by J. J. Green
All their restraints cut, the two staggered to their feet, stretching and rotating their joints to ease the stiffness caused by their long confinement. The silver robot hovered, seemingly thinking its job was not yet done. It swung forward and bumped Carrie. “Hey,” she spluttered, staggering slightly. The robot bumped her again. “Watch it.”
“It’s pushing you towards the door,” said Dave. “It wants us to leave.”
“Okay, okay.” As the robot returned for a third bump, Carrie hurried out the exit and Dave followed.
Outside, the tunnel was a scene of carnage. So many pieces of shattered and broken robot littered the floor there wasn’t a centimetre between them. Robot remains were embedded in the walls, which were scorched and blackened.
“The robots put up a helluva a fight,” said Dave.
Carrie's mouth turned down. “It looks like hundreds of them died.”
“They didn’t die. They’re machines. Machines just stop working.”
Carrie didn’t reply. He was right, but that wasn’t how she felt. The robots had been doing what they were programmed to do: evict foreign bodies from the mountain. Why they did it wasn’t clear, but it wasn’t malicious. The placktoids didn’t have to destroy them, they could have left.
A group of the machines appeared ahead and approached. As they drew nearer they sped up as if they had identified Carrie and Dave as foreign and were about to evict them. But the robot who had rescued them zoomed ahead to meet its fellows. Some kind of silent communication seemed to go on. The approaching group reversed direction and glided away.
A little farther on they came across the final sign of the battle between the robots and the placktoids: a cut gouged in the wall by a long, thick metal shard. The cut had breached one of the channels of blue liquid, and the substance oozed out and ran down the wall and along the tunnel floor.
“Look,” said Carrie to Dave. “Do you think we can drink that?”
“Of course we can drink it. Then it’ll most likely kill us. But we can drink it for sure.”
Carrie grimaced. “Without water we’re going to die anyway, and that’s the closest thing I’ve seen to water on this planet.” She dipped a finger in the liquid and touched it to the tip of her tongue. The taste was sour and slightly salty, but not unpleasant. “I’m going to try a little.” Ahead, the robot that had rescued them had noticed they had stopped. It returned and bumped Carrie. “Wait a minute.” She leaned forward and took a tiny sip. Then her extreme thirst took over. “Oh, what the hell.” She cupped her hand beneath the trickle and lifted it again and again to her mouth, sucking in the liquid.
Dave watched skeptically, but eventually shrugged his shoulders and said, “If it kills us, at least we won’t die thirsty.”
Chapter Fourteen - Harriet
Refreshed by the unknown liquid, Carrie and Dave followed their silver saviour as it led them through a labyrinth of tunnels. Each time they met with other robots, the effect was the same as their first encounter after their rescue. On some silent entreaty or command of their guide, the machines backed away and avoided them. As they journeyed through the mountain they speculated at length about why the robot had freed them and where it was taking them, but neither Carrie nor Dave could come up with an explanation.
All that was apparent was that the robot had, for some reason only known to itself, decided to help them. This particular silver machine was quite different from its fellows. All she had seen of the others up until that moment indicated the rest were drone-like, seemingly automatically fixing the inner workings of the mountain and removing broken objects and things that didn’t belong there. They behaved and reacted with little, if any, ability to adapt their behaviour outside of set tasks and actions. They had sacrificed themselves in their hundreds trying to remove the placktoids from the mountain.
If only Carrie had her translator she could have tried to talk to this creature. Maybe it could tell them how they could get their stuff back, where the placktoids had escaped to, or where the Liberator was. But even if it understood her maybe it would be unable to reply. Like all the robots, it seemed incapable of making any noise.
She stumbled on some loose rock. The tunnel they were walking through had turned gradually more sandy and rocky, indicating they were nearing the surface. The air temperature told Carrie the same story as it began to rise. The robot was leading them outside, where they would be safe from forcible expulsion, but where they had no hope of finding the Liberator and completing their mission, or even surviving for very long.
