The old man was still doing his exercises.
The boy didn’t realize why the exercises had to take so long. They didn’t look hard to do, although when he tried to copy them, the old man laughed as if he were doing them in the most ridiculous manner possible. The old man used a sword while he did the exercises, but not even a real one—it had no edge, and was made of aluminum which could not even be made to take one. He held the sword-stick ridiculously, not even using his whole hand most of the time; usually he held it with only his middle finger and forefinger, some of the time with only the little and ring fingers. Both of his hands, in fact, were held in that peculiar crab claw, with the fingers separated.
Finally, though, there were signs that the old man was coming to the end of the set, stabbing around him to right and left with his stick. The boy now had something to do. Gradually, he scurried out among the rusting steel shells, carrying the basket of fruit. It was, of course, spoiled fruit, fruit the old man would not have been able to sell at market. There would have been no point in wasting saleable produce.
The boy arranged a marrow to the west, a pineapple to the east, a durian to the north, and a big juicy watermelon to the south. Each piece of fruit sat on its own square of rice paper. He was careful to leave the empty basket in a spot where it would not interfere with the old man’s movements. Then, just as his elder and better was turning into his final movement, facing into the sun as it blazed up into the sky, the boy ran to the long half-buried shelf the old man called the dead hulk’s ‘glacis plate’, and unwrapped the Real Sword.
The Real Sword was taller than he was. He had been instructed to unwrap it carefully. The old man had illustrated why by dropping a playing card onto the blade. The card had stuck fast, its weight driving the blade a good half centimeter into it.
The old man bowed to the sun—why? Did it ever bow back?—walked over to the sword, nodded stiffly to the boy, and picked up the weapon. He executed a few practice cuts and parries, jumping backwards and forwards across the sand. This was more exciting—he was moving quickly now, with a sword of spring steel.
Then, he became almost motionless, the sword whipped up into a position of readiness up above his head. As always, he was directly between all four pieces of fruit. Sometimes there were five pieces of fruit, sometimes six or seven.
The sword moved up and down, one, two, three, four times, the old man lashing out at all quarters, turning on his heel on the sand. There were four soft tearing sounds, but no sparks or sounds of metal hitting metal.
The old man stood finally upright, ready to slide the sword back into a nonexistent scabbard. He had lost the scabbard somehow years ago, nobody seemed to know how—nobody could convince him to shell out the money for a new one.
He walked over to inspect the fruit. All four pieces now lay in two pieces, making eight pieces. In all four cases, the cut had been deep enough to completely halve the fruit right down to the rind. In not one case had the rice paper underneath been touched. In some cases, the old man’s activities had cut the rot clean out of the fruit. The boy gathered up the good pieces, which would now be breakfast.
The rotten pieces he slung away into the desert.
When they walked back toward the village, the General Alarm was sounding. This, the boy knew, could be very bad, as no alarm practice was scheduled for today.
General Alarm could mean that another boy like him had fallen down a melt-hole like a damned fool and the whole village was out looking for his corpsicle. Or it could mean that a flash flood was on the way and every homeowner had to rush out and bolt the streamliner onto the north end of his habitat, then rush back in and dog all the hatches. It might mean a flare had been reported, and everyone except Mad Farmer Bob who carried on digging his ditches in all weathers despite skin cancer and radiation alopoecia had to go underground till the All Clear.
But it was clear, when they reached the outskirts of the village, that this was none of these things. There was a personal conveyor in the Civic Square, with its green lights flashing to indicate it had been set to automatic guidance. Someone had used towing cable to secure three long irregular wet red shapes to the back of it, shapes the grown-ups would not let him see. But he had a horrible idea what they were, or what they had once been. Dragging your enemy behind a conveyor was a badabing-badaboum thing to do, and normally the boys in the village would have run and jostled to see such a marvelous sight. But when the men who had been dragged, probably alive, were Mr. d’Souza, big friendly Mr. d’Souza who had three hairy Irish wolfhounds, and Mr. Bamigboye, who told rude jokes about naked ladies, and even Mr. Chundi, who told kids to get off his property—then things did not seem so exciting.
