A Circus of Hells

by Poul Anderson

  He tried on the robots’ band. The digital code chattered with no alteration that he could detect.

  He tried other frequencies.

  After an hour or more, he unplugged and rose. His muscles ached, his mouth was parched, his voice came hoarse out of a roughened throat. “No go, I’m afraid.”

  Djana had been seated on the sanitary unit from her pack, which doubled as a stool protecting against the elemental cold beneath. He had watched her shrink further and further into herself. “So we’re finished,” she mumbled.

  He sighed. “The circumstances could be more promising. The big computer should’ve replied instantly to a distress call.” He paused. The wind blew, the stars jeered. He straightened. “I’m going for a first-hand look.”

  “Out in the open?” She scrambled erect. Her gauntlets closed spastically around his. “You’ll be swarmed and killed!”

  “Not necessarily. We saw from the boat, things do appear to be different yonder from elsewhere. For instance, none of the accumulated wreckage you’d expect if fighting went on. Anyhow, it’s our last resort.” Flandry patted her in a fatherly way, which he might as well under present conditions. “You’ll stay in the tent, of course, and wait for me.”

  She moistened her lips. “No, I’ll come along,” she said.

  “Whoa! You could get scragged.”

  “Rather that than starve to death, which I will if you don’t make it. I won’t handicap you, Nicky. Not any more. If we aren’t loaded down the way we were, I can keep up with you. And I’ll be extra hands and eyes.”

  He pondered. “Well, if you insist.” She’s more likely to be an asset than not—a survivor type like her.

  Sardonically: Yes, just like her, I suspect she’s got more than one motive for this. Exemplia gratia, to make damn sure I don’t gain anything she doesn’t get in on.

  Not that a profit seems plausible.

  Chapter VIII

  As they neared the plain, Mimir went into eclipse.

  The last arc of brilliance edging Regin vanished with the sun. Instead, the planet showed as a flattened black disc overlaid with faint, flickering auroral glow and ringed with sullen red where light was refracted through atmosphere.

  Flandry had anticipated it. The stars, suddenly treading forth many and resplendent, and the small crescents of two companion moons, ought to give sufficient illumination for cautious travel. At need, he and Djana could use their flashbeams, though he would rather not risk drawing attention.

  He had forgotten how temperature would tumble. Fog started forming within minutes, until the world was swirling shapeless murk. It gave way after a while to snow borne on a lashing, squealing wind. Carbon dioxide mostly, he guessed; maybe some ammonia. He leaned into the thrust, squinted at his gyrocompass, and slogged on.

  Djana caught his arm. “Shouldn’t we wait?” he barely heard through the noise.

  He shook his head before he remembered that to her he had become a shadow. “No. A chance to make progress without being spotted.”

  “First luck we’ve had. Thanks, Jesus!”

  Flandry refrained from observing that when the storm ended they might be irrevocably far into a hostile unknown. What had they to lose?

  For a time, as they groped, he thought the audio pickups in his helmet registered a machine rumble. Did he actually feel the ground quiver beneath some great moving mass? He changed direction a trifle, without saying anything to the girl.

  In this region, eclipse lasted close to two hours. The station would have been located on farside, escaping the darknesses altogether, except for the offsetting advantage of having Regin high in the night sky. When full, the planet must flood this hemisphere with soft radiance, an impossibly beautiful sight.

  Though I doubt the robots ever gave a damn about scenery, Flandry thought, peering down to guide his boots past boulders and drifts.

  Unless maybe the central computer…yes, I suppose. Imperial technology doesn’t use many fully conscious machines—little need for them when we’re no longer adventuring into new parts of the galaxy—so I, at any rate, know less about them than my ancestors did. Still, I can guess that a “brain” that powerful would necessarily develop interests outside its regular work. Its junction—its desire, to get anthropomorphic—was to serve the human masters. But in between prospectings, constructions, visiting ships, when routine could only have occupied a minor part of its capacity, did it turn sensors onto the night sky and admire?

