Robogenesis (11 page)

Blocking the sight with my body, I sneak the feather out of Howard’s pack and into my own. It’s the center feather from the tail of an immature golden eagle. This feather got him launched into his first dance under the arbor, and under the proud eyes of his daddy. And now it has got his blood on it.

“What is a spooklight?” asks Lark, over my radio. I ignore him.

This slug is an eating machine is what it is
, I’m thinking.
It’s an eating machine and it’s
so, so
hungry and it’ll eat anything out here on the plains. And the energy it sends out to those locusts. They herd food to its mouth and it eats and shares. And it eats and it eats and it eats
.

“I told Lonnie—”

I reach down and switch off my radio to shut Lark up.

The shadow of Lonnie’s tall walker eclipses the sun and I squint up at him. “Lonnie,” I call, stern. “Don’t you come over here.”

Let him see
, says the spooklight in my mind.

There’s no stopping him anyway. Lonnie half jumps, half falls off his tall walker, letting the long-limbed machine crash into the dirt. He scrambles toward me on cowboy boots through the horse snot and blood and little bits of flesh.

I get up and step out of the way a little reluctantly.

“Oh my Christ, no,” he mutters when he sees what’s left of Howard.

Lonnie’s face has gone pale and gray. Cheeks slack under fat-pupiled, dead eyes. His chin is quivering up and down like an old man in line at a soup kitchen. Like he wants to say something. Or like maybe he’s busy gnawing off his tongue.

“He was dead before it got started,” I say to Lonnie, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Howard was dead before it started eating him and that’s all that matters. Stop looking at it, Lon.”

Lonnie nods like he sort of half hears me. Lets his dull blue eyes
swivel off to the side, taking in everything and nothing. His chin is still bobbing a little and the expression on his face is amazing in that it is no expression at all.

“George is yonder,” Lonnie says, voice hoarse. “I done my best to get to him—”

“I saw, Lonnie,” I interrupt. “I saw what happened. It was an accident. A damned shame.”

Lonnie nods, wipes his face with a forearm.

“Head on back,” I say. “Send some more fellas to help me. Couple of spider tanks to take out those other slugs from a distance. I’ll clean this up and get these boys home. Go on now.”

The old general doesn’t react until I shove him in the shoulder. Then he just up and walks away. Leaves his dirt-stained tall walker sprawled out on the ground. A bent old man crossing the plains alone. As he heads off, the morning sun slants down over his slumped shoulders and he carries the light with him like a sack of concrete.

That man is broken.

And Lark keeps standing here, machine-gun strap cutting into his shredded army jacket. He is as still as a statue, watching me with eyes glittering over his ruined face. I glance down at my silenced radio, look back to him without turning it on.

“Go with him, Lark,” I say. “That’s an order.”

Lark nods, starts to walk away real slow. With each step, dead locusts are dropping off his clothes and pale, bloodless skin. As he passes, I see he’s looking for my bundle. I pull the little satchel against me protectively and feel the warm spooklight inside.

“And keep your mouth shut, if you know what’s good for you,” I whisper to the dead Cherokee. “Mind your own business.”

Like walking roadkill, he turns and shambles after Lonnie. I watch him go until he’s far enough away that you could mistake him for a human being.

Reach inside the slug
, says the spooklight.
Take the power-distribution mechanism. The splitter beam. It is very valuable. You will need it when you build me a form. I will take the shape of a black steed, Hank Cotton
.

I will be with you soon
.

“What’s the splitter look like?” I ask, on my knees now, holding my breath. I shove Howard’s torso aside. Push the whiskerlike strands away from the slug’s mouth. There is a complex piece of machinery underneath, dripping with digestive slime. The ground under here is soggy and acrid and dyed red with blood.

I’ll show you, Hank Cotton
.

I will show you everything you wish to see. You are a chosen one. You have the seal of God on you. You are going to be a great man. A ruler and a leader. Listen to me, Hank Cotton. Listen to me closely and do as I say and I promise these things will be true
.

