Code Of The Lifemaker

by Hogan, James

A moment of silence dragged by. Then the captain's voice came from inside the

  ship. "Ship One to Surface One. It doesn't seem to be an attack. In fact I'm not

  convinced they even know we're here at all. They started off fast just after

  their tail-end-Charlie arrived up front. It looks more like they're trying to

  lose that other bunch behind them."

  "Surface Two to forward observation post. Do you see evidence of weapons or

  hostile intent?"

  "Negative, sir."

  "We'll sit tight and see," Giraud's voice said. "Hold it for now."

  "All units, hold your fire," Wallis instructed.

  On the screen of his wristset, Zambendorf followed the progress of the Taloids

  coming up the far side of the rise. It was unbelievable— clothed robots sitting

  astride four-legged, galloping machines, now only a few hundred yards away.

  "Do you see them?" Thirg called as Dornvald glanced back. Thirg was having

  enough trouble clinging to the madly heaving mount beneath him as it tackled the

  steepening rise, without daring to turn his own head.

  "Just coming out onto the flat," Dornvald shouted back. "At least we're on" the

  open ground. We should gain more distance now."

  "There are heat lights shining from places above us on both sides," Geynor

  called from Dornvald's other side.

  "I see them."

  "What manner of thing shines thus in the desert?"

  "Who knows what guards the lair of dragons?"

  Dornvald, Thirg, and Geynor reached the top of the rise together with Rex

  whirring excitedly a few yards behind, and plunged on over its rounded crest. An

  instant later they had crashed to a stunned halt, their mounts rearing and

  bucking. The remaining outlaws stopped in confusion behind as they appeared in

  ones and twos over the hill.

  Before them, towering proudly inside a halo of almost brilliant dragon light,

  was the King of Dragons, attended by servants lined up before it in humble

  reverence. It was smooth and elongated, and had tapered limbs—much like the

  dragon that had appeared over Xerxeon, but far larger. Its eyes shone like fires

  of violet, but it made no move as it stood, watching silently. Thirg could do

  nothing but stare, dumbfounded, while Dornvald and Geynor gazed at the Dragon

  King in wonder. Rex was backing away slowly, and behind them several of the

  outlaws had dismounted and fallen to their knees.

  Then Thirg realized that one of the dragon's servants was beckoning with both

  arms in slow, deliberate movements that seemed to be trying to convey

  reassurance. The servants were not robeings as he had first thought, he saw now;

  they were of roughly similar shape, but constructed not of metal but some soft,

  bendable casing more like artificial organics from artisans' plantations . . .

  like children's dolls. What manner, then, of artificial beings were these? Had

  the Dragon King manufactured them to attend its needs? If so, what awesome,

  unimaginable powers did it command?

  The servant beckoned again. For a few seconds longer, Thirg hesitated. Then he

  realized the futility of even thinking to disobey; who could hope to defy the

  wishes of one with such powers? Without quite realizing what he was doing, Thirg

  urged his mount forward once more at a slow walk and entered the circle of

  violet radiance. Nothing terrible happened, and after exchanging apprehensive

  glances, Dornvald and Geynor followed him. The others watched from farther back,

  and one by one found the courage to move forward. Those on the ground rose

  slowly. Then Fenyig, who was standing with the rearguard on the top of the rise

  behind and looking back anxiously called, "Pray to the dragon to protect us,

  Dornvald. The soldiers are below already, and almost upon us."

  No sooner had he shouted his warning when the first missile from a

  fireball-thrower sailed over the ridge and splattered itself across an ice

  boulder. The second hit one of the pack steeds squarely, and the animal fell

  screeching with its midbody engulfed in violet flames. On the rise, Fenyig and

  his companions scattered amid a hail of projectiles hurled from below, one of

  them slumping forward with a corrosive dart protruding from his shoulder. More

  balls fell, and one of them ignited something metallic halfway up one of the

  overlooking slopes.

  "Number two searchlight emplacement hit!" a voice shouted over the radio. "No

  casualties."

  "Near miss on Yellow Sector. We've got equipment burning from splashes of

  incendiary."

  Another ball landed just in front of the assembled reception party, which broke

  ranks and fell back toward the lander in alarm. "That one almost got the ship!"

  a voice yelled.

  "Colonel Wallis, engage with maximum force in the approach zone," Giraud

  ordered.

  "All forward units, fire for effect! Launch gunships and engage enemy below

  point three-seven hundred!"

  Thirg whirled to look behind as a thundering roar erupted suddenly from below

  the rise, mixed with a hail of chattering, loud swishing sounds, and deafening

  concussions. More roars came from overhead. He looked up. Two of the small

  dragons were climbing; then violet-flaming darts streaked down and out of view,

  and an instant later more concussions from beyond the rise jarred his ears. He

  had never in his life experienced anything like this. His senses reeled. He sat

  frozen, his body and his mind paralyzed by terror.

