I cleared my throat and gave Dad a hard look. “You were saying something about checking tanks?”
“Yeah. The short description is we take sand and turn it into tempered dome glass. There are three layers of it: safety, lens and solar. The storms tore through all three quickly. The window of opportunity to maintain containment shrunk pretty fast. When the bots refused to do the repairs, I joined a team of volunteers to go up on the inside of my dome to spray another layer.”
“What was wrong with your spray tanks?” Dad asked.
“Sludge. The glass reserves are supposed to be constantly heated and turned so the gel is ready to go in case of emergency.”
“The storm kill the heater?” I asked.
“The bots did that. Only one tank still had hot gel but the hoses were cut outside the dome. The other tanks were solid as granite.”
My father sighed. “Knew it. Damn bots.”
“Then I wish you’d been there to warn us since you’re so smart.”
Dad looked up and gave an apologetic smile. “Sorry, ma’am. I meant no disrespect. You’ve been dragged through a knothole, I know. You are one brave farmer.”
“I’m an engineer.”
“Sorry again, then. What do you figure went wrong with the mechs?”
“Mechs? You’re ex-military, aren’t you?”
“I reckon we’re all military now, Emma. It’s Us and Them again. Always was, a little, anyway. Our nature and theirs.”
“Non-organics have saved us countless times.” Defensiveness crawled into her tone and I thought for a second she might cry if her anger didn’t win out.
“You’re not wrong, Emma,” I said, “but I think they’re done with saving us now.”
My father cleared his throat. “It’s NI, isn’t it?” The way he asked, it wasn’t really a question. He stared at the floor.
Emma nodded. “Yeah, I guess the slaves woke up. The computer that runs the place upgraded itself to Next Intelligence somehow.”
“Bots have woken up before,” I said. “Next Intelligence doesn’t mean they all turn into killers instantly.”
“It wasn’t instantaneous, Dante,” my father said. “Somebody had to turn the alarms off on the heaters on those tanks. The NI had to order a bot to sneak outside and cut those hoses. It was a plan that went into effect when the shatter storm hit.” He looked up at Emma. “Am I right?”
“At first, the captain thought there could be some kind of bug in the drones’ self-preservation matrix. I was outside when the slaughter started. Funny, I thought I was going to die when I volunteered to go outside in the storm. Outside was safer.”
“How many Domers were up there?”
“Hundreds. Lots of kids, too. We had the healthiest, best fed kids around. There were babies, too. We had the best birth rate of any dome city in the southwest. I radioed the Command Center about the sabotage of the hoses but I guess the captain was dead by then. It’s a shame. She was a good woman.”
The rumble of a large engine outside interrupted us. We listened as it slowly passed by. With the screen across the front of the store, we couldn’t see what was out there but it sounded heavy and menacing.
“Could that be a tank, maybe?” Emma asked. “Isn’t there a base nearby?”
My father shook his head. “Used to be an airbase. It’s gone now. They all lit out for parts unknown over a year ago. Reinforcements needed for the Euro Union was the word. I figure they’re all burnt to a crisp now.”
I tilted my head and strained to listen. There was definitely the heavy clank of a tread, but the engine was high above us. “It’s too high up for a tank. That’s a construction bot.”
Emma couldn’t conceal her fear and disappointment. “How do you know?”
“I’m an engineer, too,” I said. “Solar fields and wind turbines. That and the town is all that’s left. Believe it or not, people used to come here to live for the art and the lights in the sky.”
Despite her fear, Emma was curious. That’s when I decided to drop my wariness of strangers, go all in and like her. Curious people who ask questions and listen closely to the answers are smarter than most anybody.
“Lights in the sky!” she said. “The Marfa lights are still a thing? I thought that was just drones from the airbase and bullshit to pull in UFO tourism in the old days.”
“The lights are still there,” Dad said. “Twenty or so nights a year. Still a mystery.”
The heavy tread of the bot moved closer and I held my breath. I wondered how long it would be before the drone started tearing off roofs to hunt humans in hiding. It paused as the big engine cycled and idled above us.
Emma whispered, “Where’s the basement?”
My father shook his head. “No basement.”
“We’re screwed,” she said.
“Probably,” Dad said, “but when you think about it a little too long, we’re all born that way.”
7
Something crashed across the street.
“What was that?” Emma asked.
I’d been scared before but I began to sweat even more and it wasn’t just the heat. The terror got to me. “I think that’s the hydrogen fill-up. Or the church.”
The lights on my father’s cy-suit lit up and he stood. “We’ve got to move.”
“Maybe the bots won’t come in here,” Emma said.
“We’re in a store. A bot doesn’t have to be that smart to know this is a high value target. Grab as much as you can of what’s left on the shelves. Not so much that it will slow you down.”
Emma moved to a candy display and began filling her pockets. I did the same with the fake beef jerky. Even as I was doing it, I wondered if I was filling my pockets with poison. Jerky made me thirsty. That’s probably why everyone else had left it alone.
“What makes you think we’ll survive more than a few steps out that door?” Emma asked.