NEURONAL ID: VASILY ZAYTSEV

“Let me out, damn you!” I shout to Maxim.

The only response is a slight flicker of the fluorescent light overhead. The steel elevator door flutters minutely in its cradle. Blank and solid and implacable.

I never had time to cut the counterweights.

A groan pulses through the solid rock walls. Dust like powdered sugar drifts through the lights. People are dying above and they do not know why. All the time I have spent down here in the darkness has been for nothing. In this stink and filth, with pale skin and bloodshot eyes, I have scrabbled and fought and worked like an animal.

I had hoped to save Anadyr a second time. But I have failed.

In the guise of a little boy, Archos R-14 told me I was only a pathetic variable in some god-mind equation. But that is enough for me. Instead of anger upon hearing those words, I felt relief. It is enough for one man to do his part. I tried to do mine.

Am trying
.

“Maxim! I know you can hear me. Bring down the goddamn elevator.
There is nothing more I can do. Let me go up and fight and die with the rest. I won’t wait here like a rat on a sinking ship!”

In a flash, Maxim the hologram stands directly in front of me. His weathered face is dirty and his workman’s coveralls are worn. He rubs his stubbled face. It looks as if he hasn’t slept in a week. I wonder, why should he simulate that? Imagine, a being of pure light, marred by beard stubble.

“You have one final task,” he says in that low, modulated voice. The sound comes from a speaker but for some reason I think I can feel his breath on my face. There is a brave sadness inside his words and I understand why instantly. “Then you can go.”

Maxim looks over my shoulder. I turn and follow his gaze. With resignation, he is staring at the ax. Its dense metal head rests on the rock floor, the long wooden handle against the wall. I haven’t touched it in the months since I placed it there. Hickory and steel and death.

“You don’t want to be taken alive,” I say.

My voice is drowned out by a thud from the surface. I hear the metal-caged elevator shaking in its shaft, banging into the bare stone walls. For a few moments, objects fall down the shaft and ping off the floor. I hear the twang of swinging wires.

“We don’t have long,” says Maxim. “Soon, Arayt will breach the shaft and infiltrate my processors. It will pervert my mind. It will use me to try to destroy you.”

I shake my head.

To die alongside my brothers, fighting the enemy—this I can stomach. But I can’t execute my only friend. It is too much to bear.

“We can fight,” I say. “Whatever comes down the shaft—”

Maxim sighs. His light collapses into shards that scatter onto the floor. They coalesce into crawling shapes. A satellite view of the battlefield above us—a real-time map of the fight. It’s a trick he learned from the American boy. And now I understand what is causing the thunder up above.

I see no way to survive.

“Then we die together,” I whisper to the still cavern air.

“No,” says Maxim’s voice. “My processors must not be captured. But
we can make it mean something. We can wait until this Archos R-8 comes. Wait until it enters the stack. Together, we can capture part of its mind. Glimpse its plans.”

“You will die,” I say.

“Yes,” says the flat voice. Now it belongs to Maxim again. His hologram stands, squat and determined.

“You were a man once,” I say. “I cannot kill you, my friend.”

The fact is there. Though I can see the rock dust floating through his hologram, in my heart I
know
that Maxim is still a man. In the last weeks, our talks ranged far and wide. Women and battles and travels to places that no longer exist. But the talk always ended back at home, with the ghosts of our family and friends.

“You saved all our lives,” I say. “How can I end yours?”

“I am not alive,” whispers Maxim. “There is no dishonor in this. At the correct moment, you must end it. Smash the coolant pipes. It is the only way to safeguard—”

“But you
are
alive,” I say, shaking my head. “To say that you aren’t is a lie. You think what you are doing is right, I see that. But it is suicide. Better to take your chances with whatever comes down the shaft. Let me stand in front of you.”

