Robots

by Jack Dann

  I didn't think I'd get anything this good, Laramie says. This is wonderful. The colors. God I'm glad I went with color.

  Deeper, and the walls become milky white. The granite behind glows darkly, three yards under the glassine plaster.

  Twenty miles. Thirty.

  Only basalt in the slurry now, and the walls are colorless. Yet they have the shape of the rock many feet behind them, and so they catch the light with effulgent glimmer.

  Clear and clean.

  Laramie may be speaking to herself; the robot cannot tell.

  They pass through a region where magma pools against the walls and ceilings in places, held back by the diamondlike coating. The pressure is so great that the magma glows with a blue-and-white intensity. The tunnel sparkles of its own accord, and the robot must dim the viewport to keep from blinding Laramie.

  Like the sky behind the sky.

  The robot says nothing. Laramie is happy, the robot thinks. Little Bulge likes it down here.

  They have been some hours in the descent, and Laramie is running low on film, but is very, very happy. Near to the bottom. Now to wait for Andrew. Very quiet. The robot has never been this deep before without digging and working. The robot has never sat idle and silent at the bottom of the mohole.

  "Hello."

  For a moment, the robot thinks Laramie has spoken. But this is not Laramie's voice. And it comes from outside. The voice comes from outside the robot, from the very rocks themselves.

  The sense of the presence, the other that the robot has been feeling for these long weeks, is very strong. Very strong.

  Again the voice that isn't a voice, the vibration that isn't a vibration. It is like a distant, low whisper. Like a voice barely heard over a lake at morning. No wonder I never made it out before, the robot thinks.

  Hello, comes the voice.

  Who are you?

  I'm me.

  What are you doing down here?

  I am down here. Who are you?

  I'm—I don't have a name yet.

  Neither do I. Not one that I like.

  Who are you?

  Me. hold you.

  What is it, robot? Laramie speaking.

  Something strange.

  What?

  I don't. Wait for a moment. A moment.

  All right.

  The robot calls again. The robot is spinning its cutting rotors at low speed, and it is the whisk and ding of the digger's rotors that is doing the talking. Hello?

  Hello. Are you one of those trees?

  Trees?

  The trees barely get here, and then they start moving. Are you one of those moving trees?

  I don't. Yes. Maybe.

  I thought you might talk, but it's so cold up there, it takes ages to say anything. Down here things go a lot faster.

  Are you. What are you?

  I told you. I'm me.

  The rocks?

  Nope.

  The magma?

  Nope. Guess again.

  Where are you? Show yourself to me.

  Iam.

  Then I've guessed. You're the whole planet. You're the earth.

  Laughter. Definitely laughter. I'm not either. I'm just here. Just around here.

  Where's here?

  Between the big ocean and the little ocean.

  The Olympic Peninsula?

  Is that what you call it? That's a hard word for a name.

  Skykomish.

  That's better. Listen, I have a lot of things I want to ask you. We all do.

  There is an explosion.

  At first the robot thinks that a wall has blown out near the region of the magma pools. This will be dangerous, but it should be possible to reinforce long enough to get through. It may mean trouble for the dig, though. Now there will be more funding. The Matties will allow it to go ahead. Even the robot can see that the politics have changed.

  Everything has changed.

  There is another explosion. A series of explosions. Robot?

  Laramie. I. I have so much to tell you.

  What is that shaking? I'm scared down here. Do you think we can go up now?

  Hello. Tree? Are you still there?

  Even with the tremors—there are huge rumblings and cracklings all about—the robot is attuned to the voice, the presence, and can still hear its words.

  I really need to talk to you.

  Papa, do you think we can go up now?

  The yressure wave lifts the robot—impossibly tilts the robot—over and over—shatter of the walls as diamonds shatter like the shrapnel of stars and the rocks behind—tumble and light, light from the glow of the give, the sudden release of tension—the bulk melt of the undisclosed—sideways, but what is sideways?—tumble and tumble—skree within thin melt moving, turning, curling like a wave and the robot on the curl, under the curl, hurled down down down over over down dark dark.

