by Toby Frost
The Ringleader spun around. ‘Never threaten a child, Ram. Or Rom. You know why? Because children are our future. Especially when the first bunch of slaves dies of old age. Come on.’
The Rankorian Naked Mole Rat was being fed, and a small crowd had gathered to watch chunks of meat being hurled into the pit. The three robots ambled over to the bear enclosure.
‘You,’ a voice hissed from below. ‘Hwup! Dirty offworlder!’
The Ringleader glanced down. A bear sat at the edge of the enclosure, almost directly below him.
‘Yes?’
‘Progress update, robot! Do you think I wear this stupid disguise for fun?’
‘That’s a disguise?’
‘Shup! I want to know –’
‘People are coming. Wait a moment.’ Two young men strolled past, engrossed in conversation. One broke out laughing; they did not slow down. A family approached, the parents dragged on by their children. The Ringleader raised a hand.
‘Folks, I’m sorry. The bears aren’t feeling well today. Best move on.’
A voice behind him said, ‘I am very poorly! Nothing to see here!’
One of the children leaned over the edge. ‘The bear can talk!’
Rom and Ram lumbered over, and the family hurried away.
‘Progress update, stupid offworlder,’ the bear snapped.
‘Stupid? I’m not the one who tells people that he’s a normal bear.’
‘That is enough!’ The bear reached up and tugged at its scalp. Fur slid away: part of the snout fell off like a mask. The face that looked up at the Ringleader was not that of his usual contact. The jowls sagged; the muzzle was striped with old scars. One of the eyes was blind and white.
In the shadows, lenses watched them.
‘I know you,’ the Ringleader said. ‘Aren’t you... Wikwot? The General?’
‘The very same,’ the lemming man growled.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Taking command,’ Wikwot said. ‘I dug my way out of prison. I crawled for two hundred yards through a stinking tunnel. I came up in the panda enclosure. It was most unpleasant. One day – only one day in each year, the panda is in rut. That one day was yesterday. But I have lemming spirit!’ Wikwot licked his chops. ‘You want this city, robot?’
The Ringleader nodded.
‘Once we took a fine city,’ Wikwot said. ‘Humans called it Newstadt. They say that the night it joined the Greater Galactic Happiness and Friendship Collective of the Yull, we burned it to the ground. Lies, of course. The noble Yull are innocent of all crimes. But when the British Space Empire falls, there will be plunder for us all. All you have to give me is passage.’
‘Passage?’
‘Passage from Ravnavar, back to Andor. Back to my army. Build me a rocket.’
The Ringleader stretched. ‘For the city? Gladly. But, ah, won’t your people be a little disappointed when they discover that you were taken alive?’
Wikwot smiled. ‘People who disagree with me tend to die.’
The Ringleader laughed. ‘Well, there’s a doctrine I can get behind.’
‘Good. The sooner this city burns, the better. And get on with it. That panda is winking at me again.’
Quietly, young Charlie crept away on half a dozen metal legs.
* * *
Night fell on the zoo. Animals from a dozen planets slithered, loped and scrambled back to their beds. The Tawny Kangarams settled back on their tails. The Metamorph stopped pretending to be a zookeeper who had been accidentally shut in a cage and turned back into a tentacled blob.
The bears, however, were not sleeping so well.
‘This has got to be a trap,’ Polly Carveth said, as Smith tied the end of the rope to the railing. ‘We’re climbing into a pit full of bears because a robot who we nicked for pickpocketing us says that another robot was talking to one of the bears. Has anyone considered how crazy this is, even by our usual standards?’ She looked over her shoulder. ‘Loads of people talk to things and it doesn’t prove anything. Suruk talks to his skull collection.’
‘I do not talk to my skulls. I laugh when I polish them. It is entirely different.’
Smith tested the rope. The night air was cool around him. ‘I think the point was that the bear talked back. And keep your voice down. Now, Rhianna, this is really important. Rhianna?’
‘Huh? Oh, hi.’
‘Right. You have to distract the bears while Suruk and I climb down. Use your psychic powers. Carveth, you can stay up here until we get back.’
The android took a deep breath. ‘No. I’m coming with you.’
‘Really?’
