Backlash

by Nicholas Fisk

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; YA Science Fiction

Synopsis

The time is the middle of the twenty-first century; the place Argosy IV. Marooned on this alien planet, the three Clegg children are taken captive by hostile robot Doops, led by the cruel Princess Supa. Meanwhile, underground, Madrigal and Hansi are busy plotting... But what is their sinister secret? And who or what is 553?

Release date: January 6, 2020

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 320

Sample

“I can’t, I can’t,” Boo moaned, and let himself fall on his face on the strange, rubbery, purplish undergrowth. He buried his head in his arms. His legs thrashed feebly. His body heaved. Tears spilled over his plump arms.

“If he can’t, he can’t,” Leo said, “and that’s all there is to it. He’s only four.”

Behind them, they could hear the sounds of the Doops. The Doops were chasing them, hunting them down. Very soon, the Doops would catch them.

“Could we carry him?” Mina said, gasping the words.

“Carry him!” Leo answered. “You’re joking! I can hardly stagger!”

Leo was nearly eleven. His sister Mina was twelve. They were tall, strong and well made: typical Earthside children of their time, the middle of the twenty-first century. But they were exhausted. Almost done for.

“They’re getting closer,” Mina said. Her head was cocked like a frightened animal’s. She could hear the Doops – their whooping cries, the rattle of their weapons, the harsh commands of their leader – but she could not see them. The “trees” and “plants” hid them. She shuddered.

Everything about Argosy IV was alien and horrible. The “trees” were great slippery tubes, flesh-coloured and glistening, topped with leaves like ragged spears. The “plants” were either the rubbery, purple things on which little Boo lay sobbing, or writhing tangles of what could have been animal entrails, fleshy, wet, sodden, stinking. The Galaxy Manual said: “Argosy IV, though a planet of some interest to the botanist, offers few other attractions to the Earthside visitor.” Mina had read the words on the journey to Argosy. They rang true.

“We’ve got to get on, we must do something,” she said. “Boo, listen to me! Get up, Boo!”

“Won’t,” Boo said. “Can’t.” He kicked his stained legs.

“You can. You must.”

Far above their heads, there was a fleshy splat! Then another. “More nets,” Leo hissed. “Come on, move!”

They pulled Boo to his feet and dragged him, blubbering, through the undergrowth. Above them, the Doops’ bullets smacked into the trees and released the nets. The nets fell almost like sheets of rain. You had to run like mad to escape their fine, immensely strong meshes. Boo could not run fast enough. Leo said, “Mina – grab an arm and a leg each, OK?” Before, they had tugged Boo along by his arms. Now he was spreadeagled, flying above the undergrowth. It was a good idea: they got on faster. Behind them, the nets lazily showered down, catching nothing. Leo and Mina groaned, sweated and stumbled on, deeper into the forest.

But always, the Doops came closer.

They reached a different place, a sort of clearing, with sullen grey rocks jutting out from the ground, and dead and dying trees that could not live with the rocks. Mina gasped, “Rest!”

They collapsed, panting; then looked for hiding places in the rocks. There were some small caves and caverns, but what good would they be? The Doops would smell them out one way or another.

“I’m going to take a look,” Leo said, nodding his head at a dead, dried-out tree. Its trunk had fallen at an angle to the ground. He crawled up and along it on all fours. Sometimes the scabby bark gave way and his foot slipped on the soapy trunk beneath. Leo tottered, swore and clung on for dear life.

But when he reached the crown of the tree, he was rewarded. The advancing Doops could not see him: the tree’s sword-like leaves hid him. But he could see the Doops.

There were perhaps thirty of them, fanned out. Their bodies and heads looked human. This did not surprise Leo. Doops were called Doops because they had been designed as duplicates – human-like, artificial beings imitating men and women. Their structures even included human elements: cloned flesh and bone, laboratory-produced kits of human genes and structures. The rest was electronics and engineering, computers and gadgetry.

“Doop-a-doop-a-doop, leave it to your Doop!” the old ads had promised.

Mow the lawn?

Mind the kids?

Paint the shed?

Serve the soup?

Now you’ve got it easy! Now you’ve got a Doop!

Leo had heard a lot about Doops. Now he saw them.

What he saw frightened him.