Mr. d’Souza, Mr. Bamigboye, and Mr. Chundi were Town Councilors, and they had gone up to the Big City to argue with the authorities about the mining site. Although there was nothing there now but a few spray-painted rocks and prospectors’ transponders, the boy knew that some Big City men had found rocks they called Radioactives upriver. But the boy’s father said the Big City men were too lazy to dig the rocks out of the ground using shovels and the Honest Sweat Of Their Brow. Instead, they planned to build a sifting plant downstream of the village, and set off bombs also made of Radioactives in the regolith upstream. A handsome stream of Radioactives would thus flow downriver to the sifting plant, but the village’s water would be poisoned. The villagers had all been offered what were described as ‘generous offers’ to leave by the Big City men; but the Town Councilors had voted to stay. The Big City men had been rumored to be hiring a top Persuasion Consultancy to deal with the situation. Now it seemed that the rumors had come true.
“We ought to take a few guns into town and sort out those City folk,” said old father Magnusson, who thought everyone didn’t know he ordered sex pheromones and illegal subliminal messaging software through the mail from Big City, but Aunt Raisa knew. Now no woman in town would either visit him or call him on the videophone.
“How many guns do we have? And small-bore ones, too, for seeing off interlopers, not armour-piercing stuff. The combine bosses will be protected by men in armour, ten feet tall, with magnetic accelerators that shoot off a million rounds through you POW-POW-POW before you pop your first round off! You are maximally insane.” This was old mother Tho. Despite her insulting mode of communication, many of the older and wiser heads in the square were nodding their agreement.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Mother Murdo. “Magnetic accelerators are illegal.”
“Anything illegal is legal if nobody is prepared to enforce the law. Have you not been up to the City recently? The mining combines have been making their own militaria for months. After they had to start making their own machine tools and coining their own money, weapons were the logical next step.”
“But we are still citizens of the Commonwealth of Man,” said father Magnusson, drawing himself up to his full one hundred and thirty-five centimeters, “and an attack on us would be an attack on the Commonwealth itself.”
“Pshaw! The Commonwealth doesn’t even bother to send out ships to collect taxes any longer,” said mother Tho. “And when the taxman doesn’t call, you know the government is in disrepair.”
There were slow nods of appreciation from the crowd, most of whom were secretly glad that the tribute ships had not visited for so many years, but all of whom were alarmed at the prospect that those ships might have funded services whose unavailability might now kill the village.
“Well, in any case,” said father Magnusson, “if they dare to come up here and attempt their person-dragging activities, the State will repel them instantly.”
Mother Tho was unimpressed. “We must be pragmatic,” she said. “The Guardian has not moved for sixty Good Old Original Standard Years. Not since the last Barbarian incursion.”
Father Magnusson smacked his lips stolidly. “But I remember,” he said, “when it last moved. And it operated most satisfactorily on that occasion. The Barbarians’ ships filled the ski
es like locusts, but our Guardian was equal to them.”
Mother Tho looked up into the sky, where the silhouette of the Guardian took a huge bite out of the sunrise. “Father, you are only one of perhaps two or three people still alive who remember the Guardian moving. And it is a machine, and machines rust, corrode, and biodegrade.”
“The Guardian was built to last forever.”
“But a Guardian also needs an operator. And where is ours?”
The old man put a hand upon the boy’s shoulder, and moved away among the buildings before the conversation grew more heated.
“There are foreigners in the village,” said the boy’s mother, folding clothes with infinite precision. “Men from the mining company. They are asking for Khan by name, and you know why, old man.”
The old man tucked the sword away in a crevice by the side of the atmosphere detoxifier. “Khan can look after himself.”
“They had guns, by all accounts, and you know he can’t.” The boy’s mother ran the iron over a fresh set of clothes. “Khan is fat and slow and has long since ceased to be any use in a fight. It isn’t fair for him to be put through this.” She looked up at the old man. “Something must be done.”
