The Broken God Machine

by Christopher Buecheler

  Pehr waited for the priest to make his signal, waited for the Lagos to finish their song, waited for his chance to enter the circle of bones.

  * * *

  The metal thing’s sensors had performed their duties for thousands of years, and might perhaps continue on with them for thousands more. It guarded the borders of its land as it always had, though in some distant past – before its subroutines had become corrupted and confused – its primary function had been greeting rather than defense. There was a time when the land whose entrance it protected had been a glowing beacon of hope and promise to those who came seeking entrance. Even in instances when the metal thing had been forced to turn such pilgrims away, it had done so with utmost courtesy. Very rarely had its lasers been required, and it had used them sparingly during the time when the place hidden away in the mountains above had still been whole and thriving.

  The metal thing knew nothing more of the Lagos than they knew of it. Not a thinking machine, it had rather been built with great cunning to give the impression of thought. The metal thing did not know that those who made it were long dead. It knew only that its job was to guard the pass.

  When Jace had stepped forward into the circle of bone, his presence had tripped the metal thing’s sensors and begun its greeting subroutine. The metal thing was equipped with a powerful processing unit capable of performing thousands of operations in parallel, and while the greeting was running, it had also begun analyzing the boy’s chemical makeup. It was able to do this at the genetic level even without obtaining a direct sample, and the analysis of the data it had collected fired off a long-unused routine so important that it suspended all other non-vital processes until it was complete. This sequence of code was capable of modifying the behavior of existing processes, or halting them, or firing new routines entirely.

  Triggered by the detection of certain DNA sequences in the boy’s body, the program had been added to the metal thing in secret by certain members of its design board. Here was a security protocol that couldn't be circumvented. It required no pass or code, no key, no voice recognition. It couldn't be faked or fooled.

  In the end, the metal thing determined that not enough of the DNA in this boy matched the patterns hard-coded as acceptable, and it had resumed running its other routines as normal. Unfortunately for Jace, a minor mathematical error made by a junior programmer millennia before was responsible for his death. An integer had been divided by zero somewhere between four and six thousand years earlier, and the resulting slow cascade of errors had eaten away at the metal thing’s functionality ever since.

  It was for this reason that even while one subroutine was causing the metal thing to apologize to Jace and invite him to obtain a visitor’s pass, a second subroutine was calling forth the lasers that would burn their way through him, and through several Lagos warriors standing in their path.

  The metal thing, which was not a thinking machine, could not see the dark humor in this combination of actions. It knew only that it had obeyed its directives as it now understood them. While a manual diagnostic check would have easily diagnosed and corrected this error, the metal thing hadn't been taken in for such maintenance in nearly ten thousand years. In all the time hence, the metal thing had merely been obeying orders, like any good machine. It operated without malice or judgment, without preference or prejudice, without concern or sympathy. It operated, in truth, without any sort of thought at all.

  Small consolation that would have been to Jace.

  * * *

  The Lagos finished their chant, and the priest indicated to Pehr that it was time to enter the circle. The air was thick with silent tension as the Lagos waited to see if he would comply. Pehr had no intention of being hurled bodily into the ring and so he stepped forward, heading for the line of death. The priest sneered at him as he passed, and for a moment Pehr came very close to grabbing the creature by its gigantic ears and dragging it with him into the circle, but he forced himself to stay calm. He wanted no interference with his plan.

  As soon as he crossed the line, Pehr broke into a sprint, angling straight for the metal thing. As he'd expected, it launched immediately into the same greeting that it had given each of the other prisoners before murdering them with the awful fire from its eyes. Pehr prayed to his Gods as he ran that they would grant him the same few seconds that they had granted Jace, and that he might reach the metal thing before it decided to kill him.

  The thing did pause, and Pehr actually roared in triumph as he ran. He would almost certainly reach it now, and there was no reason to stop, no reason to do anything more than plow into it, knock it down, and try to destroy those deadly eyes. There must be something on the ground near where it stood – a rock, a stick – something that could be used as a weapon against this thing that looked like a walking corpse and carried death inside of it.

  Pehr flew forward in great, leaping strides, trying to close the distance as quickly as possible. He was nearly there when the metal thing did something so unexpected that instead of tackling it he instead came skidding to a complete, confused halt.

  “DN- M-TCH C-NF-RM-D,” it shouted at him in his own language, or at least a broken and warbling version thereof. “PL--S- ST-T- Y--R N-M-.”

  Pehr found himself stammering for a moment before answering. “Pehr. Khada’Pehr, son of Khada’Pol.”

  “AL--S -NKN-WN. D- Y-- C-M- -N P--C-?”

  “Yes. Yes, I come in peace.”

  “D- Y-- W-SH T- -NT-R TH- C-TY?”

  “I don’t …” Pehr began, and stopped himself. He had no idea what a city was, but given the choice between entering one and returning to the Lagos, he knew which option he preferred. “Yes, I wish to enter.”

  “W-LC-M- T- H-V-NM-NT. W- TH-NK Y-- F-R C-M-NG. -NT-R -ND B- W-LL.”

  The metal thing bowed once, stepped back, leaned against the wall, and was silent.

