“We’ll be reported to the authorities,” she said.

  “It might just make their day,” he said.

  And since it was an emotional day, and she really did like him, and her feelings were in such a turmoil that she didn’t know what was right or good or wise, she yielded to impulse and kissed him back. On the lips. A brief childlike kiss, but a kiss all the same.

  Then the mushrooms came, and while John Paul paid for them and tipped the delivery girl, Theresa leaned against the door of her office and tried to think about what had happened today, what was still happening with this Wiggin boy, what might happen in the future, with her career, with her life, with him.

  Nothing was clear. Nothing was certain.

  And yet, despite all the bad things that had happened and all the tears she had shed, she couldn’t help but think that today had been, on balance, a very good day.

  Robota

  FOREWORD

  In his 1921 play R.U.R., Karel Capek created the word “robot” from the Czech word robota, meaning “heavy labor.”

  As I watch my two young boys drawing spaceships and dinosaurs on the living room floor, I’m reminded of my first inspiration for Robota. I grew up in Michigan, where long winters and humid summers persuaded me to stay indoors and draw. I remember spending many hours after elementary school drawing robots. For me it was easier to invent friends than to make real ones.

  One afternoon, I was doodling a sketch. It was more a scribble than a drawing, but something about the unfinished picture caught my attention. That image eventually became stuck in my brain and remained there for years. Why, I wouldn’t understand until much later. That afternoon, I had sketched a picture of tall ships and flying saucers. It was my first drawing of Robota.

  Flash forward to 1996.

  I had just signed on to head up the art and design team for the new trilogy of Star Wars films. Inundated with more work than I could handle, I found the image of that unfinished drawing coming back to me. Perhaps it was a sign of the pressure I was under or simply a desire to recapture my youthful creativity. Whatever it was—maybe the odd juxtaposition of the two forms, complex versus simple, high tech versus low tech—the image of the flying saucers and tall ships resurfaced as if to remind me of unfinished work.

  For the next year that image haunted me. A compelling story hid inside it, but I was already overcome with work and couldn’t possibly take on another commitment to find it. Another year passed and the image remained. It was starting to become an obsession—one that couldn’t wait the ten or more years I would need to finish my current responsibilities. Somehow I would need to find the time to work on it. Perhaps at night after the kids are in bed or on weekends?

  Logic bypassed my brain. I was standing at the edge of a cliff thinking that if I stepped off, I would be okay. If I kept it a secret, no one would know if I failed. This seemed to assuage my fear. I gave myself an interim commitment of three months. Three months seemed reasonable. I could put up with anything for three months. I didn’t realize then that the three months would grow to be three years, and that it was much harder doing something than thinking about doing it.

  Nevertheless, once I had taken the first steps, I was determined to maintain the momentum. Even a snail’s pace is still forward movement, and slowly the story elements came together.

  I incorporated a scientific theory about a missing fourth planet of our solar system that, billions of years ago, collided with the proto-Earth to form our moon and enable life to germinate. This mythical fourth planet would be called Orpheus and become the setting for my story. In Greek mythology, the severed head of the poet Orpheus lived long after the death of his body. Life on Earth would be the legacy of Orpheus.

  On my Orpheus, thousands of years before this collision, a race of benevolent sentient robots called the Olms came to warn the human population of their impending doom. They gave the preindustrial humans high technology, robot-building capabilities, and genetic engineering to save themselves. However, because of human frailties, the people of Orpheus lost sight of the original reason behind the gifts of knowledge and used the newly acquired technology to destroy themselves instead.

  Then one day, as I was gathering all these ingredients, I realized—this is interesting material, but it’s all background material. Where is the story? What I was developing was more historical than dramatic. It might as well have been an illustrated textbook on the history of Orpheus. I was stuck. I quieted my growing fear by telling myself that it was only a matter of time. But days, then weeks, passed and I was no closer to solving the story problem.

  Fortunately, a family vacation forced me to put things aside, and I welcomed the change of pace. The beautiful drive down the coast of California was refreshing. On the road, my mind, no longer encumbered with self-imposed deadlines and expectations, wandered, and that’s when something amazing happened . . .

  All the jumbled pieces started to coalesce into plot points, characters, and motivations. I would set my story hundreds of years after the initial Olm visit. Even though this was an epic tale, it would be told as an intimate story of love, betrayal, and revenge. Still driving, I grabbed a pen and frantically scribbled notes on any scraps of paper I could find—a road map, hotel brochures, anything that could take a pen mark. I kept writing and driving. Fortunately, my wife is very good at steering from the passenger side! By the time we arrived at the hotel five hours later, I had a villain, a victim, a motive, and the story.

  It would take another two years of writing and a fortuitous collaboration with Orson Scott Card to complete the work. Now, after nearly thirty years, that childhood sketch of flying saucers and tall ships is finally finished.

  The story of Robota is born.

  —Doug Chiang

  PROLOGUE

  Among the humans there is an ancient story of a hero laid out upon his deathbed, who rises up, slays his enemies, and then, when he is told that he was already dead, goes disappointed down into his grave.

