by Guy Haley
Sand trudged along alone beside the robot. She had all the kids with inChips, the robot and herself linked in to the tablet, but without the supporting architecture, they could not communicate beyond text. She had never realised how limited the inChips were without the net to support them. Even on her long-range missions, she was interfaced with the ship she flew. But they were aware of each other’s presences, in a digital sense, and that gave them a kind of strength.
All of them old enough looked often to the tablet through their inChips, to see if anyone knew where they were. Nobody did. They did not discuss it; talk of rescue was taboo by unspoken consent. Sand scanned the radio waves every so often but was greeted by static. She checked the beacon more frequently, to ensure it still broadcast its steady pulse, until she realised she was doing so obsessively, and limited herself to checks on the half hour. Likewise with the tablet’s pedometer. The tablet counted her steps and those of the robot, coming up with a fairly accurate estimation of distance travelled. She had the tablet inform her every time they had passed another kilometre. It did not happen often enough for her liking.
Sand was exhausted, the heat was draining, the wind desiccating. Up the long slopes, the sand was unbearably hot; down the shadowed slip sides it was cooler, but Sand had to help get the robot down, and by the time she’d got the damn thing into the slack, she’d forgotten to enjoy the shade and was back into the sun.
The sun. Orange, unblinking, at her back all the time, it scorched her neck. Sand’s skin was darker than the children’s, but she was not dark enough to shrug off the sun, and she was burning.
“What?” said Kasia, who had rejoined her.
Sand stopped. The robot came to a halt. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were talking to yourself.”
Was I? Sand thought. Shit. “Nothing.” Their voices had become husky. Sand looked the girl up and down. She looked drugged, and was swaying on her feet. “What are you doing off the sled? Take another ride. If there’s not enough room, get Arek and Dominik to walk a while.”
Kasia looked at her.
“Go on! And check the kids for sunburn,” she called. “And make sure everyone gets a drink.”
They were in the bottom of a slack. Another huge dune rose before them. Were they getting bigger? That might mean something, but Sand didn’t know enough about deserts or dunes. At home she could have checked the net; not here. The knowledge in her own memory was inadequate. How much they all relied on their inChips! The children needed a geographer, not a pilot; and she needed a ship.
“Fuck it,” she muttered. “We’ll take a break!” she shouted. Piotr and Dominik, who had dismounted the sled, turned wearily around and headed back to it.
On the sled, Arek was gulping greedily at a bottle. Kasia rebuked him in hard Polish, and he took the drink away from his mouth.
“You tell him to stop drinking so much?” said Sand.
“Yes.”
“You did good, we have to watch our liquid consumption. I have no idea how long we’ll be walking.”
They’d been on the move for five hours, and come less than twenty kilometres. They had to make better speed. The kids were tired, Sand could see that. She had to push them on or they wouldn’t make it.
“Ten minutes,” she said. “Then five more dunes. Then we’ll stop for the day.”
The day would not stop for them. How she wished for the night.
“MA’AM, A LIFEFORM approaches.” The robot’s stentorian voice summoned Sand from her reverie. Placing one foot in front of another was hypnotic; snapping out of it was uncomfortable and unwelcome. They were descending a slip. Three days into the journey, and the robot had become more adept at negotiating the steep slopes, and so they moved quicker. The children had sledded down, and were waiting at the bottom, some hundred metres away. They no longer shouted with excitement; even descending had become a chore. The heat made everything a chore.
“What?” She shaded her eyes and scanned the horizon. All she saw were more dunes. Sand, sand, sand. Sand in the sand, she thought. I’m going to die.
An icon blinked in her mind’s eye: the robot, opening a channel. She accepted, and was looking through its eyes. She was a giant – metal, invulnerable. The heat was nothing. Systems thrilled under her attention. The feeling took her aback, but she was only a passenger; she did not have any influence on it.
“There,” said the robot.
A movement, quick and fleeting; something large. The robot zoomed in on the windward side of the dune after next.
