Adam Robots: Short Stories

by Adam Roberts

  But Strong- wasn’t to be interrupted. ‘No, no, the lines of stars in the sky are true lines. That’s why the coastline project is so important - the line of the coastline of Scandinavia does not, at the moment, run true. Do you see? We must make it true. For the sake of God!’ He stopped. Was there, he wondered, any point in haranguing Cor in this way?

  ‘You know about the sky-net?’ his brother asked.

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Strong- snapped.

  ‘All those satellites up in Earth-orbit? What are they for?’

  ‘What are you talking about now? How’s this relevant? They prevent asteroid strikes, you know that. Asteroids and comets and, uh, nebulas and things. Without them, we’d be vulnerable to . . .’

  ‘Do we really need so many of them?’ Courageous- asked.

  Strong- turned his head and stared straight at his brother, disregarding his nakedness. ‘What,’ he said, ‘are you talking about?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Courageous-. ‘Only, could you take this?’ He was holding a folded square of paper, half a metre along each side. Strong- looked at it. It was folded several times. Unfolded, it would be a fairly big thing, like a wall-chart or something.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You can look at it,’ said Courageous-. ‘When you get home. Just take it, please. Please?’

  ‘Tell me what it is.’

  ‘Just dots on a page. Random dots. Randomly generated pattern. Or, rather, lack of pattern. That’s harmless, surely? Well, you and I might think it harmless, though the Government doesn’t think so. Obviously the government thinks it’s dangerous; it’s why they’re after me. But how can it be dangerous? It’s only dots on a piece of paper. I’m asking you, as a brother, to take it for me. Please.’

  ‘I don’t know, Cor,’ said Strong-.

  ‘If you take the paper,’ said Courageous-, ‘then I promise I’ll hand myself over to the police.’

  ‘Is it contraband?’ Strong- asked. But he took the paper.

  ‘Tuck it away inside your tunic,’ Courageous- advised. ‘I wouldn’t let the police know you have it. Just take it away and look at it at home. Then you can do what you like. There are some numbers along the bottom margin that you can call, if you want. Or you can just chuck it away, if you like.’

  ‘What’s going on, Cor?’ said Strong-. He felt a wobbly sense of uncertainty, and he didn’t like that feeling. ‘What are you doing?’

  Courageous-in-the-Lord was settling himself back against the seat of the cab, folding his arms. ‘Waiting for the police,’ he said.

  ‘They’ll put you in jail.’

  ‘Are you advising me to run away, brother? Surely you’d prefer me to face justice?’

  ‘Well, yes, only . . .’ said Strong-. ‘Look, I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s alright,’ said Courageous-. ‘I don’t really know why I picked you, brother. If I’d thought about it I should have known you could not have changed. I’ve been in the company of so many people over the last few years who have changed, you see, people who had once been devout like you and now aren’t any more. When you’re in that sort of company over a long period of time it’s easy to forget that most people haven’t reached that place yet. You still believe in the coastal engineering project, don’t you?’

  ‘This again? Always knocking it. I might almost be cross with you, brother,’ said Strong-. But he wasn’t cross. He couldn’t shake the grumbling, fluttery sensation of uncertainty in his gut. ‘It’s mankind’s noblest project.’

  ‘Mankind’s most pointless, certainly.’

  ‘It’s not pointless.’ He meant to sound assertive, but instead he sounded petulant.

  ‘You don’t think there are better avenues for man’s energies? When you were in South America - you know that thirty per cent of the population there are malnourished? You must have seen it. That many thousands die each year of starvation.’

  ‘The soil there is bad,’ said Strong-.

  ‘Couldn’t we put our energies into making it better, instead of redrawing coastlines? Christ-alive.’

  ‘Please don’t swear.’

  Courageous- had sat up again. ‘You really don’t see beyond it, do you? How many coastal cities have you bulldozed?’

  ‘Most of them were already ruins,’ Strong- said, grumpily. ‘After the war, there were many ruins.’

  ‘Most, but not all. And a deal of poisoned soil, too. Which means people tend to starve. Pushed out of their homes, they become destitute. Even though the war was more’n a hundred years ago, now. And after the war we had strong government, Church-and-Government. Order and a better life. All that,’ he threw his left hand up, dismissively. ‘All that.’

  ‘Why do you have to be so cynical?’ Strong- asked. His voice was almost tearful.

  ‘I’m sorry, brother,’ said Courageous-, sounding weary again. ‘I just don’t believe it. I think the whole thing is like prisoners working a treadmill. I think it soaks up people’s energies, and people’s money, and stops them questioning the government - stops them from challenging, or changing, or - hell - overthrowing the Government.’

  ‘And why,’ said Strong-, baffled, upset, ‘would anybody want to do anything like that?’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Courageous-, grimacing. ‘The Government governs according to the principles of truth, doesn’t it? Of course it does. That speech you gave me five minutes ago, I can’t remember all the details of it, but it was all about truth, wasn’t it.’

  ‘God is truth,’ said Strong-, agreeing, and at the exact moment he said the words there came a sharp tap against the glass of the truck’s windscreen. Strong- started, pressed his face against the glass to peer at the crowd that had gathered outside. He opened the door and clambered down.

