Toy Wars (20 page)

“How can I cross that?” I said to myself.
Only one thing came to mind
—
walk
along the bottom of the river.
I’d never tried, nor had any information about any
unit
who had.
I
would
n’t
even
want to try experimenting with an undamaged leg.
It seemed foolhardy.

I scanned the river off in the distance, in both directions, to
the
absolute limits of my enhancing vision.
The resolution was grainy on what I saw
at maximum magnification
, but there seemed, downstream to the southwest, that there could possibly be a way across.
All I could see was a significant glint of silver spray, but not its cause.
It was something to strive for rather than just standing there bemoaning my inability to perform.
I couldn’t tell what caused the
mist
but that was my new intermediate goal.

Before moving out again, I needed to clean out my splint.
Every day I would spend an hour or so prying tiny particles of dirt and grit from my right foot servos, wiping dust from internal surfaces
,
and running diagnostic tests.
The seal of my skin to the horn of the beast wasn’t all I had hoped for, so I spent an almost intolerable amount of time working at keeping it serviceable.
All things considered, my repaired leg was functioning well with no additional failures.

The purging operation wasn’t difficult, just tedious, like the general amount of travel.
Even so I
made
better time than I expected
—
not excellent, but good.

Long before I had reached the
anomaly in the river
I knew there was no other place nearby for me to attempt the crossing
. The constant flow
seemed to have cut
a
shallow canyon in the soft bedrock
.
This would have to be the place if I wasn’t going to spend several weeks walking.
Every
visual
scan I made farther
on
showed no break in the river.
I co
uldn’t afford to delay any more. Who knew how many more attacks on Six there had been in my absence?

It took me three days to reach
my destination
, a huge
boulder in the center of the river causing
a
constant and
frosting rain of mercury
.
I didn’t know if it would suffice, but
I
knew it had to.
From the unique break in the shoreline and matching shapes on the huge stone, it had clearly once been a married part of the bank.
The way the rock had fallen showed that the erosion
by the mercury
had undercut it enough so the weight
had
yank
ed
it from the shore.
The roughly diamond
-
shaped rock, barely above the level of the rushing mercury at the closest edge, now had turned around and
neatly cleaved
the silvery white rush
into two separate channels
. The two horizontal liquid columns rejoined a mere meter further on in the riverbed.

The fountain of droplets, caused by the reflective fluid crashing headlong into the immovable stone, lent itself to a spray of tiny mercury droplets everywhere.
The air was so thick with the heavy metal that when I arrived at even a hundred meters distant, my fur
had
coated enough to make me
almost white in the silver sheen. T
iny r
ivulets of combining mercury
coalesce
d
seemingly out of
thin air
on the earth and drain
ed
back into the main flow.
It was fascinating and somewhat hypnotic, but I had a mission to complete.

The chasm spanned 12 meters between shore and the tiny island.
The other channel was
10
meters
wide
.
With a little luck
,
I thought I could jump that far.
Fully functional
,
I wouldn’t have worried
—a
t overload capacity,
my design could make a minimum leap of 15
meters.
The performance of my damaged leg worried me.
I couldn’t expect any thrust from the ankle, but if I
leaned
over and just pushed with my legs, I thought I might be able to make it.
Then climb to the top of the rock and do it again across to the other side.
It was worth a try.
It was either that or walk along the bottom of that swift
ly
flowing liquid.
I didn’t cherish that alternative.

I inched my way until I stood teetering over the
edge
where the stone
had broken away
.
I had to thrust at exactly the right angle to get the most from my damaged leg.
I intentionally leaned over forward, allowing my body processor to kick in.
I launched with all the power my lower legs could produce.
What I hadn’t counted on was
that
my left ankle, the undamaged one, pushed as well as my legs.
This adversely affected the direction of my short-lived flight.
I
le
a
pt in a cockeyed angle, 0.15 radians off my planned trajectory. Instead of landing flat on the large stone I
fell heavily against one sheer side
.
I dug my fingers in, trying to get them into any anomaly in the rock.
Unfortunately t
he rock
’s su
r
face had been
worn smooth by the mercury’s constant flow.
The rock had the coefficient of friction of hydraulic fluid on a metal ramp.
Into the river I went.
I had the foresight to turn off all the power to my damaged right leg as I remembered the basilisk trap just in time.
With mercury being an excellent conductor of electr
icity
,
I would
’ve
shorted that
line, draining my battery power.

