Toy Wars (26 page)

“You will be Sancho Panza, my good and faithful squire, and I am Don Quixote on a quest for my fair Dulcinea.”
It fit.
I often felt like I must have lost my mind on this silly attempt to save Dulci…I mean Six.
Tilting at windmills seemed my specialty
. Personally
,
I was thinking perhaps Don Quixote had it easy as windmills would be easier to defeat than
convincing
a Factory of anything.

“I don’t know if you understand me, but you are Sancho.
Good Sancho,” I said, stroking the elephant’s trunk again.
I fell asleep wrapped
up in
the trunk like I was climbing a very thick rope.

I
told
Sancho of his Human namesake
in the tales
originally crafted by the Human named Miguel de
Cervantes many, many years ago. They told of d
eeds of great friendship of a squire to his slightly batty master.
The more I told the tales, the more I really felt the names were justified.
I don’t know that Sancho understood a single word I told him, but his big
,
floppy ears did pick up whenever I said his name.

The very next night,
I woke up to find Sancho missing. Puzzled, I
followed his footsteps in the earth once more. It took only an hour to find him a few kilometers away, standing still and looking out toward the horizon. I couldn’t understand why.

“Is there something I need to know about, Sancho?” As usual I got no response.

“Can we continue our mission?” Sancho looked up at me but didn’t answer, but followed when I lead off.

Three more times in the next two weeks I tracked
my wayward comrade first thing I woke.
He never wandered far, but it often took me several hours to track his heavy footprints to where he inevitably st
ood
staring off to the southwest. The third time he stood in the center of a
group of black and silver-streaked vines gr
o
w
ing
up a rock face.
Whatever Sancho’s reason for trundling
away
,
he also provided the solution.
I took a
50
-meter length of the stout
-
looking growth
.

That next morning
just before
I turned off my cognitive functions I tied the heavy vine around
Sancho’s neck
. The other end went around my wrist before I dropped off. Sometime near
noon
, I
started awake
as my arm
j
erked
nearly from its socket. My head banged hard against a large rock as my body dragged
along
,
being abused by stiff flora and
the occasional low spot in the
ground
.
The damage was minor but cumulative.

“Sancho, stop!”
He didn’t.
“Halt.”
No effect.
I formed a local net and ordered him over his CCT, again with no results.
I struggled to my feet, by running at the same time as I got up.
“Stop, you overgrown tub of lard!”
I busily
disengage
d
my hand from the tether.
“Quit moving!”
I reached out and kicked him in the hindquarters to get his attention.
J
ust as suddenly and abruptly as I had been awoken, Sancho stopped.
He looked at me
,
and then lay back down on the ground.

I just stood there staring at
him
.
He obviously knew nothing of what he had done.
It wasn’t possible for him to disobey my net command, or
at least
I didn’t think it was
. S
omething else was at work
. M
y systems
complained of wear and abuse. Instead of figuring it out,
I collapsed back against my charge and fell asleep.

Even ignoring Sancho’s desire to occasionally take a walk in the middle of the day, he
wasn’t the easiest companion
.
He’d sometimes be chafing to get started in the evening, and other
times
I literally had to drag him meters to get him moving.
Several times he stepped on my foot (intentionally, I
was
sure) when he wasn’t happy with a decision I had made or my choice in discussion topic of the day.
More than once I cursed the day I’d
reactivated him.

On the plus side, he stopped and trumpeted a number of times during our march.
Only one of these times did I find something that could have obviously been dangerous, but I had learned my lesson, and fairly cheaply
at
that
.
Sancho had
my total attention when he cho
se to make himself heard.

In addition to this, Sancho made a wonderful pack animal.
I
modified my backpack so it would stay on his back. By
putting my extra equipment on him
I sped up considerably and it
slowed him not at all
. M
y tiny command was better off
as a result
.
I still carried my submachine gun and knife.
I was not going to let Sancho be the one to defend us.
After all, I was Don Quixote of La Mancha,
k
night and slayer of
g
iants
—
not to mention the odd basilisk.

“
Look up there, Sancho,” I said one early morning
two weeks later
. “It’s the peak of the mountains. Once we are on the other side we probably won’t have to worry about our power levels so much.

“If we rest anywhere along here this morning
,
the shadow of the peaks will impact our ability to recharge. I say let’s push on to make it over the top this morning.
”

A tiny
,
silver puff of cloud raced over the top of the mountain
ridge
as the sun rose up enough to reflect light off the vapor.
The way it jumped the mountain made it look almost like a thrown grenade.
Two
more
and then dozens of the tiny clouds soon followed the first.
They flew over the peaks like cars racing up a ramp, shooting off into the air for a few precious seconds of flight.
Then the trickle of tiny cloudlettes turned into a stampede of larger ones, each nudging the other for room to clear the
mountain
hurdle.

