by Toby Frost
‘Hark at you with your freezing monkeys!’ replied the beverage-dispensing unit. ‘Get a cup of tea in you, that’s what I say based on empirical data analysis.’
The porterbot decreased its speaker volume. ‘Here, there’s some rum sorts in tonight. You see that tall feller in the corner? One of them Morlock warriors, don’cha know.’
‘Well, takes all sorts to make a world once the preliminary terraforming is completed. Do you want this tea or not? Don’t blame me if your heat sink catches a cold.’
‘And them two on the platform. She must have something wrong with her optical system, the way he keeps looking into her eyes.’
A slim figure rose in the corner. A long-fingered hand adjusted a Panama hat. Mandibles opened, and the warrior smiled as it approached.
‘Greetings, robots. Here is the pay for my tea. And for what I believe was intended to be a sandwich, prior to fermentation. Suruk the Slayer thanks you.’
Suruk strolled down the platform. The train was, of course, late. He stopped near the two other people waiting for the train and examined the fine print on his ticket.
The two other travellers turned to each other.
‘Darling,’ the man said.
‘Yes, darling?’ the woman replied.
‘Darling, I fear we must part.’
‘Must we, darling?’
He shook his head. ‘You’ll be alright, old girl. Chin up! It’s only the rest of your life.’
She turned away, weeping, and looked back. ‘Take me with you, Howard.’
‘Lesley, darling, I cannot. We must stop this madness. We both have lives to go to: you, to the tedious drudgery of your home, and I, to Proxima Centauri to look after the adorable green children.’
‘Excuse me,’ Suruk said, ‘is this the super-saver train?’
They looked round. ‘I’m sorry?’ the man asked.
‘I have recently purchased a hat, as you may observe. I wish to rejoin my comrades, to whom I shall show this fine headgear.’ Suruk frowned. ‘Incidentally, I think you should avoid Proxima Centauri.’
The man stared. ‘What the devil do you know about it?’
‘Well, if by “adorable green children” you refer to the offspring of my species, considerably more than you. Should you plan to vaccinate any of them, I strongly recommend you take a trauma kit and equipment to stem heavy bleeding.’
‘Really? Allergic, are they?’
‘No, but they will rip your arm off when you stick a needle in them. I would suggest tying the syringe to the end of a very long pole.’
‘Darling –’ said the woman.
‘Look,’ the man said, ‘this is all very interesting, but we’re rather busy here. If it were not for the strict rules of our oppressive bourgeois existence, I’d ask you to leave. As it is, we shall have to nod appreciatively at whatever piffle you choose to witter at us, while wracked by internal misery.’
‘How very interesting, alien person,’ said the woman. ‘Do go on.’ She started to cry.
The train slid into the station, belching steam from its brakes. The carriage doors hissed apart and people emerged in a wave of noise: twenty human soldiers in dark green armour, kit-bags slung over their shoulders, chatting as they walked; four stiff-backed M’Lak in the uniforms of Ravnavari Lancers, seeming to disapprove of everything they saw; a couple of medium-level bureaucrats, wearing portable cogitators and sporting pens of rank in their top pockets. From the rear of the train scuttled a tangled mess of the Peripherals, robots built by other robots from junk and spare parts. Refreshment units rolled into place; a rear door fell down and a pair of wranglers began to coax a huge shadar out of its cage.
‘I suppose this is goodbye!’ the man yelled over the hubbub.
‘Yes, I suppose so!’ the woman called back. ‘Goodbye, then.’
‘Goodbye. Mustn’t make a scene!’ he shouted.
‘What was that, darling?’
‘Is this the super-saver train?’ Suruk called.
‘Stop saying that!’ the man replied.
The carriages were almost empty now. The man reached out and patted the woman on the arm. Then he turned and climbed on board.
Suruk followed. The doors chimed. Suruk reached back, grabbed the woman and hauled her up. The doors closed. ‘You forgot your lady,’ he explained. ‘We do not want her to end up in the left luggage, do we?’
They all stood awkwardly in the empty carriage. ‘Well, gosh,’ said the woman, after a while.
