Changeling

Chapter 26. A Challenge Met

SilverSide watched the city as she’d watched it every night since SmallFace was a crescent horn. The moon was entirely gone now, waiting for the OldMother to birth it once more in its endless cycle. Still the GodBeing ignored her. But SilverSide came every night and renewed her challenge.

The GodBeing would come to her. It must.

At least some of what it said had been true. The city had changed; it no longer pursued the kin when they attacked. Only a few nights past, LifeCrier had led the pack down to kill. Though the Hunters had come to protect the worker WalkingStones, they had not followed the pack when the kin retreated.

Then the youngling SlowPaw had been caught straggling as usual, and one of the Hunters had shot him. SilverSide had been certain that SlowPaw was dead. But the Hunters came after the body, and after SilverSide disabled them, she found that they had only made SlowPaw sleep. She had been certain that the Hunters would follow her for revenge and had been ready to lead them away from PackHome again.

But the rest of the Hunters remained in the city. The GodBeing-whose name was Derec, as she knew from listening to the city’s VoidTongue-had ordered it so.

What kind of creature would stay hidden in its cave for so long? How could it hunt there, when all the game had been driven elsewhere? The GodBeing was flesh like the kin; it must eat.

Which meant that it would come out.

Most strangely of all, SilverSide could feel the urge in her to meet this GodBeing again. The remembrance of it stirred odd thoughts in her mind. She felt a pull, a yearning.

It has knowledge. It is intelligent. It is a toolmaker far superior to any of the kin. I have heard the city say that the one WalkingStone was built by this Derec.

There were moments when she did not want to fight it at all. But the challenge was demanded by the OldMother’s commands inside her. Above all else, she could let no harm come to the kin, and the city harmed kin simply by its existence. She must control the city as she controlled the kin, and the GodBeing prevented that.

That meant it must be challenged. If it refused her that privilege, it must die.

The edge of the city was well defined, like the boundaries of a cooled lava flow. Derec stepped from a hard level walkway and with the next step, he was on grass. Outside.

He suddenly, foolishly, felt unprotected.

That ’ s silly, he told himself. Mandelbrot ’ s alongside you, and Alpha ’ s monitoring the whole thing through Witness robots. There are a half-dozen Hunters waiting back in the city; they ’ II get to you in seconds if anything happens. You ’ re as safe as you can be. Besides, you ’ re the one who insisted that the Three Laws protected you from the rogue.

He suddenly didn’t feel very confident at all.

A low rumbling came from his right. Derec turned.

The rogue was there.

It crouched fifty meters up slope where a stand of trees had been cleared by workers from the city. Perched atop one of the fallen logs and in wolf shape, the rogue looked bigger than Derec had remembered. Its claws were displayed, its mouth slightly open to reveal the metal teeth set there. It reared up on its back legs as Derec turned to it, standing perhaps a half-meter taller than Derec himself. Mandelbrot had come alongside Derec without prompting, the implicit threat in the rogue’s pose forcing the robot to stay close enough to intervene.

It ’ s a robot. It follows the Laws. Derec took a deep breath, motioning Mandelbrot back. “I’ve come to talk with you,” he said to the rogue.

It growled, then spat out in Standard: “I have challenged you already. I did not come to talk.”

“At least tell me your name.”

“I am called SilverSide,” the rogue answered, and Derec could have sworn there was a hint of bravado in its voice, far more inflection than any robot he had ever heard before. Whoever had programmed it had been good. “I am the Chosen of the OldMother, the Bane of WalkingStones. Tell your WalkingStone to leave so that we may decide who is the leader.”

Derec looked at Mandelbrot, who had taken yet another step closer at the rogue’s words. “Mandelbrot is compelled to protect me, SilverSide. Tell him that you’re not going to hurt me, and I can send him back.”

“It is no protection to you at all,” SilverSide answered, and her pale eyes glanced at Mandelbrot. “I have already defeated it once. I will do it again, and then you and I will settle this.”