My father moved to the back door and removed the metal bar that wedged it shut. He pulled the door open an inch and peered out. He looked back at us and whispered. “I know you’re tired but this is a war zone. If you aren’t a refugee exiting the area, you don’t survive.”
“I’ve already been running, Steve,” Emma said. “This is where I ended up.”
“That just means you aren’t done running and this isn’t the end. We stick together. We work together. We live.”
Another crash down the street got us moving faster. I had two cans of apple juice in my front pants pockets. They slowed me down too much. I fished the cans out and held one in each hand.
My father held up the metal bar and grinned. “If need be, I’ll draw them away. Dante, get to our house. I’ll meet you there.”
“Then what?”
“We stay alive until the train comes.”
“What if it doesn’t stop tomorrow night, Dad?”
“It will.”
“Why?”
“Because it has to. We’re going to need that ride out of here.”
“But — ”
He waved away my objections. “Enough talk. Details are for later. We have to keep moving now.”
“Wait!” Emma gripped my arm. “Draw me a map or something. If Dante and I get separated, I’ll need to be able to find your house.”
My father opened the back door wide and stepped through. “Follow Dante and you won’t need a map. Dante is your map and you have to keep him alive to survive.”
“Dad? I — ”
“Don’t say goodbye, son. This isn’t goodbye.”
He ran to the right and disappeared. We went left.
The streets of Marfa are wide and sun-bleached. We ran along the back of buildings hoping not to be spotted. I tried to lead the way but when Emma extended her exo-stilts, her long strides kept her ahead of me. She peered around corners and motioned for me to come forward. Sometimes she shook her head and we dashed another way.
The crashing down Washington street continued. We soon found out why. Dead Domers covered the str
eet but the carnage had just begun in Marfa.
A huge bot built for biodome construction towered above City Hall. The drone stood seven stories tall.
“Crane bot,” Emma told me.
The machine ripped through the roof as if it was made of paper.
My breath caught in my throat. I heard distant screams as the machine dug through the City Hall’s floors, collapsing the building with each savage movement of its four massive arms. As it activated all its thorium engines, it was loud, too.
We paused, watching in morbid fascination. I’d never seen a machine quite like it. The little crane drones that erected the solar and turbine fields were tall but they were delicate by comparison. The drones I’d worked with reminded me of pictures of blue herons. They were tall and strong, but each step was chosen carefully and placed delicately among the solar panels.
I couldn’t contain my amazement even as my stomach turned. “It has no wheels,” I told Emma. “How did it get here so fast?”
“Each arm has its own engine,” Emma said. “It can run over any terrain. It’s supposed to move among the domes, keeping up repairs and constructing new domes. At full speed in the desert, it looks like vids I’ve seen of mountain cats.”
“How big are the domes?”
“Big.”
More screams reached us. Apparently, many had sought shelter in Marfa’s City Hall. It had been an unlucky choice.
My pulse raced. I was too afraid to move. The street looked impossibly wide. How could we traverse it without being spotted?
The construction bot — I thought of it as a destruction bot by then — tossed a body over its shoulder. It was a woman, still alive and screaming even as she was picked up in pincers and thrown. The casual cruelty of the act was made worse as I watched the broken body fly through the air and hit the ground. Her high scream abruptly stopped with a sickening thud. The woman’s eyes seemed to look our way as she died. Maybe I imagined it. She was probably already dead but I thought I saw pleading in those eyes.
I forgot about the cans of apple juice in my hands until I dropped them in the dirt. I pressed my back against a wall and looked up at the dazzling sky. It seemed so incongruous that such terrible things could happen under cloudless azure. Marfa was drenched in sunlight. Soon it would be saturated with blood in equal measure. I couldn’t catch my breath.
Emma shrank the legs of her stilts until we were almost face to face. She embraced me. “Dante. You are hyperventilating. Slow your breath. Here….” She adjusted her height again and my face was buried in her shoulder. “Rebreathing your carbon dioxide will slow you down and calm you a little.”
I didn’t care about carbon dioxide. I squeezed my eyes tight and pulled myself deeper into her embrace. I needed the softness of Emma’s body against me. There was nothing sexual in this need. It was sensual, however. It was softness and gentle human contact I craved. I was not a man holding a woman. I was a boy clinging to his mother.
Our clutch only lasted a few moments but my breathing began to slow. When we pulled away from each other, she wiped tears from my eyes and I nodded my thanks.
When we dared to look around the corner again, the big bot continued its grim work of destroying City Hall. Another, smaller drone appeared down the block.
“Sec bot!” Emma said.
“A what?”
“They patrol the perimeter of dome installations. They can kill with a sniper bullet at three kilometers. They keep scavengers out, the Domers in and the food supply safe.”
She peeked around the corner again and pulled back faster than before. “It’s rolling our way. Looks like it’s scanning storefronts.”
“For life signs, I suppose,” I said.
I grabbed Emma’s arm and pointed her in the right direction. I almost left the apple juice behind. However, the liquid might mean survival in the desert. I retraced a few steps and bent to pick up the cans.
