Hexwood

  “Not exactly,” Ann panted. “It was Hexwood Farm in the future. Except the soldiers were like the Bayeux tapestry or something.”

  “I told them,” rattled Yam. His voicebox seemed to be badly damaged. “Beyond trees. Soldiers. Me for. Afraid of Sir Artegal. Famous outlaw.”

  “Mend him, mend him, Mordion!” Hume pleaded.

  “So they’re not following?” Mordion said anxiously.

  “I don’t think so,” said Ann, while Yam rattled, “Inside. Me for. Famous knight. Cowards.”

  Hume pulled Mordion’s sleeve and shouted his demand. “He’s broken! Please mend him. Please!”

  Mordion could see Hume was frightened and distressed. He explained kindly. “I don’t think I can, Hume. Mending a robot requires a whole set of special tools.”

  “Ask for them then – like the nails,” said Hume.

  “Yes, why not?” Ann said, unexpectedly joining Hume. “Ask the parawhatsit field like you did for the aeroplane food, Mordion. Yam stopped two crossbow bolts and saved Hume’s life.”

  “He was brave,” Hume agreed.

  “No,” Yam whirred. He sounded like a cheap alarm clock. “Robot nature. Glad. Mended. Uncomfort. Like this.”

  Mordion pulled at his beard, dubiously. If he used the field the way Ann and Hume were suggesting, he sensed he would be admitting a number of things about himself which he would rather not admit. It would be like turning down a forbidden road that led somewhere terrible, to face something he never could face. “No,” he said. “Asking for things is cheating.”

  “Then cheat,” said Ann. “If those soldiers go back for reinforcements and come after us, you’re going to need Yam’s help. Or start being an enchanter again, if you won’t cheat.”

  “I’m not an enchanter!” Mordion said.

  “Oh blast you and your beastly field!” Ann said. “You’re just giving in to it and letting it make you feeble!” She found she was crying with anger and frustration, and swung round so that Mordion should not see. “Come on, Hume. We’ll see if my dad can mend Yam. Yam, do you think you can get across that river down there?”

  “You know Hume shouldn’t go out of the wood,” Mordion said. “Please, Ann—”

  “I’m – disappointed in you!” Ann choked. Bitterly disappointed, she thought. Mordion seemed to be denying everything she knew he was.

  There was a helpless silence. The river rushed below. Yam stood swaying and clanking. There were tears running down Hume’s face as well as Ann’s. Mordion looked at them, hurt by their misery and even more hurt by Ann’s contempt. It was worse because he knew, without being able to explain to himself why, that he had earned Ann’s scorn. He did not think he could decide what to do. He did not think he had decided anything, until a large roll of metalcloth clanked to the ground at his feet.

  “Did you ask for this?” Mordion said to Hume.

  Hume shook his head, sending tears splashing. Ann gave a sort of chuckle. “I knew you’d do it!” she said.

  Mordion sighed, and knelt down to unwrap the cloth. He spread it across the earth under the pine tree to find every kind of robotics tool in there, tucked into pockets in rows: tiny bright pincers and power drivers, miniature powered spanners, magnifying goggles, spare cells, wire bores, a circuit tester, a level, adhesives, lengths of silver tegument, cutters …

  Yam’s rosy eyes turned eagerly to the unrolled spread. To Mordion’s fascination, a sort of creasing bent the blank modelling of Yam’s mouth. The thing smiles! he thought. What a weird antique model! “Old Yamaha,” Yam warbled. “Adapted. Remodelled. Trust. Correct tools?”

  “I’ve seldom seen a more complete kit,” Mordion assured him.

  “You told me you were old Yamaha before,” Hume said.

  “Not,” Yam rattled. “Gone back. Time you first found me. Think everything. Told for first time. Hush. Mordion work.”

  Hume obediently sat himself on a smooth brown rock, with Ann on the ground beside him. They watched Mordion roll up the sleeves of his camel-coloured robe and unscrew a large panel in Yam’s back, where he dived in with some of the longer tools and did something to stop Yam lurching almost at once. Then he whipped round to the front of Yam and undid the voicebox at the top of Yam’s neck. “Say something,” Mordion said, after a moment.