The old man looked away. “They have heard the name Khan, heard that this Khan is the man who is our Guardian’s operator. They perhaps mean harm. I will radio to Khan in the clear to stay out fixing watercourses and not return home until these men have gone. They will be listening, of course. This will inform them that their task is pointless, and then maybe they will leave.”
“Or they will go out and search the watercourses till they find him.”
“Khan knows the watercourses, and is more resourceful than you give him credit for. They will not find him.”
“Khan is not as young as he once was. It will be cold tonight. You think that just because people are not as old as you, they are striplings who can accomplish anything.”
“I think nothing of the sort, woman. Now boil me some water. I have a revitalizing tea to prepare for Mother Murdo’s fin-de-siècle ennui.”
Khan’s mother gathered up the heap of ironing and made her way out of the kitchen past the floor maintenance robot. “Boil your own water, and lower your underparts into it.”
In order to defuse a family quarrel, the boy walked across the kitchen and turned on the water heater himself. He could not, however, meet the old man’s eyes. Khan was, after all, his father.
The next morning, underneath the Guardian’s metal legs, there was a gaggle of young men jostling for position.
“I will save the village!”
“You are wrong! It will be I!”
“No, I!”
The boy, who was running a flask of tea to Mother Murdo, saw Mother Tho rap three of them on the occiput with her walnut-wood staff in quick succession.
“Fools! Loblollies! What would you do, if you were even able to gain access to the Guardian’s control cabin?” She pointed upward with her polyethylene ferrule at the ladder that led up the Guardian’s right leg, with a dizzying number of rungs, up to the tiny hatch in its Under Bridge Area where a normal person’s back body would be. Once, the boy had climbed all those rungs and touched the hatch with his hand for a bet, before being dragged down by his father, who told him not to tamper with Commonweal property. His father had had hair then, and much of it had been dark.
“If I gained access,” swaggered the most audacious of the three, “I would march to the Big City and trample the mining syndicate buildings beneath boots of iron.” And he blew kisses to those girls of marriageable age who had gathered to watch.
“If you gained access!” repeated the old witch, and grabbed him by the nose using fingers of surprising strength. “YOU WOULD NEVER GAIN ACCESS! Only the Guardian’s operator has a key, and it is synchronized to his genetic code. You would do nothing but sit staring up at a big metal arse until the cold froze you off the ladder.”
“OW! Bedder dat dan allow our iddibidual vreedods do be sudgugaded!” protested the putative loblolly.
Mother Tho let the young man go, and wiped her fingers on her grubby shawl.
“Our Guardian will defend us when its operator is ready,” she intoned.
A voice chipped in across the crowd: “Our Guardian’s operator is too feeble.”
The boy shrunk back behind a battery of heat sinks and hid his face.
“It’s true!” yelled another voice. “The company assassins turned out the whole of Mr. Wu’s drinking establishment and threatened to shoot all its clientele one by one until Khan was turned over to them. In his confusion and concern for his customers, Wu turned over the wrong Khan, Khan the undertaker, and they killed him instantly. His tongue lolled out of his face like a frosted pickle. When the company men find the real Khan and kill him, there will be no trained professional to bury him.”
“There are men in the village with guns?” said one of the bold youngsters, removing his thumbs from his belt, staring at his contemporaries with a face of horror.
“Ha!” gloated Mother Tho. “So our bravos are not quite so audacious when faced with the prospect of their skins actually being broken.”
The boy put dropped his cargo of tea and ran for home.
Home proved to be more difficult to get to than usual. The boy followed the path most usually followed by children through the village, disregarding the streets and ducking under the support struts of the houses. Had crows been able to fly in this atmosphere instead of expiring exhausted after a few tottering flutters, he would have been traveling as the crow flew.
