by Mike Wild
The town was small, pleasant and idyllic: a middle-American town of perhaps the early 1900s. There was a park with a statue of a metal deer, a bandstand, some colonial-style houses with coloured glass windows. These houses had porches with swings and were garlanded with flowers - geraniums, Hammerstein thought. There were whitewood houses and redbrick ones, and all were surrounded by neat picket fences. There was a church that had a golden bell hanging silent in its steeple. In the steeple's shadow was a graveyard with sixteen tombstones.
And there were trees, lots of trees: elm trees, horse chestnuts and maples. In amongst them, on a hill, almost overgrown by vegetation, stood a silver rocket ship, one that appeared to have been abandoned long ago. It was a silver rocket ship that had once carried a crew of sixteen.
"Why are we all here?" Hammerstein asked Colonel Lash.
"Maybe we're not, son," Colonel Lash said. "Maybe there's only you."
Hammerstein nodded. It had begun to trouble him that of the people he spent his days with only Maggie appeared to be real. The others, he knew now, were dead. Dead, or gone away for good.
Jodi Jones, scientist and the woman who had made him what he was today. His own hand had killed her when he had flown into a rage following an assault by her boss, Doctor Justin Gerber. Hammerstein knew this well because it was an act for which he had never forgiven himself. Colonel Lash, the man who had originally assembled the ABC Warriors two thousand years before. Terri, the human female who was raised by the Mekaniks and thought of herself as a robot - a robot and Hammerstein's lost love. For a time, Terri had been a member of the ABC Warriors - until she had been crushed to death during a battle in the eternal city of Agartha. This, too, Hammerstein found difficult to forgive - for it was he who had suggested she join their team.
They could not be here, could they? Nor Ro-Jaws. Nor Happy. They were all gone away for good. It was impossible.
Unless he, too, had gone away for good.
"Am I dead?" he asked Colonel Lash.
"I don't know, son," the Colonel responded. "Are you?"
"I don't understand," Hammerstein said.
"All I know for sure," Colonel Lash went on, clapping a hand on his shoulder, "is the only one who ain't dead around here is Maggie."
"Maggie?"
"That's right. You love her, son?"
Hammerstein hesitated. "I cause women pain... Jodi, Terri..."
"That is not what I asked, Sergeant Hammerstein."
"I think," Hammerstein said after a second, "that I could allow myself to learn to... if she felt the same about me."
"No guarantees, there, son. But there's only one way to find out. I guess you've a choice to make."
"Choice?"
"That's right. Between staying here and keeping her, or going back and taking the risk of losing her."
"Risk?"
"Sure. But that's life, after all... isn't it, son? You can't stay here just because you'reafraid to take the risk."
Life, thought Hammerstein. Of course he could have all the days he wanted here with Maggie, but he knew... that wasn't life, was it?
That night, before the noises and the nightmares began, before the reminders of his real life commenced once again to creep into his mind, Hammerstein asked Maggie a question: "Is this heaven?"
Maggie turned to him in their bed. Looked at him for a good long time.
"Of course not," she said. "Robots have no heaven."
Hammerstein said nothing.
Maggie turned onto her back once more, stared up at the ceiling. "But if you stay, it might be hell."
The next morning, when he awoke, Hammerstein discovered that Maggie had gone. He thought he knew where: the place where the screams came from, her home.
His home. Mars.
Colonel Lash joined him at the road out of town and placed a comforting arm about his shoulder.
"Leaving us, soldier?"
Hammerstein stared into the distance. "I think that there is something I must do."
"You've got to want to go back, son. Only you can make that decision."
"I know," Hammerstein said. "But Maggie-"
"She isn't real. Not here. You know that. Now."
Hammerstein nodded briskly. For a moment he found it difficult to speak. "But she could be. I mean, if I wanted..."
Colonel Lash chuckled. "Aye, there's the rub. If you wished, you could bring her back. You could stay here forever and have everything you ever wanted. But you don't want to, do you, Sergeant Hammerstein? Duty calls, after all. As duty always does."
Hammerstein shot him a look. His chest inflated.