  “THAT IS MUCH—” Yam’s normal flat voice boomed. Mordion hurriedly twiddled the power-driver. “Better than,” Yam said, and went on in a whisper, “it was before,” and was twiddled back to proper strength to add, “I am glad it was not broken.”

  “Me too,” said Mordion. “Now you can set me right if I get something wrong. You’re much older than anything I’m used to.”

  He went back to the hole in Yam’s rear. Yam turned and bent his head, far further than a human could, to watch what was going on. “Those fuel cells have slipped,” he told Mordion.

  “Yes, the clips are worn,” Mordion agreed. “How’s that? And if I take a turn on the neck pisistor, does it feel worse, or better?”

  “Better,” said Yam. “No, stop. That red wire goes to the torsor head. I think the lower sump is wrong.”

  “Punctured,” said Mordion. He bent down to the roll of tools. “More fluid. Where are the small patches? Ah, here. Do you know of any more leaks, while I’m at it?”

  “Lower left leg,” said Yam.

  Ann was fascinated. Mordion working on Yam was a different person, neither the mad-seeming enchanter who had created Hume, nor the harassed monk trying to build a house and watch Hume at the same time. He was cool and neutral and efficient, a cross between a doctor and a motor mechanic with, perhaps, a touch of dentist and sculptor thrown in. In a queer way, she thought, Mordion seemed far more at ease with Yam than he was with her or Hume.

  Hume sat seriously with a hand on each knee, leaning forward to watch each new thing Mordion did. He could not believe Mordion was not hurting Yam. He kept whispering, “It’s all right, Yam. All right.”

  Mordion turned round to pick up the magnifying goggles before starting on the tiny parts of Yam’s left leg, and noticed the way Hume was feeling. He wondered what to do about it. He could tell Hume Yam did not feel a thing; Hume would not believe him; and that would make Hume just as worried as before, but ashamed of his worry. Better get Yam himself to show Hume he was fine. Get Yam to talk about something else besides his own antique works.

  “Yam,” Mordion said, unscrewing the leg tegument, “from what you said to Hume earlier, I thought you implied you’d been inside this paratypical field for some time. Does it affect you too?”

  “Not as much as it affects human’s,” said Yam, “but I am certainly not immune.”

  “Surprising,” said Mordion. “I thought a machine would be immune.”

  “That is because of the nature of the field,” Yam explained.

  “Oh?” said Mordion, examining the hundreds of tiny silver leg mechanisms.

  “The field is induced by a machine,” said Yam. “The machine is a device known as a Bannus. It has been dormant but not inoperative for many years. I believe it is like me: it can never be fully turned off. Something has happened recently to set it working at full power and, unlike me, the Bannus can, when fully functional, draw power from any source available. There is much power available in this world at this time.”

  “That explains the strength of the field,” Mordion murmured.

  “But what is a Bannus?” asked Ann.

  “I can only tell you what I deduce from my own experience,” Yam said, turning himself round to face Ann, with Mordion patiently following him round. “The Bannus would appear to take any situation and persons given it, introduce them into a field of theta-space, and then enact, with almost total realism, a series of scenes based on these people and this situation. It does this over and over again, portraying what would happen if the people in the situation decided one way, and then another. I deduce it was designed to help people make decisions.”

  “Then it plays tricks with time,” Ann said. br />
  “Not exactly,” said Yam. “But I do not think it cares what order the scenes are shown in.”

  “You said that before too,” Hume said. He was interested. He had almost forgotten his worry about Yam. “And I didn’t understand then either.”

  “I have said it many times,” said Yam. “The Bannus cannot tamper with my memory. I know that we four have discussed the Bannus, here and in other places, twenty times now. It may well continue to make us do so until it arrives at the best possible conclusion.”

  “I don’t believe it!” said Ann. But the trouble was, she did.

  Mordion rolled away from Yam’s leg and pushed up his goggles. Like Ann, in spite of not wanting to believe Yam, he had a strong sense of having done this before. The feel of the tiny tool in his hand, the piercing scent of the pine tree overhead and the harsh whisper of its needles overlaying the sound of the river below, were uncomfortably and hauntingly familiar. “What conclusion do you think the machine is trying to make us arrive at?”

