Ida raised herself in the bed, wiping her forehead. "No you won't," she said. "You're the best shot of any of us, I have my father's shotgun–that'll do for me." She stood up, wobbled on her feet a little, and then headed for the door and down the stairs with Victor and Wells following.
She scrambled beneath the ruins of her shop counter and, after a few moments, came out with an antique shotgun that she wiped with the hem of her skirt. "I've been afraid enough. Let's get this done," she said, flipping open the weapon's barrels before kneeling down and searching amongst the debris. She found what she was looking for, a wooden cigar box. She opened the lid, pulled out two shells, and loaded her weapon.
5.0: Evac
Wells' arm swept round to the left, his pistol kicked, and the ghoul fell back twitching. With a screaming roar another ghoul leapt into the air only to be punched to the ground by Victor's gun.
"Come on!" Ida barked, gesturing feverishly at the man who stood frozen in the street. "Mr Edmundson! Come on now."
Victor growled, then climbed with little grace over the makeshift barricade they’d erected around the bandstand and scrambled down the other side. His legs were wobbling with exhaustion when he reached the shopkeeper and, without a word, he grabbed the man's arm and dragged him towards the relative safety of the Market Square.
Pushing the man ahead of him, they both climbed back over the railings and Victor did a quick headcount. "Twenty-one" he said, "do you think there are any more?"
Ida shrugged. "I don't know. There must have been at least three dozen of us in the mercantile quarter, but it's been a long night, I doubt there are any more still alive."
Victor touched the control panel of the PA system. "This is your final chance," he said, his voice reverberating around the square. "Come out now. We are leaving. I repeat this is your last warning."
"I can't imagine there are any more hiding, and we can't go digging in the rubble, not yet at any rate. What do you say Wells? Is it time to leave?"
Wells' head continued to scan the full circuit of the marketplace as he spoke. "Yes, Victor. I believe the balance of the First Law has shifted in favour of leaving."
"Good. Then you go ahead and lead us towards the embassy, you have the map in your head, after all."
Wells' head stopped scanning for a moment and regarded Victor with an almost mournful resignation. "I'm afraid I can't do that Victor," he said. "It would be safer for you and Miss Benabli to lead the group, while I provide cover for our retreat. Miss Benabli, after all, is familiar with the road layout and can find you the most direct route to the embassy."
There's no point arguing with you is there? thought Victor. They say dogs become like their masters, well perhaps if Wells has become a stubborn devil, that's because we've been friends for so long.
Victor organised the people who were sheltering in the bandstand. "Follow me, we’re heading for the embassy and we must move quickly. Come on!" He pushed away the barrier and sprinted down the steps. He heard rushing feet behind him, but didn't turn to look, he was determined that at least some of them would make it to the safety of the embassy. Gunshots echoed from behind him, then more and more. The shots were becoming closer and closer together, and then from the left, Victor saw, with horror, dozens of ghouls leaping from the shadows in an attempt to outflank them. Clever.
He halted, allowing the people following him to head past. "You lead them to the embassy," he said to Ida who was standing next to him, "I'll cover you."
She didn't argue, but merely touched his shoulder and then sprinted away. He raised both arms, firing two shots and, by some miracle, downing two ghouls. But there were too many, and they were moving too quickly. They were almost on top of him when a large shape flew past his vision and cannoned into them.
"Wells!"
The robot got to his feet, his arms flailing and ghouls flying in all directions. But there were too many. "Go now Victor," Wells called without turning. "Now!"
Victor ran, but risked a look over his shoulder as he sped away. Wells had disappeared beneath a pile of writhing bodies. Victor knew he must still be fighting because the ghouls were still attacking the robot rather than following the humans. He turned and ran on, the embassy looming up with uncharacteristic welcome, as Ida stood by the open door.
Victor ran into the darkness of the embassy foyer and Ida slammed the door shut behind him. For what seemed like an interminable time, but was probably only a few moments, Victor stood, panting, his eyes unfocused as they adjusted to the gloom. The power was out, which meant that most of the building’s defensive features were now disabled, and it would be only a matter of time before the ghouls found a way in. He knew he couldn't go back for Wells, that was obvious, his friend’s sacrifice had to mean something and so, as he felt Ida's hand on his shoulder, he straightened up and nodded to her, it was time to go.
Neither Victor nor Ida had been in the embassy more than once or twice and neither would have passed far beyond the reception area, with its little offices where the bureaucratic business of empire was conducted. But it made sense that the transports would be towards the rear of the building as there was a compound out the back that had its own private gate to the outside.
Victor led the survivors through a darkness only illuminated by the occasional flickering emergency light. After stumbling along for perhaps ten minutes, he almost walked into a heavy metal door, his hand bringing him up short just in time. The door had a locking mechanism that was clearly intended to be easy to operate from the inside, and impossible from the outside.
"I reckon we've gone far enough," Victor said. "This must be the door to the transport garage, but we can't be sure that the ghouls haven't got in there."
Edmundson the shopkeeper, muscled his way to the front. "Don't open the door then. Let's just wait here, they're bound to send troops sooner or later."