The river
tumbled
me over and over, but to my great surprise I did not sink.
I floated and bobbed up and down in the turbulent flow.
This was something I had
n’t
expected.
My memory banks showed that when equipment went into a river it sank.
None of Six’s units, as far as I had access to, ever attempted entering a river
. We’d gone
over it
, under it
,
and
around it, but never into it.
Another blank in
Six’s database
, but that wasn’t my specific worry at the moment
.
The heavy fluid forced me along at a pace I could never have made
,
even running
,
but in completely the wrong direction.
I had to figure out how to get out of this unsettling position.

The surface of the river seemed so calm, barely undulating, but in fact it was moving rapidly in many different directions.
I set my internal gyros to emergency maximum.
My tumbling reduced enough to keep me
more or less right side up.
My inertial locator told me which shore
I needed to
land on
.

I carried in my memories
something the
Human
s call swimming.
It involved moving all my limbs in a way that moved liquid under and around me, opposite to the direction I wanted to travel.
Without shame I can say that I didn’t
swim
well.
After a time I did find if I la
y
flat on top of the mercury that I could rotate my arms.
On the down stroke
,
I got some movement in the direction I wished to go.

For the first hour and twenty minutes it visually didn’t seem like I made any progress
, t
hen became
more
distinct over the following hour.

My shoulder gave a level three lubricant alarm. M
y wounded leg began to drag down beneath the surface
rather than float, I surmised because it had filled with mercury. My gyros, struggling to keep me righted, steamed through their normal thermal vent in my ears.

Fortunately for me
,
my right leg hit river bottom only sixteen minutes later. I hobbled forward until I collapsed on the bank.
I lay
there
quietly for several minutes
,
letting the heat radiate from my ears and my belly
, where my gyros were located
.
Mercury leaked out around my splint rushing down the steep embankment to rejoin the rushing river.

“Level three lubricant alarm,” came the redundant message over my body interrupt line.
I overr
ode
the
friction
sensor on my shoulder joints.
It would have to wait.
I had nothing to soothe it
.

It was time to be back on my way.
Now nearly several hundred kilometers away from where I started
my daring leap
, the going would be long and the ground had to be retraced.
More time lost.

I
traveled back along my path, with only the river to guide me.
N
o net concentrators mark
ed
my way.
Because of this I ran on
only internal battery power, which I
hoped
would get me back to the net.
If not, the entire trip was for nothing
because
I would die
—
drained of electricity
. M
y batteries would no longer keep my sump
or processor
functioning.
Not a happy thought, but a reoccurring theme of daydreams as I walked.

On th
e
second
day
t
he sky darkened ominously. Rain was not common in Six’s domain, but when it did come it blackened the sky like the coming of night
,
and drops of liquid mercury would fall.
The drops varied in size from that of the tiniest fly, barely noticed as it
gently landed
, to
those
fully
8
liters large and impacting with the force of a runaway elephant.
Neither the
rainstorms nor the darkened clouds ever lasted long, but they
made up for it in
intens
ity
.

I would have to either find shelter
or risk the impacts.
Unfortunately for me, I saw nothing that would afford me with shelter of any kind
. A
s the first tiny silver splashes hit the ground, I lay down on my belly
and rolled up as tightly as possible
.
My back had the strongest armor and by rolling tight I could present the smallest target.
I watched as mercury fell in earnest around me in spherical platinum-white balls.

The rain got heavier and I’d been mercifully only hit with smaller drops, but I saw several drops that probably
exceeded
Six’s logs
of an
8
-
liter maximum.
They hit the ground, packing
the earth
into a very shallow bowl, and then the drops flattened out to the thickness of hair before shattering into a million or more tin
y
drops exploding outward from the center.
The sound
reminded me of a battlefield
but
with
dull thuds and thumps instead of the sharp supersonic cracks of guns and rifles.
Even the thorn grass
took
a thrashing.
The rain tore it up from its shallow root systems in patches from the size of bullets all the way to larger pieces the size of my own body
.
The tall-grassed plain now
bore
huge mottled circles in the former unbroken waves of chaff like some horrific skin lesions.

In less than an hour, the merciless sky
finally
purged itself
enough to allow
the sun to shine through the thin air.
I shook out most of the droplets still clinging to my fur before sta
nding
.
My power requirements
concerned me.
My internal sensors insisted that I had another two or three days before I’d get back to where I left the powering signals of the net concentrators.