The League of Peoples

by James Alan Gardner

  “Pity the Muscle isn’t awake,” Festina muttered. “He was the one who wanted to find out what defenses were still working.”

  “If we’re forced onto the bridge,” I said, “and guns shoot at us from the far side, would it be god-awful non-sentient to use this chump as a shield?”

  “Tough call,” Festina replied. “If we convince ourselves he’d want to die nobly, defending his fellow humans…”

  I thought about it. “No. He’s not the hero type. But he was definitely interested in learning about Greenstrider weaponry.”

  “Best way to learn is firsthand,” Festina agreed.

  When the wall finally forced us out onto the bridge, I was holding the Muscle between us and the line of fire.

  The wall stopped moving, right in the mouth of the corridor. That sealed off our only retreat, leaving us vulnerable and exposed on that narrow bridge across the abyss. Festina and I exchanged looks—one of those moments when you hope your eyes are saying something because you know speech won’t work. If we were about to be chopped to chutney by gunfire, I didn’t want to die with banal last words like, “If only we had more time together…”

  At the far end of the bridge, the wall slowly dissolved into another doorway. A tall man in white stepped out: a perfect twin of the African android back in the other room. Another robot, naturally; he carried a jelly gun.

  Behind him was a shortish woman with white hair. She stared straight at me, and said, “So, Faye, we finally meet. Bitch.”

  20

  EVIL BITCH

  Maya Cuttack hailed from Indian ancestors—she’d made a point of daubing a blobby red caste mark in the middle of her forehead. Her brown skin looked crinkled and paper-dry, at least on her arms…which I could see because even in this chilly bunker, she wore a half-sleeved blouse, the kind that goes under a sari. The blouse was jade green silk; and on it, someone had hand-painted dozens of peacocks.

  Talk about a deliberate statement.

  But if you wanted a real statement, you had to look at Maya’s face. Her nose and chin might be the same brown as her arms, but the edges of her face had gone fish-belly white: chalky sickness seeping out from her hairline, creeping down her forehead, across her temples, in over her cheeks.

  Hello, Pteromic C.

  Her ears were now as yellow as butter, a jaundicey contrast with her snow-pure hair. But even that hair showed signs of the plague; it was frazzled wild, not just uncombed but unwashed and curdled, with enough head grease to hold scraggly bits as if they’d been moussed: cowlicks jutting out, churned into mad snarls.

  Maya Cuttack: tico, nago, wuto. And diseased, diseased, diseased. Christ, hadn’t Mother and Voostor noticed? Or were all these outward symptoms recent, the final cataclysmic collapse of someone who’d been crumbling flake by flake for a long time?

  “Aren’t you going to speak, Faye?” she asked me. “Bitch, bitch, bitch.” Muttering the “bitch” stuff in an undertone, as if it weren’t really meant to come out of her mouth. A subconscious chant…but Maya couldn’t keep her subconscious as “sub” as it should be.

  “You’re sick,” I said.

  “I’m afraid you’re right (bitch, bitch). And it’s all your fault, Faye (bitch), Faye (bitch).”

  “How?”

  “Because, Faye (bitch), you’re the great (bitch) evil of the world. Your father (bitch) was evil, and you, Faye, inherited it.”

  Her voice was delicately polite, all genteel and ladies-auxiliary…except for those guttural “bitches” that kept slipping their way in. Pteromic talk. Brain breakdown.

  “What do you know about my father?” I asked, keeping my voice soothing calm.

  “Your mother told me he glowed,” she replied. “Possessed by an alien thing. Bitch. Bitch. Bitch. I’ve studied this planet. People get possessed here. You’re possessed, Faye, I know you are. Your mother (bitch) told me all the evil things you did. She defended you (bitch), sometimes she did, but you hurt her so badly…I realized I had to kill you.”

  “How long ago was that?” I asked. “A month or so?”

  “Perhaps. I have perhaps, perhaps, lost some sense of time.” She smiled sweetly. “But not my sense of urgency. Your mother is my dearest (bitch), dearest (bitch), dearest friend, and you caused her so much pain you had to die. You see that, Faye, don’t you? Don’t you, Faye? Whatever it took (bitch), you had to die.”

