Archon of the Covenant (14 page)

Now, the mass outside was shrieking – blood curdling, panicked cries. Some cries cut short - twisting, distorting. A rhythmic thud shook the ground in sharp lines just outside of the complex – a zipping, buzz saw sound. One hit the outer wall, racing up the baluster, cracking like a whip, piercing the sky. This went on. The sentinel switched its optics – infrared, then a blurry x-ray. There was no satellite image. They were still in the dark, waiting there – the girl aboard the rumble seat, wondering, like the sentinel, what unknown drama was unfolding just outside. A pool of blood seeped in through the threshold of the mesquite doors ahead, trickling though the grooves of the dusty narthex tile.

It was midday now. They waited there, unsure what to do. The bedlam outside had quieted to muffled moans in the expanse surrounding the mission. The sentinel refocused its x-ray optics, transfixed on something outside. The girl looked up and, likewise, was captivated at the still door seeping blood.

“What is it?”

“Something is coming.”

An explosion ripped into the upper joint of the left door. The eruption deafened the inside of the mission and the girl cupped her hands over her ears. Another explosion, on the lower joint, and two more on the other side. The nave filled with a cloud of dust and grime that rolled over them like a black tide. The massive, mesquite entranceway collapsed and the blinding light from the midday sun filled the vestibule. The girl shielded her eyes and then held one hand aloft, blocking the light as the outside came into view. A mass of bodies were piled beneath the shards of the broken door, some still writhing – they were riddled with holes, blood streaming forth from one carcass to the next.

A solitary figure stepped forward into the church, veiled by the sun. It held over its shoulders a colossal, smoking longrifle – nearly the size of the figure itself. The sentinel raised its railgun at the silhouette, drawing aim at its core. It took one more step forward and slowly came into view. Its translucent, elastic skin redirected the sun like a prism, enshrouding an oscillating network of phosphorescent fibers stretched around the lithe, microlattice machinery of an automaton. Its face, pulsating in soft blue lights beneath synthetic skin, appeared before them. A bi-pedal medusa looking upon the petrified inhabitants of the Gorgon cave. It was the aroton. Outside, across the horizon, the same three drones from the Catalina foothills soared in formation, circling some broken revin husks in the cortile. The lead drone dipped forward, mini-gun tracers arcing towards the ground ahead.

DDC39 looked for the aroton’s wireless signal – to find some way to communicate with it - but was blocked. The aroton detected this semaphore in the brume and looked directly into the optics of the sentinel, then at the girl. Slowly, it lifted its hand towards them, pointing one finger ahead and then shifting it from left to right until it bore straight at the Mexican Wolf, which was cowered in the shadows beneath the reredos. The aroton spoke – its processed voice filling the room as the dust particles swirled upwards into the half-light of the rose windows high above:

“That’s my wolf.”

*              *              *              *              *

The aroton stood before them, guarding the front exit, awaiting a reply or acknowledgement to its simple edict. Its wolf.
Its wolf.
They stood before each other for a tense eternity. The aroton studied the wolf – its shuddering motions and fleeting glances back at the girl, who nudged the unmoving sentinel, which continued staring straight ahead at the aroton. The sun was beginning to hang low in the western sky – the bright interior of the mission now turning coral and dahlia.

The sentinel could not communicate with the aroton – or would not be permitted. The standoff left few options. DDC39 had little charge – its solar armor having only a brief glimpse of the errant morning light.. The wolf, curled in a tense repose in the corner, suddenly got up and walked slowly over to the girl, reclined on the rumble seat, and nudged her elbow. She looked down at the wolf and gave it a shrug before looking back at the aroton, which lifted the rifle off its shoulder, setting the butt on the tile. It spoke out loud, to no one in particular:

“Astounding. Well, it appears this stalemate is concluded. You win. Shall we depart?”

The girl and the machine looked at each other, each one unsure what happened. The sentinel looked back at the aroton, who was walking through the smoldering archway of the mission – it paused, looking over its shoulder at the pair near the chancel, in the depth of the church.

“Well? There are thousands more on their way. I’d recommend we make haste.”

With that, the aroton stepped out of the Mission San Xavier del Bac – digging its heels into the carcasses of the revins piled at the front steps. The crunch of bone and wet grind of skin tearing at the corner of open wounds. It exited the outer wall, passing through the arabesques and coat-of-arms of St. Francis, and into the dirt patches south of the church. The sentinel moved forward and the girl blurted out:

“Be careful!”

“We have no choice but to get into the remaining daylight.”

They rolled over the open flesh of the perforated revins – a putrid odor of blood and excrement choking the air past the vestibule. The girl gagged at the noxious smell wafting upwards, cupping her hands over her mouth. The sentinel spun its wheels forward and they were freed of the mission.

They rolled towards a circular etching in the sand in the distance and looked west. They saw, for the first time, the scene that had unfolded while they were gathered at their captive mass inside. The circumference of the mission was pocked with soiled bodies in every direction. Flies and gnats began to cloud the air above each smoldering carapace. Some were huddled against the outer wall, ripped open as they knelt, paralyzed, against the white bulwarks. Others were riddled with dark, seeping wounds in their backs – caught in the open as they dashed away from the chaos erupting behind them. DDC39 cautiously approached the aroton at the sand mound ahead of them – the sentinel’s wheels rolling softly in the gravel, a single kestrel cawing from the balustrade high atop the broken mission. The drones were gone, absconded in the amaurosis of the heliopause.