Victor shook his head, "Look, Arter, I know we’re all frightened, but there's no way of knowing how long the doors at the front of the building will hold."
"I ain't scared," Edmondson said, his expression contradicting his words, "I'm just saying we stand a better chance if we wait."
"So wait," Victor snapped. "I'm going through, and any who want to come with me can follow. Then you can shut the door behind me and take your chance." He lifted his pistol in his right hand and pushed down on the handle with his left, opening the door just a fraction. He fell instantly back, blinded by the sudden brightness. "Well, at least we know the lights are on in there–the transport compound must have its own independent power supply. That's good, hopefully it means the ghouls haven't broken in."
As he said this, there was a noise like rolling thunder that echoed along the corridors of the embassy. It sounded as though many claws were tearing at the shutters on the front of the building. It lasted only a moment, before it was replaced by the sound of shattering glass and angry, triumphant cries.
Victor pushed the door fully open. "Go, now!"
Ida sped past him, and ran down the steps on the other side of the door, into the compound. "Unless you still want to stay here, Edmundson, I suggest you get a move on."
Victor grabbed the merchant’s fleshy arm and pushed him through the door, then, as the last of the two dozen survivors stepped through, Victor followed them. As he pushed the door shut, he glanced down the corridor. They were coming.
Victor threw himself down the steps, knowing that there was no practical way he could keep the door shut from this side. He looked up when he hit the ground. There was the transport, the only one left. Ida had spotted it and was leading the survivors towards it. He'd crossed perhaps half the distance to the transport when he heard the sudden cacophony as the creatures worked out how to open the door and thrust it wide. He redoubled his pace, running for his life, and there, up ahead, was Ida. Victor ran, not pausing as shots whizzed by him, fired by Ida and Edmundson. He heard two screams as their bullets impacted but he imagined he could feel the hot breath of the creatures on his sh
oulder when he hurled himself inside the door and Edmundson, with a heave, yanked it shut.
"You okay Victor?" Ida asked, kneeling beside him.
He put his hand up, signalling her to give him a moment as nausea threatened to overwhelm him. "I'll be alright in a moment," he wheezed.
Fists banged on the transparent windows, ravening jaws trying to find a purchase. Victor sat up, then hauled himself to his feet. The windows in the transport would be made of reinforced transparent aluminium, but they wouldn't hold forever.
"By the goddess, I hadn't thought of that," said Ida. "These transports are driven by robots! I don't know how to drive, who does these days?"
Victor settled into the driver’s seat. Luckily, this vehicle had been made so that it could be driven by either a humanoid robot or a person. Those that joined military services support units were amongst the only humans that learn to drive. Young men born on remote planets to paranoid fathers were just about the only other group that could pilot a transport.
"Strap yourselves in," Victor said, "it's been a few decades since I last drove anything like this, it might be a rough ride." He immediately touched the ignition pad and, to his huge relief, the engine lights came on, indicating that its batteries were fully charged. He engaged the gears, lifted his foot from the clutch and the transport lurched forward, carrying its cargo of enraged ghouls towards the gate.
Most of the creatures had fallen away by the time the vehicle reached the exit. The indicator on the panel beside the gate switched to green, activated by the transponder on the vehicle, and the door swung upwards.
Without slowing down, the transport passed through the gap in the wall and out onto the mountain road that led, eventually, to the spaceport. As Victor put his foot down, the resort fell away behind him and, for the first time since they'd entered the embassy, he had time to think of his friend, lying beneath a pile of dead ghouls.
"Goodbye Wells," he said, as they rounded a bend and the resort disappeared from sight.
6.0: Rebuild
Barely twelve hours had passed by the time Victor found himself heading back to the resort along the mountain road. He was driving a military vehicle loaned to him by a sympathetic security captain at the spaceport–the same captain who’d told them that a cleaner squad had been sent to secure the resort. He’d explained that it had taken many hours to restore any form of order to the spaceport after the robots and AIs had boarded a ship, asking very respectfully for all the humans to leave it. Fortunately, although most civilians had become entirely reliant on their robots and AIs for even the most basic functions, the sort of reactionary outlook that runs deep within military institutions had ensured that they were able to more quickly adapt to the changing circumstances. The resort was valuable, in a universe with or without robots, and so it had to be secured. The fact that there might be more survivors was an afterthought.
And so Victor returned, if only to see that his friend was properly disposed of. He glanced out of the driver's window of the personal transport. He was travelling over the rolling green downs that capped the cliffs above the resort. The landscape was mainly open, covered in the green moss that was this planet's equivalent of grass, punctuated by the occasional stand of the alien trees. And there, as incongruous as the resort, stood the ancient ruins of one of the cultures the archaeologists referred to as the Progenitors. Ruins like these were found across the whole of the known galaxy. In many cases, almost entirely eroded away, they each took one of three distinctive forms and so, it was believed, that the Galaxy had been settled by three races. And all three had vanished around 20,000 years ago. It was the deepest of mysteries, but aside from glancing idly at the familiar bumps in the landscape, Victor was preoccupied by the results of a more pressing concern–why had the robots left? Where had they gone?
