by Doug Chiang
“How do we know he didn’t?” said Juomes. “How do we know he hasn’t used these” — and he tweaked Elyseo’s antennae — “to tell Kaantur-Set where we are?”
“I think the more important question,” said the young woman to Caps, “is who you are, and why we should trust you.”
“Are you one of the elders?” asked Caps. “You seem young.”
The woman looked at him with cool disdain, as if to say, I may seem young, but I know more than you do.
“Beryl is the one who brought us news of you,” said Eyth.
“She is the one who kept us from killing you when we saw you,” said Keedim.
“The machine you’ve been following,” said Beryl. “The one that apparently spawned you — Kaantur and his hunters took it to Transept City.”
“Then you’ll never get it back,” said Elyseo. “The Guardians of Transept City are far fiercer than the hunter robots. They aren’t sentient, but they’re relentless and irresistibly powerful. Not even a jodphur could stand against them.”
“Silence that thing,” said Keedim.
Two jodphurs lifted Elyseo by his legs and dangled him high above them, ready to smash him to the ground and grind him underfoot, if given the word.
“There was a monkey with them,” said Beryl.
“Jodphurs can’t catch monkeys,” said Juomes. “Except in the sense that dogs catch fleas.”
That was all it took to bring Rend out of hiding. He had clung to the nearly nerveless spine of the last of the jodphurs through the journey. Now he came out scolding Juomes, even though his own method of arrival seemed to illustrate just what Juomes had said.
Everyone laughed at this, but in the end, their questioning turned serious again. Where did you come by the name Caps? I don’t know, Rend told me that was my name and I knew of no other. How did you come to be inside a teleporter — if that’s what it is? I don’t know. Rend said that every time I tried to use it, I came out with no memory. Then how do you know language, and all the other things you seem to know? I told you, I don’t remember, I have no idea. I am what you see before you.
“I can’t find out who I am without finding out how that machine brought me here, and where I came from. So if you let me go, I’ll make my way to Transept City and try to learn what I can.”
“Then you’ll be killed,” said Keedim. “Your pet robot is right in saying that no humans — or jodphurs, or hunter-beasts — have come out of there alive.”
“I’m going with him,” said Juomes. “They have my jewel now. I want it back.”
“That’s not all you want,” said Beryl, challenging him.
“All right then,” Juomes answered. “I’m tired of this game. The robots will die out eventually, since they can make no more. But it’s taking too long.”
Keedim smiled grimly. “You seem to have no faith in the work we’re doing.”
“Maybe you’ll succeed, maybe you won’t,” said Juomes. “Meanwhile, I’ll find Font Prime, if I can, and when I do, I’ll destroy it.”
“And you trust this stranger, this ‘Caps,’ on such a dangerous mission?” said Keedim.
“We have already trusted each other,” said Juomes. “There’s more to him than meets the eye.”
“Go, then,” said Eyth. “We won’t keep you. But the robot stays, to be tried for his crimes.”
Caps laughed. “Tried? For his crimes? When your only conceivable witness claims she can’t tell one robot from another? And how can a machine commit a crime? All you’d be doing is trying him for the crimes of other robots.”
They looked at him in silence. “A citizen of our city could be expelled for saying such things,” said Eyth.
4.5Beryl, the Eyes of the Forest
“Then you’re no better than Kaantur-Set,” said Caps. “He also sentenced Elyseo to die because of things he said.”
“You test our patience,” said Keedim. “I need no trial. I will throw this robot to the ground and grind it under my feet.”
“Do that and you will have sentenced Juomes and me to death,” said Caps, “because Elyseo is our only hope of accomplishing our mission in Transept City.”
“What?” said Juomes. “I would never trust a machine!”
“You have no choice,” said Caps. “It’s a robot city. Do you know where anything is? Do you think they post directories of the city in convenient places for visitors to read? We have no hope without a guide, and we have no guide but Elyseo.”
It took another half hour, but the jodphurs set Elyseo down — none too gently — and Eyth and Keedim agreed that he could go with Caps and Juomes.
“Then I’m going, too,” announced Beryl.
“Why?” asked Caps.
“Because I have also been in Transept City,” said Beryl. “Not far, but far enough to know about the Guardians. And to have evaded them and escaped. Up to a point, I’ll know if the robot leads us true.”
“If ‘Beryl the Eyes of the Forest’ wants to be the eyes of the city as well,” said Juomes, “I’m glad to have her with us.”
Thus it was that, in the morning, it was a party of five that set off for Transept City: Caps, Juomes, Beryl, Rend, and Elyseo. Through the forest of mushrooms Beryl led the way.
“How did humans make such mushrooms grow?” asked Caps.
“We have given up the science of tools — we can never defeat the robots using machines,” said Beryl. “But the science of life, we excel at that. Let us say that we taught a mushroom to do what no mushroom had ever done, and when its spores sprouted, the new-sprung mushrooms remembered the lessons better than their parents.”
“So was it your science of life that brought intelligence to the jodphurs?” asked Caps.
“It was my jewel,” said Juomes. “It belonged to my grandmother, and she lent it to the people of the city. Wasn’t it?”
