Chronicles of Isambard Smith 05 - End of Empires (2 page)

‘Rhianna, will you please turn that racket down!’ Grimacing, Smith sat up and thumped the partition wall. He flopped back against the pillow.

The door opened. Rhianna Mitchell put her head into the room. She wore a large sun-hat, from which a number of dreadlocks flopped down as if she was making a bad job of hiding a dried squid on her head. The smell of Aresian Red Weed followed her into Smith’s bedroom. She looked hurt. ‘Isambard, that’s not a racket. That’s poetry. It’s like... truth.’

‘Truth my arse. They said that this was the end ten minutes ago and I’m still waiting for them to pipe down. I’m not surprised Jim Morrison’s only got one friend: if I was his brown-eyed girl I’d have left him ages ago.’

She entered the room and looked him over. ‘You’ve still got a temperature, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you take the medicine I prepared?’

‘Of course,’ he replied, hoping that she would not notice the alarming new tint that the pot-plant was acquiring, thanks to a range of herbal remedies being tipped into its soil. Rhianna’s concoctions restored normality in much the same way as rubber bullets and tear gas. ‘Look, old girl, would you mind terribly putting the kettle on? I could do with some tea. I need to be on top form today.’

They had been invited to attend a Strategic Development Conference by the Service’s Games and Diversions Department, which in plain English meant that they were going to play board games against spies.

‘Oh dear,’ said Rhianna. ‘It’s like, really bad that you’re not feeling well. You know, I’ve developed this technique to help when I’m feeling down and I need to forget all my troubles.’ She paused to take a long drag on the hand-rolled cigarette she held, releasing a cloud of fragrant smoke into the air. She watched the ceiling fan chopping through the smoke for a moment, and then kept on watching it. ‘What was I saying?’

‘Never mind,’ said Smith. ‘Thanks for looking after me, old girl.’

Rhianna sat down beside him and swung her legs up. Removing her hat, she kicked off her sandals, yawned and stretched. Smith watched her stretching. It made listening to the Doors quite bearable. ‘I bought some amazing stuff at the market earlier,’ she said. ‘Maybe that would help.’

‘What sort of... stuff?’

‘Well, it’s a native oil.’

‘Sweaty bunch, are they?’

‘The ancient peoples of Ravnavar make it from the sap of the glue-pine tree. When the wild quanbeast releases musk onto the tree, it reacts in a unique way.’

Smith imagined the unique way, and decided that he didn’t want anything to do with the drippings of a shrub that had been daubed in alien-pee. ‘What’re you supposed to do with this stuff?’

‘Well, I could rub it onto your afflicted areas.’

‘Could you leave the stuff out? You know, just rub my… er, areas?’

Smith adjusted his pyjamas. Rhianna stared at the ceiling, perhaps admiring the selection of model aircraft that Smith had attached to it with string.

‘You know this game thing we’re here for?’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t we read the rules first?’

‘I thought you said rules were oppressive and fascist?’

‘That’s just Scrabble. There should totally be three A’s in “craaazy”. That’s how I pronounce it.’

‘Well,’ Smith replied, ‘I’ve been studying the rules of Warro. I’ve finished the quick-start pamphlet and I’m now onto page seventy-eight of the basic rules. Actually, I think it might be the small type that’s made me feel ill. All that squinting, you know.’

‘I don’t believe in rules,’ Rhianna said. ‘People should just be able to… you know, express themselves.’

Smith heaved himself upright and slowly got out of bed. He pushed his feet into slippers, put his dressing gown on and checked his moustache in the mirror. ‘Yes, but it’s a board game. You have to have rules, otherwise it’d be every man for himself, like
abroad
or something. What would happen if I decided to pop up my pirate while you were trying to do Othello? Pure mayhem.’ The thought of mayhem made him pause. ‘Wait a minute. It’s terribly quiet here. Where’s Suruk?’

‘He went into town to buy a hat.’

‘Oh God. Do the police know? I know he’s keen and all, but I do worry that he’ll just get bored of waiting and kick off the war without getting to the front line first. I’ve never seen anyone keener to get to grips with the lemmings. And he does get a bit worked up about hats. Oh well…’ Smith reached down and hauled a book the size of a telephone directory from the floor. ‘
A Beginner’s Guide to Warro
,’ he announced, dumping it onto the bed. ‘Three weeks more and I’ll have it all worked out.’

