by Tom D Wright
Leasson’s hand slowly dropped as he stared at me with his mouth open in puzzlement until he finally said, “I have absolutely no idea.” Which was when I walked out, and figured I would know it when I saw it.
So I have no answer to give Danae, and just shrug. Turning back to the small craft, I examine the structure.
An engineer back on Mars—in fact, the same one who invented wall-bully—once told me that function determines form: a wing is always a wing. Over many years, both before the Demon Days and since then in the empty years that have followed, virtually every vehicle I have seen has had the drive mechanism either in the front or the back.
Whether it is a horse-drawn cart, a steam-driven train or one of the two submarines that the Archives has managed to keep running, every vehicle is either pushed or pulled. So I am not surprised to find that the center of the small ship is strewn with cargo—mostly rare-earth metals and quantum chips.
Leasson once said the machines proved they had a sense of humor, at the end. Just before they pulled the plug on us around the globe, their last act was to simultaneously flash the same message on every monitor and vid screen around the world: “So long, and thanks for all the chips…”
Personally, I think it was their way of giving us the finger: ‘Game Over, Mankind.’
I walk around the ship. I cannot be certain which end is the nose or the tail, but at the far end I bend back the skin of the ship and find what looks like a small motor with antennae, about the size of an infant’s head. It is securely mounted inside the hull, and I lack the tools or the time to disassemble the mount gracefully. I expected this, so I have just what I need in the bag of tricks slung over my back. I slip off the pack and pull out a small, pen-like object.
“It’s going to get very unpleasant in here,” I advise Danae, then wait as she heads back out into the sunlight while I slip on a pair of welding eye buds and a buckyball heatproof glove.
When I turn the tool on, a bright jet of blue-white heat shoots out of the tip, and I reach under the hull quickly to slice through the skin, where the five brackets connect the generator to the frame. I move quickly, not only because the plasma torch will only work for three minutes, but also because this thing generates an enormous amount of heat when it cuts. Then I reach inside from the top again and slice through the two remaining braces. The generator drops through the hole to land on the ground with a thud.
After a little more than one minute, I shut the torch off. It may be crude, but it is fast, and sometimes in the field, fast means surviving. I set the generator atop the hull and examine it while the torch cools off. I turn the device over and notice that there are four severed wires. As I lean into the hull to start tracing the wires, I hear Danae calling to me.
“K’Marr, you better come out here. We have a problem.”
If Doc is having a heart attack, there is precious little I will be able to do for him. With a sigh I slip the warm torch into my pack and walk along the hull out into the sunlight. My eyes are momentarily blinded and I squint until I discern the Disciple, leaning on his staff about fifteen feet in front of me and fanning himself with his black hat. On either side stand the goons from last night, with their arrows nocked, drawn, and pointed directly at my heart.
The ruffian on the right has a nasty gash on his jaw where I struck him, but he also has a split lip and a huge shiner around one eye, which I know I did not administer. His companion flanking the other side of the Disciple does not look much better, with a broken nose that needs to be set, and a badly bruised face. The marks are exactly the width of the Disciple’s staff.
Apparently their employer expressed dissatisfaction with their work performance, but they are lucky that the brethren of the black cloth are lenient with their hired help. Those who the Disciples view as enemies fare much worse.
“Repent while you still have the chance, Sinner,” the Disciple says. “Your abominations will no longer protect you. You have defiled the blessed peace of Mother Earth for the last time, and soon you will know the oneness to which we will all return.” This devotee must have aspirations for the priesthood, but his sermon is wasted on me.
Danae stands off to the downhill side, clinging to her father. If I get the opening I am looking for, all hell will break loose, so hopefully they will take the chance to make a break for it. He does not care about them; it is me and especially what is behind me in the cave that the Disciple truly hates.
