by Mike Wild
On the dashboard in front of Maggie sat Hammerstein's severed head, rocking to and fro with the swaying of the car, and back and forth with its sudden, roaring bursts of acceleration. Hammerstein had shut all of his visual receptors down, allowing his internal gyros to work overtime to try and maintain his equilibrium. It was the ABC Warrior's equivalent of slamming his eyes tightly shut.
So far as Hammerstein was aware, they were travelling on the Trans-Martian Highway, the main artery and widest and supposedly fastest route between Viking City and its less salubrious neighbour, Marineris City, which was their destination. The highway was crowded with refugees and hospital vehicles heading in the same direction, although bearing in mind the recent sudden and dramatic drop in the overall driving population of Viking City, it was still less crowded than it would normally have been. Even so, the average journey time to Marineris City was meant to be somewhere in the region of forty-eight hours. Hammerstein opened his GPS program and winced as the dot representing the Sunset Streaker moved visibly on the satellite-generated map. At the rate Maggie was shifting them, they'd be there in less than twenty-four.
Hammerstein had flown in hypersonic jets across liquid acid skies, he had travelled at warp speed through the hearts of stars, he had sling-shotted battle cruisers round giant gas planets, and he had journeyed beyond the event horizons of hungry black Holes. In short, he had faced most of the conceivable travel hazards of the known universe.
And there he was perched next to a nodding plastic Soya-bean cow on the dashboard of a clapped-out sports car and the simple fact of the matter was that he had never been so nervous in his life.
The speed appeared not to bother Maggie at all. With the way ahead clear for the moment, she leapt from her perch and slid back down into her seat, grabbing her can and taking a couple of gulps of Wooze.
"So tell me, who was that robot at the airport? You never finished his name."
"It is probably best if I conserve my energies."
"No, go on. Steelho - you said, before he chopped your head off. So what is it? Steelhorse? Steelhoof? Steelhobbit?"
"No."
"Okay, something more dramatic. Steelhorror? Steel-hook? No, no, no, wait, I've got it, STEELHOOVER! No, that sucks."
"Maggie-"
"Steelhog? Steelhoe? I suppose that's the closest but, nah, it makes him sound like a gardening tool. How about Steelhombre? Hey, now that has a ring to it! The Steel Hombre."
"Miss Sidewinder-"
"MS! It's Ms, okay. Or better still, Maggie. Oh, you said that already, didn't you? But not Miss. This whole Miss business makes it sound as if I'm waiting to be a Missus, which I've gotta tell you after what happened to me I am-"
"Steelhorn."
"-about as far from becoming as I... Sorry, did you say something?"
"His name is Steelhorn."
"Steelhorn? But that's a stupid name. It doesn't make sense. I saw the guy, remember, so if anything he should be called Steelhorns. I mean he did have two?"
"I think it refers to the horn that he blows."
"He blows a horn?"
"Yes."
"Ah, so he's a musical robot."
"No."
"No?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"He is a warrior I have known for two thousand years."
"Two thousand, eh?" Maggie did the math and whistled.
"He too used to be an ABC Warrior."
"You ran a crèche together?"
"He used to be my friend."
At last, there was a second's pause. "Oh."
And a second was all it lasted.
"So, go on then, what happened? Did you two have some kind of a row? Hah, I knew it. Bet it was over some woman. It was, wasn't it? Hold on, do ABC Warriors like girls? I mean, not that it would matter to me if you didn't, you know, if you have some kind of macho... alphabet thing going on. Wouldn't matter at all. Not to me, no... no..." Maggie stopped short and harrumphed. "But, um, do you?"
Slightly surprised, Hammerstein activated his visual receptors and looked at Maggie. She was gulping on her Wooze, her face half obscured by the can. He saw enough, though, to make out that she was staring fixedly ahead and that her face had turned a deep shade of red. It suddenly occurred to Hammerstein that, more than being grateful to him for saving her life, this woman actually liked him. Were his mouth not permanently set in an intimidating downward curve, he would have smiled.
