Time of the Stones

by Fred Rothganger

  She dropped him roughly back in his seat. “I’ve decided to let you live, because it’s convenient. I can’t be bothered running a country. I prefer to work in the shadows. You can even tell everyone I serve you. Starting immediately, you will act civilized. I will send you a little reading material: the Magna Carta, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Ten Commandments.”

  She planted a hand on each arm of the throne, leaned forward as if to convey an intimate secret, and whispered loudly, “I’ll help you with the big words.” In a normal tone she continued, “It’ll take a couple of days to make a reading machine for you. In the meantime, if you’re not sure what to do, just treat people the way they want to be treated. You can start by giving your torturers the day off. In fact, fire them! Let everyone in your prisons go free.”

  “What about true criminals?”

  “You mean like yourself? Tell them you’ve declared a general clemency, but you expect them to be on their best behavior.”

  She turned to the mostly empty room and announced grandly, “My first act as Queen of the World is—to do nothing! I haven’t had a vacation in over a thousand years.” She hopped off the dais and swept down the center aisle.

  The guards were helping each other hobble back to the door. She got in front of them and pointed at the man with the hurt leg. “Let me look at it.”

  They stared back in fear.

  She knelt, wrapped hands gently around his knee and closed her eyes. “Nothing is broken. Sorry, I hit you harder than intended.” She grinned sheepishly. “I’m a bit out of practice.”

  She left the palace and wandered around the citadel. Coming upon a tree, she hugged it serenely. Eventually she found a gate that opened into the rest of the city.

  People watched in awe as she went by, but Susan barely noticed. A young child stood in the middle of the street, staring innocently. Susan bent down and kissed the top of his head. She breathed deeply and faced the warm morning sun.

  Free at last. Thank God Almighty I’m free at last.

  * * *

  The elephant plodded along the road beside the tributary. Like its real relatives in Nature, it stepped over potholes and bumps with ease. Its short tail flared into a radio dish. At the other end, a ball on a short stalk served as head, dotted with camera lenses. The broad middle of its body held the Stone, embedded like a chocolate chip pressed into cookie dough.

  A narrow microwave beam connected the elephant to a relay station on the rim of the central valley. The relay sent another beam to the ziggurat. The plant there had sprouted more antennae, like an Ancient network tower. The links formed a long spinal cord connecting Susan’s physical body with her mind, which never left the Stone.

  It had taken months to put all the pieces into place. A little bit of swarm here and there, sneaking away in the night. Several other repeaters dotted the nearby mountain peaks, enough to keep a line-of-sight connection through the whole journey.

  Even more difficult had been the software. The swarm did not know how to do anything on its own. Every single component of the network had to be painstakingly coded and tested. Despite its enormous power, the swarm would never grow a new behavior unless someone took the time to program it.

  By evening the elephant neared the foothills of the rim. A fully-autonomous robot, it would plod on through the night, even after the Stone shut down.

  * * *

  Susan came to the surface of the river and took a long easy breath. The sun hung low on the horizon. Vacation was over. She sighed and waded ashore. Her brown body glistened in the twilight. Long red hair clung together in a sop that poured a trail of wet on the ground.

  She muttered, “Esc gown on.” A program running in the Stone caught the word Esc and interpreted the rest as a command. Some commands loaded new programs into the swarm. Others merely adjusted settings, such as clothing. Something resembling white fabric exuded from her skin and formed the garment.

  The Ancients never allowed robots like her to have this much control over their own body. It was considered unsafe, among other things. Her old swarm was like intelligent sand, basically a bunch of tiny computer chips with mechanical appendages. She shuddered at her reckless youth, fighting and making love in such a fragile machine. If it weren’t for the spare parts Anand found, she would have died long before age 38.

  She walked toward the citadel, tracing her path back through the streets. The gate was closed, with guards standing in front. She walked up as if she owned the place.

  They crossed their spears.

  She casually examined her fingernails. “So, how are the men doing? You know, the ones I beat up this morning.”

  They eyed each other nervously.

  “Perhaps you are volunteering for a more severe example.” She gave them a withering look.

  They parted and opened the doors.

  She swept past, smiling pleasantly at them. “Thank you, and have a good evening.” Across the plaza at the great hall, many people were converging for dinner. She walked in with the crowd. A hush swept across the room. She strode down the aisle toward the dais and curtsied before the King. “Good evening, Your Majesty.”

  He eyed her with disdain. She smiled and waited. An uncomfortable silence lingered over the whole room. Finally he said, quite reluctantly, “Would you do the honor of dining with me?”

  She curtsied again and took a seat at the head table. “May I ask, Your Majesty, how your splendid idea of clemency has been received?”

  He flustered for a moment. “It will take some time to arrange.”

  “Hmm. I see.” She turned attention to the food and pretended to eat daintily. Food was a convenient source of energy, especially at the King’s expense. The rest of the swarm could use photovoltaics, but this body needed something else. Growing leaves off the top of the head simply would not do. It would ruin her hairstyle.