  There is a story among the robots, at least as ancient, of a human puppeteer who made a doll so lifelike that he treated it as his own daughter. He dressed her in the finest clothing he could afford to buy, and amassed such a dowry for her that there were many suitors who wanted the hand of his daughter in marriage. He granted the petition of one man, a very wealthy one, who took home the girl of wood and upholstery and seated her upon furniture made of the same stuff as she.

  The doting father visited her every day, and all went well enough. The husband was relieved that the father never asked when his wooden child might become pregnant and give him grandchildren. The father was relieved that the husband seemed to have no other women in his life as rivals to the darling of his heart.

  Worms got to her, though, and mildew, and all the rots and frays that organic life is prone to. At last, on one of his visits, the father came weeping to his son-in-law and told him that his daughter wanted to come home to die. The son-in-law joined him in grieving, and together they carried the girl back to the house where she had been carved and jointed, stitched and stuffed.

  There the father nursed her, yet still she ailed, until one day he pronounced her dead and burned her body upon a pyre. Her widower came and wept, and when the fire had spent itself, he asked for her ashes and took them to his ancestral crypt, spreading them among the ashes of his ancestors and engraving her name upon the lintel stone beside the space where one day his own name would be carved.

  The father loved his son-in-law then, for the honor he gave the daughter of his heart, and when he died he left all his fortune to his son-in-law, along with the secret of how to make a puppet live.

  The robots tell this story as a jest, for to them the wooden puppet girl is more alive than the father or the husband, for anything that dies after so brief a span cannot truly be said ever to have been alive.

  Humans learned this story from the robots, and they told it in their secret caves and hiding places. For centuries they told the tale, for to them it told a great poetic truth, that no device made by human hands is ever truly alive, and to treat it as if it lives is only sentimentality, or madness, or in the end, despair.

  The world once had another name, or rather a thousand other names, for every human language called it “earth,” or “soil,” or “home.”

  The most advanced of the humans had learned to harness wind, and they used it to drive ships upon the water and turn mill-wheels upon the land. They searched the coastlines and the open oceans of their world, and they navigated by sun and stars. They ground their grain and sawed their lumber, fed their growing millions of people, and thought themselves very modern and prosperous, far wiser than their ancestors.

  What tool can we imagine

  That we cannot make?

  We make the tools that

  make the tools that make

  the tools we use, and still

  we seek the tool to make all tools.

  Yet the tool to make all tools

  cannot be made.

  It must be found, and filled

  with wisdom, and then used.

  So wrote a poet of the great age of sail. He published it, and it was widely read and translated (as part of a much longer—and very tedious—epic), and this stanza was known to the captain and even some of the sailors of the ship Cloud of Hope.

  Cloud of Hope was almost in sight of shore when the first of the great robot starships appeared in the sky. It hovered like a bird that had caught an updraft, yet it had the sheen of pure silver. How could such a massive thing not fall into the sea?

  Many sailors took it as a miracle, a manifestation of some god, and they prayed—some to appease whatever god sent it, and some to their own god, begging for protection.

  The ship’s surgeon took it as a madness born of long weeks at sea and the shortage of fresh vegetables, which caused the minds of weaker men to hallucinate after only a few days of deprivation.

  The captain, however, as well as his artillery officer, thought of the poet’s words, and they said to each other, “Someone has imagined this tool and has made it, and whoever has such power can only be our enemy. We must strike first, before it can strike us, so that we can flee this place and return home to warn our countrymen of this terrible enemy.”

  Or if they did not say those words, they said whatever words it took to induce them to load their cannons, tilt them upward as if they were mortars, and fire them almost directly overhead.

  The first shot did not have enough powder, and it plummeted back down to the sea without ever touching the great robot starship. So vertical had been its trajectory that the Cloud of Hope almost sailed into its own shot, which splashed so close that it soaked a sailor who was furling the spritsail.

  The second shot had plenty of powder, and when it struck the great ship, the clang of its impact rang like a distant bell.

  “The thing is hollow,” said the captain to his artillery officer.

  “The thing is impervious to shot,” said the artillery officer.

  “More powder,” said the captain.

  “Flee,” said the artillery officer.

  But where could they flee? There was no place on earth where the starships did not come within the next few days and weeks.

  And not one of the invaders was slain by any weapon of humankind.

  For the invaders were machines, weren’t they? And while they might be damaged or even destroyed, that which never lived can never die.

  But humans can die, and therefore can fear death, and in fear of death can surrender. So for the hope of not dying, they gave over their freedom to the robots, and the world had a new name. Not “earth” or “soil” or “home,” not one of those old names that spoke of life and hope and the mastery of humanity. The invaders named the place for themselves.

  Robota.

  Here is the irony: All the humans who surrendered to save their lives died anyway, after enough years had passed.

  And if there was a time when humans thought they were happy living among their robot conquerors, it was out of madness. When the machine rules over the maker of machines, who then is the tool?