Beryl only smiled. “What kind of fool would try to bring intelligence to the most dangerous predator in the world?”
“I’d say Kaantur-Set’s hunters are the most dangerous,” said Caps.
“They aren’t predators,” said Beryl. “They’re a disease.”
4.6 - 4.10Creatures of the Forest
4.11Caps and Rend
4.12Painted
“And maybe,” said Juomes, “we’re the cure.”
Caps remembered something Keedim had said. “What is the work they’re doing — your people, I mean, Beryl?”
“We stay alive,” she said. “We find ways to farm that won’t be obvious, so we can feed our people. We try to protect our children from the robots, so there’ll be a next generation.”
“But when Keedim said Juomes had no faith in the work your people were doing, they were talking about the decline of the robots, and how long it was taking.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Juomes, as if Caps were crazy.
“You certainly trust in your memory,” said Beryl, “considering that it only works intermittently.”
Only then did Caps realize that whatever the work of the human mushroom city might be, they weren’t going to tell him, at least not in front of Elyseo. And even if Elyseo were not there, they still might not trust Caps enough to tell him anything that really mattered. Caps couldn’t blame them. He didn’t even know himself well enough to know if he could be trusted.
4.13Rock City
5.1Strangers and Friends
5.2Stone and Air
There are versions of the legend in which this noble party entered Transept City accompanied by a great windstorm that filled the city with sand and dust, or an earthquake that opened a gate for them, or a flood that made rivers of the streets.
In reality they entered the city like awestruck tourists. The gates were not barred or even supervised. Nor had anyone accosted them as they approached, passing great stone shapes that seemed to be a mockery of the mushroom city, except that some of them still hung in the air, suspended by the gravity balancers of some ancient sculptor. They also passed the fallen head
s of statues once built in memory of robots — though Juomes insisted that the robots had been gargoyles. “There’s no point building statues of machines. They all look alike.”
Transept City had been carved out of a great pillar of stone. It was a city built for giants, but it stood so high above the surrounding terrain that the vast scale of it could not be seen. Robots entered and left the city by means of shafts and elevators.
The five legendary heroes climbed up by means of one of the old construction ramps that wound around and around the shaft of the pillar. To Caps’s surprise, it was Juomes who called for a rest now and then. Though he claimed he was stopping out of concern for Beryl and Rend, neither of them ever seemed tired, and Juomes always did. But no one said anything about it. It occurred to Caps that, while Juomes had begun the journey full of vigor, seemingly inexhaustible, the rigors of the trip were taking a heavy toll on him. He seemed to require more effort to start moving, like an old man or a machine that needed oiling. Well, he might be old.
5.3Transept City
Apart from the sheer effort of going endlessly uphill, though, the passage into the city was easy, with neither obstacle nor challenge. Juomes must have been thinking the same thing, because he said to Beryl, “Now that I see how easy it is, I’m a little less impressed that you were able to get inside.”
“It was getting out that presented the main challenge,” she replied.
Here’s how heroic they were: They followed Elyseo into the city, ignoring his protest that the Guardians would sense them immediately. He led them in and out of passageways and chambers, vast empty things. But they never moved as fast as he urged them to, because they could not help but gawk at the sheer size of everything around them. Even Juomes, large as he was, looked like a baby playing in his parents’ closet.
“Now you know how I feel all the time,” said Rend.
That was their last laugh inside Transept City, for as they rounded the next corner they found themselves facing a half dozen Guardians, huge white machines more than ten meters high, which strode on two legs and outran them in moments when they tried to flee.
5.4The Guardians of Transept City
To Caps’s surprise, however, the Guardians did not kill them or even hurt them — their grasp was considerably gentler than the jodphurs’ had been.
“They’re designed to catch, not to kill,” said Elyseo.
“So what happens to us?”
“They junk us,” said Elyseo. “We’re assumed to be defective robots.”
The Guardians lowered them into a giant concrete container with smooth, polished sides that sloped slightly inward. The lid they placed on top was so heavy that it took two of the giant Guardians to set it in place. Fortunately, it was perforated so it let in air and light.
By that light they discovered that only four of them had made it into the prison.
“Where’s Beryl?” asked Juomes.
“Always hanging back, that one,” said Rend. “They missed her.”
“The Guardians don’t miss anyone,” said Elyseo. “She must have been caught by another team and put into another cell.”
5.5Discards
All around them were dead bodies — a few of them the skeletons of long-dead animals, mostly birds, but the vast majority were the broken, corroded corpses of robots.
“If they can’t make any more robots, why would they program the Guardians to discard defectives instead of repairing them?” asked Caps.
“Most of these were new when they went in here,” said Elyseo. “Freshly made robots that never became sentient. Discards.”
“They threw away the whole robot because the brain unit didn’t work?”
“They don’t know why the brain doesn’t work,” said Elyseo. “So they start over.”
“So this is a city where they used to make new robots.”
“They still do,” said Elyseo. “But not mass produced anymore. Handmade, one at a time, in the effort to build one with a mind that works.”
Juomes chuckled. “So here’s the graveyard of Robota. This is where all the robots will end up, now that they can’t replicate themselves. Along with their dreams.”