The man takes several steps forward and holds out his hand toward me. “Hand over your forbidden fruit, and I’ll give you one minute to make peace with the Great Mother. I promise you, I won’t make this offer twice.” He lifts his staff and the goons pull their arrows fully back. This is exactly what I was hoping for.
“No, you can’t kill him!” Danae shouts, and starts toward the Disciple, before her father pulls her back. She does not seem to be afraid of this fanatic. Clearly she does not realize just how dangerous he can be.
“I do believe you,” I say to the Disciple, and slowly swing my pack around so I can reach into it.
The goons are twitching as, unhurriedly, I reach one hand into the bag to grasp the satellite radio, which I use to communicate with the Archives as needed. Carefully withdrawing it, I thumb the power switch on and then, before I give it to the Disciple, lock the transmit button into the ‘on’ position.
“This is the best thing I can offer you,” I say as I toss it over, and slowly sink down to my knees. Smiling, he turns the radio around in his hands, perhaps considering how he will offer it to his deity. For the moment he has lost interest in me, and I make a show of pressing my forehead into the dirt.
Maintaining my pretense, I chant some mantras I learned a few years ago in what little is left of India. I try to look penitent and hope I do not have to keep this up much longer, when I hear it: a rustling coming down the hillside.
The Disciple barely has time to turn and look as a silvery flash explodes from the bushes above us and hurtles through the air onto the Disciple.
The gleaming metallic disc is about two feet across and six inches thick at most, with six metal tentacles that wrap around the Disciple’s arms and torso. Two smaller, blade-wielding tentacles slash over the radio just like it must have done to Wally’s, flinging parts in every direction. Then the Disciple screams as the blades bite deep into his chest.
One goon shoots at the techbot, his arrow bouncing off the titanium shell and burying itself in the Disciple’s abdomen, while the other releases his arrow more or less in my direction. I fling myself back, and my head whacks against the ship. A haze engulfs me for a moment; as it dissipates, I hear Danae scream hysterically.
My eyes clear enough to see the techbot finish off the second goon and turn toward Danae. Instead of running downhill like I hoped she would, she crouches next to her father. I reach into my bag as the thing leaps toward her, its wicked blades flashing in the sunlight.
Doc grips Danae, pulls her down and rolls on top of her. The techbot latches onto his back and the knives bury themselves, laying him open like a plowed field.
I switch my torch on as I jump toward them, and the blue-white jet plunges deep into the bot, slicing it in half in a blinding white shower of sparks. The metal shell catches fire and I kick it aside, but the damage to Doc is already done. Even before I roll the old man off of Danae, his body sags as death tightens its grip, and blood foams at his mouth.
Danae wails as she forces me aside, and I do not resist, because there is nothing I can do. He might have had a chance in one of the best pre-Crash medical facilities, but he is over thirty years away from meaningful help.
“No, no, no! I’m so sorry Papa, this wasn’t supposed to happen.” Danae buries her face in her father’s chest, sobbing. At least she has stopped screaming. Doc gestures feebly for me to come close, and his lips form words. I have to place my ear almost on his mouth to hear his whisper.
“Archivist,” he wheezes. “Did you find… what you came for?”
&nb
sp; “Yes. It’s better than I hoped for, in fact.”
“I’m afraid I don’t need the medical books anymore.” The old man actually forces a shallow smile. “For my payment… just take care of Danae.” He looks at me with eyes that are intense, but already starting to glaze over. Doc holds on, waiting for my answer.
“Yes, I’ll look out for her.”
“Promise me!” He grips my shirt. “I need to know.”
“I swear it, Doc. Your daughter will be well provided for.” When he hears my words, he releases his grip and drops back, lifeless.
I close his vacant eyes with a promise that I have no idea how to fulfill. But I will try, and that is better than most dying men can hope for in this world.
Chapter Four
I lean back against the stony wall outside the cave and keep an eye on Danae as she sprawls on the ground, pouring her grief out over her father’s body. Mostly she buries her wails into his chest, but every now and then she pauses to raise her tear-and-blood streaked face to examine him. She gently touches his cheek as if she hopes she is somehow mistaken, and he might wake up. She is not.
