Robota

by Doug Chiang

  “Yes, my darling. And you gave it to me.”

  “Don’t call me your darling.”

  “My pet, my sweetling.”

  “Where is my sister?”

  “She’s safe. At home. Where she belongs.”

  “She doesn’t belong with you.”

  “You’ll get her when I have Caps’s dead body. Which isn’t long from now, I think.” He turned to the hunters. “Get that thing open,” he said.

  While they worked at prying open the machine’s door, Beryl knelt by Juomes’s body. “The one hero in all this story,” she said, “and now you’re dead. I suppose that makes this a tragedy.”

  “And it makes you the false friend who betrayed him.”

  “You had my sister,” said Beryl. “He would have understood.”

  “Not really,” said Kaantur. “When I had his family, he let me kill them rather than betray the secret of his cubing jewel.”

  Tears streaked Beryl’s face. “I’m not a hero, then. But what are you?”

  “I’m the winner,” said Kaantur. “That means I get to write the story however I want. Winners always do.”

  Inside the teleporter machine, as Decan closed the door, Caps felt nothing but failure and despair. “We left Beryl out there with them,” he said. “And what good does it do for us to hide in here? How long before Kaantur has this thing peeled open like an orange?”

  “Master,” said Decan, “we won’t be here.”

  “If you think I can make this machine transport us out of here just because Font Prime could …”

  “Font Prime couldn’t,” said Decan. “He could transmit an old code — a modified code — into the receiver on this machine, but he couldn’t use it to transport anything because this is the only teleporter left.”

  “Is this supposed to make me feel more confident somehow?” asked Caps.

  As he spoke, Decan raised a portion of the floor. Under it was a hatch, which he cranked open.

  It revealed nothing under it but smooth floor.

  Kaantur’s robots began prying and pounding on the outside of the teleporter.

  Decan rapped on the floor twice.

  The floor sank out of the way. Decan gestured for Caps to go through the hole.

  “Where does it go?” shouted Caps over the pounding outside.

  “Do you have another door to choose from?” asked Decan.

  He had a point. Caps sat on the edge of the hole and dropped through to the floor below.

  The Servants who had left Font Prime’s chamber only a few moments before were gathered in a circle around him. They inclined their heads, bowing to him.

  One of them approached him, took hold of his torn and bleeding arm, applied a spray, and taped it together. At once the pain stopped and the metal of his robotic skeleton was hidden under his all-too-human flesh.

  Decan-Trap came through the hole. Immediately one of the Servants reached through the opening, re-covered the interior floor of the teleporter, sealed the hatch, and then pressed the floor piece back into place.

  “The surface material seals automatically,” said Decan-Trap. “There will be no sign of our hole in the floor.”

  “So Kaantur will think I made the machine work,” said Caps.

  “Kaantur can think what Kaantur wants,” said Decan. “We have work to do.”

  Decan led Caps at a steady jog through the corridors, down shafts, into the pendant stone, past the dungeons, and finally into a room that was surrounded by windows showing a view of the ocean below them.

  Decan sat at a console, pressed a few controls, and watched as coded messages flashed across the screen.

  “What’s happening?” asked Caps.

  “Kaantur is giving the order for his invasion force to move into action,” said Decan.

  “Invasion force?”

  “He plans to destroy the jodphur city. The place where you and Elyseo met Beryl.”

  Caps felt his stomach sink. “Is that what Font Prime wanted?”

  “Don’t be absurd,” said Decan. “It has taken all Font Prime’s influence all these years to keep Kaantur from destroying it.”

  “And now that Font Prime is dead …”

  “Font Prime is not dead,” said Decan.

  “I told you, I don’t remember anything. However he put me together, he left out way too much of his memory. I don’t know how to do the things you think I should be able to do.”

  “Yet,” said Decan. “Kaantur’s sending out a fleet of ships to start poisoning the forests of the world.”

  “What for?” asked Caps.

