To Crush the Moon

by Wil McCarthy

  Then the buckets are hurled right through the print plate, which crackles and sputters in accepting them. From the ozone smell alone, Bruno can tell this machine is on its last legs, relying heavily on error correction to smooth over its many burned-out faxels. Under other circumstances, this might be disturbing; how much damage and drift did they all incur, in printing themselves through that used-up old plate? But under these circumstances, it hardly matters.

  Presently, the plate crackles again and a shiny new robot emerges, carrying perfect copies of the hurled-in buckets. It isn't gleaming mirror-bright, though, or anyway most of it isn't. Instead, its impervium hull is surrounded—except on the joints and sensory pits—by an outer layer of glassy ceramic painted in green and brown camouflage spots. Once free of the fax, it steps around the Dolceti and follows its shinier brothers out into the workshop, where another robot hands it a rifle—not a sword but a rifle, with a bayonet fixed at the business end. And then it walks out through an open archway and vanishes down a corridor.

  “Well,” says Radmer, “here, as promised, is the source of all our trouble. They seem to be printing one every three minutes. That's what, twenty-four hundred robots per Luner day? More than enough for the task at hand.”

  “It's not the source,” says Bordi, eyeing the print plate with superstitious awe. “This is just a clever tool. The source is the Glimmer King himself.”

  “True,” Radmer admits.

  To which Bruno says, “We shall deal with him soon enough.”

  He pulls a wellstone sketchplate—a proper one this time!—out of his pocket, and begins programming sensor algorithms. He can't simply interrogate the walls, for the walls are merely stone. But he can analyze the sound waves reflecting and refracting through the building's corridors. He can measure cosmic radiation and its secondary cascades to gauge the amount and type of material between floor and sky. He can measure heat and vibration, light and magnetic fields. He can even, given enough time, image the neutrino absorption of the structure and build a literal image in three dimensions. That process could take months, though, so he leaves it running in the background and forgets about it. Even without it, a crude sketch of the building begins, slowly, to emerge.

  Meanwhile, though, two more robots have been printed, issued rifles, and sent on their way.

  “They've given up on swords,” Zuq observes.

  “Worse than that,” says Bruno, “they've developed a blit-resistant outer shell, insulating and nonprogrammable. Look at this, it's glass. Tempered, reinforced, camouflage-painted glass. We'll need to crack through it before the blitterstaves can do their work. Which is troubling, because it means they've been analyzing the battle in Shanru.”

  “Their first real defeat,” says Radmer. “Their work has gotten more difficult as they've moved northward, but they've just thrown more hardware at it. They've never needed to shift tactics before.”

  “Well, they're clearly capable of it; we've only been away for ten hours, and already they're responding. Surprise is not entirely ours, though they don't seem to expect us here.”

  “Right,” says Bordi. “So let's move. Let's finish this while we can. They've seized samples of this armor”—he pinches his own shoulder for emphasis—“and you can bet they'll soon be wrapping that around their soldiers. I'd give it a day or two at the very most.”

  “Indeed,” says Bruno. “An excellent point. Astaroth's military expenditures clearly need to be capped.” That said, he heads back toward the fax machine with purposeful strides and raps its print plate hard with the butt of his staff. The effect is immediate; it flickers, coughs out a cloud of glittering dust, and then darkens and fades like the eyes of a dying beast.

  Still another Queendom treasure removed from the game board that is Lune. It's a cultural apocalypse and a damned shame, but Bruno can see no other way forward. The past is not quite dead, and that's the problem.

  Unfortunately, while the arrival of back-door intruders didn't raise any alarms, the interruption of power through the fax machine does. Almost immediately, electric bells are ringing throughout the fortress, and the only clear advantage is that this fills in a lot of echo data on Bruno's map. He's seen a fortress or two in his day, and a fair number of palaces, and he knows a throne room when he sees one. And if this king is not on his throne—which seems unlikely, given all that Bruno knows of his character—then he may well be in the apartments behind them, or in one of the hidey-holes nearby.

