Ruined Cities

by James Tallett (ed)

  “Stand,” Jake said. He could hear shouting now, a human master eager to imprint another robot into his collection, accompanying the runners.

  Jake clasped the robot, fingers curling about its wrist, the robot reciprocating. When the robot smiled Jake felt a tug in his head, not pain but pleasure as if a needle full of some lost-in-the-past miracle elixir had been plunged into the center of his brain.

  Jake had become a master. The others would have to accept him, would have to mark him and his robot with the tattoos. He would live in hightown, in the towers.

  He did not name the robot then but started calling it Dale shortly thereafter. They climbed out of the crater, leaving the picture with Jake’s other trash.

  ***

  Renay was wrong. Dale would not be proud of Jake. Dale would never have permitted Jake to work as a recycler, the process was too horrific, no matter the wage. Once, robots ate mana to stay alive, but now that it was scarce, more brutal means were necessary. Recyclers chopped flesh from the weakest of robots and grafted it onto the strongest. A muscle here, a tendon there; an arm, a leg.

  “We’ll find you other work,” Dale would say. And they would, or more accurately, Dale would. Finding first himself a job, then bringing Jake on. Of course Dale could never pass through a checkpoint, could never work except in the outskirts, limiting their pay. Jake hadn’t cared as long as he was fed.

  “Stop your daydreaming!” A ping-pong ball bounced off Jake’s forehead and

  he glared at Overseer Jenning. She held another ball in her hand. He rubbed his forehead, waved a reluctant apology and almost returned to work when he recognized the arm he had just thrown into the recycling cart.

  It was a muscular arm with flaps of flesh dangling as if it had been torn away crudely. Black powder-paint still covered most of it, having peeled in a few spots to reveal the soft glow of moon blue below. The glow was strong, if not vibrant, an arm meant for recycling. He could not be certain but the paint matched Dale’s preference.

  Jake pivoted back to the line with his saw still hanging in its holster. The robot pickings were slim tonight; no full bodies, only pieces and bits. No Dale.

  A second ball bounced off the conveyor in front of him. He waved another apology and resumed work. Relief and frustration were a poor mixture in his stomach as no further fragments of Dale rolled down the line. Today’s salvage seemed barely humanoid.

  He imagined masters and their minions patrolling outside the safety of the city’s boundaries and hunting Unwanted — the aberrations made when mana fell in the woods, imprinted by wild critters. Jake lifted a slimy mound of flesh that might have been a snout and dropped it into the cart beside Dale’s arm.

  He had taken this job because he had hoped it would lead him to Dale. All of Dale! Not shards of him. Jake worried his fingers through his hair as the warehouse shuddered and the thick steel door on the far wall rumbled open. The cobblers entered, their crisp blue uniforms crinkling as they pushed empty carts towards the lines. They would take the full carts.

  Including Dale’s arm.

  Protocol required that Jake wheel his cart down to the end of the conveyor belt for the exchange but he hesitated.

  Dale had always been there for him, through all the scheming and intrigue of the high towners. Jake was never satisfied simply to indulge — he had wanted to ridicule the masters and propel himself above them. Dale had warned Jake his greed was out of control but the benefit of having a robot as adviser is that when he told Dale to shut up, Dale shut up. At least until Jake had gotten them evicted from the Burning City.

  As shameful as that had been, it had been nothing compared with the other cities they had traveled to. Jake had discovered a single robot was not sufficient to challenge the masters in most towers. They had wasted years wandering in search of more mana. He owed the robot no loyalty, but now that Dale had failed him, abandoned him, Jake was nothing. One chance to change that.

  Jake pulled the power lever on Mazo’s line, then did the same for his own. The absence of the low hum that he never noticed until it faded made the clatter of the wheeled carts that much louder. Until the screams of the severed heads in Jake’s and Mazo’s carts drowned them out.

  While the others were distracted he pulled Dale’s wriggling arm free and stuffed it into his lunch satchel. Then he restored power to both lines. He did this all before a single overseer emerged.