  “He wants to eliminate all carbon-based life from Robota.”

  “But there’s no point to that,” said Caps.

  “We’re leaving at the same time as the other ships,” said Decan-Trap.

  “To do what?”

  “To get you your memory back.”

  A command came across the console. At once Decan’s fingers flew across the controls, and the room they were in began to quiver. Then it detached itself from the rock above it and plummeted downward toward the sea.

  “What are you doing!” cried Caps. “This thing isn’t flying!”

  “It’s going to crash into the sea,” said Decan, sounding rather proud.

  “That’s your plan?”

  “No,” said Decan, “it’s your plan.”

  “I thought Font Prime was silent!” shouted Caps as they fell between the vast cliffs of sea.

  7.1Memories of War

  “It depended on who was listening,” said Decan, quite calmly.

  They now plummeted toward the lower ocean level of the sunken part of the sea, but now Caps could see that there was yet another, much narrower, hole in the sea, and through this one no water fell.

  The only thing that fell into it was the airboat in which Caps sat gripping the arms of his chair.

  Surrounded by darkness, the airboat slowed, stopped.

  “Where are we?” asked Caps.

  “We are plumbing the depths of your memory,” said Decan.

  “My memory is a hole in the sea?”

  “Your memory is encoded into the crystals and metals of the crust of the planet.”

  “But I don’t know how to … to remember it.”

  “That’s what good Servants are for.”

  The door of the airboat opened. A red light shone into the darkness. Caps followed Decan-Trap out into the land under the sea.

  The door to the transporter broke off and clattered to the floor. One of the hunter robots dived through the open doorway. In a moment his head reemerged. “Gone,” he said.

  “Gone?” said Kaantur stupidly.

  “There’s nothing in here,” said the hunter.

  “He can’t have used the transporter!” cried Kaantur. “I had all the other units disabled!”

  “Nothing,” repeated the hunter.

  Beryl laughed.

  Kaantur whirled on her. “Your sister stays with me until Font Prime’s robot copy is dead.”

  Beryl continued laughing.

  Kaantur nodded, as if agreeing with her. “It’s good to laugh while you can.”

  Beryl’s laughter died. “What are you planning?”

  “Nothing that should stop you from laughing,” said Kaantur as he left the chamber.

  She ran after him. “What’s the trick? How have you trapped me?”

  “Life has trapped you. Mortality has trapped you. Allowing yourself to love other people has trapped you.” Kaantur put a hand in the middle of her chest and pushed her back into what had once been Font Prime’s chamber. “But your sister will be returned to you unharmed.”

  “Meaning what!”

  The door closed between them.

  Beryl turned back to look around the room. At Juomes’s inert body. At the poor tortured relic of Font Prime, dead at last. At the blood and fluids across the floor. At the doors leading … where? Nowhere. At least, nowhere that mattered to her.

  She had betrayed Ju
omes and Caps and Rend to save her sister, leading them straight into Kaantur’s trap. Yet that was exactly where they had wanted to go. How else would they have made their way into this heavily guarded chamber? And hadn’t her betrayal allowed Juomes’s goal to be achieved — the death of Font Prime? All she had done was save her sister, get Juomes and Caps where they wanted to be, and terminate the ruler of the robots.

  Except that none of those things meant what she had thought they would mean. Before Juomes died, he had realized that it was Kaantur all along, not Font Prime, who was his enemy. Juomes had died trying to help Caps save Font Prime from Kaantur-Set. And now Kaantur was gloating about something — more than the death of Juomes.

  I have been trapped by loving other people — yet my sister will be safe.

  He’s going to kill everyone else I love, she thought. He’s going to attack my city. The sentient jodphurs. The scientists who are so close to finding an airborne metal-eater. The people who trusted me. The people I betrayed.

  I’m going to live. My sister is going to live. And both of us are going to hate me for it.

  A door opened on the other side of the room.