Because the fact was that Hammerstein liked Maggie, too. She was certainly the oddest floppy he had ever known.
"We like girls," he said.
"Oh," Maggie said, sitting upright. Hammerstein saw that her mouth was capable of curving upwards. "Oh... oh, right, that's good."
She revved the engine, swung into the centre lane. The sky darkened as they passed beneath a highway-straddling transporter. Maggie flicked on a mute-field, dulling the sound of its engines.
"Soooooo..." she said.
Hammerstein sighed. He realised it was inevitable that sooner or later she'd get the information out of him, so why not now? After all, it was less draining on his resources to talk than to listen.
He told her about Steelhorn. He told her about how Steelhorn had been the seventh member of the original ABC Warriors, who had fought with distinction in the war against the mighty Volgan Empire; about how he had been the one to end the war, when single-handedly he had penetrated a solar barrier and destroyed the Volgan leader. About how he had then become a pacifist and been subsequently betrayed by man, transformed inside a fusion furnace into a liquid creature known only as "The Mess"; and about how he had eventually become the symbiotic, sentient bloodstream of an intellectually-challenged, multiple-personality-disordered terraforming Gargantek by the name of George. At last he told her how the spirit of the planet, Medusa herself, had disposed of George, and as a natural consequence, Steelhorn, in a massive MarsQuake that had swallowed the two of them inside her world forever.
"Bloody hell," Maggie said.
"Hmm," Hammerstein concurred.
"You guys got around."
"We did," Hammerstein said. Strangely, Maggie thought she heard a touch of regret in his voice - a longing for those times past, perhaps - but she decided that then was not the best time to pursue the reason behind it.
Instead, she asked the obvious question.
"So, if he died, what's he doing here, knocking your block off?"
"A very good question," Hammerstein said. "I suspect Medusa has a lot to do with his resurrection as well as his death."
"Bitch," Maggie said. "Hadn't he suffered enough?"
Hammerstein shot Maggie a glance. Since he had been in her company, the sudden serious sides to his rescuer's behaviour had constantly surprised him. She was genuinely concerned about Steelhorn's history, he could tell. That made a very refreshing change. Even in the supposedly enlightened times of robot equality, it was still rare to come across a floppy who truly, deep down, considered robots to be their equals.
Hammerstein suddenly thought of Jodi Jones and Terri. And the memory made him unexpectedly weary. He found it difficult to restore visual acuity when his receptors flickered again, and then dimmed.
"No wonder he changed careers. I mean I'm not much for kids myself but I guess looking after them can be kind of fulfilling..."
"Maggie, being an ABC Warrior doesn't mean that we-" Hammerstein began. He experienced a wave of acute dizziness, as if he had plunged into a gravity well. He checked his power reserves. Things were worse than he had thought.
"Maggie, I need to shut down for a while. Will you be okay?"
Maggie glanced over, and that same serious side that had manifested itself a moment before returned in a look of deep concern. She took a swig of Wooze and swallowed slowly. "Sure," she said, after a moment. "You get some rest and I'll have us there in no time."
Hammerstein didn't doubt that for a moment. Although part of him suspected that Maggie drove like this all the time, and alongside it
another part of him suspected that she had never actually driven at all. There was a good reason for Maggie's homicidal dash along the Trans-Martian Highway.
A very good reason: he was dying.
Steelhorn had known exactly what he was doing when he had severed Hammerstein's head on the tarmac of Sojourner Airport, because in doing so he had also severed all of his direct neural transmitters to his weapons and the other parts of his robotic body. Normally, this would not have mattered - Hammerstein could simply have controlled his body and weaponry by remote - but in also signalling the tripods to simultaneously attack those parts of his body that contained the neural receivers, Steelhorn had effectively shut him down. Hammerstein had become little more than scrap metal - for the most part, melted-down scrap metal.
There was worse. The only power reserves he possessed were those that remained in his skull and they were finite. Hammerstein knew that he had no more than a day before his neural net shut down forever.