  “Pathetic haul,” Jake muttered, handing the cart over. The goggled cobbler ignored him, flaring the disgust Jake felt for these men and women who could shape and reshape mana. He did not understand how they could touch the moon rock and not want it for themselves. Could not respect them for it.

  ***

  Jake clutched the satchel to his chest all the way home. There he rummaged through his apartment, cramming food and clothing into the satchel with the arm. Twice he set the arm free and both times it slammed itself against his apartment’s south wall, confirming Jake’s suspicions. He had no doubt the arm had been crawling its way towards what remained of Dale. Renay ambushed him, just outside his door.

  She asked, “Where are you going?”

  Her eyes scanned him with a thoroughness a checkpoint guard might have appreciated.

  “Just out.” He tightened his hold on the satchel, grappling Dale to stillness. “What are you doing here?”

  “I had a friend, owed me a favor. Says Dale’s not working in hightown.”

  Jake kept his mouth shut.

  “I’m sitting around, waiting, and he’s not coming back, is he? My… friend says no low towner has been taken into hightown in months. Months, Jake.”

  “I’m really in a rush, Renay. Sorry.” Jake shouldered his way past her. This was not about her. He needed his robot back and screw Dale for damaging women the way he did anyways. The robot should have known better.

  She followed him through the crumbling remains of the dead suburbs, harassing him with questions but when he reached the boundary, a wall of barbed wire, man-sized coils running east-west, she stopped.

  “You can’t leave.”

  He glanced at her, crying now, barefoot and desperate, grieving over her not-a-man. She might be educated but she didn’t know anything and no matter how badly she looked like she needed a hug, no matter how badly he desired to give her one, he turned his back on her again.

  Recognizing an under-way, a shallow depression burrowed out beneath the fence, he bent, studying it. He had dug more than a few of these in his youth. This under-way had not been used in years and had partly refilled with settling soil. He scooped it wider.

  “Jake, please, tell me.” He pushed the satchel in front of him, through the under-way. “I’m not a stupid girl. I know Dale is in trouble.”

  He reached the other side, dusting himself off and setting the satchel about his shoulders again.

  “Please tell me where you are going!”

  “I’m going to find Dale.”

  ***

  He released the arm and it crawled through the undergrowth for several meters. Jake made note of the direction.

  “Where are you leading me?” he asked before dropping the arm back into the satchel. He was well away from both the city and the gravel highway, surrounded by thick woods.

  In the distance a creature howled and the hair on Jake’s arms rose. This was the seventh howl he had heard since entering the forest. He imagined an Unwanted screaming skyward and bidding farewell to the Cocoon as the moon faded with the lightening of the skies — another day arriving. Jake ran his palms over the stubble on his cheeks. There were real monsters out here; he was not safe without Dale.

  Even with Dale they had had too many almost fatal encounters with Unwanted. Only traders in large caravans ventured outside the cities. Jake should not have to be out here. Should not be rescuing his own servant.

  The path was rough and Jake rested often, but never long. By afternoon the Unwanted was shrieking louder than before. Jake was being stalked.

  He fe
lt the forest groan before he heard it and when he glanced over his shoulder he saw the tree tops rocking side to side.

  Jake ran. He was no stranger to being chased for he had evaded many a mid towner while clutching a stolen purse but. now he pushed his body to exhaustion, not certain if the pounding he heard was the beast’s hooves or his own heart.

  No dignity in this frantic flight. Jake remembered wearing his master’s robe, the tattoo fresh and tender as he stared at the mid towners assembled to pay homage to him. How proud he had been, standing above…

  A root caught Jake and he fell, hard.

  ***

  The suite was locked from the outside. A deception flipped sideways, catching Jake in his own trap. He pounded at the door to the hallway, cursing Dale.

  “Open it!” he screamed but heard no acknowledgment from his robot. Jake glanced at the plush bedroom behind him. The dead master was burning, his flesh licked by the funeral pyre Jake had lit.