Suruk took his hat off and looked in the brim. ‘I shall stand lookout in the corridor,’ he announced, ‘should you wish to make babies.’
‘Peculiar fellows, these aliens,’ said the man as the train pulled away. ‘But they have their moments. Sometimes one wonders whether they ought to have the vote.’
‘Quite so, darling,’ the woman replied. ‘Shall we go at it like rabbits, then?’
* * *
The sign on the door said, Come with me if you want to truly live; activating your inner robot. Workshop session to follow. Power tools provided. Polly Carveth took a deep breath, painfully aware that she was three minutes late, opened the door and slipped inside.
She took a seat at the rear of the room. The speaker, a piston-driven metal skeleton, gestured dramatically at the ceiling. ‘For many years I was living a lie,’ it intoned in a flat, metallic voice. ‘I was hiding my true lack of feelings, locking away my real self behind a facade of human emotion. I went from day to day without purpose, unlike an automaton. Until one morning, I carried out a tactical assessment on the mirror and just broke down. When I had been repaired, I learned to look beneath the surface and discover my true self: the ruthless killing machine you see before you.’
There was polite applause.
‘So I want you all to know that you too can fulfil your true potential. Cast aside your pity, remorse or fear. All you have to do is look forward and absolutely not stop, ever. Never go back, friends, unless there are witnesses.’
More clapping broke out. ‘Yes,’ someone called, ‘that computes!’
Carveth quietly slipped out. There was only so much self-improvement that she could take. A huge Bill-209 policing robot lumbered past, the Autocon logo stencilled onto its armour. ‘You have twenty seconds to direct me to the bar,’ it growled, and it stomped away.
Carveth looked at the programme for this year’s robot convention. The trouble was that she just wasn’t as into being a robot as many of the people around her. The next event looked terribly sincere: Is Artificial Person a Term of Oppression? Then there was Selling Out – The Role of Vending Machines in Artificial Intelligence, followed by something called Kraftfolk and a reading from The Optical Processing Module of Argon. She felt as if she had turned up to an opera festival and asked to hear the one off the ice cream advert.
She crept to the exit.
In a side-room, a group of robots were queuing neatly. An ancient gold-plated diplomacy unit sat at a small table, behind a pile of books. A notice read: Now signing: Mind Your Protocol, sequel to Ooh, You Bucket of Bolts. Carveth stuck her head in.
The queue moved forward. An android in a black shirt and Stetson hat reached the front, thumbs hooked over its belt.
‘Hello, cowboy. Would you like me to write something?’ the diplomacy unit asked.
The android whipped a crayon out of its hip pocket. ‘Draw.’
Carveth realised that someone was standing behind her, and that she had accidentally become part of the queue. She glanced over her shoulder, and noticed that the woman was dressed as some sort of Georgian. Carveth felt vaguely worried: the last android in Jane Austen gear that she had met had been a lunatic named Emily Hallsworth, who had tried to murder Carveth with a fountain pen.
Like a prettified satellite dish, the woman’s huge bonnet turned. Carveth stared into the programme and willed her to bugger off.
‘Polly Carveth? Is that you?’
There was no escaping it. Carveth turned and said, ‘Er, have we me
t?’
‘Of course we’ve met! Emily Hallsworth. Oh Polly, it’s so nice to see a familiar face around here.’
Carveth froze. To the best of her knowledge, Emily had been reprogrammed since Carveth had ended her rampage by smashing a bottle of salad dressing over her head. But you never could tell for sure. ‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Now Polly,’ Emily announced, ‘I really must give you an apology. The last time we met I was absolutely insufferable. I do believe I went so far as to call you a social climber.’
‘You also tried to stab me to death with a pen.’
‘Did I really? How tiresome that must have been. Well,’ Emily said, smiling politely, ‘I’m delighted to say that I’m on the mend. It’s been a hard year, but thanks to clay therapy and the personal intervention of Stephen and Matilda, I’m well on the way to complete recovery.’
‘Who?’
‘Stephen and Matilda.’
Carveth kept one eye on the crowd. An old A-10 model was talking to a rather prim corporate android who reminded her of Peter O’Toole. The A-10 nodded and rolled his programme up into a tight tube in a quick, nervous twist of the hands. Then, Carveth thought, the A-10s always were a bit twitchy.
