Stranded

by James Alan Gardner

Another silence. Then Balla suddenly said, “Witness, wits, wizard,” and Alyssa said, “Okay.”

  —————

  In the comm center’s lobby, Viper said, “Wait. Yell out the door and tell your bodyguard not to make any false moves. He can’t possibly destroy me before I slit your throat. Besides, his weapons are so powerful, he can’t kill me without vaporizing you.”

  “Og,” Alyssa called through the open door, “I’ve been captured by a minion of the Lorelei and . . .”

  “Is okay,” said Og. “Og minion now too. Leeches came. Og switch sides.”

  “Oh, Og,” Alyssa said. Without waiting for Viper to give permission, Alyssa rushed out into a noon-bright glare of sun. Og stood near the door, his yellow body speckled with beetle-like attachments. His big glass eyes seemed emptier than before, as if something had drained away.

  “Oh, Og,” Alyssa said again.

  “This is bad,” Eve muttered from the comm center’s doorway.

  “No, it’s good,” Viper said. “One less problem to worry about.” Her black-jewel eyes glittered. “What about you?” she said to Eve. “Are you going to be a problem?”

  “No,” Eve said quickly. “I’ve always been neutral, haven’t I? I had nothing to do with the General when he and the Lorelei were together, and I stayed neutral when he and she broke up. I’m only here for the child’s sake.”

  “Ah,” said Viper. “You’re programmed to be fond of humans. One of those.” She turned away as if Eve was no longer worthy of her attention. “Come to the Lorelei or not, I don’t care. Just don’t be annoying.”

  Alyssa hadn’t taken her eyes off Eve. Did Eve really like humans, or was she only part of this because she wanted the General to repair her? The earliest robots had been programmed to put human well-being ahead of all other concerns . . . but during the Almost War, their programming became more complex: shoot your enemies and protect your friends, except when the mission matters more than your friends’ survival. As part of that programming change, every robot was taught how to lie—it helped with both the killing and the times when betrayal was necessary.

  So maybe Eve cared; maybe she didn’t. Alyssa sighed. Nothing was ever simple.

  “All right,” Viper said. “We’re leaving.” She squeezed Alyssa’s throat just enough to make breathing difficult for a moment. She eased her grip and said, “Move. I’ll give directions.”

  “Og carry,” the giant said. He lifted Alyssa in his huge padded arms.

  “Whatever,” Viper said. “As long as we don’t dawdle. The Lorelei is waiting.”

  Og’s tank-treads clanked into motion. Eve rolled along beside him. Alyssa knew that Spymaster was tracking them from somewhere overhead, but she forced herself not to look. With Viper wound tightly around her neck, the robot snake would notice if Alyssa scanned the sky.

  Now was not the time to do anything suspicious.

  —————

  They continued following the river as it passed the comm center and flowed through more fields. Alyssa wondered what the crops were; she felt ignorant for not knowing. Tall plants like wild grass. Short ones with purplish leaves. Cane-like bushes with tiny green berries. When Alyssa asked Og what they were, he sounded heartbroken that he couldn’t tell her. Eve said, “I only do codes,” and Viper snapped, “Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I waste data storage on the name of some weed?”

  Not so long ago, Alyssa would have asked Balla; he knew the names of things, or could look them up so quickly that Alyssa couldn’t tell the difference. Not now. She hugged him against her stomach. Viper noticed and made gagging sounds.

  Balla whispered, “Yeast . . . yell . . . yellow.” His voice was getting fainter.

  For a long time after that, Alyssa held her dolphin friend. She ignored their surroundings. The sun came and went; so did smells on the breeze. Now and then they’d pass some vegetable patch whose odor was so strong that Alyssa couldn’t help noticing—like market day on Montserrat, where the stalls were filled with garlic, onions, hot peppers, ginger, and every seller’s “secret fish spice.” But for the most part, Alyssa kept her attention on Balla until Viper gave her throat a peevish squeeze. “Enough of that. We’re here.”

