Robogenesis

  But the black cube is talking somewhere nearby. Sending out those whispers like a thousand tiny hairs standing up on the back of your arm. I can feel the beast out there in the darkness ahead of me. I turn and follow its cold whispering.

  Creak, creak, go my legs in the night.

  I weave my shuffling body between scrubby, tick-filled trees. A few footprints dimple the damp grass ahead of me. After struggling over rough land for ten minutes, I sense a change in humidity. The trickle of flowing water surfaces in my hearing. Osmotic sensors in the machinery at the base of my neck sample the clammy smell of river rock and the acrid bite of smoke.

  And I hear the sound of voices.

  I slow down, creeping toward the campfire one measured step at a time. Soon, a fire flicker emerges. Over the lip of the next hill, two slumped silhouettes sit next to the riverbank on toppled logs. The incomprehensible monotone whispers are coming from a satchel lying next to the bigger shadow.

  My adversary is smart: Hank found Lonnie before I could.

  Standing as still as the sighing trees around me, I route some extra juice to my hearing and listen close. Sitting just up the river, the two men come into greenish focus. Their words rise in sharp relief against the natural sounds of wind and water and insects.

  Lonnie Wayne sits on a rough log, one elbow across his knees and his fingers curled around a whiskey bottle. His back is hunched over and he’s got his eyes on the black flowing river water, seeing and not seeing. His breathing is steady and I can tell from here that it’s taking everything he’s got to keep it that way.

  The unblinking arctic sun we left behind has burned the old man’s skin a dark brown. He is imprinted with wrinkles and craters like the surface of the moon—a place with no atmosphere to protect it. Hank Cotton, the skeletal man, perches on a log next to Lonnie, watching him.

  “It’s all right, Lonnie,” he murmurs. “How long we known each other?”

  Lonnie reaches up and rubs his milky blue eyes with a thumb and forefinger. Wipes away tears on his flannel shirt without opening his eyes. Keeps on breathing steady and deep, holding a half-empty bottle loose in one hand.

  “Sometimes,” he says to Hank, “sometimes I wonder if we oughta be allowed to just pass on. Once you’ve seen enough. Had enough. Just to move on. I think it would be a blessing, Hank. What do you say? You think it’s allowed?”

  Hank frowns. Watches his old friend for a long second without blinking. His first word comes out a cough and he clears his throat before continuing quietly.

  “I reckon maybe that’s true for an elder.”

  “I’m too old to be an elder. I already seen too much,” says Lonnie. He lifts the bottle to his lips and kisses the amber liquid.

  Hank takes the bottle from Lonnie. Has himself a drink.

  “There’s men who came before us who seen just as much. Maybe not more than us, but just as much. They lived through it, Lonnie. Our ancestors had everything they knew tore down and they built it up again. And not just once or twice. We’re from a strong stock, me and you. When you fall down out of the saddle, why, you just—”

  “It’s his eyes,” says Lonnie. “That’s the thing. They’re just . . . black, Hank. I can’t see his old brown eyes and it scares the hell out of me. It’s the same for an animal as it is for a man. The eyes are how you can tell if a living thing is suffering. I can’t tell how much my boy is hurting, but I know it’s a lot, Hank.”

  My boy. Lonnie is talking about me. A tender spot inside me starts aching. To hear it out loud: The man I secretly think of as my father also thinks of me as his son. Or thought of me as a son. Back when I was living.

  Hank responds in a low, quiet voice. “Now, you ain’t calling that thing your boy, are you, Lonnie? Your boy is overseas, remember?”

  “Paul ain’t coming home. I made peace with that, Hank. I do believe in my heart he’s still alive. God would tap me on the shoulder and let me know if it weren’t true. I know He would. But Lark growed up fast in the New War and it was me who was there for him. He was a leader. He might have been the best of us.”

  “Well, that thing ain’t Lark no more,” says Hank.

  “Don’t call him a . . .” Lonnie stops. Takes the bottle back and drinks deeply and groans. He slams the butt of the bottle against the close-packed river rocks. Digs it in and leaves his hand around the neck. “Ah, hell! I want to close my eyes to all this. We already won the war! What else does the Creator want? What else can we do? All this damned hurt and suffering. I’m sick to death, Hank. I’m sick. . . .”

