A Circus of Hells

Chapter IX

Djana was the target. She stood paralyzed. “Run!” Flandry bawled. He sped to intercept. The gun flamed in his grasp. Sparks showered where the beam struck.

Djana bolted. The robot swerved and bounded after her. It paid no attention to Flandry. And his shooting had no effect he could see.

Must be armored against energy beams—unlike the things we’ve met hitherto—He thumbed the power stud to full intensity. Fire cascaded blinding off the metal shape. Heedless, it bore down on his unarmed companion.

“Dodge toward me!” Flandry cried.

She heard and obeyed. The lance struck her from behind. It did not penetrate the air tank, as it would have the thinner cuirass of the spacesuit. The blow knocked her sprawling. She rolled over, scrambled up and fled on. Wings beat. The machine was hopping around to get at her from the front.

It passed by Flandry. He leaped. His arms locked around the neck of the horsehead. He threw a leg over the body. The wings boomed behind him where he rode.

And still the thing did not fight him, still it chased Djana. But Flandry’s mass slowed it, made it stumble. Twisting about, he fired into the right wing. Sheet metal and a rib gave way. Crippled, the robot went to the ground. It threshed and bucked. Somehow Flandry hung on. Battered, half stunned, he kept his blaster snout within centimeters of the head and the trigger held back. His faceplate darkened itself against furious radiance. Heat struck at him like teeth.

Abruptly came quiet. He had pierced through to an essential part and slain the killer.

He sprawled across it, gasping the oven-hot air into his mouth, aware of undergarments, sodden with sweat, and muscles, athrob with bruises, dimly aware that he had better arise. Not until Djana returned to him did he feel able to.

A draught of water and stimpill shoved through his chowlock restored a measure of strength. He looked at the machine he had destroyed and thought vaguely that it was quite handsome. Like a dreamworld knight…Almost of themselves his arm lifted in salute and his voice murmured. “Ahoy, ahoy, check.”

“What?” Djana asked, equally faintly.

“Nothing.” Flandry willed the aches out of his consciousness and the shakes out of his body. “Let’s get going.”

“Y-y-yes.” She was suffering worse from reaction than him. Her features seemed completely drained. She started off with mechanical strides, back toward the mountain.

“Wait a tick!” Flandry grabbed her shoulder. “Where’re you bound?”

“Away,” she said without tone. “Before something else comes after us.”

“To sit in the sealtent—or at best, the boat—and wait for death? No, thanks.” Flandry turned her about. She was too numbed to resist. “Here, swallow a booster of your own.”

He had lost all but a rag of hope himself. The centrum was at the far side of the pattern, some ten kilometers hence. If robots were programed actually to attack humans, this close to where the great computer had been—We’ll explore a wee bit further, regardless. Why not?

A machine appeared. At first it was a glint on the horizon, metal reflecting Mimirlight. Traveling fast across the plain, it gained shape within minutes. Headed straight this way. And big! Flandry cursed. Half dragging Djana, he made for a house-sized piece of meteoritic stone. From its top, defense might be possible.

The robot went past.

Djana sobbed her thanks. After a second, Flandry recovered from the shock of his latest deliverance. He stood where he was, holding the girl against him, and watched. The machine wasn’t meant for combat. It was not much more than a self-operating flatbed truck with a pair of lifting arms.

It loaded the fallen lancer aboard and returned whence it came.

“For repairs,” Flandry breathed. “No wonder we don’t find stray parts in this neighborhood.”

Djana shuddered in his arms.

His words went slowly on, shaping the thoughts they uttered: “Two classes of killer robot, then. One is free-ranging, fights indiscriminately, comes here to get fixed if it can make the trip, and doubtless returns to the wilderness for more hunting. While it’s here, it keeps the peace.

“The other kind stays here, does fight here—though it doesn’t interfere with the first kind or the maintenance machines—and is carefully salvaged when it comes to grief.”

He shook his head in bewilderment. “I don’t know if that’s encouraging or not.” Gazing down at Djana: “How do you feel?”

The drug he had forced on her was taking hold. It was not magical; it couldn’t marshal resources which were no longer there. But for a time he and she would be alert, cool-headed, strong, quick-reacting. And we’d better complete our business before the metabolic bill is presented, Flandry recalled.

Her lips, twitched in a woebegone smile. “I guess I’ll do,” she said. “Are you certain we should continue?”

“No. However, we will.”