  Alyssa looked up. The river had widened into a lake with unrippling water as black as burnt coffee. It smelled like vinegar and nail-polish remover. A dull gray bunker squatted in the water at the lake’s center; as far as Alyssa could see, no bridge joined the bunker to the shore. The only way across seemed to be swimming, but the water’s color and odor silently said STAY AWAY. Alyssa had no idea what toxins the lake might contain, but they would surely be deadly to both humans and machines.

  Around Alyssa’s neck, Viper started to trill: a warbling sound, almost like a singing canary. The sound made Alyssa dizzy—maybe it was a sonic weapon to muddle human minds. If she hadn’t been held by Og’s arms, Alyssa would have fallen over. As it was, her brain merely reeled until Viper went silent again. Alyssa’s thoughts began to clear, but she still felt disoriented as a gleaming wet causeway rose out of the lake.

  The causeway was made of black cement. Toxic water puddled on its dark surface, and between the puddles the wet cement gave off wisps of smoke.

  “What are we waiting for?” Viper said. “Cross over.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Eve replied. “You don’t have to roll through that stuff. Og, could you carry me?”

  “Og strong,” he said, lowering his arms so that Eve could roll up and nestle beside Alyssa. “And Og’s feet very tough.”

  “You don’t have feet,” Viper said. “You have tank-treads.”

  “Tough tank-treads.” He rolled onto the causeway. A stink like burning rubber immediately rose from the treads. Og revved up his engine to speed forward far faster than he’d been going before. He crossed the causeway in seconds, and barreled down a ramp into the bunker. At the bottom of the ramp, he splashed straight into a pool that had obviously been placed there to rinse off the residue of the moat’s stinking poison. As Og washed his treads in the pool, the burning rubber smell subsided.

  “Well, that was fun,” Eve said. “And such a welcoming introduction to the Lorelei’s hospitality. Between the moat and the leeches, I can’t understand why the Lorelei doesn’t have a million billion friends.”

  “Maybe it’s because she likes demolishing any robot who trash-talks her,” Viper said. “When she breaks you into components, make sure to tell me how you feel about it.”

  “Would you two stop fighting?” Alyssa said. “Just because you’re war machines isn’t an excuse.”

  “Big words for someone with a knife to her throat,” Viper said. But she didn’t press the blade any harder against Alyssa’s skin. “Let’s just hurry this up. Og, get moving.”

  Og rolled forward down a corridor painted black. Unlike the way into the General’s bunker, this corridor had no side rooms or obvious sentries. Even so, Alyssa was certain that safeguards were in place—hidden scanners were surely checking her out with X-rays and other sorts of probes. If they found anything amiss, the Lorelei’s minions would be on her in a flash.

  The corridor led to a huge circular room, wider across than a gymnasium. It smelled like the algae mats where this all began: swampy with rotting plankton. The air was hot and humid; the moistness came from a great pool of water that practically filled the room. The only solid floor was a ring a meter wide running around the outer wall. Metal ladders led down into the pool at several locations. The place had the look of a sewage treatment plant . . . but with the station populated only by robots, there’d been no sewage for years. The pool’s water was perfectly clear, all the way to the concrete bottom.

  Something glittered down in the depths. Even as Alyssa watched, it rose with the speed of a dolphin. As it broke the surface, its momentum carried it into the air a short distance before it cam
e down and landed with a smack . . . just like the cannonball trick Eve had played when she tried to splash Spymaster. This time, the splash was big enough to soak the whole room: when the Lorelei cannonballed, everybody got wet.

  She looked exactly like Eve—a mirror-ball, perfectly polished—but she was many times bigger: as tall as Og and then some. If Eve had lurked off coastlines and listened to passing transmissions, the Lorelei must have been built to monitor millions of signals at once . . . a super-eavesdropper who could decode enormous quantities of data and process it into a cohesive picture.

  Eve herself was a Level Ten intelligence. Alyssa wondered how much higher the Lorelei ranked. It was easy to understand how this silver giant could battle brain-to-brain against the General and come to a draw.

  “Hello,” the Lorelei said in a pleasant woman’s voice—close to Eve’s voice, but with the silky smoothness of the General. “I’m so glad you could come to visit. I see so few guests these days.”

  Alyssa thought that might have something to do with the toxic moat, but she didn’t mention it.

