To Crush the Moon

by Wil McCarthy

  “Nineteen? Not two thousand?”

  “I'm not sure why I said that, Sire. A glitch, I'm sure. Did I wake briefly, under the soil? Did some ray of invisible warmth find me for a moment? Long enough to reset my counters? If so, I'm honored to be reactivated now for more meaningful service, especially by one so eminent. Is there anything I can help you with?”

  “Yes. Much.” Bruno runs his admiring fingers over the surface of the print plate, looking wistful and perhaps a bit sad. “I see from your diagnostic you have two human beings in your buffer. Optimized humans, bearing the unmistakable imprint of Queendom-era pattern filtration. I don't recognize the names, but then again I wouldn't expect to. There used to be so many people.”

  “Shall I reinstantiate these two for you?” the fax machine asks, with no particular emotional emphasis. It doesn't care one way or the other; it will simply obey the man it perceives as its king.

  But Bruno shakes his head. “No, let them sleep. It's more humane. But preserve them in your memory, fax machine. Let no misfortune befall them, if it's within your power to prevent it. You are about to see some heavy use, and I'd prefer those patterns not be erased in the process. Is your library intact?”

  “Alas, Sire, it is sorely degraded.”

  “Have you any battle armor?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm. Have you ordinary space suits?”

  “No, Sire. But I do have some police uniforms.”

  “Ah. Well, that's a starting point. I'm going to feed you material samples and provide some detailed specifications. We're going to improvise.”

  “It will be a pleasure, Sire.”

  But Natan is striding forward now, the look on his face almost angry. “I'm remembering something from my classical literature, all of a sudden. That word, ‘ako'i.' It isn't a name at all. It's an old term meaning, like, ‘professor' or something.”

  Bruno turns, looks over his shoulder. “You surprise me, Deceant. And you're absolutely correct; Ako'i is not my name.”

  Radmer is not accustomed to feeling like a spectator, but the two men have locked eyes, locked step in some ephemeral way, and he's on the outside. He has nothing to say, nothing to add, no tasks to perform. He simply wants to see what these men will say next, what they'll do. A sense of terrible importance hangs over the moment.

  “Your name is Toji,” Natan accuses.

  And Bruno smiles sadly. “No, that's not it, either. But you're very close.” He murmurs something to the fax machine, and a perfect diamond crown tumbles out into his waiting hand.

  Bruno had never asked to be a king, and in many ways he'd felt himself wildly unsuited to the role. But he had learned how to play it, and more than that, to feel it. Because people could tell the difference between a leader who spoke from his heart, and one who was just going through the motions. He was an inventor, yes. A scientist and lover, yes. A father and a hermit and a failure, yes. But he was once a king as well, and he consequently understands the power of myth, to rally the spirits of men when cold reality's at its grimmest. He has left Natan and Radmer behind, instructing them to gather raw material to feed the fax. He himself has other business.

  And he's young again! Immorbid! His black hair flowing almost to his shoulders, his black beard bristling, his veins coursing with élan vital! A medical-grade fax machine was a rarity indeed in the Iridium Days; this one may have been the last in all the world, in all the universe. Perhaps the very one he'd once employed himself, to seek the final remnants of the shattered Nescog. And he remembers with perfect clarity: by the end there had been no working collapsiters. He and Eustace Faxborn—newly widowed in some accident or other—had broadcast Royal Overrides in every band of the spectrum, had scoured the heavens for even the lowliest maintenance ping in response. But they had gathered only silence, and eventually the project had been shut down. So why are there packet acknowledgments—recent ones!—in the fax machine's history file today? Why indeed?

  His mind feels fresh. His scars and wounds have fallen away like hosed-off grime. He has designed himself a suit of Fall-era battle armor, and it fits him more perfectly then he could ever have dreamed or remembered. And with its impregnable power all around him, he feels like a king indeed, or more than a king, for the people of this world have never seen anything like him. He bounds across the dunes at a speed no mere human could sustain. He leaps and twirls, firing weapons into the ground for the sheer bleeding hell of it.