Colonel Lash whistled. "You know, I had a funny feeling that duty alone might not have been enough this time," he said. "I think that maybe you do love her, son."
Hammerstein paused. Because of his past, he had never been the most emotionally open robot and it was difficult for him to commit himself.
The truth was the emotion was new to him. He didn't know, but he knew one thing: he knew enough that he wanted to find out. He only hoped that he wasn't going to make a fool out of himself. Hammerstein remained silent, though his gaze returned to the town.
Colonel Lash shook his head. "She's not coming back," he said. "And the others are gone. Ro-Jaws, Jodi, Terri, Morrigun, Sam..." He tapped Hammerstein's head. "Back to where they came from."
"You're still here."
"Not for long, son," Colonel Lash said slowly. "Not for long."
"Are you telling me I'm ready?"
"Seems that way to me."
Hammerstein took a step along the road. "Colonel," he said. "Colonel, what if Maggie - the real Maggie - doesn't want me? What if I'm wrong?"
"You're not wrong, son."
"But how can you know?"
"Because I'm ordering it. 'Bout fraggin' time someone sorted out that head of yours. Even if it is you."
"Yes, sir," Hammerstein said.
"Now go get her, sergeant."
"Yes, sir."
"And stop calling me sir," Colonel Lash commanded. He smiled. "You're your own robot now."
"Yes," Hammerstein said. He turned.
"Remember the ABC Warrior's motto, son," Colonel Lash's voice echoed after him. "'Strike first... strike hard!' And that goes for the tripods, too!"
"Goodbye, colonel," Hammerstein said.
A long, long road was the last thing he saw before...
Sigmund Jimarigg?
"Sergeant Hammerstein?" Sigmund Jimarigg said.
Hammerstein looked at his hands. "It appears so."
"Thank frag for that. I was really starting to think I'd lost you. "
Hammerstein bolted upright on the operating slab and examined the rest of himself. As in his dream, he was whole again.
Only this time he knew it was for real. "It worked?"
"Biol, of course it worked. Why else you think they call me Frankenfragger?"
"I wouldn't banter that around too much, if I were you, Jimarigg," Hammerstein said. "It's a weird name."
"Yeah. Well. Look who's talking."
Hammerstein tested out his body, flexed his limbs. He swung himself from the operating slab and made Sigmund flinch as he calibrated his weapons with a series of loud klaks, whirring, spinning barrels and ker-chunking ammo clips.
"So that's the thanks I get? You've got a weird name?"
"No," Hammerstein said. "Thanks. But I thought you said there was little chance of my...?"
"I did. And to be honest, I believed it. But that was before..."
"Before what?"
"You kept mentioning her name, man, over and over. I knew then that you were comin' back."
"Maggie?"
"Yeah, Maggie. She spent hours by your side, man, just talking to you, trying to bring you back. I reckon you mean one biol of a lot to her."
"You do?" Hammerstein said.
Sigmund studied Hammerstein's expression. "She means a lot to you, eh?"
Hammerstein faltered, switching quickly to diversionary ta
ctics. "You too, if my neuro-physiological scanner is anything to go by."
Sigmund reddened, but Hammerstein couldn't be sure if it was through anger or embarrassment. "That was a while ago. Before..."
Involuntarily, he looked down.
Hammerstein followed his gaze.
He swore he could hear singing. Prisoner of Love.
"Don't ask..." Sigmund said.
His etiquette protocol being what it was, Hammerstein didn't. But he made sure to dump a reminder to enquire on the matter with Maggie later. In depth.
"I tell ya, sergeant," Sigmund said, returning to the previous subject. "When you were sayin' her name before, it sounded like you were in heaven."
"Oh, I was," Hammerstein said heavily. "For a while."
There was a sudden explosion somewhere outside Siggy's shack, in Bowel Town.
And gunfire.
All of a sudden Hammerstein was reminded of the dreams in which Maggie had been screaming. And it suddenly occurred to him: she wasn't there.
"Maggie?" he said. He looked over to where his as yet unsorted weapons were piled. One of them was gone.
Sigmund Jimarigg faltered.