  Whatever it took. Christ, that phrase gave me the chills. “Are you saying this was all about me? The robot attacks on the proctors…”

  “Of course, of course, of course.” Another of those sugary smiles. A teacher pleased with how fast her student catches on. “If I just killed you outright, the police would ask questions. (The bitch, the bitch, the fucking bitch.) They’d interrogate your next of kin, Faye. Perhaps they’d even accuse your mother, because she’d be so happy at your death. So blissfully, blissfully happy.”

  My mother blissfully happy to see me dead? No. Ma might have been appalled by the teenager I once was, but she wouldn’t dance on my grave. Look at the way she’d treated me when I suddenly turned up on her doorstep— wary but polite, ready to give me a chance. Perhaps even glad to see me, glad to find out I’d changed.

  Maya was just a brain-sick madwoman who’d got a crazy idea into her head. Yes. Yes.

  “You decided to kill me,” I said, “but you didn’t want people to guess I was the specific target. So you knocked off a slew of proctors so it would look like a political thing. I was supposed to be one more corpse in the crowd.”

  “That’s right.” She flashed me a proud-of-herself grin. “I could feel myself getting sick (bitch, bitch). Before I went, I wanted to give a present to my dearest, dearest friend. It wasn’t hard to post androids (bitch) all around the planet, ready to take on easy targets. Then I made friends with your supervisor, Faye, so I could track your movements.”

  Poor Chappalar: manipulated, then murdered. All because a poor plaguey lunatic intended to do my mother a favor poor Ma didn’t want.

  “So what now?” I asked. “I suppose you want to walk us through this bunker…show off the fabulous things you’ve discovered.” Actually, I doubted the idea ever crossed her mind; Maya just wanted to gloat till she’d worked herself into a lather. At some point, when she was keyed up enough, she’d tell the android to gun us down with acid. But maybe I could come up with some delaying step that would appeal to her tico mind. If she liked the notion of a guided tour, at least we’d get off this blasted bridge.

  “It would be pleasant to show you things, Faye,” Maya admitted. “I’m particularly proud of the control room (bitch) for this place. So much of it still works…and I’ve always had a knack for programming machines.” She smiled and patted the shoulder of her android bodyguard. “Or maybe (bitch)…I could show you where your (bitch) father died.” Her eyes twinkled, like she’d just told a joke. “Did you know this bunker stretches close to the Rustico mine? Or at least its outer defense ring does. And that so-called ‘gas explosion’ twenty-seven years ago (bitch)…the miners actually ran into an antipersonnel device intended to stop anyone from tunneling too near to the bunker’s wall. An explosive, Faye. The miners stepped on a mine in the mine.”

  She giggled. Or maybe I should say a giggle got away from her. Fell out uncontrolled. Giggle, giggle, bitch, giggle, bitch.

  I wondered what she’d been like before the plague spackled her brain. Willing to trespass, to play fast and loose with the law…but not a bitched-up killer. Just a titch too ambitious for her own good. How could I hate her, seeing how pathetic she was now? Christ, it would have been nice to blame everything on some out-and-out monster. All the dead and wounded, Chappalar, Oh-God, even the Mouth. Wouldn’t it be fine to lay it all at the feet of a heinous villain? But in the Vigil I’d learned the universe is stingy with black-and-white wickedness. Even the devil has a story.

  I stared at Maya with pity and horror. Which was a mistake—I shouldn’t have made eye contact.

  “Bitch
!” she suddenly screamed. All her placid conversation boiled off in a heartbeat. “You want to kill me, don’t you, bitch? That’s why you’ve chased me all over Demoth. That’s why you tracked me down here. You’re not human, no, you’re possessed…and you want to stop me because I know the truth. You destroyed the Greenstriders, and you think you’ll destroy me.”

  “Maya, I don’t want to destroy…”

  “Kill her!” Maya shouted to the android. “Kill her now.”

  “Stop, you’re making me allergic!” Festina yelled behind me.

  The android took a step forward.

  “Uh-oh,” I said.

  “Do you think I wasn’t listening?” Maya asked. Shrill. Breathy. “There are monitors all through this installation, and they still work. I’ve been watching you people since you came down the tunnel. When you were stupid enough to destroy that keypad, I was the one who opened the door for you. And closed it behind you. I’ve had plenty of time to reprogram this robot not to be fooled by your ridiculous allergies.” She slapped the android on the back. “Shoot the bitch. Now!”