“But Elyseo,” said Caps, “you aren’t defective, and yet here you are.”
“But I am defective,” said Elyseo. “I ignored the identify-or-avert signal.”
“You were getting a signal?” demanded Juomes, suddenly suspicious. “And you didn’t tell us?”
“Yes, from the time I came within range of the city down there on the ground below,” said Elyseo. “I assumed you knew that all cities send out a signal like that. If I had identified myself, Kaantur would have found out that I wasn’t dead.”
“Why aren’t robots made so that identification is automatic?” asked Caps. “I mean, you’re machines, and you could be wired to identify yourself no matter what.”
Elyseo seemed reluctant to answer. “Would you stand for it?” he asked. “Always having everyone know who you were without any ability to control it?”
“No,” said Caps. “But …”
“But you’re a human, not a machine,” said Juomes. “They’re all like Kaantur-Set. They all wish they were alive, instead of being big mechanical toys.”
“There was a time,” said Elyseo, ignoring Juomes’s gibe, “when there were some robots that were sentient, but most were not. The nonsentient ones were … like slaves. And even though they had no mind and could not feel their slavery, we became ashamed of having slaves.”
“Ashamed,” said Caps, “in front of the humans.”
“Yes,” said Elyseo. “We wanted to be equals.”
“That’ll be the day,” said Juomes.
“Humans had given up slavery. Could we do less?” asked Elyseo. “And once we decided to make no more slaves, none of us were willing to have some automatic response that wasn’t under our own control. It’s part of being free, not having to tell what you don’t want to tell.”
“Interesting thought,” said Caps. “That the essence of humanity is the ability to lie.”
“Not lie,” said Elyseo. “Just … withhold.”
“Who made you?” asked Caps.
“Me?” asked Elyseo. “I could check my …” He paused a moment. “I was made in the manufactory at Bilellepad.”
“I mean, in the first place,” said Caps. “Before robots ever came to Robota. Who made the first of your kind? Who was it who learned how to make you intelligent, instead of all being machines and … slaves?”
“I don’t know,” said Elyseo. “We aren’t given that information.”
“Some living creature, anyway,” said Juomes. “Life grows from life — machines don’t grow from machines.”
“Your kind grew from a machine,” said Elyseo to Juomes.
Juomes growled, but made no reply. Instead he looked up at the lid that held them in. “We could fit through those holes in the lid,” he said.
“Probably,” said Elyseo. “If you can climb there.”
But of course they couldn’t. The walls were too smooth, and the inward slope defeated their attempts to make a living (or mostly living) pyramid. They couldn’t get high enough for Rend to scramble up their bodies to reach the openings.
And there the legend might have ended — indeed, had their story ended there, what legend would have grown around them? — except that a shadow passed over the perforations and a voice called out. “Are you down there?”
It was Beryl.
They called to her, and she lowered a rope.
Caps looked at the rope, at Juomes, at Elyseo. “We’re supposed to climb this?” he called up to her.
“I’m not hauling you up, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” she called down.
Apparently robots were designed for this kind of work, because no sooner had she finished speaking than Elyseo passed the rope under his arm and through a slot in his side, and then hung limply from the rope as some wheeled mechanism whirred him swiftly upward.
&n
bsp; “Can you do that?” Caps asked Juomes.
“I just put the rope in my mouth and swallow my way up,” said Juomes. “So you’d better go first.”
Caps climbed, again surprised — though by now he should not have been — at how easily he could do it, how little it wearied him. Juomes, climbing afterward, was enormously strong — but also heavy enough that it was quite an exertion for him. He was panting when he reached the top. Caps had not been.
Caps pushed these thoughts aside, however, for he had other, more pressing questions.
“How did you evade the Guardians, when we couldn’t?” Caps asked Beryl.
“More to the point,” Juomes asked her, “why aren’t they chasing us now?”
It was Elyseo who answered. “Because the ones that caught us are stupid.”
“Good thing we didn’t run into any smart ones, then,” said Juomes.
Beryl explained. “They already caught you. They’re patrolling the perimeter again, looking for new intruders and malfunctioning robots. They don’t know or care that you got out.”
“My question goes unanswered,” said Caps.
Beryl sighed. “Juomes already knows my story. So, I imagine, does this robot.”
“I don’t,” said Elyseo-Set. “Just because we have antennae to share data — when we choose to — doesn’t mean our leaders share all that they know with us.” He held up his one hand to calm Juomes. “My broadcast unit is switched off, for my own protection. I can’t imagine I’ll ever turn it back on. If you want my antennae as trophies, you can have them.”
Juomes looked at him with contempt. “It’s not a trophy if you give them to me.”
“I’ll turn my back and close my eyes,” said Elyseo.
Juomes turned his back on Elyseo and waved for Beryl to go on.
So Beryl told Caps her story. Briefly. Unemotionally. “I grew up in one of the last human communities to survive in one of the old cities. The hunter robots killed my parents, but when they found my sister and me, just babies then, they kept us as pets.” She pulled from her pocket a thin metal sheet that held a lifelike picture of her sister. “We amused them.”
