Ian McDonald - Desolation Road

“Prepare all divisions and sections to move out.”

“But ma’am, the defences, the preparations for the final battle.”

She looked long and dangerous at Sub-major Jonathon Bi. He talked far too much. He needed to learn the value of silence.

“The final battle will just have to be fought somewhere else.”

Since Johnny Stalin replaced all his immediate staff with robots, the efficiency ratings had trebled. Such was the brilliance of his scheme that he spent many a long afternoon in his private massage studio under the fingers of Tai Manzanera; meditating upon the brilliance of his scheme. As robots never tired, never slept, never consumed or excreted, they never needed paying. The wages of their tireless labours went to support their fleshly originals desporting themselves on permanent vacation at the polar ski resorts, the island paradises of the Tysus Sea, or in the vice dungeons of Belladonna and Kershaw’s Rubber Alley. As long as the substitutions went undiscovered, the scheme would continue to be all things to all men.

“Brilliant,” Johnny Stalin told himself, gazing out of his 526th floor wall-window at the deformed landscapes around Kershaw. He remembered the dread that poisoned land had provoked in an eight-and-three-quarteryear-old boy arriving at the great cube. Now he loved the sludge pools and oil gushers. He had taken his many beloveds to promenade by Sepia Bay and whispered love’s sweet syllables through his respirator into the receptive ears. Profit, Empire, Industry. What was a dead lake, a few poisoned rivers, a few slagged hillsides? Priorities, that was what it was about. Priorities and Progress.

Knock on the door, “Enter,” bow, and Carter Housemann; rather, Carter Housemann’s robot double, was beside him.

“Postcards from China Mountain, St. Maud Station and New Brazil Jungleworld, the usual thanks and praises.” The last three replacees seemed content. And as long as the credit in their accounts continued to amass month by month they would continue to be content. “Also, the latest reports from the Desolation Road project.”

Johnny Stalin’s genial humour fled him.

“Tell me the worst.” He rolled onto his back for Tai Manzanera to pummel his stomach. Still firm, thank God. Can’t afford the least sign of weakness in upper management.

“Good news and bad news, sir. Production levels are back to normal and resistance to industrial-feudal principles has been largely eradicated. Still some black-marketeering hitting the Company commissaries and a lack of support among the citizenry of Desolation Road, but the Concordat Organization has been effectively dispersed in the wake of the destruction of its managerial echelons.”

“You can lay off the Company-speak with me. If that’s the good news, what’s the bad?” Transplant surgery kept the ulcers tolerable but three replacement stomachs and small intestines in as many years was more than the worth of the Desolation Road project.

“We have information that Rael Mandella Jr. plans to return to Desolation Road to avenge his grandfather’s death. Also, we know that he has been in contact with the Whole Earth Army Tactical Group in South Chryse.”

“Child of grace. There, on the thighs, love. That family. Bad about the old man though. I knew him well when I was a kid. Shouldn’t have done that.”

“There was a certain revanchist element at work under the lead of the security director. However, there is an expression about omelettes and eggs, sir. I also have information that Taasmin Mandella is organizing a protest march to coincide with your visit to the works next month. I have heard that children all over the world have been receiving visions from the Blessed Lady herself: there have been two cases reported here in Kershaw, both children stole rides on transport dirigibles.”

“Damnation. Recommendation?”

“I would advise against you visiting the Desolation Road project at the planned time.”

“I agree. Unfortunately, there are three board members accompanying me to make sure that I’ve done a good job in quelling dissent, and their diaries are very full.”

At times the robot proxies were so human it unnerved Johnny Stalin. The double’s shift of weight onto one leg as an indication that it wished to suggest something reminded him so greatly of Carter Housemann it made him shudder.

“Might I inquire, as a related point, what is sir’s favourite pursuit?”

For an instant Johnny Stalin feared mass program failure in all his robot doubles.

“Tilapia fishing on the Caluma River up in the Sinn Highlands. Why ask?” “Well, maybe sir would like to spend more time at such pleasurable pursuits and less on the dreary mundanities of the Desolation Road project.”

So this was how it happened. He had been expecting this for a long time, that one day his robots would ask him if he would like to take a protracted holiday and slip a machine double into his shoes and behind his desk.

“How long have you been working on the proxy?” He lay back and looked at the ceiling. Strange that it was not as fearful as he had anticipated. It wasn’t like dying in the least.

“The double has been ready for almost eighteen months.”

“But up until now if you lacked the opportunity.”

“Precisely, sir.”

In his mind’s eye Johnny Stalin watched fly lines plopping into the crashing dashing Caluma River. It was an attractive idea, shiny slippery and bright as a Caluma tilapia.

“I suppose with the amount of evidence against me I have no other option.”

The robot gave a fair impression of being scandalized.

“By no means, sir! This is in your own best interest.”

The leaves would be turning brown and amber up by Caluma Falls. There would be snow on the highlands and cold nights and warm fires in the Caluma lodge.

“Well, Tai darling, I’m afraid you’re out of a job. Robots don’t have much call for masseuses.” He looked Tai Manzanera up and down. She was a good girl really. “I can’t really leave you here either, not after this conversation. How’d you like to come with me? The fishing’s great up in the Sinn this time of year.”

On learning of her father’s death, Taasmin Mandella imposed a vow of silence upon herself. Her final communication before her lips were sealed under a cumbersome metal mask fashioned for her by the Poor Children was that she would speak again only when justice was visited upon those criminals who had perpetrated these acts. Justice, she said, not vengeance.

That same night she set off alone along the bluffs, away from the furnaceous hell-mouth glow of Steeltown, following her feet down the path of mortifiction she had walked those years before. She found again the little cave with its water drip. There were mummified beans and carrots on the floor. They made her smile behind her mask. She stood at the mouth of the cave and looked out at the Great Desert all scabbed and leprous under the hand of industrial man. She threw back her head and released all her power in a psalm of energy.

Asleep in a thousand beds in a thousand homes a thousand children dreamed the same dream. They dreamed of ugly metal insects descending upon a desert plain and building a nest for themselves of towering chimneys and belching smoke and ringing metal. Pulpy white worker drones served the insects with pieces of red earth they had torn from the skin of the desert. Then a hole opened in the sky and out of the hole came St. Catherine of Tharsis dressed in a multicoloured ballet leotard. She held up her arms to show the oil oozing from her wounds and said, “Save my people, the people of Desolation Road.” Then the steel insects, who had been building an unsteady pyramid out of their interlocked metal bodies, reached the Blessed Lady with their manipulators and pulled her, shrieking and gasping, into the metal mill of their jaws.