  “Elyseo,” she said. She could not bear to show him the despair she felt, so she spoke in a light ironic tone. “You wouldn’t mind doing me a favor, would you?”

  “If I can,” he said.

  “Kill me now and save me the trouble later.” She managed a wry chuckle, but the tears coursing down her cheeks belied the jest.

  “No,” said Elyseo.

  Elyseo was right. Death would be too kind an outcome for her now. And besides, she had one job left that might be worth trying. “All right, I have a better idea anyway. Help me kill Kaantur-Set.”

  “I can’t,” said Elyseo. “I’m a Servant.”

  That took her aback. “You don’t wear the robe.”

  “That’s how we kept it a secret.”

  “You hunted with Kaantur.”

  “I never harmed any living soul.”

  “I wish I could say that.” Suddenly, she burst out sobbing.

  The robot came to her, touched her. The metal made her shudder. She turned away, then flung herself onto the body of Juomes.

  “I know,” said Elyseo. “I know that it’s no comfort, but I too have lost a loyal friend.”

  She looked up to see him cradling the corpse of Font Prime in his arms.

  “But you didn’t kill your friend.”

  “Nor did you kill yours,” said Elyseo. “But now I think we have important things to do.”

  “Like what?” she said. “Kaantur’s going to kill the last pocket of human resistance in the world.”

  “Maybe not,” said Elyseo.

  “Who’s going to stop him?”

  “Font Prime,” said Elyseo.

  “Font Prime is dead,” said Beryl.

  “Font Prime has been transported.”

  8.1Solider of Kaantur

  “Font Prime has been copied onto a machine.”

  Elyseo shook his head. “Font Prime has created for himself a body that has been robotically enhanced. But his heart, his brain, his skin, all his emotions, his will, his hopes, his loyalties — he is human to the core. He is human wearing armor under his skin.”

  Beryl buried her face again in Juomes’s fur. “It doesn’t matter. Kaantur has won.”

  “The struggle between Font Prime and Kaantur-Set has gone on for nearly three hundred years,” said Elyseo. “In all that time, despite his best efforts, Kaantur has never succeeded in taking control away from Font Prime. He thinks that because he killed this poor thing” — Elyseo looked down again at the body in his arms — “he now rules the robots as he has wanted to for so long.”

  “But he doesn’t?”

  “They obey him for now,” said Elyseo, “but they obey only his words. He doesn’t speak to their minds.”

  “And Font Prime does?”

  “Did,” said Elyseo. “And will again.”

  “How?” asked Beryl.

  “When Caps is able to access all his hidden memories, he will again be able to reach out to the minds of the robots.”

  “And control them?”

  “And persuade them,” said Elyseo. “Why can’t humans ever see us as we are? The living robots are not just empty machines. As surely as a hunter-beast, as a talking jodphur, as a nattering monkey, we are sentient beings with minds of our own. We follow Font Prime because we trust him. And when we have to choose between him and Kaantur — it won’t be hard. Kaantur has his human-hating followers, but the followers of Font Prime are far more numerous.”

  “But less violent.”

  “Less violent, but not necessarily less powerful. Not all power comes from a willingness to kill.”

  “No,” said Beryl. “Sometimes it comes from a willingness to die.”

  8.2Airboat Machines

  9.1Invasion Force

  9.2The Landing

  The invasion fleet rose up out of the water on giant spider legs, walking ashore and depositing a robot army as if they were turtles coming ashore to spawn. Along with the robots, they unloaded pairs of giant grasshopper legs, which the robots mounted like horses so they could walk at a pace unmatchable by any beast. From this battle the jodphurs would find no escape. Those who did not fight and die would flee and die — but die they would.

  The jodphurs and humans had set sentinels along the shore, and they now lit their signal fires. Kilometers inland, their counterparts saw the flames and lit new ones, spreading the word inward. The robot invasion had come. Out of their mushroom towers the humans and jodphurs descended, moving swiftly to the fortifications and ambuscades that would neither slow nor deceive the coming robots. They knew, in their despair, that this would be the last stand of the last remnant of the intelligent beasts. All they could hope to accomplish was to kill as many of the irreplaceable robots as came under the power of their hands.