Sand stared through unblinking eyes for a minute.
“If there is something coming, Unit 7, then it will take a long time to get here. It has to climb the other side. We’ll be here for –”
“Wait,” demanded the robot.
“What?” asked Sand incredulously. Robots took orders; they did not give them.
Then it was there, fast, a large shape the same colour as the desert sand, skittering a comical highstep on many legs. A teardrop carapace rose high and rotated to and fro, independently of the legs, twisting this way and that like a monstrous head. Two long, triply-jointed limbs jutted from a mouth set directly into its torso. It stopped periodically to drum them upon the sand. What could have been a mouth opened, and a long cone lined with cruel, recurved spikes protruded into the air. Then the creature raised itself up, revealing the structure of its legs – they were set in a cluster, also three-jointed, ending in a leathery skirt in the underbelly of the carapace.
The children had seen it too. They were standing, pointing at it, glancing back to Sand, frightened.
The creature stopped, stock still. Its legs moved around in a fussy little dance. The proboscis opened and closed; purple fronds extended, waved on the air, then darted back in. Its feelers drummed on the floor, shifted around, drummed again. The proboscis snapped closed and pulled back inside the hillock of its body in one movement.
It turned to face towards the children, and the tablet shrilled.
“Kasia!” screamed Sand. “Kids!”
The creature began to run.
The tablet sang out a mad song that was not interference. Sand shut the radio off with a thought and severed her link with the robot. She hurtled down the hill, tripped, went sprawling, then scrambled onto her hands and knees, spitting sand from her dry mouth. “Kasia!” she shouted.
The children were screaming, running back up the hill. The creature was a couple of hundred metres away from the kids, Sand thirty or so. It was gaining; the children slipped in the sand. It did not.
The robot.
Sand shot an emergency override into the machine, intending to take control of it. The robot had no combat programming, but Sand had some training, and its body was strong.
“No,” said the robot. It shut her out.
Then it was past her. Unit 7 had learned from experience, moving its legs in a rolling motion, using gravity in its favour to avoid becoming mired in the sand. It reached the bottom before Sand had got to her feet, stumbled, flung its arm out to compensate with a fluidity Sand had never seen before in a robot, and recovered. It intercepted the beetle scant metres away from the children. The robot dipped low, and barged into the carapace with its shoulder, knocking the beetle sideways. The improvised straps on the machine’s back burst, and their supplies were scattered all over the place.
The creature rocked on its strange, crustacean undercarriage and recovered, legs scurrying to bring it around to face this challenger. The creature reared itself, segmented limbs extending, apparently making itself appear bigger to present a greater threat. It spread its mouth feelers wide – and they were wide, four metres across, alien and disturbing – and circled the robot. A beetle before, now it resembled a Terran crab. Its mouthparts flicked in and out, and from somewhere within its armoured shell came a penetrating sibilance.
Sand climbed to her feet. The children clutched at her, making it hard to regain her footing. She pushed them away and went for her gu
n. “Stay here! Stay here with Kasia!”
The gun slid out of its holster; she held it out double-handed, arms straight, and advanced on the monstrous beetle.
The robot followed the alien lifeform’s movements, head tracking round, shifting on its massive metal legs when the beetle tried to get behind it. They remained locked in this stalemate, circling each other in a strange waltz. Sand drew closer, off the slope and onto firmer ground. She could see that the beetle was not just sand coloured, but covered in a seamless coat of sand. It looked huge closer to: the length of a large car, and taller. It must weigh as much as the robot, she thought. She was afraid.
The beetle had not seen her. It lunged, leftmost limb whipping forward. The robot raised its shovel hands to deflect the blow, but it was too slow, and the limb struck the machine square in the chest. There was an almighty bang, and the creature ducked out of the way as the robot swiped in return. The robot’s casing was cracked, but so was the creature’s chitin. Yellowish fluid welled up in it. The creature seemed unperturbed. The robot swung, pivoting its gimballed waist. Its fist alone massed fifty kilograms – a weight of six hundred newtons or so here. The creature dodged back. Its strange mouth rakes spread wider, it hissed louder.
