The Dark Side of the Sun (18 page)

But a bare world was inhuman. So, around his palace, another Emperor Ptarmigan, the first of the dynasty, started to build a garden...

Rooted in barren dust, powered by sunlight, the robot acres were deader that a corpse but, like a corpse, roared with tiny life.

Electronic men were a fact of life. A fifth of the Human population was metal. Electronic nature was something else again.

The stately copper trees were nevertheless squat and gnarled like oaks to support their selenium-cell leaves, which tinkled in the breeze. Humming birds - an electronic hum - whirred among the spun-silver flowers, where small golden bees tapped the currents into their tiny batteries and flew back to their secret, dark storage cells. In a little mineral-rich brook that wound through the garden the reeds sucked up the metals and threw forth brittle sulphur flowers. In the depths, zinc trout churned. And in the cool pools aluminium water lilies opened like hands.

The horses trotted between the trees and along gravel paths lined with nodding flowers. Sharli led him to a small hill where a streamlet gushed out of the ground and fell over a rock outcrop into a deep blue pool. A small pagoda had been built amid beds of golden lilies, shot with copper.

She sat down and patted the seat beside her, then spoke to the giant.

'Lady Sharli say to tell about yourself,' the drosk said. She was throwing a two-foot knife in the air and catching it by the blade.

He did. There were long pauses when the giant translated, and he had plenty of time to watch a little brass spider which scuttled out of a cranny a few feet above his head and, taking up a position on a steel twig, swung purposely outward.

Sharlie was a good audience, and possibly the giant was a good interpreter. The girl gasped at the account of the fight in the Bank, and laughed and clapped her hands, weaving a golden haze in the air, when he told her about the escape by sunpuppy.

The spider climbed another twig and swung again.

'Empress say, were you not scared?'

Dom tried to explain the predictions while the spider completed several more jumps. He hadn't finished before the spider had completed a web of fine copper wire and retired to a twig, paying out two tiny power cables behind it.

Dom told himself that he was being too expansive, too sure of himself. But Sharli was gazing at him wide-eyed. It was too much to resist. Besides, her perfume was going to his head. He was acutely aware of the giant lady's maid behind him, and the horse, too, had sniggered once or twice.

While he was demonstrating his grav sandals by flying a figure-of-eight above her head a small mechanical fly blundered into the spider web. There was a minute blue flash.

Prowess in catching and steering windshells was being explained while the spider slowly dismantled the protesting fly with two spanner-like legs.

Another horse galloped between the trees. At the controls was Tarli, almost hidden in an armour made of leather slabs in a complex overlapping pattern. He removed his fearsome helmet, wiped his forehead with his gauntlet, and smiled brightly at Dom.

'Greetings, step-uncle. I thought you might be here. I hope you have not been overly bored?'

'Not at all,' said Dom airily. 'Er, your costume .
.
.
'

Tarli raised his eyebrows. 'I have been Sham fighting. You do not fight Sham on Widdershins?'

Dom thought of one or two fights he had seen on the jetties, when four-foot long dagon-knives were used. 'It's usually for real on Widdershins,' he said. 'Sham?'

Tarli unslung a long bundle from his horse and drew out a sword as tall as he was. The handle was leather-bound, with no superfluous decoration. The blade was invisible, except when it caught the light, when it showed up momentarily as a thin green sliver.

'Shamsword,' he explained. 'The blade is, of course, only a few microns thick, forged as a molecule in the special sword-light of dawn. Strong, too. Perhaps you are a good swordsman?'

'I can use a memory-sword,' said Dom. He drew his own and demonstrated. Tarli took it gingerly.

'How does it work?'

'There's a little matrix field projector in the stud that can generate up to a dozen shapes.'

Tarli handed it back. 'Not an honourable weapon,' he said sadly. 'You would perhaps like a sham battle?'

He laughed at Dom's expression and pulled two wooden lathes from his bundle. 'For practice,' he explained. 'So novices don't lose too many appendages in the learning. I am the second-best shamuri on Laoth.'

Dom felt Sharli's eye on him.