  Bruno gestures and points, then calls out over the clattering bells, “Look for the Glimmer King one floor up, and thirty meters that way. I shall lead.”

  “No,” says Radmer. “No way. Men, kindly surround him. Protect him with your lives. Let's get him there in one piece!”

  And with that, their luck has officially run dry; a sea of glass-skinned robotic troopers pours through the workshop's entrance, with rifles aimed and triggers already halfway pulled. Unsynchronized chemical explosions fire up and down the line, hurling projectiles at the suited Olders and Dolceti.

  They really can slap bullets in flight, Bruno sees with wonder, watching Zuq and Bordi—with movements almost too quick to follow—knock away one projectile each. The Olders, for their part, favor a quieter strategy of simply staying out of the firing arcs. It's like every rifle has a laser beam projecting out of it, showing where its bullets will strike; Radmer and Sidney and the others simply watch these invisible beams and calmly step around them, mostly with very small movements. But it's not enough. Bruno sees right away that both methods will be overwhelmed by the sheer number of guns and bullets in play.

  And it's worse than that, for the projectiles are no mere bullets of lead, but needle-sharp cones of some material sandwich that's both charged and highly magnetic. On impact, they pierce a little way into the wellcloth armor and then let go their charge in spiraling bursts. It's a crude attack as such things go, but it will damage wellstone fibers. Enough hits like that and the suits will develop dead spots, through which these darts should eventually penetrate. And the robots' rate of fire is impressive; in the first five seconds of the engagement Bruno himself—at the protected center—is struck by ten or twenty.

  Still, once the initial shock has worn off the Olders and Dolceti are on the offensive again, pressing forward with blitterstaves, with wirebombs and laser light. The new robots aren't that tough, and they wither and crumple under the attack. Which is, in its own way, a bad thing for the human side, because it saves the robots the trouble of moving out of the way when they're out of ammunition. Those bayonets are cute, but against two centimeters of live wellcloth they're of little use. Bullets are the real danger here, and the hail of them continues. By the time the men are out in the corridor and striking for a stairwell up ahead, their suits are already showing signs of wear.

  The darts must have some poison upon them as well, for on the stairs themselves, Bruno watches one penetrate Sidney Lyman's armor. Lyman flinches and gasps and then crumples to his knees, and is grabbed and hoisted and carried up and away by strong robot hands. There are enemies both behind them and in front, and at the top of the stairs it's Nick Valdi who yelps and collapses and tumbles backward into certain doom. And then in another hallway it's Natan's turn, and his end is uglier than the others, for it involves a spray of bright arterial blood on the inside of his helmet dome. Bruno watches it all through his rearview mirrors, and mourns.

  But next they're at the entrance to the throne room and fighting their way inside, dodging and slapping a storm of projectiles. Bruno even swats one aside himself, feeling the buzz of its approach and reacting without thought.

  And then they're in. Glass windows look out on a set of low hills, illuminated by evening twilight, and if this truly is the south pole, locked in permanent shadow, then it's always evening here. Or else—Bruno hardly dares to think it—it's always morning. Each moment beginning the world afresh.

  The throne itself is a predictably gaudy affair of golden arms and lion's feet and a great
sunburst disc spreading out behind. But there's no Glimmer King in it, just another robot. Or is it?

  Amid the broken bodies of a dozen determined attackers, Brian Romset, the last of Lyman's Olders, goes down in a mess of his own guts and hacked-off limbs. But Bruno scarcely notices; his eyes are on that throne. On the robot on that throne. The robot which has no iron box welded to the side of its head, but rather a crown of gold soldered round its brow. The robot whose scratched, worn, battered hull bespeaks long years of wear and tear, and something more, for ordinary robots never show that kind of damage pattern.

  Indeed, it's the clear fingerprint of an emancipated 'bot, left to find its own way in the world. And there is something chillingly familiar about this one, about the tilt of its head and the lazy dangle of its arms. Bruno's worst fear—his prime suspicion—has proven out.

  “Hugo!” he cries to the figure on the throne. “Stop this, I beseech you. Royal Override: stand down and await instructions!”

