The Broken God Machine (12 page)

It was for this reason that even while one subroutine was causing the metal
thing to apologize to Jace and invite him to obtain a visitor’s pass, a second
subroutine was calling forth the lasers that would burn their way through him,
and through several Lagos warriors standing in their path.

The metal thing, which was not a thinking machine, could not see the dark
humor in this combination of actions. It knew only that it had obeyed its
directives as it now understood them. While a manual diagnostic check would
have easily diagnosed and corrected this error, the metal thing hadn't been
taken in for such maintenance in nearly ten thousand years. In all the time
hence, the metal thing had merely been obeying orders, like any good machine.
It operated without malice or judgment, without preference or prejudice,
without concern or sympathy. It operated, in truth, without any sort of thought
at all.

Small consolation that would have been to Jace.

* * *

The Lagos finished their chant, and the priest indicated to Pehr that it was
time to enter the circle. The air was thick with silent tension as the Lagos
waited to see if he would comply. Pehr had no intention of being hurled bodily
into the ring and so he stepped forward, heading for the line of death. The
priest sneered at him as he passed, and for a moment Pehr came very close to
grabbing the creature by its gigantic ears and dragging it with him into the
circle, but he forced himself to stay calm. He wanted no interference with his
plan.

As soon as he crossed the line, Pehr broke into a sprint, angling straight
for the metal thing. As he'd expected, it launched immediately into the same
greeting that it had given each of the other prisoners before murdering them
with the awful fire from its eyes. Pehr prayed to his Gods as he ran that they
would grant him the same few seconds that they had granted Jace, and that he
might reach the metal thing before it decided to kill him.

The thing did pause, and Pehr actually roared in triumph as he ran. He would
almost certainly reach it now, and there was no reason to stop, no reason to do
anything more than plow into it, knock it down, and try to destroy those deadly
eyes. There must be something on the ground near where it stood – a rock, a
stick – something that could be used as a weapon against this thing that looked
like a walking corpse and carried death inside of it.

Pehr flew forward in great, leaping strides, trying to close the distance as
quickly as possible. He was nearly there when the metal thing did something so
unexpected that instead of tackling it he instead came skidding to a complete,
confused halt.

“DN- M-TCH C-NF-RM-D,” it shouted at him in his own language, or
at least a broken and warbling version thereof. “PL--S- ST-T-
Y--R N-M-.”

Pehr found himself stammering for a moment before answering. “Pehr.
Khada’Pehr, son of Khada’Pol.”

“AL--S -NKN-WN. D- Y-- C-M- -N
P--C-?”

“Yes. Yes, I come in peace.”

“D- Y-- W-SH T- -NT-R TH- C-TY?”

“I don’t …” Pehr began, and stopped himself. He had no idea what a city was,
but given the choice between entering one and returning to the Lagos, he knew
which option he preferred. “Yes, I wish to enter.”

“W-LC-M- T- H-V-NM-NT. W- TH-NK Y-- F-R
C-M-NG. -NT-R -ND B- W-LL.”

The metal thing bowed once, stepped back, leaned against the wall, and was
silent.

Pehr knew that the wise course of action was still to attack, knew that he
should expect this to be some sort of trick, but there was a part of him that
understood in some deep and instinctive way that the metal thing had no further
interest in him. Much of what the metal thing had said was lost on him, even in
his own language, so broken was the thing’s voice. The last four words, though
– these had been nearly as clear as if spoken by a fellow hunter.
Enter and
be well
, the thing had told him, and as unbelievable as it seemed to him,
it was clear that the thing had meant it.

There was a confused muttering coming from the horde behind him as the Lagos
realized that whatever was going to happen had already happened. Pehr was
standing there, alive and well and unsacrificed, and a savage thrill of victory
ran through him. He wanted to turn and scream at the monsters, ask them what
they thought of their god now, but a small part of him still feared turning his
back on the guardian.

He heard a single, loud snarl, and Pehr risked a quick glance over his
shoulder. A warrior was shoving past the priest, striding past the line of
death and into the ring of bone, intent either on dealing with Pehr himself, or
perhaps simply proving that the human boy they had captured was not the only
one who could subdue the metal thing. Pehr heard the metal thing before him
screech back into life, reciting its familiar refrain. He looked back at it,
saw that it was clearly focused on the approaching warrior, and decided that
his best course of action was to get as far out of its way as possible. To this
end, he stepped first to his right and then, with three quick strides, moved
past the metal thing entirely.

