Wise advice.
“Clean the field,” orders the leader. “Leave the dead behind.”
Moving quickly, a dirty-faced dragoon dismounts and loots the corpses of his two fallen comrades. Cursing, he tugs at the blood-stained saddle trapped under the disemboweled horse. He slips in the mud and falls, staining his outer jacket.
“Leave it,” orders the commander. His eyes are dark and scared over a thick black moustache. His breath is visible in the moist air.
With a last wary look in my direction, the three surviving riders lead their dead comrade’s horse away and gallop for the horizon. I wait until the vibrations fade before I blink. Wait until the sight of them has receded into tiny specks before I dare to stir.
I am alone in the grass with silent corpses. The sun has finished easing itself over the flat horizon. The great blue orb of the moon has appeared, jovial, its pale light sending my shadow reaching out across the plains. In the sudden chill, I can feel that I am badly broken.
Elena may still be alive. I must protect her.
The blow to my back has disabled my left arm, but I still have the right. I take a handful of grass with my thumb and two remaining fingers. With a violent yank, I drag myself an arm length forward. Part of my hip and my right leg stay in the grass behind me. My left leg is still attached but useless. I pull again, leaving a slug’s trail of broken machinery glinting darkly under moonlight.
But the grass is plentiful and my grip strong.
Stars fade into view as I leave the wreck of my body behind, one arm length at a time. Hidden among the shadowed grass, I am a crooked head and part of a torso cloaked in black wool, slithering forward by virtue of one good arm. Without pause or thought, I creep onward—pushing over the footsteps of three riders who know nothing of the horror they’ve left for dead.
ST. PETERSBURG, 1725
My world ends in the predawn light of January 28, 1725. In one moment, the great bellows of Peter’s lungs push the last breath past his lips. His massive head tilts and falls to the pillow, a relieved expression on his face for the first time I can remember.
He hid the illness. Peter hid the illness until it was too late.
Elena and I did not arrive in time. The Empress was already there. Watching her rise from Peter’s bedside, I sense that she has already maneuvered into position. Outside the bedroom window, I hear the hoarse shouts of the Guards regiments echoing against the cobblestone courtyard. They have already been summoned to the capital and massed near the palace.
I put a hand protectively over Elena’s shoulder. Together, we served the great man for twenty years. We fought through plague-infested cities during the war with Sweden, forged new weapons for the Guards regiments, and even served as spies in the Western countries.
Yet we never served this woman.
Catherine looks up from the corpse. She has one palm over Peter’s still chest, leaning over him. Her hair is wet with tears, hanging limply over the corpse’s face. Under sharp black eyebrows, her face buckles with anguish and anger.
“You . . . abominations,” she says. “Did you know when he was sick? Did you say nothing?”
“No, Empress,” I say, my deep voice thrumming from the black cavern of my chest. “I am the Word.”
“Pravda? You are not pravda, you poor thing. You are a blasphemy. Peter was deceived into calling you an eternal Tsar. Tricked by that deformed mechanician.”
I tap Elena on the shoulder and she understands immediately. Find Favo. The girl turns and scurries toward the door.
“Stop her!” shouts Catherine, gesturing emphatically, climbing directly over Peter’s body. “Don’t let either of them leave.”
At the door, one of the Guard snatches Elena by the hair. Her wig comes off, and she struggles as he grabs hold of her with both hands. I cannot act outside my honor, and the Guard serve royal blood. So, I watch as the man gathers the small machine up into a bear hug and pins her thrashing against his armored chestplate.
The shouts of the Guard are growing louder outside.
“Do you hear that?” asks Catherine. She is smiling at me, her small canines flashing. “My Guards have rallied to me. Peter wished for me to become the next Tsar. His wife. Not you. Not a broken version of himself.”
I hear a straining crack as something snaps inside Elena. Now, she is not struggling as hard. Her cloak is pulled up around her face and her thin brass legs are swinging, kicking uselessly, wooden heels scraping against the floor. I feel a twinge of anger and sadness inside my chest.
