The League of Peoples

by James Alan Gardner

  Queer thing, that.

  Festina walked toward the wall-breach. Debris had been cleared here too, leaving a gap you could walk through. Festina pulled up in front of it. “Stop,” she yelled into the next room, “you’re making me allergic.”

  “You saw something?” I asked.

  “No. But why take dumb chances?”

  She poked the end of the torch-wand through the breach. A trio of androids stood on the other side, jelly guns raised.

  Like lightning, Festina dropped the wand, dived sideways, jigged the moment she hit the floor, and rolled to her feet, weaving like a kickboxer in full defense mode: guard up, chin down, body loose. My own reaction wasn’t half so dramatic—I just jumped to the side, out of the line of fire from the hole.

  Waiting. The torch-wand rolled along the ground, shadows shifting in response…till the wand ran up against a chunk of stone, rocked back, lay still.

  Nothing from the robots.

  Slowly I let out my breath. “Good call with that ‘allergic’ thing,” I told Festina.

  She let her fists relax. “Yeah,” she agreed, lifting her hand to her cheek. “A faceful of acid would ruin my complexion.”

  “Don’t obsess—there’s nothing wrong with your cheek that couldn’t be solved with a nice hard kiss.” It felt good to say that out loud. I bent and picked up the light. “Now let’s see what’s next door.”

  The androids had shut down, just like the ones near Sallysweet River: standing there stock-still, frozen in the blink before firing. We slithered past them, avoiding the tiniest touch for fear they’d wake again.

  Beyond the robots? More robots…only these weren’t humanlike. Their bodies were fat ellipsoids, the shape and color of watermelons but almost as tall as me. They had no separate head, but the top of their watermelon torso was ringed with pits and niches that I guessed were for sensing—eyes going all the way round, 360 degrees, plus holes that might be ears or nostrils or breathing orifices. They had thinnish legs, bony and tough like an ostrich’s. As for arms: three pairs each, spindly, insectish, covered with coarse hairs that might have been sensors or bristly protection.

  How did I know they were robots? There were four of the beasties within reach of the light, and all had patches where the epidermis was peeled away—flayed sections of arm, flaps cut into the torso, an entire leg where the skin had tattered. Beneath the exterior were metal flexors, armatures, ball bearings, fiber optics…eerily similar to what I’d seen in Pump Station 3, when jelly acid bared the androids’ innards.

  I took a step toward the closest watermelon. Festina grabbed my arm full strength and yanked me back. “Don’t touch. Their natural skin chemicals are poisonous to humans. Nerve toxins.”

  “You know the species?”

  She nodded. “They’ re Greenstriders

  “Never heard of them,” I said.

  “The fleet made contact with their people a couple times. Not a friendly species—arrogant landgrabbers, dangerously greedy. Worse than humans, believe it or not. A few years back, the League of Peoples rescinded their certification of sentience: grounded every Greenstrider space vessel till they learn to play nicely with others.”

  “So what are these doing here?” I asked.

  “They must have arrived before the League clamped down. At one time, the Greenstriders set up colonies all over this arm of the galaxy; but their settlements had a habit of fizzling out…which is a polite way to say they degenerated into civil war. Striders have a rabid territorial streak that they seldom bother to control.”

  “Are they a robot species?”

  Festina shook her head. “They’re organic. These must be the Greenstrider equivalent of androids—robots built in their own image. How old did you say these mines are?”

  “Three thousand Earth years.”

  “Then they could have been dug by Greenstriders. The striders were definitely active in this neighborhood back then.”

  “How sophisticated were they technically?” I asked. “Compared to us.”

  “Who knows?” Festina replied. “The striders don’t share confidences. We have no idea how advanced they are now, let alone three millennia ago. But they were a spacefaring race even back then, so they may have had some interesting goodies.”

  “And that’s what Maya and Iranu were looking for.”

  “Probably.”