  After an hour the low-power warning went off, a feeling as much as a sound. Far away in the Stone, it impinged upon her consciousness. She stood abruptly. “Thank you, Your Majesty, for the lovely evening.”

  She flew from the hall like Cinderella, running to the center of the plaza where the ziggurat stood. She rocketed up the stairs five at a time. Around the perimeter of the first tier a hedge of stinging nettles had grown up. It parted to admit her, then wove together again. Another wall of thorns waited at the second tier, and again at the top. Each opened in turn like an automatic gate. She stumbled onto the mesa ...

  Early-morning sun blazed across the tributary valley. The world swayed ever so slightly as the elephant plodded along the gravel road. Susan and the console dragged behind on the ground, like a trailer with no visible hitch. The feeling of the world sliding past without friction was enough to drive anyone nuts.

  The Stone always booted into basic operating mode each morning. Special modes like teleop required an explicit command every single day. Dreadfully inconvenient, but that would soon change.

  Yesterday her body had a few annoying issues. Time for some bug fixes. She brought up the swarm-program editor and found blessed relief from the constantly shifting landscape. The surrounding space exploded with points of light connected by lines. It looked like a 3D constellation map. Mathematical equations laced among the dots and lines.

  With bent knees and spread hands she surfed through the graph, leaning left or right to turn, backward or forward to control speed. The problem node came into view. She stabbed it with a finger and dictated some changes to the equations. Then on to another location. When the edits were done, she extended her hand palm up, flipped it over and formed a fist. The miniature universe collapsed and disappeared. On the Stone’s console she tapped a network address—

  Susan woke, sprawled on the pavement where her body had collapsed the night before. She stood, dusted herself off and surveyed the mesa. Much of the swarm surrounded it, acting as a living wall. Vines tangled among each other, with many small leaves and long sharp thorns. Crude protection for a small enclave in
enemy territory.

  The King had to be brought under control. No more vacation for a while. She walked toward the stairs. The hedge untangled itself to let her through. A breathtaking vista unfolded: over 500 men, fully armed, standing in formation at the base of the ziggurat. It was going to be an interesting morning.

  No time to write another swarm program to deal with them. It took two years to write the ones she had now. Susan smiled and started down the stairs.

  Archers at the back of the phalanx let loose a volley. The surprise and fear caused her mind to accelerate to maximum speed. The first arrow arrived in less than two seconds, but its flight seemed to last a small eternity.

  Sadly, their aim was poor. The spread was so wide there was nowhere she could go without intersecting one of them, and her legs were not bent enough to jump.

  She grabbed two arrows out of flight and used them to bat several others away. Ten hit home. The swarm parted to avoid damage, but not quickly enough. A few units got torn and crushed.

  Pain, a useful source of information. Arcs of searing pain shot through her, thanks to Ancient software. She screamed.

  The impact knocked her back against the stairs. The soldiers below cheered while she lay in agony. The swarm took a few seconds to expel the arrows.

  She whispered, “Esc pain cancel.” The command reset her damage record, immediately relieving the consequences.

  It made sense to play dead. Then a better idea came to mind. “Esc teleop close.”

  Susan woke standing before the console in the virtual world. She brought up a miniature model of the citadel. Yellow bands marked areas where the thorn bushes should concentrate. Like finger-painting onto the model, she reshaped the marks in real-time.

  The hedge on the first tier of the ziggurat unwound itself and separated across the stairs. From each side it slid down the face of the tier onto the plaza, a miniature walking forest. It spread out in two directions and began surrounding the soldiers.

  The cheering stopped. Those who had any sense ran the opposite direction and escaped, mostly the archers at the back. The rest stood transfixed in horror as the trap closed. The hedge sealed off each side of the stairs so there was nowhere to go but up.

  Some of the men drew their swords and slashed at the hedge, trying to hack through the jungle with machetes. The metal clanged as it struck the rigid branches. Pieces of foliage dropped to the ground. Immediately they morphed into blobs and crawled back to rejoin the base. Meanwhile the vines grew and extended new thorns.

  The men made exactly zero progress. One by one they stopped and turned their attention to the ziggurat. A few climbed the stairs and walked out onto the ledge of the first tier. A leap from that height would be impossible. They shouted for their escaped comrades to bring a ladder.

  The loop of hedge began to shrink around the trapped soldiers. The ones at the back screamed in terror and jostled forward. Soon the whole crowd moved up the stairs and onto the ledge. The loop closed into a bristling mass that covered the stairs from the ground up to the first tier. The hedge from above flowed down, forcing any remaining men off the steps.

  Susan reanimated her body, stood and walked down. The hedge parted at the center, forming a kind of bubble around her. As she descended, the vines ahead opened and the ones behind closed. At the bottom the bubble disgorged her onto the plaza. She strode up to the door of the great hall. The guards promptly opened for her.

  “Your Majesty, your men gave me quite a workout this morning. I fear my appetite is even greater than usual.”

  The King looked up from a meeting with his underlings and scowled at her.

  She clasped her hands together and smiled expectantly.

  The King rolled his eyes, then clapped twice. When the maids arrived, he commanded with exaggerated boredom, “Bring food for Antikva.”

