Fast Forward

by Lou Anders

  So it was with excitement and wariness that Sanjeev let Rai help him into the rig. He knew all the snaps and grips—he had tightened the straps and pulled snug the motion sensors a hundred times—but Rai doing it made it special, made Sanjeev a robotwallah.

  “You might find this a little freaky,” Rai said as he settled the helmet over Sanjeev's head. For an instant it was blackout, deafness as the phonobuds sought out his eardrums. “They're working on this new thing, some kind of bone induction thing so they can send the pictures and sounds straight into your brain,” he heard Rai's voice say on the com. “But I don't think we'll get it in time. Now, just stand there and don't shoot anything.”

  The warning was still echoing in Sanjeev's inner ear as he blinked and found himself standing outside a school compound in a village so like Ahraura that he instinctively looked for Mrs. Mawji and Shree the holy red calf. Then he saw that the school was deserted, its roof gone, replaced with military camouflage sheeting. The walls were pocked with bullets down to the brickwork. Siva and Krishna with his flute had been hastily painted on the intact mud plaster, and the words, 13th Mechanized Sowars: Section headquarters. There were men in smart, tightly belted uniforms with mustaches and bamboo lathis. Women with brass water pots and men on bicycles passed the open gate. By stretching Sanjeev found he could elevate his sensory rig to crane over the wall. A village, an Ahraura, but too poor to even avoid war. On his left a robot stood under a dusty neem tree. I must be one of those, Sanjeev thought; a General Dynamics A8330 Syce; a mean, skeletal desert-rat of a thing on two vicious clawed feet, a heavy sensory crown and two gatling arms—fully interchangeable with gas shells or slime guns for policing work, he remembered from War Mecha's October 2038 edition.

  Sanjeev glanced down at his own feet. Icons opened across his field of vision like blossoming flowers: location elevation temperature, ammunition load-out, the level of methane in his fuel tanks, tactical and strategic satmaps—he seemed to be in southwest Bihar—but what fascinated Sanjeev was that if he formed a mental picture of lifting his Sanjeev-foot, his Syce-claw would lift from the dust.

  Go on try it it's a quiet day you're on sentry duty in some cow-shit Bihar village.

  Forward, he willed. The bot took one step two. Walk, Sanjeev commanded. There. The robot walked jauntily toward the gate. No one in the street of shattered houses looked twice as he stepped among them. This is great! Sanjeev thought as he strolled down the street, then, This is like a game. Doubt then: So how do I even know this war is happening? A step too far; the Syce froze a hundred meters from the Ganesh temple, turned and headed back to its sentry post. What what what what what? he yelled in his head.

  “The onboard aeai took over,” Rai said, his voice startling as a firecracker inside his helmet. Then the village went black and silent and Sanjeev was blinking in the ugly low-energy neons of the Kali Cavalry battle room, Rai gently unfastening the clips and snaps and strappings.

  That evening, as he went home through the rush of people with his fist of rupees, Sanjeev realized two things; that most of war was boring, and that this boring war was over.

  The war was over. The jemadar visited the video-silk wall three times, twice, once a week where in the heat and glory she would have given orders that many times a day. The Kali Cav lolled around on their sofas playing games, lying to their online fans about the cool exciting sexy things they were doing—though the fans never believed they ever really were robotwallahs—but mostly doing battle-drug combos that left them fidgety and aggressive. Fights flared over a cigarette, a look, how a door was closed or left open. Sanjeev threw himself into the middle of a dozen robotwallah wars. But when the American Peacekeepers arrived, Sanjeev knew it truly was over because they only came in when there was absolutely no chance any of them would get killed. There was a flurry of car-bombings and I-war attacks and even a few suicide blasts, but everyone knew that that was just everyone who had a grudge against America and Americans in sacred Bharat. No, the war was over.

  “What will you do?” Sanjeev's father asked, meaning, What will I do when Umbrella Street becomes just another Asian ginza?

  “I've saved some money,” Sanjeev said.