Sand opened fire, marching forward with every shot. Bullets smacked into the carapace to no effect, other than bringing her to its attention. The beetle turned again, facing her.
Fuck, thought Sand, if it charges me I’m fucked.
She fired and fired, concentrating on the proboscis. This evidently hurt it a great deal; the violet fronds were withdrawn rapidly, followed by the mouth-cone itself. Flattened, armoured palps slid over the aperture. She could see no eyes, but carried on firing at what she’d decided, on the evidence, was its face.
The creature wavered between her and the robot. The robot waited until the beetle faced her again, and struck. The creature was blindsided, and the robot grabbed its undamaged forelimb. With a smooth, mechanical motion, the robot pulled it free. A long tendon trailed from the palp, gleaming whitely, followed by a gout of deep yellow blood.
The creature made a noise that had Sand clutching at her ears, a polyphonic keening she felt in her teeth. It ran backwards from the robot, bobbing up and down in submission, then turned, hurled itself at the side of the dune, and with a flurry of legs, disappeared underneath the surface. A shifting movement in the sand betrayed its presence, then a sinking, then nothing. It had gone.
Sand held her gun at the ready, pointing at where the beetle creature had burrowed away. She reached the circle of their scattered supplies next to the robot and called to the children, gave the robot a link command to follow, and met them halfway down the slope.
The area of the fight was scuffed, the smell of cinnamon overpowering around the creature’s spattered blood and its severed limb. They gathered their supplies quickly, putting them on the sled. Sand was worried the creature might come back, or that there might be more of them, and did not wish to waste time reattaching them to the robot’s back. A few bottles had burst, trampled during the battle, but many of their supplies had been pushed into the sand undamaged, and they recovered nearly all of them. Some of the food packets were ripped, but the rations within were still edible. They gathered up the hard biscuits, sand and all, leaving the few that had been contaminated by the beetle’s blood. All the while Sand regarded the robot with a mix of relief and worry.It had shut her out. Robots weren’t supposed to do that, they weren’t capable of it.
Sand made a decision. She retrieved the guncase and flipped it open.
She gave Piotr and Kasia a pistol apiece.
“A gun?” said Kasia. She held the weapon at arms length, somewhat limply, like it would burn her. Piotr was more enthusiastic.
“Yeah,” said Sand. “I figure you’re more likely to die from not having them than kill yourselves with the damn things,” she said to them quietly. “Hey! Piotr, it’s not a toy. Don’t wave it around like that. You know how they work?”
They said yes, but she showed them quickly anyway. She was jumpy, needed to be out of there, but she wasn’t going to be caught out like that again.
“You keep these close. Don’t play with them, okay? Use them to protect yourselves and the little kids, you got that? Only take them out then. Promise me.”
They nodded solemnly.
Sand urged the robot on. Spurred by fear, they set off quickly, casting worried looks behind them all the while. She didn’t feel safe until they were two dunes further on, and she never relaxed fully in the desert again.
The character of the desert changed, dunes giving way to rocky hills. When they came to a stone spire, they stopped, and set up camp on the safety of bedrock. They slept, the robot standing sentry, Sand watching it fearfully until exhaustion bore her down into sleep.
The next day, the wind picked up strength. The day after, they walked into the sandstorm.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Robot
INHALATION. NOT DEAD, not dead. Wet drops on his face, pattering.
Rain?
Dariusz opened his eyes, and thick, sand-filled rain stung them. He was moving. He propped himself onto his elbows.
Five faces stared at him, cowled in cut-down environment suits. Five children. He was on a sled, a massive version of the ones the 14A survivors had dragged through the desert. The kids blinked at him. One rubbed a finger under her nose, but they said nothing.
