Robot Planet, The Complete Series (The Robot Planet Series)

by Chute, Robert Chazz

  “I gave them something to think about!” Elizabeth had protested. “It wasn’t all naked pictures.”

  The City in the Sky had not fallen right away, though. In time, even the people who hated the City in the Sky claimed that her counter-propaganda campaign had largely failed.

  “Not counter-propaganda,” she told them patiently. “Facts. Facts can wait. Facts can gnaw. Facts grow. Tyrannies don’t.”

  Eventually, Elizabeth had been proved correct. The City in the Sky slowly collapsed under the weight of its ideology. It withered as the young questioned the truth of the elders. Each year, more people who had once lived in the City’s utopia escaped to the south and moved to the village at the foot of Hearst Castle. These immigrants ran from their modern city-state to join what the Fathers and Mothers condemned: a primitive and feudal community.

  “Well,” Elizabeth always told the newcomers, “things are more primitive and we do lack some of the City’s tech. But we’re more free than feudal. The City in the Sky is full of conveniences, but the cupboard where they kept the freedom is empty.”

  Before Elizabeth had uploaded a library of forbidden literature to the City’s comm system, Hearst Castle had been a lonely trade outpost full of pirates. The famous mansion, in disrepair and abandoned for years after the Terrors, was never so lavish as it had once been. However, with trade and commerce and new subjects flooding in, Hearst Castle was somewhat restored. Most improvements to its new design were meant to shore its defenses. Before the Fall, Hearst had been a castle in name only. Now, surrounded by stone walls, the huge house was the hub of a thriving community. Domiciles crowded around the trails that crisscrossed the hills. Small buildings, tents and fortifications stretched all the way to the water.

  There were few bots within the castle walls. The humans who migrated here were traders and farmers who distrusted non-organics and hated all the autonomous drones. Only simpler drones — “small heads” — were allowed to serve here.

  Drew Cantrell, the captain of the Queen’s Guard, had warned Elizabeth not to allow any bots within Hearst Castle walls. “Them auto bots, they could get hacked and we could have our own guns turned on us. That’s a fret. It wouldn’t be the first time. Prolly won’t be the last, the NIs being as sneaky as they are.”

  “If we don’t use any bots at all, we’ll be invaded long before we have the defenses finished,” Elizabeth told him. “This was just a house and then it was a park. If you don’t want to see it fall to battle drones, you’ll support my lead at the council.”

  After much debate, Elizabeth insisted the community allow med bots and building drones. Since she’d risen to lead, she stepped up production of exoskeletons for the humans whose work went into building and defending the wall. The exoskeletons, manufactured up the coast in Santa Cruz, were the best in the Free World.

  Elizabeth had prevailed at council, as she often did. There were always squabbles of one sort or another, but her status as queen kept her above any personal jabs from other council members. She had arrived at Hearst a stranger in an exoskeleton. She had gained favor as a consensus builder and an organizer long before she was made a monarch.

  Elizabeth wondered how much longer she would be able to see her beloved home. Each evening she walked down to the water to watch the sun extinguish itself in the ocean under an orange sky. Her sunsets were growing dimmer, little by little. When the blindness swallowed her sight, she would still feel the smooth cheeks of the young ones. The soft dimpled hands would still be hers to touch. Of all the sights, she decided she would miss the sunsets most.

  The queen worried. When she was old and weak and blind, what would be left by the time she died? Though Hearst had grown in number of adults, there were few children and fewer babies each year. Perhaps it was the Blight or the Troubles that had sapped men’s virility and made women barren. Maybe the NIs were, even now, seeding the atmosphere with some dangerous spore that guaranteed human extinction.

  One of the many books she’d risked uploading in the City in the Sky had been Children of Men. She worried sometimes that she’d inadvertently given some enterprising Next Intelligence the idea to kill off the human race slowly, to win by attrition.