With my tools, perhaps I can reroute the elevator away from Maxim’s control and bring it down. Perhaps I will reach the surface in time to fight.

“I will not help you commit suicide,” I say.

Turning, I scan the room for a crowbar.

A silent flash bursts before me and I’m blinded, just for a moment. My face is engulfed in greenish, murky light. I stumble, catch myself against the cold elevator door. The blur of light falls into place and once again takes on the shape of a man.

It is Maxim, his moon face flickering with rage. The stout man is flushed, jaw clenched. His eyes burn frightening and bright in their sockets.

“Yes!” he shouts. “I am alive! Yes, I am a man!”

Maxim gesticulates with muscular arms. Flecks of spit spray from his mouth as he shouts at me. “Who the hell are you to tell me how to die!?”

This makes me pause.

“I wish to die for my people. It is my choice. How dare you try to deny me this? Go over to that wall, Vasily Zaytsev. Pick up the goddamned ax. At the opportune moment, do what you must do. I will do what I must do. You will take my final message and leave here. Travel east to the coast and climb the peninsular antenna and deliver this message to the world. For your honor and for mine!”

My skin goose-pimples with cold shame. He is a man, of course. A Russian man. And every man has his rights.

“Why not simply fight and die?” I whisper to the apparition.

Maxim’s blunt dirty face relaxes, slowly unknots. His wide jaw snaps shut and he makes a crooked grin. He turns his glowing hands palms up, showing the creases and callouses, almost as if he is asking for forgiveness.

“For my wife, Vasily. For my daughter.”

I snatch the ax from where it has rested these months. It is heavy and familiar in my hands. I twist the cold wooden handle back and forth until it is warm, marching into the darkness of the stacks. My feet move on their own. Navigating these narrow aisles is second nature to me now. This is a burrow that I have called home for long months that stretch out into the darkness like years.

“Wait until the moment comes,” says Maxim. “Not long now.”

Distantly, I hear the freight elevator engage.

“They’re here. Does this mean … Leonid?”

“I am sorry. I arrayed the topside troops into the most stable possible defensive configurations. Each sacrifice was for maximum utility. They fought like lions.”

“They’re gone. All of them?”

“There was not a winning solution. Not this time. Too much avtomat hardware was left in the woods. The enemy sent everything it could find against us.”

“After all these years,” I muse. “We are lost.”

The elevator shaft echoes with strange sounds, the scrape of metal on metal. The wires groan and strain as something heavy descends. Something creeping down here into the dark with me.

“Not you, Vasily. You must live. You must take our final message to the east antenna. Wait until R-8 enters the core. It will be vulnerable then. While our minds are connected, I will take as much data as I can. We will learn its true intentions. And you must warn the rest of the world. Sever the connection midtransfer and the thing may be confused momentarily.”

“What is the point of this, Maxim?”

“The boy-thing Archos R-14 told us half the truth. If Arayt controls these stacks, it will become a god and it may seek to eradicate all life. But there is another supercluster that R-14 did not mention. It is in North America, overseen by the freeborn robots. R-8 will go there next. If they do not know to protect their supercluster, then what we do here will not matter. At the final moment, take the data I give you and run. And you must run hard. They must know. Do you understand?”

I nod in the darkness, press my shoulder against the rock wall. Rest my knee against a coolant pipe that throbs with icy water pumped in from the Bering Sea. The aisle chatters with Maxim’s blue LEDs like little windows in skyscrapers. It is a familiar sight. It steadies my legs now, instead of turning them to rubber.

The light from the elevator anteroom is distant. A speck.

Clang
.

Our guest has arrived. I hear the steel doors rolling up. The dot of white light in the anteroom darkens briefly as something moves across it. I catch myself holding my breath, then I force it out slow through my nose.

The pipe is cold and hard against the side of my leg. I lean against it harder until I feel a blurry ache of flesh on icy metal. Pain cleanses the palate of the world.