Within minutes they no longer had any delineation between them, becoming one huge cloud led by millions of fine
,
wispy tendrils, like the finest fur on a
teddy
unit in a brilliant white.

The ponderous structure, unable to sustain its own bulk, broke in a wave across the hill in a slow, majestic curl.
It appeared as if millions of metric tons of the silver-red vapor were going to crush us under its mass.

“
Ferwee
t!” Sancho offered looking up at the huge formation
.

“Uh
-
oh!” I quickly tied my vine rope to Sancho’s neck. Well practiced as I’d become, the haste I felt definitely led to some botched motions.

The
swell
splashed in slow motion over the crest of the mountain.
As it descended upon us,
the burgeoning
day turned
rapidly to inky blackness
.
No time passed from being bathed in the warming sun to being swallowed by
midnight
’s dark, cold arms.

It was dark. Not the dark of night but even darker. Even in the blackest night the starlight and moonlight gave me the ability to see very clearly. My vision couldn’t penetrate the cloud bank that engulfed us. I felt the beginnings of a breeze. My memories contained references to such storms. We were in for a bumpy ride.

The winds
,
gently at first
, barely ruffling my fur
. The gusts became more
intense, bursting against us strong enough that it became more difficult to stand still.

“Ferweet!”

“Hang on, Sancho.”

The strength of the winds picked up even more. A small rock pelted my chest, tearing out
3
square centimeters of fur. I struggled over to my companion. “L
ie
down, Sancho. Get as flat as you can.” While I couldn’t see him, I felt him hunch down. I la
y
next to him as plant material and flecks of dirt sandblasted our hides. I cut the pack off of Sancho’s back, crawling up to put it over his face to protect his optics. I held it there and pressed my own snout against his chest, presenting my back to the
airborne debris
.

The
blustery weather gained strength
into
a gale. The gale raged into a tempest.
Violent explosions of light and sound punctuated the
squalling wind. Slowly
,
we were being slid along the ground. I flatted myself even more until we stopped.
Deposited by the winds,
dirt
built up against my back
and arms. Twice that morning I felt larger objects hurtle against me. One snapped hard against
the
smallest digit of my left hand, crushing the joint. The second impaled itself through my left thigh. I could do nothing about either injury while the fury of nature vented around us. All I could do
wa
s wait and hope.

The feeling of impotence
tore at my thought processes. How could I fight the substance of the air? Several hours of grinding my processor at high voltage levels caused an epiphany. I would never be able to control everything, no matter how much I wanted and needed to. Weather and
F
actories would do what they willed and I must find ways to deal with both or relax to the inevitable.

By the time I’d reached this flash of genius, the storm had slaked its taste for violence and slowly wound down. Already I measured a
33
percent reduction in the wind speed and estimated a
70
percent reduction in danger. Oddly
,
we never received the deluge of rain I expected, and for that I was truly thankful.

My pillow twitched.

“Hold on just a little more, Sancho.”

Two more hours I waited before I dug my way out of the earthen igloo that surrounded me.
The damaging wind reduced to the barest of breeze, a refreshing change. The storm hadn’t completely vented all of its fury as the black, red
,
and silver
mass moved beyond us. Brilliant flashes of lightning flared from the malignant mass to the
ground
with astonishing regularity.

It didn’t take the perception of a Nurse Nan to find
a wooden splinter of wood 3
centimeters
wide, sticking 4
centimeters
out the front of my thigh and
2
2
centimeters
out the back. I inspected the wound and found no leaking materials. Yanking hard with on
e
hand didn’t dislodge it. I took both hands and put maximum strength on the attempt to remove. Again it stayed firm. I decided to ignore it as best as possible for the moment.

I dug Sancho the rest of the way out of mound. As I did, I inspected him for damage.
With the exception of some missing fur, he seemed
completely intact. Sancho stood and shook
back and forth, creating a crimson cloud of fine dust around him
.
He returned to his normal pink background color.

“Good, Sancho. Listen, I don’t know if you can understand me, but I need your help.
”
I
lay
down on my stomach and pointed to the
wooden skewer.

Sancho didn’t even hesitate. He waddled up next to me and wrapped his trunk twice around the pole and in a single jerk removed the entire length. One more point for my comrade.

I
searched
the gaping hole for leaks. Finding none, I crawled a meter back to the mound of earth and dug down to my pack. Shaking it free of grit, I dug in for some of the
armor
patches.
Positioning them j
ust beneath my fur,
one
ceram
ic patch
covered
each hole,
entry and exit
,
nicely.