“No, I order you-” Derec began, but it was already too late.

The rogue moved faster than Derec thought possible. If Mandelbrot had not been there, Derec would not have had a chance. Derec felt a wind as Mandelbrot shot by him and met SilverSide.

The rogue collided with the onrushing Mandelbrot in a thunderous, resounding crash. There was a blur of violent motion, and Mandelbrot was suddenly down in the dirt, his legs thrashing helplessly from a severed cable held in the rogue’s claws. The rogue itself had a long scratch in its flank but otherwise seemed unharmed.

Derec opened his mouth to shout, to protest, to scream. The chemfets told him that the Hunter-Seekers were coming, but they would be too late.

Much too late.

SilverSide growled terribly, flung the cable away, and was on him. He tried to raise his hands, hopelessly. Claws raked Derec’s sides as she grappled him and bore him down. “No!” he screamed. “You can’t hurt me! I’m a human-”

The rogue wailed.

“I’m a human-” the GodBeing Derec cried. The word set off a bewildering spark of reactions in SilverSide’s mind. Human! The resonance from that VoidTongue word was stu

A human being is an intelligent life form.

Intelligence. Human.

“You are not human,” SilverSide roared in denial, but she spoke in HuntTongue-the language of “humans”-and no answer came to her. Taking advantage of SilverSide’s confusion, the GodBeing had rolled to its feet, and now she struck at it once more, intending to slash it open with her claws for its lie.

She could not. Could not. It was as if the OldMother controlled her hand and brought the claws back at the last instant so that she missed the GodBeing. She leapt at it instead, bearing it down again to roll it gasping in the dirt, then moving away a step so that it could stay on its back, submissive and beaten.

It either did not know to submit, or it would not. The GodBeing staggered up once more, defiant. SilverSide rushed at it again. The GodBeing screeched with pain as her arms wrapped around its chest and squeezed.

“Submit!” she whispered to it, and it was as if the OldMother’s will made the words a plea. She wanted this to end. She wanted the GodBeing to go limp and end this farce.

She was so much stronger than this thing of flesh. The GodBeing was weak, weaker than the sickest of the kin. And yet it still struggled.

“No!” it shouted back, its face gone red, its eyes wide and mouth gaping open. She could smell its breath, strangely sweet. “No. You must stop this. I order it. I am a human. You must obey me.”

The words staggered SilverSide as if they were physical blows. Her grasp loosened, and the GodBeing sagged to the ground. SilverSide stared at it without seeing it, all her attention on the confusion within her.

Human.

You must obey.

SilverSide howled in BeastTalk.

Somehow, he wasn’t dead. The rogue was howling again like a mad thing, and, as Derec stared at it, its body was changing. The snout was shortening, the ears moving lower on the body, and the canine jaws softening. Yes, the face was humanoid, and the features were startlingly like Derec’s own.

“GodBeing, I…I must know…more,” it said, and he could hear the confusion in its mind in its halting voice. Positronic drift. Derec began to feel some hope. “I…need information.”

There was someone or something behind the rogue, some shape. Mandelbrot had managed to lock his legs and rise, lumbering stiff-legged to them and impelled by the First Law. Derec saw the blow coming a moment before it landed. “Mandelbrot, no-” he began to shout, but it was too late.

Mandelbrot’s closed fist fell on the rogue’s neck. It went to its knees, a wolfish snarl coming from its human mouth, and now it was changing again, returning to wolf form. “No, Mandelbrot!” Derec ordered again. “I’m in no danger!”

The rogue was confused. It looked from Mandelbrot to Derec, to the forest, to the Hunter-Seekers moving rapidly toward them. It screeched, a sound of raw animal fury, its features changing rapidly and ceaselessly. Human/wolf/ human/wolf.

Wolf.

It stared at Derec. “Don’t go,” he began, but the rogue shook its head.

Dropping to all fours, it began to run for the cover of the forest.

“Come back!” Derec shouted. “I can teach you! In the city…”

But it was already gone.