  “And you’ve brought one of my little sisters!” the Lorelei said with apparent delight. “Although she’s been terribly hurt by something. How did that happen, dear?”

  “Your leeches attacked me,” Eve said.

  “Yes, they do that,” the Lorelei said. “Nothing personal, dear—I don’t actively control them. I just send them out with orders to recruit anyone interesting. They choose their own targets, based on . . . well, I really don’t know what their criteria are. I didn’t make them myself, I just repurposed them from the General. And after all this time, they’re still full of surprises; I never thought they could woo me a Doom Cluster, but apparently they can. Welcome, you!”

  “Og happy to be here,” the big robot said. He set Alyssa down on the narrow floor surrounding the pool. At the same time, Eve rolled out of his arms. She moved close to the pool, as if she’d love to dive in. Alyssa worried about that—with the leech holes in Eve’s skin, water was a bad idea, even if the holes were covered with tape. Eve apparently decided the same thing; she remained on dry land, rolling wistfully back and forth at the edge of the water.

  “Don’t be sad, little sister,” the Lorelei said. “If you want a dip, you’ll be all right. Most of your internal components are organic: DNA data storage and bioprocessing chips. Only ten percent of our kind is electronic, and that’s just the radio equipment . . . receiver, tuner, trivia like that. Our brains are built of biological polymers—so much more efficient than wires and silicon circuits. We’re like the girl’s aut; it’s not half-dolphin for looks, it’s half-dolphin for performance.”

  The Lorelei paused, apparently admiring Balla’s design. In the silence, Balla whispered, “Zenith . . . zephyr . . . zero.”

  “Why is it talking like that?” the Lorelei asked.

  “He’s sick,” Alyssa said. “He’s got the same plague I had.”

  “He’s what?” The Lorelei’s creamy voice was suddenly shrill.

  “He’s sick,” Alyssa repeated. “He caught the disease from my blood and he—”

  “He could be contagious!” the Lorelei screamed. “You . . . Doom Cluster! Incinerate that aut immediately!”

  “No!” Alyssa shouted, hugging her arm to her stomach.

  “Aut nice,” Og said. “Aut not trouble.”

  “Maybe not to you, you all-metal oaf. But to me, he’s a plague dog and he has to be sanitized. Get your biggest hottest weapon and cremate him!”

  “Aut on girl’s arm,” Og said. “Weapon hurt girl too.”

  “Humans can live without arms,” the Lorelei snapped. “It’s an acceptable loss. Oh, I see it all now—the General wanted me to capture the girl and bring her back. He’s mostly inorganic; he’s always envied that I’m alive. But I refuse to let him infect me. Burn the girl and the aut, Doom Cluster. I order it!”

  “Og, please don’t hurt Balla!” Alyssa said, staring up at the big robot.

  “He’ll do what the Lorelei says,” Viper told her. “Time for me to get off the firing line.” Like lightning, she uncoiled from Alyssa’s neck and dropped to the floor. Even before she landed, she had turned invisible. Alyssa heard a clatter as the metal snake struck the concrete. Viper raced away, leaving slither marks on the wet floor; she obviously didn’t want to be anywhere near Alyssa when Og opened fire.

  “Shoot!” the Lorelei shrieked. “Shoot now! You’re programmed to obey me!”

  “Surprise!” Og said happily. All the leeches attached to his body fell off with a sound like peanuts being spilled on the floor. Many of the beetle-like devices bounced into the water, but a few came to a stop on the concrete. Alyssa picked one up and weighed it in her hand.

  “Held on by magnetism,” she told the Lorelei. “One of Og’s many talents is turning himself into an electromagnet.” She held up the dark little beetle. “These particular leeches were made by the General, not you. They didn’t hack into Og; they just stuck to his skin like fridge magnets so you’d think Og was yours. But really, he just needed to smuggle them past your defenses. I’m sure you scanned them when we came in, but your scanners could only see what the leeches were made of, not how they were programmed. Hardware can be X-rayed, but software . . . you never know what it will do till it does it.”

  “Viper!” the Lorelei cried. “Defend me!”

  “She’s gone,” Eve said. “Ran at the first sign of threat.”