The next two squares they crossed were empty. One to their left was occupied. The humans kept a taut watch on that robot as they went past, but it did not stir. It was a tread-mounted cylinder, taller and broader than a man, its two arms ending in giant mauls, its head—the top of it, anyway, where there were what must be sensors—crowned with merlons like the battlements of some ancient tower. The sight jogged at Flandry’s memory. An idea stirred in him but vanished before he could seize it. It could wait; readiness for another assault could not.

Djana startled him: “Nicky, does each of them stay inside its own square?”

“And defend that particular bit of territory against intruders?” Flandry’s mind sprang. He smacked fist into palm. “By Jumbo, I think you’re right! It could be a scheme for guarding the centrum…against really dangerous gizmos that don’t behave themselves on this plain…a weird scheme, but then, everything on Wayland is weird.—Yes. The types of, uh, wild robot we’ve seen, and the ambulance and such, they’re recognized as harmless and left alone. We don’t fit into that program, so we’re fair game.”

“Not all the squares are occupied,” she said dubiously.

He shrugged. “Maybe a lot of sentries are under repair at present.” Excitement waxed in him. “The important point is, we can get across. Either directly across the lines, or over to a boundary and then around the whole layout. We simply avoid sections where any machine is. Making sure none are lurking behind a rock or whatever, of course.” He hugged her. “Sweetheart, I do believe we’re going to make it!”

The same eagerness kindled in her. They stepped briskly forth.

A figure that came into view, two kilometers ahead, as they passed the hillock which had concealed it, drew a cry from her. “Nicky, a man!” He jolted to a stop and raised his binoculars in unsteady hands. The object was indeed creepily similar to a large spacesuited human. But there were differences of detail, and it stood as death-still as the tower thing, and it was armed with sword and shield. Rather, its arms terminated in those pieces of war gear. Flandry lowered the glasses.

“No such luck,” he said. “Not that it’d be luck. Anybody who’s come here and taken charge like this would probably scupper us. It’s yet another brand of guard robot.” He tried to joke. “That means a further detour. I’m getting more exercise than I really want, aren’t you?”

“You could destroy it.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. If our friend the knight was typical, as I suspect, the lot of them are fairly well armored against energy beams. Besides, I don’t care to waste charge. Used too bloody much in that last encounter. Another fracas, and we could be weaponless.” Flandry started off on a slant across the square. “We’ll avoid him and go catercorner past the domain of that comparatively mild-looking chap there.”

Djana’s gaze followed his finger. Remotely gleamed other immobile forms, including a duplicate of the hippoid and three of the anthropoid. Doubtless more were hidden by irregularities of terrain or its steep fall to the horizon. The machine which Flandry had in mind was closer, just left of his intended path. It was another cylinder, more tall and slim than the robot with the hammers. The smooth bright surface was unbroken by limbs. The conical head was partly split down the middle, above an array of instruments.

“He may simply be a watcher,” Flandry theorized.

They had passed by, the gaunt abstract statue was falling behind, when Djana yelled.

Flandry spun about. The thing had left its square and was entering the one they were now in.

Dust and sparkling ice crystals whirled in the meter of space between its base and the ground. Air cushion drive, beat through Flandry. He looked frantically around for shelter. Nothing. This square held only basalt and frozen water.

“Run!” he cried. He retreated backward himself, blaster out. The heart slugged in him, the breath rasped, still hot from his prior battle.

A pencil of white fire struck at him from the cleft head. It missed at its range, but barely. He felt heat gust where the energy splashed and steam exploded. A sharp small thunderclap followed.

This kind does pack a gun!

Reflexively, he returned a shot. Less powerful, his beam bounced off the alloy hide. The robot moved on it. He could hear the roar of its motor. A direct hit at closer quarters would pierce his suit and body. He fired again and prepared to flee.

If I can divert that tin bastard—It did not occur to Flandry that his action might get him accused of gallantry. He started off in a different direction from the girl’s. Longer-legged, he had a feebly better chance than she of keeping ahead of death, reaching a natural barricade and making a stand…

Tensed with the expectation of lightning, the hope that his air unit would give protection and not be ruined, he had almost reached the next line when he realized there had been no fire. He braked and turned to stare behind.

The robot must have halted right after the exchange. Its top swung back and forth, as if in search. Surely it must sense him.

It started off after Djana.

Flandry spat an oath and pounded back to help. She had a good head start, but the machine was faster, and if it had crossed one line, wouldn’t it cross another? Flandry’s boots slammed upon stone. Oxygen-starved, his brain cast forth giddiness and patches of black. His intercepting course brought him nearer. He shot. The bolt went wild. He bounded yet more swiftly. Again he shot. This time he hit.