I heard the whir of the bot’s electric motor as it zipped down the sidewalk. I heard a subtle beep. That’s when I knew I’d waited too long. The bot was just around the corner. It stopped for another scan. I tried to hold my breath and not make a sound but my heart hammered in my chest. My pulse sounded so loud in my ears I was sure the drone would detect it. I reached for the pistol at my waistband but I didn’t think that would do much against a bot, at least unless I knew where to shoot to do the most damage. I didn’t know.
The first blast destroyed the front of the building I leaned against. It had been a hair salon. The store hadn’t been open for a long time. I hadn’t seen the pretty sisters who ran it for a month or more. I knew they had lived with their mother and father above their salon in a little apartment. I didn’t know they were still there.
The bot knew.
I heard women’s screams as the bot entered the wrecked building. I heard a man shout in Spanish. A shotgun boomed twice. Then again.
Something crashed into the wall inside and I felt the reverberations through my body.
A man was shouting in Spanish. Then he said, “See that? See that? That’s what they get! That’s what they get!” Then, “Oh, shit.”
A louder boom hit and the wall to my left collapsed outward. I was thrown to the ground by the concussion. As I struggled to my knees I saw that the sec bot had wheeled into the street. It was damaged and rolled unevenly.
As I got to my feet, the drone raised one of its manipulators. It held a human head by the hair. I’m sure the decapitated head belonged to the hairstylists’ father. There was something oddly triumphant in the bot’s gesture, something disturbingly human.
Worse, the crane bot turned away from City Hall to look towards the sec bot. There is something very disconcerting about an enemy that doesn’t communicate in a way that a human can hear. Obviously, the sec bot summoned assistance from its giant brethren.
One of the cans of juice had rolled away or was buried under debris. I left it behind and scooped up the remaining can as I ran.
I heard more screams behind me and another shotgun blast.
In that moment, I had thoughts that make me sad and disgusted and ashamed.
I hoped the young women and their mother got away somehow.
I hoped they did more damage to the bot that killed their father.
I hoped they made enough noise that they distracted the killer drones and covered my escape.
I hoped they had the good sense to use that shotgun on themselves.
Failing that, I hoped the crane bot would be quick.
In a match of bots versus humans, we’re obviously at a great disadvantage.
8
I ran farther down a long block, turning corners to get out of sight. Raphael had told me stories of the destruction of cities. He’d read a lot of old books. I couldn’t remember most of the stories he’d told me, but one detail came back to me as we ran.
“Don’t look back,” I told Emma. “Don’t look back!”
“Why?”
“If it’s coming for us, I don’t want to know, do you?” Raphael’s story warned that if you looked back at the danger behind you, you turned into a pillar of blood or salt, something terrible that didn’t make sense. “Change of plan,” I said. “We leave town and circle back.”
“But your father — ”
“Like he said, this isn’t goodbye. We live on the edge of town. We’ll get there by heading north. If we go through Marfa, we’re dead.”
The howls of the sirens and the screams of the dying receded but I’ll never forget them. Dad was right. This was war and we were all drafted now.
I ran until the numbers of buildings thinned. Only when I was standing out in the open did I dare to look back. I could see there was another crane bot in the distance through shimmers of heat. “There’s two of the big ones!” I told Emma.
“Three,” she said.
“What? You mean three back at your dome?”
“No, Dante. I mean three here. It’s not standing up but I can see the heat plumes of the
third. It’s heading northwest. I’m guessing the plan is to level Marfa.”
I searched the horizon but saw nothing. “You’ve got Vivid, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“That didn’t go down with your dome?”
“The enhanced vision is still there. I’ve lost any connection to the services offered through the Collective.”
“What do you mean?”
Emma shrugged. “I’m cut off. It’s mechanically advantageous but my information is limited to…mostly how you see the world, I suppose.”
I flushed, a little angry at that remark. Then it occurred to me she could catch my thermal changes and interpret them as anger. Embarrassed, I turned away.
“I can see far and I can see close. I’ve still got night vision,” she said.
“That will be useful. Let me know if you see any snakes or bots tonight. What can’t you do that you used to do?”
“Can’t look up any entries to check facts. Mostly, for me, that was engineering manuals. Makes no difference now, I guess. The Collective won’t be feeding me any information anymore.”
We had a big circle to walk so I hurried as best I could. With her exo-stilts extended, the trek was easy for Emma. I ran at first. Then I walked and jogged. I was embarrassed at that, too. Every time my breath came short and ragged, she told me to stop and rest. “If you wore the full body rig, I could be getting a piggyback ride and we’d be there in no time.”
“I left with what I was wearing at the time. I only had the stilts on to crank me high enough to check the tanks and work on the domes.”
“No offense meant, Ma’am.”
“None taken. But don’t call me, ‘Ma’am.’ Emma will do fine. How far, cowboy?”
“We gotta move stealthy so it’ll be evening before we’re close. And don’t call me, ‘cowboy.’ Dante will do fine.”
“Fair enough. How do you get a name like Dante?”
“Dad said it’s because he’s been to the ninth circle of hell.”
“I don’t get it.”
“It’s a story he knows. Mythology, I think. Caught my father’s imagination. Old knowledge. ”
Robot Planet, The Complete Series (The Robot Planet Series) Page 14