'Okay,' he said miserably. After all, he could handle a sword by proxy on the tstame board, even if it was only a two inch skewer wielded by a mommet. And they were only wooden poles.

Tarli unpacked another helmet and some pieces of leather body armour, and Sharli helped Dom into them.

'You'd better explain the rules.'

Tarli smiled. 'This is only stick sham. Anything goes, but you've got to use the stick. Sharli will give us the signal.'

The girl, who had been watching them with interest, shook her head and spoke sharply to her brother.

'She says we've got to fight for a prize. My sword against your grav sandals. I don't think that's fair.'

'Don't worry,' said Dom. He bent down and began to unstrap his sandals. Tarli sighed and laid his shamsword on the seat alongside them.

Sharli waved a small handkerchief.

The poles met in mid-air, once, and they circled each other warily.

Dom felt emboldened and tried one or two lunges, which slid harmlessly off the other's pole. Tarli smiled, and spun his pole around a finger. The spin carried on - the pole flashed across his back, was caught again and came down with a thud on the heavy padding of Dom's helmet. Tarli made a few passes and completed the movement with another gentle blow to the head.

Dom jerked aside and swung his pole downwards. Tarli hopped over it, lunged and twisted. Caught by the added leverage Dom slid several yards on his stomach in the gravel.

Sharli put her hand over her mouth and turned away. Her shoulders were shaking.

Dom's pole came down with a crack across Tarli's unprotected feet. Then he scrambled up and brought it down in a whistling arc that ended on the boy's arm.

Tarli staggered backwards, waving his arms desperately to keep his balance. Dom caught him again in the chest.

Tarli disappeared.

Dom ran forward in time to see his white face vanish under the water of the waterfall pool. He struggled out of his own armour and dived after him, hitting the water in a jangle of waterlilies.

Far below him a dark shape was sinking into the depths. Dom caught it, grabbed him by the arm and kicked out for the surface. As they broke water gravity found the heavy armour again and they both went under.

He fought for the surface again, trying to find the buckles of the armour. Then a thick arm broke through the ripples and he snatched at it.

As soon as he could get a grip of Tarli's limp body the giant pushed Dom back into the water, slung the boy across her shoulder and set off at a run through the trees.

Dom hauled himself out, painfully and shamefacedly, on the rocks at the far side of the pool. He coughed up water and waited for the pounding in his head to stop. .

He heard the swish of a blade, and threw himself backwards. Underwater he blundered into a thicket of finger-thick cabling, and surfaced again in a clump of waterlilies. Sharli glanced at him, and let the tip of the blade take another two-foot slice out of the black rock where his fingers had been.

'He was only playing,' she hissed in perfect janglic. 'He is the second-best shamuri in the galaxy, and he was only playing. But you had to win!'

'I am not playing,' she added. The sword sizzled round her head and took a thick copper branch off a nearby tree without noticeably slowing.

Dom dived and came up at the far side of the pool, scrambling out as she came round after him. His discarded body armour still lay in the gravel. He groped in it feverishly. It couldn't withstand a shamsword that could cut through rock. The padding was just to take the force of the blow - there must be a static field to turn that impossibly-sharp edge...

He didn't see the blow. There was no sensation except for a faint glimmer of green. The piece of breastplate he was holding was just in two pieces, that was all. The singlet had become a doublet. It was no consolation to see sheared field components dribble out on to the ground.

'I will cut you up.' she said. 'A bit at a time. Starting with the
extremities
!
'

The tip of the sword drew a thin line across his arm only because Dom had moved with commendable speed.

'You say your death won't be yet,' she said. 'Can you be so sure, hey?'

Dom winced and closed his eyes. The sword caught him in the neck. He opened his eyes, and felt her contemptuous glare as he touched his neck sheepishly.

'You wait till you nod your head. I hit you with the flat, fool!' she said, walking up to him and standing on tiptoe to bring her hand across in a stinging slap. 'Boastful, boorish, barbarian
boy
!
'

His feet fought for purchase on the edge as he teetered over the pool, and then for the third time he hit the water bodily and came up shaking his head and gasping. Sharli pointed the sword at him, trembling.

