The Caryatids

torso and he’d died almost instantly.

It was hard to hate the machines, with that neat way that they killed. They had no more moral judgment than bear traps.

His exoskeleton was still functional. The robot suit was trying to do something about its human occupant, putting jolts through his dead flesh as if trying to wake him up. It was searching for his departed soul like a lost Martian probe contacting a distant antenna.

Sonja heard faint repeated gunshots. Then the Badaulet appeared, empty-handed. He looked from her, to the dead Acquis cyborg, and back again. “Many more planes are coming.”

“Where’s the pack robot? Where’s your rifle?”

“I gave the rifle to the robot. That robot is a weapons platform. The rifle knows its targets now. It will kill those planes till it runs out of am­munition. More planes are coming, many more.” He flicked his fingers repeatedly. “I think they have hundreds.”

“And you’re still alive? You are lucky.”

Lucky began piling loose cobbles and boulders into a crude barri­cade. “The planes will see our body heat. We must hide behind rocks.”

“Our dead friend here brought treasure with him. He just gave his life for that.”

The Badaulet whipped out his long knife with instant fluid ease and slashed the backpack free from the dead man. Then, with a burst of wiry strength, he hauled the dead cyborg away from the rocky overhang.

Lucky propped the mechanized corpse into plain sight of the sky, half leaning it against a broken boulder.

The corpse was standing there, and it had a human silhouette. That was clever. Maybe luck was mostly a matter of experience.

Sonja hastily emptied the dead man’s pack, hoping to find something useful for a last-ditch defense. The raider was carrying circuitry. A glued-together, broken mess of boards and cards. All of it old technol­ogy, maybe twenty years old. All of it burned, warped, smoke-blackened. This trash had been torn loose from some larger network installation, precisely slotted electronic hardware hastily knocked loose from its ma­trix, maybe with the looter’s skeletal fists.

That was what he had come for, that was his mission: stealing garbage. There was nothing else in his backpack, not a ration, not a bandage, not a paper clip. He’d died for this worthless junk.

She threw the empty pack frame onto the barricade and helped the Badaulet pile rocks.

Sadly, not many rocks were handy. The nearest heap of useful rocks required a dash across open ground. Their crudely piled wall was the length and height of a coffin.

There was a sudden wet thwack as a passing plane shot the dead man. Sonja threw herself on her belly. The Badaulet sprawled beside her, behind the piled rubble.

Sonja told herself that she wanted to live. With his warm, breathing body beside her, the smell of his male flesh, she wanted life, she desired it. Ifshe wanted life enough to get clever about surviving, she would live through this.

There was hope in this situation. There had to be hope. The ma­chines were uncannily accurate, but they lacked even one single spark of human common sense. Their rocky barricade was so low and so hasty that there had to be parts of their bodies exposed to enemy fire. But the stupid planes were strictly programmed to make uniformly fatal shots to the head or the chest. So they would aim at the head or chest every time, and if their bullets hit a rock, they suffered no regret and they learned nothing. That was hope.

They were weak little toy planes made of straw. They had single-shot guns. They couldn’t hover in place. With each shot they would lose al­titude, and with their humble little motors they would struggle to regain that height.

The planes had limited amounts of fuel or ammunition. They were real-world machines, they were not magical flying demons. Machines could be outsmarted. They could be outwaited. There would have to be some algorithm, some tick-off switch, some error-correction loop that would tell them: Try again later. The prospects are cloudy.

“I could have been in Vienna,” she muttered.

“What?”

“I just wanted to tell you: My darling, I am so proud of you! It is an honor to be your wife. We are going to win this battle!”

“Yes!” shouted the Badaulet. “Heaven is on our side.” He suddenly rose, scrambled over their miserable heap of rocks, and hastily shifted the skeletal limbs of the dead man.

Attracted by this motion, the machines began firing at the corpse again. Every bullet struck true; she could hear them banging neatly into the dead man’s chest and helmet.

“I have his canteen,” said the Badaulet.

She squeezed water from the cloak and dribbled it into the container. “You are such a good wife to me,” said the Badaulet. “Can you cook? I have never seen you cook.”

“Do you like Chinese food?”

“It is my duty to like Chinese food.”

Bullets panged into the rock barricade. Once again, something was wrong with her cyborg ears. Her ears were not hurting properly from the violent noises of ricochet. Their volume controls were problematic.

Lying prone, the Badaulet squirmed his way inside the black water cloak. Humped over, lumpy, featureless, he scrambled over the barri­cade and vanished.

When he returned, after an eventful ten minutes of aircraft fire, he had an armful of rocks.

“These rocks are difficult to carry,” he announced, stacking them into place. “Also there are two bullet holes in this cloak and they are leaking cold water.”

“Are you wet now? That’s a shame.”

“A human enemy would ricochet his shots off the rock wall behind us, and kill us. These machines will not think of that tactic.”

“No. Machines never think.”

Lucky sucked a splinter wound on his left hand. “It may be the will of Heaven to kill us.”

“I know that. Do you think you might—carefully—turn your body without getting shot, and give me a kiss?”

This done, it occurred to her that to die while making love, delicious though that sounded, was impractical. Or, rather, it depended on the mode of death involved. Sniper fire from small aircraft was not one of the better modes.

“There is a thing that I can do,” she told him. “It likely won’t affect these aircraft that are shooting at us. But it will avenge us, if they have any human controllers nearby.”

“What is that fine vengeance, my bride?”

“If I do this thing, anyone near us will die. Men, women, children. Alsothe larger animals with longer life spans: the horses, the cattle. They will die in a year and a half. From a great many apparent causes. Cancer, mostly.”

“That is your weapon?”

“I thought I might have to use it. If you didn’t simply shoot them dead. It is my best weapon.”

“Where is this weapon? Give it to me.”

“It is in orbit.” She paused. “I mean to say, it is in Heaven, so you can’t have it.”

“I know what a satellite is, woman,” he told her patiently. “A sharp­eyed man in the desert can see many satellites. Give me the trigger to your satellite weapon, and I will call down the fire. Then you can flee, and you might live.”

“The trigger is inside me,” she told him. “I swallowed it.”

“You swallowed your weapon of vengeance?”

More bullets panged into the rock, for a fresh squadron of airplanes had appeared. Apparently these new planes had failed to share their data with the earlier assailants, for the dead cyborg in his skeleton was riddled with fresh bullets.

“It would be wrong to deploy a massive weapon such as you carry,” he said thoughtfully, “for it would kill those gallant men fighting these air­craft along with us. I saw their truck through the scope of my rifle. I think they