Steelhorn could have finished him there, of course. It would have been the merciful thing to do. But Steelhorn had not been in a merciful mood. He wanted Hammerstein to suffer, to watch his oil leak away in an ever-expanding pool and die a long, slow death on that lonely patch of tarmac.
And that was exactly what would have happened. But the ex ABC Warrior had reckoned without Maggie Sidewinder.
"You big, bearded bastard," were the first words he'd heard after his decapitation. He had looked up to see Maggie, oblivious to the danger she was in, hitting and kicking his departing enemy. Thankfully, Steelhorn had been distracted by something - a bullet, Hammerstein thought - and along with his tripod honour-guard he was already moving across the airfield, ignoring her.
After he had gone, Maggie had knelt by his side.
"Oh, frag. Look at you..."
"I have had better days," Hammerstein admitted.
"Smashed-up Martian, eh?"
"There is extensive damage."
Maggie picked about in Hammerstein's remains and plucked a piece of metal from the floor.
"Is this important?"
"Deflector array."
"This?"
"Attitude processor, I think."
"Here's a weird one."
Hammerstein considered the oddly shaped arm-and-gimbal mechanism carefully. It obviously came from somewhere deep inside. "To be honest, I've no idea," he admitted. He gave a choking, mechanical laugh.
"It's bent," Maggie observed. "Your twirlybobblestop's bent."
"Twirlybobblestop?" Hammerstein repeated.
"Well it has to be called something," Maggie said. "If we're going to get it fixed."
Hammerstein ran a quick physical with the parts of his diagnostic program that were still operating. "There is nothing you can-"
"Do?" Maggie said, gathering more parts. "I think there is."
"Ms Sidewinder-"
"NOW YOU LISTEN!" Maggie shouted. "You saved that kid just now, and more to the point, YOU SAVED ME! DO YOU UNDERSTAND? You cared about my life and you saved me. Nobody has ever done that for me before. Nobody in my entire fragging life has ever done that!"
Hammerstein was speechless. Maggie continued to examine the pieces.
"Now it's my turn to save you," she said, more softly. "We're going to get you to someone who can help."
"Ms Sidewinder, no-"
"Ms Sidewinder, yes."
Maggie stood up. The last thing she'd said was, "Don't go away. I'm going to find us a car."
And so that was that. Hammerstein was on the way to Marineris City. Who exactly was going to help him there, he did not know. How they were going to help him, he had no idea.
Only one thing was for certain: he had little say in the matter. Hammerstein shut down, while Maggie continued to drive and to drink.
After a few kilometres, steam began to rise up from the bonnet of the car, as if the radiator was overheating. This was a little odd, as a Sunset Streaker didn't have a radiator - it was battery powered.
Maggie watched as the steam began to slowly curl and twist before her eyes, forming itself into a shape that after a few seconds coalesced into a woman's face. The face wavered before Maggie, fresh and young and at the same time incredibly lined and ancient, both ethereally beautiful and repulsively ugly. It studied Maggie in silence, shimmering insubstantially, like a ghost.
Maggie had no doubt who it was she was looking at. And she hoped she hadn't turned white.
"Don't tell me, Medusha, right?" she said. "I mean, Medusa, right?"
"Boo," Medusa said. "Gotcha."
Maggie tipped the can of Wooze to her mouth, disguising the fact that she had to swallow hard. "Well, this is a first. Never talked to a planet before." She offered the tin at the windscreen. "Wooze?"
"A vile concoction of humankind," Medusa said. "It is as much poison as the tainted blood that runs through your insipid veins."
"I'll take that as a no, then."
"Actually, I prefer the cherry flavour."
"Okay."
"Harlot! Witch! Whore!" Medusa blurted out.
"Harridan," Maggie responded, and stuck out her tongue. "You're not altogether there, are you?"
There was a pause. Medusa's eyes narrowed. "Altogether where?" she asked suspiciously.
Maggie held her hands up. "My point exactly." The car swerved dangerously and she quickly grabbed hold of the steering wheel. "You know, not playing with a full deck; a banana short of the bunch; your stairs don't reach the attic?"
