Toy Wars (27 page)

My hand damage rose to a higher plane. The finger was fully dislocated. This paled into insignificance
next to
the fact that the joint itself looked like a pretzel. That finger would never again inhabit that joint. Without the entire digit being replaced I’d have to suffer with the injury.

“Well
,
that was exciting,” I mentioned, as I turned off the bit that controlled my damaged digit so it would remain immobile. “I think we should hurry over the summit before
we have to sleep in the shade.”

The last
kilometer
wore heavily on the batteries. We scrambled up
70
degree
-plus
slopes, only making any headway because of paw
-
and trunk
-
holds in the weather
-
fractured rocks.
By the time we reached the crest,
the
sensors on my hydraulic fluid complained bitterly of overheating, but the interrupt never entered my thoughts.

For all the spectacle and power of the storm earlier, I
daresay I have never seen a more reason
-
stealing sight.
A great expanse of shining, undulating silver st
retched before me
—
an
ocean of mercury floated below so wide I couldn’t see either end or the other side.
Bays of mercury, each large enough to swallow the entirety of Six’s valley dotted the shoreline like
leaves on a tree
.

Never had I seen such a large body of mercury in one spot.
It was
n’t
rushing to be elsewhere in a hurry to find another home, it just was.
It
exuded a feeling of solid
immutability.
This
sea lived on no matter what happened to us transient units
—
it l
ived over all times.
It took me eighty-five minutes to take in the awesome magnitude of the metallic sea and forty-six minutes more to begin to be able to function in a reasonable way.

“Wow,” was all that came to my mouth.

Near the extreme limits of my vision, to the east, a column of silver and black steam r
ose
from a conic island into a permanent ebon cloud in the sky nearly as large as the ocean itself.
The island, obviously a volcano, lit up
even the day
like a magnesium flare of garish red.
Dante’s
Inferno
looked pale by comparison.

I
don’t know if the entire scene af
fected Sancho the way it did me, but we both
just stood rooted in place
.
Eventually
,
I managed to sit and regain some level of
control. When I did I remarked at the power of the sun beating down on us.

“We need to stay here for at least two full days
to recharge
, Sancho. We’ll have plenty of time to gawk.”

Partner

The two days went quickly. Every time I thought I’d
seen everything
,
something new would appear.

The great cloud mass
ebb
ed
and flow
ed
over the sky, remaining mainly over the center of the ocean but
occasionally
sending threatening tendrils over different shorelines as the winds directed.
When I put those tendrils in their proper perspective, t
he incredible
storm we’d witnessed
just days before w
as
just
the broken off tiny nub. Thinking of all that power caused me to develop a shudder in my balancing subroutine. I zeroed it out but couldn’t stop the very slow but steady ramp of my main bus voltage.

Taking my processor off that process, I detected additional movement a
round the volcanic island. Zooming in to my maximum magnification I saw what looked to be masses of balloon like
flyer
s darting in and around the caldera, being thrown around by the thermals
as they seemed oblivious to the slashing rain
. One of the dark figures darted down through the smoke and ash to land on the back of another.
Both of their
balloons deflated suddenly and together the barely visible pair spiraled down into the fiery heat below. It happened again and again. I began to realize these weren’t units, but biologics performing more of the craziness that defined them.

Late
r
on the second day
I watched as three massive biologics slither
ed
up the mountain we sat on. They looked like python units. From their distance, I could extrapolate that they were
30 meters long and 2 across. After making their way to the top of a steep slope they rolled up into a
n 8
-
meter wheel and cast themselves down.

“Why would they do that, Sancho?”

Whether I was just taking too long, or whether Sancho was tired of waiting, he finally began
tramping
down the o
ther side of the mountain range. After putting away my
awe,
I applauded my companion’s practicality.
The ocean was yet a long distance away and we had no more time to lose.

“
The game is afoot, Sancho!”

On the way
down,
I directed us t
o the hill where the wheel biologics had spun down. At the base of the hill I found the desiccated
corpses of the strange creatures. A cursor
y
inquiry
showed very little other than a large number of unexplained eye-sized holes all over the snake’s skin.

“What do you think, Sancho?” I asked, lifting up one end
of the bizarre creature
. My
friend said nothing. In fact he didn’t even look.
Oddly
,
without saying a word, Sancho communicated a great deal.
This investigation distracted me from
my primary mission. I dropped the tail and got my furry tail moving again.

It took ten hard days of travel to make our way down to the edge of the colossal metallic ocean.
Waves of mercury lapped gently upon a red, powder-fine sand
y
shore.
Tiny clouds of dust billowed up in our footsteps.
At times, with the wind from the right quarter, it was almost impossible to see through to the next step
.
This could have been
passively dangerous
because of the
obstacles
.

C
arcasses
, both animal and vegetable,
littered the
beach at random intervals.
So badly were some of the
bodies
decayed,
I could only guess as to their original forms.
Others bore striking resemblance to creatures out of Human taxonomy
—
fish
, kelp, mussels
,
and shellfish of several varieties.
Not only did I not feel any need to investigate these corpses, I
felt an anxiety to leave as quickly as possible.

Silver waves lapped at my feet.
I didn’t delude myself that I could build any craft that would go across it, especially with the excessive weight of my comrade.
According to my estimation, the other Factory lay directly to the south of us, across that great breadth of silver.
Left or right
? East or west?

“So what do you think, Sancho?
Should we brave the dangers of the wicked giants of the west, or plow through the evil dark armies of the east?” I asked
in a form
as true to my namesake as I could
manage
.
“I really don’t see an advantage to either direction.”