She nodded. Her face was set. In the moonlight, her skin was like candlewax. ‘By my counting, Gerald’s got six hours of water left. Let’s go.’
‘Good stuff,’ Smith replied. ‘I’ll go first. Rhianna, can you calm the bears, please?’
She gripped the rail with both hands: her mass of wild hair made her look like a passenger in a storm at sea. ‘Blessed be, Isambard,’ she said, and she made a curious noise in her throat, like an instrument tuning up.
Smith climbed over the railing and took the rope in his hands.
At the edge of the pit, he suddenly realised that he had no idea how to climb down a rope. He had a vague childhood memory of trying: a small boy in big shorts, leaping up to grab the rope in both hands before grimacing and falling off again, having gained nothing except sore palms. Somehow, you were supposed to grip the thing between your legs, presumably without being neutered by friction burns. He had a worrying image of landing heavily in front of a drowsy bear, rolling around and clutching his smouldering groin. Not a good death.
Well, a good captain always led the way. He grabbed the rope, locking it between his legs, and let go of the side. Then he discovered that he wasn’t moving at all. He seemed to have lassoed himself.
Below, something large made a loud huffing noise, which he hoped indicated that it was settling down for the night. Very carefully, Smith opened his hands.
He fell. Smith plummeted head-first, the ground suddenly looking very detailed and very hard. The rope snagged his ankle, jerked him to a halt, and suddenly he was dangling four feet off the ground, looking into the puzzled and malodorous face of a brown bear.
‘Hello,’ he said.
The bear gave him a withering look, snorted and lumbered away. Smith’s foot slid out of his boot, and he hit the ground. A moment later, his boot hit him.
‘Easy,’ he said, checking his head for fractures.
The rope creaked as Carveth started her descent. Smith pulled on his boot and looked around. He had not realised how large the bear enclosure was. It was, simply, a chunk of forest. At least that meant that the bears would not be unhappy in captivity. On the other hand, it meant that there might be quite a lot of them.
Carveth landed lightly beside him. ‘What now, Boss?’
‘We look for clues.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Got any better ideas?’
She shrugged. ‘Not climbing into a bear pit, to start with.’
‘Think of Gerald, Carveth,’ Smith replied. He looked up at the railing. ‘Rhianna? How’s distracting the bears going?’
Rhianna started as if waking up. She leaned over the railing. ‘Oh, fine, so long as I don’t break focus. Hey, look, an airship –’
Something growled.
‘Never mind,’ Rhianna said.
Suruk slipped out of the darkness behind them. ‘Are we fighting bears yet, Mazuran?’
‘Follow me,’ Smith replied, and set off towards the middle of the enclosure. Carveth looked over her shoulder, sighed, and followed.
Suruk moved easily in the dark. Even without his spear, he looked formidable. He really was a master hunter, Smith thought.
Suruk glanced at Carveth. ‘Piglet, you should cover your hair.’
‘Why? Do bears eat hair?’
‘No, they will think you have come to steal their porridge.’
Well, Smith reflected, almost a master hunter.
Suruk held up a hand. Smith froze: Carveth walked into the back of him, swore, and stopped. Quietly, the M’Lak lowered himself into a crouch. When he stood up, he held something limp and furred up to the moonlight.
‘The bears have shed their skin,’ he said.
‘And evolved zips,’ Carveth said. ‘That’s not skin.’
Smith took it from Suruk. He held the thing to the light and tried to gauge its shape. It wasn’t a suit, as such, but a kit that would cover the arms and neck of its wearer. From the smell of the thing, it had been put to some fairly regular use.
Why would anyone want half a bear suit? he wondered. Even in the moonlight, it was obvious that the costume was missing most of its fur. It would be useless – unless its wearer already had the rest of the fur.
‘Lemming men,’ he said. ‘There are lemming men here.’
Suruk drew two knives in a soft hiss of metal. Smith took out his Civiliser and drew back the hammer. ‘Careful.’
‘Where are we going?’ Carveth whispered.
‘To the centre of all this,’ he replied, and he took a step forward and disappeared.
* * *
Smith hit the ground, fell forward and felt soil under his hands. He stood up quickly, jabbing his gun into the dark around him. Nothing.