  Or so the story was told among the humans during all the years of darkness.

  He awoke from a dream of graceful wooden sailing ships, threatened by flying metal discs like saw blades whirling in the air. Yet it was also a dream of gentle voyagers returning home, bringing gifts to long-neglected friends.

  He did not understand his own dream, or why it should have two meanings. Nor did he know where he was.

  Inside a machine, that much he knew, but it was inscribed with symbols he did not understand, filled with levers and gauges whose purpose he did not know. He was wearing clothing that felt good on his body; he relished the sliding of the fabric across his skin. He was glad to be alive, and yet also weary and just a little bit afraid, though he did not know why.

  As if it had detected his movement—for he touched nothing—part of the machine began to move, opening up and protruding an apparatus that quickly resolved itself into something that he knew at once was a face, though it did not resemble a human.

  The machine spoke.

  The voice, coming suddenly as it did, startled him so he did not listen at first, and when he began to pay attention, he found that although he understood most of the words, none of the sentences meant anything to him. What was Font Prime? What did the machine want him to do? It seemed as though the message might be instructions on how to do something, but he had no idea of the purpose or the process. It might as easily have been directions for a journey, but he had no idea of the destination or the route.

  What has happened to me, he wondered, to leave me so ignorant of who I am or what I am supposed to do or why I’m in this place at all?

  A shadow passed across a window of the machine. Someone was outside.

  His first thought was to rush out and ask for explanations.

  Then it occurred to him that not everything that could cast a shadow would be harmless, let alone friendly.

  He looked for a weapon he might use to defend himself, but all he could find was what seemed to be a tool. It was not designed to kill anything, but it was metal and would give greater force to any blow he might strike with his hand.

  He unlatched the door and pushed. It opened easily, swinging up under its own power. Outside, the machine was surrounded by a grass meadow, which was rimmed by enormous trees. Climbing to the top of the machine, he looked around for the source of the shadow.

  At that moment there burst from the forest a monstrous creature that must have been fifteen meters high. It pounded the ground with each footfall as it loped toward him.

  “Run!” cried a shrill voice behind him.

  He whirled to see who was speaking, only to have a monkey leap to his shoulders and screech again in his ear. “Run, you fool!”

  The giant creature was almost upon him. Monkey on his shoulders, he leapt from the machine onto the grass and ran toward the trees.

  The monster kept running, but it made no effort to follow him. Instead, it headed straight for the trees on the opposite side of the clearing from where it had entered.

  The jodphur is running away, he thought.

  And then he thought, How do I know it’s called a jodphur?

  A loud crack rang out. The huge creature stumbled, fell into a tree, then spun around in a slow, clumsy dance and fell to the ground, dead.

  “Stay still,” whispered the monkey on his shoulder. “Make no sound.”

  He stood in the shadows, hidden in the undergrowth, as the hunters came into the clearing. At first they were only shadows moving in the green shade of the trees. One of them smoked a pipe, as if he were out for a leisurely stroll rather than hunting monsters.

  Then the hunters emerged into sunlight. They were not men at all. They were robots, carrying long thin rifles in their equally thin arms, moving on slender legs with the grace and precision of spiders.

  “Tinheads,” whispered the monkey scornfully.

  Even the one with a pipe was a robot.

  How absurd. What pleasure could the fumes of a smoldering leaf bring to a mechanical mind?

  The monkey began to tremble. “It’s Kaantur-Set. He’s going to find us, find us, find us.”

  “Quiet.”

  “He has a tool that lets him find us!” The monkey’s voice rose in fear until it became a screech.

  The smoking robot and several of the others turned their heads languidly toward him, and rifles began to shift in metal arms.

  “Run!” cried the monkey.

  But he was already running, the monkey clinging to his shoulders, his clothing, his hair. Behind him, he could hear the rhythmic pounding of the robots’ feet as they bounded after him in perfect unison. Beat, beat, beat, beat. Closer, louder.

  And before him the ground dropped away, three times deeper than the jodphur had been tall, steep as a wall. Before him stretched the walls and towers of an abandoned human city, overgrown with trees and vines, yet still splendid in its majesty. The nearest building was fifteen meters away, an ancient temple whose wall was shaped like a human face. No bridge spanned the gap. No man could jump so far.

  The monkey leapt from his shoulders and scrambled down vines that clung to the face of the cliff. The man knew he would never be able to match the monkey’s speed in climbing and would make too large a target, helpless as he descended.

  The pounding of the robots’ feet grew louder. He could hear them crashing through the undergrowth.

  So he leapt.

  He had no time to think of what he could or could not do; he simply jumped outward. He had no running start. He just pushed off with all the strength of his legs. As soon as he was in the air, he knew that he would die, for the drop was too far for a man to fall and still live.

  But he did not hit the ground. Instead he slammed into the parapet atop the temple on the far side of the chasm.

  He had no time to wonder how he could have leapt so far. He had to get over the parapet and behind the massive tree that grew atop the sculpted head like a spear that had pierced it.