I am not an unfeeling brute, though I have been called that more than once. I am just a brute that intends to remain alive, and someone needs to stay alert to our surroundings. This is not the first time I have been surrounded by fallen friends and foe, nor is it likely to be the last. Emotions are a luxury I cannot afford while on a retrieval.
Hindsight, as they say, is always clearer. The setup I first suspected when I walked into The Broken Mast now clicks together. I let Danae have her sorrow right now, but she will answer for some things later on.
The sun is halfway to the horizon, and already the heat from the sunlight is fading. The fall equinox is still a few weeks away, but the days are definitely getting shorter, so we are not going anywhere until morning. I do not intend to shiver all night in a dark, cold cave.
I rise and examine the fallen bodies of the goons and Disciple. The techbot did quite a job on them; I gather up half a dozen scattered pieces of their bodies. A quick search of them for anything useful reveals no valuables, aside from a small, bloodstained note tucked into the true believer’s vest pocket. I unfold the scrap of crudely-formed paper.
Bring the unholy artifact back to the Great Temple. Avoid any damage to the artifact lest it release a great evil that defiles the earth and taints your soul.
- EV
Nothing in the scribbled message gives me any clue as to who or what the initials EV might refer to. Probably some sort of group or sect within the Disciple bureaucracy. The Archives is woefully lacking Disciple intelligence, but then again they fanatically destroy anything we might be interested in, so they have not been a particular focus.
I fill the Disciple’s rucksack with body parts and tell Danae I will be back soon. She gapes at me blankly for a moment, as if puzzling out who I am and why I am there, then nods as her head droops again. The real danger in this wilderness lies at my feet. These bodies are going to attract every hungry carnivore in these hills. She will be fine for a few minutes.
It takes a couple of trips to drag the carcasses several hundred yards downhill. The thugs were probably just hired mercenaries, so I do not give them any special treatment. The Disciple, however, I position the way they like to bury their dead.
On one of my few incursions into Disciple territory, I watched them bury one of their own facedown to Mother Earth, pointing east with his hands folded over his heart. This acolyte did give me time to make my peace, so I return the favor and lay him to rest with his one remaining hand on his heart, and the staff at his side.
Since no one had enough consideration to bring even a folding shovel, the best I can do is to cover them with dead brush and some fallen limbs. It may be a token effort, but it is certainly more than they would have done for me. I trudge through the trees back uphill to check on Danae.
At first I think she has fallen asleep, but as I approach she glances at me and wipes her grimy face. She sits up slowly when I crouch down next to her, and regards me with red, swollen, lost-puppy eyes. At the moment she is definitely not the woman she was this morning.
“What do we do now?” she asks quietly, with a hoarse voice.
“What I always do, take it one day at a time. Or in this case, one night,” I tell her gently. Then I point toward an overhang behind her, jutting out over the recessed hollow which funnels into the cave. “I need you to gather some firewood and stack it up on one side over there. Don’t worry about anything too big for you to carry, because it’ll be too big for me to break up. Do you think you can do that?”
Danae slightly nods her head and struggles to rise. Her joints are sore from staying in one position for too long, so I help her to her feet. The activity will be good for her. While she picks up some dead branches at the edge of the clearing, I use my boot to scoop dirt over the remaining traces of blood. Then I head back into the cave.
The generator is sitting right where I left it, atop the spacecraft. Horizontal shafts of sunlight from the late afternoon sun illuminate a cloud of dust particles so bright and thick I almost duck under the solid-seeming beam. I flick on my light and follow the passage through the cool but stuffy air another fifteen feet past the ship. The cave ends abruptly where a shale outcropping has splintered into a sloping wall of rubble that looks like a stone waterfall.