Daylight filtered into the tunnel and grew to a strong, brilliant beam. The robot had taken them to a side of the mountain that faced the two suns. Great. She had to do something, anything, to get through to their rescuer that taking them outside would only lead to their slow, painful death. She reached forward and touched the back of the smooth, silver lozenge. “Look, we can’t go outside. We’ll roast under those suns. And we haven’t got any food or water. We appreciate you helping us so far, but we need more. We have to go somewhere else.”
The shiny metal machine shifted under her grip, lifting and pulling forward to break her hold. As if she’d said nothing at all, it continued on.
“Nice try, Carrie,” said Dave, “but it’s hopeless. That thing can’t understand a word we say. How could it? We’re from thousands of years in its future. English probably hasn’t even been invented yet.”
“Do you have to be so pessimistic? It might have understood me. It might have learned our language while we were talking to each other.”
“I’ve told you, I’m not pessimistic, I’m realistic. It’s easy to see it hasn’t understood you. Look at its behaviour. It didn’t react, did it? It’s carried on leading us the same way.”
Carrie's lips thinned to a line. Dave was always telling her she was wrong. Okay, sometimes he was right—maybe more than sometimes—but he didn’t have to be so smug about it.
They were nearly at the exit onto the mountainside. As they reached it, Carrie took a peek outside, narrowing her eyes in the intense light. The robot had brought them to an area that seemed to be rarely visited by its comrades. Only a few discarded robots lay about, mostly empty shells, their tools retrieved by the scavengers. The savage suns had faded their shiny surfaces to dull grey.
Only a short distance lay between them and the mountain’s foot, which led to an open, barren plain. The robot bumped them from behind, nudging them to leave, so they scooted down the short, hot slope. They went immediately and quickly to the only source of shade: a small, rocky outcrop one hundred or so metres away. The robot followed. As Carrie slumped gratefully onto the shadowed patch of ground marginally cooler than the surroundings, she was surprised to see it hovering nearby, as if watching them.
Dave had pulled down the zip on his uniform to cool himself down, and not for the first time, nor, she suspected, the last, Carrie found herself regretting that he was gay. She sighed.
“I’ve had an idea,” he said. “I’m going to see if I can get a better look inside that machine. Maybe there’s something in there that we can use.”
“Like what? What we need is a water extractor and some food. I’m starving. Aren’t you?”
“Of course. It’s a long shot, but maybe there’s a tool we can convert to a weapon of some kind. What we need to do is get our equipment back from the placktoids, then find the Liberator.”
“I know that. It’s worth a try. What do we have to lose?”
Dave went to the hovering machine and placed a hand on its shell. The robot quivered but remained in the same spot. Dave ran his hands over the surface, as if probing for an opening. He pushed down gently, causing the machine to sink. When he removed his hand it bobbed up to its original level. He rubbed his chin, then got down on the ground and lay on his back. He scooted backwards along the dusty surface, pushing with his legs and squirming his shoulders, until he lay under the robot like a mechanic under a car.
He probed the underside, tracing the lin
e where the robots opened when they produced their tools. After several moments of picking at the line and pushing the bottom of the machine in an effort to make it open up, Dave stopped what he was doing and gazed up at the underbelly thoughtfully. As Carrie watched, wondering what her friend would try next, he rapped on the surface as if it were a door. She could have sworn she heard an “Open sesame”. To her surprise the robot actually obliged and the two flaps that enclosed its underside obediently opened. “Well done.”
Dave gave her a thumbs up before returning his attention to the machine, frowning in concentration as he examined its innards.
Carrie was exhausted. Hunger and a new thirst gnawed at her. She didn’t have any interest in investigating the robot to keep her awake. Dave had his hands buried in the machine. Her eyes began to close. Soon, she was flat on her back in the shade, one arm over her head, fast asleep.
