And so he took about wandering the globe, in search of answers, in search of men who might understand him and help him return to the only home he had ever known—its location in time and space now lost to him. The years ground by and humankind fell into a terrible depression—as a direct result of the Final War—and whoever had achieved victory must have soon realized it was indeed Pyrrhic. The planet’s atmosphere was so drastically altered that climate and weather went berserk. Centuries of upheaval plagued the surface of the globe, changing its contours, wiping out whole cultures. Carbon-dioxide levels increased, the poles began melting, the axis shifted slightly, diseases ravaged the remnants of humanity, radiation sterilized whole continents, mutations abounded, and human culture fell into a dark, downward spiral, into a night of centuries-long darkness, from which it was only now emerging.
But Kartaphilos persevered. So great had been the technology which spawned him that he survived, powered by seemingly unbounded energy, repairing his body indefinitely, slowly relearning his past, searching for the Citadel. He assumed the mask of a nomad and moved through the cultural streams and the reemerging nations of what was left of the World. He walked in the shrouds of myth, pausing only to tell an interested traveler his story, or to pick up a piece of the past which might key the retrieval of a lost memory. His quest became one of almost religious stature, and only when the Guardian’s homing beacon struck him did the final pieces of the millennia-old mystery begin to fall into place.
Only then did Kartaphilos remember who he was.
As he finished his tale, silence followed, as the facts of his story impacted upon the group. It was inconceivable to think that Kartaphilos was as old as he claimed, that he had been present during the end of the First Age and had witnessed the rise of the World so familiar to the group.
They looked at him in awe, in disbelief, and perhaps a certain amount of fear. It was Varian who spoke first.
“What do you mean that now you know who you are?”
Kartaphilos shook his head. “You will not believe me if I tell you. . . .”
“Try us,” said Stoor, reloading his pipe.
Kartaphilos exhaled slowly. “Very well, we have nothing to do now but wait. Do any of you have any true conception of how great the builders of this place were? Would you understand? I don’t know, but I shall tell you in any event. It was built in a time when the differences between men and machines were becoming very slight. It was a good thing and a bad thing, as you might well surmise.”
“What do you mean?” asked Tessa.
“Listen. There was a . . . creature, a construction, if you will, of the First Age called a cyborg—a cybernetic organism. It was part machine, part man. Do you understand now?”
“How could there be such a thing?” cried Stoor.
“How could there be a Guardian?” said Kartaphilos. “How could there be the Slaglands? How can anything be? You cannot ask such questions in the face of fact. They simply are. That is the only answer I can give you.”
“I don’t understand,” said Varian, although something stirred in his soul, a fear that he did indeed understand.
“Something that is part machine and part man . . .” said Kartaphilos. “Don’t you see what I am telling you? I am that thing!”
Chapter Twelve
Kartaphilos’ admission explained the Guardian’s inability to control him, and it provided the group with an ally which knew the enemy. After the initial shock had passed, everyone realized this and hope rekindled in their hearts. The old man in the monk’s robe further explained that as his machine body repaired itself, and his human brain struggled back to self-awareness, he fought to break through the barrier of amnesia which kept him from knowing who and what he was. It was not discovered until he actually returned to the Citadel that he was indeed a cyborg. Millennia ago, he recalled waking up from the aircrash, discovering his plasteel body, his blinking circuitry, and his great strength; the natural assumption was that he was a machine, a robot. There was an awareness, yes, a mind, a sense of self, but there was no way of knowing that it lay centered in a living, organic brain. A brain locked within an alloy skull, fed by pyroxene tubing and myoelectric sensors. For it was known that brain cells, while they do not replicate or repair themselves, do not age. Keep the brain supplied with oxygen, and it will live indefinitely. The triumph of the cyborg. And the tragedy.
As the memory of Kartaphilos returned, he recalled his real function in the world: he was a fighting machine. As he had originally told the group, he was part of a special unit of warriors, the Combat Series VI. As a cyborg of that designation, he was equipped with immense physical strength, alarming quickness, a remarkable keenness of the senses, and a weapons system of intriguing economy and lethality. In the back of his throat lay the nozzle of a heat weapon called the White Molecular Disruptor. Named after its inventor, T. White, the Disruptor was activated by the cyborg opening his mouth until the lower mandible locked into firing position, whereupon a thought command carried by myoelectric circuitry activated the weapon, discharging a tight beam of energy with pinpoint accuracy. Although the system was of limited range, its kill quotient was extremely high and there were few materials which could withstand the full force of the beam without disintegrating.
“Guardian is obviously