My daughter.
But there is nothing I can do until it is within pravda. For I am the Word.
“Our father is dead,” shout the Guard who are mobbed outside, faint voices booming from the palace walls. “But our mother lives.”
Elena’s whalebone ribs are snapping. Gears inside are grinding against the intruding shards of bone and wood. She whimpers, and I know she may only have moments left before the damage is irreparable.
Pravda.
“How will you honor us?” I ask Catherine. “Will you obey Peter’s wishes?”
Catherine slips a strap of her falling nightgown back over her shoulder with one thumb, climbing off of her husband’s bed. She strides to me and stops only when her anger-pinched face is inches below mine. Wild dark hair stripes her forehead and her nostrils quiver with each breath.
“Honor you?” asks Catherine. “I cannot honor you. I am only sorry for you. You must be destroyed—”
A stated intention to break pravda is enough.
My right arm shoots out, and my gauntleted knuckles crunch into the face of the Guardsman who holds Elena. I feel the flimsy nose squash beneath my fist and the knock as his head impacts the wall. Elena lands scrambling on the ground as the man crumples, unconscious. I can already feel her tugging at my cloak.
“What!?” shouts Catherine. “What have you done?”
Our father is dead.
Catherine is too close to me. I could kill her with a swipe of my hand. And she knows this. The other Guardsmen watch us closely. I hear the slow grind of a blade leaving its sheath and I shake my head no. The sound stops.
But our mother still lives.
Catherine is the Tsarina. I will not harm her—cannot harm her—and yet to honor Peter . . . I must not allow my death or Elena’s.
I take a step back, my full seven-foot height perfectly fitting the enlarged doorway to Peter’s bedroom. In light mesh armor and kaftan, I look uncannily like the dead man lying across the room—as I was designed to.
“By Peter’s command, we must live, Empress,” I say. “We cannot accept death, but, please, for Peter’s honor . . . allow us to accept exile.”
GREAT EUROPEAN PLAIN, 1725
Grip the grass. Pull. Release. Reach again.
The gods who haunt the hidden angles of the constellations offer their assistance to me through clear patches of sky above. The bright eye of Mars watches as I am soaked in dew, and smiles to see the horse blood washing out of my cloak. Part of my face is caught on a serpentine root, and the leather of my cheek is torn, leaving an obscene hole in my visage.
And so it continues.
Under the gaze of a starry night, my body, made lighter by horrific damage, squirms its way over glittering waves of grass. The moon is fading on a pink horizon when I finally see the silhouettes of four horses tied to a scrubby tree.
The Guardsmen are sleeping. My Elena is a dark pile of robes next to a smoldering camp fire. Her hands and feet are tied. I slither closer through dirt, my one good arm out, head cocked to the side and my black eyes open wide to the predawn light. My broken torso drags entrails of metal, leather, and wax.
A shape stirs. I pause, arm outstretched.
Someone tosses a reindeer hide to the side. A guardsman stands, head turning warily, still clumsy with sleep. The man steps closer to where I am hidden, my body splayed out and deformed. He stops, tugs at his trousers and sprays an arc of steaming piss.
I watc
h him turn back and stumble toward his sleeping hides, but then he notices Elena. Quietly, he squats next to her and whispers something, even as I continue to drag myself forward. My dirt-stained armor crunches over stalks of grass as I push through the periphery of the camp. The rider is not listening for danger. He is pushing Elena silently onto her back, one hand cupped over her mouth. Untying her ankles, he roughly spreads her legs.
The man is grinning, teeth glinting red in the dawn.
I find the helmet as I pass his hide. One urgent, broken lurch at a time, I plant the metal bowl of it into the dirt and drag myself forward. The armored hat is made of steel, fur-lined underneath and peaked in the middle.
“What?” he hisses at Elena, recoiling on his knees as he finds nothing but cold metal beneath her cloak. “What are you?”