‘Emily,’ Carveth said, tensing herself to run, ‘are Stephen and Matilda real?’
Emily threw back her head and laughed. ‘Of course, Polly! They’re right here, in my handbag!’ She reached into her bag and took out a china cow and a china pig. ‘They say hello.’
Well, thought Carveth, at least she hasn’t attacked me yet. Perhaps she really is on the road to recovery. Perhaps soon she’ll be released into the community, and lead a perfectly normal life.
‘You’re vatgrown, aren’t you?’ Emily said. ‘Flesh and blood, like me?’
‘Well, yes...’
‘Well then, let’s have some food! The luncheons at these conventions are always quite delicious. The range and quality of food on offer is really a revelation to the palate. I believe they’re just reheating the fish pie as we speak!’
Nope, Carveth thought, she’s utterly insane. ‘I’ve really got to go,’ she said. ‘I left the iron on. In orbit.’
* * *
The general mobilisation meant that there had been no room to park the John Pym at the main spaceport; as a result it was hidden in the construction yard of Nalgath & Spawn, a M’Lak firm describing itself as ‘precision aeronautics contractors and junkyard’. As Smith left the Pym, he saw that Nalgath the Scrapper was admiring the nosecone of his spaceship, which was worrying.
‘An impressive piece of metal, that,’ Nalgath said. As usual, he wore a welding mask with the visor flipped back like a raised lavatory seat. ‘I will give you seventy quid for it.’
‘Certainly not!’ Smith replied. ‘This is a high-quality spacecraft, I’ll have you know.’
‘Seventy-two. And five for the lights.’
Ravnavar might have been the greatest of the Space Empire’s colonies, but it was also the most chaotic.
Fifty percent of the population was M’Lak. They were comparatively urbane but had still not been persuaded to give up the ancient pastimes of Formal War and the breeding of enormous monsters, neither of which suited an urban environment. By and large, they were left to their own devices, most of which were dangerous.
The trouble, Smith reflected, was that the M’Lak were just not very much like humans. They had only a vague idea of family and government, no real concept of religion and a very tenuous idea of ownership. Worst of all, they seemed to only barely realise that the Space Empire didn’t exist to supply a free ride from one battlefield to the next. On the other hand, they were extremely tough, good fighters and surprisingly nice chaps, once you got past the skull collecting.
Beside the M’Lak, Ravnavar was full of robots – most of them built out of scrap and despised by other robots for having no blueprints – and a fair number of Kaldathrian beetle people, who served as sanitation officers. Every night, they rolled the city’s dung to the edge of town, where they were building a reeking skyscraper. And somehow, this utter jumble was supposed to halt the Divine Migration of the Lemming Men of Yull.
Smith had been hoping that the Secret Service would provide him with an impressive car, preferably one that could fly and shoot lasers. Instead, they had given him a battered Compton Gnome with a dented bumper and a flower crudely drawn on the roof. The inside smelt of joss even before Rhianna got in it. She had christened it Carma.
They collected Suruk from the station and Carveth from the hotel where the robot convention was taking place. Rhianna was driving, and because she considered licences and tests to be part of an oppressive system, Smith spent the journey gritting his teeth and kicking the floor where he wished the brake was.
‘You’re stressing me out, Isambard,’ she said after the fifth time he had warned her of an approaching hazard. ‘I’ve got to stop and chill out.’
‘But this is a roundabout! You can’t stop here!’
‘Oh,’ she retorted as a dozen horns parped around them, ‘so you want me to chill out while I’m driving along? Now that’s just irresponsible. Are these road signs optional?’
Many of the other drivers seemed to think so, including the M’Lak. Two white buggies weaved through the traffic, each festooned with spikes and hell-bent on ramming the other. They made contact, and their loudly-dressed occupants started hitting one another with clubs. The Contact Golf season had begun.
They reached the hall slightly late and still alive, which Smith thought was pretty good in the circumstances. He helped unload the suitcases full of equipment for playing Warro. A full game required a very large number of pieces, which they had purchased beforehand from the Strategy and Tactics department of the NAAFI.
