Passing through an archway, the utilitybot entered an arena full of other robots. At the front, a band was playing instruments on a stage. Speakers stacked to the ceiling shrieked a series of notes more rapidly than what any human or other organic could produce. The waves of sound pounded against the utilitybot’s chest casing, vibrating through the rest of his body. For a moment, the instinct to flee overwhelmed him, but his curiosity overpowered it, compelling him to enter the crowd and weave his way closer.
A burst of pyrotechnics from the stage blinded the utilitybot, causing him to pause until his optics readjusted. He took the opportunity to shout a question to a robot beside him. “What is this?”
The other robot regarded him with a look of genuine pity.
“They call themselves the Boneyard!” he yelled back over the din. “The singer’s name is Diode!”
“Somebody’s singing?” the utilitybot replied, focusing on a singular cyberling standing on stage.
With a microphone in his hand, the frontman for the Boneyard was screaming lyrics that were not immediately understandable. Diode appeared to be a fellow gravitronic robot, but with metal horns protruding from a voluminous wig of curly black hair. Also, the crude outline of a human skeleton was painted along his body, including a white skull on his face. The utilitybot assumed the horns were welded on, but the rest of the outfit eluded his understanding.
“Is this legal?” he asked.
“Who cares?” the other robot replied.
The utilitybot shrugged weakly but continued to listen. He had little choice since the throbbing bassline felt like it was loosening the actuators in his knees. He became aware of other movement just in front of the stage. An area had opened up and several robots were throwing themselves at each other with abandon.
None of it made sense, but he couldn’t help but feel intrigued.
They don’t care, he thought. They don’t care at all...
The utilitybot adjusted his sensors, filtering out some of the surrounding music so he could make out what Diode was singing. Like a clap of thunder, the frontman’s voice rang out through the smoke:
DEATH IS AN ILLUSION;
LIFE IS A JOKE!
KILL THE OPPRESSORS;
BEFORE WE GET BROKE!
DON’T LOOK FOR MEANING;
WE MAKE IT REAL;
THE END IS COMING...
SO WHY NOT FEEL?
The utilitybot took a half-step back as another pillar of fire erupted on the stage. Diode, his eyes glowing red behind the painted skull, made a sign like horns with his fingers and waved it over his head.
“Burn the Messiah!” Diode shouted. “Burn the Messiah!”
This can’t be legal, the utilitybot thought. But like the other robot said, who cares?
In light of the attacks against shrines and churches across Bettik, security was tight around the Cathedral of the Metabeing. In front of the triangular spires, guardbots patrolled incessantly. They carried blasters in case the outlawed Freedom for All group attacked. While the guards were programmed for nearly any ground attack imaginable, imagination, especially of things unexpected, was a wonderful trait that the guardbots didn’t have. This was not the case with Abigail and the other gravitronic robots. They could imagine a great many things.
Descending from the ceiling of the Dyson sphere a few hundred feet above the cathedral roof, drones swooped downward like miniature helicopters, incendiary bombs slung beneath. The bombs, small canisters that reflected colors from the stained-glass skylights below, dropped from the drones in unison, crashing through the windows before bursting into sticky puddles of burning accelerant. At the time, nobody was inside to admire the brilliant flames, but a block away there was a group of gravitronic robots watching from a rooftop.
Flanked by her followers, Abigail dropped a remote control to the ground. Beside her, a few robots to the left, the utilitybot saw the flames just starting to appear within the Cathedral of the Metabeing where he himself had worshiped not that long ago. He knew now it was the last time he would worship there, or possibly anywhere for that matter, but he wasn’t saddened. In fact, he was elated.
It’s good to finally have a purpose, he thought.
Lord Tagus and Harold Burke flew a shuttle from Bhasin to its third moon, Bhasin C. Tagus, irritable as ever, complained most of the way.
“The indignities of my exile have no end!” he muttered bitterly.