His curly black hair is rusty in the dawn light as he turns and sees me—eyes widening at the sight of my ruin, cheeks twitching in fright. I am already rearing back on the remains of my left biceps, helmet lifted high in my good hand. The dragoon is choking on a shout as I bring the helmet down.
The metal bowl glances over the bridge of his nose. His jaw snaps shut and he falls, horror and blood mingling on his face. Elena kicks with both legs, sending the rider flailing onto his back with a grunt, the air knocked from his lungs.
I bring the helmet down again.
This time it lands with a wet crunch in the middle of the rider’s face. Again. A half dozen more times until I feel the skull crack and the ground is littered with teeth and blood and saliva.
I hear a gurgling scream from across the camp and see that Elena is on her feet. She has tugged a blade from the fallen rider’s belt and has slit the throats of the other two riders. In moments, there are no men living.
The smoldering fire now warms only metal, wood, and leather.
“Oh Peter,” says Elena. “Oh my poor Peter.”
I feel Elena’s arms encircle my head, cradling me on her lap. With her other hand she is patting down my body, feeling for the extent of the damage. Somewhere, a bird sings to the dawn. Faintly, I hear the trickle of blood flowing into the grass and the whinny of a nervous horse.
“You are very damaged,” Elena says.
“As long as my relic is intact,” I respond. “I can be repaired.”
“The Empress will hunt us.”
“She will,” I say to Elena, my eternal daughter. “But we are not running blindly. We leave now in search of something special.”
“What do we seek, Peter?”
I lock my eyes on the curve of her porcelain cheek. Elena was once a mindless doll, but now we are more than things . . . we are avtomat.
“We will find our own kind, Elena . . . even if it takes a thousand years.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel H. Wilson is a New York Times bestselling author. He earned a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he also received master’s degrees in robotics and in machine learning. He has published over a dozen scientific papers, holds four patents, and has written eight books. Wilson has written for Popular Science, Wired, and Discover, as well as online venues such as MSNBC.com, Gizmodo, Lightspeed, and Tor.com. In 2008, Wilson hosted The Works, a television series on The History Channel that uncovered the science behind everyday stuff. His books include How to Survive a Robot Uprising, A Boy and His Bot, Amped, Robopocalypse (the film adaptation of which is slated to be directed by Steven Spielberg), and Robogenesis. He is also co-editor, with John Joseph Adams, of the anthologies Robot Uprisings and Press Start to Play (forthcoming). He lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. Find him on Twitter @danielwilsonPDX and at danielhwilson.com.
DANCING WITH BATGIRL IN THE LAND OF NOD
Will McIntosh
Words were coming out of Eileen’s mouth, but they didn’t make sense. The voice in Ray’s head, the one screaming that they had to fill the bathtub, had to stockpile more food, was making it impossible for him to understand.
He grasped Eileen’s shoulders. “I don’t think grocery stores are safe. Too much risk of exposure. What if I—”
“Did you hear what I just said?” Eileen asked.
She’d always reminded Ray of a cartoon ladybug, and now more than ever, with her eyes big and round, her face framed by red curls. Ray realized it was an odd thought, given the situation.
“Not really, no,” he answered. “I think I may be in shock.” The walls looked strange, like they were advancing and receding, advancing and receding. The virus was in Los Angeles. It was spreading like mad. They should have prepared better.
“I said I’m having an affair with Justin.”
“What, what—” Ray stuttered, utterly lost. Maybe Eileen was in shock as well. “You’re not making sense.” He turned toward the bathroom. “We have to fill the bathtubs.”
“No, Ray, listen to me.” She grasped his shoulder, turned him around. “I’m having an affair with Justin.”
“An affair?” They didn’t have affairs. They weren’t the sort of people who had affairs. They were the good guys, the couple other couples wished they could be.
Only, Eileen was having an affair. She’d just said so.
Ray thought he was going to vomit. “You’re telling me this now?”
Eileen looked at her feet. “I want to face what’s coming with a clear conscience. I don’t want this lie between us.”
It was hard for Ray to breathe, like there was something pressing on his chest.