'If he is dead, boy, if he is dead...' She picked up a small rock and threw it inexpertly at his head. When he broke surface again she was a small figure riding between the trees.

Dom let the water stream off him, and lay on the gravel watching the ants. They had appeared from everywhere to congregate around the branch that she had cut down. While he watched, it fell neatly in two, and he saw the tiny blue pinpoint of an electronic cutter. The smaller piece was dragged quickly across the gravel to a hatchway that had appeared in the tree.

Dom took his grav sandals and the shamsword and walked back to the horse. It looked at him sympathetically and said nothing. He rode off thoughtfully.

High up on the stump of the branch a minute crane was being jostled into position and scaffolding had appeared. The myrmidon reconstruction crew had already set to work. Further up, where the silicon-chip leaves drank in the sun and tinkled in the breeze, another insect watched them impassively. It had camera eyes, and it was not a Laoth make.

A spider watched it, and thought of electricity.

'We are an old race. We have enjoyed all that the galaxy has to offer - I myself have seen the black mouth in the centre of the galaxy, and the bright dead stars beyond - and therefore as a race we must be doomed. You seek new experience as a pseudo-human; I study the birth of hydrogen in the interstellar abyss with the race called Pod. We sublimate our Creapiness, because it stifles us. Where do we go from here?'

Personal letter from His Furness CRabE + 687° to His Furness CReegE + 690°, reprinted in the anthology
Post Joker

'Enter.'

Dom pushed open the door.

Tarli was lying on his stomach, reading. He glanced up and grinned. 'Come on in.'

Dom entered sheepishly and dumped the grav sandals on the bed.

'Yours,' he said. Tarli touched them thoughtfully.

'Yes,' he said, doubtfully, and switched off the cube.

'Gravity was on my side and I cheated and, well...' said Dom miserably.

'You're soaked,' said Tarli. He clapped his hands. There was a rush of air from one corner of the room and a young drosk appeared, took an order for clothing and a towel, and vanished. A moment later she was back.

'Have your people got, um, rigid rules about bodily exposure?' asked Tarli. 'If so, the ablution room is through there.'

Dom pulled his sodden shirt over his head and grunted.

'Only we get all sorts here, you see. Okay, Chaquaduc.' He clapped his hands again and the bowing figure disappeared. Dom glanced up.

'That's pretty neat. Field transference? Grandmother won't have it in the house. She says it's a wicked waste of power.'

Tarli held up his hand. 'Inductance surfaces under the skin, yes. It's a tradition with us. It impresses guests. Here.'

Dom caught a dragonskin belt and buckled it around a loose fitting robe intricately worked in yellow and grey silk. The Laothian boy opened an enamelled closet and handed him a smaller version of the sword.

'Hey!'

'It's only a koto. Purely ceremonial. Please accept it. Apart from anything else, by custom it's a mortal insult if you don't. I'd have to fight you again, with swords and without armour. And before that I'd have to teach you to use it.' He glanced sidelong at Dom's neck, 'You've been getting a few lessons anyway, I hear.'

Dom's hand flew to his neck and he winced, not just from the bruises.

'I thought Laothian girls went in more for flower arranging,' he muttered.

Tarli grinned. 'Oh yes? The nearest flowers to us are on Boon-dock, the next planet out. The biggest ones are motile roses - you have to get the plant in an arm-lock before you can prune it.'

'I bet she'd be good at it.'

'Pretty good, probably. She's first on the shamsword lists, that's out of about five hundred true shamuri. You have to be expert to get on the lists'.

Dom fingered the blade of the koto and grunted.

'Archery, now, I'm better at that. She hasn't got the patience. Sharli's only about thirtieth in the list.'

'Anything she's not good at?'

'There's our third national pastime.'

'What's that? Pig-sticking? Crushing rocks with the fingers?'

'No. Micro-circuitry design. It's an art, you know
.
Come on, it's time for dinner.'

Dom was surprised as they made their way towards the main hall. He was on Laoth, a world that made the best shipware and Class Five minds that were classed as humans, and he had seen no robots apart from the horse and the mechanisms in the garden. Laothians obviously didn't like to surround themselves with their creations.