  So: hypothesize a sequence of events. Yasbad Iranu, Kowkow’s father, discovered this place thirtyish years ago, back before the plague. His first thought—scour the mine for alien tech…and do it on the hush so our government didn’t interfere with the game. Unfortunately for him, Iranu senior wasn’t careful enough, and the feddies caught him smuggling. Away he went, first to jail, then booted off planet as persona non grata. He never found a way to sneak back.

  Forward two decades: Iranu junior gets friendly with Maya Cuttack on some archaeological dig in the Free Republic. Kowkow shares the secret of his father’s discovery. He and Maya head for Demoth to resume dear old dad’s work…not just here in Mummichog but at Sallysweet River and other sites round the planet. When the Freeps begin trade talks with Demoth, Iranu wangles a place as aide to the negotiating team, probably by milking his family connections. Next thing you know, the treaty contains a clause that opens Demoth archaeological sites to Freep exploitation.

  Slick. I wondered if our feddies had ever suspected Iranu junior of following in his father’s footsteps. Probably…but junior was tied so close to the Freep government he’d have diplomatic immunity. Anyway, Maya must have done most of the fieldwork; Iranu just dropped by now and then to see how she was doing.

  And how was she doing? With all their undercover digging, had Iranu and Cuttack turned up anything useful? Or were they just flouncing around in the dirt, without finding bugger-all?

  Gingerly I stepped past the Greenstrider robots and lifted the torch-wand to light the rest of the room. It showed more robot watermelons on ostrich legs, and assorted machine boxes—computers maybe, or communication transceivers, food synthesizers, air conditioners. How can you ever tell? One box of wires looks much like another…and these had been rusting in a hot humid climate for three thousand years.

  No, not that long—this room had been sealed hermetically for a long time, till an earthquake opened that breach in the wall. It explained why I recognized this stuff as machinery, unlike the moldering lumps in the outer room. It’d taken longer for microbes and humidity to get in. Even so, every exposed surface here was covered with corrosion; I doubted anything was still in working order.

  Festina had her Bumbler out, running its scanner up and down a Greenstrider robot. “Interesting,” she murmured.

  “What?”

  “See here?” She pointed to a flap of green skin folded back from the creature’s chest to reveal metal beneath. “The edges are clean,” she said, “and the metal has practically no rust.”

  I held the torch-wand close so I could see for myself. She was right—the skin had been sliced away with a knife. Underneath, the robot’s innards had a passable gleam. “Probably the work of our bold archaeologists,” I said, “cutting a hole to peek inside.”

  “But here…” Festina squatted and aimed her finger at the point where the robot’s left leg joined its torso. “This damage is much more ragged. And the metal’s been exposed to air a lot longer.”

  I crouched and looked. The scaly ostrich skin had been eaten away, eroded to shreds; and the armatures beneath were speckly brown with rust. “Sure,” I agreed, “this damage is older. But what does that mean? The natural decay process had to start somewhere. This is just where the skin flaked off first.”

  “It doesn’t look like natural decay to me.” Festina fiddled with the Bumbler controls; the image on the machine’s vidscreen ballooned through several powers of magnification. “See around the edges there? A rim of white plastic. There used to be a plastic sheath just under the skin, like a protective wrap around the metal flexors. Something chewed away most of th
e plastic, and bared what was underneath.”

  “Acid?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Then I’d expect to see melting, and there’s nothing like that. This looks more…eaten.”

  “Demoth has bacteria that can break down some types of plastic,” I told her.

  “But there’s still some plastic left,” she replied, moving the Bumbler’s scanner up and down the robot’s leg. “Once a bacterial colony begins consuming a particular substance, why would they stop? No. To me, this looks like an entrance hole. Something ate through the skin, then consumed just enough of the plastic sheath to get into the robot’s guts.”

  “I assume you don’t mean pesky jungle insects?”

  “Most likely a coordinated nano attack, specifically designed to disable this type of robot.”

  She grabbed the Bumbler’s scanner and gave a yank. The scanner pulled out of the Bumbler’s body, trailing behind a fiber-steel umbilical cord…like a thumb-sized glass eye on a flexible tether. Festina jammed the eye through the break in the robot’s skin. “Yes,” she said, “the circuits are a real mess in there. Diced. Wire salad.”

