A Circus of Hells

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 across 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.