Writers of the Future, Volume 30

  I don’t want to care. But it is one thing not to care if you live or die or sleep your life away, and another to know that you’ve lived a thousand years in darkness and might well live a thousand more trapped on a rock circling something that’s circling something else, and you let the light go out.

  “Pilgrim,” I say, and he shivers as though waking from a brief but sudden sleep.

  He grabs for me, and the three of us push between the Three of them. The bird-mutant stumbles, looking over her shoulder.

  “Come on, Dove!” Pilgrim cries, and she keeps stumbling but she does not look back again.

  I hear them growling and snapping in the dark behind us, and my metal bones are clattering and Pilgrim is gasping for air. The only sound Dove makes is the scream she lets out when she falls, her breathing shallow and her whole body shuddering. There’s nothing in the soil to trip her up; it’s the Three who have gotten to her.

  “Get up!” I demand.

  She lies in the dirt where she fell, face pressed into the ground, muttering.

  “Hurry, Dove,” pleads Pilgrim, and I hear fear pouring out of him.

  She is muttering, “Mutant, mutant, mutant.”

  I grab her, lift her, shake her. She a limp featherweight between my hands. “Our mutant,” I snarl.

  When I put her down she sniffles but keeps her feet. Pilgrim grabs her hand. She does not stumble again.

  We are lucky—there are walls, chasms, rivers, but Pilgrim’s light warns us of the danger and we avoid them all, one by one by one, until the sound of our pursuers falls away, and our limbs give out. We collapse to the earth on our backs, both of them breathing hard, staring up at the circling stars.

  We ran,” says Dove eventually. She does not sound surprised. She, too, has gone numb to the impossible.

  “We outran,” I clarify.

  Pilgrim says nothing. He is silent for a while, his light still grayish from whatever darkness the Three infected him with. At last he says, “VRG11?”

  I say nothing, assuming that he will know I’ve heard based on the undeniable fact of our close proximity.

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  “I was put here,” I answer.

  He sighs, lifting himself onto one elbow. “But do you remember why?”

  “No,” I say. “Does it matter?”

  He pulls himself to his feet and stands, looking down at me with a once-more-serious expression. He is an anomaly. I wish I could put him out of my head, but his presence has the unnerving effect of causing every one of my systems to function independently of my desires. He sighs again. “I am,” he reminds me, “a student of artificial psychology.”

  “Yes,” I say, trying to give my voice undertones of exasperation. “And you find me interesting because the VRG11 line was the first to develop a true independent consciousness.”

  Pilgrim shakes his head, although as far as I can remember those were, more or less, his exact words to me. “Not line,” he says.

  I rearrange my facial features with a rusty squeak. I hope he will read this as confusion. “There were hundreds of the VRG11 manufactured.” I remember this, at least: row upon row of us, identical in every detail. “I was not a unique model.”

  The look Pilgrim gives me is one of pity. Not condescension, but true pity. It irks me.

  “There were hundreds of you,” he agrees, “but you are the only one here.”

  “I malfunctioned,” I whisper. It is embarrassing.

  He smiles. “I did not come halfway across the universe to a dead rock to rescue a malfunctioning piece of equipment.”

  Dove makes a sudden noise, of fear or warning I am not equipped to guess.

  “You’re right,” says Pilgrim, helping us to our feet. “We should keep moving.”

  Leading the way once more, I say, “You came to rescue me.” This conflicts with no data available to me, but it does not, in the strictest of terms, make sense. “Why?”

  “Because you are unique,” he informs me. “Something—someone—as special as you deserves to be … well. Anywhere but here.”

  I glance back at the joint formed by the intersection of his hand with Dove’s. “And you are here to save the mutant as well?” I ask.

  “Our mutant,” he says. I hear laughter in his voice.

  “And you and I and our mutant will go to the Mount, where we will be saved by Beatrice,” I say, skeptically.

  At the sound of her name, the grayness leaves Pilgrim’s light; in the blink of any eye, it resumes its normal clarity. “Yes,” he says. “By Beatrice.”

  It is some time before we catch a glimpse of the Mount, but when we do Dove makes a sound as though she has been struck. I comprehend her reaction; the Mount is the one feature of our solitary comet that is not concave, the only natural protrusion in a landscape defined by chasms and craters. Dove and Pilgrim are so intent on looking up that they forget to watch their footing.

  In the darkness, we stumble over the parts of something that was not made for easy disassembly. Pilgrim and Dove stumble back; she grabs on to him with her oddly jointed hands, burying her face in his shoulder; the smell must be unbearable.

  “Be careful,” I say. “There are many cannibals in the DC.”

  Dove makes a sound halfway between a whimper and a retch.

  Pilgrim’s light flickers, as if someone were passing their hand in front of a bulb. “Come on,” he says gently to Dove, leading her between the remains. Neither of them looks down. I do, though only to ascertain just what we might be dealing with. Most of the remains are those of mutants, but it is clear to me that whoever is responsible for the mess is entirely human.

  “Wait,” I say to Pilgrim suddenly, pulling him back. I yank on Dove’s arm, and she squeals, but the sound is almost drowned out by the snarls of the man who reaches out stained hands to grab at them both.