He knelt. The sled was wide and stable, and his movements did not affect its progress. They were going along a valley bottom. The sled squealed as it ran over pebbles, but slid on without interruption. Ahead of him, a tall shape lumbered, leaning into the weight of the sled. Lightning blinked, highlighting panels and hard edges. Water ran off it in torrents: a robot, a heavy construction unit.
Two smaller shapes walked to the right of it, heads down. They looked like toddlers next to the robot, and Dariusz thought they were children, until his sense of perspective returned and he realised one was an adult, the other not far from becoming one.
It was as dark as he’d yet seen it. The sun was completely obscured by glowering cloud, and the wind had switched around to the west. Runnels of water poured down the slopes to their left and right, braiding themselves into small streams.
Pebbles. The hills here were not dunes; gullies cut through them, exposing strata. He’d driven this way, he thought, through part of this landscape. But this, this was a dry riverbed, something he’d not seen before on this world. And it was not so dry any more. Water was gathering in the bottom, sandy tongues of it wetting stone and dust.
They had to get out. He came alive instantly, adrenaline galvanising his limbs. He shouted. Thunder rolled above them, obliterating his voice.
He jumped off the sled and jogged forward. He ran alongside the taller figure – a woman, from the size and shape. He tapped her on the shoulder and was rewarded with a gun in his face.
He held his hands up reflexively. The robot stopped. She pulled her mask off to reveal a coffee-skinned, sunburned face, dark circles under her eyes – one black with bruising – lips dry. She was angry.
“What the hell do you think you are doing?” she shouted. “I nearly shot you!” Rain pattered off her environment suit.
“I’m sorry!” he replied. “We have to get out of this valley!”
“Why?”
He pointed at the water. “This river will flood very soon. We are in danger here.”
She paused, looked at the riverbed. She gave him a quizzical look.
“This,” he shouted, “is a riverbed! It will flood very soon. Flash flood. We need to move.”
The woman looked up. “Not to the top, too dangerous. Too much lightning!” She waved her gun at the sky. They were both yelling. The noise of the rain and the thunder was incredible.
“We have no choice!”
She nodded, beckoned to her companion, a girl, and said something to her that Dariusz did not catch. The girl went back to the sled, and they head
ed up onto the valley slope.
The woman set herself to walking again. Dariusz grabbed her shoulder. He wished he had his own hood still. Rain washed the salt of his own sweat into his eyes, and it stung. “Listen!” he said. “I have a vehicle. Big enough for us all.”
“Where?” she said. “I get nothing on my tablet.”
“Maybe the storm scrambled the beacon.”
“Where was this?”
“Not far from where you found me.”
She slumped. “Man, that was four hours ago.”
“I have supplies. There is a forward base not far from here, two days’ drive. You’ll never walk out of the desert. You’ll die. If we get back to my ATV, we will live.”
Her face wrinkled. “Shit. I should’ve tried harder to wake you up.” She nodded. “We’ll head back.”
She called the girl and told her to go back again. The girl rolled her eyes in the manner of all teenagers confronted with the foolishness of adults. The robot clumped around to face back the way they had come. Dariusz scanned the side of the valley. He pointed.
“If we walk along there, below the ridge, the way will be easier. We should be safe from the lightning.”
The woman considered that too. She was evidently not one who would follow blindly. “Alright. We’ll try it.”
They made the valley edge. It was harder going than the valley floor and the children had to get off their sled.
“This is not good,” said the woman.
“Look,” said Dariusz.
The valley resounded with noise. A rush and a rumble, and the hollow knock of stone on stone. The snout of a torrent nosed down the riverbed, white and brown and ravenous, surging with debris. The snout passed. One moment the river was empty, the next it was full.
Dariusz doubted the robot would have been able to keep its footing in that. The rest of them would have been washed away.
They watched it a while, the woman’s arms wrapped protectively around the two youngest children. The robot hefted something overhead, and they were suddenly sheltered from the worst of the rain. Dariusz rubbed rain and sand from his eyes.