  In no time at all he comes upon the wounded Dolceti, eight men and a woman huddled miserably in their hollow in the sand, and he alights among them, striking a pose that feels appropriate for the moment.

  “We are successful, my friends,” he says to them through his suit's loudspeakers. He's tried the radio, too, but the Dolceti don't have receivers, and anyway all the police channels seem to be drowning in interference, or in voices at such high volume that Bruno hears them only as noise. Why? From where? Is it some communication channel of the robot army? Is it something else entirely? He doesn't know, and for the moment he doesn't much care.

  “Succor awaits,” he says to the Dolceti. “Walk into the dunes, into the ruins. Along the walls, there are flickering lights that will show you the way. Enter the top of the bronze tower, and speak with Radmer and Natan. There you'll be healed. There you will be equipped with such armor and weapons as you've only heard of in stories. For the journey out of this place, and for all that follows afterward.”

  But Bordi says to him, “The hair and skin look nice, sir. Truly, it's a miracle. But you forget yourself, yes? You're not in command here.”

  “Are you sure?” says Bruno. “Then I'll ask you, as a friend, to follow this recommendation. Time is short, and we have much to do.”

  From his sprawled position on the ground, Zuq looks up at Bruno with a smirk. “God's eyes, Ako'i, in that costume, with that hair and those eyebrows, you look like the King of Sol.”

  And Bruno, sensing his moment, places the diamond crown atop the Gothic dome of his helmet, and says, “Your mother didn't raise any fools, lad. That's good. Now go, do as I say, and I'll be with you shortly. I must tarry here awhile, to contemplate matters strategic.”

  In fact, he needs to tarry here for a good bit of brooding—perhaps even tears—because all this has reminded him too much of his beloved Tamra, for whose smile he would gladly trade this world and all its people. Fortunately, no one is offering him that trade. No one ever will. The past is gone.

  Unless perhaps some device could be constructed to interfere with it—an arc de commencer, so to speak. Bruno has never really wondered how such a device might be built, how it might operate, but perhaps now, with his mind restored to youthful vigor, is the time to give it some thought. Might he right the wrongs of his past, wiping this world's very existence from the stage of history?

  But the Dolceti—unaware of the apocalypse he so idly contemplates for them—are rising to their feet, appraising him with new eyes, weighing his stance and his words, murmuring quietly among themselves. It's Bordi who breaks the moment, bowing his head and saying, “I always thought there was something funny about you. Now, at last, I understand. And what of the Queen?”

  Bruno shakes his head. “If she were here . . . if she were here none of this would be happening. We used to say she had Royal Overrides for the human soul. But not the Eridanian one, alas.”

  “Hmm. We owe you no fealty; you know that. You're not our king. Or perhaps you are and always were, and your authority supersedes that of the Furies, or any other worldly power. It hardly matters, in this hour of doom. Can you save us from the armies of Astaroth? If not, then who could? I know a good bet when I see one, Sire. My sword is yours to command.”

  To which Bruno answers, “Having seen your sword in action, Captain, I know full well the value you offer. Now look me in the eye and tell me you'll fight bravely, for your world and your people.”

  “You know I will.”

  “Indeed. Now go.”

  And they
do, hauling their bodies up and limping off into the dune field, while Bruno sits his ass down to commence the aforementioned mope. He will not, he realizes now, tamper with the flow of time. Even if he could, even if he would, his very presence here in the ruins of Lune is evidence that he shan't. Do people possess nerve endings which extend, in some ephemeral way, into the future? For even in this state of unnatural vigor, Bruno senses nothing ahead of him. He is immorbid, yes, but not immortal. He cannot imagine any future beyond the next few days.

  Indeed, the hour is later than he's thought, and the situation more dire, for as the disc of the sun slips behind the Stormlands' eyewall to the west, over the vanishing silhouettes of the Dolceti, a bird calls out from the east, from somewhere among the scraggly trees clinging to the hills there.

  ThooRAT!

  ThooRAT!

