Hayes looked out on the lower floor and said, “No. It’s not here, either.”
“What isn’t?”
“There’s something here. Or someone. I’m not sure yet.”
They went down another floor and looked out at the next level. This one seemed empty, the blank cement floor stretching far back into the shadows. Hayes took one step out and looked into the darkness. Leaned forward as though drawn by an invisible string. His face drained of color and he said, “It’s here.”
He began walking forward. Samantha looked and saw a set of switches on the far right of the wall. She hesitated and then hit them. Out in the gloom orbs of light flickered, quavered, then strengthened and stayed on, revealing a small doorway at the far side of the floor. Set around that were chairs and charts and small tables set in a circle.
Hayes staggered toward the doorway, reeling drunkenly. Samantha rushed to keep up with him and called, “Mr. Hayes! Wait!”
He ignored her, stumbling as he kicked over a chair. Then he fell forward into the small black doorway and was gone.
Samantha slowed as she approached. She looked in and thought. Then she took off her watch and her belt and whatever other metals she wore, though she was not sure why, and took a deep breath and stepped through.
She had expected to feel something. Some change in the air or in the ground beneath her feet. But there was nothing. Just more cement, more cold air, more darkness.
“Mr. Hayes?” she asked.
“I’m here,” said his voice.
“Are you all right?”
“No,” he said quietly.
She reached out and felt along the wall, searching for a light switch again. When she could not find any she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small box of matches and struck one.
She could see Hayes standing nearby, staring into the darkness. He did not appear hurt. She stepped forward to tend to him and as she did the flickering light struck something mere feet ahead. Something immense and shining and golden.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“What is that?” she asked, and stepped closer.
The object’s surface was many-faceted, made of thousands of tiny rectangles of paper-thin gold that were as reflective as a mirror. Its side was rounded but the thing was so enormous it disappeared beyond the light of the match flame. As she moved she saw the match reflected in each of the tiny mirrors, even the ones that, by her guessing, were not at the angle to fully reflect it. She was not sure why but suddenly she felt that all the little mirrors were eyes and each one was watching the light, the image of her face trapped in each of their flat golden pupils.
“It knows we’re here,” Hayes said softly.
“What?”
“This. This thing. I don’t know what it is. But it knows we’re here. It’s thinking. I can feel it.”
Samantha drew away until her back touched the wall. In the dying light of the match flame she saw the light switch at the other end of the room. She paced over and hit it and the room lit up and they saw the thing fully, sitting in the center of the room like an enormous beached whale, long and tapered at both ends with a mass of strange piping hanging truncated from its midsection. It looked like some nameless organ of a massive clock, some great machine that had spent its long life connected to a dozen others in constant movement, back and forth, patient and ageless. In some places clumps of dirt and ripped-out, ancient-looking tree roots had woven their way into the innards of the device and remained lodged there. Some of the mirrors were broken and missing, leaving its glittering hide patched and dark in places.
“This… thinks?” she asked.
“Yes. I can feel it,” Hayes said faintly. “Not like a person. Not like when I’m standing near you. Less than a person. But also more. Like it’s doing only one or two things in comparison to our hundreds, but those things… They’re so big.”
“It’s doing them now?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Not fully. It’s trying to talk to me, Sam. But it’s not… not smart enough. But, Christ, just the fact that it’s trying…”
She leaned close, then reached one hand out to the many mirrors. They seemed to twist with her though she could detect no movement.
“Don’t touch it,” Hayes said sharply.
“What? Why not?”
“It’s not… not happy, I don’t think.”
She paced around it, watching the images in the mirrors move. She looked at the mixed jumble of tubing that dangled off the midsection. Looked at the brass and crystalline threads hanging limp like rags. It was as delicate as a dragonfly’s wing. She remembered her wonder at the machine Tazz had shown them in the tunnels, and now that device seemed huge and clumsy and stupid in comparison to this thing of terrifying grace. She looked around and saw the walls were lined with worktables, each one paired with a bench. On all the tables were hundreds of tools, pliers and microscopes and thick drills, and in some places there were white stone slabs each with a small golden piece set in the center. She examined these and saw the pieces were tiny gears or many-faceted rods of incredibly intricate make, and guessed they had been pulled or ripped from the strange machine in order to be examined.
“How could McNaughton have made a machine that thinks?” she asked.
“I don’t think they did,” said Hayes from the other side.
“Then who? Kulahee? Do you think this could be one of his first ones, maybe?”
“I don’t think this was made by people, Sam.”
She stopped, then came around to look at him. “What?”
“I don’t think this was made by men.”
“Then… What?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. But I don’t think this could have been made anywhere on Earth.”
She stepped farther back, eyes tracing over its long, sloping figure, like a golden piece of driftwood washed up on the cement floor. She could see no source of power feeding the machine and yet she knew somehow that it was on and functioning. Unlike Tazz’s mechanism she felt this device could not be stopped, could never fall dead. It was somehow eternal, unending, or perhaps it had been forged in a place where time was as easily manipulated as steel or wood.
“The machines they make seem like they were never built for people,” said Hayes quietly. “And sometimes the workers think they talk to them, in their heads…”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s nothing,” he said. “It’s just what someone said to me not too long ago.” He swallowed. “This building,” he whispered. “It goes down far below.”
“All of our facilities are seventy percent underground,” Samantha said without thinking.
“But down there. Below us. I think there’s more.”
“More of these things?”
He shook his head. “But ones like it. Being stored. And waiting. And they’ve been waiting for so long…”
Samantha remembered the sounds of the machines in the deeps, and the faint pounding of strange devices filling the underground chambers. “Waiting for what?” she asked softly.
Hayes lurched forward, grasped his chest, then turned away and vomited onto the cement. Samantha went to him and pulled the hair out of his face and pounded his back. As he coughed she noticed something lying not more than a few feet away. She picked it up and studied it.
“What is that?” Hayes asked between breaths.
“A hat,” she said. “A child’s hat.”
Hayes looked at her and she knew he was wondering how and why a child could be there.
“We need to go,” Samantha said.
“You’re probably right,” Hayes said.
They slipped back through the patrols easily. The night was moonless and quiet, the whole world sleeping and shrouded in darkness. They passed through the woods and walked along the shore, searching for the boat.