  The bots could afford to be patient. The machines had killed many organics. In return, humans had fought bravely, killed many bots and even managed to destroy some that possessed the Next Intelligence. But bots could reproduce much faster in a factory than humans could reproduce. Battle drones could last forever. Human babies were helpless a long time before they could grow to become soldiers. Their prime was short. In war, the advantages of time and power lay on the side of the machines.

  Before I become irrelevant, Elizabeth wondered, what more can I do?

  5

  It was Elizabeth’s negotiation skill as a community builder that had first drawn the king’s attention. She had seen Joseph watching her work for months before he spoke to her directly. One day, she was weeding a garden when her future husband appeared at her side.

  “You’re the woman,” he said in an accusing tone, “who can stir the pot without making a ripple in the water. Tell me, how is it that you can be so bossy and yet so many people seem to love you?”

  “The trick to getting your way,” she told King Joseph, “is to make your way synonymous with the way that benefits the people you’re trying to convince.”

  “Win-win, hm?”

  “That works, but the people you’re negotiating with have to see their win before they can allow yours.”

  “Why negotiate when you can tell people what to do?” the king asked.

  “Don’t kick the dog on the way into the house,” she said. “Someday, he might be part of a pack and find his way in while you sleep.”

  “That’s why I don’t let wolves gather.”

  She shrugged. “I’ve lived in fear and I’ve known love. Love lasts. I got over my fear. If I can, anyone can.”

  The king seemed to consider this as she continued digging at weeds. Or, perhaps, he was just watching her. She wasn’t sure so she concentrated on her task. At last, the king cleared his throat. “I’ve often thought that, to make our city grow, we have to find troubles and turn them into assets. You seem to have a knack for that, Elizabeth.”

  She didn’t look up from her hoe as she continued to work. “Weeds don’t know they’re weeds, just like most troublemakers don’t mean to be troublemakers. In fact, many troublemakers make great allies, if you can show them you’re trying to see their view of the world. We’ve all got different views. Some would say, for instance, that having a king for a leader is ridiculous.”

  King Joseph’s laugh was short and strained. “Are you one of those who say my position is ridiculous?”

  “Well, of course, it’s ridiculous,” Elizabeth said, “but by all accounts, you’ve got your good points, too. You are trying hard to make things work. That counts for something. You aren’t a warlord, sir. You’re trying to protect people. That’s why you’re still alive. It’s not your strength that holds Hearst together. There are many strong men and women. The people know you’re one of the few men who uses his strength for unity instead of domination.”

  “Kind words, though you should know I’ve had men hanged for entertaining any thoughts of disrespect.”

  “I know you did that to bandits and rapists,” she said. “You stopped idiots from dragging us back into the dark, into the Long Before. It’s time we moved beyond that sort of thing and progressed again, though, don’t you think?” She flashed him a kind smile. “I can see why violence was necessary around the time of the Fall, but that’s behind us and it’s time we got together again, isn’t it? The old wars are done and we’ll need more friends, not embittered families that hold grudges against the king. The Fathers and Mothers hate us and the City in the Sky is not so far to the North. The bots…the NIs…what’s left of humanity must trust each other enough to fight back to back, right?”

  He allowed a slight nod.

  “If
you’re going to hang me, King Joe,” Elizabeth continued, “could you do it before noon? It’s hot out here. Hang me now if you like. Just know that there will be no carrot and beet soup for you this fall.”

  “I could get someone else to take care of the garden.”

  “No one else knows my recipe for beet and carrot soup.”

  King Joseph laughed. Later that day, she met Drew for the first time. He was just another guard then. Drew called to her to come out of her tent.

  “Oh, hello,” Elizabeth said as she poked her head out from behind the canvas flap. “Did Joe send you? Have you come to hang me?”

  “No, ’course not,” the guard replied. “Should I?”

  “Well, if you try it, my young friend Greta is behind me.”

  “Uh-huh. So?”

  “She’s got her exoskeleton on and she can be dangerous, so — ”

  “I have a message from the king,” Drew said.

  “Yes?”

  “You’re to be made an advisor to the large council.”