  The android lifted its gun and fired.

  When I’d joked about using the Muscle as a shield…sometimes our Faye is all talk and no action. I dropped to the bridge, Muscle and me together, trusting Festina would also have the sense to duck the incoming acid. She did—a blob of jelly just doesn’t travel as fast as a bullet, and if the shooter isn’t at point-blank range, you’ve got time to get out of the way. The wad passed over our heads and splashed somewhere behind us.

  Then Festina was firing her own jelly gun—a quick shot, snapped off as she bellied down onto the bridge. Maya shrieked and threw herself behind the android…who just stood there, dumb as a stump. Programmed for offense, not defense. When the acid splatted home, the center of impact was plumb on the robot’s gun hand: goo spraying over the pistol, the fingers, and halfway up the elegant white sleeve.

  “Nice shooting,” I said.

  Festina muttered, “I was aiming for his chest.”

  “Shoot them!” Maya screamed at the android. “Shoot, shoot, shoot!”

  The robot’s arm lowered, pointing the gun muzzle straight at my face…and nothing happened. Festina’s shot couldn’t have hurt the pistol itself—an acid-shooting weapon surely must be resistant to acid. But the android’s hand was smoking with corrosive gunk, not to mention a dozen burning patches all the way up to its elbow. With so much damage, something had buggered the robot’s ability to squeeze its trigger finger: a wire cut, a servo off-kilter, some crucial mechanism pitted to pate.

  Maya continued her squeal, “Shoot, shoot, shoot!”…as if the word had stuck in her brain and wouldn’t let anything else out. The robot kept aiming dead zero on my face but didn’t have the smarts to do more than that; didn’t switch the gun to its good hand, or even use its free hand to pull the trigger.

  All of which gave time for Festina’s pistol to pressurize. Bracing herself, firing with a two-hand grip, she landed a wad smack on the android’s sternum—making a beautiful splash pattern that scattered droplets as high as the robot’s throat, as low as its groin. Those pretty white mourning clothes boiled away in instants; then the acid began to eat through artificial skin into the circuits below.

  The gooey thwock of impact snapped Maya out of her, “Shoot, shoot, shoot!” fit. She slapped the android on its shoulder and yelled, “Go after them! Throw them off the bridge! Now!”

  For a split second, I let myself hope the robot was too damaged to obey. But no such luck. With a sudden lurch it broke into that full-out sprint I’d seen from the other androids, a thunder-footed run across the bridge toward us. I was on the ground; I only had time to scuttle backward, hoping that maybe when the robot came for me, I could knock it off-balance with a kick in the shins.

  Only one problem—the robot wasn’t coming for me. When I’d ducked the robot’s first shot, Muscle and I had dropped down together. Now that I’d retreated a pace, the Muscle was closest to the android. Apparently that’s all Machine-Man cared about: never mind that Muscle was unconscious, while Festina and I were still threats. Simple-minded robot algorithms said if Muscle was closest, Muscle would take the high dive first.

  Which I didn’t realize till the android reached down and grabbed Muscle by the leg. “Hey!” I shouted. “Leave him alone. I’m the one your boss wants dead. I’m the blessed Antichrist, aren’t I?”

  Robots don’t know from Antichrists. Lifting Muscle by the ankle, the android jerked him up and over the abyss.

  Festina fired—a close-range shot straight into the robot’s ear. The same second I dived forward; the android was holding Muscle head down in front of me, leaving Muscle’s arm dangling limp within my reach. I snagged Muscle’s wrist just as the robot toppled: Festina’s last shot had fried one too many circuits for the machine to keep its balance.

  Clunk, the android hit the bridge…and now it was twitching with mechanical death spasms, half its servos cycling at random while others squeezed tight or snapped wide-open, clanky jerks shuddering through the robot’s body. Then like a fish flopping in the bottom of a rowboat, the android bounced clear up off the bridge, landed with a crunch, bounced again…and flipped over the side, smoke streaming off its body.

  It kept its grip on Muscle’s leg. The robot’s hand was locked in place, clutched frozen on the dipshit’s ankle.