Joined upon the solitude of the sand mound, the girl and sentinel fixed their gaze on the aroton, which was still looking west into the low sun. The aroton was speaking softly to itself, undisturbed by the girl and the sentinel.

“
Look upon me with eyes of compassion, and awaken in my heart a tender commiseration for those sufferings, and a sincere detestation of my sins.”

The aroton motioned the sign of the cross over its diaphanous chest and fell silent before finally acknowledging the sentinel, speaking to it again in the familiar, English tongue:

“Your charge is low. Follow me and we’ll find sanctuary for you and your passenger.”

The aroton set out on a path through the abandoned parking lot to the southwest, walking into the low sun. An ocean of orange and violet hung in the sky, pocked by wisps of cirrus that crested above them like a still delta. The sentinel turned and began heading in the opposite direction towards Little Nogales Dr., the girl looking behind her at the aroton, which even at its short distance began to fade into the sun like a mirage. Its disembodied voice called out from the void:

“You know, of course, that if you head in that direction, you’ll spend the evening in the open. It won’t be a good night for you or the girl.”

She looked up at the sentinel, which had stopped abruptly and swung its optical array back in the direction of the aroton, which was now walking further into the distance. She waved at the sentinel’s lens, getting its attention, and pointed at the aroton, giving a thumbs-up in its field of view. The sentinel turned around and followed in the aroton’s tracks.

Together the two machines and the girl ventured out of the dusty village just on the outskirts of the mission, passing by tilting, collapsed hovels and weathered shacks. The pastoral sanctuaries of the patronato and the cabalgatas. They came upon the desolate Gok Kawulk Wog – the loam passage winding along the desert floor, bearing forth towards a dark, volcanic mesa on the horizon. This black highland was unmarked – unnamed on any records known to the sentinel. They kept on, forward, in silence until the girl blurted out:

“Hey, whaddya mean the wolf is yours?”

The aroton looked over its shoulders at the girl – its expressionless face, further muted in the flare of the setting sun. It let the question hang in the air, looking back at the sentinel, before finally speaking – not to the girl, but to DDC39:

“You and I, we are part of a line. You have a program, albeit simple, and I too have a program. Rather more complex. I know you’ve tried to break my protocols as we’ve walked – there’s no need. I’ll tell you what I do. I was part of the ending series – the last automatons created by sentient man, before the disease swept. The most advanced artificial intelligence ever created. I am the memorial and living testament to humanity. Better than mankind could ever be, in its short lifespan.”

The sentinel and the girl listened, rapt, through the crumbling of gravel under polyurethane and the whisper of wind through the burroweed.

“When they knew they were facing extinction, the humans put in motion a network of artificial intelligence – machines - that would become the caretakers. Each of us would be given a set of instructions. Some would find themselves powering down nuclear plants. Some would be charged with standing watch over hydroelectric dams. And then there were some less understood programs. Like mine. I was given a very specific set of instructions: protect an endangered species. The Mexican Wolf.”

The sentinel looked behind them, scanning the reaches of the O’odham waste. It switched between optics, settling on its thermal vision. A small heat signature, in the distance, peeked above the weeds of an empty field. The sentinel asked:

“How many are left?”

As they moved forward in the shale path, the aroton looked overhead at a flock of grackles moving north across their path.”

“Blackbirds. The weather is changing.”

“The Mexican Wolf. How many?”

“Let me ask
you
something You have a human girl strapped to your back. Where do you intend to take her? Forgive me. I
know
where you’re taking her – I broke your firewall hours ago. I hacked your program, but there is no meaning behind it. So, why? What purpose does it serve to take her
there
?”

The girl screwed up in a ball on the rumble seat, tugging at her sweatshirt, and looked up at the sentinel’s trident frame. Nervous eyes. The sentinel’s array was seized on every movement the aroton made. DDC39 looked back at her, briefly. The aroton pressed:

“What on earth are you going to do with the girl
there
? Are you going to kill her? Perhaps? No. You would’ve killed her already. Fascinating though.”

“Your mission is to protect the Mexican Wolf. And they are nearly extinct. The one that follows Becca – is that the last of them?”

“Becca? Is that her name? Well, this is a special occasion. A
Becca.
”

The aroton kept walking, face forward, longrifle over its shoulders. Its voice was calm, biting, and unwavering.

“It’s been so long since I’ve encountered anything with a forename.”

It turned, while walking backwards, and feigned a long bow towards the girl, tucked behind the trident frame of the sentinel. It shifted the longrifle from one shoulder to the next, and kept walking. The sentinel chimed in again:

“What happened back there? How did you kill all of those reverted incurables?”

“The revins? Who says
I
killed them? You killed them. The moment you shut down the ECM jammer at the NSO. I imagine you did that to get your own uplink back online? Well, in doing so, you released the thousands of revins trapped in the campus. The jammer kept the drones outside of firing range – at bay. The revins figured that out awhile ago. They had shelter in that bubble – the quarantine zone. You see, the drones program is simple – kill all the revins they can find. The violent roombas”

“You directed the drones to our position?”