  They brought out roughly the same fare as the previous morning.

  Susan looked it over and focused on the sweet breads. Sugars and fats were good energy. Scintillae were less adapted to digest protein. After fueling up for the day, she told the King, “We could do this on a more formal basis. Send about twenty to thirty of your very best men to practice with me. I can teach them some things that will amaze you.”

  Suddenly the King perked up. “When?”

  She shrugged. “After breakfast? Not today though, I’m busy. The Stone will arrive home this afternoon, and I still owe you that reading machine.” She stood. “If you need advice, you’re welcome to visit.” She turned and started to walk away, then paused and raised her finger in sudden thought. “Ah yes—I still expect to hear that you’ve released your prisoners.”

  Back outside, the last of the soldiers were clambering down the ladders. She walked cautiously toward the ziggurat, wondering whether anyone was still in the mood for a fight. The men looked at her as if they were wondering the same thing.

  The hedge opened as she approached, then closed behind. She climbed the stairs, passing through the second and third circles. With her body safely out of reach, she returned to the virtual world and got to work. First thing was to move the hedge back into its original formation. Then she started writing a swarm program for the reading machine.

  All the programs so far were one-of-a-kind special applications. Wherever possible, she adapted existing code. Her avatar came from a swarm robot popular in Ancient times. The plantlike machines defending the ziggurat came from a dynamic sculpture, augmented with the decoded genome of a real plant.

  To help civilization rebuild, the Ancients had left recipes for basic pieces of technology. The communication network between the Stone and the ziggurat used several of these. After writing so many, Susan could see a pattern in how they got translated. She decided to write one program to rule them all, one that could translate any recipe. It would be bigger and more difficult than the others. The King would have to wait a little longer for his new mobile.

  * * *

  The elephant plodded up the stream bed, carefully picking its way among the stones and mud. Water swirled around its stumpy ankles. The middle of the stream contained no trees and few big rocks. Water knew the easiest route through the valley.

  Ahead, Stonehill rose between two branches of the stream. The elephant veered left and went around to the northwest face. The forest was thin enough to weave through, and the slope of the hill shallow enough for the elephant to climb. In some places the brush grew too thick. The elephant backed up a few paces and tried another way.

  In the middle of the deserted glade, a shrine occupied the place where the Stone once stood. It looked like something Kantisto would make. Three wood poles were tied at the peak to form a tetrahedron, with feathers hanging off. Three poles formed the base, weighted down with rocks.

  The elephant crushed the fetish, then morphed into a giant blob that flowed down and out. The swarm expelled the sticks and stones, along with even the finest debris on the granite surface. The Stone sank gently into place.

  The boundaries of the Stone were softly rounded rather than sharp, making it possible to grasp and lift. The swarm around the edges held it up until the last moment, while the swarm underneath fled for dear life. In the end, not a single unit was lost.

  The swarm crawled to the north end of the glade and formed four dendroids. Each extended a vine along the ground back to the Stone, where they joined together in a sheath that covered the north face. A steady supply of light from the swarm would keep the Stone running all night.

  A stem sprouted from one of the vines and grew a microwave dish. It searched for a moment, then settled its aim toward a repeater on the nearest mountain peak.

  * * *

  Dinner time arrived. Susan stopped work and crept to the edge of the ziggurat on hands and knees, exposing only enough to peer down the stairs. No army there. She stood and took a better look around. All seemed clear. Surely some ambush must be waiting around the corner.

  Paranoid old fool.

  She walked down the stairs and joined c
lumps of people streaming into the hall. They seemed calm and accepting. The local women had tan skin and brown or black hair that rarely reached their waist, much less their ankles. Their clothing, made of woven fabric, still echoed the cut and style of the Nomads. Susan’s white gown, dark brown skin and red hair stood in contrast to everyone around. She liked it that way.

  Susan found a seat at the least important table, just inside the door. No one seemed interested in fighting over positions there. It held mostly women, apparently dropped there by men on their way to more important seats. They acted uneasy in her presence, but gradually fell into conversation.

  She sat quietly, accepted the food given her and ate with reserve. The table talk gradually shifted to gossip about who was in or out of favor with the King. One of them asked, “Antikva, why are you out of favor?”

  “Perhaps the King is out of favor with me.”

  Some of them stifled a nervous laugh.

  Bards came out and sang about the exploits of the Ancients. Susan chuckled at the inaccuracies. When the evening ended, she slipped out among the crowd.

  She wandered around the poorly-lit plaza, listening. People sent vibrations through the pavement with each footstep, revealing paths to their rooms. She walked to a building and spread her body against the wall. Activity within rippled through its structure. Then another building. A map of the whole citadel took shape in her mind.

  Around midnight, vines crept in through the windows of the palace. They spread along the ceilings and penetrated the royal quarters. A sweet smell flooded halls and rooms. Guards and maids alike drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  * * *

  The King woke with a headache. He did not drink enough to cause this—at least not that he could remember. Night still hung thick in the sky. He shivered with cold. The floor felt hard. Not the floor, it was stone pavement.