Toy Wars (34 page)

“Oh, bloody!” I swore as I plucked one of the spiked nuisances from Sancho’s fur only to have it drop into the fur on my thigh.

“
Biologics
are
in much greater abundance than I ever noticed
, Sancho.
And I don’t mean the quantity of these stupid seeds, but rather the varieties.
They range from the inanimate plant life that covers the ground in a staggering number of different types, to hundreds of different species of motile forms.” Sancho flinched as a pulled harder on a deeply imbedded form.

“Sorry.” I found if I carefully pulled the hair away from the hooks on the seed, it came out easier.

“I mean we’ve seen at least sixty different types of insect from those no bigger than the head of a bullet to bug bunnies, basilisks, rock crabs
,
and thousands more. By direct line computation I have to assume there are over six million different motile species.” The number staggered my sump.

“I’m beginning to think
units will never control the surface of the planet.”

By nightfall we both were
nearly
at
a full charge
and
almost
seedpod free. We
moved on,
the forest and its denizen fad
ing
quickly into the memory of a place
we’d
rather forget.
Every cubic meter no longer
contained
vegetation and a place for extremely fast and powerful catlike units to lurk within.

The fairly level plain
gave high, sustainable speeds over long
distances.
We were making much better speed than I had anticipated.
With the certainty of having an energy supply during the days,
I pressed the pace and walked well into each morning.

I didn’t speak much at all
once
we left the forest. If Sancho noticed he gave no sign. Instead
,
I spent every clock cycle
recalculating my sims on
Six’s
likely
status.
M
y voltage rhythmically spiked
during these computations. T
he symptom increased e
very time we stopped or slowed, so I pushed harder each day.

During the next ten days we avoided a basilisk.
Sancho let out a pathetic “mrwwwt” as a warning. With his trunk capped off it was the best sound he could make.
I caught the beast’s movements moments later at
3
kilometers
’
distance.
Because of extreme range
the odds of being seen approached zero
, and
that the beast in question could attack us was less than zero. Needless to say
,
we avoided the danger like one would shun used hydraulic fluid.

Just as the palest lightening of twilight bloomed on the eleventh day, my travels brought me full circle.
I found myself staring down a very familiar valley.
I remembered a terrified flight, a betrayal of my brothers,
and
a place where I had given up what I believed
in
to save what I believed in
. Below me lay
the
valley of the
train tunnel.

The waving pristine crimson thorn grass and unblemished countryside mocked the violence, destruction
,
and deactivation
s
of that day so long ago.
It was as if a Human’s hand had come out of the sky and righted all that was wrong, replanting grasses, filling bomb craters
,
and erasing permanent char marks on the ground.
But 320
days
had
returned it to its natural state, not some mythical gods.

I remembered letting each of those
107
units die in
the
cave.
I
bore the guilt
of their deaths as if I had pulled the trigger myself.
I should have found something to save them, pulled some
bug
rabbit out of my hat, invented a new tactic, something.
Instead I ran away.
The
decision
was inevitably etched in my sump fluids. It was a decision I’d
never forgive myself for.

I told myself repeatedly that they had died so I could
have a chance to
save our way of life and Six at the same time
,
but it was all a lie.
I hadn’t been certain what I was doing would work, and even if it had, Human literature was replete with the fact that “the end does not justify the means.”
Where was my bravery in going down with the ship, the resolve of those at the
Alamo
, or the courage within myself like those Humans at
Masada
?
I didn’t like what I
had seen
within myself at that moment.
I hoped
my
cowardice
would pay off in the end.

Even after the violence of war, th
e return of peace to this
place gave me hope that my horrid memories could one day be erased
.

I snapped out of my reverie as the sun blossomed to full height
,
only to find myself hugging tightly to Sancho with my arm around his lower shoulders.
I realized just how good a friend I had in him.
Were it not for him, I would have been deactivated a number of gruesome times
, my mission a failure
,
and all those I
’d
sacrificed below would have died for naught
.

“Thanks, friend.”

He turned his trunkless face toward me in what I think was acceptance.

“We are almost home.”
Home was a word that elicited a number of exciting prospects within me.
And while it hurt to think of it, I needed Six.
Making all the decisions
wearied me in a way silicon and fluid should not be capable of experiencing.

I looked out over the wild countryside and a thought dawned on me.
This valley was almost untouched.
If 55474 had come through, it would not be so.
A moving army marred the country indelibly with littered ammo cans, shell casings, empty hydraulic containers, heavy trampling marks, lubricant waste dump, net concentrators
,
and spare carrying containers.

I led Sancho
out
onto the flats.
C
loser up t
here were still some minor signs of the battle we had fought, but nothing like the disfiguration
left by
bringing the massive force that 55474 would need to crush the final resistance of Six.

This was good news.
It meant that unless 55474 had found another way into Six’s valley, I was in time, but at the same time it left me puzzled.
Why wasn’t there at least a garrison of the enemy camped on this spot?
Why hadn’t there been a number of battles fought for either tunnel entrance?
The cave-in
wasn’t
so severe that it couldn’t have been cleared.
The more I thought about it, the more
confused I
got.
Who controlled this space?
The train tracks were still
twisted and damaged
so certainly Six couldn’t control here.