  “So nanites bit their way in, then chewed up the robot’s guts? Why?”

  “It was a weapon, Faye.” She pulled the scanner out of the robot and stood up. “Like I said, Greenstrider colonies had a habit of disintegrating into civil war. Faction against faction. They’d start off targeting each other’s machinery, just like this—the League of Peoples doesn’t mind if you corrode the guts out of mindless robots. But how long before tactics accelerated into something uglier?”

  I looked around the room: the unmoving robots, the rusting machines. Shut down by enemy nano? And what happened when the nanites destroyed other equipment…food synthesizers, say. Could Greenstriders eat our local flora and fauna? Or did the war against each other’s machinery send the colonists spiraling down to slow starvation?

  Next question: how far would starving people go for revenge on their enemies? Bombs? Poison gas?

  Germ warfare?

  Maybe.

  And when the war heated up, some Greenstriders would hide from their enemies. Huddle down in places like this, where they’d hope they were safe from nanites, armies, whatever their opponents might throw at them. Underground complexes in Mummichog, in Sallysweet River, all over Demoth.

  We’d thought these were ancient mines; and some probably started out that way. But in the end…they’d become military bunkers.

  16

  PINNED BUTTERFLY

  The other Greenstrider robots had the same kind of damage: entry wounds where the legs met the torso, minced machinery inside. I guess the point of attack got chosen because it was especially vulnerable…or maybe just handy and close to important control circuits. No way to tell now—the robots had all been gutted too badly to reconstruct how they used to work.

  And speaking of reconstruction…where did that leave Maya and Iranu? These robots looked too wrecked to be salvageable. What here could gladden the heart of a greedy archaeologist?

  I moved around the room, giving each machine the once-over. A few rusty boxes had got opened and partly dismantled, half-rotted circuit boards laid out on the floor: Maya and Iranu must have been seeing what they could find. They’d done the most work on something that looked like a control console—a flat surface with bumps and lumps that might have been eroded push buttons, plus dirty plates of clear plastic that were probably screen readouts. Maya and Iranu had pried off two access panels under the console and gone fishing inside; you could see gaps where they’d removed bits and pieces for examination. But everything I saw looked too rust-eaten to be functional. If the archaeologists learned much from what they found, they must be rare good at their jobs.

  Two times circling the room with the torch in my hand…and only then did it click back into my head that there were no doors anywhere. We’d clambered in through that spot where the wall crumbled; but that definitely wasn’t a real entranceway. As far as I could tell, the room had been totally sealed up with four mock-granite walls…and that didn’t make sense, did it?

  “Festina-girl,” I called, “time to give the Bumbler another workout. These walls look too good to be true.”

  They were. The Bumbler found two patches of wall whose temperature ran a titch warmer than their surroundings: both patches almost straight-edged rectangular, three meters wide, stretching from floor to ceiling. One patch was plunk in the middle of the wall between this room and the outside tunnel; the other was at the rear of the chamber.

  “All right,” Festina said. “So two sections of wall aren’t the same as the rest. Yes, they’re probably doors. But how do we get them open? Maybe once upon a time they unlocked at the flick of a switch…but every switch in the place is rusted clean through.”

  “O ye of little faith,” I told her. “When you’ve got the right friends, who needs switches?”

  My thoughts: the Greenstriders used nano weapons. So they probably used nano for other things too—like doors. The doorways could be like the windows in my office: made to look solid, but the nanites would let you pass if you had proper authorization.

  What better kind of door for an army bunker?

  And if Xé was my friend…if Xé had somehow wormed its way into Greenstrider nanotech, as easy as winning over the navy’s “incompatible” probe missiles…if the nanite doors weren’t totally dead after all these years…Xé might help me pass through.

  “Let’s try a little experiment,” I said.

  I took a step toward the rear door.

  And suddenly the Peacock was blocking my way, burning brighter than I’d ever seen, flames of gold and blue and green.

  Nago! screamed my father’s voice in my head. Oolom for “evil.” Tico, nago, wuto! Crazy, evil, dangerous.