There was no pause in the speech for the Lagos warrior, and the creature
realized its error midway into its charge. Skidding in the white, powdery dust
that coated the ground, the Lagos tried desperately to turn and flee the
circle. Escape proved impossible; the metal thing finished speaking and its
eyes opened wide, the beams emerging from them and hitting the Lagos in the
small of its back. The warrior was thrown to the ground, shrieking in agony and
flailing wildly, not dead but mortally injured. The metal thing swiveled its
head and again the fire lanced from its eyes, this time obliterating most of
the Lagos warrior’s skull.

Pehr had seen enough. There was no hope for him now in any direction save
one, and so he turned to face it. The mountain pass beckoned to him like open
arms, and as the first arrows from those warriors that had drawn their bows
began to clatter off the rocks around him, Pehr made his decision and ran for
the cleft in the rock. The metal thing ignored the arrows clattering to the
ground around it. It had done its job, and Pehr knew it would wait there,
unmoving, until the next time it was called upon, when some foolish or unlucky
thing stumbled past the edge of its domain.

Around the corner and out of danger from the arrows, Pehr stopped for a
moment to catch his breath. He heard roars from behind him, and what he thought
was an attempt by the priests to calm the group of Lagos and bring about some
sort of order. He wondered if the creatures would simply charge the metal thing
and try to overwhelm it by sheer numbers, and he hoped fervently that their
obvious reverence for the thing would keep them from doing so.

There was no sound of pursuit after several minutes, and Pehr could feel the
tension draining from him. He took a few slow steps along the path and came
almost immediately to an intersection. The left branch continued further
upwards into the mountain. The other arced east and seemed to descend. Pehr
hesitated for a moment, considering. The mountains would be cold, he reasoned,
with little in the way of sustenance to be found among the rocks. He would
rather descend into whatever valley might be at the end of this path. Hopefully
he could find food there, and water, and some sort of shelter.

Pehr made his choice, opting for the path on the right, and in doing so he
failed to reach the ruins of humanity’s last great work, but instead set the
workings of fate in motion and delivered himself into its hands.

At the foot of the mountains there was a tight band of deciduous trees, dark
but not foreboding, and it was within this small forest that grief overtook
Pehr.

He gave himself no time for it while making his way down from the mountains,
intent on putting as much distance as possible between himself and the Lagos,
the metal thing, and Jace’s body. When at last he staggered into this relative
shelter, parched and hungry and exhausted, he realized that he could go no
further that day. Pehr stood for a moment by a small stream, too tired yet even
to drink, and at first his mind was clear of any thought. He closed his eyes
and listened to the rush of the water moving by.

Then came an unbidden image of Jace giving the hunter’s salute, and the
grief swept over him without warning, dragging him to his knees, where he
covered his face and wept for the first time that he could remember since
Paul’s death two years earlier.

He had failed Jace. He had failed Nani. He had failed himself. His cousin,
his best friend of fourteen years, was dead. They would never hunt the red fish
together again. They would never train for the Test, or talk about the village
girls, or insult each other and laugh about it again. Somewhere up in the
mountains above lay, in a dishonorable heap, the body of a boy who had been
like a brother to him, a boy who Pehr hadn't been able to save. There would be
no burning for Jace, no hunter’s pyre, no scattering of his ashes to the
wind.

Here Pehr knelt, on the side of the mountains his people had never seen,
trapped by some ancient metal creature that threw fire from its eyes and spoke
to him in his own language as if it knew him. He'd not only failed in his
mission, but had left himself in a foreign land without knife or bow or club.
His cousin was gone forever, and Pehr was alone.

He did not beg the Gods for mercy or ask them why they had chosen him for
this punishment, but he couldn't help weeping. He cried for his cousin who lay
dead on the ground, and for the one who still lived and who had been right to
kiss him goodbye. He wept for the loss of the things he'd known, the village
he'd grown up in, the hunters of whom he'd lived in awe. He wept for himself,
and the knowledge that he would most likely die in this alien place. This grove
of trees was too small to support him indefinitely; he must move on or he would
soon starve. Retreat was impossible, and so his only option was to plunge even
further into the unknown.