  “And if she comes back . . .” Spymaster suddenly appeared, hovering near the doorway. “Did you notice she makes ripple marks when she slithers across the floor? I noticed. And if she leaves a trail I’ll see it, even if Viper herself is invisible. I’ll see it, and I’ll tell Og.”

  “Og stop little snake if she comes,” Og said. “Little snake just has knife. Og has more.”

  Alyssa told the Lorelei, “When the General described his plan, I wondered if it would work.” Alyssa toyed with the leech, feeling its weight in her hand. It seemed heavier than the ones she’d pulled off Eve . . . as if the General had packed more power into his version. When you’re aiming at bigger game, Alyssa guessed you needed heavier bullets. “I also wondered,” she said, “if I could bring myself to go along with what he wanted.” She held up the leech and showed it to the Lorelei. “He told us to plant these on you. He wants them to drill into you, and hack you into submission. That’s a horrible thing to do; but from the way you’ve acted the past few minutes, I’m less upset by it than I was. You wanted to kill Balla!”

  “The aut is infected,” the Lorelei said. “He’s a menace.”

  “No, he’s sick.” Alyssa glared at the big silver sphere. “And why should that bother you, even if you’re full of biological components? You have a solid metal shell. Germs can’t get into you.”

  “Not as solid as you think,” the Lorelei said bitterly.

  She rotated slowly on the surface of the water, revealing what she’d hidden all this time: the back side of her shell. It had a great hole torn into it; the hole’s edges were twisted shards of silver that looked as sharp as glass. Inside the hole, pulpy organic tissue showed puffy red scabs, as if they were filled with pus.

  “Your General did this to me,” the Lorelei said, “with one of his hideous arms. He tried to break me open and rip out my brain. I don’t even know why—at the time, I thought we were allies. But he’s a treacherous psychopath, and he tried to kill me. I managed to get away, but I’m marred forever . . . torn open to the world. Lucky for me, the seals on my electronics weren’t damaged, so I’m still waterproof. I can spend most of my time safely submerged. But when I’m out in open air I’m exposed to bacteria . . . to disease . . .”

  Alyssa felt sick. The Lorelei’s open wound would have been stomach turning even on a living creature; the contrast between the damage and the flawless silver exterior made it that much more u
gly. Alyssa realized she was still holding the General’s leech. She let it fall.

  “Hey!” Spymaster said. “Don’t go soft on us, sickie—you still have a job to do. You gotta remember, the General is the only one who can cure your aut, and all those people in the hospital. Finish your part of the deal.”

  “We shouldn’t have to hurt anyone,” Alyssa said. She turned to the Lorelei. “Your minions stole things from the hospital—things the General needs to cure everyone. Give those back and we’ll leave you alone.”

  The Lorelei gave a sharp laugh. “The General lied to you, child—my people never touched the hospital. It’s so deep inside the General’s territory, we couldn’t get anywhere close.”

  Alyssa sighed. The Lorelei’s words weren’t much of a surprise. “Eve, what do you think? Is she telling the truth?”

  “It would be hard to steal from the hospital without being seen. Even someone like the Viper who can turn herself invisible . . . she can’t turn other things invisible too. If she tried to carry something away, it would be spotted.”

  “I hate to admit it, but you’re right,” Spymaster said. “That whole ‘theft-from-the-hospital’ story doesn’t make sense.”

  Alyssa nodded. She had suspected from the first that the General couldn’t be trusted. He’d lied and used her to catch the Lorelei by surprise. Even if Alyssa did what the General wanted, there was no guarantee he’d help Balla and the plague victims. Maybe machines like Eve and Og could be said to have a heart, but the General certainly didn’t. He’d do anything he considered “strategic,” no matter what damage it caused.

  Alyssa looked down at the leeches on the floor. The General had explained what she was supposed to do. He knew the Lorelei would be living in water; since the General’s leeches were too heavy to fly, Alyssa was told she’d have to swim out and plant the bugs on the Lorelei’s skin. Spymaster and Eve couldn’t do it—neither had hands for carrying—and Og would only sink to the bottom of the pool. Alyssa was the one who had to do this . . . if she chose.