  Elizabeth called back to her friend, “Take off the exo, Greta, and get some sleep. You won’t have to stomp anyone and we aren’t sailing to Samoa tonight, after all.”

  The next year, Elizabeth was elected to the large council and soon became liaison to the small council. Three years later, King Joseph asked her to advise him personally in reorganizing the city’s government. Within a year after that, they were married and she became Queen Elizabeth of Hearst Castle.

  Hearst’s construction bots hauled stone from quarries up and down the West coast. The walls grew high and a network of ramparts had turned every approach to the castle into a field of fire.

  With each new moon, Hearst grew. Many journeyed down the coast from Low Town, the port city that lay at the feet of the City in the Sky. They knew the sea and they knew farming, They came to Hearst hoping for a better life.

  In the years since Elizabeth came to King Joe’s realm, the castle’s port had grown as the City in the Sky dwindled. The stronghold of the Fathers and Mothers was mostly inhabited by bots now.

  Each morning at dawn, Elizabeth met new travelers to the kingdom by the water. She spoke to each new applicant and rarely turned anyone away. She spoke longest to those who came from her old home, putting them at ease with, “Tell me about the City in the Sky. And why would you want to leave all those conveniences?”

  A coder named Jonas had given her the best answer so far. “I’m a sinner,” he’d said.

  “Anything serious?”

  “That’s the problem,” Jonas replied. “The Fathers and Mothers don’t make those distinctions. I’d say my trespasses are mild. I fucking swear sometimes. Sometimes I fucking swear a lot.”

  Elizabeth grinned. “That’s music to my ears as long as you don’t play that tune to death.”

  “Only when I’m angry,” Jonas said.

  “Are you angry often?”

  “In the City in the Sky, I was angry all the time. Now that I’ve gotten away, I swear a shitload less.”

  “And why is that?”

  “The Fathers and Mothers hate sin more than they love people. That’s no religion I can abide.”

  “Welcome to Hearst,” she said.

  “Uh…thanks, Queenie,” Jonas said.

  Queen Elizabeth burst into a belly laugh.

  Many applicants had stories of punishment, isolation and loneliness. Elizabeth remembered those feelings well. The Fathers and Mothers had been cruel to her.

  A few applicants spoke of wanting freedom in vague terms that made Elizabeth suspicious. She granted those applicants a trial period. If they proved they could contribute to the realm and stay out of trouble for a year, she met them again to reassess their application.

  Some applicants had been banished from the City in the Sky for reading non-biblical literature or contraband vids. The older ones said they knew who Elizabeth was because the Fathers and Mothers had declared her an enemy of the City. A few even traced their subversion and dangerous book clubs directly to her incursion on the City in the Sky so many years ago.

  She granted families entry right away. Invariably, the young ones who arrived alone or in pairs spoke of love that was forbidden by the Fathers and Mothers. Either they had fallen in love with someone to whom they were not assigned or they were condemned for doing what came naturally to the young. Occasionally, some were banished for becoming pregnant with unapproved children. Since humankind appeared to be slowly dwindling, there could be no such thing as an unwanted pregnancy, at least as far as the Queen of Hearst Castle was concerned.

  Elizabeth did not recognize any of the refugees from the City in the Sky. She assumed her mother — perhaps everyone she’d once known — had been executed after Elizabeth uploaded revolutionary vids and subversive material to the City’s comms. She hoped her mother had died of old age. However, as blindness crept over Elizabeth slowly, she began to think the charms of a natural death in old age were dubious. Maybe a quick execution wouldn’t be too terrible.

  She did not like these melancholy thoughts. She turned her mind to Greta. Surely her young friend would soon return with news of the world. When Elizabeth first escaped the City and when Greta was very young, the pair had moved to Santa Cruz. Soon after, Greta had joined her friend Anne aboard a little boat that ferried people and supplies along the coast. After a year or so, Greta joined the crew of a rescue ship that visited tiny villages with a doctor and a couple of nurses aboard.