I was going to mentally toss a coin when
I noticed Sancho’s input
.
While Sancho had still not talked he could be amazingly graphic with some of his motions.
In this case
he left
no doubt
.
He had already started walking east without me.

“Ahhh,” I said
,
dumbfounded.
I was about to object when I realized
how little information I had
. If he felt strongly about a specific direction,
why not
follow his lead?
He had been right before on information I couldn’t see.

Trust was hard for me
. I
had to work on it.
I didn’t even truly trust Six, my own Factory, but I was learning to trust my friend, a
1.5
-meter-tall pink and purple polka-dotted elephant who couldn’t speak.

“
Lay on, Macduff, and damned be him who first cries ‘Hold! enough!’”
I called out
as I hurried to catch up
.

That first night next to the beach I learned a very important lesson.
So caught up in our travels and the marvels around us, we traveled well into the day. In fact
,
with
midday
nearly upon us
,
Sancho sat down and wouldn’t go further. I realized then just how far into the day we’d come.

“Sorry, friend. Let’s grab a sunspot and charge.”
As was our habit we lay down in the sunniest place we could,
in
this case directly adjacent to the lapping mercury.

Some six hours later m
y timer wakened me, just as the sun passed over the horizon
. Instead of finding myself on the beach, I floated on my back
in
the ocean
about
400
meters off shore.

I panicked at first
, trying to sit upright, but instead tumbled. When I finally relaxed, my body righted itself. I bobbed in a gentle
up and down motion
that caused an odd feedback in my balance subroutine as
my gyros tried to fight them.
Shutting down my gyros and ignoring the sensations, I realized I could neither see nor sense my elephantine companion.
Then I realized that the rope I
used as a tether still hung from my wrist. The braided vine traveled straight down
,
directly out of my reach.

Sancho was well under the
mercury and by the length of the tether, he l
ay
at least a full meter out of my reach
.

“Sancho, can you hear me?” I called out loudly
as m
ercury would keep any
l
ocal
n
et I could put up from reaching him.

“If you can hear me, walk directly south.” As he didn’t respond and no movement toward the shore happened, I knew the liquid kept the sound dampened as well.

We
had chosen to sleep on an almost imperceptible slope near the ocean.
A tiny rise in the level made a huge difference as to where the shoreline was.
My black and white memories called it a tidal flat.
It took until almost high sun the next day to get Sancho’s aural receptors below tide level and give him instructions.

During that miserable day, I realized that the sea must have a cyclic phase to it, being much smaller during the day when it is hotter and the air can hold more vapor
,
and then growing during the night when the air gives up that vapor.
It might also have something to do with the moons, but the reason didn’t matter.
I lost my knife, about half of my reserve batteries and a few of my precious repair tools.
I also lost about three days
—
one bobbing around like a cork and the other two waiting for Sancho’s batteries to recharge.

It gave me plenty of time to ponder my failure.
I knew I had to do better, not just for my little command but for Six as well. I couldn’t afford another such lapse. It might be fatal. We slept well away from the liquid from that time on.

Despite the great volcano and cloud show all night and all day for our pleasure, our quest soon became almost as monotonous as the travel on open fields of barb grass.
At least I had
a companion
to help
ease the boredom
.

I used up time acting out plays, reading aloud books
and
poetry, or even playing music
that
could be reproduced by my voice.
It was enjoyable to me
.
Sancho never complained except when I tried to augment the music with my own singing.
He would drop to the ground and press his huge purple ears against his head with his paws, waving frantically with his trunk.
Even friendship must have its limits, I surmised.

I refrained from singing.

Between acts of plays, chapters of books, chamber music, or even listening to the hypnotic sound of the metallic breakers against the often rocky shore, I studied the huge conic island in the center of the ocean which belched forth the
spiral
of contaminated mercury vapor into the air.
The volcano vaporized nearby mercury and flung it up into the air where most of it condensed from the supersaturated atmosphere and fell out as rain.
From the proliferation of dead on the beaches, I could only assume that the volcano had come into existence relatively recently and
changed
the local ecology drastically.
It probably wasn’t doing the environs of the entire
planet
a great deal of good either, changing weather patterns and decreasing the temperature worldwide.

“You think it looks like rain?” I asked my traveling companion one early evening. Over the last week, one of the arms of the cloud
vortex leisurely swung our direction.
While I was not, in theory, worried about the rain
, I would never again be nonchalant about a storm.

“Maybe
it won’t rain
today
, but
I do have to say I’m worried about the lack of light, Sancho. Those clouds have blocked out
12
percent of my daily charge.
I thought once we crested the mountain range our power issues were over. Apparently not. If that cloud cover continues, we’ll have to decrease our travel time.
”

“Fert.”

I spun around to look at my traveling companion. At first I thought I had heard some other sound, but playing it back across my processor’s inputs, my binaural placed Sancho’s vocalization with incredible accuracy.
I didn’t know what he meant but it heartened me.
“Incredible! Glad to hear you, my friend. Speak up any time.
”

In appreciation, I performed
Edmond Rostand
’s
Cyrano De Bergerac
in its original French rhyming couplets with as much panache as I could
muster
.
How better to understand something than in its original form. I danced through the sword fights and even manag
ed
to hold the line against the Spanish
all as
we continued to walk along
the shore. I
also
managed to die in my beloved Roxanne’s arms, while playing both parts.

My friend gave no applause, no cheers
,
in fact no indication he’d even heard me. There once was an award given by Humans to exceptional performers. I wondered if my performance, given while still moving, might have warranted a Tony in spite of my companion’s lack of input. Maybe at least honorable mention for having stage
-
managed the effort
en situ
.