  Daylight began to filter through the snowfall. The wind died to a soughing. The ground flattened rapidly. Before precipitation had quite ended, fog was back, the newly frozen gases subliming under Mimir’s rays and recondensing in air.

  Flandry said, low and by sonic transmission: “Radio silence. Move quiet as you can.” It was hardly a needful order. Earplugs were loud with digital code and there came a metallic rattle from ahead.

  Once more Wayland took Flandry by surprise. He had expected the mists to lift slowly, as they’d done near dawn, giving him and Djana time to make out something of what was around them before they were likely to be noticed. His observations in orbit had indicated as much. For minutes the whiteness did veil them. Two meters away, wet ice and rock, tumbling rivulets, steaming puddles, faded into smoky nothing.

  It broke apart. Through the rifts he saw the plain and the machines. The holes widened with tearing rapidity. The fog turned into cloudlets which puffed aloft and vanished.

  Djana screamed.

  Knowledge struck through Flandry: Damn me for a witling! Why didn’t I think? It takes a long while to heat things up again after half a month of night. But not after two hours. And evaporation goes fast at low pressures. What I saw from space, and assumed were lingering ground hazes, were clouds higher up, like those I see steaming away above us—

  That was at the back of his brain. Most of him saw what surrounded him. The blaster sprang into his hand.

  Though the mountain was not far behind, soaring from a knife-edge boundary, he and Djana had passed by the nearest radio mast and were down on the plain. Like other Waylander maria, it was not perfectly level; it rolled, reared in scattered needles and minor craters, seamed itself with narrow cracks, was bestrewn with rocks and overlaid in places by ice banks. The travelers had entered the section that was marked into squares. More than a kilometer apart, the lines ran arrow straight, east and west, north and south, further than he could see before curvature shut off vision. He happened to be near one and could identify it as a wide streak of black granules driven permanently into the stone.

  What he truly saw in that moment was the robots.

  A hundred meters to his right went three of the six-legged lopers. Somewhat further off on his left rolled a horned and treaded giant. Still further ahead, but not too far to catch him, straggled half a dozen different monstrosities. Bugs by the score leaped and crawled across the ground. Flyers were slanting down the sky. He threw a look to rear and saw retreat cut off by a set of legs upbearing a circular saw.

  Djana cast herself on her knees. Flandry crouched above, teeth skinned, and waited in the racket of his heart for the first assailant.

  There was none.

  The killers ignored them.

  Nor did they pay attention to each other.

  While not totally unexpected, the relief sent Flandry’s mind whirling. When he had recovered, he saw that the machines were converging on a point. Nothing appeared above the horizon; their goal was too distant. He knew what it was, though—the central complex of buildings.

  Djana began to laugh, wilder and wilder. Flandry didn’t think they could afford hysteria. He hauled her to her feet. “Turn off that braying before I shake it out of you!” When words didn’t work, he took her by her ankles, held her upside down, and made his threat good.

  While she sobbed and gulped and wrestled her way back to control, he held her in a more gentle embrace and studied the robots acros
s her shoulder. Most were in poor shape, holes torn in their skins, limbs missing. No wonder he’d heard them rattle and clank in the fog.

  Some looked unhurt aside from minor scratches and dents. Probably their accumulators were about drained.

  In the end, he could explain to her: “I always figured those which survived the battles would get recharge and repair in this area. Um-m-m…it can’t well serve all Wayland…I daresay the critters never wander extremely far from it…and we did spot construction work, the setup’s being steadily expanded, probably new centers are planned…Anyhow, this place is crucial. Elsewhere, they’re programmed to attack anything that moves and isn’t like their own particular breed. Here, they’re perfect lambs. Or so goes my current guess.”

  “W-we’re safe, then?”

  “I wouldn’t swear to that. What’s caused this whole insanity? But I do think we can proceed.”

  “Where to?”

  “The centrum, of course. Giving those fellows a respectful berth. They seem to be headed offside. I imagine their R R stations lie some ways from the main computer’s old location.”

  “Old?”

  “We don’t know if it exists any longer,” Flandry reminded her.