  The smoke thickened, his eyes filled with tears, and Jake pressed his mouth against his inner arm, coughing and gagging. Where was Dale? Jake’s robot should have easily overwhelmed the dead master’s sputtering, ancient and worn out constructs. He squeezed his eyes shut, thought of Asma, the powerful master who had taken Jake under her wing, as well as into her bed. Mere hours earlier her long blond hair had drifted across his cheeks, buffeted by a violent wind as she pressed against him, her lips against his, ferocious kisses.

  They had planned this together. Working together, removing the weakest of the masters, taking their robots for their own. Building a powerbase against the others.

  Had both she and Dale failed? How else to explain the still locked door?

  “Not fair,” Jake muttered, opening his eyes, glancing wistfully at the window across the room from him, already blurred by the smoke. Even if he shattered it he’d never survive the fall to the street below.

  It was over.

  The door shook and he scrambled away as a great tear ripped down its center. A second kick and the door fell apart. Dale’s large hand reached in, plucked Jake from the room.

  ***

  Jake woke groggy and sore, wincing at the bright sunlight. He stared a long hard moment at his arms to convince himself they were not burning. Then he spun, certain the beast sat behind him, waiting for him to wake.

  Nothing.

  He rubbed his eyes with trembling hands. Jake had demanded revenge the night of his near death but Dale had refused that order and every other order Jake had hurled as Dale dragged him away from the Burning City. It was the night everything changed, Dale taking charge, Jake sliding into depression.

  All that he had worked for had been stolen from him and Dale threw it in his face, no longer his hunter, his weapon. Dale had been altered that night too. Jake might have pondered the implications there in the dirt, beast or no beast, but in the valley below was a starship.

  Or what remained of one.

  Its pieces were broken and scattered across the valley, what remained verdant and overgrown. Legends told of a war following the Cocoon’s appearance, but the longsleepers, the great starships that vaulted from one star system to another had all crashed centuries ago. Jake had never believed in them.

  Dale’s arm was missing…

  The grass on the slope before him too thick, the three-headed, red prairie flowers too tall — no trail. It did not matter. It was leading him towards the longsleeper. Jake’s eyes settled on a larger section of hull, the u-shaped ribs of the starship flipped over, buried into the earth. Several trees grew in tangled knots around it.

  “Dale!” His cry was readily answered.

  But not by Dale.

  Huff.

  The beast behind him was a ruddy blue with vast swatches of dull flesh and a single broken antler extending from a misshapen skull. It dragged itself on four muscular legs and glared at Jake through a puss filled eye. Then the Unwanted roared and flocks of pink and yellow birds fled from the trees.

  Jake ran down the hill, arms stretched wide to maintain his balance. He thought of the great herds of deer he and Dale had passed on their trek overland and realized what animal had been this beast’s mirror.

  He pulled his satchel over his head and dropped it, hoping the beast might pause to inspect it, might give Jake the time needed to reach the starship. His eyes scanned for an opening, a breach in the hull, finding several. Somebody had taken salvage, cutting sheets of metal from between the hull’s ribs.

  Reaching safety Jake turned himself sideways and slid through a breach. His shirt tore but he scrambled into the middle of a makeshift room with a dirt floor and a star-steel roof. The many missing wall segments allowed for more than enough light.

  The Unwanted hit the longsleeper and the dead ship shook, fragments falling from above. Jake covered his head with his arms as the beast tried again and again, but the breaches were too small for it to enter. With a snorting scream it thrust its antler through a rupture, sweeping it side to side, flaring blue sparks from the ship’s ribs, before withdrawing. Jake barely avoided being impaled.

  He had just recovered from that when Dale spoke.

  “Hello, Jake.”

  Startled, Jake flipped his head side to side. The voice came from above and he noticed a raised area where the ship had buckled, forming a small platform. The robot, his robot, glowed a soft blue, lighting the niche.

  Dale held his left arm in his right.

  “Thanks for returning it.”

  ***

  Dale scratched his bald head, black paint flakes falling off, exposing blue patches.