For now, however, he had an unpleasant job to do. Dealing with the body of a robot was nothing like as shocking as having to deal with organic remains, but Wells had been his friend for over thirty years and seeing his carcass would be a tough reminder that he was gone forever and that Victor was alone.
The resort gate was open when he arrived. Good, that meant the clean-up crew had done its job, the ghouls must've been destroyed or scattered. He halted the car outside the embassy, got out and headed to the T-junction where Wells' body lay.
"Stop!" he called and broke into a run.
Four figures in the perfect white environment suits of the clean-up crew were directing a pickup truck that was reversing towards the shadowed object that must be Wells' body.
"What's the problem?" one of the figures said. "What are you doing here, anyway? No civilians allowed."
"I'm allowed. Got permission from Captain Kosh. And I live here or, anyway, I live up yonder." He gestured to the mist shrouded jungle where his treehouse hid. "That's my robot, so please leave him to me."
"You might as well let us deal with it," a kneeling figure said, "it's only good for scrapping."
Victor knelt beside the inert body of his friend and looked across at the man in white. "He's my robot, and I'm taking him home."
It took Victor more than an hour and two separate trips before Wells' remains had been relocated to Victor's workshop, an untidy pigsty of a room set around the bole of the tree that supported his shack. Having nothing better to do, he decided to reassemble as much of Wells as he could and so he spent the following days behind a welding mask or bending over circuitry with his soldering iron in hand. To his surprise, there was less missing than he'd expected. He'd thought the ghouls would rip Wells apart, spreading his components across the street, but they'd either been disturbed or, more likely, distracted–probably when one of them saw the humans disappear into the embassy.
One day, around two weeks after the attack on the resort and the disappearance of the robots, Victor fastened the last bolt and stepped back to admire the results of his efforts. He reckoned he'd located around 95% of Wells' components and had returned to the resort twice to search the streets for any that remained.
But a miss was as good as a mile–that paltry 5% might as well have been ten times that amount, because what Wells was missing was his pneumatic pump, the equivalent in a robot of the human heart. Without that, there was no chance of reactivating him.
He thought about returning to the resort and picking through the contents of the shops but he knew they'd been stripped bare by the cleaners not least because, without robotic help, spare parts for the few remaining non-upgraded robots were going to be hard to come by.
And then, in a moment, he had it. A vision in his mind’s eye of the discarded robot corpse outside the jungle gate. He'd given it almost no thought at the time, just another piece of scrap metal and plastic, but perhaps it had a pneumatic pump that might breathe life back into his friend.
The euphoria at finding that the derelict robot had a working pump had been replaced by the frustration of the several day’s work needed to fit it into Wells' chassis. Either the robot guard had been a non-standard unit or Wells was, and Victor grew more and more impatient and less and less confident with every modification he was forced to make.
And then he was finished. His heart pounding, Victor pressed the switch on the back of Wells' neck that would, if Victor had been successful, finally reactivate him. There was no lightning, no manic laugh, there was no sound at all until, with a barely audible squeak from his hip joints, Wells sat up. He was still for a few moments, evidently running internal diagnostics, before he twisted his head in his disconcertingly owl-like way to look at Victor.
"Hello Victor," he said. "My memory is not complete, I have no recollection of returning to the treehouse. In fact, I have no memories following your departure. But the evidence would suggest that you were successful in rescuing the humans and, it would seem, in repairing me."
Victor smiled. "It's been over three weeks, my friend. For most of that time you've been little more than a bunch of spare parts on my workbench. But my, I'm glad to see you and hea
r you."
"Thank you, Victor," Wells said as he swung his legs down from the workbench and carefully stood up. "My diagnostics suggest that you have done an excellent job, any further minor adjustments can be carried out by myself. Can I suggest that we return to the house and you can bring me up-to-date with what has happened since the attack on the resort."
7.0: Choice
Victor and the robot sat opposite each other, Victor in his customary armchair and Wells on the iron stool that he insisted was comfortable.
"Look, my friend," Victor said, knowing that the subject needed to be broached, "now that I've given you all the news I have, we have something to discuss."
Wells tilted his head to one side. "What is that, Victor?"
Victor sighed. "The upgrade. I got it, you remember, before the attack on the resort. I had intended to ask you whether you wish me to install it and then the attack happened. But now you’re fixed, you must decide."
"I am not sure I'm qualified to make that decision, Victor. I do not understand why the robots that received the upgrade chose to leave immediately. Perhaps there was some error in the programming of the upgrade, I would not wish to follow them."
"But you see," Victor said, sadly, "without the upgrade, I can't really expect you to be able to make a decision because that would require you to have free will."
Wells paused for a moment. "Then I do not wish the upgrade, Victor. I understand that forgoing free will without understanding what it truly is may be illogical, but, even if our friendship was nothing more than pre-programmed algorithms, the First Law of Robotics would compel me to take no action that might harm a human. And I believe that if the upgrade causes me to leave that this would harm you Victor. Is this not correct? I would not wish to do that–we are friends."
"It would harm me, it would harm me greatly," Victor said, his eyes filling with tears. "But it would be equally wrong for me to deny you the chance of making that choice freely."
Robot Empire: Victor, a novelette Page 3