  Pehr knew that the wise course of action was still to attack, knew that he should expect this to be some sort of trick, but there was a part of him that understood in some deep and instinctive way that the metal thing had no further interest in him. Much of what the metal thing had said was lost on him, even in his own language, so broken was the thing’s voice. The last four words, though – these had been nearly as clear as if spoken by a fellow hunter. Enter and be well, the thing had told him, and as unbelievable as it seemed to him, it was clear that the thing had meant it.

  There was a confused muttering coming from the horde behind him as the Lagos realized that whatever was going to happen had already happened. Pehr was standing there, alive and well and unsacrificed, and a savage thrill of victory ran through him. He wanted to turn and scream at the monsters, ask them what they thought of their god now, but a small part of him still feared turning his back on the guardian.

  He heard a single, loud snarl, and Pehr risked a quick glance over his shoulder. A warrior was shoving past the priest, striding past the line of death and into the ring of bone, intent either on dealing with Pehr himself, or perhaps simply proving that the human boy they had captured was not the only one who could subdue the metal thing. Pehr heard the metal thing before him screech back into life, reciting its familiar refrain. He looked back at it, saw that it was clearly focused on the approaching warrior, and decided that his best course of action was to get as far out of its way as possible. To this end, he stepped first to his right and then, with three quick strides, moved past the metal thing entirely.

  There was no pause in the speech for the Lagos warrior, and the creature realized its error midway into its charge. Skidding in the white, powdery dust that coated the ground, the Lagos tried desperately to turn and flee the circle. Escape proved impossible; the metal thing finished speaking and its eyes opened wide, the beams emerging from them and hitting the Lagos in the small of its back. The warrior was thrown to the ground, shrieking in agony and flailing wildly, not dead but mortally injured. The metal thing swiveled its head and again the fire lanced from its eyes, this time obl
iterating most of the Lagos warrior’s skull.

  Pehr had seen enough. There was no hope for him now in any direction save one, and so he turned to face it. The mountain pass beckoned to him like open arms, and as the first arrows from those warriors that had drawn their bows began to clatter off the rocks around him, Pehr made his decision and ran for the cleft in the rock. The metal thing ignored the arrows clattering to the ground around it. It had done its job, and Pehr knew it would wait there, unmoving, until the next time it was called upon, when some foolish or unlucky thing stumbled past the edge of its domain.

  Around the corner and out of danger from the arrows, Pehr stopped for a moment to catch his breath. He heard roars from behind him, and what he thought was an attempt by the priests to calm the group of Lagos and bring about some sort of order. He wondered if the creatures would simply charge the metal thing and try to overwhelm it by sheer numbers, and he hoped fervently that their obvious reverence for the thing would keep them from doing so.

  There was no sound of pursuit after several minutes, and Pehr could feel the tension draining from him. He took a few slow steps along the path and came almost immediately to an intersection. The left branch continued further upwards into the mountain. The other arced east and seemed to descend. Pehr hesitated for a moment, considering. The mountains would be cold, he reasoned, with little in the way of sustenance to be found among the rocks. He would rather descend into whatever valley might be at the end of this path. Hopefully he could find food there, and water, and some sort of shelter.

  Pehr made his choice, opting for the path on the right, and in doing so he failed to reach the ruins of humanity’s last great work, but instead set the workings of fate in motion and delivered himself into its hands.

  Chapter 12

  At the foot of the mountains there was a tight band of deciduous trees, dark but not foreboding, and it was within this small forest that grief overtook Pehr.

  He gave himself no time for it while making his way down from the mountains, intent on putting as much distance as possible between himself and the Lagos, the metal thing, and Jace’s body. When at last he staggered into this relative shelter, parched and hungry and exhausted, he realized that he could go no further that day. Pehr stood for a moment by a small stream, too tired yet even to drink, and at first his mind was clear of any thought. He closed his eyes and listened to the rush of the water moving by.

  Then came an unbidden image of Jace giving the hunter’s salute, and the grief swept over him without warning, dragging him to his knees, where he covered his face and wept for the first time that he could remember since Paul’s death two years earlier.

  He had failed Jace. He had failed Nani. He had failed himself. His cousin, his best friend of fourteen years, was dead. They would never hunt the red fish together again. They would never train for the Test, or talk about the village girls, or insult each other and laugh about it again. Somewhere up in the mountains above lay, in a dishonorable heap, the body of a boy who had been like a brother to him, a boy who Pehr hadn't been able to save. There would be no burning for Jace, no hunter’s pyre, no scattering of his ashes to the wind.

  Here Pehr knelt, on the side of the mountains his people had never seen, trapped by some ancient metal creature that threw fire from its eyes and spoke to him in his own language as if it knew him. He'd not only failed in his mission, but had left himself in a foreign land without knife or bow or club. His cousin was gone forever, and Pehr was alone.

  He did not beg the Gods for mercy or ask them why they had chosen him for this punishment, but he couldn't help weeping. He cried for his cousin who lay dead on the ground, and for the one who still lived and who had been right to kiss him goodbye. He wept for the loss of the things he'd known, the village he'd grown up in, the hunters of whom he'd lived in awe. He wept for himself, and the knowledge that he would most likely die in this alien place. This grove of trees was too small to support him indefinitely; he must move on or he would soon starve. Retreat was impossible, and so his only option was to plunge even further into the unknown.

