A Science Fiction Novel

More by reflex than by plan, the young man threw his hands up over his face as the shards of wood panelling sprayed across his body and then he paused for just an instant, shocked and confused, before the ceiling creaked in agony and then fell downward, pinning him beneath it.

After a moment of stunned silence Atwood suddenly realized that his body was afire with the pain of numerous cuts, gashes, and bruises and he groaned, attempting to turn sideways to push himself to his feet. But the heavy steel desk that had protected him from most of the rubble that had fallen from the ceiling also held him pinned and helpless so that he couldn't move.

For a moment he had a flash of horrified panic as he thought he was paralyzed from the waist down, but then with what was very nearly a scream he managed to push the desk and pile of clutter off his hips and upper legs and he rose, whole but shaky, to his feet.

Atwood rubbed the side of his right hand across his brow, clearing enough of the plasterboard dust from his face to allow him to see, through stinging, watery eyes, the remains of the small building, which stood in jumbled piles on every side of him. Then he began systematically to pull splinters of wood and glass from his hands and forearms, barely noticing the dust and chaos surrounding him.

Somewhere in the distance a siren began wailing, followed by another and then another and then yet others, until it seemed that a whole tribe of banshees was screaming for all it was worth somewhere overhead. After Atwood had pulled the largest and most obvious of the splinters from his hands he managed to overcome some of the shock that had been cushioning him from the horror of his position. He realized, at first in a vague way and then with greater and greater clarity, that people were rushing about on every side of him, digging frantically at the rubble.

If it had been anywhere else in the human universe Atwood might have been offended that the rescue squads seemed to be paying virtually no attention whatsoever to him, but this was Mechanica, after all. And while the young private had only been living there for something over a Terrestrial year, he had quickly become used to the fact that humans didn't have the kind of status that would have justified the rescuers in tending to him in an emergency. At least not until they were certain that all of the native-born citizens of the world were taken care of first.

Not that Mechanicals didn't value humans, of course, in fact they were, to a considerable extent, totally dependent upon their human servants in almost every possible way and treated them accordingly. But it was an accepted fact of life on that planet that the natives came first. Humans were useful, and even greatly appreciated and admired, but no one who knew the ways of that world would have expected that the rescuers would bother with an injured man until they had first made certain that they had done everything possible to help Sergeant Davis, who was a native Mechanical.

Because of this fact Atwood was left largely to his own resources and so he stumbled his way free of the rubble that had, just moments before, been the guardhouse where he had been employed as a trainee. He sank down, dizzy and weak, on the runningboard of an ambulance that was backed up to the scene of the calamity.

"So, how are you feeling, lad?" a sympathetic voice asked.

Atwood raised his weary eyes and blinked in an ineffective attempt to clear them of dust and his own tears, expecting to find another human standing at his side, but he saw no one closer than the men in women in firemen's outfits scrambling frantically in the ruins of the guardhouse.

The young man paused for just a moment in confusion and then his mind cleared a bit and he realized that it was the aubulance itself which had spoken.

"I'm all right, I guess," he tried to say, but his throat was filled with dust and he coughed and retched before managing, finally, to croak out a few words.

"You don't look too bad," the ambulance said judiciously. Privately Atwood imagined that he must look a half-dead mess, but he had been on Mechanica long enough to realize that the natives had an entirely different definition of what constituted good health than a human would have.

Being made up entirely of parts that could be replaced, all except the semi-organic brains that constituted their essential selves, the Mechanicals could survive even the most horrific of crashes on those death-traps they liked to call their freeway systems, as long as they had humans to do the necessary repairs for them or, at the worst, to transfer their brains to another vehicle body altogether, so that as long as their brains weren't entirely crushed in their heavy, almost indestructible casings, they could shrug off even terrible injuries as mere incidents.

Since they were somewhat in awe of a biological body's ability to heal itself without help, they also tended to overestimate the natural resilience of an injured or sick human.

Even so, as Atwood cautiously examined his various injuries he had to admit that the ambulance was right. Unless he had some hidden, internal injuries which had not yet revealed themselves, he was in remarkably good shape for a man who had just had a building fall on him.

Having reached this conclusion, he rose on unsteady feet and peered over at the ruins of the guardhouse, where the human rescuers had already pulled away most of the rubble from where the body of Sergeant Davis had been buried.

Atwood wasn't the type to be squeamish, especially when it came to pseudo-automobiles, but he flinched as he saw the twisted, mangled body of the sergeant as it was exposed from its grave beneath the heavy cement blocks that had fallen on top of it.

He heard the ambulance grunting behind him and he turned in its direction, then suddenly he was overcome with a brief flash of dizziness and he propped himself with a hand against the vehicle's side before regaining his balance.

"Easy, human, easy," the ambulance's voice said soothingly. "Sure, it looks bad, but I'm guessing the poor chap's brain is still intact, and that means he can be-"

But at that moment there was a chorus of cries from the humans gathered around the remains of the crushed automobile, and they broke into a mad scramble away from the guardhouse. Before Atwood could realize what was happening there was a loud whooshing sound and the entire pile of rubble burst into fierce, roaring flames. Then just as suddenly there was a loud explosion, throwing fire and blazing ruins in every direction.

Once more Atwood was knocked from his feet, but this time he had been a bit better prepared and he quickly rolled beneath the high frame of the old-style ambulance to escape the flaming rubble. Fortunately, he had just cleared the wheels when the ambulance roared into life and pulled sharply backward in an attempt to get away from the fire, so that in a moment he was lying totally exposed as the vehicle backed away over him.

Atwood groaned and threw his hands up over his head, expecting to be engulfed in flames, but the fire was already starting to splutter out as the rest of the gasoline from the crushed car's tank burned away, leaving little more than a scattering of smouldering fragments here and there on the pavement.

He raised his head cautiously and then rose to his feet, gazing with wide-mouthed amazement at the thick, oily smoke billowing up where the remains of the crushed car had been exposed just moments before. He was no expert on such things, but he found it hard to believe that even the toughest of insulation would have been able to save Sergeant Davis' brain from the devastating effects of such a violent explosion. To all appearances the monkeys had just managed to kill one of the governing elite of Mechanica, a crime almost beyond imagination even for Atwood, who had been living on that planet for only a few years and so might have been expected to view with indifference the destruction of what might have seemed to be a mere automobile.

As he stood there staring at the fire with stunned disbelief, he heard a sudden cry from somewhere behind him and he turned, stiff and slow from his bruises and from shock, to catch a bare glimpse of movement before he was knocked to his face and rough hands pulled his arms sharply backward. He struggled in panic to free himself, but a sharp blow on the back of his head slammed his face against the hard pavement and he was, temporarily, too stunned to resist any further as he was trussed up, smoothly and efficiently, and then lifted from the ground. He shook his head weakly but a coarse cloth was pulled with painful tightness around his eyes and he felt himself being carried off, bound and helpless, by what seemed a vast number of small, strong hands. He groaned and tried to cry out, but then his injuries and shock overcame him and he slipped into merciful unconsciousness.