"Are you sure you can handle it? I thought Gambols were dangerous parasites."
"Yes," said Feroza. "Just like the organization you work for."
He sighed. "You know we aren't just dumping the petroleum into the sun. We aren't wasting it. The fuel and plastics and hydrocarbon feedstock...they keep people alive in space stations and habitats all the way back to Luna. We need Petrolea."
The Gambol dragged its head back and forth, scooping up food. It was almost close enough. "We need Petrolea like a child needs his ice-lolly."
"So let him have his damn ice-lolly. Food can't complain."
A camera twitched in her direction and Feroza held her breath.
"Alright, maybe you disagree that mechanoids deserve basic rights, but what about people?" Toledo asked. "What about the people in the jungle when you brought the entire ecosystem down on our heads?"
"I didn't kill those people," Feroza watched the enormous parasite waddle closer to her, unaware of the danger it was in. Unaware of the meal that it would soon be. "I know you're not responsible, either, but you did bring the harvester into their territory. It was too tempting a target. You should have listened to us when we said that Petrolean life had become too aggressive to — "
"I tried!" he said. "And I was never supposed to be sent into the jungle to arrest you. I am a programmer, for God's sake!"
Feroza couldn't afford to let herself become as emotional Toledo. Forcing her breathing to slow, she bent her legs a precise 160 degrees and jumped, shrieking static across the AM bands.
The Gambol launched itself away with a kick from its piston-like hind legs. Feroza watched it arc through the air, flipping those legs around, turning them into springs with which to cushion its fall. A fall which brought it nearly on top of the mother Dragon.
The Gambol squealed over Feroza's radio and kicked its piston-legs, but they weren't oriented at the right angle to do any damage. Hooked mouthparts scrabbled and sparks flew as the buzz-saws in the Dragon's mouth bit into the carapace of the giant metal flea.
"Dr. Merchant?"
Feroza realized she'd been staring at the fighting monsters, breathing heavily, for far too long. How was her oxygen? Good. Fine. It was fine.
"Dr. Merchant? Feroza? What has happened?"
"The Gambol is down," she reported. "It's scattering."
Factors sloughed off the Gambol's steel skeleton. Some of the little robots managed to escape, but most fell prey to the dragon's overpowering radio voice and fell into line as members of its own swarm. They marched into their new master's body cavity, not even pausing to disassemble and transport the armature, organs, and other tools they had so painstakingly fabricated. Nor the fuel tanks they had just filled.
The Dragon tore into the skeleton, bright trails of light behind the hot tips of her cutting mouthparts.
Feroza edged forward and snatched up a steel bone from where it had fallen. Feeling rather like a cavewoman, she took the tool back to the gash she had made in the forest oil-pipeline. Petroleum streamed from the wound, already the center of a writhing clump of factors. Some of the little machines formed lines leading back to their nests in the undergrowth, stealing the resource. Others piled on top of each other within nets of spun plastic, self-assembling into impromptu walls, reservoirs, and claws to protect this breach in the Berg's body.
Feroza swung her bone-steel staff through them.
"What are you doing now? What's that noise?"
"Killing the Berg's repair-factors." She took a deep breath. "Keeping the blood flowing." Another breath. "Waiting for more parasites." She backed away from the honey pot. Hid herself again. "My plan is working, and so we might live out the day."
Toledo was silent for a while, digesting that. "Dr. Merchant," he said eventually, "I am sorry I argued with you. I want to thank you. Without you, I would have nothing to feed into my still. We keep each other alive, right?"
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"We all keep each other alive, Mr. Toledo. That's what ecosystems do."
"Eh? Yes, I suppose."
Feroza didn't have long to wait before the next Gambol arrived. And the next, and the guardians the Berg summoned to protect its oil, and the larger things that would prey upon all three mechanoids.
"I feel like Mr. R.M. Renfield," said Feroza, "feeding flies to spiders and spiders to ants and ants to birds…"
"I don't know what that means," said Toledo.
"All for the glory of the great Count Dracula." Feroza raised her right arm and broadcast a specific radio signal. "Come to me."
The Dragon crashed through the undergrowth, mouthparts agape.