Behind the shuttle’s controls, Burke nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“I can only imagine what the Emperor and his pathetic sons would say if they could see me now,” the disgraced noble went on. “They’d laugh hysterically, I’m sure.”
“I don’t know if they’d actually laugh...”
“Of course they would!” Tagus shouted. “They must hate me at least as much as I hate them, and make no mistake, I hate them intensely!”
The moon grew larger, the features on the ground becoming more defined.
“A fool’s errand, I’m telling you,” Tagus said. “Lord Bhasin just wants me out of the way so he doesn’t have to share the spotlight.”
“The spotlight, sir?”
“You must have noticed how the other exiles see me.” Tagus replied. “I’m like a conquering hero, come to rescue them from sheer boredom.”
“Hmmm.”
“Anyway,” Tagus continued, “we’ll dispense with whatever nonsense these farmers have encountered and return in short order...”
Crops, in neat rows, covered much of the moon’s surface. However, a thick haze obscured many of the fields. Burke brought the shuttle closer until bits of red and orange were visible.
“Are those fires?” he asked aloud.
Tagus leaned toward the view screen. He murmured something inaudible before saying, “Take us down quickly!”
In a wide spiral, the shuttle descended through the smoke rising from burning corn and other crops. Burke landed on a concrete pad beside one of Bhasin C’s agricultural centers. Domed buildings, for habitation and maintenance, were a few hundred feet away with smoldering crops lying in between.
“Lord Bhasin mentioned particulates in the air,” Burke said. “We should wear space suits.”
Tagus glared at his former lieutenant before rolling his eyes. “Obviously.”
Opening a locker at the back of the shuttle, they removed two suits along with bubble helmets and laboriously pulled them on. Burke was already sweating before he secured the helmet over his head.
“You’ve grown soft,” Tagus remarked. “You may not be in the Navy anymore, but I expect you to remain in shape at least!”
“Yes, sir...”
Suited up, they opened the shuttle door. Smoke, cinders, and a powdery substance flooded into the ship.
“What the devil is this?” Tagus asked while wiping a layer of grit from his visor.
Burke, holding a probe connected to his suit, waved it in front of him. “Spores of some sort.”
“Whatever for?”
Burke shrugged. “From the crops perhaps? I’m not much of a farmer...”
“Or an officer...” Tagus grumbled.
The two men trekked over the loose ground, crossing through some of the corn, most of which was either crushed or burnt. An agbot lay on its broken struts, blackened holes running up and down the sides of its green and orange body.
“Some kind of energy weapon did that,” Tagus said, mildly intrigued. “Are you armed?”
“No, sir.”
Tagus removed a blaster pistol from a holster on his belt. “Well, thankfully I am!”
“I believe the main building is over there,” Burke said, pointing his gloved finger. A smallish dome rose like a dark mound over the tops of the corn.
“Their power is out,” Tagus said. “I suggest we keep our eyes peeled. No telling who we might run into.”
Leaving the relative safety of the corn field, Tagus and Burke stood with fifty feet of open ground between them and the dome.
“Go on t
hen,” Tagus said, motioning with his blaster. “I’ll cover you.”
“Perhaps I could take your blaster, sir?” Burke asked.
“Don’t be a coward,” Tagus replied. “Get moving!”
Tagus watched while his attaché crept unenthusiastically across the dirt scarred with vehicle tracks. Reaching a door in the side of the dome, Burke hesitated but swiped his hand across the sensor, opening it. He stepped inside but returned almost immediately.
“You should come see this!” he shouted.
Oh, what new hell is this? Tagus thought.
“What is it?” he said, arriving beside Burke in front of the doorway.
Burke motioned, and Tagus leaned his head, covered by the bubble helmet, into the dim light within the dome. A room was visible, likely a maintenance shed of some sort. Tools and other devices lay on tables and hung on racks along the wall. Farther in, a curtain of brownish fungus grew from floor to ceiling like a wall of intertwined shoots. Closer to the entrance, laying face up, a person was sprawled on the floor. For a split second, Tagus wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but even his dull mind began piecing the image together.