They were good. Much too good. They moved too easily, too humanly. They were too well muscled, too alert-looking. In the TV ads, they were always shown as mild-mannered servants; these Doops looked anything but mild.

Two things surprised him. First, he thought that every Doop would exactly resemble every other Doop. It wasn’t so. There were considerable differences, apart from the obvious difference of male and female. Some Doops were tall, some stocky, some dark, some fair. The human designers of the Doops must have been brilliant genetic engineers.

The second surprise was the Doops’ dress – gaudy, noisy, outrageous. They had adorned themselves with metal or plastic jewellery, with curving swords, with glittering helmets and thonged sandals. They bellowed, screeched, pranced and flourished their weapons.

The leader was the most outrageous of them all. Her black hair flowed and waved like a dark sea over her golden skin. With her right hand, she brandished a spear; in her left, she held a jewel-crusted globe. Amplifier inside it, Leo thought. That’s why her screechings sound so loud.

Below him, Mina called, “What can you see? What’s happening?” Boo’s face looked up at him too. “I’m hungry,” he said. He sounded like a juvenile foghorn.

“I’ve got to eat!”

Leo shouted down to them. “There’s a lot of them, and they’ve got a leader. She’s —”

“She?” Mina called back. “Did you say, ‘she’?”

“Yes, a woman. Well, a female, anyhow.”

“What are they doing?”

“They’re still coming on, they’re all dressed up like warriors — ”

“I’m hungry.”

“Shut, up, Boo. Listen, Mina, we’ll have to stay here, there’s nothing around us but more jungle. We’ll have to surrender!”

“Oh no we won’t! I’m not giving myself up! Or Boo!”

“Hungry. Oh, boo. Oh, boo-hoo. Boo-hoo-hoo!”

Leo thought, Boo always starts crying the same way, first of all a “boo”, then the rest of it. Out loud, Leo said, “Shut up, Boo.” He stared at the Doops. He was chilled with fear. They were getting closer and closer.

Mina said, “I’m coming up! Boo, stay there and don’t move and stop crying or I’ll skin you alive.”

She began clambering along the sloping, treacherous tree trunk. Boo watched her with big eyes still wet with tears. His mouth pouted but he did not cry. Leo thought, You’re a good little man. Well, you have to be good if your parents zoom you round all the nastiest bits of the Galaxy in crummy ships that keep going wrong …

“Good boy, Boo, you’re a good boy!” he shouted.

Boo said, “Good,” then “Hungry!”

Mina was beside Leo now. They silently watched the Doops. “They know where we are, don’t they?” Mina whispered. “I suppose they’ve got all sorts of sensors and sonars and thermotrackers …”

“Course they know,” Leo said. “So there’s no need to whisper. They’re coming for us. They’ll get us.”

“That woman,” Mina said in an awed voice. “She’s awful! If she gets us – if she gets hold of Boo …”

“She won’t do anything,” Leo said. “I mean, the Doops are programmed, they wouldn’t actually harm us …” His words tailed off.

Now the leader-woman was carried on the shoulders of two tall warrior Doops. She was jerking her spear above her head, thrusting it towards Leo and Mina and Boo. Her yelling mouth was a black hole fringed with very white teeth and red lips. Leo could see every detail. The Doops were that close.

“I’m going to run,” Mina said. She started shuffling backwards down the trunk. “I won’t let them catch me, I won’t let them hurt Boo.”

Leo did not hear her. Something extraordinary was happening. A prancing, shouting Doop warrior had been dancing about on the edge of a rocky ledge. He fell. Leo saw the rock give way, and the Doop’s legs flailing, and his body fall and fall, in an ugly, jarring series of thumps and batterings; and then the body just lay there, almost hidden by the purple undergrowth. It lay motionless.

Immediately, the Doops’ war cries were silenced. They forgot the chase and gathered round the fallen body. The woman leader bent over the body. She examined it for a long time. Then she stood erect, threw back her head, tore at her long black hair and howled.

“Mina!” Leo called, “Come back! Come and see!”

She crawled up to him. Both watched as the Doops threw down their weapons and gathered round their leader and the body in the undergrowth. They began to howl like wolves, like banshees, like lost spirits. The greenish sky of Argosy IV seemed to quiver at the noise. The planet’s thick, dank air vibrated with it. Mina and Leo looked and listened and were appalled.

But then, after many minutes, . . .