  The-Unerring-Word was standing there, and four policemen. Two of the policemen were carrying weapons - long-barrelled police-guns, aimed at the cabin. ‘Sir?’ said one of the policemen.

  ‘He’s alright,’ said Unerring-, gruffly. ‘This is my work colleague. It’s the other guy - in the cab.’

  Strong-, feeling foolish, stood, superfluous, as the police dragged his brother - naked - out of the cabin. As they cuffed him, searched him and removed from him the gun he had (presumably) stolen from somewhere. They dragged him over and strapped him into the back of their Law-wagon. Afterwards Strong- accompanied Unerring- to the police depot, and they swore statements, and agreed witness dates, and answered questions, and gave details, until the whole thing had taken up almost the entire night’s shift. All through it Strong- kept thinking that maybe he would wake from the experience, as if from a dream -everybody has that sort of dream, don’t they? You’ve had it, surely? The dream where you are walking down the main street, stark-naked, entirely naked from forehead to neck, and people are looking and staring, and you become more and more embarrassed. The experience felt something like that for Strong-, except that it was Strong-’s brother who had been naked rather than Strong- himself. But the whole thing had that terrible nightmarish quality to it.

  It was almost dawn by the time Strong- got home.

  He slipped the key in his lock and stepped inside quietly, trying not to wake his wife, his two children. He needed to sit, to think. He went through to the kitchen and made himself a beaker of hot milk.

  He placed the folded square of paper on the table in front of him.

  He couldn’t make sense of any of it. What was it Cor had been saying? None of it made any sense. Why had he said that thing about the sky-net satellites? Everybody knew that they were essential for global defence, all of them. Every single one. Sure there were lots of them, but what of that? What had Cor been going on about? What had gotten into his head?

  Strong- tried to imagine what image was printed on the paper in front of him. Random dots, Cor had said. What could that possibly mean? It sounded harmless, and yet Strong- felt a strange inertia, a disinclination to open up the sheet of paper and lo
ok at what was printed there. It would be - he felt intuitively - upsetting to him. He recalled (he wasn’t sure why) the line in the Bible, about the veil of the temple being rent across. He had a terrible sense that this is what the image would show. God’s temple rent and split diagonally across, splashes and dabs of ichor, like God’s white blood, spattered over creation, falling with appalling randomness. It was almost like a telepathic premonition. He almost did not have to open the paper to see it.

  Almost.

  His hand was resting on the table, his fingers playing with one corner of the paper, folding it up, smoothing it down, folding it up. Above his head, upstairs, he could hear his wife moving around, oblivious, performing her habitual morning ablutions: the triple-flush of the toilet, the squeak and gushing flow of the bath-tap, her voice humming tunefully as she prepared for her day.

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  ~ * ~

  The Woman Who Bore Death

  So, the land there is thickly forested to the north and the forest grows even more thickly and denser to the south. This southern cantrev of forest is so very dense, indeed, that there is no other place in the world with trees of such height or magnificence or profusion; excepting only one place, and that is the same forest’s reach westward, of which it is impossible to imagine a more perfectly wooded cantrev. And yet, Gwad the Great, who grew the world from a grain that no man had harvested, always keeps one surprise hidden in his glove with which to startle each man or woman who believes they have seen everything that the world has to offer. And so it is that the easternward reach of this forest is thicker, more finely grown, and broader in extent even than the north, south and west portions.

  Now, there is a kingdom in the realm of breath known as Fflam-a-Nuwver. [’Blazing Firmament’.] That is a strange place, where women have their own names, and the trees that grow there are of metal rather than wood. In that place was a Shawoman called Lle-Llew, who was also known as Gwevel Cutch. [That is, ‘Red Mouth’.] She looked out of the realm of breath first upon the realm of cloud, and saw in it nothing that seemed to her worthwhile or beautiful; and then upon the realm of water and saw in that nothing that seemed to her worthwhile or beautiful, and then upon the realm of soil. Upon soil she saw there were men and women, and it seemed to her that it would be worthwhile and fine to live amongst them. So she came to the people of the forest, the cantrev called Bright, and she spoke to them.

  ‘I might riddle you a riddle,’ she said, ‘one riddle only, out of all the many questions that are hard of answering. And mine is a simple question.’

  In all courtesy they replied, ‘We will answer your question, if Gwad has planted the answer in the world.’

  And she said: ‘My question is only this, “What is my name?” ‘

  And the people of the Bright did not know how to answer the question. They said to her, ‘How can we know if you are married, since you bring no husband? How can we know if you are unmarried, since you may have no husband, or your husband may be watching from the realm of breath?’

  At this she looked sorrowful, and said, ‘Until you can name me, my displeasure will fill the forest with Fantoums. You may call me three times, and each time I shall listen; if I hear my true name, I shall relent. But if you call me with a false name, then falseness will fill your forest, and the nature of falsity is distress, and the end of distress is death.’