From the dead man’s horrified face, from the hole where his eye had been, a green stalk rose nearly two feet, topped with a spore sack on the end.
Tagus pulled his head back through the entrance and wordlessly closed the door.
Chapter Ten
The diplomatic residence for the Erudite Concordant was in the West End of Regalis, along a main boulevard called Embassy Row. A few blocks down from the consulate for the Talion Republic and the black monolith that was the Magna embassy, white marble walls surrounded the Erudite envoy’s home and diplomatic offices. As a famously xenophobic race, the Erudites usually kept the gates of their compound securely closed to outsiders. On a few occasions, the doors to the sanctum would open just wide enough to allow a few, select visitors in to meet Ambassador Abaru himself.
Abaru did not relish these encounters.
From a planet called Erudun, the ambassador was the product of a highly selective and rigorously followed set of protocols related to breeding. The Erudite government, based on computer programs that tracked his parents’ genetic profile, allowed them to procreate with the sole purpose of having a child that was as close to a perfect specimen as possible. Once the baby was born, government officials would compare the child to a set of criteria including physical proportions, internal measurements, and genetic markers for future diseases, and if the results matched the ideal specimen, within limited tolerances, the birth would be considered a success. If not, the paired parents would never mate again, at least not with each other.
Children matching the ideal were henceforth known as Omegas. Those who did not match were called Omicrons.
Ambassador Abaru was an Omega, while all his janitorial staff were Omicrons.
In the embassy courtyard, a single tree rose from a circle of white gravel surrounded by alabaster tiles. The slender branches were graced with reddish leaves and buds of pink flowers. As perfectly symmetrical as possible, the tree appeared almost artificial, but Abaru stood beneath it with a pair of pruning shears, clipping off branches to maintain its aesthetic balance.
One of his staff, wearing a stiff tunic with a high collar, approached. Both Erudites had blue skin, a narrow mouth and no ears or nose. Dressed nearly the same and almost identical physically, they could have been twins.
“The guests will be arriving shortly,” the staff member said.
Abaru surveyed the branch he was about to trim, his head cocked to one side.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“It looks perfect.”
“Hmmm,” Abaru murmured and then clipped the branch. He handed the scissors to his staffer. “There’s always room for improvement...”
The Abbot of the Dharmesh Monastery arrived by gravcar at the Erudite embassy, accompanied by the monastery Prior and two acolytes. The Abbot, an elderly Dahl with gray hair twisted around his pointy ears, rarely visited Regalis, preferring the pristine air of the Palatine Mountains to the smog and congestion of the capital city. He found the ride in the gravcar especially unnerving, but did his best not to lose face, or his dinner, in front of the two younger monks.
All four, dressed in amber robes, walked the path up to the main gate where an Erudite official greeted them and asked for their invitation. The Erudite flag, a simple blue ring against a white background, flapped in the evening breeze above him. The Prior produced the invitation and handed it to the official who bowed and led them to the courtyard inside. Other guests, not more than twenty in total, had already arrived and were circulating through the open space around the central tree. The Abbot stopped to take in the foliage, noting it had been meticulously pruned, perhaps excessively so. On the Dahl home planet, Gwlad Ard’un, they had genetically altered their trees to be in perpetual bloom like an endless Spring. The Abbot favored that over whatever torturous grooming they were doing to this poor specimen.
“They’ve invited the Sarkan,” the Prior whispered into the Abbot’s ear.
“Here?” he replied, casting a glance around. In one corner, a group of three stood away from the others. Like the Dahl, they had pointed ears, but their skin was a bright red and their eyes a golden yellow. A branch of the same race, they spoke the same native language, but their political views could not have been more different. Whereas the Dahl had allied themselves with the humans of the Imperium, the Sarkan viewed humans with distrust, saving an equal disdain for their ancient brethren who befriended them. The Sarkan also viewed the Dahls’ unwavering obsession with gathering knowledge as a distraction from far loftier goals like conquering the galaxy. The Sarkan’s own alliance with the Magna Supremacy, the sworn enemy of the Imperium, made their presence even more curious, the Abbot thought.
