains, but no one walked them.
Charon vanished at the top of the escalator. Xen held her breath until she heard the dull reportof the shotgun. One. Two. Three. Four...
A man started to stumble down the escalator, blooming yellow-hot with rage or panic.
"Firing," said Changeling. The laser hissed, and for an infinitesimal instant a line of brilliant heat traced a path between the turret and the man's head. He stiffened, then his knees gave out and he fell. Xen could not take her eyes from his progress down the stairs, head over heels and limp as a broken doll. He wore only a pair of ragged jeans and a bandoleer. The metal on the bandoleer rattled on the escalator as he went, not as loud as the shotgun, but more real. He landed at the bottom in a heap. Xen was obscurely grateful she couldn't see his face.
Someone was screaming curses from upstairs. It was a woman's voice, shrill with panic. Xen resisted the childish urge to cover her ears. She heard Charon's deeper voice shout something, but the words were drowned out.
Then there was a teeth-rattling boom from up above, an explosion of heat that she saw even through the platform. She felt the sound through the soles of her feet. Afterward there was the sound of pieces of... something... raining on the platform upstairs. The rattle of metal and plastic mixed with something wetter and more organic.
"Changeling, what was that?" Xen asked.
"I believe it to have been a hand grenade," said Changeling.
"Did Charon have any of those?"
"Negative," said Changeling.
"Can you read heat signatures through the platform?"
"Affirmative. One living but stationary. Seven cooling."
"So either way, it's safe to go up and look," Xen said.
"Given your reaction to our last encounter with Raiders, I cannot recommend it. Send me instead."
"I don't trust you that much yet," said Xen. "I thought I knew Tori. I wouldn't have thought she was devious enough to upload you. Therefore, I don't know if you are devious enough to lie about my override working. We'll wait here for a minute and see what happens."
After a moment Changeling said, "The signature is moving."
"Toward the escalator?"
"Negative. It is approaching one of the others. It appears to be dragging the corpse."
There was a distant whump. Xen didn't see what had caused it.
"Now it has returned for another," said Changeling. This time Xen was watching for the falling body. It fell past a dead train on the other side of the platform and hit somewhere on the other side with another whump. Five more bodies were dropped off the platform in sequence. Then another couple of somethings that Changeling read as room temperature. Xen supposed they were probably things like the one she had seen in the tunnel, saved by the Raiders for... whatever Raiders used them for. She chose not to picture it, and they fell too fast for her to get a good look.
After that there was a pause. Xen imagined someone standing up on the platform, looking at the aftermath of the grenade. There was a patter of noise after that, the kind of sound that would result from several things being tossed over the side of the platform at once.
"Was that a mattress?" Xen said. Then she heard a loud whoosh that went on and on, like air blowing from a furnace. "What's that noise?"
"I believe it is a flamer," said Changeling. "A roughly constructed weapon with approximately the same use as a classical flamethrower."
"He's... burning something?"
"The heat signature is receding toward the upper station area," said Changeling. "I can no longer read it."
Xen, now thoroughly puzzled, said nothing. A couple of minutes later, Changeling registered the return of the heat signature. Then Charon walked down the escalator with a heavy pack on his back and a long-barreled weapon in both hands. A tiny flame showed at the end of the barrel. He still had his shotgun, attached by its strap to the backpack. Xen watched him without speaking. He glanced at her and Changeling without apparent interest, as if to verify that they were still there. Then he stepped over the corpse at the bottom of the stairs, seized it by the collar, and dragged it around into the maze of dead trains.
The flamer started up again a minute later. Xen listened to it for a while. Smoke rose up toward the ceiling, and she heard a pop and crackle that she had never heard in the lab. "What's that?"
"I believe he is disposing of the bodies," said Changeling. "A small secondary conflagration probably resulted."
"You mean he set them on fire," said Xen. The smell was not pleasant. On the other hand, it wasn't worse than the earlier ones. Better, arguably.
Changeling said, "Yes. The weapon itself will burn much hotter than a conventional flame. He will probably be able to reduce them to ash in fairly short order."
"So we can go upstairs now," Xen asked.
"Affirmative. I will go first."
"All right," said Xen.
The platform smelled of nothing worse than char, now. Xen coughed. The floor was still smoking faintly, and she felt the warmth through the soles of her shoes. Ashen bits of paper litter – at least, she chose to believe they were paper - crunched underfoot as she walked on them. The plywood barriers still stood, but they looked a little singed. Someone had set up a rough counter and a couple of card tables. A couple of dirty mattresses lay nearby. There was an incongruously neat stack of weapons beside them. Xen had a feeling the Raiders hadn't done that. There was also an advisory board tower with a map of the Metro, its interior light still firm and bright. The ticket booth beside it was dark and empty. Its floor was charred as well. Very thorough.
Changeling went to check the plumbing. Xen sat in one of the creaking metal chairs and listened for the flamer to turn off. Then she listened to Charon's quiet footsteps returning up the stairs. He had only the shotgun when he reappeared at the top of the escalator. His body temperature was a little above normal, but he was composed otherwise.
"Are you injured?" Xen asked.
"Minor bruising only," said Charon. "Though unfortunately, I must report dat the flamer ran out of fuel."
"Why did you do all that?" Xen asked.
"It was my unnerstanding dat you wished to rest here. You would not be able to do dat in proximity to corpses."
"That's true," Xen said. So very, very true. And an interesting use of initiative. File that under 'things you didn't know Charon could decide to do on his own.' "But it was a lot more work than two mole rats. Thank you."
"I am yours t'command," Charon said.
"What happened with the grenade?" Xen asked, curiosity rearing its ugly head now that the important questions were answered.
"One of the Raiders made the mistake of t'rowing a grenade immediately after pulling the pin. I derefore returned it," Charon said.
"You picked it up and threw it back," Xen said.
"Dat is correct."
"That would take some very fast reflexes," Xen said. "They probably would've got Changeling after a couple of shots. And I can't defend myself at all." Would they have eaten me, too? Or would I taste too different from a human person? Would they have killed me before they started, or some time after? She looked at Charon thoughtfully. He looked back with the same heavy-lidded stare as always. "I'm glad I hired you," she said.
If Charon had any response to this, he did not share it.