Something about him was wrong - out of place. It called to mind the warnings we had been given as children.
Beware the well fed man.
Simple. True. Crassus had very little brutality within him. He was gentle, and it showed through his emaciated body. The stranger, though gentle in speech, was not thin.
“Our tribe has no need for a leader yet,” Thunfir said suddenly, “The Thakka have not been seen straying too close to our border, and most other travelers just end up staying here. As it is we have no need to make decisions. I don’t think I speak out of line when I say the Plexis gives us all we need. In its way, perhaps the Plexis is our leader as well.”
The nod of general agreement I had been expecting didn’t come from the others around us. Instead, there was a ghostly hollow silence. But it was a silence loaded with an unspoken question. Are we following a machine? Even Thunfir reacted by looking conspicuously at me as though the words had snuck out from somewhere hidden within him. The stranger didn’t seem much surprised, only pleased. He smiled mirthfully,
“If it’s the machine that’s in charge, I’d like to speak with the machine.”
Of course we laughed.
The next time I saw Crassus, it was once again in our little apartment. He was sitting at the kitchen table with a piece of paper folded in front of him. From the troubled look in his eyes, I had the sudden impression that he had just finished speaking with the stranger, Euclid. I didn’t say anything, but twisted my hand in the air in a faint gesture of greeting. Crassus said,
“Remember when you asked me how a machine could build this place?” I nodded, of course. It wasn’t unusual to probe the mysteries of our still new home over dinner. He continued, “Euclid explained it to me tonight.”
I raised my eyebrows for a moment in mock interest, before the facts caught up to me,
“How could the stranger know? He only arrived here today.”
“He may have explained to you his unique talent,” Crassus said unfolding the piece of paper and looking down at it, “He does math. The answer was, in this case, hidden therein. Do you remember how I used the word drone before?”
“Of course,” I said setting the paper bag onto the table, “You say it near every day. The devices they sent to outer space to build the Plexis.”
“No,” Crassus stressed, “At least not at first. Most of the time they were up there, they weren’t building the Plexis. It would have taken thousands of machines, maybe tens of thousands to make this. Launching a factory of that size into space would have required more fuel than what history tells me the collapsing planet had amassed. I always assumed there was some other answer, yet another technology that had been kept from us by the obscuring hand of time. And yet that’s not the case at all.”
I walked to Crassus and sat down with my eyes on the small piece of paper weighted beneath his fingers. Was this the answer to the greatest secret the Plexis still had? How could a civilization on the brink of collapse design something in deep space so massive without human assistance? Immediately, my mind turned to the image of a rocket standing on a landing platform I had seen broadcast from the information terminals. If not launched into space to build upon itself, then what?
A notion entered my mind of a far off distant world - a thought I knew was impossible. I imagined a massive platform hovering in orbit where humans were living much like we were. They were on an automated factory ship, living day to day assembling massive plates of these paradise complexes to drop back to their home world, all while clucking their tongues and shaking their heads at the flames slowly crawling across the face of their planet. At the head of it all strolled a massive bearded man in elfish red moving from machine to machine turning dials and laughing mirthfully as his workers toiled in dronish ecstasy. It was a strange thought, one that was soon dismissed by the reality of my brother’s look.
Crassus pushed the piece of paper toward me. On it, there was a pyramid of rats. Exponential growth was the secret to building the Plexis. It had all started centuries ago, with one single drone. One made two. Two made four. And gradually, over six million drones began the process of harvesting and creating this paradise. So many had come from so few. The thought stayed with me for the rest of our dinner, which we finished in silence..
Exponential growth. Many, descended from few.
As the days wore on, my brother was talking more and more with the stranger, Euclid. I would often find them strolling the hallways near shops and scribbling down notes on scraps of paper. The two were hardly ever seen apart in those days, talking in their own nearly indecipherable language. It was difficult for most of the outsiders in our tribe to understand, but occasionally when I heard my brother's voice talking with Euclid I noticed a tone of fear. And yet there was nothing to be afraid of. I knew that. Now was the time to live a different life. I welcomed the time away from Crassus as we each pursued our own chosen work in the day, and conversed over an endless supply of food at night.