However, there was a problem. A small group of boys were holed up under the belly of Mother Tho’s house, whispering deafeningly, fancifully imagining they were Seeing without Beeing Seen. But the boy was not afraid of other boys—at least, not as much as he was afraid of the men in the street who were tolerating Being Seen.
It was quite rare for children to be playing on the streets now. Their mothers were keeping them indoors. It was hoped that the Persuasion Consultancy assassins had not realized their mistake, and would be happy with having disabled the village’s (admittedly one hundred per cent lethal) corpse-burying capabilities.
However, it seemed the assassins were not content with simple murder. They were standing in the street outside the house of Khan the undertaker, above which a grainy holographic angel flickered in the breeze. Not content with having murdered the undertaker’s unburied corpse, the men had turned out the contents of his funeral emporium, headstones-in-progress and all, into the street. They were searching the whole pile of morbid paraphernalia with microscopic thoroughness, while his widow screamed and hurled such violent abuse as the poor woman knew. The boy could only conclude that onyx-look polymer angels were of great value to them.
“They are searching for our Guardian’s access key,” hissed one of the watchers in a strict confidence that carried all the way to the boy’s ears.
“Only the Operator has the access key,” said another boy. “Was Khan the Operator?”
“No,” said a third. “I think it was Khan the farmer.”
“Khan, a warrior! He is a fat little fruit seller.”
“Operators are not chosen for their physical strength,” said the third boy contemptuously. “The servomechanisms of the Guardian provide that. Operators are chosen for the extreme precision of their physical movements. It is said that the operator of the Guardian of the Gate of the City of Governance back on Earth was so precise in his motions that he was able to grip a normal human paintbrush between his Guardian’s claws and inscribe the Rights and Duties of Citizens on the pavement in letters only three meters high.”
The boy ducked under the hull of the nearest building and took a dog leg a habitat to the south before any Persuasion Consultancy men could engage him in conversation.
It was sunset. The sun was setting in the East.
The old man was sitting dozing, pretending to be absorbed in serious meditation. The boy walked up and pointedly slammed
down the basket on a nearby ruined Barbarian war machine, pretending not to notice the old man starting as if he had been jumped on by a tiger.
“I have brought everything,” said the boy. “Father is still at large. The assassins are reputed to be pursuing him along the north arroyo.”
The old man nodded, and sucked his teeth in a repulsive manner. “Did you bring the weapons from underneath the loose slab in the conveyor garage?”
The boy nodded. “There is no need to conceal these weapons,” he sniffed. “It is not illegal to possess them, and surely they can be of no intrinsic value.”
The old man ran his hand along the bow as he lifted it from the bundle, and grinned. “There was also a picture of your grandmother underneath that slab,” he said. “That is also of little intrinsic value.”
“I never knew my grandmother,” said the boy.
“Think yourself lucky,” said the old man grumpily, “that I did.” He set an arrow—the only arrow in the bundle—to the bow, and began trying to bend it, frowning as his hands shook with the effort.
“OLD MAN,” called a voice. “STOP PLAYING AT SOLDIERS. WE DEMAND TO KNOW WHERE KHAN IS.”
The bow collapsed. The arrow quivered into the dirt. The old man turned round. From the direction of the village, three young men, muscles big from digging ditches and lifting baskets, had strolled in to the clearing between the destroyed military machines. The boy realized with a sinking heart that he had been followed.
“My father,” said their leader, “says that Khan is the operator of our Guardian.”
The old man nodded. “True enough,” he said.
“Then why is he hiding outside the village like a thief?” The youngster threw his hand out towards the horizon. “Not only are there murderers in our midst, but an army is gathering on our doorstep. Employees of a Persuasion Consultancy engaged by the mining combine have arrived. They have delivered an ultimatum to the effect that, if the combine’s generous terms are not accepted by sunrise tomorrow, they will evacuate the village using minimum force.” He licked his lips nervously. “Scouts have been out, and the consultancy’s definition of ‘minimum force’ appears to extend to fragmentation bombs and vehicle-seeking missiles.”
Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 91 Page 12