  And just like that, the defending robots are frozen in their tracks. Zuq takes the opportunity to smash another one down with a blow to its exposed armpit, but he sees Bruno's glare, and does nothing further. Which is good, because Bruno knows full well that his overrides have no power over this seated creature. He has merely intrigued it.

  “Hugo,” he says, stepping toward the throne in a daze of sorrow.

  But with its blank, mouthless face the robot answers, “Why do you . . . call us that, Father? Do you not recognize us?”

  Bruno pauses, while hope and fear war within him. “Bascal?”

  “Don't be a fool,” says Radmer beside him. “What is this thing? Where is the King of Barnard, who has written so much villainy across our landscape?”

  The robot's laughter is cool, unfriendly, more than a little unhinged. Its face is turned exactly toward Bruno, ignoring Radmer, ignoring everything. “You needn't act so . . . shocked, Father. Our condition—my condition—did not arise by accident. Or had you . . . forgotten?”

  Indeed, Bruno had not. That lapse of judgment—a desecration of all that human beings hold dear—is woven deeply through the tatters of his conscience. Pouring a copy of his tyrant son into the only copy of his pet robot!

  “This is the King of Barnard,” Bruno says, amazed at the weight of his sin now that it confronts him face-to-face. Poor Lune, to suffer so greatly for his mistakes! “Parts of him, anyway.”

  He'd known it was a bad idea even at the time, but he was very curious to see what would happen. And he'd missed his Poet Prince, yes, the last link to his old life. He'd longed to speak with that boy again, if only for an hour, a minute, a word. Memories can be edited! There was some etiological and mnemonic and engrammatic surgery involved, far more elegant than a simple cut and meld. The approach was sound and carefully—if hastily—reasoned.

  But Bruno was no surgeon, and the road to hell is paved with careful plans. The effort had been furtive because it would find no support if revealed. He had no friends or relations left; he worked alone, in secret, as far from the ashes of civilization as Boat Gods' fuel supply could safely carry him. Which wasn't far. And the result had been more horrific than even a pessimist would predict; he'd shut the monster down barely five minutes into the experiment.

  “You have proved yourself unworthy of even my . . . disdain,” it had told him, with halting but vehement passion. “Beware, for I'm incapable of fear.” It had said other things, too, of a vile and personal nature. And the worst of it was that it sounded exactly like Bascal. It moved exactly like Hugo. It was the perfect synthesis of the two, and the conversation had begun well enough, with prancing bows and twirls and snippets of spontaneous verse. “Ah, to exist! To have a . . . form to which the soul might cling! A clever . . . thing, and sorely missed.”

  But that exuberance was not to last, for the creature had made demands. Lightly at first, and then angrily, and then with threats of force. Had it realized its peril it might have kept up the illusion awhile longer, and so escaped into the world, into the ruined solar system, into the universe at large. But the experiment was structured so that keeping his creation alive required a conscious act of will on Bruno's part. In his first stab of real fear, that concentration had wavered and the delicate quantum waveforms had collapsed. The monster had died. Bruno had buried it in secret, and never breathed a word about it to any living person. Iridium Days, indeed.

  In the wake of this final failure, he'd powered up his grappleship—one of the last of its kind—and sent it puttering into the void without him. Marooning himself, yes. Perchance to starve, though he'd ultimately failed at that as well.

  “I turned you off,” he says now. “I buried you in space. I would have fed you into the fax if it had been working. I should have fed you into the sun.”

  On the throne, the ancient robot considers these words, and slowly nods. “Or vice versa. It's . . . good to see you, Father. I had no idea you were still alive. When first my resurrection was upon me, I . . . thought myself awakened by providence. I felt it: the finger of God upon me, commanding life. It commanded nothing else, but the . . . ship had awakened as well. From nowhere had appeared a sparkle of stored energy—enough to carry me down, to this . . . world I found myself circling. I survived the crash, and if the fax machine was dead for you, Father, then the . . . finger of God must have touched it as well. For I stepped into it once, and out of it twice. And from that moment, my . . . path has been clear. To reestablish a monarchy over all that exists.”