  “I have no idea,” said Yam. “It could be that the people deciding are not us. We are possibly only actors in someone else’s scenes.”

  “Not me,” said Ann. “I’m important. I’m me.”

  “I’m very important,” Hume announced.

  “Besides,” Ann went on, giving Hume a pat to show she knew he was important too, “I object to being pushed around by this machine. If you’re right, it’s made me do twenty things I don’t want to do.”

  “Not really,” said Yam. “Nothing can make either a person or a machine do things which it is not in their natures to do.”

  Mordion had gone back to work on Yam’s leg. He knew he was not in the least important It was a weight off his mind, somehow, that Yam thought they were only actors in someone else’s scene. But when Yam said this about one not being made to act against one’s nature, he found he was quivering so with guilt and uneasiness that he had to stop work again for fear of doing Yam damage.

  Ann was thinking about this too. She said, “But machines can be adapted. You’ve been adapted, Yam. And people have all sorts of queer bits in their natures that the Bannus could work on.”

  That was why he felt so guilty, Mordion realised with relief. He went back to making painstaking, microscopic adjustments on Yam’s leg. This machine, this Bannus, had taken advantage of some very queer and unsavoury corner of his nature when it caused him to create Hume. And the reason for his guilt was that, when the Bannus decided the correct conclusion had been reached, it would surely shut down its field. Hume would cease to exist then. Just like that What a thing to have done! Mordion went on working, but he was cold and appalled.

  Meanwhile, Ann was looking at her watch and saying firmly that she had to go now. She had had enough of this Bannus. As she got up and started down the steep rocks, Mordion left Yam with a driver sticking out of his leg and hastened after her. “Ann!”

  “Yes?” Ann stopped and looked up at him. She was still not feeling very friendly towards Mordion – particularly now that it seemed she had been shoved into scene after scene with him.

  “Keep coming here,” Mordion said. “Of your own free will, if possible. You do me good as well as Hume. You keep pointing out the truth.”

  “Yam can do that now,” Ann said coldly.

  “Not really.” Mordion tried to explain, before she climbed down by the river where she could not hear him. “Yam knows facts. You have insights.”

  “I do?” Ann was gratified, enough to pause on one foot halfway down to the river.

  Mordion could not help smiling. “Yes, mostly when you’re angry.”

  Ann did wish Mordion had not smiled. It was that smile that had entranced her – she was sure of it – into coming back this afternoon. She had never met a smile like it.

  “He thinks I’m funny” she snorted to herself as she made her way home. “He thinks I eat out of his hand when he smiles. It’s humiliating!”

  She arrived home in a pale, shaken sort of state because of it. Or maybe it was being chased by men in armour – at least they hadn’t followed them down to the river. Or the Bannus hadn’t let them follow. Or maybe it’s everything! she thought.

  Dad looked up at her from where he was relaxing in front of the news. “You’ve been overdoing it, my girl, haven’t you? You look all in.”

  “I’m not all in – I’m angry!” Ann retorted. Then, realising that she would never get a plain-minded person like Dad to believe in the Bannus, or theta-space, let alone a boy created out of blood, she was forced to add, “Angry at being tired, I mean.”

  “This is it, isn’t it?” said Dad. “You get out of bed just this morning, and off you go – vanish for the whole day – without a thought! You’ll be back in bed with that virus again tomorrow. Are you going to be well enough to go to school at all this term? Or not?”

  “Monday,” said Mum. “We want you well and back in school on Monday.”

  “There’s only two more days of school left,” Martin put in from the corner where he was colouring a map labelled ‘Caves of the Future’. “It’s not worth going back for two days.” Ann shot him a grateful look.

  “Yes it is worth it,” said Mum. “I just wish I’d paid more attention when I was at school.”

  “Oh, don’t bore on about that!” Martin muttered.

  “What did you say?” Mum asked him. But Dad cut across her, saying, “Well if it is only the two days, there’s no point making her go, is there? She might as well stay at home and get thoroughly well again.”

