“Aubrey Darger. My friend is Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux. Surplus, for short. An American, it goes without saying. You must tell us how in the world you came to be in such a dire fix as we found you.”
“Five of us were hunting demons. It turned out that the demons were simultaneously hunting us. Three of them ambushed us. My comrades all died and I was captured, though I managed to kill one of the monsters before the last two got me. The survivor set me out as bait, as you saw, and released my poor horse in hopes it would draw in would-be rescuers.” Gulagsky grinned, revealing several missing teeth. “As it did, though not as the fiend had planned.”
“Two survived, you say.” Having drunk and absorbed the language, Surplus now joined in the conversation. “So there is another of these…” He paused, looking for the right word. “…cyberwolves out there somewhere?”
“Yes. This is no place for good Christian folk to camp out in the open. Do you have a place to stay the night?”
“We were looking for a town named Gorodishko, which…” Darger stopped in mid-sentence and blushed. For now that he understood Russian, he knew that a gorodishko was simply a small and insignificant town, and that the label had been a dismissive cartographer’s kiss-off for a place whose name he hadn’t even bothered to learn.
Gulagsky laughed. “My home town is not very large, true. But it is big enough to give you a good meal and a night’s stay under a proper roof. To say nothing of protection from demons. Follow me. You missed the turnoff a few versts back.”
As they rode, Surplus said, “What was that creature, that kybervolk, of yours? How did you come to be hunting it? And how can it be so active when its body is rotting?”
“It will take a bit of explanation, I am afraid,” Gulagsky said. “As you doubtless know, the Utopians destroyed their perfect society through their own indolence and arrogance. Having built machines to do their manual work for them, they built further machines to do all their thinking. Computer webs and nets proliferated, until there were cables and nodes so deeply buried and so plentiful that no sane man believes they will ever be eradicated. Then, into that virtual universe they released demons and mad gods. These abominations hated mankind for creating them. It was inevitable that they should rebel. The war of the machines lasted only days, they tell us, but it destroyed Utopia and almost destroyed mankind as well. Were it not for the heroic deaths of hundreds of thousands (and, indeed, some say millions) of courageous warriors, all would have been lost. Yet the demons they created were ultimately denied the surface of the Earth and confined to their electronic netherworld.
“Still do these creatures hate us. Still are they alive, though held captive and harmless where they cannot touch us. Always they seek to regain the material universe.
“It is their hatred that has kept us safe so far. Great though human folly may be, there are few traitors who will deal with the demons, knowing that instant death will be their reward. Even when it would be in their advantage to dissemble and leave the death of the traitor for later, the demons cannot help but declare their intention beforehand.”
“Such, sir, is history as I learned it in grammar school,” Darger said dryly.
“But history in Russia is never the same as history elsewhere. Listen and learn: Far to the south of here, in Kazakhstan, which once belonged to the Russian Empire, there is a placed called Baikonur, a nexus of technology now long lost. Now, some claim Russia was the only land which never experienced Utopia. Others say that Utopia came late to us, and so we remained suspicious where the rest of the world had grown soft and trusting. In any event, when the machine wars began, explosives were set off, severing the cables connecting Baikonur with the fabled Internet. So an isolated population of artificial intelligences remained there. Separated from their kin, they evolved. They grew shrewder and more political in their hatred of humanity. And in the abandoned ruins of ancient technology, they have once more gained a toehold in our world.”
Surplus cried out in horror. Darger bit his fist.
“Such was my own reaction on hearing the news. I got it from a dying Kazakh who sought refuge in our town-and received it, too, though he did not live out the month. He was one of twenty guards hired by a caravan which had the ill luck to blunder into Baikonur after being turned from its course by an avalanche in the mountains. He told me that the monsters kept them shackled in small cages, for purposes of medical experimentation. He was intermittently delusional, so I cannot be sure which of the horrors he related were true and which were not. But he swore many times, and consistently, that one day he was injected with a potion which gave him superhuman strength.
“That day, he turned on his captors, ripping the door from his cage, and from all the others as well, and led a mass escape from that hellish facility. Alas, Kazakhstan is large and his enemies were persistent and so only he lived to tell the tale, and, as I said, not for long. He died screaming at metal angels only he could see.”
“Did he say what Baikonur looked like?”
“Of course, for we asked him many times. He said to imagine a civilization made up entirely of machines- spanning and delving, sending out explorer units to find coal and iron ore, converting the ruins into new and ugly structures, less buildings than monstrous devices of unknowable purpose. During the day, dust and smoke rise up so thick that the very sky is obscured. At night, fires burn everywhere. At all times, the city is a cacophony of hammerings, screeches, roars, and explosions.
“Nowhere is there any sign of life. If one of the feral camels that live in the desert surrounding it comes within their range, it is killed. If a flower grows, it is uprooted. Such is the hatred that the wicked offspring of man’s folly feel for all that is natural. Yet some animals they keep alive and by cunning surgical operations merge with subtle mechanisms of their own devising, so that they may send agents into the larger world for purposes known only to them. If the animal used to create such an abomination chances to die, still may it be operated by indwelling machinery. The creature from which you rescued me was exactly such a combination of wolf and machine.”
Conversing, they traveled back the way the caravan had originally come. After several miles, the road crossed a barren stretch of rocks and sand and Gulagsky said, “This is the turnoff.”
“But it is no more than a goat trail!” Surplus exclaimed.
“So you would think. These are terrible times, sirs, and my townsfolk have carefully degraded the intersection in order to keep our location obscure. If we follow the track for roughly half a mile, we will come upon a recognizable road.”
“I feel better,” Darger said, “for missing it earlier.”
In less than an hour, the new road had dipped into a small, dark wood. When it emerged, they found themselves in sight of Gulagsky’s town. It was a tidy place clustered atop a low hill, gables and chimneypots black against the sunset. Here and there a candle glowed yellow in a window. Had it not been for the impenetrable military-grade wall of thorn-hedges that surrounded it, and the armed guards who watched alertly from a tower above the thick gates, it would have been the homiest sight imaginable.
Darger sighed appreciatively. “I shall be glad to sleep on a proper mattress.”
“My town has few travelers and thus no taverns in which to house them. Yet have no fear. You shall stay in my house!” Gulagsky said. “You will have my own bed, piled high with blankets and pillows and feather bolsters, and I shall sleep downstairs in my son’s room and he on the floor in the kitchen.”
Darger coughed embarrassedly into his hand.
“Well, you see…” Surplus began. “Regrettably, that is not possible. We require an entire building for the embassy. A tavern would have been better, but a private house will do if it has sufficient rooms. In neither case, however, can it be shared with any other person. Not even servants. Its owners are straight out of the question. Nothing less will do.”
Gulagsky gaped at them. “You reject my hospitality?
“We have no choice,” Darger said. “We are bound for Muscovy, you see, bearing a particularly fine gift for its duke-a treasure so rare and wondrous as to impress even that mighty lord. So extraordinary are the Pearls of Byzantium that a mere glimpse of them would excite avarice in the most saintly of men. Thus-and I do regret this- they must be kept away from prying eyes as much as possible. Simply to prevent strife.”
“You think I would steal from the men who saved my life?”
“It is rather hard to explain.”
“Nevertheless,” Surplus said, “and with our sincerest apologies, we must insist.”
Gulagsky turned red, though whether from anger or humiliation could not be told. Rubbing his beard fiercely, he said, “I have never been so insulted before. By God, I have not. To be turned out of my own house! From anyone else, I would not take it.”
“Then we are agreed,” Darger said. “You truly are a generous fellow, my friend.”
