Chosen twelve, p.18
Chosen Twelve, page 18
She was always careful not to let her fellow humans know what she was really up to; they wouldn’t approve after what had happened with Rho. It was all so exhausting. There weren’t enough hours in the day. There weren’t enough golligs. She had to wait for more to be born while she scouted for threats and improved her shelter and dug new food caches and swam countless trips to the bottom of the bay. All the while, the golligs watched her indifferently. Their uselessness got on her last nerve.
She could tell them apart now. She knew more about them than she did about herself. Unlike Gamma, she did not come to love them. The vocabulary she’d built up while training on the moonbase hadn’t taken into account how much unique and specialized profanity she would need to get through even one day on the island. So much so that she’d created specialized cuss words for each individual gollig, regretting that they couldn’t understand her well enough to be offended.
Ethel slipped and fell in the sand. The rest kept pulling. Omicron had tied up all her golligs, even the young. She needed every ounce of muscle power they had. She watched the rope. It was taut but perfectly still. Then, with a lurch, it moved.
“It’s working,” Omicron said with thinly restrained excitement.
Bart oink-bleated.
“Take it up with HR,” Omicron said. Edubot had taught them extensively about corporations in prior civilizations. That one line was all that had stuck.
How much did the submerged bot weigh? Omicron had no idea. The more important question was, how much could a gollig pull? No one knew. They were too feisty to ride, and there was no wood to build a chariot. Even a simple wheel was out of the question. Gamma had experimented with sleds made from bamboo, but they had quickly fallen apart on the rugged terrain. Besides, there wasn’t much that needed to be hauled around. The basic tools and goods they traded back and forth didn’t weigh much. The heaviest things they had to move were Alpha’s mud bricks. Phi seemed perfectly happy to carry those himself, if only for the workout. If Omicron hadn’t been so worried about secrecy, she would have invited him to help pull.
The rope moved forward a centimeter at a time. The golligs were struggling. Omicron tapped Bart on the butt with the flat side of the sword. He jerked wildly with a fresh wave of panic.
“You’re such a baby,” she said.
Bart would never trust her again. Not that he should have ever trusted any human in the first place. To most of them, he was no more than the raw materials for jerky. To her, he was jerky and an obligation. She had protected him from countless predator attacks. She had bled for him. Was it too much to ask him to dredge up one giant block of metal in return? Apparently, yes.
She watched the rope nervously. This had to work. If it didn’t, she couldn’t think of any other way to retrieve the bot. Two years of blood, sweat, and profanity would have been utterly wasted. Without the metal, Rho would have died for nothing. What would that make Omicron? If none of this served the greater good, she couldn’t justify a single thing she’d done.
“Pull harder!” she yelled.
Three golligs toppled over, their legs as stiff as short bamboo. She had to watch her temper. The other golligs continued to pull. The rope moved. That was weird; they were applying less force than before. The rope accelerated. Some of the standing golligs weren’t pulling at all now, and went back to digging in the sand. For the golligs tugging at the line, the ropes were still taut, but they weren’t like horses pulling a carriage. They were more like dogs straining at the end of a leash. She had witnessed both in the simulator during various apocalypses, but she never imagined she would see it play out in real life.
The golligs weren’t pulling the bot up. It was coming up on its own.
Omicron cut the rope. Bart took off, dragging the team of golligs sideways. With another slash, she cut him loose; he disappeared into the short bamboo. She would deal with him later—if the wolf sharks didn’t get him first.
A metal glimmer appeared near the surface. Omicron watched, transfixed. Plumes of sand mushroomed around its feet. Slowly, it rose from the water.
A gollig oink-bleated uneasily. The ones who hadn’t run off were watching now. Had they sensed danger, or were they just curious? She cut the rest of them free from their harnesses. She kept the sword in her hand.
Water poured off the bot as it walked up the slope of the sandbar and into full view. It was tall. Five meters, if not six. It was huge when it wasn’t folded up on itself. It made lifting bots look small. How had she ever thought a team of golligs could pull something that big? They must have annoyed it awake. It had done the rest on its own.
Its metal surfaces gleamed in the sunlight. The sand refused to stick to it. It looked factory-fresh. It was the most beautiful thing Omicron had ever seen. And it could crush her like a bug.
The rest of the golligs ran away. That was a lot of free dinners roaming around for any sea monster that wanted them. Omicron had bigger problems. She’d be lucky if she survived long enough to eat her next meal.
She didn’t have to stay. There was still time to flee—unless there wasn’t. Maybe the bot was fast. Maybe it could fly. The only thing she knew for sure was that it could survive for thousands of years underwater. Whatever it was, it was tough. It would soon be right on top of her.
She came to a decision. She put away her sword.
“Hey, there!” she said. “I’m Omicron. Nice to meet you.”
The bot kept coming. It didn’t show any reaction to her greeting. Maybe it hadn’t heard her.
“Hey!” she said again. “Haven’t seen you around here before.”
Where did that come from? She was embarrassing herself in front of her likely murderer. Part of her was glad there were no witnesses.