  Lonnie trails off. They listen to the water.

  “I just . . . ,” Lonnie continues. “Sometimes I wonder. What’s the point of it? What’s the damn point of all this? Is it a test? Is it pure chaos? I don’t know that I care. It hurts me, Hank. I’m hurting. I just want it to stop.”

  Hank leans in closer, a strange hungry light in his eyes.

  “The point is the suffering, Lonnie. The pain is so we know we earned the big reward. But you’ve suffered enough. You don’t have to keep on going. You hit the finish line, old man. Put your hands on your knees and take a breath. Your reward is coming. I promise you that, Bubba.”

  Lonnie looks unconvinced.

  “Maybe . . . maybe what I’ve already done will hang around. My past will just sort of bounce around between folks like an echo. Maybe that will be enough. Maybe I can just close my eyes for a minute. Or for longer.”

  Lonnie exhales for a long time. As the breath goes out of him, his shoulders slump. His forehead nods and he loses his grip on the bottle. It clinks onto its side on the rocks.

  The old cowboy is passing out asleep.

  Hank reaches over and picks up the bottle. Rights it, then puts a big hand on Lonnie’s shoulder to keep him from slumping over. These two men have been friends and rivals for half a century, and there is a rough tenderness in how Hank holds Lonnie. Some part of their old life together.

  Then a crafty glint enters Hank’s eye. He pulls his bundle out and holds it soft with both hands. His cheekbones are high and gaunt and shadowed in the firelight. The smile he makes . . . it’s like I see the devil’s face moving under his skin. His lips quiver gently. He is whispering to the black box.

  Almost there. You were right. Now I’ll finish it.

  “Hey,” Hank whispers to Lonnie. “You can’t fall asleep here. And it ain’t time for you to pass on, neither. You’re just sad and drunk, old man. Shoot, you still look like a million bucks. Any old lady in Gray Horse would take you to bed. Probably will, in about a week.”

  Lonnie’s eyes crack open. A weary smile divots into his leathery cheek. He sits himself up, elbows on his knees, and coughs.

  “That’s funny, Hank,” he says. “A million bucks. ’Cause I feel like a thousand bucks at most.”

  Hank smiles back and the devil is gone.

  “I’m not gonna sit here and argue with you about how good you look,” he says. Then the smile fades and his eyes get glassy and serious. “But there is something I’m willing to do. Something I feel like maybe I should have offered to do a long time ago.”

  “Yeah?” asks Lonnie, wary.

  “War’s over, Lonnie. Let me take your burden from you. Name me the general of Gray Horse Army.”

  “I’ve got a responsibility—”

  “You remember pulling Howard Tenkiller out from under that slug? The thing ate him, Lonnie. War is supposed to be over and a new variety came along and sucked the living flesh right off that boy’s legs. It made me angry to see Howard die that way. I wanted to stand a thousand feet tall with smoke coming out of my nostrils and smash every last machine to pieces with my fists. It made me fighting mad. Now, tell me honest. What did you feel that day?”

  Crickets sing.

  Finally, Lonnie sighs. “Nothing, anymore. I don’t feel anything inside, Hank. The war left me with a loud ringing in my ears and nothing . . . nothing in my heart.”

  “Well, more bad is coming. You heard that messag
e from Russia. They’re saying the True War has only just begun. I think it’s time, Lonnie. Let me help you. Make me your general.”

  “What about Lark?”

  “I’ll take care of him. Let me pick up your flag and carry it. Come on now.”

  “You won’t hurt him?”

  “Stop it. What you’re doing is selfish. The boy is only living to please you. He’s in pain—you said it yourself. Stop this, Lonnie. Give me control. I’ll take care of him. I swear to you that I’ll take care of him. His pain will be over. Forever. Now, come on. Don’t you think that sounds like a good idea?”

  Lonnie closes his eyes. Puts his head back and points his face at the stars. He stays that way for a long moment. Now I can see the old man is broken. I honestly can’t say whether it was accidental. Or whether his best friend did it to him on purpose by stripping me down today and showing Lonnie the reality of what the New War has done.

  It’s too late. I waited too long.

  The old bent cowboy lowers his head and opens his eyes. His lips are dry and they peel apart from each other as he speaks, mouth wilting at the corners.