  With the money he had saved, Godspeed! bought a robot. It was a Tata Industries D55, a small but nimble antipersonnel bot with detachable free-roaming sub-mechas, Level 0.8s, about as smart as a chicken, which they resembled. Even secondhand it must have cost much more than a teenage robotwallah heavily consuming games, online time, porn, and Sanjeev's dad's kofta pizza could ever save. “I got backers,” Godspeed! said. “Funding. Hey, what do you think of this? I'm getting her pimped; this is the skin-job.” When the paint dried, the robot would be road-freighted up to Varanasi.

  “But what are you going to do with it?” Sanjeev asked.

  “Private security. They're always going to need security drones.”

  Tidying the tiny living room that night for his mother's nine o'clock lesson, opening the windows to let out the smell of hot ghee though the stink of the street was little better, Sanjeev heard a new chord in the ceaseless song of Umbrella Street. He threw open the window shutters in time to see an object, close, fast as a dashing bird, dart past his face, swing along the powerline and down the festooned pylon. Glint of anodized alu-plastic: a boy raised on Battlebots Top Trumps could not fail to recognize a Tata surveillance mecha. Now the commotion at the end of Umbrella Street became clear: the hunched back of a battlebot was pushing between the cycle rickshaws and phatphats. Even before he could fully make out the customized god-demons of Mountain Buddhism on its carapace, Sanjeev knew the machine's make and model and who was flying it.

  A badmash on an alco moto rode slowly in front of the ponderously stepping machine, relishing the way the street opened in front of him and the electric scent of heavy firepower at his back. Sanjeev saw the mech step up and squat down on its hydraulics before Jagmohan's greasy little pakora stand. The badmash skidded his moped to a stand and pushed up his shades.

  They will always need security drones.

  Sanjeev rattled down the many many flights of stairs of the patriotically renamed Diljit Rana Apartments, yelling and pushing and beating at the women and young men in very white shirts. The robot had already taken up its position in front of his father's big clay pizza oven. The carapace unfolded like insect wings into weapon mounts. Badmash was all teeth and grin in the anticipation of another commission. Sanjeev dashed between his father and the prying, insect sensory rig of the robot. Red demons and Sivas with fiery tridents looked down on him.

  “Leave him alone, this is my dad, leave him be.”

  It seemed to Sanjeev that the whole of Umbrella Street, every vehicle upon it, every balcony and window that overlooked it, stopped to watch. With a whir the weapon pods retracted, the carapace clicked shut. The battle machine reared up on its legs as the surveillance drones came skittering between people's legs and over countertops, scurried up the machine and took their places on its shell mounts, like egrets on the back of a buffalo. Sanjeev stared the badmash down. He sneered, snapped down his cool sexy dangerous shades, and spun his moped away.

  Two hours later, when all was safe and secure, a Peacekeeper unit passed up the street asking for information. Sanjeev shook his head and sucked on his asthma inhalers.

  “Some machine, like.”

  Suni left the go-down. No word no note no clue, his family had called and called and called but no one knew. There had always been rumors of a man with money and prospects, who liked the robotwallah thing, but you do not tell those sorts of stories to mothers. Not at first asking. A week passed without the jemadar calling. It was over. So over. Rai had taken to squatting outside, squinting up through his cool sexy dangerous shades at the sun, watching for its burn on his pale arms, chain-smoking street-rolled bidis.

  “Sanj.” He smoked the cheap cigarette down to his gloved fingers and ground the stub out beneath the steel heel of his boot. “When it happens, when we can't use you anymore, have
you something sorted? I was thinking, maybe you and I could do something together, go somewhere. Just have it like it was, just us. An idea, that's all.”

  The message came at 3 AM. I'm outside. Sanjeev tiptoed around the sleeping bodies to open the window. Umbrella Street was still busy; Umbrella Street had not slept for a thousand years. The big black Kali Cav Hummer was like a funeral moving through the late-night people of the new Varanasi. The door locks made too much noise, so Sanjeev exited through the window, climbing down the pipes like a Raytheon 8-8000 I-war infiltration bot. In Ahraura he would never have been able to do that.

  “You drive,” Rai said. From the moment the message came through, Sanjeev had known it would be him, and him alone.

  “I can't drive.”

  “It drives itself. All you have to do is steer. It's not that different from the game. Swap over there.”