The first Gambol died before it even noticed the onrushing predator. It fell, sparked and dissolved into bones, organs, and squirming factors.
Feroza pointed and whistled again and the Dragon attacked another Gambol just as it compressed its spring legs. A leap to freedom became a sideways flop and a terminal shudder.
The forest guardian, a creature of plates and spikes like a car-sized metal hedgehog, died in a blast of fire, its plastic organs melting. The other predator sprang into the air, a jackal compared to the tiger Feroza had unleashed. It spread helicopter rotors, but the path of its unlucky leap took it past Feroza. She braced herself and swung her bone-steel staff like a featherball racket. The little predator crashed into the ground, where a jab with the staff and a stomp from her boot convinced the factors that made up its skin that they had better chances of survival elsewhere.
Feroza watched the creature disassemble, wondering if she was doing the right thing. Certainly, she could reduce her impact on Petrolea if she left. When they reached Xanadu Base, Al-Onazy would be only too happy to send her back to Earth on the next rocket, probably in chains. But then what? He or someone like him would go on merrily draining the moon of its resources until none were left. Who would stop him if Feroza was in jail on Earth or dead in the jungle?
The honey-pot she had made was now a-swarm with orphaned factors. Some tried to reclaim their abandoned armatures of bones and organs. Others tried to self-assemble without them. Most fled or died in the clutches of Gobs and other scavengers. Feroza tried to bag as many as possible for the still. If a person could survive indefinitely in the Petrolean jungle, what works might she accomplish? How might she act against the exploiters?
"You know what?" said Toledo as she worked. "I am thinking of what we can do with all this feedstock you're collecting. Why stop at food and water and oxygen, after all?"
Why indeed? But Feroza was too busy with the slaughter to answer him.
"I have programs that will make a plastic film to cover the entrance. The walls, floor, and ceiling will need to be covered as well, to prevent oxidation."
Feroza leaned on her staff, breathing hard, feeling her suit's cooling fans whir. "We won't have any leakage if you just keep fabricating spare oxygen canisters."
"Leakage? Oh no. I want to flood the chamber with breathable air. I want to be able to take off this damned suit."
Take off the environment suit. The sensual impact of that fantasy stopped Feroza in her tracks, imagining air on her skin. Sloughing away this plodding, restrictive armor. Feeling warmth over the invisible hairs on her body...
No. No, she couldn't allow herself to say what was on her mind. Couldn't allow herself to even think of the decadence of… "I suppose a bath would be out of the question?"
Silence. Feroza cringed. How had Toledo described her? As privileged? Self-indulgent? Not to mention hypocritical. Feroza was the woman who had prepared to walk into the jungle and make her environment suit into her tomb. Who had told Toledo he should regret every Petrolean life he feed into his still. And now she would use those precious resources to make soap and hot water?
"I apologize," Feroza said. "Please forget that I said…that I wanted…it was wrong of me."
"Oh, no. I don't think it's wrong, Dr. Merchant." Toledo's voice had gone husky. "I was only visualizing how...what resources we would need to requisition. Heating the water should be easy. Soap...I think I can fabricate. A bath...hm."
"A bath?" She said mortified. A princess of Petrolea, indeed! How could he think she would demand a bathtub? "No, no, I was thinking of a sponge bath," she assured him.
"Sponge..." he said "...bath. Oh. Oh. That would be...feasible, yes." He cleared his throat. "I will make a curtain, of course. For privacy."
And Feroza understood. 'I was just visualizing,' he had said. And then she had suggested a sponge bath. Of course. The point of life was reproduction.
Feroza's cheeks burned against the pads of her helmet. What must he think of her? And what was she thinking of him? Toledo would be out of his suit, as well. And would she perhaps enjoy giving him one?
Once Feroza allowed herself something so louche as a bath in a Dragon's nest, a bath with a man in a Dragon's nest hardly seemed worse. And whether they agreed about environmentalist philosophy or not, the two of them were going to be stuck together for some time. Adrift. Benighted. Bereft. With lots of free time...
"This is not the time. Nor — even remotely! — the place." Feroza picked up her bonesteel staff. "So we shall concentrate merely on staying alive." She swung, and clubbed the nearest mechanoid to death.