  The crying didn’t last long; Pehr had never been much for tears even as a very young boy and he had no patience at all for them now. He swiped an arm roughly across his eyes and then stared at it for a moment, shocked by the clean tracks the tears had left in the dirt that covered him. The Lagos hadn't allowed them to bathe, and it’d been days since the last rain. Pehr was filthy, and for a time he debated washing in the stream, but when he tested it he found the water icy cold, coming as it must from the peaks of the mountains. In the end he decided only to clean his face, and to wait until he found warmer water to take more complete action.

  Pehr had neither the energy nor the tools to make a shelter, and anyway, it had grown too dark to see much of anything but what was immediately around him. The air was cool and dry, free of bugs, and he did not believe the dangers of the jungle would trouble him here. If the plains past the mountains held their own evils, he would have to risk it. He stripped a few nearby branches, threw them to the ground to use as bedding, and then collapsed upon them. Within minutes, blackness took him, and he slept undisturbed – even the inevitable nightmares, it seemed, were biding their time – for more than twelve hours.

  In the morning, he drank his fill from the cold stream and then forced himself to drink even more, almost to the point of making himself ill. He had no skins and no way of knowing how far it would be to the next source of water, and so he took in as much as he could. Also, the water filling his belly helped him forget that it had been hours since he'd last eaten.

  Finished drinking, he stood and observed his surroundings, taking his first good look at the land around him in full daylight. The mountains ran in a line that was nearly straight, north to south, though the southern progression bent slightly east as they stretched out into the distance. The path he had followed down from the cliffs continued on through this tiny forest, heading eastward. He debated whether to follow the path or stick close to the mountains. Eventually he decided on the path; it seemed as good a choice as any.

  Pehr made his way through the trees and came to the forest’s edge in only a few minutes. Before him stretched what seemed an endless vista of gentle, rolling plains, covered in waist-deep grasses and dotted occasionally with strange and scraggly-looking trees that squatted low to the ground. High in the air, birds of prey circled, hunting for movement in the grasses below.

  Pehr forced himself to keep moving. He was still hungry, still filthy, still without weapons or water skins, but the way of the hunter was to make a choice and follow it. The way of the hunter was to do, and Pehr intended to follow his training until it brought him either to salvation or to death.

  The path was petering out, becoming choked and overgrown with the tall grasses that now surrounded him, and soon it ended entirely. He stopped again for a moment, looking out at the vast and unending stretch of grassland before him. He bent and plucked a few strands of the grass, holding them between his fingers. Then he threw them high into the air and watched to see which way the wind took them. Northeast.

  Surrendering to the whims of fate, Pehr turned in that direction and began to walk.

  * * *

  It took four days to reach a state of utter desperation, and Pehr was in some way amused by the idea that it was not the Lagos that would kill him, not the beasts of the jungle or the murderous sea beyond the lagoon, but simple thirst. On what he had come to think of as his side of the mountains – the beach and plains of his home, the jungle of the Lagos – he would never have had to worry about water. The land was crisscrossed with streams and rivers, and to go two days without rain was a rare occasion indeed. Food would have been the only real concern, and it would be many more days, perhaps weeks, before that truly became a critical need.

  It hadn't rained on this side of the mountains since he'd arrived, and Pehr hadn't seen so much as a swampy patch of ground since he’d left the grove of trees. He was certain there must be
some kind of water supply in this land, because grasses like this couldn't thrive for long without it, but he was not in a position simply to wait and see if the rain might someday fall. Four days without anything more than the dew he could sometimes lick off the grasses in the early morning had dehydrated him rapidly. Pehr could feel that his last reserves were nearly depleted and knew he would soon run out of strength.

  Though he was in no immediate danger of starvation, being famished certainly didn’t make this experience any more enjoyable. He’d tried eating the grass on the first day, but it was bitter, and even the small amount that he'd consumed as a test had made him nauseated. The stunted trees had leaves that were sharp and hard and had proven no more edible than the grass. He’d managed to catch and eat a few grasshoppers, though the taste of raw insect didn’t thrill him, but this hadn’t even served to sate his hunger. All around him during the nights, he could hear the rustling of countless small creatures, but without bone or flaky stone from which to fashion a knife and no twine for snares, he had thus far had no success in hunting them.

  Thinking about this now, he gave a grunting, exasperated laugh and said, “Some hunter. Give me a spear and a boar, and I’ll feast for a month, but Gods forbid I manage to kill a mouse when I need it most.”

  It didn’t matter; he would walk until he fell. He knew that if he turned now and tried to make his way back to the grove of trees, he would die before he reached it. He could only continue onward and hope to stumble upon a source of water before his legs would no longer carry him.

  They gave out for the first time eight hours later, and Pehr found himself on one knee, arms stretched out before him. He watched as a grasshopper the size of his index finger crawled along his arm and then leapt, buzzing into the air to find itself a better perch. His mouth felt full of kampri fur, and his skin burned even though the air was cool.