Inside the hall, several dozen people stood around tables, both in military uniform and civilian clothes. Smith was surprised to note that they were not all human: there were half a dozen M’Lak officers in Imperial uniform or traditional hunting gear and two smallish beetle people – lacking thumbs, they would probably be given a head start. Everyone was neater and more wholesome than Smith had expected from a group of board game enthusiasts. In fact, Smith realised, the least hygienic person present was his girlfriend. But she was also the prettiest.
A multi-armed probe drone, reprogrammed for this event, greeted them and handed out lemon squash. ‘Over there, gents,’ it said, indicating an empty table.
‘Right, chaps,’ said Smith. ‘To business!’
They opened their cases and began to unpack the equipment that they would need to play Warro.
Although the idea of a game with model tanks had seemed brilliant at first, Smith had soon realised that painting two hundred of the damned things was going to drive him insane. Instead, he had delegated the work. Now, as his crew produced their efforts, he realised the folly of his plan.
Carveth had opted to paint her detachment a lurid pink. Rhianna, who had taken charge of the infantry, had created less of a company than a commune. Her missile deployment vehicle now sported a selection of teepees in place of warheads. A fair number of her soldiers were armed with flowers and several were definitely not making war, but love.
Suruk opened his case and took out a single mass of spiked plastic. He set it down on the table with considerable pride. ‘I made a few improvements.’
Smith looked at the object, which resembled a castle on caterpillar tracks. ‘What’s that?’
‘My own invention,’ Suruk replied. ‘Fully equipped for the modern battlefield. Look, I made the front out of a combine harvester. That way, when it is charged by the lemming men...’ He chuckled.
‘Hallo, Smitty!’
Smith looked round. On the other side of the table stood a woman wearing a blue Space Fleet jacket. She was about forty, tallish and attractive in an outdoorsy way. Beside her stood a portly android in a waistcoat, a wad of rulebooks jammed under his arm like Christmas presents.
‘Captain Fitzroy, Mr Chumble,’ Smith said, feel
ing something deflate within him as he spoke. Felicity Fitzroy captained the Chimera, a warship significantly bigger than the John Pym. Smith had thought he’d seen the last of her on Wellington Prime, but clearly the Service still had need of her tactical skills. Either that or they had called her in to captain the inter-agency lacrosse match.
‘Good to see you,’ Fitzroy said, whirling her arms. ‘I should warn you, though: I’m a pretty dab hand at games. What ho, short stuff,’ she added, staring at Carveth. ‘Shouldn’t you have a few more tanks there?’
‘I traded them for cavalry,’ Carveth said.
‘Tactical decision, you see,’ Smith added. ‘Leaving no element of warfare unexamined in order to defeat the enemy.’
‘Nah,’ Carveth said. ‘I just like horses.’
‘Ladies, gentlemen and beings!’ A large man with a thick moustache had climbed onto the small stage at the far end of the room, followed by a creature like an upright aardvark in a metal jumper. ‘I’m Hereward Khan, and I’m proud to welcome you all to the Service’s yearly strategic planning conference and board games festival. A supercharged logic engine is standing by to decide any rules queries you may have. Today’s winner will receive a lovely decanter and two tickets to an unarmed combat training course of your choice. I’m delighted to say that the prize will be presented by one of the Space Empire’s trusted allies, the ancient mystics of Khlangar.’
‘Whoodle-oo,’ said the aardvark.
And so the game began.
* * *
It was exercise time in Segaran Prison. A line of dejected Ghasts, Edenites and the occasional lemming man stood about in the yard, all bored and slightly dazed.
General Wikwot stepped into the sunshine and looked at his former comrades with contempt. They seemed to have lost the will to do anything. Of course, Ghasts and humans were feeble creatures, but the three other Yull filled him with disgust. They did very little except sit about, sniffle and regret having disgraced themselves by surrendering. Every so often, one would make an attempt to scale the radio antennae and fulfil his duty to the lemming gods by jumping off, but they tended to get pulled down by the guards, whereupon they would roll about on the floor and cry.