  All the people of the Bright came together to discuss this circumstance. In that place, such a gathering was called a Cob. ‘Let us discuss, allowing each the opportunity to speak, and letting each weigh each other’s words in the balance,’ they said. ‘How can we discover this woman’s name, when no woman should have a name?’

  And the result of the Cob was to request that the Shawomen of the cantrev be supplicated and their opinion uncovered. In that cantrev, at that time, were three Shawomen of the forest, and they came willingly, and were content with such offerings as the Bright brought them. And the offerings included three live wood deer for each Shawoman, and as many strips of salted meat as would fit in a satchel; and resin clasps and resin jewellery moulded and carved as fine as any; and a hundred leather strips for each, and buckets woven of leaf and sealed with gum, and a hundred bottles of fruit wine for each woman. And the oldest of the Shawomen said, ‘She is not of our hive, and yet magic is magic. For there is power in names, and only uncover this stranger’s name, if she has one, and whoever wields that word will wield her magic. Then her magic will belong to the Bright, for to name a person is to put a rope around such power as they possess and lead it, as one leads a deer.’ There was much discussion at this as to whether her magic was worth wielding, but at this a woodsman named Hudd requested permission to address the Cob.

  ‘Stand on the stage, Hudd,’ they said to him. ‘Courteously say what you have to say.’

  ‘By Gwad, the Great, who gardened the world in its wonderful growth,’ [This is a line from the alliterative poem ‘The Roundel of Roots’, and may have been used as a conventionalised or standard address before speaking in public.] said Hudd, ‘I will say, “I was in the forest, westward of here, and I saw a thing.” ‘

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘I saw a fort, built in the midst of the trees, where there was no fort before. It was made all of precious metal, and marvellous to see. And the woman whose name you seek built it, for I saw her walking upon the battlements, fine of face, with black hair and a red mouth. Her clothes were of a fabric I have never before seen, for its weave never gets wet, no matter how much water is poured upon it; and its seams never split, no matter how it is pulled or stretched. I do not know what manner of animal provided the hair, or which plant was milled, to make the thread of so wonderful a garment.’

  ‘This fort is fashioned of her magic,’ said the first Shawoman. ‘And who now says that such magic is not worth the wielding? Tell us of this fortress.’

  ‘That I will do, and it will be worth the wear upon your ears to hear it, courteous people. This woman fashioned her fort in a moment, and built it all of metal, so that it shines and sparkles in amongst the trees. The walls are of silver, and the central tower of silver too. Around this she has put up a wooden wall, of trees felled from round about. I don’t know why she has built this wall, unless it is to hide the silver fortress from the gaze of Gwad.’

  ‘But,’ said the second Shawoman, ‘Gwad has many servants, and eighty of these servants are Eyes, and eighty more are Tongues, to taste the tang of metal on the wind, and eighty more are Ears, to hear as she whispers her true name in her sleep.’

  ‘Go on with your telling,’ they said to Hudd.

  ‘She has made her fort strong,’ he said. ‘And she has conjured an army of Fantoums, made from the trees of her world; and yet although they are fashioned of trees yet they are not made of wood. For the wood of her world is not the wood of our world.’

  ‘Why do you say that of the wood of her world?’

  ‘For in her world the trees are made of metal, and the wood is buried beneath the soil in lozenges in grounds in the villages and by the churches. In our world, wood grows above the ground, and metal lies beneath.’

  ‘Hudd is only telling the truth,’ said the third Shawoman, ‘for if the metal is disturbed then the forests do not grow, as in the plains of the west where they dig the ground to get at the metal - trees grow there sparsely if at all. Whereas if the metal is left alone - as in the four cantrevs of the Bright - the trees grow more thickly than grass in a field.’

  ‘So,’ said Hudd. ‘Her Fantoums are metal made, towering and tall, and their fingers are flails, and their teeth are big as swords, and their eyes bloom like mushrooms and turn to seek you out. They are a scary sight, and they patrol the woodland in the day and also at night.’

  ‘Do they not sleep?’ asked a man, called Urjen the Tall.

  ‘They neither sleep nor wake,’ replied the Shawoman. ‘For the weariness that causes sleep is a kind of pain, and they feel no pain of any kind.�
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  ‘These soldiers serve only the stranger who has set us this question.’ said Hudd.

  ‘There was a time,’ said Deheubart Handraiser, who was a notable figure in the western cantrev’s largest village, ‘when this woman walked amongst us. But now she lives in her fort, with her soldiers, and she sends insects with myriad eyes to fly into the air and spy upon us.’

  ‘What manner of insect are these, courteous Handraiser?’ asked the others at the Cob.

  ‘Insects as they must be in her world; for where our insects have carapaces made of matter that resembles bark, or hardened resin, yet her insects have carapaces made of metal, that steal small glitter from the sunlight in silver and in gold. Yet if a man or a woman seizes hold of these insects, they send fire into that person’s arm and make it numb for three days and three nights.’

  So the Cob was distressed to discover the nature of these new insects. ‘We must discover her name, or there will be disaster,’ was the conclusion. And the three Shawomen consulted after the manner of their hive, and said this: ‘If all else fails, we will speak to the Worthy One who lives in this portion of the wood.’