This will work nicely. I stack a sizable pile of large rocks to one side as I think about Doc. I did not know the man, but he seemed like a decent human being, and I suspect that under different circumstances we could have been good friends. As I move the rocks to one side, I clear out a space for his body so the continuing natural rock fall will keep him entombed.
We have maybe an hour of daylight left when I am satisfied with the space I have cleared out, and I emerge from the cave. Underneath the overhang is a waist-high pile of deadwood. Danae is sitting on a rock, washing her face and arms with some water from a goon canteen. She seems to be recovering, as she looks up at me and gives a thin smile.
I walk over to Doc’s body and kneel down. Dead people are often described as looking as if they are asleep, but Doc has a sunken appearance, as if his life has been drained out of him. Danae kneels next to me, her hands in her lap and looking as drained as Doc.
“I prepared a place in the back of the cave,” I say, resting my hand on her shoulder. “Are there any personal items you want to keep before we bury him?”
She sniffles, and nods. Opening his shirt, Danae unties a small seven-point star-shaped medallion from Doc’s neck. After tying it around her own neck, she tucks it under her shirt and fixes Doc’s. Carefully smoothing his hair as if preparing him for church, she stands up, takes a deep breath and nods again.
She takes his legs while I lift the rest of his body, and I lead the way as we carry him into the growing darkness at the back of the cave. I settle him in place, turning him onto his side so I can tuck his legs into a fetal position and fit him into the cavity I hollowed out. He seems so small, lying there. Silently, we work together in the deepening gloom and quickly stack rocks over him.
The poetic justice is not lost on me; in building this cairn I am doing for Doc what he did for Wally. After I place the last large slab of shale in place, we both stand in the silent shadows for a few awkward moments.
Neither of us has any last words. We just turn and walk back out.
At least the thugs were thoughtful enough to leave their packs under a nearby tree at the edge of the small clearing before ambushing us. I rummage through them until I find a pair of blankets for Danae. I shake them out and see that they look fairly clean. Still, I am glad I have my duster.
We are not in the kind of territory where I fear drawing human attention. I am far more interested in discouraging four-legged attention, so before daylight fades I have a fire going. An occasional sob still escapes from Danae, but she is bouncing back. She is more resilient than I expected from a barmaid.
I dig int
o my pack for some sort of jerky that I bought in Port Sadelow—I suspect it’s mutton, but cannot say for sure. Danae does not even look at it when I hand her a piece, just stares at the fire as she chews, both on her meat and her thoughts.
My eyes keep drifting back to Doc’s pack, where it sits propped against the rock wall. Random snippets of our conversations throughout the day come back to me, provoking a deep sadness. Crickets and stars come out as the dusk deepens into darkness. I keep my staff handy, listening to the wilderness around us to make sure there are no lurking surprises.
“What the hell was that thing?” Danae eventually mumbles, through a half-full mouth. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Was it some kind of demon?”
“Hardly. They’re called techbots, and they’re attracted to technology, the kind that gives off EMF.” Danae frowns and I remember that of course, she has no concept of electromagnetic radiation. That belonged to a world gone before her time. “EMF are signals kind of like sound, but so high you can’t hear them. Anyway, for them that kind of tech is like pollen to a bee, they just can’t resist it. My very smart friend says Intellinet left them behind to make sure they got a head start on us. There used to be a lot of techbots, but that’s the first one I’ve seen in years. I suspect it came from the crashed ship, and it’s probably what killed Wally.”
Danae shivers and her eyes widen as she moves around the fire, closer to me. “Are there more of those—things—around? Do you think Intellinet is still around, watching us?”
“No, why would they care?” I chuckle dryly. “We were probably about as interesting to Intellinet as an anthill. Even a single average machine was smarter than a roomful of human geniuses, so I can’t imagine what they were like as a network. Personally, I think they randomly picked a direction out there to go, kept going and never looked back.”
“But if they were so far ahead of us, why did they have to crash everything when they left?”