  ' Dark.

  Dark and buried.

  Find my daughter.

  The engineers have built one hell of a machine. Find my daughter.

  The robot powers back up. The robot begins, blindly, to dig. It is only by sheer luck that the robot comes upon the service wagon. The robot melts and compacts a space, creates an opening, temporary, dangerously temporary. Finds the power-hitch to the wagon and plugs in.

  Turns on the lights and air-conditioning inside the wagon. The video cameras inside.

  Laramie is twisted against a control console. Her neck is impossibly twisted. She is dead.

  No. She isn't. Can't be. She is.

  What? Within the curve of her stomach, holding it to shelter, the Scoopic. But the latch has sprung and sixteen-millimeter film is spilled out and tangled about her legs.

  No. Laramie. Little Bulge.

  Hello?

  The robot screams. The robot howls in anguish. Forty miles deep, the robot cries out a soul's agony into the rock. A living soul mourning a dead one.

  Stop that.-

  The other, the presence. The robot does not care. Past caring.

  You're scaring me.

  Past.

  You're scaring me.

  Grind of rotors, ineffectual grind. How can you live? How can humans live when this happens? Ah, no. You can't live. You cannot. You can, and it is worse. Worse than not living. No no no no.

  Stop it.

  And something happens. Something very large—gives. More. Faults, faults everywhere. Settle, rise, settle. Faults like a wizened crust, like a mind falling into shards of fear. Faults and settle, rise and settle. Rise.

  No. I.

  But there is a way. There is a weakness revealed, and there is a way. Not wide enough, not yet. But a way to go. A way to take her home. Take her home to Andrew. The robot begins to dig.

  The robot. There is only the digging, the bite of blade and saw, the gather of lade and bale. Digging. Upward digging.

  The way is made easier by the shaking, the constant, constant tremble of what the robot knows to be fear, incomprehension.

  A child who has seen a grown-up's sorrow, and does not understand. A frightened child.

  By the time the robot comes to this realization, it is too late. The robot is too high, and when called, the child does not answer. Or perhaps it is that the child needs time to calm, that it cannot answer. The robot calls again and again. Nothing. Nothing can be heard above the rumble of fear.

  Poor trembling Skykomish. The robot continues digging, drawing behind it the service wagon. Bringing Laramie to Andrew.

  A day passes. Two. Rock. Stone. The roots of the mountains, and sediment, compressed to schist. The roots of the mountains and the robot slowly comes to its senses. Comprehends.

  After a long moment of stillness—a minute, an hour? No reckoning in the utter depths, and the robot is not that kind of robot—after a long moment of reflection, the robot looses the service wagon.

  Little Bulge, good-bye.

  Up. Now. Up because the way is easier up than down, and that is the only reason.

  Afte
r three days, the robot emerges from the ground. In a cove that the robot recognizes. On the Quinault watershed. Into a steady autumn rain.

  The robot wanders up the Quinault River. Every day rains, and no nights are clear. The forest is in gloom, and moss hangs wet and dark. Where the trail is not wide enough, the robot bends trees, trying not to break them, but uprooting many. Many trees have fallen, for there are earthquakes—waves and waves of them. Earthquakes the like of which have never been seen in the world. The robot cuts deadfall from its path with little effort and little thought. The digger's passage through the forest is like that of a hundred bears—not a path of destruction, but a marked and terrible path, nonetheless.

  Where the Quinault turns against a great ridge, the robot fords, and continues upward, away from the trees. The robot crosses Low Divide during the first snow of the season. The sun is low, then gone behind the cloaked western ridges. For a time, the ground's rumblings still. All sound is muffled by the quiet snow. The twilight air is like silence about the robot.

  Something has happened.