"The tripods came, man," he said uncomfortably. "In the night. They attacked Marineris City, killed thousands. It was Viking all over again. We thought we were safe down here, what with the trimorphs and all, but then the tripods started to work their way onto the girders, began to target the humans' dwellings..."
"Where is she?" Hammerstein demanded to know.
Jimarigg held up his hands. "That's what I'm trying to tell you, man! We took a couple of hits here, were lucky because of the armoured roofing. But it was going to get worse. You were in the middle of surgery and there was nothing I could do so-"
"WHERE!"
"She took a gun, tried to draw their fire away... to keep them away from you so I could finish."
"Biol!" Hammerstein said.
"It's probably too late for..." Sigmund continued, but Hammerstein was already gone.
Outside, but for the odd distant explosion and rattle of gunfire, Bowel Town was quiet, the main tripod force having moved on, their job done.
Bowel Town, however, dripped blood. Endless rivers of blood that oozed from the slain and injured of Marineris City above, trickling turgidly down through its darkest foundations, streaming slowly, in ever diverging paths, along the girderwork, then overflowing from the metal and falling at last in a slow thick rain into the devastated ruins below.
Bowel Town was a graveyard, pooled with red. Hammerstein thought that he had never heard it so quiet since the U-Cranes and traffic above were stilled.
Never so quiet since most of its raucous population were gone. Hammerstein had indeed given up heaven for hell.
"Maggie," he called as he began to make his way through the wreckage, over the grotesque, incinerated dead. His voice echoed. "Maggie."
The few humans who still lived looked at him bemusedly as he moved among then, checking their faces. Some of them pleaded for help. Hammerstein calmed them as best he could.
Some trimorphs that were tending to the injured looked equally bemused. Only their bemusement was directed above, to a god whose actions of the last few hours they were not able to comprehend.
"Maggie," Hammerstein went on. "Maggie!"
Somewhere less distant now, he heard the explosions and the sound of gunfire again.
And the distinctive klang-klang-klang of tripod feet on the girders above.
And the sound of heat-rays.
Frag! Sidewinder, is that you?
RATTA-TAT! RATTA-RATTA-RATTA!
Maggie?
RATTA-TAT! RATTA-RATTA-RATTA!
Hammerstein span and pounded in the direction that the sounds were coming from, hurling aside loose wreckage and huge chunks of concrete that blocked his path, warning the survivors he passed to stay away, to keep their heads down.
The gunfire continued as did the heat-rays.
Then he could hear a woman's voice. It was Maggie's voice.
"You want this Wooze, you're gonna have to come and get it, ya Medusan morons. Come on - over here. That's it, over here. Umm, lovely Wooze."
Definitely Maggie's voice.
Just ahead Hammerstein could make out the half-obscured shapes of tripods manoeuvring in the girderwork.
There were more gunfire sounds.
Bullets sparked as they ricocheted off the girders up above.
"Maggie!" Hammerstein shouted again, and continued on. "Maggie, it's all right, I'm back!"
She couldn't hear him. He emerged at last into the roofless shell of a burned-out building that was a neuropeptide den of some kind.
Maggie was huddled between the barely recognisable bodies of a couple of humpies, using them for cover. She fired off a few rounds, then hobbled for the opposite corner of the building, firing as she went.
"Thanks guys!" she shouted.
She was far too busy to notice Hammerstein; busy and badly injured.
Oh Gaia, Maggie, Hammerstein thought as he looked at the burns and the blood that covered her. Her leather coat was smoking and burned in patches from what had obviously been a very close shave.
The worst thing was, Hammerstein knew she had been doing all this for him.
Klang-Klang-Klang.
Klang-Klang-Klang.
The tripods prepared to fire again, having manoeuvred to a suitable position on their precarious perch.
DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM.
"Come on you three-legged freaks, come get your Wooze."
The tripods fired. The building began to fill with flames.
Maggie was trapped.
"NO!" Hammerstein shouted. "MAGGIE, NO!"
She turned and looked at him, just for a second, and seeing him returned and intact, she smiled. The heat-ray struck her in the back.
