Terry Brooks - Antrax

It took them less than an hour to complete their work, speeding about like mice in a cage, sunlight gleaming off their metal shells, the sounds of clicking and whirring and buzzing barely audible in the stillness surrounding them. When they were finished, they wheeled into lines and disappeared down rampways that opened to admit them in the same fashion as the chutes that had swallowed the Mwellrets. In seconds, they were gone.

Ahren looked at Ryer Ord Star. A surge of relief swept through him. He felt giddy. “Sweepers,” he said, gesturing toward the tiny machines, the word popping into his mind all at once, causing him to smile in spite of himself.

She did not smile back. Instead, she pointed to something just behind him. His heart lurched as he followed her gaze and found one of the newly named sweepers parked not three feet away.

The sweeper wasn’t doing anything. It was just sitting, a squat, cylindrical body on a set of multiple rollers. Its round head might have been the top half of a metal ball resting on a set of heavy springs. Thin, short probes stuck out from the head in various places and directions, and a pair of fat knobs stuck out of its body on opposite sides, each about the size of a fist.

Ahren had no idea how it had gotten so close without them hearing it. Nor did he care. What mattered was what it was doing there. It didn’t appear to have any weapons, but he was not about to discount the possibility.

Neither Ryer Ord Star nor he said anything for a moment. They stared at the sweeper and waited for it to do something. The sweeper, to the extent that it was capable of doing so, stared back.

Then all of a sudden a hatch on its head popped open and a beam of light shot out, freezing an image in the air about two feet away from them. The image wasn’t very big, but it was quite clear. It was of Walker.

Ryer Ord Star gasped, and Ahren gripped her arms to steady her as she sagged into him.

The image was gone an instant later. A second image appeared in its wake, this one showing the Druid running swiftly through a series of tunnels lit by odd lamps with no flame, sliding from one patch of light to the next, his face tense and worn. Every so often he paused to look over his shoulder or peer ahead into the gloom, listening and searching. His black robes were torn and soiled, and his dark face was streaked with sweat and dirt and perhaps blood. He was being hunted, and the strain of running and hiding was beginning to tell on him.

The image disappeared. Ryer sobbed softly, as if the impact of the images had collapsed whatever wall of strength remained to her and all that was left was despair.

Ahren clutched at her. “Stop it!” he hissed angrily. “We don’t know if that is really happening! We don’t have any idea what this is about!”

Another image appeared, then another and another, all of creepers moving through the same tunnels, hunting something. Claws and blades flashed brightly when they passed through light. Some of them were huge. Some were rocking in an eager, anticipatory fashion. All had parts awkwardly grafted onto them, giving them a barbaric, half-finished look.

The images disappeared. Ahren decided he’d had enough. “What do you want!” he snapped at the sweeper, not giving a moment’s consideration to whether it could understand him.

Apparently it could. Another image appeared, the Elf and the seer following the little sweeper through the same series of tunnels, searching the gloom. A second image followed, Walker, looking over his shoulder, stopping, lifting his arm as if in recognition, beckoning. Then all of them were joined in a third image, relief painted on their faces, hands reaching out in greeting, Ryer Ord Star melting into Walker’s strong embrace.

The seer was almost hysterical. “It wants us to follow!” she cried. “It wants to take us to Walker. Ahren, we have to go! You saw him! He needs us!” She was shaking him, any attempt at calm forgotten.

Nowhere near as convinced as she was, Ahren freed himself roughly. “Don’t be so quick, Ryer.” He used her first name to make her listen, and it worked. She went still, eyes fastened on him. “We don’t know if any of this is true. We don’t know if these images are real. What if this is a trick? Where did this sweeper come from anyway?”

“It isn’t a trick, it’s real; I can feel it. That really is Walker, and he’s down in those tunnels, and he needs our help!”

Ahren was wondering what sort of help they would be able to provide to the Druid. He was wondering how following the sweeper down into the tunnels—supposing they could do that—would result in the happy ending they had been shown. If Walker, with all his magic, couldn’t get free of the creepers, what difference would their coming after him make?

He looked at the little sweeper. “How did you find us?”

A fresh image appeared. The sweeper was cleaning down at the edges of the maze, just below their hiding place. It was viewing everything through some sort of lens. Something distracted it, and it moved out of the maze and into the ruins, climbing slowly through the rubble until it was just behind them.

The image faded. “It must have heard us,” the seer whispered, giving Ahren a quick, hopeful look.

He didn’t see how. They had been careful not to make any noise at all. Maybe it had sensed their presence. But why hadn’t the other sweepers sensed them, as well?

“I don’t like it,” he said.

“Ahren!” she pleaded, her voice wrenching and sad.

He gave an exasperated sigh, feeling trapped by her need and expectations. She was so desperate to get to Walker, to do something to help him, that she was abandoning any attempt to exercise caution or good sense. On the other hand, he was so desperate to get away from this place, that he was refusing to give the sweeper’s credibility any consideration at all.

“Why are you trying to help us?” he asked the little machine. “What difference does it make to you what we do?”

The sweeper must have expected the question; an image immediately appeared in the same place as the others. It showed the sweeper performing its tasks in the maze and the tunnels belowground. A second set of images followed, these showing the sweeper being kicked and pummeled and knocked about in almost every conceivable way by something big and dark and fearsome that was always cloaked in shadow or just out of sight. Time and again, the sweeper was picked up and flung against a wall. Over and over, it was knocked on its side and had to be righted by other sweepers coming to its aid. There seemed to be no reason for the attacks. They appeared random and purposeless, the result of misdirected or pointless anger and frustration. Dented and cracked, the little sweeper would have to be repaired by its fellows before returning to its duties.

The images disappeared. The sweeper went still once more. Ahren tried to reconcile his doubts. An abused sweeper? Kicked around so thoroughly and for so long that it would do anything to put a stop to it? That meant, of course, that the sweeper was capable of feeling emotion and reacting to treatment that troubled it. As a rule, machines didn’t feel anything, not even creepers. They were machines, which by definition meant they weren’t human.

But these machines might well be as old as the city and whatever lived in it. It was not impossible to imagine that before the Great Wars destroyed the old civilization, humans had developed machines that could think and feel.

“It’s asking for our help,” Ryer Ord Star pointed out, breaking the silence. She brushed back her long silver hair in frustration. “In return, it will help us find Walker. Don’t you understand?”

Not entirely, Ahren thought. “What sort of help does it expect us to give it?”