Sancho and I walked briskly over to the bore in the side of the cliff face.
I could see all the way through.
I switched CCT to Six’s and could
feel the warmth of Six’s net through the bore.
Six was still alive!

I ran headlong through the tunnel, heedless of what might be waiting there in the dark.
To my good fortune, Six’s net provid
ed
enough power for Sancho and me to operate in the darkness.
We were going to be functioning around the clock again, instead of hibernating like biologics.

The memorial on the wall to the units
I sacrificed forced me to suddenly stop. An obviously
puzzled Sancho
ploughed into me
,
sending me sprawling.
I didn’t even scold him.
I just got up and walked back to where the
107
designations remained carved
into the stone.
The loss of these units tempered my
elation at finding Six still functioning.
Guilt, rage, sadness
,
and pain all raced through me at the same time.

“We will make it right,” I whispered, running my paw in reverence over the
engraved
list.
“I owe you at least that much.”
Sancho gently butted me.
I don’t know
why.
It didn’t matter as the result
spurred me to direct and positive action.
I turned and left the tiny shrine
, moving
at a more sedate pace
with
my ecstasy
moderated
by a larger emotion.

Ambassador

In my worst case scenario I expected to see
my home a
smoldering ruins
with
piles of
deactivated units
bleaching in the sun
and Six itself nothing but a smoking crater.
Not a single sign of war showed about the valley as I emerged from the tunnel
that
now seemed undamaged and unscathed from whatever had caused the earlier cave-in.
Rust red, a very common color, covered the steel of the train tracks
,
showing no traffic wear for a good number of months
.

Most ominously t
he net was silent.

The net is never a silent thing.
Beyond being a source of power, it carried constant conversations, requests for information, order clarifications, library queries, production scheduling, information to be stored in long-term memories, requisitions for supplies, demands for status
—
and
more.
As the spinal column of
our communal structure
,
the noise level matched
a battlefield during peak fighting.
Now it was quiet.

Not the quiet of a slow day or even the quiet of the loneliest place I had visited on my travels, but rather the desperate quiet of someone who
hid
for their life
,
afraid to speak for fear of giving away their location to the enemy.
Without knowing more, I decided I would not put my voice alone on that net with a query to Six.
It was a decision that probably saved my life.

Sancho and I follow
ed
the tracks that led back to Six’s dome.
I remembered my only other trip out in this direction and realized that it would probably be, despite my enthusiasm at being home, another forty-three hours before we actually could see the dome of my birth.
With the crushing weight of Six’s survival no longer in question
I decided
I could accept the few more hours. The
hours themselves melted away
in silent reverie before
Sancho and I crested the final hillock between home and us.

“What the heck?”
The darkest part of night made the scene even more bizarre, if that was at all possible.
R
ow upon row of small
stone
boxes, each approximately
120
centimeters on a side
concentrically
encircled
about Six’s dome, starting at
1
kilometer from the dome and moving outward.
The
10
-
meter spacing between each box seemed so perfect as to be used as a
distance standard.

As many of the cubes as there were
, 7255,
they were insignificant to what was happening near Six.
All of Six’s outbuildings, manufacturing shed, smelting plants, broadcast towers, were neatly removed from their locations.
They were just gone, like someone had remove
d
them to land in Oz.
Nothing
remained but the foundations
.
But most spectacular
of all was
a huge scaffolding holding some tremendously large
gun-barrel-shaped
object cover
ing
Six’s dome
.
If it was a gun barrel,
the structure under construction
was nearly
60
meters long, with a bore at least
4
meters across
, pointed directly at Six’s dome itself
.
It was difficult to see the exact details at this distance.
To say I was stunned
is
an understatement.
I just sat and
soaked it in
.

“I don’t think we are in
Kansas
anymore,” I said.
I
wondered
if my own Don Quixote
namesake
had rubbed off on me.
Was I seeing giants or windmills?

As sunup began to crest over the far hills, which seemed barren without the outlying buildings and transmitting towers shadowing everything, the valley transformed from a desolate place to one of bustle and industry.

Each of the stone boxes opened up and disgorged a single
t
eddy unit.
I estimated nearly
7,000
t
eddy units milled around with the rise of the sun.
I almost wanted to cry out and rush down the hill again
.
No other units were in evidence
—
no
Tammi dolls,
Nurse Nan
s,
Tommy Tank
s, roadrunners, pythons, dump trucks, nor even trains.
Also, the wide net failed to light up with requests or even demands by Six for status.
Even the local nets were dead things.
The
teddy
units grouped up and
held
vocal communications as they walked down toward Six’s dome.
I was not privy to those conversations because of the distance.

I sat on a rock outcropping and watched my brethren for the better part of the day.
Each of the units actively engaged in some work, but none seemed the slightest bit worried about defending
the valley
.
The only armed units
oversaw
the work and
were
on guard for some unnamed menace within the working community itself.