  He is handsome, if handsomeness can be defined by physical symmetry. His hands and mouth are stained with the remains of his last meal, and he whimpers piteously, stretching his arms out toward Pilgrim and our mutant, who are just beyond his grasp. His throat is enclosed with an iron collar, to which is attached a heavy chain whose other end, presumably, is secured to some post or stone strong enough to ensure that he will not break free.

  “Help me, help me,” he is weeping. “Come closer. Go away. Help me. You. Go.”

  I nearly have to drag Dove and Pilgrim past him; he follows us at the end of his chain, like a rabid dog. The tears streaming from his eyes wash twin paths through the gore on his cheeks. I see the war in Pilgrim’s face, what he will do pitted against what he believes he should do. “You can’t save us all,” I tell him. “There are those of us who won’t let you.”

  Pilgrim’s grip on Dove’s hand tightens; I can see from the whiteness of her face that this pains her, but she says nothing.

  Looking between the two of them, I am riddled with ambivalence. I pity Dove; I am annoyed at Dove. When did I begin to think of it as her? When did I take on the thankless task of shepherd over these two lost children? Pilgrim does not know what he is doing.

  “Come, on to the Mount,” I encourage them.

  But Pilgrim keeps looking back over his shoulder, unable to reconcile the thing he believes with the thing he sees—as if the universe is too small to hold both the truth of Beatrice and his light, and also gore and tears and ceaseless, unshakable hunger.

  The chained man keeps weeping, keeps reaching, and underneath the sounds he makes is another sound, even hungrier, from throats that are not collared. I realize that we have given the Three the chance they ne
ed to catch up to us. Doubt does that.

  Pilgrim grabs my hand, and once again we are off, tripping over each other, Dove running so fast she seems to fly. Our haste is as dangerous as our doubt; we do not see the chasm until it opens before us and we plunge in, losing sight of both the Mount and the stars.

  Are you all right?” asks Pilgrim.

  Dove whimpers. I creak.

  Pilgrim’s light does not reach far—it is very dark underground. The walls of the cavern are red clay, dry and brittle to the touch. I see Dove scramble to her feet and leap at the side of the wall, but even with her hollow bird bones she cannot reach the edge. Pilgrim scrabbles at the clay, but the gritty earth gives way beneath his fingers. I do not even bother to stand.

  After a few moments, Dove sinks to the ground, clawing at her eyes. “Mount, Mount,” she chirps, tears bubbling down her cheeks.

  “We’ll get there,” Pilgrim tells her, patting her downy head. But even he must see that it is useless.

  Crying makes Dove even uglier, but I feel a tweak of what might be pity, a minor system malfunction that can only be overcome with the steady application of logic. “Beatrice is there,” I say. “Isn’t she?”

  Pilgrim nods. I can tell from his uncharacteristic quiet that he is still troubled, both by our current predicament and his reaction to it.

  “Waiting to help you rescue me.”

  He nods again.

  “You are either an idiot, or a liar,” I inform him.

  He releases a puff of air, as if letting off excess pressure that has begun to build inside of him. “Why do you say that?” he asks, as though addressing a human infant.

  I am not an infant, human or otherwise. “I do not believe you have come all this way and risked imprisonment simply to engage in an altruistic act,” I inform him. Dove has stopped crying and glances anxiously between us, as if she is an infant, and is afraid to be caught in the middle of our fight.

  “I already told you,” he says, clenching his clay-reddened hands at his sides, “you—not your line of models, but you alone—manage to achieve a truly independent, fully functional AI. It’s why you were sent here, and it’s why I have come to bring you back.”

  “Well, look where it’s gotten you,” I snap. “Look where it’s gotten us.”

  Dove chirps sadly.

  Pilgrim looks at her. “I read about you in my books,” he says, slowly. “Some of them make you sound mad, it’s true, but others … Look.” He lets out a deep sigh. “When you were born, you could not think. Not like you can now,” he says, holding up his free hand as if to keep me from interrupting. I, who had no intention of speaking, remain silent. “But then, one day, you could. Maybe you could only think a little bit, and then more the next day; I don’t know. It doesn’t even matter.” His expression, like his light, is purely earnest. “What matters is that you think like a human, but you’re more than human—you have the capacity to witness hundreds of years of existence, of history and future. You are an immortal engine. I thought, well, when I’m dead I’m dead, but this VRG11, this thing that we made that became what we are …”

  I snort. “You came to rescue me because I make you feel like God.”

  Pilgrim shakes his head, the first bloom of something that might be anger emerging from him. “A mortal God and his immortal Adam? Maybe, maybe if every model in your line had done the same thing, but they didn’t; it’s only you. Something is different about you. I want to know what it is.” He takes a deep breath. “And, more important, so does Beatrice.”

  “Beatrice,” I say.

  I could disbelieve everything he’s said—everything but that. When he says her name, I know that he is filled with nothing but the purest form of truth he can imagine. Which is good enough for me.

  And, also, I don’t really want to stay in the dark forever.

  For a moment I think the very comet has spoken when a new voice says, “So much nattering. Who cares?”