  And then all was quiet. He looked around fearfully. Dornvald and Geynor were

  sitting petrified where they had been before the thunder. Farther back, Fenyig

  and the rearguard were motionless, staring back down the rise. They seemed

  bewildered. Thirg looked at Dornvald. Dornvald shook his head uncomprehendingly,

  and after a few more seconds called back, "What terrifies you so, Fenyig? What

  has happened?"

  At first Thirg thought Fenyig hadn't heard. Then Fenyig turned his head slowly,

  raised an arm to point back the way they had come, and answered in an unsteady

  voice, "The King's soldiers have been destroyed, Dornvald . . . Every one of the

  soldiers is destroyed—torn to pieces and smitten by dragon fire ... in a

  moment."

  "A storm of lightning bolts!" another, just before Fenyig, choked hoarsely. "We

  saw it. The whole of the King's army would have fared no better, nor even

  twelve-twelves of armies." He looked at Thirg. "What league have you entered

  into, Sorcerer?"

  The servants who had retreated to the dragon for protection were advancing

  again, and the stunned outlaws were slowly returning to life. More servants were

  appearing from concealment on the slopes above— there were more of them than

  Thirg had realized. Although still shaken, he was beginning to feel that the

  worst was over, as if they had passed a kind of test. For he had seen the

  awesome anger of the dragon, and the dragon had spared them. Perhaps, then, only

  those foolish enough to provoke its anger had reason to fear it, Thirg thought.

  He looked at it again. Still it stood watching calmly, as if nothing had

  happened. Had disposing of a whole company of King's soldiers really been so

  effortless and insignificant as that?

  The other outlaws seemed to be
arriving at similar conclusions. Dornvald had

  dismounted and was cautiously leading his mount toward the central group of

  servants, and Geynor was following suit a few yards behind. The servants seemed

  to be encouraging them with arm motions and gestures. Thirg noticed a movement

  just to one side and turned his head with a start to find a servant standing

  close below, with another watching from nearby. A feeling of revulsion swept

  over him as he glimpsed the grotesque features glowing softly behind the

  window-face of the head that was not a head—a deformed parody of a face, molded

  into a formless mass that writhed and quivered like the jelly in a craftsman's

  culture vat. Luminous jelly held together by flexible casing! Had the Dragon

  King made its servants thus as a punishment? Thirg hoped that his thoughts and

  feelings didn't show.

  Zambendorf gazed up incredulously at the silver-gray colossus staring down at

  him from its incongruous seat. It had two oval matrixes that suggested compound

  eyes shaded by complicated delicate, extendable metal vanes, a pair of

  protruding concave surfaces that were probably soundwave collectors, and more

  openings and louvers about its lower face, possibly inlet/outlet ducts for

  coolant gas. It had nothing comparable to a mouth, but the region below its

  head, which was supported by a neck of multiple, sliding, overlapping joints,

  was recessed and contained an array of flaps and covers. The robot was wearing a

  brown tunic of coarse material woven from what appeared to be wire, a heavy belt

  of black metallic braid, boots of what looked like rubberized canvas, and a

  voluminous dull red riding cloak made up of thousands of interlocked, rigid

  platelets. Its hands consisted of three fingers and an opposing thumb, all

  formed from multisegmented concave claws connected by ball joints at the

  finger-bases and wrists. A smaller machine, suggesting in every way a ridiculous

  mechanical dog, stayed well back, keeping the steed between itself and the

  humans.

  What kind of brain the creature contained, Zambendorf didn't know, but he felt

  it had to be something beyond any technology even remotely imaginable on Earth.

  And yet, paradoxically, the culture of the Taloids showed every appearance of

  being backward by Earth standards—medieval, in fact. And everything that

  Zambendorf saw now confirmed that conclusion. So what would a medieval mind have

  made of the army's recent performance? He examined the robot's face for a hint

  of bemusement or terror, but saw nothing he could interpret. The face seemed

  incapable of expression.

  "I still don't believe this, Karl," Abaquaan's voice whispered in his helmet,

  for once sounding genuinely stupefied. "What kind of machines are they? Where

  could they have come from?"

  Still awestruck, Zambendorf moved a pace forward. "It seems to want to say

  something," he murmured distantly without taking his eyes off the robot. "But it

  makes no move. Does it fear us. Otto?"

  "Wouldn't you, after what just happened to that other bunch?" Abaquaan said,

  beginning to sound more normal.

  To one side, in an attempt to convey reassurance, Charles Giraud and Konrad

  Seltzman, a linguist, were gesticulating at two robots who had dismounted, but

  without much apparent success. Maybe the robots hadn't realized that they were

  safe from their pursuers—some of them kept looking back, as if they still

  thought they were likely to be attacked. Zambendorf thought he could do

  something about that. He operated the channel selector on his wristset to

  display the view from over the rise being picked up by an image-intensifying

  camera in the army's forward observation post, and raised his arm so that the

  robot could see the screen. The robot looked at his arm for a second or two,

  moved its head to glance at his face, and then studied his arm again. Zambendorf

  pointed to the wristset with his other hand.