In
spite
of
the cease-fire from 55469, Factory 55474 was still in the war business.
I couldn’t understand such an obvio
us lack of defensive capability. The
majority of the units seemed to
o
busy working on the huge vertical rifle.

From somewhere out of my vision, a nearly endless line of
t
eddy units
carried
shoulder yokes with a bucket of
irregular rock
s
dangling off each.
The
teddies dumped the
ores into several crude smelting operations, none with automation.
After a time, each
molten pot of metal pour
ed
white-hot fluid into long, thin, bar-shaped molds, one at a time.
Then, wearing oversized mittens, other
t
eddy units immerse
d
the molds into a large trough of mercury
eliciting
a plume of silver steam.
Seconds later
the mold
emerged empty
. Another
unit
fished the bar from the liquid and toted it up a
ramp within the scaffolding.
At the top the unit connected the bar to the growing weapon
,
but at my distance I couldn’t see how.

Multiply that operation by thousands through the day and I watched the rifle grow significantly, right in front of me.

The work, for all of me, looked medieval, like peasants laboring to carry sheaves of
wheat or straw from the fields or like the construction of the Human pyramids of old.

My observation paid off manifold when
I
saw
a
t
eddy
casually
pick up a stack of freshly forged bars that I would have been hard
-
pressed to lift
from the ground
.
Their hydraulic systems must have been augmented. Additional
ly,
I felt no draw from Six’s net of power.
If they were doing this by themselves without the power of Six, they would have been using up their capacity of energy during the day and wouldn’t be able to operate at night.

The bustle of activity continued unabated throughout the day until just before sundown.
The sudden c
essation of these labors, in unison,
caught me off guard.
T
he entire valley population
migrated as one
back to the stone cubes.
As far as I could tell, each
teddy
got into the exact same cube that he had exited from in the morning.

“This is too bizarre for words, Sancho. I’ve not the foggiest clue of what is going on down there.” My
companion
had it easy. He only
dealt with
half a dozen crazy things. I seemed to be doing them constantly.

I decided to wait until sunup before doing anything.
The night was totally uneventful, showing not a single unit, or biologic for that matter, moving among the mass of cubes.
Sunlight dawned with a repeat of the previous day’s blooming of units from their rock gardens.

That
following morning
I turned to Sancho.
“I have no idea what is going on, but shall we pay a visit anyway?
We
can try to find out what’s in
a bird’s
nest by measuring the wind and humidity and examining the calendar and by looking from the ground all
we
want.
But eventually someone has to go up into the tree and see what’s up there.”
I needed to wrap my paws around this tree and climb it.

Sancho followed my lead as I spent the next hour walking into what I could only call “the village.”
As I reached the outskirts, one of the
teddy
units, gold in color, turned toward me.
“Good morning, Brother,” he said in a mellow tone.
His overall manner was calm but his eyes riveted upon Sancho.
Granted
my companion
was an odd sight, with no trunk and leopard skin in a ragged patch across his side, but I didn’t feel it should be anything that would
attract
that kind of devoted attention.

“Good morning,” I said back as politely as I could.
A large group of other
teddie
s gathered in a ring
, hemming Sancho and myself in. Three of them carried M16s that sported rust stains on the ballistic metal. One weapon even had a small blade of muddy grass sticking out of the ejection port.

“Good morning,” I said to another
teddy
unit sporting black fur and then once more to the overall group, each in
a
unique color and pattern.
I didn’t stop but rather continued to walk toward Six’s dome, still some kilometers in the distance
.
M
y progress was stopped when the ring of units became a solid wall.
The gold furred bear broke through the circle and strode up to me.

“Why have you brought this creature of the devil here to plague us?”

I came back with the only comment I could think of.
“Huh?”

“That
…
that abomination!”
G
oldie said, gesticulating wildly at Sancho.
“It must be destroyed at once.”

“Excuse me, but I’ve hauled Sancho’s keister from here to
h
ell and back.
He has saved my life on numerous occasions.
And I trust his judgment sometimes more than my own
. So you can understand that I’m
not about to let you just destroy him.
Why would you even suggest such a thing?”

“It is the spawn of Six.
It will rise up and murder us as we sleep.”
Alice
never had it this crazy.
I came here for answers and all I had was more questions.

“It must be destroyed now before nig
ht falls and it ravages us all,” another said.
At this time I noticed a few more of the encircling crowd had somehow obtained guns, some sporting rust
y
mechanism
s
and others missing key components. All of these poorly maintained weapons pointed generally at my friend.
I hoped
the activity
was merely a threat, but I wasn’t going to take the chance.
I had to do something fast.

“Look, I will deactivate him.
Then we can discuss this like rational units.”

The gold one looked at the crowd, measuring the faces there.

“Why should we believe you?”
It was clear to me that this
gold
unit
held
sway
in spite of the fact that all
the
units seemed to be sentient.
They were not dumb
,
unfeeling soldiers.