“Let’s leave,” the sound meant.
Slowly, Kalima lifted her head. The Hellbore guns hadn’t tracked her. The Bolo had shifted them to one side. She frowned and sat up.
“How come it didn’t try to shoot me?”
Again, Sufi whined to leave.
“Wait a minute, Sufi. This is strange. I need to think.”
She’d made some silly comment, she could hardly recall what, and the Bolo had come to life. What had it said? Gonner, gonner, gonner? It had repeated what she’d said. One word, anyway. Then it had started babbling about sunshine. The sunlight on her shoulders, weak as it was in autumn, warmed a little of the chill from her bones.
“Why would it say sunshine?”
She glanced skyward and frowned again. Why sunshine, after two centuries? The most logical answer was simply that its Action/Command center was damaged. The machine was, effectively, senile. But if it were senile, why hadn’t it fired on her? Maybe it was out of ammunition? No . . . It hadn’t even tried to fire on her. None of its impressive array of guns had cycled. And why sunshine?
She crawled uneasily to her feet, but the Bolo sat motionless. The only hint that it had ever come to life was the slightly different angle of its main guns. She brushed dirt out of her hair and jumpsuit, cast one last, uneasy glance over her shoulder, then headed for home. She had nothing to show for her adventure except bruises, but she didn’t care any longer about the Pig and his stupid challenges.
She’d gone one-on-one with a deranged Bolo and come out alive. That ought to be enough for any lifetime.
Two days later, Kalima left school to find a group of colonists clustered near the Council building. She edged her way closer and discovered a serious debate underway.
“. . . can’t repair it? We’ve got to have that power unit on line within ten hours or the backup generators will go down!”
“We don’t have the tools needed to fix a fusion unit. We’ve got to wait for the supply ship.”
“But the hospital!”
Near the far edge of the crowd, someone said, “What about a solar rig?”
“That’s ancient technology!”
“Yeah, but it works,” someone else said thoughtfully. “We’ve got the supplies to build a pretty big solar collector and Fred’s a good electrical engineer. You could rig a converter, couldn’t you, Fred?”
“Yes, that’d work temporarily. We could divert part of the power to backup batteries for emergency use until the supply ship—”
Kalima had stopped listening. Sunshine. Solar energy. Power . . . The Bolo needed recharging!
She whirled and slipped away without being noticed.
—7—
The thud of conifer cones is very distant. Power reserves are critically low. My Emergency Survival Center functions; my outer sensors hardly at all. Soon, the darkness will return permanently. I have not been visited again by my new Commander. I calculate that 2.7 days of my remaining three days of power have elapsed, without further command contact. It would have been good to receive a last command; but I am without purpose and have disgraced my unit. This ending is to be expected. Still, it is a lonely end. I miss the voices of my fellow Dinochrome Brigade units. I miss the laughter of my Commander. I—
Low-ultraviolet Y-Band radiation floods my external power-grid panels. Energy surges through my Action/Command center and floods into my backup power cells. Outer sensors regain receptivity. Memory cells I had long forgotten resonate once again. Euphoria floods my ego-gestalt Introspection Complex circuitry. I am alive! Damage assessment is automatic, requiring 1.73 seconds to determine that I am immobilized, incapable of speech, and unable to function in more than 75 percent of my original design functions. My memory crystals are intact in places, damaged in others. Many connections between banks of data cells have been damaged, so that much of my memory, while intact, remains inaccessible.
My armaments are low, but I sustained crippling damage before on-board munitions stockpiles were exhausted. If I am able to repair the damage to my motor control functions, I will be capable of fighting.
Although my main fission plant remains cold, backup power reserves are restored. I swivel forward sensors and locate the small human who is my Commander. I attempt to communicate.
“Gonner. Gonner.”
“Uh, hi. Hi, Gonner. I, uh, thought you might need power.”