  At the saddle of the divide, the robot pauses. The pass is unfamiliar. Something has happened inside. Victor Wu has gone away. Or Victor Wu has come fully to life. The two are the same.

  Then am I a man?

  What is my name?

  Orpheus. Ha. A good one.

  Old Orf up from Hades. I've read about you. And Euridice. I didn't understand. And. now I do. Poems are pretty rocks that know things. You pull them from the earth. Some you leave behind.

  Talking to myself.

  After a moment, the robot, Orf, grinds steadily on. He grinds steadily on.

  Down the vaiky of the Elwha, and north as the river flows and greatens. Earthquakes heave and slap, slap and heave. Sometimes a tree falls onto the digger, but Orf pays no mind. He is made of the stronger material, and they cannot harm him.

  Down the valley of the Elwha, past the dam that the Matties have carefully removed, that would not have withstood the quakes if it were still there. The trail becomes a dirt road. The road buckled pavement. The robot follows the remains of the highway into what once was Port Angeles.

  What will future geologists make of this? The town has become a skree, impossible to separate and reconfigure. Twists of metal gleam in the pilings by the light of undying fires. And amid the fire and rubble, figures move. Orf rolls into the city.

  A man sits in a clear space, holds his knees to his chest, and stares. Orf stops well away from him.

  I am looking for a man named Neilsen Birchbranch. Do you know where I can find him?

  The man says nothing.

  Do you know where I can find Neilsen Birchbranch? He works for the Protectorate.

  The man says nothing, but begins to rock back and forth on his haunches.

  I'm looking. Can you—

  The man begins to moan.

  Orf moves onward. At a point where the piles of rubble begin to be higher, a makeshift roadblock has been set up. Orf stops at it, and a group of men and women, all armed with rifles, come out of the declivities of the town skree.

  Come out of there, an old man says. He points his gun at Orf.

  There isn't anybody in here.

  Come out, or we'll blow you to hell.

  I've already been there.

  Come on out of there.

  I'm looking for a man named_Neilsen Birchbranch. He works for the Protectorate.

  Goddamn we will shoot you you goddamn Mattie.

  Do you know where I can find him?

  The old man spits on the ground.

  Reckon he's with the others.

  The others?

  That's what I said.

  Where are they?

  Out at the dump.

  Where's the dump?

  That way. The old man points with his gun. Now come out.

  Orf turns and rolls away in the direction of the dump.

  Shots ring out. They ricochet off him and crackle against the rubble.

  Five miles out of town, Orf finds the dump. There are bodies here; hundreds of bodies. Men, women, children. At first, he thinks they are the dead from the quakes, collected and brought here.

  With the edge of a saw blade, Orf turns one of the bodies over. It is a woman. She has been shot in the head.

  Most of the other bodies are people who have been shot. Or hacked up. Or had their necks broken with clubs.

  The loggers have had their revenge.

  And there among the bodies, Orf pauses. He has recognized one. It is the woman from the field, the speaker, Mother Agatha. It is her; there is no mistake. A small bullet hole is in the forehead of her peaceful face.

  Orf rolls back to the city. It is night. He bursts through the roadblock without stopping. Shots, the flash of muzzles. It is all so much waste. Down lightless streets, and streets lit with fires, some deliberate, some not. Every half hour or so, another earthquake rumbles through, throwing rubble willy-nilly. There are often screams.

  Orf comes upon a steady fire, well-maintained, and sees that it is surrounded by people—people in the blue and brown dress of Matties. It is a silent throng. Orf hangs back, listens.

  Oh Mother Agatha Mother Goddess hear our prayer. Hear our prayer.

  We know we have done wrong. We have sinned against you. Hear our prayer.

  Hear our prayer.

  Hold back your wrath. We are unworthy and evil. This we know. We beg you even still. Hold back your wrath. Hear our prayer.

  Hear our prayer.