  Ann let them argue about it. Mum seemed to be winning, but Ann did not mind much. Two days wouldn’t kill anyone. And that would be two days in which the Bannus couldn’t use her as an extra in somebody else’s decisions. It was good – no, more, a real relief to be back at home with a normal decision being argued about in the normal way. Ann sat down on the sofa with a great, relaxing sigh.

  Martin looked across at her. “There’s Alien on the late film tonight,” he said, underneath the argument.

  “Oh good!” Ann stretched both arms over her head and decided, there and then, that she would not go near Banners Wood again.

  Ann kept to her decision next morning. Yam’s looking after Hume now, she told herself. He was obviously the non-real person she had asked the field to provide for Hume, when Mordion could not seem to be bothered. But the Bannus had done a lot of fancy hocus-pocus to make Ann believe it was the year two thousand and something, and then more fancy work with the men in armour. It seemed to enjoy making people frightened and uncomfortable.

  “I have had enough of that machine.” Ann told her bedroom mirror. The fact that she could see the grey car in the mirror over her left shoulder, still parked in the bay, only underlined her decision.

  Anyway, it was Saturday and she and Martin both had particular duties on a Saturday. Martin had to go with Dad in the van, first to the suppliers and then to deliver fruit and vegetables to the motel. Ann had to do the shopping. Feeling very virtuous and decided, Ann dug the old brown shopping bag out of the kitchen cupboard and went dutifully into the shop to collect money and a shopping list from Mum. Mum gave her the usual string of instructions, interrupted by customers coming in. It always took a long time. While Ann was standing by the counter waiting for Mum’s next sentence, Martin shot through on his way to meet Mrs Price’s Jim.

  “Chalk up one week I don’t have to do that for you,” he said as he whizzed by.

  Poor Martin, Ann thought. His last few Saturdays must have been quite hard work. She had not thought about that while she lay in bed.

  “And don’t forget the papers,” Mum concluded. “Here’s another ten pounds to pay the bill – though I don’t suppose it’ll be that much, even with this new comic Martin got for doing the shopping for you. I want to see some change, Ann.”

  Trust Martin! Ann thought. My brother will accept a bribe for anything. What’ll it be like when Martins grown up and running the country? She was smiling as she went out of the sh
op. Everything was deliciously normal – wholesomely humdrum – right down to a little sprinkle of rain. The street was safely grey. The other people shopping all looked fretful, which gave Ann a further feeling of security, because this was just as you might expect. She was even able to listen patiently to Mrs Price chattering away while Ann paid for the papers. Mrs Price was behaving just as usual too.

  Contentedly, Ann heaved up the full shopping bag and set off back home.

  And put the bag down again on the damp pavement to stare at the person coming towards her carrying a sack.

  Ann thought at first he was a monk. But the brown robe was not long enough, and it had narrow trousers underneath. And the tall figure looked lopsided because of the rolled blanket-thing over one shoulder. He had a curious strolling walk. Ann knew that walk.

  Mordion was smiling to himself as he came. Ann could see all the other shoppers reacting to that smile. Some were startled, some suspicious, but most people smiled too, as if they could not resist It gave Ann a very queer shock, which ran all over her skin like soreness, to see Mordion here in Wood Street on a Saturday morning.

  “What are you doing?” she said accusingly, standing in his path.

  Mordion’s smile broadened and became particularly for her. “Hallo,” he said. “I wondered if I might meet you.”

  “But what are you doing?” Ann repeated.

  “Shopping,” said Mordion. “We were very short of food this winter – until it occurred to me there would be food I could buy here.”

  This winter? Ann thought. She took a quick look at Mordion’s left wrist. The cut was no more healed than her own knee was. She had put a new plaster on it before she came out. The Bannus was playing tricks with time again. “But,” she said, “what are you using for money?”

  “That’s no problem. I seem to have quite a lot,” Mordion told her. Ann must have looked disbelieving. Mordion said, “Look. I’ll show you.”

  He put his sack down beside Ann’s bag. It was one of those green shiny bags with net inside, Ann saw, in which sprouts got delivered to their shop. Her distracted eyes took in potatoes, carrots, onions, lamb chops, inside it, before they switched to the leather wallet Mordion was taking out of his pouch. “Here,” he said, and opened the wallet to show her a big stack of ten-pound notes.