He took out his lighter and flicked the wheel. He stood in a tunnel, roughly-hewn but big enough for him to stand upright, the walls made of packed earth. ‘Suruk?’ Smith called softly. ‘I think you’d better come down here.’
Suruk dropped neatly beside him, and together they helped Carveth down.
‘It looks like the lemmings have been digging a warren,’ Smith said. ‘I’ll wager they’ve been doing some filthy business down here.’
‘You can say that again.’ Carveth put a hand over her mouth. ‘It smells like the bottom of Gerald’s cage.’
Smith led the way: Carveth stayed close, her face so pale and worried that it almost glowed white. Suruk was a quiet presence at Smith’s side, just out of view. Lurking.
A stripe of light came from the left. Smith raised a finger to his lips. Bent low, he crept forward. The light spilled from under a closed door. A low thrumming noise came from behind it. Smith crouched down. Very carefully, he leaned forward and looked through the keyhole.
A machine rumbled and shook in the centre of the room beyond. Belts whirred; a bar swung back and forth and, with each swing, a fresh sheet of paper slipped out of the machine onto a neat, thick pile.
Two lemming men stood inside. They wore green visors; the larger of the two was smoking a cigarette. The smaller lemming held up a poster for his colleague to inspect. The poster showed a M’Lak warrior raising a knife, the features stylised as if in a woodcut. The slogan read: The Rising Has Started! Kill The Oppressors! We Shall Make Ravnavar BURN!
The smaller lemming man said something. The words were lost in the rattle of the printing press, but his companion laughed. The bigger lemming man lumbered forward, chuckling dirtily, and Smith glimpsed an ugly, brutal face: saggy around the chops, the snout broken in some fight years ago, the eyes ringed with shadow. The right eye was as white and blind as a cueball.
I know you, Smith thought. I’ve seen you before. He looked away, struggling to remember. This called for cunning and subterfuge. He put his eye back to the keyhole, and as he did, the door opened into his face.
The doorknob hit Smith just above the eye and he fell onto his backside. ‘Hwot?’ a voice snarled, and a furred shape barged into the passage. ‘Offworlder!’ it cried, and as Smith pulled his gun the lemming man slid a knife from the sash on its waist.
The air flickered. The Yull stumbled, a stiletto quivering in his throat. Suruk chuckled.
A gun boomed behind them. ‘Hands up! Now turn around, nice and slow.’
Smith lowered his Civiliser and looked around.
The Ringleader’s chimney-hat scraped the tunnel roof. He carried a brass-plated automatic in one hand and the other groped the air for dramatic emphasis, as if waiting for a hawk to land on it.
‘My sincerest apologies, General,’ the robot said, ‘but I believe I have located some interlopers.’
A second lemming stepped into the corridor. It was the one Smith had glimpsed through the keyhole, the big one with the single eye. ‘General,’ he said. ‘I know you.’
‘Is that so?’ The general’s chops stirred into a smile. He spoke good English, and his intonation was free of the revving, growling quality common to the Yull. ‘Three offworlders, lost in the zoo.’ He looked at Suruk. ‘You are in the wrong place, frog-thing. You ought to be in the reptile house, along with the other green slime. And as for you two... humans. I could chew you and store you in my pouches, like so many seeds.’
‘Careful, Wikwot,’ the Ringleader said. ‘I’ve a mind to test my aim on these three.’
The general shrugged. ‘Not yet. First, they talk. You! The officer. Tell me, what do you think we do down here?’
Smith looked from Ringleader to Wikwot. ‘Given that you’re a tin soldier and you’re a giant mouse, I’d say that you dance The Nutcracker.’
‘Nutcracker?’ Wikwot said. He flexed his massive hands. ‘Yes... that is a good idea. Seize him!’
The Ringleader stepped forward. Smith had a sudden sense of the sheer strength of the robot, his relentlessness. The clock-face of his head, with its absurd moustache, was something terrible.
‘I will annihilate you and your excrementious comrades,’ the robot said. ‘I will...’ he fumbled in the air, ‘scatter your lights to the four winds. I will eradicate –’
Suruk sidestepped and smashed his elbow into the robot’s face.
Steam blasted out of the Ringleader’s hat. He staggered back, all spindly legs and dandified fabric, his moustache flapping. He righted himself in a whirl of limbs.