  Nonetheless he walked with ebullience. He was still alive. How marvelous that his arms swung, his heels smote ground, his lungs inhaled, his unwashed scalp itched! Regin had begun to wax, the thinnest of bows drawing back from Mimir’s incandescent arrowpoint. Elsewhere glittered stars. Djana walked silent, exhausted by emotion. She’d recover, and when he got her back inside the sealtent…

  He was actually whistling as they crossed the next line. A moment later he took her arm and pointed. “Look,” he said.

  A new kind of robot was approaching from within the square. It was about the size of a man. The skin gleamed golden. Iridescence was lovely over the great batlike wings that helped the springing to its two long hoofed and spurred legs. The body was a horizontal barrel, a balancing tail behind, a neck and head rearing in front. With its goggling optical and erect audio sensors, its muzzle that perhaps held the computer, its mane of erect antennae, that head looked eerily equine. From its forepart, swivel-mounted, thrust a lance.

  “We could almost call it a rockinghorsefly, couldn’t we?” Flandry said. “As for the bread-and-butterfly—” His classical reference was lost on the girl.

  She screamed afresh when the robot wheeled and came toward them in huge leaps. The lance was aimed to kill.

  Chapter IX

  Djana was the target. She stood paralyzed. “Run!” Flandry bawled. He sped to intercept. The gun flamed in his grasp. Sparks showered where the beam struck.

  Djana bolted. The robot swerved and bounded after her. It paid no attention to Flandry. And his shooting had no effect he could see.

  Must be armored against energy beams—unlike the things we’ve met hitherto—He thumbed the power stud to full intensity. Fire cascaded blinding off the metal shape. Heedless, it bore down on his unarmed companion.

  “Dodge toward me!” Flandry cried.

  She heard and obeyed. The lance struck her from behind. It did not penetrate the air tank, as it would have the thinner cuirass of the spacesuit. The blow knocked her sprawling. She rolled over, scrambled up and fled on. Wings beat. The machine was hopping around to get at her from the front.

  It passed by Flandry. He leaped. His arms locked around the neck of the horsehead. He threw a leg over the body. The wings boomed behind him where he rode.

  And still the thing did not fight him, still it chased Djana. But Flandry’s mass slowed it, made it stumble. Twisting about, he fired into the right wing. Sheet metal and a rib gave way. Crippled, the robot went to the ground. It threshed and bucked. Somehow Flandry hung on. Battered, half stunned, he kept his blaster snout within centimeters of the head and the trigger held back. His faceplate darkened itself against furious radiance. Heat struck at him like teeth.

  Abruptly came quiet. He had pierced through to an essential part and slain the killer.

  He sprawled across it, gasping the oven-hot air into his mouth, aware of undergarments, sodden with sweat, and muscles, athrob with bruises, dimly aware that he had better arise. Not until Djana returned to him did he feel able to.

  A draught of water and stimpill shoved through his chowlock restored a measure of strength. He looked at the machine he had destroyed and thought vaguely that it was quite handsome. Like a dreamworld knight…Almost of themselves his arm lifted in salute and his voice murmured. “Ahoy, ahoy, check.”

  “What?” Djana asked, equally faintly.

  “Nothing.” Flandry willed the aches out of his consciousness and the shakes out of his body. “Let’s get going.”

  “Y-y-yes.” She was suffering worse from reaction than him. Her features seemed completely drained. She started off with mechanical strides, back toward the mountain.

  “Wait a tick!” Flandry grabbed her shoulder. “Where’re you bound?”

  “Away,” she said without tone. “Before something else comes after us.”

  “To sit in the sealtent—or at best, the boat—and wait for death? No, thanks.” Flandry turned her about. She was too numbed to resist. “Here, swallow a booster of your own.”

  He had lost all but a rag of hope himself. The centrum was at the far side of the pattern, some ten kilometers hence. If robots were programed actually to attack humans, this close to where the great computer had been—We’ll explore a wee bit further, regardless. Why not?

