"They're all in the jungle now," came the steady monotone of the watchful soldier. "All right, let's head on back to the beach."
Laura felt a hand on her arm. "What? I'm not going with you."
"Lady, there are robots roamin' all over this—" There was a distant boom, and a sound like firecrackers ripped through the night just after. Then came another explosion and another and another.
"Come on, let's go!"
The soldiers tried [missing] out of the jungle and turned toward the airport. Laura yanked her arm free and took off running toward the Village, abandoning her suitcase by the road.
"Hey!" she heard from behind, followed by the sound of a man running after her. Laura sprinted down the hill as fast as her feet would carry her. "Chief! Break it off!" someone else shouted.
After a moment, Laura glanced back over her shoulder. She was all alone, and she slowed her pace to a walk.
The night had fallen quiet again. The fighting had died down.
It had come from somewhere behind the mountain — from the empty quarter.
The streets of the Village were just ahead. There were no robots to be seen.
Something stirred in the brush to her left. There was another sound — very deliberate, like an animal preparing to strike. Laura felt panic set in. She began to jog again, staring into the black jungle over her left shoulder and counting down the steps until she made it to the relative safety of the streetlamps.
She turned to see a Model Eight blocking her way into the Village.
She stopped dead in her tracks. The monstrously large robot stood framed by the streetlamps forty or so yards away. He remained completely motionless, but he was holding something in his right hand.
Laura felt her every move counted. The robots were at war. They'd be jumpy. Terrified. Angry. They'd be in a killing mood.
As methodically as she could manage, Laura raised her open right hand. It was an international gesture of peace and greeting — showing a stranger that she was unarmed.
A brilliant white light burst from the robot's right hand, crackling with violent heat. The robot headed straight up the hill toward her, breaking into what for it had to be a run. It raised the welding torch that it held into the air.
Laura was blinded now with panic. She turned to flee up the hill but froze. Against a sky that glowed from the airport lights, she could see another Model Eight coming down the hill right behind her.
She was trapped, and the terror gripped her completely.
Without thinking she dashed straight into the thick jungle beside the road, throwing herself against the clinging brush in utter desperation. She fought her way deeper and deeper, the branches scratching at her arms and neck and face.
The robot coming down the hill was the first of the attackers to reach her. Its entry into the jungle behind her was announced by the great volume of cracking branches and crushed foliage. Looking back over her shoulder at the Model Eight, Laura screamed "No-o-o!"
First one great swath of branches were sheared from their limbs above her, then a deeper cut was taken by the robot — slinging its arms through the air like a scythe. With the third pass of the blades, Laura fell to the ground under a shower of leaves and twigs. In the sudden silence, she raised her head to see the robot standing motionless directly above her.
Laura curled up into a ball, shaking from the soundless sobs that wracked her body. Her stomach muscles clenched so tight they began to cramp. Her gasps for air ended the moment she felt the robot's touch.
It pressed down on her head with its hand. This is it, she thought in terror, unable to move a muscle.
The sound of branches being broken near the road again filled the air. The robot hand rose from her head, and there was a great thud that Laura felt through the ground where she lay. Looking up, she saw the robot who'd chased her into the jungle now lying on the ground beside her. It was grasping frantically for brush, which it uprooted in its vain attempt to resist being dragged out of the jungle to the road.
All was still under Laura's blanket of fallen leaves and branches.
An eerie glow emanated from what she now saw was a small gathering of robots. The shadows thrown across the brush drifted slowly as a welding torch descended toward the earth.
The quiet of the night was broken by a crackling and sizzling burn.
Laura sat up. The robots were all seemingly unconcerned by her presence. She saw in the flashing light from the torch that they stared intently toward the center of their circle. She crept through the brush on her knees, approaching the edge of the clearing for a better view.
Three Model Eights held Laura's pursuer pinned to the ground. The fourth was pressing its arc torch into the left thigh of their prisoner. The right leg, Laura saw with a sudden jolt of nausea, lay on the ground… severed.
The captive robot lay perfectly still — its head raised and watching their efforts. The amputation was extremely precise. The cut on the left leg was being made just below the hip — at exactly the same place as the right. When the welding torch fell dark, the crackling air grew quiet. The captors all rose. The one at the feet of their victim held the two severed legs.
The paraplegic Model Eight stared down at its missing limbs, then lowered its head and raised its arms straight up. The two robots at its head grabbed its forearms, and they dragged the legless machine toward the Village.
The remaining Model Eight stood just outside the jungle not ten feet from where Laura knelt. When the others had gone, the robot's head turned toward her. It held its free hand up in the air, just as Laura had done in the road.
She took a guess — prepared to run back into the black jungle at the slightest hint of danger. "Hightop?" she asked in a low and quivering voice.
The Model Eight raised the electric torch into the air. The torch flared once with a sizzling sound and flash of brilliant light.
The robot then lowered the makeshift weapon into its equipment belt. It extended its hand to Laura, palm-up.
She rose and carefully stepped out into the clearing. She didn't take the proffered hand, but with her heart pounding she followed Hightop down the hill. From the way he kept turning to look back at her, Laura didn't feel she was the robot's prisoner. Hightop acted like her rescuer, her savior, her protector. She just wished she could get some hint of what was going on in his mind.