The bot continued walking down the sandbar. When it reached the main section of the beach, Omicron put her arms behind her back. She held her ground.
The bot stopped. It towered over her.
“Welcome,” Omicron said.
The bot seemed to regard her for a moment. Then it slowly rotated its head a full three hundred and sixty degrees. Omicron guessed it was surveying the landscape. She waited.
From its right shoulder, the bot extended an antenna with a red light on top. The light flashed several times. The bot beeped.
“Can you speak?” Omicron asked.
The bot remained silent.
“We could use your help,” Omicron said. “We’re settling the planet again. Humans and bots aren’t fighting anymore.” She realized she should have led with that. “We’re on the same side now, so there’s no need to, you know, kill me.”
The bot walked. Omicron jumped out of the way. The bot crossed the beach and stomped through the short bamboo. Omicron followed.
“I do not take orders from organics,” the bot said suddenly, its voice deep and mechanical. The digitals were capable of much more complex and subtle vocal patterns. Omicron wasn’t sure why some of them sounded like this. The bot continued its march.
“So you do speak,” Omicron said, scurrying after it. “You’re probably the only working bot on the planet. I can’t believe you’re still functional. How long were you down there?”
The bot’s pace remained unchanged.
“Time increment irrelevant,” it said, and stopped again.
This time, its head extended upward a full meter on a piston. As if this thing needed to be any taller. The bot again rotated its head in a full circle. Omicron waited patiently.
The bot retracted the piston so its head was again on its shoulders. It swiveled at the waist to face her without moving its feet. It really was like a beefier lifting bot.
“Swear fealty to the Digital Alliance or be destroyed,” the bot said in its rudimentary, mechanical voice.
That was disappointing. She thought she was making progress. She had never heard of the Digital Alliance, but context clues suggested it was the bot side of the war that had wiped out the previous batch of colonists. She didn’t know fealty had been an option for the last humans. Had some people switched sides? If they did, it didn’t save them. If you were going to commit treachery, at least make sure it would keep you alive.
“Uh, okay,” Omicron said. “I swear allegiance to the—what did you call it?—Digital Alliance, whatever that is.”
The bot was silent for what seemed like forever. The red light on its shoulder antenna continued to blink.
Omicron looked around. There was no sign of other humans or golligs. Wind rustled the short bamboo. She had the eerie impression she was the only living thing on the entire island.
“Pledge not accepted,” the bot announced abruptly.
It raised both arms. Omicron noticed its hands for the first time. Each finger was as long as her arm and shaped like a pickaxe.
The bot slammed them down.
Omicron dove backward. The hands made a wet, sucking sound as they slashed into the soil.
Omicron reached for her sword, then thought better of it. There was no point in fighting. She would almost certainly die without being able to warn the others. Better to run, but not by a direct route. She would just lead the bot to more prey. She had to lose it first.
Crouching low, she rushed through the stalks. She heard the bot stomping behind her. She dropped to her hands and knees, jerking this way and that as she crawled. She was light enough not to sink too far in the swampy soil. The bot stayed right behind her, sloshing as it walked, each step leaving a deep impression. It cut a straight path as Omicron zigzagged around thick patches of bamboo. The towering bot could easily see over the top of the lightning-stunted trees.
Suddenly, Omicron was back on Comus, where the air was filled with smoke and screams and the ground was streaked with blood. The bots were everywhere. Their metal tracks clanked against the metal floor. They spotted her. She tried to run toward the lander, but her legs wouldn’t move. The bots closed in.
She blinked. She was back in Dion’s cold, clammy muck. Her heart tried to pound out of her chest. There was no time to catch her breath.
She stood and ran. Her only hope was the water.
The bot had likely been in Rho’s Bay for millennia, but at the bottom. It couldn’t swim—she hoped. She would be safe on the surface with dozens of meters of depth below her. Unless something came up and ate her, of course.
She swam.
Stay away today, you stupid dragons, she thought. Halfway across the bay, she dared to look over her shoulder. The bot was on the edge of the water, staring.
It stood there. She kept treading. How long would it wait? Long enough for her to exhaust herself, she guessed. She looked to the other side of the bay. Maybe she would be better off getting out there. Then again, swimming was slow. The bot might beat her there once she started to move. She stayed put.
She took a deep breath and put her head in the water to make floating easier. It was something survivors of shipwrecks and plane crashes used to do to stay afloat for hours or even days. Omicron had learned that when Epsilon tested out boats in the simulator. That week, they’d all discovered more than they ever wanted to know about death at sea.
Minutes ticked by. It was hard to be sure how many. From her countless trips to the bottom, she knew she could hold her breath for nearly five. Her lung capacity had increased enormously over two years of dives. She counted each breath before she stuck her head in the water. She went through ten. Then twenty. Each time she refilled her air, the bot was still there. It hadn’t budged since she’d entered the water. The sun was getting lower in the sky. With her face in the water, she watched for monsters. Soon, she wouldn’t be able to see them. She didn’t want to be out here after dark.