  Steering wheel pedal drive windshield display all suddenly looked very big to Sanjeev in the driver's seat. He touched his foot to the gas. Engines answered; the Hummer rolled; Umbrella Street parted before him. He steered around a wandering cow.

  “Where do want me to go?”

  “Somewhere, away. Out of Varanasi. Somewhere no one else would go.” Rai bounced and fidgeted on the passenger seat. His hands were busy busy; his eyes were huge. He had done a lot of battle drugs. “They sent them back to school, man. To school, can you imagine that? Big Baba and Ravana. Said they needed real-world skills. I'm not going back, not never. Look!”

  Sanjeev dared a glance at the treasure in Rai's palm: a curl of sculpted translucent pink plastic. Sanjeev thought of aborted goat fetuses, and the sex toys the girls had used in their favorite pornos. Rai tossed his head to sweep back his long, gelled hair and slid the device behind his ear. Sanjeev thought he saw something move against Rai's skin, seeking.

  “I saved it all up and bought it. Remember, I said? It's new; no one else has one. All that gear, that's old, you can do everything with this, just in your head, in the pictures and words in your head.” He gave a stoned grin and moved his hands in a dancer's mudra. “There.”

  “What?”

  “You'll see.”

  The Hummer was easy to drive: the in-car aeai had a flocking reflex that enabled it to navigate Varanasi's ever-swelling morning traffic, leaving little for Sanjeev to do other than blare the triple horns, which he enjoyed a lot. Somewhere he knew he should be afraid, should feel guilty at stealing away in the night without word or note, should stay stop, whatever it is you are doing, it can come to nothing, it's just silliness, the war is over and we must think properly about what to do next. But the brass sun was rising above the glass towers and spilling into the streets, and men in sharp white shirts and women in smart saris were going busy to their work, and he was free, driving a big smug car through them all and it was so good, even if just for a day.

  He took the new bridge at Ramnagar, hooting in derision at the gaudy, lumbering trucks. The drivers blared back, shouting vile curses at the girli-looking robotwallahs. Off A-roads on to B-roads, then to tracks and then bare dirt, the dust flying up behind the Hummer's fat wheels. Rai itched in the passenger seat, grinning away to himself and moving his hands like butterflies, muttering small words and occasionally sticking out of the window. His gelled hair was stiff with dust.

  “What are you looking for?” Sanjeev demanded.

  “It's coming,” Rai said, bouncing on his seat. “Then we can go and do whatever we like.”

  From the word “drive,” Sanjeev had known where he must go. Satnav and aeai did his remembering for him, but he still knew every turn and side road. Vora's Wood there, still stunted and gray; the ridge between the river and the fields from which all the men of the village had watched the battle and he had fallen in love with the robots. The robots had always been pure, had always been true. It was the boys who flew them who hurt and failed and disappointed. The fields were all dust, drifted and heaped against the lines of thorn fence. Nothing would grow here for a generation. The mud walls of the houses were crumbling, the school a roofless shell, the temple and tanks clogged with wind-blown dust. Dust, all dust. Bones cracked and went to powder beneath his all-wheel-drive. A few too desperate even for Varanasi were trying to scratch an existence in the ruins. Sanjeev saw wire-thin men and tired women, dust-smeared children crouched in front of their brick-and-plastic shelters. The poison deep within Ahraura would defeat them in the end.

  Sanjeev brought the Hummer to a halt on the ridgetop. The light was yellow, the heat appalling. Rai stepped out to survey the terrain.

  “What a shit-hole.”

  Sanjeev sat in the shade of the rear cabin watching Rai pace up and down, up and down, kicking up the dust of Ahraura with his big Desi-metal boots. You didn't stop them, did you? Sanjeev thought. You didn't save us from the Plaguewalkers. Rai suddenly leaped and punched the air.

  “There, there, look!”

  A storm of dust moved across the dead land. The high sun caught glints and gleams at its heart. Moving against the wind, the tornado bore down on Ahraura.

  The robot came to a halt at the foot of the ridge where Sanjeev and Rai stood waiting. A Raytheon ACR, a heavy line-of-battle bot, it out-topped them by some meters. The wind carried away its cloak of dust. It stood silent, potential, heat shimmering from its armor. Sanjeev had never seen a thing so beautiful.