  After several more years, and the death of the doctor, Greta had risen to the rank of bosun aboard a cargo ship that ranged North and South, from ice to ice. When Elizabeth became Queen of Hearst, her gift to Greta was a sleek schooner. At thirty-two, the young woman captained her schooner, the Iola (named after Greta’s dead mother). Elizabeth remembered Greta’s mother fondly. Elizabeth still wore the sweater the old woman had knitted for her.

  Looking out at the sunset, the queen hugged herself tight. She wished Joe were feeling better so he could join her. She wondered how much of the sunset she was missing and found herself remembering the vivid colors of other sunsets. She was sure she would have seen more texture in the sky last year. Her world had grown dim and she worried she had little left to look forward to.

  Though the large print in children’s books was still within her reach, the young maids and cooks who worked within the castle took turns reading to her each night. They read to her as she stared at the candle they read by. Later, each night, Elizabeth snuggled close to Joe and, as she closed her eyes, she wondered if she’d awake to darkness that would not relent. Would she remember candlelight after the blindness claimed her?

  Despite Iola’s fine sweater, Elizabeth shivered and twitched, as if a cold metal finger had slid up her spine.

  “My queen?” Drew’s voice startled her.

  The sun was extinguished for another day and, looking back, the Queen’s Guard was just a silhouette of a man on a horse. He held the reins to her white stallion.

  “Yes, Drew? It’s bad news, isn’t it?”

  “The king is in distress. The doctor says you should come right away. He is very pale and — ”

  Elizabeth was already on the move. It was a long walk back to the castle. Her stallion, Cooper, was fast and knew the way in the dark. Still, the sentry towers’ bells began to ring before she was halfway to King Joe’s deathbed. She was too late to say goodbye.

  He’d started as a strong man. Then he was a strongman. They’d called him King Joe ironically, at first. Eventually, his subjects called him King Joseph with respect and without irony. In death, they would honor him.

  Of all the sights she would miss, she had assumed the painted dawns and the riots of sunsets reflected in the Pacific would be the greatest loss. That night, Elizabeth discovered she would miss her husband’s smile most.

  6

  All of Hearst fell into mourning. Everyone came to the water’s edge to watch as King Joseph’s raft was pushed out with the tide. When it had drifted far
enough out and the funeral songs were spent, a group of bow hunters set their arrows alight. They shot as one. The flight found its mark. Soaked in oil, the king’s body burst into flame.

  A few of Hearst’s oldest citizens remembered the worst times, back when King Joseph was just a man named Joe Salazar. When the world was torn apart by the Troubles and Terrors threatened every coastal city with container ships loaded with explosives, the world needed the hard man he’d once been. When the Blight threatened the food chain, King Joe enforced strict rationing. He’d executed looters and hoarders alike. Some of those hoarders had been rich friends. Still, he persevered until, in his little corner of the world, civilization reasserted itself. The roots of a new city dug in and took hold around Hearst Castle.

  Later, with Elizabeth’s influence, the monarch of the world’s tiniest kingdom settled into a new role. He stopped dictating terms. A form of parliamentary democracy was restored. King Joseph Salazar had no heirs, but he left a strong legacy. That’s how Elizabeth eulogized her dead husband. “Peace and order was his goal even when the world refused to cooperate,” she said. “He made enemies and had to do terrible things sometimes. In the end, he strove to attain peace, order and longevity for all.”

  The burning raft turned over. The crowd gasped in horror.

  Elizabeth couldn’t see the raft. It was just a blur to her, but she could tell it wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

  Drew whispered in her ear, “The raft is overturned and the flames are extinguished, my queen.”

  “Is…is something wrong?” Elizabeth asked. “It sunk already?”

  Her answer rose out of the water. Drew described it to her as a tall, skinny bot. “It’s a custom job,” he said. “I don’t recognize its purpose. It doesn’t look like a battle bot. This one’s all silver.”

  Her Guard seemed to recover from the shock faster than others and began pulling her back toward her stallion. Elizabeth mounted her horse and called for her Guard. Cooper’s hooves knocked across the wooden pier as Drew led the horse toward Hearst’s high walls.