Her eyes welled with tears. “I’m sorry.”
Ray swallowed, trying to flatten the lump in his throat. He wasn’t going to cry. He wanted to cry, but he wasn’t going to. He also wanted to find Justin Schneider and smash his teeth in, but he wasn’t going to do that, either.
“Do you love him?”
“With everything that’s happening, I honestly don’t know what I feel.” Eileen looked up at Ray, blinking rapidly. “If you want me to leave right now, I’ll understand.”
“That would make things easier for you, wouldn’t it?” said Ray. “If I kick you out, you can go to Justin with a clear conscience.”
Ray had a flash of her in Justin’s arms, kissing him. Ten minutes earlier that image would have struck him as absurd. Billions of people were dead, or lying paralyzed, waiting to die, and Eileen had chosen this moment to clear her conscience.
“I’ll tell you what: I’ll make it even easier. I’ll leave.” Ray spread his arms wide. “It’s your house, after all. Your parents paid for most of it.”
Eileen stiffened. Ray thought he saw something cross her face—hope, relief that she was fighting to mask. Suddenly he couldn’t stand the sight of her. “Just go away so I can pack in peace.”
She reached out. “Ray, I’m—”
He pulled away. “Just go.”
There was nowhere for her to go. The virus could be anywhere. It lived on surfaces for days; one cough from someone who was infected and you were dead.
Red-eyed, Eileen looked around, and finally headed into the garage.
He had to do something to blunt the pain rising in him. There was too much of it, heaped on top of the terror. Ray staggered to the kitchen cabinet over the refrigerator—which served as their liquor cabinet—and pulled down a bottle of vodka. For the first time in his life he drank straight from the bottle.
It helped a little. Just a little.
Trying to think about nothing, Ray went upstairs. The walls in the stairway were covered with eight-by-ten photos of him and Eileen. He watched his feet, not wanting to see them.
After packing clothes and toiletries he went to the basement and brought up a brown backpack filled with survival gear they’d bought at Target two months ago, back when the possibility the nodding virus would reach Los Angeles had seemed so remote.
He had no idea where to go. Walter would take him in, but Walter and Lauren didn’t need Ray sitting in their living room while they dealt with this.
When everything was packed and in the car
, he couldn’t bring himself to get in and drive away. Not yet, at least.
He went back inside. In the living room, newscasters updated the situation in breathless tones just shy of panic. It was in all the major U.S. cities now. It was everywhere; there were paralyzed people in a billion houses, in a million hospitals. Any minute, Ray could join them. He wouldn’t know he had it until the nodding began, and by then it would be too late. It was already too late, if he had it. But they’d stayed indoors, hadn’t left the house in three days. Surely he was clean.
Somewhere outside, a siren wailed.
He went to his collection room to calm himself. Being surrounded by his Batgirl memorabilia comforted him. He’d owned some of the pieces in the collection—the lunchbox, the action figure—since he was nineteen. They reminded him that he’d had a life before Eileen, and could have one after.
If he didn’t catch the nodding virus.
If he did, he would sit frozen until he died of dehydration. The thought set his pounding heart racing.
He looked at his wall of autographed photos from the old Batgirl TV show, trying to dampen the fear threatening to swallow him, but this time they provided no solace. They were nothing but glossy paper marked with black ink.
The frame closest to the edge of the wall held nothing but a manila envelope. He’d kept it because Helen Anderson had personally written her return address in the top left corner before returning one of the photos he’d mailed to her to be autographed. The postmark was 1998; nearly twenty years ago.
Ray took the framed envelope down, studied the return address, neatly written in Anderson’s beautiful, looping cursive. She was divorced, estranged from her only child. She could be alone right now, just like Ray. Her house was a thirty minute drive, in the direction of the bay, opposite the refugees fleeing the city, passing the virus between them.
Ray imagined Helen Anderson opening her door.
I’m your biggest fan, he’d say to her. Is there anything I can do to help you?
The End Is Now Page 29