‘I know,’ Rhianna said, ‘Why don’t you study the rules, and I’ll put the playing pieces together? It’ll be really creative.’

‘Excellent idea! I’ll get Carveth to help you once she gets back from her robot convention. And don’t let her paint my tanks pink, alright?’

* * *

At 8.33 the porterbot rolled into the station café. ‘Gor blimey,’ it announced, closing the airlock in a rush of cold air, ‘sensors indicate that external ambient temperature has decreased to freezing brass monkeys and all.’

‘Hark at you with your freezing monkeys!’ replied the beverage-dispensing unit. ‘Get a cup of tea in you, that’s what I say based on empirical data analysis.’

The porterbot decreased its speaker volume. ‘Here, there’s some rum sorts in tonight. You see that tall feller in the corner? One of them Morlock warriors, don’cha know.’

‘Well, takes all sorts to make a world once the preliminary terraforming is completed. Do you want this tea or not? Don’t blame me if your heat sink catches a cold.’

‘And them two on the platform. She must have something wrong with her optical system, the way he keeps looking into her eyes.’

A slim figure rose in the corner. A long-fingered hand adjusted a Panama hat. Mandibles opened, and the warrior smiled as it approached.

‘Greetings, robots. Here is the pay for my tea. And for what I believe was intended to be a sandwich, prior to fermentation. Suruk the Slayer thanks you.’

Suruk strolled down the platform. The train was, of course, late. He stopped near the two other people waiting for the train and examined the fine print on his ticket.

The two other travellers turned to each other.

‘Darling,’ the man said.

‘Yes, darling?’ the woman replied.

‘Darling, I fear we must part.’

‘Must we, darling?’

He shook his head. ‘You’ll be alright, old girl. Chin up! It’s only the rest of your life.’

She turned away, weeping, and looked back. ‘Take me with you, Howard.’

‘Lesley, darling, I cannot. We must stop this madness. We both have lives to go to: you, to the tedious drudgery of your home, and I, to Proxima Centauri to look after the adorable green children.’

‘Excuse me,’ Suruk said, ‘is this the super-saver train?’

They looked round. ‘I’m sorry?’ the man asked.

‘I have recently purchased a hat, as you may observe. I wish to rejoin my comrades, to whom I shall show this fine headgear.’ Suruk frowned. ‘Incidentally, I think you should avoid Proxima Centauri.’

The man stared. ‘What the devil do you know about it?’

‘Well, if by “adorable green children” you refer to the offspring of my species, considerably more than you. Should you plan to vaccinate any of them, I strongly recommend you take a trauma kit and equipment to stem heavy bleeding.’

‘Really? Allergic, are they?’

‘No, but they will rip your arm off when you stick a needle in them. I would suggest tying the syringe to the end of a very long pole.’

‘Darling –’ said the woman.

‘Look,’ the man said, ‘this is all very interesting, but we’re rather busy here. If it were not for the strict rules of our oppressive bourgeois existence, I’d ask you to leave. As it is, we shall have to nod appreciatively at whatever piffle you choose to witter at us, while wracked by internal misery.’

‘How very interesting, alien person,’ said the woman. ‘Do go on.’ She started to cry.

The train slid into the station, belching steam from its brakes. The carriage doors hissed apart and people emerged in a wave of noise: twenty human soldiers in dark green armour, kit-bags slung over their shoulders, chatting as they walked; four stiff-backed M’Lak in the uniforms of Ravnavari Lancers, seeming to disapprove of everything they saw; a couple of medium-level bureaucrats, wearing portable cogitators and sporting pens of rank in their top pockets. From the rear of the train scuttled a tangled mess of the Peripherals, robots built by other robots from junk and spare parts. Refreshment units rolled into place; a rear door fell down and a pair of wranglers began to coax a huge shadar out of its cage.

‘I suppose this is goodbye!’ the man yelled over the hubbub.

‘Yes, I suppose so!’ the woman called back. ‘Goodbye, then.’

‘Goodbye. Mustn’t make a scene!’ he shouted.

‘What was that, darling?’

‘Is this the super-saver train?’ Suruk called.

‘Stop saying that!’ the man replied.

The carriages were almost empty now. The man reached out and patted the woman on the arm. Then he turned and climbed on board.

Suruk followed. The doors chimed. Suruk reached back, grabbed the woman and hauled her up. The doors closed. ‘You forgot your lady,’ he explained. ‘We do not want her to end up in the left luggage, do we?’