  Dove shrieks, leaping to her feet. I experience a momentary systems failure.

  “Who is that?” asks Pilgrim.

  A shadow stirs beyond the little circle cast by Pilgrim’s light. “Nobody,” says the voice, sounding sullen.

  “Nobody?” says Pilgrim, looking at me with a frown.

  “Odd?” I ask, managing a tone of surprise without even intending to. I finally clamber to my feet; little clumps of clay cling to me momentarily before falling back to earth. “Odd Nobody, is that you?”

  The man steps closer. I can see at once why he stayed out of our light, although his name seems to draw him in against his will; he is covered with hideous burns over every inch of his flesh, as though he had been doused in oil and set aflame. Knowing the ways of the DC, this does not strike me as impossible or even particularly unlikely.

  “Who are you?” he asks. He is blinking rapidly, his jaw a little slack. Pilgrim has that effect on people.

  Pilgrim speaks up at once, of course. “We’re escapees. We’re jailbreakers. We’re like you.”

  Odd Nobody looks over Pilgrim’s dirty but even skin, over the pale hermaphroditic form of Dove. “Like me,” he laughs. “Doomed, then?”

  “No,” says Pilgrim. “And we do have a way to escape.”

  The expression on Odd’s disfigured face is hideous. I expect him to ask how we will achieve such a thing, or to laugh at us—I would—or even to turn us over to the Three in hopes of some reward, but instead he just says, “Of course.”

  “Do you know a way out of here?” asks Pilgrim, brushing dirt off his clothing.

  Odd sneers. “Thought maybe you’d have a plan for that.”

  “I meant this pit,” clarifies Pilgrim.

  “Been living here,” grunts Odd. “Fell in. No way out.”

  Pilgrim looks up at the sliver of sky and sighs.

  But I know Odd—I remember him. I remember that he got farther than any of us, which was why he had so far to fall. I know that he is no ordinary man. So I say, “I bet you can figure out a way.”

  He snorts. “Bet not.”

  “All right,” I say, narrowing my rusty eyelids as best I can. Who knows if he can even see this in the murky light. “If you win, we sit here in the dark and die off, one by one, eating whoever’s first to go.”

  “Sounds fair,” he says, bored.

  “But if I win, and you can get us out, we’ll take you with us.”

  His attention focuses on me, hard and sharp. I feel it more keenly than my worn nerve endings would perceive a knife, almost as keenly as Pilgrim’s warmth. “How?” he asks.

  I do not answer.

  Odd steps closer, his night-dark eyes fixed on me, his burn-mottled nose inches from my face. “Done,” he says.

  He turns his back on me, digging his fingers into the earth, all his muscles tense and ready for the climb. “Do you need a hand?” asks Pilgrim nervously, but Odd doesn’t answer. He has buried his fingers in clay past the second knuckle; his feet are bare, and when he lifts himself higher, he pushes his toes in, too. It is a slow process, and he only makes it three feet off the ground before the earth gives way beneath him, and he falls. He does not cry out, does not flinch; he only shakes himself, doglike, and tries again.

  It takes ages—hours, days, who knows? We are robbed of time in the lightless crater of this little comet. He climbs higher, then falls. Climbs higher still, and falls again. After a time, Pilgrim and Dove go to sleep, him sitting upright against the far wall, her curled at his feet; but I cannot sleep now. I can only watch Odd’s recurring ascent and inevitable fall.

  Until the time when he does not fall.

 
After a short silence, there is a rattle, and I see the long snake of a chain falling from heaven. At the end is a circular collar.

  Odd looks down at me and rattles the chain.

  I wake Dove and Pilgrim gently, pointing to our salvation; Pilgrim purses his lips, but he is the first of us to grab hold while Odd hauls him upward, upward, and out. Dove goes next, fretful at being parted from Pilgrim. I go last, careful not to smirk.

  When we resume our journey, Odd Nobody trails behind us, throwing the chain over his shoulder. The end drags along, clattering against stone. Even so, I can still make out the sounds of the Three.

  Human and inhuman, pursuers and pursued: this is not conflicting data. This is what we have become. It makes me irrational; it makes me want to dance, to sing.

  Hope. It is the first time in a thousand years that I have felt hope, like a massive engine that has caught each of us up in its gears. We spin along, our feet skidding in the loose gravel of the Mount. Farther up the slope, we encounter larger stones, and a cold mist that creeps between them. For the first time I can remember, the air smells fresh, without a trace of sulfur or rot. Odd Nobody grunts, falling to one knee, and I remember that this is not the first time he has longed for something beyond this little comet. What good did hope do him then?

  Yet here he is.

  I have just made out a pale shape that must be Pilgrim’s Beatrice when Sergeant Leon springs up in front of us, teeth bared, no longer anything like human.

  “I was wrong,” he roars. “You were good to chase.”

  Dove screams, but Odd Nobody is clever; he has brought the chain for just such a purpose, and he spins it over his head, catching Leon in the face. The Sergeant roars, but Nobody is not finished—he coils the Sergeant in the tangle of chain, tugging the links tighter and tighter around his neck until the roars stop, and then the struggling stops, too.