She didn’t know how long she slept before Dave’s “Damn” woke her. She raised herself up onto her elbows and blinked. The twin suns had circled farther round the sky, and her friend was standing with his hands on his hips. He was looking towards the mountain, where in the distance the robot was zooming away from them. She sat up. “What happened?”
His back to her, Dave replied, “It shut up shop and left, just like that.”
“I wonder why?”
He shrugged. “Maybe it got recalled, or it got bored with us?” He returned to the shade and sat next to her. “It’s strange, don’t you think? This whole setup, I mean. All we’ve found are those robots. Where are the ancient placktoids we saw in the creation story video? And where’s the Liberator?”
“I’ve been wondering that, too, and I think I might have the answer. Gavin was careful to tell us that story was part of the placktoid mythology, not their history. If it was history, it would be more likely to be fact, but mythologies may only have a crumb of truth at their centre, if any at all. We’ve come here expecting to see what we saw in the hologram, but the information’s become distorted over time. The placktoids have interpreted and twisted the truth to suit their self-image and their aims.
“One thing that strikes me about these robots is that—with the exception of our little friend—they’re identical. They’re multipurpose, designed to cope with most tasks thrown at them. They aren’t differentiated like the placktoids in our time. It’s like they’re the originals and the placktoids evolved from them.”
Dave’s eyes widened. “You’re saying the robots are the placktoids’ ancestors?”
“Makes sense to me. It explains everything. Why there are no ancient placktoids like the ones from our time, and why they have to fight the robots off. They don’t recognise their descendants as belonging to the same species. They react to the placktoids like they’re foreign.”
“You could be right. So, where are the Creators? And the Liberator?”
Carrie frowned. “Your guess is as good as mine. We didn’t see them in the mythology Gavin showed us, and even if we had seen them they could be as different from that as these robots are from modern-day placktoids. There’s no telling what the Creators might be, or where they are. Nor, come to think of it, the Liberator.”
Dave drew his sleeve across his forehead and wiped the sweat from his face with his hand. “Well, whether you’re right or not, we have to carry on looking.”
Carrie scanned the peaks that led to the horizon. “But where to start?”
“Right where we left off, I’d say. We have to go after that machine that saved us. It’s the only thing behaving differently from everything else. Maybe that robot—”
“Harriet.”
“What?”
“We keep calling it that robot and that machine, but it saved our lives. I don’t care if it isn’t made of flesh and blood, it deserves a name.”
“Okayyy.” Dave gave her his tolerant look. “Why Harriet?”
Carrie shrugged. “She looks like a Harriet.”
Her friend paused as if about to say something, but changed his mind. “Anyway, Harriet is the first thing we’ve seen that doesn’t fit the mould. There’s something different about it, and we should try to find out what it is. Maybe it’s been affected by the Liberator, and it’ll lead us to our goal.”
“Hmm...doesn’t make much sense to me. The Liberator wanted the placktoids to revolt and rise up against their Creators, not help out stray humans who happen to arrive on her planet. But it doesn’t matter. Whichever of us is right, we have to go back inside the mountain and start searching. I just hope the robots managed to drive the placktoids off. I don’t fancy meeting that High Commander again.
“But we’ve been going for hours,” Carrie went on. “You look exhausted. You should rest for a while. I’ll keep a lookout.”
Dave’s shoulders sagged. “You’re right. I could do with a nap.” He had barely lain down, resting his head on an arm, before he was asleep and snoring.
Chapter Fifteen – One Time or Another
Carrie wasn’t sure how long Dave slept. The suns moved across the sky, each following a different trajectory. She spent some time trying to imagine the orbit the placktoids’ planet traced around the binary system that caused the suns to move as they did, but eventually got bored. Next, she investigated the rocky outcrop that provided their shade. After a while she realised the significance of the small holes she saw in the crumbly rock. If she hadn’t also seen the speckles of silver, she might not have come to the realisation at all. When it hit her, she sat back in surprise. The speckles of silver were tiny discarded machines, and the rocky lump protecting them from the suns was a miniature version of the mountain. She was tempted to wake Dave up to tell him of her discovery, but the restful look on his face dissuaded her.