  “My Cocoon-sister was displeased with my entering her forest,” Dale explained, “so she took my arm. But as you can see, she was not satisfied with so meager a prize. I am sorry, Jake. I did try returning to you.”

  “You do not listen to me, do not obey, as you once did,” Jake said, still troubled by his memories of the night, the fire.

  Dale looked away. “Heard whispers of a fall… but my source was unreliable. I should have known better.”

  “With two robots I…”

  “No, you couldn’t. Look at my arm, Jake, it won’t attach.”

  “So?”

  “I have not served you well. You should have built yourself a better servant.”

  Jake stared. Normally Dale was more… arrogant. The robot before him seemed subdued, weak, fading… He blinked away tears. “You are dying?”

  Dale nodded. Jake thought of the years of toil, rushing out at every whisper of new fall, all so he might create new robots. He had worn Dale away.

  “And that is why you came out here? To find a replacement? Ruin and debris,” Jake muttered, running fingers through his hair and staring at his servant. “You have served me well. Too well.”

  “I have not served you in years.”

  “You have, since the day I breathed purpose into you, you…” His words trailed away as he thought back to the fire and everything after, especially Dale’s unusual independence.

  Dale stared back at him.

  “Another imprinted you,” Jake whispered, “That is why you made us flee? To avoid obeying your new master.”

  Dale nodded.

  “Who was he?” Jake asked, his hands now fists. The desire for revenge kindled again.

  “She. Mistress Asma took me.”

  Asma? Jake’s lover. She was their betrayer? Jake had heard rumors that robots might be stolen, but had never believed it possible. There weren’t even any proper children’s stories about it.

  “Why did you rescue me then? Why did you stay with me?” It was unthinkable that a robot would disobey commands, the way Dale had disobeyed Asma.

  “I don’t know.”

  “All the orders I gave, my rudeness. My… laziness…”

  “In truth, Jake, I prefer caring for a lazy, lost man than murdering for a tyrant.”

  Jake did not know what to say. Dale had taken care of him, a faithful servant, but in truth, no longer a servant. A friend? Sha
me rushed through Jake and they might have spoken more, might even have apologized, but a woman screamed.

  ***

  “She must have followed me!”

  Dale stood beside Jake, both peering through the breach. The Unwanted stood over Renay, pawing at the ground near where it had tossed her. She was not moving.

  The beast stared at them, a challenge.

  “What did you say to her?”

  Jake had never understood Dale’s reliance on women, dating them, deceiving them, ultimately hurting them when his nature was revealed. At times Jake had delighted in his servant’s play but now he wondered… had Dale clung to female companionship as a way to escape Jake?

  “Just told her I was leaving to find you.”

  Dale nodded sadly and then started to advance.

  “No,” Jake said, pushing his servant back and stepping past the safety of the longsleeper’s walls. He kept his eyes fixed on the beast.

  “Stay,” Jake ordered Dale, though he knew it was merely a request now. “I have a plan.”

  “I’m not sure if I should be relieved or terrified.”

  Jake didn’t respond to that as he approached Renay. His heart was thudding. After the Burning City he had traveled a determined path towards a second servant. Now that path ended in the most powerful robot he had ever seen.

  Dale had been taken; could Jake take this beast?

  He cleared his mind, returning to his memories of the morning he had created Dale. The beast walked warily towards him. Jake tried smiling and murmuring, holding his voice steady even when Renay pulled herself into a weary crouch.

  He could smell the stench of the Unwanted as it neared. It worked its mouth, chewing its own tongue as it appraised him. Years wasted. Power wasted. Jake had risen far beyond what a trash child dreamed.

  The beast lowered its head, snickered and hastened its approach. Jake balanced himself, stretched out his hand. If he touched it…

  Renay screamed. Dale had abandoned the safety of the longsleeper. The beast adjusted its orientation and Jake realized it intended to gallop past him, to strike Dale. He lunged, grabbing thick finger-clutches of mana flesh and clawing himself up the side of the beast. It snarled and spun in a tight circle as he wrapped his arms about its neck and tightened his hold.