  For one screaming instant, I held the full weight of Muscle plus the android by my one-handed grip on Muscle’s wrist…just long enough to dislocate my shoulder, a cracking pop, loud as thunder. I was lucky my arm wasn’t ripped clean off; but my fingers gave first, and I was holding nothing. Grasping at air as robot and dipshit plunged out of sight.

  I might have fallen myself, pulled over the edge by the jerk of their weight…and dizzy-sick-nauseous from the wrenching agony of my shoulder. Teetering, teetering, wobbly on the brink; but Festina stopped me: grabbed my legs and pulled me back from the edge, till I was lying sweet-solid on the bridge.

  “Bitch!” Maya shrieked. “The devil’s always on your side.”

  I couldn’t answer. The pain from my shoulder was driving me fast toward blackout. Festina called, “Let it go, Dr. Cuttack. There’s no reason to keep fighting. What do you want? To tell the world how wicked Faye is? I can arrange that; I’m an admiral.”

  Thanks a bunch, I thought.

  “Just open the door so we can go back,” Festina told Maya. “You’re obviously a gifted archaeologist; you’ve got full control over the nanites in this bunker. Just tell the nanites to open the door.”

  “Yes,” Maya said softly. “I could speak to the nanites…”

  I didn’t like the tone of her voice.

  Next moment, she shouted something in a language I didn’t recognize—the ancient Greenstrider tongue, I guess, calling a command to the control center.

  Under my body, the solid granite bridge began to turn gooey.

  “Oh shit,” Festina said. “Oh shit.”

  The bridge was made of nanites too. Of course: the bunker’s last line of defense. If the place was under all-out attack, with enemy troops crossing the bridge in such numbers you couldn’t shoot everyone…then you just told the bridge to dissolve itself. Send everyone plummeting to hell.

  The bridge surface had turned as soft as mud. The edges were beginning to drip into the chasm. Far to the opposite end, Maya laughed; the stone was melting under her feet too, but she didn’t care. “Got you!” she crowed. “This time I got you, bitch.”

  Festina grabbed my arm and pointed behind us. “Look!” The door sealing off the end of the bridge was starting to liquefy too. Crazy witless Maya must have ordered all nanites in the area to dissolve…including the ones blocking our retreat. Festina scrambled to her feet, dragging me up with her. “Let’s go, Faye! Come on, come on, come on.”

  My head was reeling, my shoulder throbbing, but I stumbled as best I could toward the exit. The bridge was as soft as mud in a rainshower. Each footstep sank a bit deepe
r. “You’ll never make it!” Maya screamed, nearly choking with laughter.

  “Come on,” Festina kept saying, “come on.” Pulling me hard. I forced myself to keep moving, knowing I was slowing her down. If she just left me and ran, she’d get away clean—but I knew she’d never do it. Festina would rather die than abandon me…which meant I had to keep plodding ahead.

  My foot suddenly splashed down, straight through the bridge. Like stepping into quicksand—another second and I’d sink clean out the other side. With the full force of my strength, I wrenched my arm from Festina’s grip and shoved her toward the open corridor. It might be the extra push she needed to get to safety…but no, she was sinking too, sinking through the bridge, liquid nano sludge, and we were both going down.

  Something shot out of the corridor in front of us, something shouting in Oolom. Tic. He swooped over our heads…and I yelled at Festina, “Grab him!”

  “You too!”

  I’d never hold on to him with my shoulder out of commission. And Tic couldn’t support both our weights. With a sweep of my good arm, I pushed myself down faster through the goo of the bridge: out the bottom, falling free.

  Looking up, I saw Festina falling too…but she’d caught Tic at the waist and he was slowing her descent like a hang glider.

  “Faye!” she shouted. Angry to tears. Survivor guilt, I thought. Welcome to Demoth, sister. Then the world exploded into colors. Green and gold and purple and blue.

  21

  PROPOSALS

  The shore of Lake Vascho.

  I lay on the beach under the quiet blackness of a northern night—clouds still riding fast on the warm spring wind, but not so thick as in Sallysweet River. Stars shone through the cloud gaps, thousands of stars…and I thought of nights once upon a time, sleeping clear and girlish with the whole universe open above me.