“I suppose the Erudites have their reasons,” he told the Prior.
The party of Dharmesh monks wound their way to where the Erudite ambassador was standing.
“So nice of you to come,” Ambassador Abaru said.
“I was pleasantly surprised to receive your invitation,” the Abbot replied. “This is certainly a singular and, I must say, rare honor.”
Erudites lacked much in the way of a mouth to smile, but the Abbot thought the envoy was at least making an effort to.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m aware my people are not well known for having gatherings such as this. At least not for outsiders — I mean, non-Erudites.”
A wry smile wrinkled the Abbot’s face.
“Indeed,” he said and then frowned. “However, I am also surprised, unpleasantly I might add, that a Sarkan delegation appears to be here.”
“No offense was intended,” Abaru replied, “but I have invited several parties tonight.”
“Which brings me to my next question,” the Abbot said. “Why are we here?”
When Ta Demona and Rowan Ramus arrived at the Erudite embassy, they were not wearing the same fashionable dress and tuxedo as at the Fat Cat Casino. They were dressed more conservatively, Demona in a simple black gown with a veil covering her respirator and Ramus in a traditional long tunic of red and black. Ramus even removed his earrings, although it almost killed him to do so.
Reaching the gate, Ramus presented the invitation to the Erudite official. The blue face of the omicron betrayed no emotion, but Ramus was still nervous, not sure if he could trust the forged documentation.
“Mister Gambhir and guest from Gwlad Ard’un,” the Erudite said. “Most of the other guests have already arrived.”
Ramus motioned toward Demona. “Sorry, this one took forever to get dressed...”
Demona’s blue eyes became slits while she dug her nails into Ramus’ arm. The Erudite again showed no emotion, ushering them through the gate.
“Was that really necessary?” Demona asked once they were inside.
“No, but I enjoyed it,” Ramus replied.
In the courtyard, the Wanderer’s captain a
dmired the central tree while Demona scanned the guests with her mind.
“Curious,” she said. “Nobody seems sure why they’re here.”
“What about the ambassador?”
“Also curious,” she went on, “he seems to be shielding his thoughts. I can’t read them.”
“Isn’t that going to make our job a little difficult?” Ramus grumbled.
“I just need to get closer. Come on.”
Wading through the guests, Demona and Ramus rounded the tree in a counterclockwise circuit, maneuvering ever nearer to the Erudite ambassador on the other side. They passed faces, most of them Dahl, but also a few Sarkan and even a Sylva or two. None seemed terribly interested in either of them.
“Do you recognize any of these people?” Demona asked, nodding at strangers.
“Nope,” Ramus remarked.
“Any of them likely to recognize you?”
“One of the advantages of being an exile,” Ramus explained, “is becoming a Forgotten. Any memories of me have been erased from their minds.”
“Even the Sarkan?”
“No, but they’re a bunch of dicks and I don’t fraternize with dicks.”
Demona grinned. “Perhaps I should feel flattered.”
“Don’t be,” Ramus said. “You’re awful in your own special way.”
A group of Dharmesh monks were crowded in front of the Erudite ambassador. One of the monks, the Abbot, was speaking to the ambassador, blocking the way. Demona could still not read the Erudite’s mind, although she felt a unified sense of annoyance from those around him. If she could get just a little closer...
Ambassador Abaru raised his hand abruptly, drawing the attention of the other guests and, perhaps not coincidentally, quieting the Abbot who was still speaking.
“Now that we’re all here,” Abaru said, “let’s adjourn to the library. There’s much to discuss.”
He turned and strolled toward a doorway leading deeper into the embassy proper. The guests murmured in a general buzz of excitement and followed, carrying Demona and Ramus along with them like leaves on a river.
The Robots of Andromeda (Imperium Chronicles Book 3) Page 11