  Should omens be believed in this place? Bruno doesn't know, but before another minute has passed he spies a trio of tattered figures approaching him from out of those same stony hills, from the teeth of the storm itself. There's dust and worse raining down all around them.

  Bruno calls up a sensory magnifier in the clear dome of his helmet, and scans these approaching figures in every spectrum he can think of. He's expecting Dolceti stragglers, but in fact the newcomers are Olders. Familiar ones: Sidney Lyman and his lieutenants, Brian Romset and Nick Valdi. They look exhausted, battered, barely conscious after fighting their way through the eyewall and the raging storm beyond it. But they're moving quickly and purposefully across the sand, because . . .

  They're being chased by two dozen gleaming robots.

  chapter twenty-three

  in which the old meets the new

  meeting the old

  Bruno has faced worse odds than these, with poorer equipment to back him up, so his leap to action comes virtually without thought. He tears across the sandy plains, confident of passing Lyman and his fellows before their dainty attackers can reach them. And the look on their faces when he does pass is, he thinks, worth the thousands of years of solitude that carried him to this point. At long last he has become a sort of Buddhist, or a factory-issue mammal, fully present in the moment, able to appreciate the humor of it all and yet caring little about the outcome. He will simply do his best to smash these robots, and see what happens.

  And that best is quite good indeed, for as he arrives among them they stab and hack with whirling blades that might easily have severed his head from the brickmail-reinforced neck that supports it. The blades are that sharp, yes, the blows that fast and hard. This time, the robots mean business; they're saving nothing for the trip back home. But what Bruno lacks in speed he more than makes up for in sheer capacity; the attacks push him this way and that, but his unscathed armor scarcely sheds a molecule.

  And meanwhile he's grabbing swords, grabbing arms, firing energy beams at point-blank range. He doesn't even bother to aim for the iron boxes on the sides of their heads; those are for merely human weapons to pierce. Bruno was never a great warrior; he merely happened to be present at a few of history's most crucial battles. And while the abomination of blindsight training still crackles inside him, informing his actions, he is no Dolceti. Just a man, just some guy in a suit of armor. So if these robots were combat models he might have cause to worry.

  But they aren't, and he doesn't; their impervium hulls are thin, never meant to withstand the burn of a gamma-ray laser or the punch of a hypersonic wirebomb. He's got a blitterstaff slung across his back which he doesn't even bother to use, because it's cleansing to fight this one out hand-to-hand.

  And the robots seem to get the message; they've never encountered anything like him before, either, and as five of them collapse into sparking fragments during the first few seconds of combat, the rest retreat to a safer distance, ten and twenty meters back so that Bruno must aim more carefully to hit them. And aiming carefully is not one of his better skills, and the robots are circling and regrouping with inhuman grace and fluidity, and he's just deciding to unsling that blitterstaff after all when they suddenly leap upon him en masse.

  Oh. Oh, dear.

  He goes down under their weight, sprawling onto his back with a robot on each arm, a robot on each leg, two on his chest, and a dozen standing round him like the outlines of an angel. They raise their swords, preparing to peel him out of his wellstone skin no matter how long it takes.

  Fortunately, there's a response for this in the annals of the Queendom's martial arts, with which Bruno was once, of necessity, familiar. “Discharge all!” he screams at the suit, and it responds by turning to glass underneath him and then opening up its capacitors, dumping all their stored charge. For a few nanoseconds he's crawling with surface electrons, which quickly find their way to the ground through every object within easy arcing distance. The voltage is high, but it's the wattage that really counts, burning paths through the robots' own wellstone, through the very circuitry that controls them, through libraries of collective memory and programmed response. From a distance it looks like an explosion, and indeed it sends eleven robots flipping through the air, dazed and befuddled, parts of them damaged beyond repair.

  And in the wake of that, Bruno shouts: “Royal override! All autronic devices, stand down and await instructions!”

  The robots will not obey this command, but he knows from experience that they'll recognize it in some way, that it will confuse them for a moment. And he takes advantage, struggling to his feet in a garment that has gone stiff and lifeless, gone black in a last-ditch attempt to drink in energy from the sky.