Time passed. In a small informal ceremony, Thunfir was drafted as leader against his wishes. Two weeks later, we saw the approach of a burning distant hill.
It was walking.
- - -
The city sagged on tremendous metal legs as it carefully picked its way across the landscape, always taking care to keep the plate atop it even. The constant boom and pop of the machine as it shuffled its way to the valley lip grew steadily as the smokestack topped beast closed in on the Plexis. The thick black smoke trailed upward, darkening the sky and filling the wind with the noxious smell of burned rubber and oil.
The city closed thirty yards with each shaking step, and soon it had traversed the gap halfway between the valley's edge and the Plexis, resting its back legs on a formation of rock. With a tremendous explosion high above, the city lowered itself and jerked violently. From its edge, metal sheets and bolted armored plating tumbled over the side and fell some ninety feet, spearing the Earth with rusted detritus around its circumference. After finally coming to rest, the smoke atop the beast stopped pouring up, and it bleated with a tremendous signaling horn. The sound echoed throughout the valley.
So vast. So impossibly huge. Indomitable. Unstoppable.
"Anquan. It's a spider city," Thunfir said glancing from his price tag adorned binoculars over to me. We were in a department store on the 19th storey, lying prone and staring through lenses out at the stationary creature. Thunfir had spent much of his youth out west where the Spider cities were more common in the desert, "No entourage." This was not a term I had heard yet. I grunted interrogatively, and then after a bit added,
"What's that?"
"Entourage? It's a term we used out west. The entourage tribes followed spider cities and picked up whatever fell off over the edge. And when the plate inhabitants needed anything from the surrounding landscape, they would inform their entourage and have it brought to them. Mostly food and slaves. They compete with one another and dream of being pulled up into the city proper."
"Does it ever happen?" I asked. Thunfir was staring at the feet of the city,
"Apparently it does. From what I understand the entourage tribes of cities don't stop following for any reason. And they're generally well armed. Not as well armed as the city vanguard, of course."
A spotlight from the walking city switched on and beamed into the windows of the Plexis, filling the building with a blue and red alternating light. Thunfir cursed and rose to his feet, the binoculars in his hand clattering to the floor.
"That's not good," he said grabbing a fur coat from one of the display racks, "They want to talk."
"To you?" I asked Thunfir.
"To me," he said gravely, "And you, Ebon. What weapons do you have?"
Naturally I had spent time building, and that meant I had more to trade with. While the Plexis' vast system of shops and factories wasn't equipped to print weapons, a few of our more industrious fellow tribesmen had learned to forge th
em from the readily made materials it provided.
A hollow steel chair leg, for instance could be grafted to a wooden stock and elastic cord creating a zip gun that fired like a rifle, but had the priming mechanism of a crossbow. The guns had a propensity for breaking the first time they were used, sometimes exploding catastrophically into shards of splintered metal and wood. When it happened, this explosion rarely failed to injure the shooter. Other times they didn't work at all, or became more inaccurate with each subsequent use. They were also incredibly easy to build, as was black powder Serpentine. The result was, of course, a surplus of easily crafted and totally disposable firearms. Other than that there were also several hand crafted axes, clubs, spears, and the odd crossbow. Those worked with far greater predictability.
As did my hunting rifle. I snatched it up from my apartment as we left.
Outside, at the base of one of the spider city's massive legs, I stood next to Thunfir. Crassus and Euclid had likewise been summoned to make the journey. Each of us stood in silence with weapons slung over our shoulders, across our hips, or around our backs.
Thunfir pulled the two handed sword from his back and hoisted it over his head. With a bellowing warrior's cry he drove it into the brittle soil shadowed by the massive city. His voice rang out, and he sustained the