  The story makes no sense—the “Glimmer King” is clearly deranged—but Bruno can picture this much: one robot overpowering its faxed twin, strapping it down, tinkering with its circuitry until resistance ceases and obedience is absolute. And then feeding this perfect soldier back into the fax machine to create an army. Capturing first a village, then a fortress, a city, a world. Spreading outward in relentless waves, to fill the universe with some strange echo of Bascal's would-be paradise.

  Ah, God, Bascal did have vision. Would so many have followed him otherwise? To their ruin and his? He'd understood the human heart as well as his mother, though he'd used the knowledge very differently. Very differently.

  “Stop all this,” Bruno says to the thing in the chair. “Please. You're defective; your very construction prevents you from grasping the horrors you've spawned, the horror you are. The responsibility is mine. You have no idea what I've done here, through you. But take my word: the society you dream of cannot be built on a foundation of murder. It must be freely chosen, and chosen anew with every morning. It must be the sum total dream of all who dwell within it.”

  “Ah,” says the Glimmer King, “but the mind of meat is wounded by its own imperfections. It is you who cannot conceive the totality of my vision. I knew it the . . . moment I awoke: that in the quantum-crystalline purity of my thoughts I was blessed, and more than blessed. Do not blame yourself, Bruno, for it was . . . God's own hand that crafted me. You were merely the instrument.”

  “What the hell is going on?” demands Radmer. “Is this the Glimmer King? This? Bascal's recording in a robot body? Are you kidding me?”

  And finally, the robot's head swivels toward Radmer. There's a sound, a kind of electronic gasp or grunt or snigger, and then Bascal's voice again: “Conrad Mursk? Do I . . . dream? Is that you I see before me, fighting at my own father's . . . side, whom once you fought against?”

  “Aye,” says Radmer, and spits on the inside of his helmet dome. “Though I'm called Radmer now, and have sworn to kill you on sight.”

  “Radmer!” says the Glimmer King. “Ah! How many . . . times we've heard that name, Hugo and I! From books, from songs, from the lips of tortured prisoners! I . . . should have known it was you, always sticking your nose in the business of others. How little surprised I am to find you here! I knew someday we would . . . face each other again, and you would be called to account for your wrongs against me. And yet, now that the . . . moment is here I can only recall that you twice saved my life.” He spre
ads his arms. “Give us a . . . kiss, me boyo, and join us in remaking this world.”

  “If you owe me anything, then stop this war,” Radmer says coldly. He, too, seems little surprised now that the shock has worn off. It makes sense; Bascal's name had been mentioned more than once in connection with the Glimmer King, by the robot soldiers themselves! The Senatoria Plurum in Nubia had even written it into their formal record, which Radmer claimed to have carried away with his own hands. But surely the real Bascal had ended his days swinging from a Barnardean lamppost, a lynch mob's noose slowly throttling the life from his damnably hard-to-kill body. And even if he hadn't, could he have come so far? Marshaled the resources of his dying colony to send his only self back here? Perhaps, yes. But he didn't.

  “Ah,” says the Glimmer King, sounding regretful. “I could wish for you to . . . disappoint me, but alas your character holds firm.” He rises from his throne, steps down from the dais, and walks toward Bruno and Radmer.

  “Halt,” say Bordi and Zuq together, raising their blitterstaves to block the way.

  But suddenly the battle is on again; robot soldiers are swarming the two, and though they fight hard to protect their charges, there are only two of them against an infinite supply of attackers. They're driven back, and the Glimmer King continues to advance.

  “Halt,” Radmer warns him in the same tone, raising his own staff.

  But the Glimmer King's mind, however defective, is faster than meat. In his impervium hand is a miniature blitterstick, of the sort sometimes carried by Olders in this world. Of the sort Radmer himself had carried, until the battle of Shanru afforded him a stouter weapon. With it Bascal easily blocks Radmer's feint, and where the two sticks touch there's immediate trouble; they attack each other as easily as they attack mere impervium. There are sizzles and pops and flashes of light, and both weapons fall to dust.