  A machine appeared. At first it was a glint on the horizon, metal reflecting Mimirlight. Traveling fast across the plain, it gained shape within minutes. Headed straight this way. And big! Flandry cursed. Half dragging Djana, he made for a house-sized piece of meteoritic stone. From its top, defense might be possible.

  The robot went past.

  Djana sobbed her thanks. After a second, Flandry recovered from the shock of his latest deliverance. He stood where he was, holding the girl against him, and watched. The machine wasn’t meant for combat. It was not much more than a self-operating flatbed truck with a pair of lifting arms.

  It loaded the fallen lancer aboard and returned whence it came.

  “For repairs,” Flandry breathed. “No wonder we don’t find stray parts in this neighborhood.”

  Djana shuddered in his arms.

  His words went slowly on, shaping the thoughts they uttered: “Two classes of killer robot, then. One is free-ranging, fights indiscriminately, comes here to get fixed if it can make the trip, and doubtless returns to the wilderness for more hunting. While it’s here, it keeps the peace.

  “The other kind stays here, does fight here—though it doesn’t interfere with the first kind or the maintenance machines—and is carefully salvaged when it comes to grief.”

  He shook his head in bewilderment. “I don’t know if that’s encouraging or not.” Gazing down at Djana: “How do you feel?”

  The drug he had forced on her was taking hold. It was not magical; it couldn’t marshal resources which were no longer there. But for a time he and she would be alert, cool-headed, strong, quick-reacting. And we’d better complete our business before the metabolic bill is presented, Flandry recalled.

  Her lips, twitched in a woebegone smile. “I guess I’ll do,” she said. “Are you certain we should continue?”

  “No. However, we will.”

  The next two squares they crossed were empty. One to their left was occupied. The humans kept a taut watch on that robot as they went past, but it did not stir. It was a tread-mounted cylinder, taller and broader than a man, its two arms ending in giant mauls, its head—the top of it, anyway, where there were what must be sensors—crowned with merlons like the battlements of some ancient tower. The sight jogged at Flandry’s memory. An idea stirred in him but vanished before he could seize it. It could wait; readiness for another assault could not.

  Djana startled him: “Nic
ky, does each of them stay inside its own square?”

  “And defend that particular bit of territory against intruders?” Flandry’s mind sprang. He smacked fist into palm. “By Jumbo, I think you’re right! It could be a scheme for guarding the centrum…against really dangerous gizmos that don’t behave themselves on this plain…a weird scheme, but then, everything on Wayland is weird.—Yes. The types of, uh, wild robot we’ve seen, and the ambulance and such, they’re recognized as harmless and left alone. We don’t fit into that program, so we’re fair game.”

  “Not all the squares are occupied,” she said dubiously.

  He shrugged. “Maybe a lot of sentries are under repair at present.” Excitement waxed in him. “The important point is, we can get across. Either directly across the lines, or over to a boundary and then around the whole layout. We simply avoid sections where any machine is. Making sure none are lurking behind a rock or whatever, of course.” He hugged her. “Sweetheart, I do believe we’re going to make it!”

  The same eagerness kindled in her. They stepped briskly forth.

  A figure that came into view, two kilometers ahead, as they passed the hillock which had concealed it, drew a cry from her. “Nicky, a man!” He jolted to a stop and raised his binoculars in unsteady hands. The object was indeed creepily similar to a large spacesuited human. But there were differences of detail, and it stood as death-still as the tower thing, and it was armed with sword and shield. Rather, its arms terminated in those pieces of war gear. Flandry lowered the glasses.

  “No such luck,” he said. “Not that it’d be luck. Anybody who’s come here and taken charge like this would probably scupper us. It’s yet another brand of guard robot.” He tried to joke. “That means a further detour. I’m getting more exercise than I really want, aren’t you?”

  “You could destroy it.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. If our friend the knight was typical, as I suspect, the lot of them are fairly well armored against energy beams. Besides, I don’t care to waste charge. Used too bloody much in that last encounter. Another fracas, and we could be weaponless.” Flandry started off on a slant across the square. “We’ll avoid him and go catercorner past the domain of that comparatively mild-looking chap there.”