The cold and expressionless face gave her no clues as to his intent.
Hightop paid her less and less attention the farther they progressed into the Village. They passed two other Model Eights and the wreckage of another Model Seven whose spider legs were strewn all about the central boulevard. This one had not been hit by a car. It had burn marks crisscrossing its torso in perfectly straight scars.
Another Model Eight appeared, crawling out the front door of a building. Its right shoulder made contact with the doorframe, and wood splinters flew onto the sidewalk. Through the display windows of the store she could see shelf after shelf of expensive crystal. The floor was littered with sparkling debris.
Instead of turning sideways the way it had presumably entered the store, the robot pressed carefully but firmly straight through the frame. With one long breaking sound it was through, widening the entrance in the process to more comfortable proportions.
Hightop stopped in front of the store, and Laura halted beside him. The robot from the china shop approached and opened a panel on the front of its chest. From the open compartment it extracted a wide, flat connector. Thousands of glowing white dots of light emanated from the connector's exposed end. Hightop opened his own compartment, and the new arrival cabled up to the mini-net housed in Hightop's chest.
It was the same cable that had been run from Hightop to Gray's laptop at their aborted hillside picnic two nights before.
They were communicating, Laura realized. The glowing lights were optical cables. But they can talk to each other with microwaves, Laura remembered as she waited silently. Radio silence… They're at war.
But with whom?
Only other robots could listen in on their transmissions. Laura looked down the empty boulevard. The burned and cut torso of the Model Seven lay crumpled just under the statue of the woman with the globe.
There was a Model Seven and a Model Eight on the asteroid.
"Hey!" she said in a raised voice. The robots didn't move. "Hey! I've got to go! I've got to get to the computer center!" she said loudly, enunciating each word.
The robot unplugged its connector from Hightop. They snapped their chest panels closed and turned toward Laura in unison. They walked past her up the boulevard toward the statue.
She turned to look at them. "Where the hell do you think you're going?" she shouted. "The computer center is that way!"
They didn't even slow down. "That way!" she yelled, jabbing her finger in the opposite direction.
Hightop stopped and held his hand out to Laura. They had plans of their own that were more important.
Laura grabbed her pounding head with both hands. She had to decide whether to go with them or to go alone. The decision was immense, and it was a toss-up.
They stood there unmoving. No face or voice to [missing]. Just a machine.
"Where are you headed?" she asked. "Could you point!" she shouted. She even showed them how.
Nothing. Nothing but a hand held out by Hightop. It was an extension of Gray. His tool. His most trusted. It was like a hand held out by Gray himself.
And it had a plan.
Laura turned to follow the two robots up the hill. "I'm not going in there," she said as they stood at the edge of the jungle. "No way! Uh-uh." She was shaking her head and waving her arms in front of her.
They cabled up to each other again. When the thin ribbon was stowed away, Hightop's companion grabbed Laura by the waist. She screamed in shock as it picked her up. She began bicycle-kicking the air. The robot raised her high off the ground, and Hightop turned to look away.
"Hightop!" she shouted, kicking his hard back with the toes of her running shoes. She was close enough to pound his head with her hands. "Hightop!"
His skin was soft and smooth. The strange feel of it made Laura stop struggling. She grabbed onto his shoulders. Her feet found the equipment belt at his waist. She clung there on Hightop's back, her head ten feet off the ground. Hightop headed for the jungle ahead.
It was a piggyback ride. She owed him an apology. "I, uhm—" she said. "Sorry about that."
Hightop walked straight into the jungle without slowing. The black branches cracked in a thousand places. They scraped along the robot's sides and swatted at Laura from behind. Hightop used his hands to clear a path ahead with great squeezes and twists of the protruding branches, but his body did most of the damage. From his chest and legs and feet there came a constant din.
They traveled through the jungle with ease. The Model Eight to the rear ensured that no limbs sprung back onto Laura.
Laura climbed closer to the robot's ear and shouted, "Hey… where're we going?"
The robot made no move to respond.
"Hightop," Laura said in a loud voice, "listen to me. I'm scared. I'm really, really scared. Now I know you can't talk, but if you can understand me, please give me some kind of sign that you're not going to take me into the jungle and do something terrible to me. Please!"
The two robots stopped, and all at once there was silence.
Hightop's head turned with the faintest of whirs. When his face was visible, he raised his fingertips to a grill. He then reached over his shoulder toward Laura.
The smooth, flat fingers gently touched Laura's cheek with a gentle caress.
The procession moved on. Laura had no idea how far they traveled. She had no idea where she was. What little sense of direction she possessed had been lost.
Hightop stopped, then slowly knelt to the ground — crushing the brush underneath. The night was black as coal on the floor of the jungle. Laura took Hightop's move as her cue and climbed down.
Her eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness, and then she saw the robots all around. They were everywhere, kneeling on the ground just like Hightop. They faced the same way, as if in prayer. There were dozens and dozens of them.
Laura stumbled backward — away from the menacing forms that surrounded her. Despite the noise she made, the robots all remained motionless.