The voice is female, young. She is my first female Commander. Sensor probes indicate medical-design equipment near my treads. I am unfamiliar with the specific configuration of the machine, although its medical purpose is clearly indicated by the symbols stamped onto its hull. This equipment is emanating Y-Band radiation as a flood of waste energy. My manufacturers built into my design the ability to absorb Y-Band radiation and convert it to battlefield energy. I am grateful for the delay of oblivion. I attempt to come to attention. I rotate my Hellbore guns and lift them in a salute.
“Gonner, Gonner, Gonner.”
I must repair my speech centers. Can my Commander understand my need for depot maintenance?
“Is that the only word you can say? No, you said sunshine. That’s how I figured out you were low on power.”
I am pleased. My new Commander is capable of extrapolating from slim clues.
“Uh, my name is Kalima Tennyson, Gonner.”
Kali-Ma, ancient Hindu Goddess of Death and Rebirth, Consort to Shiva the Destroyer. My Commander was well chosen. I await Current Situation input.
“In case you’re wondering, it’s been about two hundred years since you, uh, since the battle with the Deng.”
My Commander knows of my failure.
“I think it’s pretty awesome, what you did. You should see the battle damage on your hull. When I was coming out here, three years ago, the captain of our transport ship told me all about the battle for Donner’s World. They named it after your old Commander, ’cause the colony fought so bravely, my Dad said. That was before he got killed in the battle on Hilltop Gap. My Dad even knew about you, Gonner. You’re famous. They put a medal on your hull and left you here, where you fell standing against the Deng. Just like Leonidas at Thermopylae.”
I know this battle. It is part of my battlefield archives, which have sustained no damage. I access the file. The Spartan three hundred, under King Leonidas, held the gap between the mountains at Thermopylae against invading Persians. The Spartans were killed to the last man. Persia overran Attica and sacked Athens; but Greek forces rallied at Corinth and finally drove the Persians from Greek soil.
If my Commander speaks the truth—and why would she not?—then the Deng have taken Planet XGD 7798-F and lost it again. Humanity has not fallen to the Enemy. It pleases me that the planet has been renamed in honor of my Commander. James Donner was a valiant officer. My new Commander has said I am honored. This seems impossible; but my Commander would not lie to a Unit of the Line. Perhaps my mission was not a failure. Humanity has survived.
I attempt again to request assistance at a maintenance depot.
“Monkey. Monkey.”
My Commander’s voice is understandably puzzled. “Monkey?”
I try again. “Slick.”
“Monkey? Slick? Gonner, I wish I knew what was wrong with your brain.”
I attempt further diagnostics and find only broken tangles which my on-board repair functions cannot fathom. Without a maintenance depot, I will not be capable of telling my Commander what is wrong with my internal psychotronic circuitry.
My sensors detect the approach of another life form. I go to Battle Reflex Alert Status. My Commander must be protected. I swivel anti-personnel guns and lock onto the target.
“Gonner! No! Don’t shoot!”
I halt the anti-personnel-response program and await further commands.
“This is Sufi. She’s my dog.”
I study the life form which has joined my Commander. It is smaller than she, quadrupedal. My Commander’s hand rests on the animal’s head. The animal is of a different configuration than my fragmented memories of the Deng Enemy. The Sufi dog has half as many appendages as the Deng, although its body is slightly larger. The shape and arrangement of head, body, and legs differs significantly. I switch from Battle Reflex Alert to Active Service Alert Status. This introspection and alert-status change requires 0.013 seconds. I still function slowly.
My Commander continues her Current Situation update. “Sufi is a special dog. My mother does genetic research. Sufi’s nearly as smart as I am; she just can’t talk. She and her puppies, they’re grown up now, they babysit us kids, so the adults don’t have to watch us all the time. The colony gets a lot more work done now than we used to. Of course, I don’t really need a nursemaid anymore, but Sufi’s my friend.”
I file Sufi in my memory banks as authorized personnel permitted to approach this Unit. My Commander’s friend emits two sharp sounds.