"NOOOOO!" Hammerstein cried as she fell.
And as he did he fired his guns.
BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA.
The bullets slammed into the tripods, hammering them and the girders on which they balanced, drowning them in an unceasing hail of lead that they could not avoid. A tripod slipped from its perch, crashing into the debris below. Before it could recover, Hammerstein fired into its maw. Martian blood erupted. Hammerstein turned his attention to a second tripod, firing unrelentingly at the girder above the ungainly war-machine.
The girder shifted and collapsed suddenly with a loud groan, the tripod trapped between it and the other girder below.
Hammerstein emptied every clip he had into the face of the third tripod, forcing it back across its girder with the sheer force of his bullets alone. The tripod staggered back into the darkness and was gone.
Maggie, Hammerstein thought. Oh Gaia, Maggie.
The ABC Warrior picked his way through the burning rubble until he was at her side. Maggie lay amidst the wreckage battered and burned, but she was alive.
"Heeey, Smash Martian..." she said weakly. "Welcome back."
"Maggie, don't move."
"Wasn't... planning to," Maggie said in a strained voice. She coughed. "You seen my Wooze?"
Hammerstein picked up her can and placed it gently to Maggie's charred lips. Maggie took a sip and lapsed into unconsciousness.
"She's dying, you know," Sigmund Jimarigg said. He had appeared by their side, having obviously followed the ABC Warrior when he had left his shack. "I'm sorry."
"Is there-" Hammerstein asked slowly. "-Is there anything you can do?"
"I'm a cyberneticist, not a medical doctor," Sigmund said. "She's too far gone and needs blood."
Over in the corner of the burned out building, the body of the first tripod settled in the debris, drawing glances from them both.
"The tripod has blood," Hammerstein said. "The pilots feed on it."
"Alien blood," Sigmund said dismissively.
"Human blood," Hammerstein corrected. "Their victims. The whole machine operates as a kind of giant transfusion device which the pilots are hooked
into..."
Sigmund looked up. Something had suddenly occurred to the cyberneticist. He scrambled over to the pilotless tripod and with a little effort hauled himself inside. After a few minutes he came scrambling desperately back out.
"I think I can save her," he said.
"The blood?"
"More than the blood, Sergeant Hammerstein," Sigmund breathed excitedly. "I told you, I'm a cyberneticist, not a medical doctor."
"What are you talking about?"
"The tripod," Sigmund declared. "The equipment inside is more than just a blood transfusion system, it operates as a complete life-support system for the Martians! It regenerates them! If I can hook Maggie up to that..."
"It'll keep her alive?"
"More than keep her alive, Sergeant," Sigmund went on. "Given time it could actually regenerate Maggie, too. It could completely heal her."
"You can do this?"
"Hey, they don't call me-"
"Frankenfragger for nothing," Hammerstein said. "Yes, I know."
Hammerstein left Sigmund to work, patrolling the Bowel Town ruins to ensure that no tripods approached, doing effectively for Maggie what she had done for him during his own operation.
Hours passed.
When Hammerstein returned, Sigmund was tinkering with one of the legs of the upright war-machine, adding some finishing, customised touches. To Hammerstein's amazement, he had turned the feet of the tripod's legs into high-heels.
He had also provided it with a bandolier of Wooze, which was draped around its hull. This man was more than just good, Hammerstein thought.
This man had style.
"Er, Maggie?" Hammerstein said cautiously. He still wasn't sure how successful Sigmund's operation had been. "How are you feeling?"
To Hammerstein's surprise, the tripod turned towards him with a clang.
Maggie Sidewinder placed her elongated, snake-like arms dramatically on her hips and stared down at the ABC Warrior.
"HOW DO YOU THINK I'M FEELING? THIS BIOLHEAD JUST TURNED ME INTO A FRAGGING TRIPOD!"
SIXTEEN
The huge cybo-whale sloughed through the churning depths of the Sand Sea. Joe Pineapples crawled along its belly like a spidery blue limpet, laser knife in hand.
Chock!
Joe plunged the knife deep into the cybo-whale's flesh, hauled himself another foot along its body.