Hightop plugged his communications cable into the nearest Model Eight.
Laura saw that cables ran from robot to robot, and the daisy chain ended with Hightop. He was the leader. He gave the orders.
The Model Eights all unplugged their cables and stood. There was a great collective breaking of branches as they rose. Laura shielded her head and face against the rain of falling limbs.
But that was nothing compared to what happened next.
The robots began to move forward en masse. It was as if a wave of metal crashed through the jungle ahead of Laura. The brush was flattened in its path. The stunted trees fell to reveal the starry sky and the roof of the computer center. She heard an alarm — a throbbing, strident tone.
After the last of the robots exited the jungle, there were a few seconds of relative quiet. Then came the horrible screeching sound of rending metal. Laura could see through the thin leaves the eerie light cast by a welding torch. The light wavered and flickered through the suddenly defoliated jungle, and Laura realized it wasn't one torch but dozens. The smell of the burning metal mixed with the cacophony of crashing sounds. It reminded her of some gigantic pile-up on a fogbound interstate, but these were not the sounds of an accident. They were the hellish noise of battle in the earth's second millennium.
Laura made her way toward the jungle's edge. The scene on the open fields around the computer center slowly came into view.
"My God," Laura whispered, a chill rippling up her body. There was carnage everywhere.
The Model Eights were fighting an army of Sixes and Sevens. The main battle was in the center, where the Model Eights had formed a phalanx.
The tight formation rushed four abreast and five deep straight for the computer center walls. Their wake was littered with wreckage. Most of the fallen were the wheeled Model Sixes, rendered immobile once knocked to their sides. They waited only to die, snapping futilely at passersby with their single long arm.
On the flanks a few Model Eights stood apart. Their torches thrashed wildly through the air. When the torches made contact with metal, the night lit up with the sparks of a killing.
The Model Sevens fared better than the Sixes, but the spidery robots seemed reluctant to fight. They ambled sideways back and forth like crabs. There were many feints and few engagements, but when they clashed the contest was intense. The Sevens lifted a leg to batter their enemies with all the violence they could muster.
They either toppled the Model Eights with the blows or missed and were themselves upended. Once on the ground, the two-legged Eights could roll over but a Seven could only delay. It would grab its attacker like an octopus, but the clench wasn't strong enough to kill.
Inevitably, there was the blistering light of a torch, and from amid the tangle would emerge an Eight — the fittest model on the field.
Everywhere lay the results of the disaster. Twitching legs that once were a graceful Model Seven. The pathetic waste of an armless Model Eight wriggling helplessly away from its nightmare. It brought tears to Laura's eyes. Each was a thing of beauty. There were poets and scholars and felons, and Laura intensely felt the loss of each. It was so senseless, so cruel, and it seemed like the end of all her hopes for the future.
Through the tears that blurred her eyes, Laura could see the Eights dragging their wounded to the rear. They appeared to have set up an aid station, and had drawn cables from the thighs of the fallen.
These weren't the thin cables used for communications. They were power cables built to pass charges of electricity.
The thick black cables were plugged into the uninjured robots, who knelt on the ground beside their comrades. The healthy are giving the wounded a transfusio
n! Laura thought. Instead of blood, they passed electricity!
But something struck Laura as odd. After the healthy Model Eights rose to leave, new robots would take their place. They came, cabled up, and returned to battle, but the wounded robots sank into a stupor.
They were getting worse, not better. They were being drained of their charges instead of recharged. The healthy were sucking the life out of the wounded.
Laura decided she had to make a run for it. She couldn't wait for the Model Eights to return. They were designed to learn about life from experience. From among the awful maiming and killing on the field, what lessons would be learned by the survivors? What scars would they bring back from war?
Laura frantically began to search for an opening. The ragged line seemed to have stalled halfway across the grassy lawn. She scanned the computer center's walls to get her bearings. The entrance was somewhere around the side to the right. All of a sudden she saw several tiny black specks running along the base of the bunker. They were insignificant compared to the robots — mere flies buzzing about the bloodless massacre. But they meant everything to Laura just then.
They were human… like her.
She burst out of the jungle into the open, sprinting straight toward the melee ahead. There had to be over two hundred robots on the field.
Billions of dollars of technology from the Information Age were being ground to pieces with the brutality of the Dark Ages. Her eyes searched the battle lines for an opening. It was a new world to Laura, and she was at a dangerous disadvantage. She didn't know the various models' capabilities, but more importantly she knew nothing of their goals.
They had ambitions, missions, menace, and she didn't know who was friend and who was foe. She pumped her arms and legs as hard as she could, running straight for the computer center wall.
She flew past unrecognizable pieces of metal, her eyes fixed on the small black figures. They were pointing at her and motioning frantically, but her view of them was repeatedly obscured by the rapidly maneuvering robots.
She was now less than fifty yards from the front line, and there was no clear way through in sight. The Model Sixes made their runs against the Eights at high speeds, their single grippers raised straight in front of them like jousting spears. They would take little heed of her presence amidst their battle to the death. She had no business being there in the first place.
Society of the Mind Page 49