They all stood awkwardly in the empty carriage. ‘Well, gosh,’ said the woman, after a while.

Suruk took his hat off and looked in the brim. ‘I shall stand lookout in the corridor,’ he announced, ‘should you wish to make babies.’

‘Peculiar fellows, these aliens,’ said the man as the train pulled away. ‘But they have their moments. Sometimes one wonders whether they ought to have the vote.’

‘Quite so, darling,’ the woman replied. ‘Shall we go at it like rabbits, then?’

* * *

The sign on the door said,
Come with me if you want to truly live; activating your inner robot. Workshop session to follow.
Power tools provided.
Polly Carveth took a deep breath, painfully aware that she was three minutes late, opened the door and slipped inside.

She took a seat at the rear of the room. The speaker, a piston-driven metal skeleton, gestured dramatically at the ceiling. ‘For many years I was living a lie,’ it intoned in a flat, metallic voice. ‘I was hiding my true lack of feelings, locking away my real self behind a facade of human emotion. I went from day to day without purpose, unlike an automaton. Until one morning, I carried out a tactical assessment on the mirror and just broke down. When I had been repaired, I learned to look beneath the surface and discover my true self: the ruthless killing machine you see before you.’

There was polite applause.

‘So I want you all to know that you too can fulfil your true potential. Cast aside your pity, remorse or fear. All you have to do is look forward and absolutely not stop, ever. Never go back, friends, unless there are witnesses.’

More clapping broke out. ‘Yes,’ someone called, ‘that computes!’

Carveth quietly slipped out. There was only so much self-improvement that she could take. A huge Bill-209 policing robot lumbered past, the Autocon logo stencilled onto its armour. ‘You have twenty seconds to direct me to the bar,’ it growled, and it stomped away.

Carveth looked at the programme for this year’s robot convention. The trouble was that she just wasn’t as into being a robot as many of the people around her. The next event looked terribly sincere:
Is Artificial Person a Term of Oppression?
Then there was
Selling Out – The Role of Vending Machines in Artificial Intelligence
, followed by something called
Kraftfolk
and a reading from
The Optical Processing Module of Argon
. She felt as if she had turned up to an opera festival and asked to hear the one off the ice cream advert.

She crept to the exit.

In a side-room, a group of robots were queuing neatly. An ancient gold-plated diplomacy unit sat at a small table, behind a pile of books. A notice read:
Now signing:
Mind Your Protocol
, sequel to
Ooh, You Bucket of Bolts
.
Carveth stuck her head in.

The queue moved forward. An android in a black shirt and Stetson hat reached the front, thumbs hooked over its belt.

‘Hello, cowboy. Would you like me to write something?’ the diplomacy unit asked.

The android whipped a crayon out of its hip pocket. ‘Draw.’

Carveth realised that someone was standing behind her, and that she had accidentally become part of the queue. She glanced over her shoulder, and noticed that the woman was dressed as some sort of Georgian. Carveth felt vaguely worried: the last android in Jane Austen gear that she had met had been a lunatic named Emily Hallsworth, who had tried to murder Carveth with a fountain pen.

Like a prettified satellite dish, the woman’s huge bonnet turned. Carveth stared into the programme and willed her to bugger off.

‘Polly Carveth? Is that you?’

There was no escaping it. Carveth turned and said, ‘Er, have we met?’

‘Of course we’ve met! Emily Hallsworth. Oh Polly, it’s so nice to see a familiar face around here.’

Carveth froze. To the best of her knowledge, Emily had been reprogrammed since Carveth had ended her rampage by smashing a bottle of salad dressing over her head. But you never could tell for sure. ‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Now Polly,’ Emily announced, ‘I really must give you an apology. The last time we met I was absolutely insufferable. I do believe I went so far as to call you a social climber.’

‘You also tried to stab me to death with a pen.’

‘Did I really? How tiresome that must have been. Well,’ Emily said, smiling politely, ‘I’m delighted to say that I’m on the mend. It’s been a hard year, but thanks to clay therapy and the personal intervention of Stephen and Matilda, I’m well on the way to complete recovery.’

‘Who?’

‘Stephen and Matilda.’

Carveth kept one eye on the crowd. An old A-10 model was talking to a rather prim corporate android who reminded her of Peter O’Toole. The A-10 nodded and rolled his programme up into a tight tube in a quick, nervous twist of the hands. Then, Carveth thought, the A-10s always were a bit twitchy.