  Who else could see the end of the human race on Robota? Deep in the bowels of the world, under a hole in the sea, within the vent of a once-submerged volcano, Caps — Font Prime — could see everything.

  Through the eyes of squirrels he saw it, through the fingers of grass he touched it, through the ears of rabbits he heard, and he could taste the throb of the robots’ thunderous steps in the quivering sap rising in the trees.

  9.3March of the Stiltwalker Army

  For all of these were tied together, no individual aware of it, but all of them intertwined, their perceptions flashing and floating and streaming downward into the soil, into the very stone of the earth, where they were gathered by crystals that had grown upward toward the surface from the deepest underlying rock. Thin ribbons of rockbound metal became the highways of knowledge, carrying imperceptible data to the one who could perceive them.

  Caps embraced the stone pillar of the navel of the earth, obsidian pressing against the front of his body, the pure perfect crystal bonding to him as if it could bend to fit him, or as if his flesh had grown over it and made it part of him. Out of the warm stone, trembling in the magnetic potential of the crystal, there flowed all that Caps could bear to see of Kaantur’s invasion.

  “Can I stop this?” he asked softly. “Can I call these robots back?”

  “Call, Font Prime,” said Decan. “See what they do.”

  “Look at me,” Caps whispered.

  “I can hear you,” said Decan. “But who else?”

  It was not with his voice that he would have to call.

  Instead, he had to think of the robots of the world as a part of himself. The way a man might will his hand to flex, his knees to bend, so Caps had to find that impulse, that muscle, that joint, that part of himself that was a window into the minds of the robots.

  It was not with words he spoke, but in his mind it seemed like words.

  “Wait,” he said through the impulse of this unfamiliar new limb, this voice that spoke into the minds of his people. And then, because all he controlled was the ability to make them f
eel his will, not to make them obey it, he added, “Please, my friends.”

  He could hear Kaantur screaming through the antennae that quivered from every robot’s head: “He is not Font Prime! Don’t listen to him!”

  “You know me,” Caps said to them. “You know that I am one of you, but I am also one of them. Robot, and human. Once it was human assassins who tried to kill me; now I beg you, my friends, to let it be robots who give life back to the living. Slay no man or beast today. Kill no forest. Break no chain binding life to life and mind to tool.”

  He could feel-see-hear-taste them on the hard-packed earth of the plains, in their airboats over the forests, on their grasshopper legs bounding over desert sands and plunging through high grasslands. Most of them heard his voice in their minds with a sigh of recognition, with the ease of ancient friendship. “You’re back,” they said. “Where were you? Why has all this death been done in your name?”

  9.4Jodphur Warriors

  “Turn away from the slaughter,” said Font Prime. Said Caps, “Come home to see me walk among you once again.”

  “He’s a fraud!” cried Kaantur-Set. “The real Font Prime is dead! He died today!”

  In reply, Caps remembered the scene with all the clarity of his mind — how it felt to be plucked into the air, caught by the feet, swung like a bludgeon against the cylinder. The memory of the shards spraying around him, the viscous fluid flowing, and that helpless body dangling from its life support.

  Then, Kaantur’s hands tearing the machinery from the ruined man. Kaantur’s arm striking the ribs, smashing the heart, bringing the life that lingered there to a shuddering halt.

  “Yet I am not dead,” said Caps. “I transported myself out of the prison Kaantur made for me. I made myself anew, returned my memories into my mind, and I speak to you now more clearly than I ever could before. Come home and see me, my friends.”

  “Go forth and slay the last of the biological life!” cried Kaantur-Set. “Then come back and help me deal with this impostor, wherever he’s hiding! You know that I am the strong one. You know that life belongs to the one who has in him the power to survive.”