  The Peacock fluttered in the air, shivering. Shivering with emotion. And the emotion was fear.

  “What’s wrong?” I demanded. “What’s so bad?”

  Tico. Tico, nago, wuto.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Are you having a conversation with a pocket universe?” Festina asked.

  “Yes. But it’s precious skimpy on explanations.” I turned back to the Peacock. “Tell me what’s behind the door.”

  Tico. Tico botjolo.

  Crazy. Crazy cursed.

  “Fine. I get the message.” I glanced toward Festina. “The Peacock is all worked up over whatever’s in the next room. Says it’s crazy, evil, dangerous.” I sighed. “Maybe the smart thing is to back away and call the cops….”

  Boom.

  Silent, inside my head, but boom. I was hit with a jolt of shuddery weeping frustration: a jab from the inside out, some high-proof hormonal punch that was pressure-pumped into every muscle of my body. I screamed—not pain, not anger, just screaming because I had to scream, deluged-drenched-drowning in teary-eyed floods of emotion. My head was clear enough to think, “What the bejeezus is this?” But still I screamed.

  Festina grabbed me. Locked me into a grip that was two-thirds hug, one-third grappling hold. “What’s wrong, Faye? What is it?”

  I didn’t fight her. I just started to cry. Wrapped my arms tight around her and sobbed. Not understanding it, scarce even feeling it, as the clear part of my brain kept thinking, “This isn’t me, this is something else. Something else is crying through me. What’s doing it?”

  The answer came, not words, just realization.

  Xé. Xé, Xé, Xé.

  Weeping as if her heart would break.

  Here’s the thing: I’d been assuming the Peacock was Xé. An alien whatsit hooked into our world-soul AI. Tied in with my father and me and Tic and God knows what else.

  But. (Hard to think when you’re bawling your eyes out and wiping your nose on an admiral’s shoulder.) The Peacock spoke to me in simple Oolom words, sounding in my head with my father’s voice. Xé hardly ever spoke in words at all: just emotions, realizations, facts showing up in my brain.

  Xé s
ent thoughts through my link-seed. The Peacock spoke words—telepathically, if you wanted to call it that.

  Two different beings. Entities. And what was behind the hidden door?

  Xé. Xé, Xé, Xé.

  The Peacock didn’t want me going through the door. Crazy, evil, dangerous.

  But Xé spilled me wet with tears of frustration the moment I considered walking away. Sad, desperate tears.

  “Stop it,” I blubbered into Festina’s shoulder. “Let me think. Let me think.”

  “Shh,” she said. We must have looked clown-stupid, me so much taller, crumpled against her. “Shhh. Shhh.” She stroked my hair, not looking at me. Her cheek was against my head. “Shhh. Shhh.”

  Slowly, the gush of heartbreak eased away. Quiet. A drained-weary calm. Mine? Xé’s? Or just the afterwash from the hormones Xé sent swelling through me?

  Peace is when the adrenaline goes away.

  “That wasn’t me,” I murmured to Festina, still holding her tight. “My body got hijacked by someone else.”

  She kept stroking my hair. “Shhh. Shhh.”

  I’d dropped the torch-wand. Now the only light I could see came from the Peacock, looping quick circles around Festina and me like an anxious dog. Dizzying, dappled ripples of color.

  “Shhh. Shhh. Shhh.”

  At last I pulled away…one hormone cocktail played out, another too precious eager to surface. Festina let me go, not meeting my eyes.

  The Peacock had drawn in tight around us, an Ouro-boros ring only a handbreadth from touching our backs. Now it loosened, opening a gap that would let us scuttle back up the tunnel…but still blocking the way forward like a glittery wall of light.

  “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” Festina asked. She was still very close.

  “Xé,” I said. “She…it…is a consciousness laced through all the digital intelligences on Demoth. Including my link-seed. When I suggested maybe we shouldn’t keep going forward, Xé hit me with that colossal crying jag. Or maybe Xé herself had the crying jag, and I just got caught in the backwash.”