"HOW DARE-"
"Whaddya want, Medusa?" Maggie asked curtly. She was surprised at how steady her voice sounded. "I'm a little busy here."
"I want you to die!" Medusa screeched. "You and your little dog."
"Pardon?"
"Sorry, got a little carried away there."
"This is about Hammerstein, isn't it?"
"Of course it is about Hammerstein, you insolent whelp. Did you think I'd be worried about you? With a wave of my hand I could have your body flopping around wondering where its bones have gone."
"You're a planet, you don't have hands."
"Oh, really..." Medusa said tauntingly. The cloud of steam swirled suddenly, reforming itself, and Maggie found that she was choking as a set of nebulous fingers sprung forward and clutched her tightly about the throat. She felt the skin beneath them redden and blister, hot sweat trickle into the nape of her neck. "You shouldn't have saved him," Medusa hissed. "You are an interfering little girl."
"Worried, are we?" Maggie croaked hoarsely. Tears swam in her eyes. "Worried about the nursery bots?"
"Never!" Medusa hissed. She snatched the fingers away. "Bah, why am I wasting time with you?"
"I don't know," Maggie said, rubbing her neck "Why are you?"
"I am here to give you a warning."
"Yeah?"
"A warning that you will never reach Marineris alive!"
"Figured as much. But didn't you forget something?"
"What?"
"HA-HA-HA-HA-HARRR!"
Medusa hissed loudly and the cloud of steam seethed. Maggie blared the Sunset Streaker's horn, whilst Medusa screeched and almost dissipated.
"Gotcha," Maggie said.
"Cute."
"Are you going now?" Maggie demanded forcefully. "Only you're blocking my view."
Once again Medusa lashed out, but this time it was with a single finger. The finger was gnarled and bony and it wagged in Maggie's face.
"You're going to regret that," Medusa said. "You'd be amazed what I can do with the dead."
Having said that, she was gone.
Maggie looked around, wondering what it was that Medusa had up her sleeve. The traffic looked normal, the desert on both sides of the highway quiet.
Then, on both horizons, a dust cloud appeared, and out of it cloud came strange shapes.
Frag, Maggie thought. Better wake the Sarge.
"Er, Hammerstein. Wake up, Hammerstein."
"What is it, Maggie?"
"We've got company."
>
"Company?" Hammerstein said. He was aware that there was a deep roaring in the air.
He reactivated visuals and wished that he hadn't. Hundreds of leather-garbed, skeletal pyromaniacs - the crazed and psychotic motorbike gangs who had once plagued Viking City - were roaring at them across the desert. It appeared that Medusa had resurrected them from their sandy graves.
But it wasn't the pyromaniacs that worried Hammerstein; it was the machine guns that were mounted on their bikes. The ABC Warrior stared at his weaponry stacked on the second seat of the Sunset Streaker. He could have really done with those. The roaring got louder. The bikes bounced onto the highway in pursuit.
Maggie slammed her foot down on the accelerator.
"Just like that movie," she said.
"What movie?" Hammerstein asked.
"Mad Meks."
The bullets began to fly.
EIGHT
She loved him not... She loved him... she loved him not. She loved him... she loved him not. In her mind, Juanita Perez gently plucked petals from the golden yellow flower in her hand. She had been plucking petals from the flower forever, or so it seemed to her. The meadow in which she sat was carpeted with them.
She loved him...
Music played, a rhapsody, but it played only in her mind.
Juanita was no longer aware that she was a prisoner in a cage, having long since departed for that place within herself where there was peace.
Juanita Perez had gone away. She was no longer aware of the snakes and the rat-like things that shared her confinement, nor of their slithering and their twitching on her body, and of their ever more courageous gnawing at her flesh. She was no longer aware that her clothing clung to her only in patches, having been eaten away by a slow-acting fabric corrosive in the air, another of Diaz's humiliation tactics.
She was no longer aware of the guards who consequently leered at her body from beyond the bars, having turned up the heat in the tiny cage to be able to see her in all her glistening glory. She was no longer aware that she had become an animal in a zoo.
Juanita Perez was aware of only one thing: she loved him.