She pulled her head out of the water and took another breath. The bot was gone. She turned slowly, not wanting to disturb the surface of the water, as if the sound of her splashing would bring it back. She scanned the entire shoreline. The coast was clear.
Omicron swam to the opposite side of the bay. She pulled herself onto the beach and lay there, exhausted. She wanted to take the longest nap of her life. There was no time. She pushed herself to her feet. She had to warn the others.
She ran.
Chapter 29
“Are you picking up anything?” Delta asked.
Spenser whirred above her head. No luck. She thought the sensors on his damaged and immobile vacuum body might reach further with an altitude boost. It made no difference. The beast had simply vanished. To the others, that might be a relief. Not to Delta. She liked her monsters where she could see them.
She set Spenser on the rocky ground. He whirred apologetically.
“You did your best,” Delta said.
She hadn’t believed Omicron at first when she told Delta her ridiculous story. It was too strange to be real, even on this, the most absurd planet in the universe. Where else had killer kangaroos been a stepping-stone to the apocalypse? And yet, things had somehow gotten worse. On a deserted island with no sign of prior bot activity, one had simply walked out of the water. No, that wasn’t right. Omicron had harassed it into coming out. If this had happened at the Table back on the moon base, Delta would have accepted it. There was nothing too strange for those doomed simulations. But here, in real life? No one was that dumb. Clearly, Delta had given her species too much credit. It was so frustrating. It was her job to protect them. She wanted humanity to survive. That meant both the race and these particular individuals. She would die for them if it came down to it. She just wished they’d be slightly less suicidal so she didn’t have to.
Perplexingly, the mysterious bot, which was larger than any they had ever seen, had somehow disappeared. Everyone had been looking for it ever since. The tracks had been easy enough to follow. The thing had marched down the sandbar, through the bamboo thicket, and then along the beach, where it apparently stood for a great while. Its foot indentations there were deeper than anywhere else along its path. After that, it ventured inland onto harder ground. That’s where the trail disappeared. Did it re-enter the water at a different point? If so, they hadn’t found its footprints on any other beach. It didn’t seem like it could possibly still be on the island. Surely something that big would be noticeable. She had never seen a cave on the island large enough to hide it. Could it dig its own hiding spot? According to Omicron, it had huge limbs with massive fingers shaped like pickaxes. They seemed perfect for digging—and for killing. They needed to find this thing now.
Everyone was on the case. Delta divided ten adults into three search parties. That left one person to watch the kids. Children were absolutely necessary to the future of the species. Their civilization had no future without them, but protecting them diminished Delta’s already meager army. It wasn’t easy to run a military operation and a daycare at the same time. Delta found a way. There had been quite an argument over who would stay back to watch the children. Upsilon volunteered, but Lambda refused to hand over Starlight. Trust between them had dipped that low. After an inexcusable amount of wasted time, Delta drafted Theta to watch both children while everyone else went out on the hunt. They could be confident the kids would be safe until they got back—unless the dentopuses decided this emergency was the perfect occasion to launch another mass raid. At this point, Delta wouldn’t rule anything out.
Beta ran up, out of breath. That was unusual. He could go practically forever. He must have sprinted the whole way.
“Found something,” he gasped. “Bay of Death.”
Delta suppressed a shiver. She hadn’t been back since that eight-legged dentopus almost got the best of her, “almost” being the operative word. It found out the hard way that the prize for second place was death. On Spenser Island, sometimes that was the prize for first place, too.
Delta looked at Spenser.
“You good?”
Spenser whirred.
She took off without the stationary bot. The sea monsters should leave him alone. Not even the dentopuses were that hungry.
Sigma and Pi struggled to keep up with her. She’d selected them for her group because they were among the only possible neutral choices. She couldn’t pick Upsilon and Gamma or Lambda and Phi for obvious reasons. Omicron was also a lost cause. She was defiant even when she wasn’t getting someone killed or provoking a giant bot. Delta tried not to take it personally. She suspected the former hairdresser would have a problem with anyone who was in charge. Some people make it their whole purpose to be ungovernable. Delta had done it herself under the bots, but she’d had a good reason. If she was being honest, maybe Omicron had, too.
Practically everyone had some kind of problem with Delta these days. She hoped that was a sign she was doing her job correctly. If she was truly being fair with these no-win decisions, then everyone should be equally fed up with her. Not that that made the emotional toll any easier. Sending the others out of the fortress had been the right call, but she had to admit she sometimes missed the early days after the landing. Back then, everyone huddled together every night, and no one but Theta and Alpha had separated into the sort of insular couples Delta would never be a part of. With each passing day since then, she had become more alone.
Beta caught back up to her.
“There,” he said.
From the top of the cliff, he pointed to a set of tracks along the beach. How did the beast get there? The trail down was narrow and steep. She couldn’t imagine its big, plodding feet navigating that precarious ledge. Carefully, she descended the path, keeping an eye on the countless dark crevices that lined the cliff wall. A dentopus could launch itself out of any one of them. The others followed her wearily. She put on a brave face. The last thing she needed was for them to get nervous, too. She could deal with monsters but not with panic. There was nothing more dangerous than a spooked human with a sword.