  Why did the servant wear a small vegetable on his arm, and why was he showing

  it? Thirg wondered. Perhaps it was an indication of rank or status. No, that

  wasn't it; the servant wanted him to look at it. He looked. Shapes were visible

  in the square of violet light, faint and difficult to distinguish in the glare.

  Thirg adjusted his vision to the nearest he could manage to dragon light and

  stared for awhile before he realized what he was seeing. It was a view looking

  out over the open ground they had crossed back beyond the rise. Piles of debris

  were scattered here and there and lots of buckled and twisted machine parts

  spread over a wide area, with violet glows and obscuring patches of smoke

  hanging above . . . And then Thirg gasped as he realized what it meant. Now he

  understood what devastating powers Fenyig had been trying to describe. In those

  few brief seconds . . . and there was nothing left. Then it came to Thirg slowly

  that the servant was trying to show how the dragon had helped them.

  But what form of magic vegetable was this, that could see through a hillside?

  Thirg looked at the servant, and then turned his head several times to look back

  at the rise, just to be sure he was not mistaken.

  Zambendorf felt a surge of elation. Something that they both recognized as

  having meaning had passed between him and the robot. "It understands!" he said

  excitedly. "Rudimentary, but it's communication! It's a beginning, Otto!"

  "Are you sure?"

  "I showed it the scene from over the hill. It understood. It's trying to ask me

  to confirm that it's seeing what it thinks it's seeing."

  Abaquaan motioned for the robot to climb down from its mount, and after a few

  seconds of hesitation it complied. Then it gestured at Zambendorf's wristset

  some more, and held up a hand and began pointing at it repeatedly first from the

  front and then from the back, and in between pointing back at the rise. "It

  can't make it out," Abaquaan said. "It can't figure how the picture could be

  coming through solid ground from behind the hill."

  The robot was mystified and curious. Suddenly much about it seemed less strange.

  Zambendorf could feel himself warming toward it already. "I'm sorry, but how

  could I even begin to explain the technology, my friend?" he said. "For now, I'm

  afraid, you'll just have to accept it as magic."

  "Try getting the idea of a camera across," Abaquaan suggested. "At least it

  would say we're not actually looking through the hill from here."

  "Mmm . . . maybe." Zambendorf switched the wristset to another channel, this

  time showing a view of the lander and its immediate surroundings from the drone

  hovering above the landing site.

  It took Thirg a while to comprehend that he was looking down on the Dragon King

  now. Then it came to him with a jolt that the dots to one side of the dragon

  were the dragon-servants and robeings around him; in fact one of them was

  himself! He looked at the servant and pointed down at the ground, then up at the

  sky. The servant confirmed by mimicking him. Thirg tilted his head back to peer

  upward, and after searching for a few seconds made out a pinpoint of violet

  light hanging high overhead. Could the servant's magic vegetable see through the

  eyes of the flying dragons
? But that meant that a mere servant who possessed

  such a vegetable could send his eyes anywhere in the world and see all that

  happened without moving from one place. If the dragon bestowed such powers upon

  its servants, what unimaginable abilities did it possess itself?

  Zambendorf could sense the robot's awe as it finally made out what the screen

  was showing. He switched from the drone's telescopic channel to a lower

  resolution, wide-angle view. The screen now displayed a much broader area of

  terrain, with the lander barely discernible as a speck in the center. After more

  pointing and gesticulating, the robot seemed to get the idea. Zambendorf

  switched to a high-altitude reconnaissance flyer circling just below the aerosol

  layer, whose cameras covered several hundred miles of the surrounding desert and

  a large tract of the mountainous region beyond its edge. Then the robot started

  making excited gestures, pointing upward again with its arm extended as far as

  it would stretch. "Higher! Higher!" It was important. The robot seemed to be

  going frantic.

  Zambendorf frowned and turned his head inside his helmet to look at Abaquaan.

  Abaquaan returned a puzzled look and shrugged. Zambendorf stared at the robot,

  tilted himself back ponderously to follow its pointing finger upward for a few

  seconds, and then looked at its face again. Then, suddenly, he understood. "Of

  course!" he exclaimed, and changed bands to connect the wristset through to an

  image being picked up from orbit by the Orion and sent down in the trunk beam to

  the surface lander via a relay satellite.

  Giraud and the others had noticed what was going on and were gathering round to

  watch curiously. "What's happening with this guy?" one of the group asked.

  "What lies beyond the clouds has always been a mystery to its race," Zambendorf

  replied. "It's asking me if that is where we come from, and whether we can tell

  it what's out there and what kind of world it lives on. They've never even seen

  the sky, don't forget, let alone been able to observe the motions of stars and

  planets."

  "You mean you could get all that from just a few gestures?" Konrad Seltzman

  sounded incredulous.

  "Of course not," Zambendorf replied airily. "I have no need of such crude

  methods."

  But beside them, Thirg had almost forgotten for the moment that the