The robot slowed, veered as if to meet this antagonist who could be dangerous, faced away once more and resumed its pursuit of Djana. Flandry held down his trigger and hosed it with flame. The girl crossed the boundary. The robot stopped dead.

But—but—gibbered in Flandry’s skull.

The robot stirred, lifted, and swung toward him. It moved hesitantly, wobbling a trifle, not as if damaged—it couldn’t have been—but as if…puzzled?

I shouldn’t be toting a blaster, Flandry thought in the turmoil. With my shape, I’m supposed to carry sword and shield.

The truth crashed into him.

He took no time to examine it. He knew simply that he must get into the same square as Djana. An anthropoid with blade and scute in place of hands could not crawl very well. Flandry went on all fours. He scuttled backward. The lean tall figure rocked after him, but no faster. Its limited computer—an artificial brain moronic and monomaniacal—could reach no decision as to what he was and what to do about him.

He crossed the line. The robot settled to the ground.

Flandry rose and tottered toward Djana. She had collapsed several meters away. He joined her. Murk spun down upon him.

It lifted in minutes, after his air unit purified the atmosphere in his suit and his stimulated cells drank the oxygen. He sat up. The machine that had chased them was retreating to the middle of the adjacent square, another gleam against the dark plain, under the dark sky. He looked at his blaster’s charge indicator. It stood near zero. He could reload it from the powerpack he carried, but his life-support units needed the energy worse. Maybe.

Djana was rousing too. She half raised herself, fell across his lap, and wept. “It’s no use, Nicky. We can’t make it. We’ll be murdered. And if we do get by, what’ll we find? A thing that builds killing engines. Let’s go back. We can go back the way we came. Can’t we? And have a little, little while alive together—”

He consoled her until the chill and hardness of the rock on which he sat got through to him. Then, stiffly, he rose and assisted her to her feet. His voice sounded remote and strange in his ears. “Ordinarily I’d agree with you, dear. But I think I see what the arrangement is. The way the bishop behaved. Didn’t you notice?”

“B-b-bishop?”

“Consider. Like the knight, I’m sure, the bishop attacks when the square he’s on is invaded. I daresay the result of a move on this board depends on the outcome of the battle that follows it. Now a bishop can only proceed offensively along a diagonal. And the pieces are only programed to fight one other piece at a time; of certain kinds, at that.” Flandry stared toward his hidden destination. “I imagine the anthropoids are the pawns. I wonder why. Maybe because they’re the most numerous pieces, and the computer was lonely for mankind?”

“Computer?” She huddled against him.

“Has to be. Nothing else could have made this. It used the engineering facilities it had, possibly built some additional manufacturing plant. It didn’t bother coloring the squares or the pieces, knowing quite well which was which. That’s why I didn’t see at once we’re actually on a giant chessboard.” Flandry grimaced. “If I hadn’t…we’d’ve quit, returned, and died. Come on.” He urged her forward.

“We can’t go further,” she pleaded. “We’ll be set on.”

“Not if we study the positions of the pieces,” he said, “and travel on the squares that nobody can currently enter.”

After some trudging: “My guess is, the computer split its attention into a number of parts. One or more to keep track of the wild robots. Two, with no intercommunication, to be rival chessmasters. That could be why it hasn’t noticed something strange is going on today. I wonder if it can notice anything new any longer, without being nudged.”

He zigzagged off the board with Djana, onto the blessed safe unmarked part of the land, and walked around the boundary. En route he saw a robot that had to be a king. It loomed four meters tall in the form of a man who wore the indoor dress of centuries ago, gold-plated and crowned with clustered diamonds. It bore no weapons. He learned later that it captured by divine right.

They reached the ancient buildings. The worker machines that scuttled about had kept them in good repair. Flandry stopped before the main structure. He tuned his radio to standard frequency. “At this range,” he said to that which was within, “you’ve got to have some receiver that’ll pick up my transmission.”

Code clicked and gibbered in his earplugs; and then, slowly, rustily, but gathering sureness as the words advanced, like the voice of one who has been heavily asleep: “Is…it…you? A man…returned at last?…No, two men, I detect—”

“More or less,” Flandry said.

Across the plain, beasts and chessmen came to a halt.

“Enter. The airlock…Remove your spacesuits inside. It is Earth-conditioned, with…furnished chambers. Inspection reveals a supply of undeteriorated food and drink…I hope you will find things in proper order. Some derangements are possible. The time was long and empty.”