  My heart breaks when he says it.

  “Yeah, Hank,” says Lonnie. “I think that sounds like a good idea.”

  Hank grins, long yellow teeth glinting in the firelight. He raises his collar radio to his lips. Ducks his head to the side and whispers a quick go-ahead. I watch the radio waves rise and propagate through the skies over my head.

  Oh no. No, no, no.

  I’m shuffling, humping through the woods as fast as I can go. But my own transmissions are not long-range enough. “Chen,” I’m transmitting in a silent scream. “Run, Chen. You have to run right now.”

  My head is buzzing as the forest moves in slow motion around me. It’s my rotten flesh that cripples me, tree branches clawing at my dead limbs. Ahead, in the tree-striped darkness, I see the familiar silver glimmer of Chen’s transmission. Bits and pieces of her voice are draped like trout lines caught in the brush after a flood. But she’s still too far away to connect.

  Then flashes of light silhouette the branches. I hear the barking reports of assault rifles. The glimmer fades, leaving only a final wisp of Chen’s voice coiling through a gunpowder-scented breeze.

  “. . . peace,” she is saying, as she dies for the last time.

  I slow to a stop.

  Beyond the clearing, just over the horizon, a blue light that I remember from my dreams is growing. I think of the pale white hand of the Adjudicator, beckoning.

  9. HEADRIGHTS

  Post New War: 8 Months, 4 Days

  In postwar peacetime, the residents of Gray Horse streamed down off the defensive plateau by the thousands to settle the surrounding countryside. In three years of war, the settlement had grown from a refugee camp into a full-blown city. All these people had come to depend on the sovereign tribal government of the Osage Nation for their only tenuous grasp on prewar life. John Tenkiller, the elderly chief of the Osage Nation, had unintentionally become the gatekeeper to human civilization.

  —ARAYT SHAH

  NEURONAL ID: HANK COTTON

  Home again, home again. Jiggety jog. Gray Horse, Oklahoma.

  It ain’t exactly a hero’s welcome. Not for me, anyway. Instead, everybody and their sister comes out kowtowing to the big man. Lonnie Wayne Blanton, hips rolling in the saddle of his tall walker, waving slow to the crowds with his cowboy hat. Just a regular everyday hero and a gentleman.

  They don’t know yet who the real man in charge is. But they will. God bless ’em, they’re about to find out. Lonnie sold his soul to me down by the water and I’m not about to let him take it back. Especially not with some Russian squawking on the radio about a True War shaping up on the horizon.

  I’m mounted on our lead spider tank—the big old bastard we call Brutus—wearing my full uniform, boots polished and goggles hanging around my neck. In a belly net below me, the half-built frame of a black steed is clanking. The light that lives in my bundle has a name: Arayt. We’ve been talking more and more. He’s told me how to build this new walker out of scavenged parts. When I’m finished, I’ll put that spooklight inside and there’ll be no stopping the two of us. In the meantime, Arayt told me to get dressed up extra nice this morning. Said it was important.

  And still not a pair of eyes on me. Everybody watches the old cowboy. That’s okay for now. A smile spreads across my face. With my Cotton patrol at my back and those parasites gone, I’m feeling almost optimistic about what I have to do.

  Our military column winds across the tallgrass prairie for the final half mile. I raise my eyes up to the heavens and see the elders have come out to greet us. Three bent silhouettes standing up on the overlook bluffs. All the political control of Gray Horse is inside them. Those little old-men lead every family with headrights. Through ancient, honored family lines—the Red Eagles, Big Horses, Tallchiefs—these fellas happen to run Gray Horse.

  I’m licking my lips just thinking about all that power and respect.

  Settlers have been busy laying roots out here at the base of the plateau. Reclaimed houses are leaning in what used to be overgrown fields. Mustangs mill around in herds near weedy, rusted oil pumps, along with scattered goats and bison. The grass is short—it’s been burned lately, like they’ve been doing since the old days. People have truly come down off the safety of the hill. Gotten bold. These are battlefields, the way I remember. They’re farms now, crowded with crops and tattooed with repaired barbed-wire fences.

  While we were away, Gray Horse went and became a city.

