Wil McCarthy - To Crush the Moon

“This is the King of Barnard,” Bruno says, amazed at the weight of his sin now that it confronts him face-to-face. Poor Lune, to suffer so greatly for his mistakes! “Parts of him, anyway.”

He’d known it was a bad idea even at the time, but he was very curious to see what would happen. And he’d missed his Poet Prince, yes, the last link to his old life. He’d longed to speak with that boy again, if only for an hour, a minute, a word . Memories can be edited! There was some etiological and mnemonic and engrammatic surgery involved, far more elegant than a simple cut and meld. The approach was sound and carefully—if hastily—reasoned.

But Bruno was no surgeon, and the road to hell is paved with careful plans. The effort had been furtive because it would find no support if revealed. He had no friends or relations left; he worked alone, in secret, as far from the ashes of civilization as Boat Gods ’ fuel supply could safely carry him. Which wasn’t far. And the result had been more horrific than even a pessimist would predict; he’d shut the monster down barely five minutes into the experiment.

“You have proved yourself unworthy of even my… disdain,” it had told him, with halting but vehement passion. “Beware, for I’m incapable of fear.” It had said other things, too, of a vile and personal nature. And the worst of it was that it sounded exactly like Bascal. It moved exactly like Hugo. It was the perfect synthesis of the two, and the conversation had begun well enough, with prancing bows and twirls and snippets of spontaneous verse. “Ah, to exist! To have a… form to which the soul might cling! A clever… thing, and sorely missed.”

But that exuberance was not to last, for the creature had made demands. Lightly at first, and then angrily, and then with threats of force. Had it realized its peril it might have kept up the illusion awhile longer, and so escaped into the world, into the ruined solar system, into the universe at large. But the experiment was structured so that keeping his creation alive required a conscious act of will on Bruno’s part. In his first stab of real fear, that concentration had wavered and the delicate quantum waveforms had collapsed. The monster had died. Bruno had buried it in secret, and never breathed a word about it to any living person. Iridium Days, indeed.

In the wake of this final failure, he’d powered up his grappleship—one of the last of its kind—and sent it puttering into the void without him. Marooning himself, yes. Perchance to starve, though he’d ultimately failed at that as well.

“I turned you off,” he says now. “I buried you in space. I would have fed you into the fax if it had been working. I should have fed you into the sun.”

On the throne, the ancient robot considers these words, and slowly nods. “Or vice versa. It’s… good to see you, Father. I had no idea you were still alive. When first my resurrection was upon me, I… thought myself awakened by providence. I felt it: the finger of God upon me, commanding life. It commanded nothing else, but the… ship had awakened as well. From nowhere had appeared a sparkle of stored energy—enough to carry me down, to this… world I found myself circling. I survived the crash, and if the fax machine was dead for you, Father, then the… finger of God must have touched it as well. For I stepped into it once, and out of it twice. And from that moment, my… path has been clear. To reestablish a monarchy over all that exists.”

The story makes no sense—the “Glimmer King” is clearly deranged—but Bruno can picture this much: one robot overpowering its faxed twin, strapping it down, tinkering with its circuitry until resistance ceases and obedience is absolute. And then feeding this perfect soldier back into the fax machine to create an army. Capturing first a village, then a fortress, a city, a world. Spreading outward in relentless waves, to fill the universe with some strange echo of Bascal’s would-be paradise.

Ah, God, Bascal did have vision. Would so many have followed him otherwise? To their ruin and his? He’d understood the human heart as well as his mother, though he’d used the knowledge very differently. Very differently.

“Stop all this,” Bruno says to the thing in the chair. “Please. You’re defective; your very construction prevents you from grasping the horrors you’ve spawned, the horror you are . The responsibility is mine. You have no idea what I’ve done here, through you. But take my word: the society you dream of cannot be built on a foundation of murder. It must be freely chosen, and chosen anew with every morning. It must be the sum total dream of all who dwell within it.”

“Ah,” says the Glimmer King, “but the mind of meat is wounded by its own imperfections. It is you who cannot conceive the totality of my vision. I knew it the… moment I awoke: that in the quantum-crystalline purity of my thoughts I was blessed, and more than blessed. Do not blame yourself, Bruno, for it was… God’s own hand that crafted me. You were merely the instrument.”

“What the hell is going on?” demands Radmer. “Is this the Glimmer King? This? Bascal’s recording in a robot body? Are you kidding me ?”

And finally, the robot’s head swivels toward Radmer. There’s a sound, a kind of electronic gasp or grunt or snigger, and then Bascal’s voice again: “Conrad Mursk? Do I… dream? Is that you I see before me, fighting at my own father’s… side, whom once you fought against?”

“Aye,” says Radmer, and spits on the inside of his helmet dome. “Though I’m called Radmer now, and have sworn to kill you on sight.”

“Radmer!” says the Glimmer King. “Ah! How many… times we’ve heard that name, Hugo and I! From books, from songs, from the lips of tortured prisoners! I… should have known it was you, always sticking your nose in the business of others. How little surprised I am to find you here! I knew someday we would… face each other again, and you would be called to account for your wrongs against me. And yet, now that the… moment is here I can only recall that you twice saved my life.” He spreads his arms. “Give us a… kiss, me boyo, and join us in remaking this world.”

“If you owe me anything, then stop this war,” Radmer says coldly. He, too, seems little surprised now that the shock has worn off. It makes sense; Bascal’s name had been mentioned more than once in connection with the Glimmer King, by the robot soldiers themselves! The Senatoria Plurum in Nubia had even written it into their formal record, which Radmer claimed to have carried away with his own hands. But surely the real Bascal had ended his days swinging from a Barnardean lamppost, a lynch mob’s noose slowly throttling the life from his damnably hard-to-kill body. And even if he hadn’t, could he have come so far? Marshaled the resources of his dying colony to send his only self back here? Perhaps, yes. But he didn’t.

“Ah,” says the Glimmer King, sounding regretful. “I could wish for you to… disappoint me, but alas your character holds firm.” He rises from his throne, steps down from the dais, and walks toward Bruno and Radmer.

“Halt,” say Bordi and Zuq together, raising their blitterstaves to block the way.

But suddenly the battle is on again; robot soldiers are swarming the two, and though they fight hard to protect their charges, there are only two of them against an infinite supply of attackers. They’re driven back, and the Glimmer King continues to advance.

“Halt,” Radmer warns him in the same tone, raising his own staff.

But the Glimmer King’s mind, however defective, is faster than meat. In his impervium hand is a miniature blitterstick, of the sort sometimes carried by Olders in this world. Of the sort Radmer himself had carried, until the battle of Shanru afforded him a stouter weapon. With it Bascal easily blocks Radmer’s feint, and where the two sticks touch there’s immediate trouble; they attack each other as easily as they attack mere impervium. There are sizzles and pops and flashes of light, and both weapons fall to dust.