  Rai raised his hand. The bot spun on its steel hooves. More guns than Sanjeev had ever seen in his life unfolded from its carapace. Rai clapped his hands and the bot opened up with all its armaments on Vora's Wood. Gatlings sent dry dead silvery wood flying up into powder; missiles streaked from its back-silos. The line of the wood erupted in a wall of flame. Rai separated his hands, and the roar of sustained fire ceased.

  “It's got it all in here, everything that the old gear had, in here. Sanj, everyone will want us, we can go wherever we want, we can do whatever we want, we can be real anime heroes.”

  “You stole it.”

  “I had all the protocols. That's the system.”

  “You stole that robot.”

  Rai balled his fists, shook his head in exasperation.

  “Sanj, it was always mine.”

  He opened his clenched fist. And the robot danced. Arms, feet, all the steps and the moves, the bends and head-nods, a proper Bollywood item-song dance. The dust flew up around the battle-bot's feet. Sanjeev could feel the eyes of the squatters, wide and terrified in their hovels. I am sorry we scared you.

  Rai brought the dance to an end.

  “Anything I want, Sanj. Are you coming with us?”

  Sanjeev's answer never came, for a sudden, shattering roar of engines and jet-blast from the river side of the ridge sent them reeling and choking in the swirling dust. Sanjeev fought out his inhalers: two puffs blue one puff brown and by the time they had worked their sweet way down into his lungs a tiltjet with the Bharati Air Force's green, white, and orange roundels on its engine pods stood on the settling dust. The cargo ramp lowered; a woman in dust-war camo and a mirror-visored helmet came up the ridge toward them.

  With a wordless shriek Rai slashed his hand through the air like a sword. The bot crouched; its carapace slid open in a dozen places, extruding weapons. Without breaking her purposeful stride the woman lifted her left hand. The weapons retracted, the hull ports closed, the war machine staggered as if confused and then sat down heavily in the dead field, head sagging, hands trailing in the dust. The woman removed her helmet. The cameras made the jemadar look five kilos heavier, but she had big hips. She tucked her helmet under her left arm, with her right swept back her hair to show the plastic fetus-sex-toy-thing coiled behind her ear.

  “Come on now, Rai. It's over. Come on, we'll go back. Don't make a fuss. There's not really anything you can do. We all have to think what to do next, you know? We'll take you back in the plane, you'll like that.” She looked Sanjeev up and down. “I suppose you could take the car back. Someone has to and it'll be cheaper than sending someone down from Divi
sional, it's cost enough already. I'll retask the aeai. And then we have to get that thing…” She shook her head, then beckoned to Rai. He went like a calf, quiet and meek down to the tiltjet. Black hopping crows settled on the robot, trying its crevices with their curious shiny-hungry beaks.

  The Hummer ran out of gas twenty kays from Ramnagar. Sanjeev hitched home to Varanasi. The army never collected it, and as the new peace built, the local people took it away bit by bit.

  With his war dividend Sanjeev bought a little alco-buggy and added a delivery service to his father's pizza business, specializing in the gap-year hostels that blossomed after the Peacekeepers left. He wore a polo shirt with a logo and a baseball cap and got a sensible haircut. He could not bring himself to sell his robotwallah gear, but it was a long time before he could look at it in the box without feeling embarrassed. The business grew fast and fat.

  He often saw Rai down at the ghats or around the old town. They worked the same crowd: Rai dealt Nepalese ganja to tourists. Robotwallah was his street name. He kept the old look, and everyone knew him for it. It became first a novelty and then retro. It even became fashionable again, the spiked hair, the andro makeup, the slashed Ts and the latex and most of all the boots. It sold well and everyone wore it, for a season.

  Nebula award-winning author Pamela Sargent is a considerably talented writer whose fiction always contains deft characterizations executed with an assured touch. She is also a consummate anthologist, renowned for her Women of Wonder series, which highlights science fiction stories “by women about women.” Her Venusian trilogy—Venus of Dreams, Venus of Shadows, Child of Venus—is a landmark tale of terraforming often compared to Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, which it predates. Her novel Earthseed is recently out from Tor, along with a sequel, Farseed. She offers us a bit of satire here, emerging from sentiments that will be all too familiar to those of us troubled by our current times.