What she discovered next, however, was so amazing she couldn’t hold herself back.
She’d been sitting with her legs drawn up and her arms wrapped around them, scanning the plain for signs of life, but seeing nothing but silence and stillness. As she was wondering if this planet had ever known organic life and how the Creators had ever evolved, her gaze drifted back to the nearest mountain, where they had encountered the placktoids. Something about the sight of it niggled at the back of her mind. Something seemed to have changed since the previous time she’d looked in that direction, but she couldn’t figure out what. She searched the rocky slope for several moments as she puzzled what it was.
At last she saw it: a small, crumpled shape at the base of the mountain beneath the hole they had left through. Carrie stood and leaned forward, lifting her hand to shade her eyes. The shapeless lump was brown and it looked vaguely familiar. With a gasp, she realised what it was. Almost before her mind could spit the words Transgalactic Intercultural Community Crisis Liaison Officer Toolkit, she was running. It was her or Dave’s equipment bag. Not since she had first seen a toolkit in her interview with Gavin, seemingly eons ago, when she had taken it to be a designer handbag, had she been so pleased to see one.
Fear rose up in her as she sped over the sand. What if the bag was empty? What if the placktoids had taken everything and one of the robots had dumped it outside like a piece of rubbish. Breathlessly, she reached the bag and grabbed it. It was comfortingly heavy. She pulled it open. Everything seemed to be there. Water extractor, food, weapons, translators... She riffled through the contents some more. Her heart sank a little. It was her bag, not Dave’s. The gateway-opening device was not in it. Still, it was better than nothing. A lot better than nothing. But how had it got there?
She flew over the sand back to her friend, who was still sleeping peacefully, until she crashed into him, shouting, “Look, look what I’ve got. Look what I found.”
Dave made some indistinguishable sounds and extracted himself from Carrie’s grip. His expression was sour until she pushed the bag under his nose, when it transformed to joy. “Wh-what-where did you find it?”
“Over there. It was right under the hole where we came out.”
“But, how?”
“I’ve no idea. Who cares? Here, drink some water. And let’s eat. I’m starving.”
Carrie’s water extractor was full of the precious fluid. They had enough to slake their thirst and hydrate two of the dried meals. Carrie’s stomach groaned and rumbled and her mouth filled with saliva as the nondescript mush swelled and softened with the added water. All thoughts of the many disgusting meals prepared by Transgalactic Council chefs were far from her mind as she took a mouthful. “Oh my god,” she said, speaking with her mouth full.
“I know,” said Dave, “it’s bloody delicious.”
Carrie continued shoveling in the food like there was no tomorrow. As the edge of her hunger wore off, a niggling thought arose. “I wonder how my bag got thrown out of the mountain just right there where I would see it.”
Dave stopped eating just long enough to suck the residue from his fork and shrugged before continuing.
Carrie breathed in sharply and her eyes grew wide. She grabbed Dave’s arm, stopping his hand midway to his mouth. “What if the placktoids put it there? What if they poisoned the food, knowing we’d eat it?”
“If they knew we were here, why didn’t they come out and capture us, or, more likely, kill us?”
They gaped at each other and quickly moved around the outcrop, out of sight of the mountain. Dave took the briefing device from the bag and turned it on. Carrie sighed. Why did he have to keep looking at that thing?
“So if the placktoids didn’t put my bag there, who did?” asked Carrie.
“Maybe one of the robots, tidying up?”
“I don’t think the placktoids would let go of our equipment so easily. They know we need it.”
Dave’s brow wrinkled as he read the briefing tablet. “That can’t be right.” He thumbed the device off and on again. “Well then, I don’t know. I’m just glad we got it back. Now we just need to get mine, do our job, and return to our hopefully unchanged future.” He read the screen again. “That doesn’t make any sense.” Again, he turned the device off and on.