Wil McCarthy - To Crush the Moon

As it turns out, the fax is located a kilometer and a half deeper into the dune field, where the free flow of sand is restricted by the presence of wellstone walls, running deep. And even to Radmer himself, it really does begin to seem that Bruno is a kind of sorcerer, for though he’s complained about the crude sketchplate in his hands—it isn’t working properly, it isn’t suitable, its library has been corrupted—he’s able to use it, somehow, to communicate with the dead wellstone all around him. Conrad Mursk had been an expert programmer in his day, and his particular specialty was in speaking to buildings, or pieces of buildings. But Conrad had merely been determined and lucky, which was not at all the same thing as being brilliant.

Now, Bruno walks out ahead of Radmer and Natan, and the dead wellstone in his wake turns to silver and gold, to impervium and marble and mother-of-pearl. There’s no real rhyme or reason to it, no master plan, no memory of how the city once looked. The King of Sol is just fooling around, putting the stuff through its paces, like a musician picking up a long-forgotten instrument. In truth the effect is kind of gaudy, kind of ugly. But it makes a world of difference in the appearance of the desert: no longer a ruin, no longer a dead city filled with sand, but a sleeping one, carefully preserved for later use.

The first problem comes when the fax machine turns out to be buried deep in the sand. When the men arrive at the designated spot, there isn’t even a building. There are wall fragments and even a bit of intact rooftop nearby, but the magic spot itself is just a basin of sand, featureless and apparently empty.

“Blast,” Bruno says, surveying the scene unhappily. But he isn’t daunted for long; within another minute he’s calling out instructions to the surrounding wellstone, forging connections between the intact pieces of building and the intact pieces of street far below. Soon the fragments are coming alive with circuit traces, white and gold and silver on black, and he’s murmuring to them, gesturing, and finally raising his beseeching arms into the air, more like a prophet or a druid than any conventional sort of scientist.

And the sand responds.

At first there’s just a hissing sound, and then a slight rumble underfoot, barely noticeable. Then Conrad’s hairs suddenly stand on end, his pistol and blitterstick rattle in their holsters, and there is a tangible jerk in the ground beneath his feet. Against the sides of the wellstone ruins, the sand begins flowing like water. Out, away, unburying this place. And in another few seconds these trickles are entraining more sand around them, becoming rivulets, streams, rapids. Radmer exchanges a glance with Natan, and the two of them step back, and back, and back some more. If Bruno needs protection in this place, it’s not a sort that they can provide. Soon, the dust is flying in geysers and there’s an excavation happening in real time, right before their eyes. The hole is rectangular, at least to the extent that the collapsing sand permits, and it’s three meters deep, then five, then ten. Radmer and Natan retreat farther. Then the hole widens, and they have to retreat some more. Within minutes, the top of a building is exposed. Then the whole top story, with the sand flowing away in rivers, crawling to higher ground and spilling down out of sight, into hollows somewhere, burying mice and lizards and desert peas.

Then, all at once, the sound and the movement stop. The sand neither rises nor falls. It doesn’t trickle back into the hole, and Radmer’s hair does not lie flat against his scalp. There is some sorcery at work here, still.

“It’s down there,” Bruno says, pointing quite unnecessarily into the pit. As if they could miss what happened there. As if they could be looking at anything else. The building fades from mirror-black to bronze, and Bruno says to it, in a somewhat louder voice, “Glass ceiling. Glass windows. Door.”

A double line of round portholes appears in the bronze, one of them surrounded by a rectangular seam, which parts from the material around it and swings inward on imaginary hinges. Bruno climbs down into the hole on sure, steady feet, as though he does this all the time. He follows the carpet of rigid sand right into the doorway itself, pausing at the threshold to look over his shoulder at Natan and Radmer. “Are you coming?” It’s very nearly a command.

Natan is looking frankly scared by all this, and Radmer can hardly blame him. He hasn’t seen a sight like this in thousands of years, or maybe ever. But he murmurs, “It’s all right. We’re in good hands.”

And Natan replies, “ I’d fling myself into the great beyond for this man, too, in a sphere of brass or not. Suddenly I feel sorry for the Glimmer King. Isn’t that a funny thing?”

“Aye,” Radmer can only agree. And with that, they follow the ancient scarecrow of a man inside the ancient building.

The interior is surprisingly well lit. It’s an office of some sort, and the surfaces are immaculate—walls and floors and countertops, tables, the arms and seats and backs of wellstone chairs, supported by spindly structures that look, even to Conrad’s eye, as though they should have collapsed at the first puff of wind. The fax machine—a sight Radmer hasn’t seen since the Shattering, or nearly, stands against a far wall. Bruno walks right up to it as though he owns the place.

“Buffer status.”

And then, when that doesn’t work, “Royal Override. Reset all functions to factory nominal. Report the status of mass buffers. Report the status of memory buffers. Perform a full diagnostic, and stand by.”

The foggy, fractal surface of the print plate flickers for a moment, and then the walls around it come alive with diagrams, with scrolling lists of words and numbers, with a holographic table of the elements, annotated with a bar graph showing how much of each element is present in the machine at this particular time. It isn’t much.

“Fax,” Bruno says to it, “how are you feeling?”

“Very well, Your Majesty. It’s good to be functional again, for the first time in nineteen years.”

“Nineteen? Not two thousand?”

“I’m not sure why I said that, Sire. A glitch, I’m sure. Did I wake briefly, under the soil? Did some ray of invisible warmth find me for a moment? Long enough to reset my counters? If so, I’m honored to be reactivated now for more meaningful service, especially by one so eminent. Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Yes. Much.” Bruno runs his admiring fingers over the surface of the print plate, looking wistful and perhaps a bit sad. “I see from your diagnostic you have two human beings in your buffer. Optimized humans, bearing the unmistakable imprint of Queendom-era pattern filtration. I don’t recognize the names, but then again I wouldn’t expect to. There used to be so many people.”

“Shall I reinstantiate these two for you?” the fax machine asks, with no particular emotional emphasis. It doesn’t care one way or the other; it will simply obey the man it perceives as its king.

But Bruno shakes his head. “No, let them sleep. It’s more humane. But preserve them in your memory, fax machine. Let no misfortune befall them, if it’s within your power to prevent it. You are about to see some heavy use, and I’d prefer those patterns not be erased in the process. Is your library intact?”

“Alas, Sire, it is sorely degraded.”

“Have you any battle armor?”

“No.”

“Hmm. Have you ordinary space suits?”

“No, Sire. But I do have some police uniforms.”

“Ah. Well, that’s a starting point. I’m going to feed you material samples and provide some detailed specifications. We’re going to improvise.”