  Our spider tanks march by the outer structures and start up the incline toward Gray Horse proper. Holding their children up on rock posts, men and women I’ve never seen stare up at us. People point, oohing and aahing as the gleaming special forces exoskeletons tramp by, heavy Gatling gun kits hanging off their backs and retractable trench knives winking in the sun. And still I don’t see any of my Big Hill people yet.

  A gaggle of scampering boys shouts encouragement. With sticks for guns, they’re play-fighting near clusters of young soldiers who hang lanky and tough from the sides of battered spider tanks. I see a lot of swaying assault rifles slung over swelled chests.

  Eyes bright and proud.

  A lot of these folks look relieved to see us, and more than once I see a young woman scanning the faces of my soldiers with a certain eagerness. Looking for the one. There are plenty of mothers and fathers, too, searching for their kin. But most of the watchers’ faces are glazed over with a deer-in-headlights kind of look. An undercurrent of fear that I can taste. Not just because we’re armed with exotic scavenged Rob hardware. They’re scared of what we’re gonna do now that we’re back.

  And they should be.

  Looking out over these people, I feel my anger growing. I’m seeing new wells, new gardens, and a whole lot of new faces. And a lot of those faces ain’t native. Even up here on the sacred hill, these ain’t a hundred percent real Indians. Shit, I guess we didn’t know who we were out there fighting for.

  Just a matter of time, is what I’m thinking.

  Why, if we don’t nip this in the bud, I get the feeling that pretty soon everything that’s old will be new again. Does anybody remember how the Osage ended up kicked out of Missouri in the first place? These Great Plains are ours, right about now, and damned if I don’t intend to keep it that way.

  Of course Lonnie don’t bat an eye at these peckerwoods.

  We get up to the top of the plateau and reach the arbor at the center of Gray Horse. People are gathered there by the thousands. From a distance, it’s a flat, round space, a dancing circle wrapped up by the old family benches and then by bigger bleachers for the rest of the spectators. It used to have a roof over it, but that must have blown off. That’s fine—there’s no shame in dancing under the sun.

  This is where the Wah-Zha-Zhe begins and ends.

  The old cowboy signals our column to a halt. Orders us into dress parade formation on the far s
ide of the arbor. Soldiers and tanks and exoskeleton forces form up. I get myself out in front, next to Lonnie, facing across the arbor to the stone bluffs and the blue empty sky beyond.

  A dance is already going on.

  Strangers fill the new bleachers that circle the outside of the dance arbor, and I see more familiar faces down on the family benches. The dance area is swept, watched over by the whipmen and a smattering of water boys. In the middle, the drum host is set up and playing. Four barrel-chested, portly fellas, probably brothers or cousins, wearing button-down shirts with pearl buttons and cowboy boots are sitting there with their rawhide drums. As we arrive, they end their song and roll the drums to applaud us and signal a water break.

  We finish setting up our formation in front of the huge crowd, all of us piled together on top of Gray Horse. They’re standing, squeezing in tight, with kids popping up on shoulders. Thousands of quiet conversations creating a gentle kind of murmur that washes out over the clearing. It’s a kind of happiness, the wanaxe of all of us being here at home together—alive and breathing, for now.

  Straight across the dance arbor, facing my Gray Horse Army, the three elders still stand on that rocky ledge. The oldmen are all done up in their ceremonial regalia. They stand in a line with brown, wrinkled faces and dim eyes. Porcupine-quill headdresses quivering in the breeze and buckskin leggings decorated with beadwork so complicated it’ll make you dizzy to look at. Two of the men stand to the side a scooch, giving respect to the man on their right.

  Chief John Tenkiller.

  John’s eyes sit in his dark face like sapphires. He’s been sitting on a folded buffalo skin, fresh made. The old ways are coming back along with the trout and the deer and the bison. This city has grown and become a bastion to thousands of people. The spiritual and government leader positions have combined. All of it ends at the feet of this man. The revered leader of Gray Horse. My target.

  The field around the arbor gets real quiet.

  In the hush, Lonnie Wayne hops off his tall walker. The long-legged sprinting machine falls and he catches it neat as you please. Sets it down gentle, showing respect for his steed even if it ain’t living. Then he turns and strides toward the elders in confident steps. He nods at the drummers and goes left around the fire, moving counterclockwise according to tradition. He’s got a tight grin and I think he’s even enjoying the attention, a reminder of what we fought for.