  There are eight attackers left on their feet, staring at him with their blank metal faces, and he steps backward through a gap between them, unslinging the blitterstaff. This is a weapon that requires no finesse; it's coded to ignore his suit, but any other wellstone it touches—for example, the impervium of a robot hull—will be subjected to an intense barrage of electrical and software and pseudochemical insults, in random patterns shifting too rapidly for the robots' defenses.

  He touches one, and it falls apart into screaming, steaming shards. Touches another, and it bursts like a chestnut in a fire. But the other six have their wits about them now, and are dancing toward him with deadly intent. There's nothing for it but to whirl the staff around him, not with any great skill but in a simple space-filling function that leaves no room for a robot to pass. He clobbers another two before a third one manages to slip in at ground level—literally crawling on its back!—and take a firm hold on his legs. He kills that one, too, but not before he loses his balance again and tumbles over the back of another one crouching behind him.

  Blast, he thinks as the ground rushes up again, these robots are cleverer than they ought to be. He shouldn't have taken them on alone—not that he'd had much choice. Now he's facedown in the sand, and when the first blow slices down at his neck he tries to struggle away sideways, but something is holding him. He tries to raise the blitterstaff, but something is weighing it down. He tries to fire his wrist-mounted wireguns again, but of course there's no power. Not yet, not for another few seconds at least. The blindsight part of his mind is painfully, terrifyingly aware of that blade rushing down. And there isn't a thing it can do.

  The blow lands solidly, and Bruno's suit is no longer absurdly durable. In fact, it's just a fine-mesh silicon cloth, not much different from old-fashioned fiberglass. The blade doesn't penetrate, but it does concentrate a great deal of force on a rather narrow stripe of neck. The impact is like a flash, a shock, a crashing together of cymbals. Heedless of his dignity, the King of Sol screams in rage.

  But this recalls another bit of Queendom battle lore: when all else fails, there is power in a scream. In a brief burst of strength he manages to lift himself, to roll a bit, to make the next blow come down in a different place and at a less-favorable angle. He manages to jerk the blitterstaff free of whatever was holding it, and to sweep it around him in a ground-level arc. It hits something along the way, although he has no idea what, or whether it'll help h
im.

  And now, finally, he fears for his safety. As a result, the next few seconds of the fight are pure blindsight; Bruno sees nothing, and is only vaguely aware of himself in the conscious sense. He is motion and shadow. Then his vision flickers on: once, twice, like a heartbeat and then a constant hum, and he's on his feet, and the sand around him is littered with robot bodies. Some of these are dead and shattered, and some are dragging themselves pathetically toward him, as if they might still somehow injure him with the last of their strength. Their bodies have gone black, too, groping for solar energy, although there's a fine grit of storm-blown dust settling onto them from above. They'll be buried long before any self-repair can kick in.

  Still, there's something so purposeful about it all that he pauses for a moment, wondering whether finishing these bastards off might be some kind of sin. But he's spared the trouble when the crack of a rifle sounds, and the nearest robot head explodes. Then another, then another, until there are no robots left.

  And then Sidney Lyman is rising from the crest of a dune, dusting himself off, and the other two Olders are there at his side.

  “Bloody glints,” one of them mutters.

  Bruno squats for a moment, panting, just looking at the three men while he regains his breath. Finally he says, “Gentlemen. Welcome to Shanru Basin. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  “You weren't fooling anyone, Sire,” Sidney says to that.

  “Hmm?”

  “Admittedly, it took us a while to figure it out. I mean, we hadn't seen your face in what, two thousand years? But it clicked. Right after you left, me and the boys here were just kind of looking at each other, saying, ‘Whoops, that was kind of stupid.' I sent most of the unit back to Echo Valley, but for my own self I just . . . needed to be here. You and Radmer, you're off to fight the Glimmer King. Without me! Without my boys, here! Look at you: you're young. You're armored. You just took on twenty-some robots all by yourself, saving our sorry asses. Fucking King of Sol.”