Changeling

Chapter 9. The Hill Of Stars

SilverSide knew the normal pack routine with a kill.

The hunters would first tear open the abdomen and feed themselves on the warm, pulsing blood-rich meat. Afterward, their own appetites sated, they would use their crude flint-knapped knives and flay the carcass, cutting it into manageable chunks to be put on the carriers.

Now the kin circled uneasily around the dead WalkingStone. LifeCrier reached out and tapped at the thing’s stomach with a claw. “It’s stone, SilverSide,” the old wolf-creature said. “A magical creature from the FirstBeast. There’s nothing for us to eat. It’s a mockery.”

SilverSide came up to the body, the other kin moving aside for her. “KeenEye,” she asked, “have any of the WalkingStones been killed before?”

KeenEye seemed grateful for the attention, as SilverSide had expected. “No,” she said. “These are the Hunters of the WalkingStones; there are other kinds near the Hill of Stars, but they never leave that place. Every time before, we ran from the Hunters when we couldn’t hurt them. They’ve killed three hands of kin and more in the three dances of the moons since they came. The fire from their fingers kills.”

Three hands of kin-with the wolf-creature’s four-fingered hands, that meant that over a dozen kin had fallen to the WalkingStones in three months. SilverSide had seen perhaps thirty to forty of the wolf-creatures at PackHome. Twelve members of the tribe was a significant loss. It was no wonder that LifeCrier and the others were looking for divine intervention.

SilverSide crouched down alongside the WaIkingStone. She examined the thing carefully. Her optical circuits noted a seam running along the abdomen. She slid a claw tip carefully along the edge, narrowing and flattening the claw so that it slipped easily under the lip of metal.

She pried up. Magnetic catches held tenaciously, then finally gave as she increased the tension. The abdomen covering lifted, revealing an interior of miniature servo motors, linkages, wires, and circuit boards. The kin around SilverSide gasped.

“There’s no blood;’ KeenEye said in SilverSide’s ear, marveling. “No muscles, no meat, no stomach. How does it move?”

“Magic,” LifeCrier said again. “The Eternal Ones have set them in motion against SilverSide and the OldMother.”

The answer sounded right to SilverSide. She could not refute LifeCrier, not with the strange gaps in her knowledge. LifeCrier had told her of the struggles among the gods. SilverSide had found nothing to disprove that she had been sent by the OldMother to serve humans. Given that, it was just as likely that the WalkingStones may well have been sent by FirstBeast or some other rival of the OldMother.

Still…

“The Hunter is not magic,” SilverSide told them. ‘The WalkingStones are MadeThings. They are tools, like our flint knives or the travois. They are like the dolls the cubs fashion from sticks, only the WalkingStones are stuffed with stone chips and vines from the Void. The power in them allows them to walk, and they speak with a voice you can hear only in your head.

“Look,” she said and plunged her forepaw hand into the WalkingStone’s entrails. Her claws emerged again fisted around the colorful intestines of the creature: a trailing, knotted coil of wires. The kin howled at the sight, half in lament, half in wonder.

“These are the guts of kin’s worst enemy,” SilverSide said. “The cubs back at PackHome could at least eat a SharpFang. Even if SharpFangs kill kin, they can also feed us. But not these creatures. This is the inedible meat of the WalkingStones.”

“What are we going to do, SilverSide?” LifeCrier asked, and his question was echoed by the others around them.

SilverSide thought for a moment. Then she tugged hard at the array of wires. Bright sparks spat angrily, arcing and dying on the ground. SilverSide flung the tangle down.

“Since they will not let us live, we will kill them,” she said.

A robotics expert would probably have been simply appalled and frightened and ordered the destruction of the robot. Janet Anastasi, SilverSide’s creator, might have herself been concerned with the robot’s behavior, but she would have also been intensely interested.

SilverSide’s mindset had nothing of a human being in it at all. The Three Laws were there, yes, but they had now been completely reshaped and changed. As the robots of Aurora, Solaria, Earth, and other human worlds were shaped and designed to mimic human behavior, so SilverSide had shaped and designed herself to mimic the kin. Indeed, because she had no conception that she was a constructed thing herself, she was kin, and she interpreted the inbuilt Three Laws of her positronic brain in light of her own “humanity.”

The WalkingStones threatened the Kin. They killed kin. And though she could have led the kin away from PackHome, that also would have meant the probable loss of life. The wolf-creatures were territorial hunters, and the neighboring pack-leaders had already warned them. SilverSide’s pack couldn’t move into another pack’s territory without being challenged and having to fight other wolf-creatures, nor would another pack have allowed them to hunt in their own territory.

Finding another viable home that was not already claimed was at best a dubious hope, and KeenEye and LifeCrier had already told her that the WalkingStones were expanding their holdings-even if SilverSide’s pack left, another pack would eventually have to confront the WalkingStones when they might be even more powerful.

SilverSide had reluctantly come to the decision to stay and confront the situation directly.

Yes, kin might die, but more kin would likely die if they left.

A human robot might have looked for yet another, more peaceful solution. But SilverSide was a carnivore, a hunter even though she herself did not eat at all; she took the carnivore’s solution.

Having accepted the wolf-creatures as human, she accepted their mores. Without further proof, she also accepted their mythology. The OldMother had sent her. She was chosen for the task. The WalkingStones might be intelligent, but they were made by another god and therefore were not “human” themselves. Though SilverSide couldn’t perform outside the Three Laws, she would do what she had to do within their limits.

As her new mindset perceived them.

What the carnivore could not avoid, it attacked. Dr. Anastasi’s experiment had worked perfectly well. Her robot had become something other. A very dangerous other.

Still, if it weren’t for the fact that SilverSide had just killed one of the hated creatures, the rest of the kin might not have accepted her statement. A challenge to her leadership might have been the immediate outcome.

Even so, there were questions.

“We’ve tried killing the WalkingStones before,” KeenEye said. She used KinSpeech rather than HuntTongue, not wanting SilverSide to think she was offering formal challenge. SilverSide listened to the old leader, sitting back on her hind legs and braiding a necklace from the WalkingStone’s wires. “They’re not like SharpFangs. SharpFangs are strong but very stupid. These Hunter WalkingStones can kill by pointing their fingers, and our claws and teeth do nothing.

“This one died,” SilverSide said. She placed the necklace around her neck; the other kin howled softly at the sight.

“Yes, but it’s the first.”

“It won’t be the last. I will show you ways to deal with them. This is our territory, not the WalkingStones’. They are driving away the game we live on and making this a barren place. Once the WalkingStones and their Hill of Stars are gone, the game will return and the kin can live as they please. We will take our territory back again.”

“You will show us how to kill them?”

“I will.”

KeenEye paused. She looked from the dead WalkingStone to SilverSide. “Then lead us, SilverSide,” KeenEye said in a rising shout and let out a glad cry in BeastTalk.

SilverSide took a strand of wires from the gutted Hunter. She quickly plaited another necklace from the colorful wire and knotted the bright coil around KeenEye’s neck. Carefully, she then did the same with each of them. “There;’ she said when it was done. “We wear the signs of our victory. Now, follow me. We must learn more about our enemy.”

SilverSide dropped to all fours. With a quick lope, she ran into the forest, moving westward toward the Hill of Stars.

Howling, the rest of the kin ran behind her.