The crying didn’t last long; Pehr had never been much for tears even as a
very young boy and he had no patience at all for them now. He swiped an arm
roughly across his eyes and then stared at it for a moment, shocked by the
clean tracks the tears had left in the dirt that covered him. The Lagos hadn't
allowed them to bathe, and it’d been days since the last rain. Pehr was filthy,
and for a time he debated washing in the stream, but when he tested it he found
the water icy cold, coming as it must from the peaks of the mountains. In the
end he decided only to clean his face, and to wait until he found warmer water
to take more complete action.

Pehr had neither the energy nor the tools to make a shelter, and anyway, it
had grown too dark to see much of anything but what was immediately around him.
The air was cool and dry, free of bugs, and he did not believe the dangers of
the jungle would trouble him here. If the plains past the mountains held their
own evils, he would have to risk it. He stripped a few nearby branches, threw
them to the ground to use as bedding, and then collapsed upon them. Within
minutes, blackness took him, and he slept undisturbed – even the inevitable
nightmares, it seemed, were biding their time – for more than twelve hours.

In the morning, he drank his fill from the cold stream and then forced
himself to drink even more, almost to the point of making himself ill. He had
no skins and no way of knowing how far it would be to the next source of water,
and so he took in as much as he could. Also, the water filling his belly helped
him forget that it had been hours since he'd last eaten.

Finished drinking, he stood and observed his surroundings, taking his first
good look at the land around him in full daylight. The mountains ran in a line
that was nearly straight, north to south, though the southern progression bent
slightly east as they stretched out into the distance. The path he had followed
down from the cliffs continued on through this tiny forest, heading eastward.
He debated whether to follow the path or stick close to the mountains.
Eventually he decided on the path; it seemed as good a choice as any.

Pehr made his way through the trees and came to the forest’s edge in only a
few minutes. Before him stretched what seemed an endless vista of gentle,
rolling plains, covered in waist-deep grasses and dotted occasionally with
strange and scraggly-looking trees that squatted low to the ground. High in the
air, birds of prey circled, hunting for movement in the grasses below.

Pehr forced himself to keep moving. He was still hungry, still filthy, still
without weapons or water skins, but the way of the hunter was to make a choice
and follow it. The way of the hunter was to
do
, and Pehr intended to
follow his training until it brought him either to salvation or to death.

The path was petering out, becoming choked and overgrown with the tall
grasses that now surrounded him, and soon it ended entirely. He stopped again
for a moment, looking out at the vast and unending stretch of grassland before
him. He bent and plucked a few strands of the grass, holding them between his
fingers. Then he threw them high into the air and watched to see which way the
wind took them. Northeast.

Surrendering to the whims of fate, Pehr turned in that direction and began
to walk.

* * *

It took four days to reach a state of utter desperation, and Pehr was in
some way amused by the idea that it was not the Lagos that would kill him, not
the beasts of the jungle or the murderous sea beyond the lagoon, but simple
thirst. On what he had come to think of as
his
side of the mountains –
the beach and plains of his home, the jungle of the Lagos – he would never have
had to worry about water. The land was crisscrossed with streams and rivers,
and to go two days without rain was a rare occasion indeed. Food would have
been the only real concern, and it would be many more days, perhaps weeks,
before that truly became a critical need.

It hadn't rained on this side of the mountains since he'd arrived, and Pehr
hadn't seen so much as a swampy patch of ground since he’d left the grove of
trees. He was certain there must be some kind of water supply in this land,
because grasses like this couldn't thrive for long without it, but he was not
in a position simply to wait and see if the rain might someday fall. Four days
without anything more than the dew he could sometimes lick off the grasses in
the early morning had dehydrated him rapidly. Pehr could feel that his last
reserves were nearly depleted and knew he would soon run out of strength.

Though he was in no immediate danger of starvation, being famished certainly
didn’t make this experience any more enjoyable. He’d tried eating the grass on
the first day, but it was bitter, and even the small amount that he'd consumed
as a test had made him nauseated. The stunted trees had leaves that were sharp
and hard and had proven no more edible than the grass. He’d managed to catch
and eat a few grasshoppers, though the taste of raw insect didn’t thrill him,
but this hadn’t even served to sate his hunger. All around him during the
nights, he could hear the rustling of countless small creatures, but without
bone or flaky stone from which to fashion a knife and no twine for snares, he
had thus far had no success in hunting them.

Thinking about this now, he gave a grunting, exasperated laugh and said,
“Some hunter. Give me a spear and a boar, and I’ll feast for a month, but Gods
forbid I manage to kill a mouse when I need it most.”