Carveth threw herself down. Wikwot leaped at Smith. Smith whirled and fired. Wikwot stumbled, clutching his shoulder. Smith twisted and shot the Ringleader in the chest.
The bullet simply glanced off. ‘That’s a scratch,’ the Ringleader said, and as he raised his automatic, a massive shape bounded into the corridor behind him. It rose up as the robot took aim, and for a moment Smith thought it was another lemming man.
‘Bears!’ Carveth shouted, ‘Run!’
For half a second the Ringleader stood against a backdrop of enraged fur, and then the bear threw its weight on him. The robot crashed to the ground. His pistol fell beside him, and Carveth scurried in and snatched it up.
Turning, Smith shouted ‘The game’s up, Wikwot!’ But there was nobody in the corridor. Wikwot had fled.
He looked back at the Ringleader, and the sight that greeted him was like something from a cheese-dream: her hair wild, her blue skirt muddy, Rhianna stood in the middle of the tunnel, flanked by bears.
The Ringleader scrambled upright. He was dented and gouged, his paintwork a grid of claw marks. His painted eye had been almost entirely scratched away. Had he been a man, he would have been long dead.
‘You!’ he snarled, holding his brass moustache on with one hand. The other hand jabbed a battered finger towards Smith. ‘The arm that strikes me shall be cut off – the marks you see upon me now, I will soon carve into you!’
He turned and ran. Smith raised the Civiliser, took aim and fired. Sparks burst from the Ringleader’s back. ‘This is my best coat, too!’ he yelled, and in a rush of thin limbs he made his exit.
Suruk retrieved his knife. Carveth leaned against the wall and gave a long, shivering sigh.
‘Hey guys,’ Rhianna said. ‘Check out my bears.’
Smith walked over to the door. Behind it, the printing press still thumped and rumbled. He walked in, the smell of ink around him, and pulled one of the sheets from the pile. ‘Look.’
The poster showed a ruined building like the shell of a bombed cathedral, over which a huge, troll-like creature was glowering. In the foreground, a wee
ping woman carried away a baby, while a broad-shouldered man looked back in fury. THEY TOOK OUR HALL, said the slogan – NOW LET’S TAKE BACK OUR CITY!
‘So this is their plan,’ Suruk said, pointing to the troll. ‘They mean to loose a gigantic baboon upon the city! Could we end up fighting that? Because it would have a very impressive skull.’
Smith looked at Rhianna. She frowned. ‘Er, Suruk, this is kind of awkward… but I think it’s supposed to be you.’
‘I?’ The M’Lak peered at the picture. ‘No, that is some sort of mindless monster, hell-bent on carnage. Although, from a certain angle… But why would I want that tiny building? Is it a beehive?’
‘It’s a caricature, old chap,’ Smith replied, ‘and not a flattering one. That’s supposed to represent the M’Lak, I’m guessing.’
‘It’s meant to turn mankind against your people,’ Rhianna said. ‘Being an oppressed minority, the M’Lak are vulnerable to this sort of slander.’
Carveth snorted. ‘Him? Oppressed minority? There’s twice as many of Suruk’s lot in this city than us. And seriously, can you imagine trying to oppress six million Suruks? They’re like sharks that have learned how to open doors. No offence, Suruk.’
‘None taken,’ the alien replied. ‘Although these days we prefer the term “piranha”.’
Smith glimpsed different colours on a pile of paper behind the printer. He lifted off a sheet: it depicted a M’Lak warrior, drawn in far more favourable terms than before, shaking hands with an unusually sane-looking Yullian officer. They were both laughing, as if one had just cracked a joke. The slogan was in M’Lak characters.
‘The Yull shall return the relics of Grimdall to Ravnavar,’ Suruk said.
‘Hang on a moment, Boss.’
Smith looked round: Carveth was leafing through the posters. ‘That building in the first picture, the one with the roof pulled off. I recognise it.’
‘Really?’ Smith looked back at the picture. It did seem vaguely familiar: he had a feeling that it was one of the landmarks of the city. ‘They took our hall,’ he said. ‘It looks like the big guildhall in the north, but that’s still standing.’
‘For now it is,’ Carveth replied.
Slowly, Smith turned to her. ‘What did you say?’