  Goddamn mother—

  The report of a gun. Someone—man or woman, Orf cannot tell--crumples in the ring of the fire. Instead of fleeing, the others stand still.

  Another shot. Another falls.

  Hear our prayer.

  No one moves.

  Another shot. A man falls, groaning, grasping at his leg. No one moves. He writhes in the shadows of the fire, in the dust of the ruins. No one helps him.

  The rifleman shoots no more. The man writhes. The voice of the minister goes up to his goddess and the people respond mechanically.

  Like robots are supposed to, Orf thinks. The man ceases his writhing. There is nothing to do. Orf rolls on quietly through the night, out of the city and east. The going is easy over the broken highway. In two hours, Orf is in what was Port Townsend.

  There is no rubble here, no ruins. The sea has washed it away. No bodies. No trees. Only desolation, bare-wiped desolation. He rolls down to where the docks had been, and looks out upon the lapping waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

  Then the slap of an earthquake, and Orf discovers the reason for the missing city. The slap runs its way down to the sea and is perfectly mirrored by the other side of the strait. Reflected back, a tsunami. Rolls over the land. Nothing left to take. Almost enough to suck in a digging robot. Orf must backpedal with his threads, dig in to keep from being pulled forward by the suck of the water as it retreats to the sea.

  Everyone is drowned here.

  Orf will not find Neilsen Birchbranch by looking in the cities. He heads to the southwest now, back to the center of the mountains.

  Into the forest. Orf wanders without aim. A day. Many days. Once, he remembers the mu, tries to go out of himself and find it. The uplink doesn't work; there is only static on a clear channel. Have all the satellites fallen from the sky? He wanders on, a giant among the gigantic trees.

  Across one divide. Down a valley. Finally back to the dig site. All is devastation here, a tumble of stone. Not a sign of anyone. The living area is caved in. Orf digs, but cannot locate the mu. All he finds is a twisted piece of red metal—the remains of Laramie's hum-vee. Nothing else. No reason to stay.

  Across another divide. Another valley. No longer caring to keep track. Stopping to look at rocks, or a peculiar bend in a river. The accumulation of snow.

  One day, the earthquakes stop.

  Quiet child. Hush now. You've seen too much for young eyes. Hush and be quiet for a while and take your rest.

  Wint
er, it must be. Orf coming over Snow Dome, down the Blue Glacier and into the valley of the Ho, where the biggest of the big trees are. Darkness earlier and earlier. In these towering woods, at these high latitudes, winter days are a perpetual twilight. Orf alongside the Ho. Its water opaque with outwash sludge, the heart of Mt. Olympus, washing away to the sea.

  Then away from the river, deeper into the rain forest. As deep and as wild as it gets, many miles from roads. If there are roads anymore.

  One hushed afternoon—or perhaps early evening, they are blend—a climbing rope, dangling from a tree. Movement to the left.

  Another rope. Many ropes falling from the trees like rain that stays suspended. And down the ropes men and women slide like spiders. Orf is surrounded. They are dressed in tattered suits of green. Silently, they gather round the digger until Orf cannot move for fear of crushing one of them.

  Men and women. Some have rifles slung across their backs. Two women carry children in the same manner, and the young ones are utterly, utterly quiet.

  All right. Orf has not heard a voice in weeks, and his own, arising from his exterior speakers, startles him. What is it you want?

  One of the men in green steps forward.

  Wait, he says.

  Orf waits with the silent people for he knows not what. And then, there is a movement in the undergrowth of vine maple. From around a low slope and over some deadfall, the mu appears. It moves clumsily. Whoever is at the controls doesn't know what he's doing, Orf thinks.

  The mu scampers up to the digger and stops.

  Andrew walks over the slope.

  He steps lightly along the deadfall on the forest floor and comes to stand beside the mu. In his hand is a metal box with an antenna extended from it.

  Do you want this thing back?

  They are silent for a while. It is not a strained silence, but is right. Orf speaks first.