It didn’t matter; he would walk until he fell. He knew that if he turned now
and tried to make his way back to the grove of trees, he would die before he
reached it. He could only continue onward and hope to stumble upon a source of
water before his legs would no longer carry him.

They gave out for the first time eight hours later, and Pehr found himself
on one knee, arms stretched out before him. He watched as a grasshopper the
size of his index finger crawled along his arm and then leapt, buzzing into the
air to find itself a better perch. His mouth felt full of kampri fur, and his
skin burned even though the air was cool.

You’re not done yet
, Nani said to him from what sounded like
somewhere ahead, but when Pehr looked up there was nothing to be seen but grass
and trees.

“No,” he said anyway. “I guess not, Nani, but it hurts.”

My poor Pehr
, she said, her voice like a ghost on the wind, and
after that she did not speak again. Pehr struggled back to his feet and stood,
swaying a little, staring off into the distance. Before him was a large hill,
and the thought of climbing it was not something he relished. To the north and
south the plains were flat for some distance, and he thought about turning and
taking the easier route. Still, the hill would allow him the furthest view he'd
had in two days’ time. Perhaps he would be able to spot water.

Or perhaps more grass
, he thought to himself.
Perhaps another
stumpy tree. You are wasting your time
.

Then why walk at all
? Another part of him asked.
Why not lie
back down and wait to die
?

“Why not?” Pehr asked out loud, and then shook his head. “Because I'm the
son of a hunter, and I will not lie down and wait for death in shame.”

A hunter would use the view to his advantage. A hunter would continue to
search for water until death took him. A hunter would climb the hill. Pehr took
one step forward, and then another, and found himself able to move on at least
for a while longer.

When he at last reached the hill’s zenith and looked down, a great wave of
disgust and depression swept over him. More grass. More hills. Not even a
single tree to break the view, let alone the beautiful thread of silver that
would have meant a river or a brook. Was this to be his only vision, repeating
itself over and over until his body finally gave up and let him die? Was
he—

But there was a figure there in front of him, at the bottom of the hill. A
human figure – he was sure of it. A human female. She had been bent down at
first, which was why Pehr had missed her, but now she stood, tall and thin and
graceful, and Pehr nearly cried out in surprise.

The girl from his dream was standing below him, just a few dozen yards away,
and yet he did not think that this was a dream. If it was, it was certainly not
the
same
dream; he was
here
now, not in his village, and she
was not calling for him. Still, he could tell by the set of her shoulders and
the shape of her thighs, the cut of her hair and the way she stood, that this
was the girl. He knew her as if she were his kin.

Pehr stumbled his way down the hill on legs that felt wooden and clumsy.
Midway down he realized he was rambling out loud about this new discovery.
Still cognizant enough to realize that his strange muttering might frighten the
girl, he forced himself to stop. He was almost upon her now, but her back was
to him and she hadn't noticed his coming. It wasn’t until he was close enough
that she could hear his movement through the grass that she turned and to see
who approached.

The girl had pale skin and red hair that glowed golden in the sun. It was
cropped short and swept over to one side of her forehead, adorned with a few
simple feathers and a clasp fashioned from bone. She had a small nose, slightly
concave, which sat above thin, pink lips. By far the most dominating aspect of
her face was a pair of huge eyes, lined with black paint to mitigate the sun.
Her irises were a shade of brilliant, vibrant purple, a color Pehr associated
with jungle orchids. In the moment that he saw her face, he knew her. He’d
always known her, and not just from a single dream. He’d been seeing this girl
in his dreams all his life, but only now, faced with the reality of her, was
that truth revealed to him.

She was looking at him with those amazing purple eyes, her face set in an
expression that was equal parts curiosity and concern. Pehr opened his mouth to
summon forth any sort of words that might alleviate her trepidation, but could
only manage a cracking, dry sound, like branches rubbing together. The girl’s
eyes were widening not in fear, but in amazement. After a moment more, Pehr saw
something else there as well, something he understood all too well: a sort of
terrified recognition.

“I know you,” she said, her voice breathless with awe, and these were the
last words that Pehr heard for some time. It seemed to him at that moment that
the sun had grown terribly bright, and past it swam black spots, like an
enormous flock of birds. His head throbbed once, twice, and by the third time
Pehr was quite sure it would soon explode. His eyes rolled up and he pitched
forward, crashing face-first into the soft, high grass.