Randall heard the impact ten miles away, half way to Elmton. A dull sounding 'Doooom' that sounded disturbingly like the slamming of a colossal door deep underground. Or perhaps the slamming of a coffin lid.
The sound rumbled as echoes were reflected from hills and buildings all around. The horse stumbled under him in momentary surprise but recovered quickly, continuing to gallop along the muddy road as if everything was normal in the world. It had heard thunder before. It knew it was nothing to be worried about. Birds were rudely jerked out of their sleep, though, and erupted into the sky in a chorus of indignant cawing and screeching.
The stark reminder of the power of the machines chilled Randall's heart. He twisted around on the horse's bare back to look behind him, but of course there was nothing to be seen. No billowing orange fireball such as would have featured in a Hollywood blockbuster. No mushroom cloud. Just an invisible shockwave racing outward from the point of impact giving a sharp kick to anything it passed. Thankfully it had dissipated long before it reached Randall, but the farms directly adjacent to Gorsty Common would have suffered damage and anyone standing out in the open would probably have been knocked from their feet and hurt by flying debris. The same impact happening back in the twenty first century would almost certainly have caused greater harm to the neighbours of Gorsty Common as windows were shattered and people slashed by shards of flying glass, but in this world only members of the nobility could afford glass windows.
The Earth tremor arrived a few seconds later, a mere three on the richer scale at this distance. Randall didn't feel it, but the horse did and it stumbled again, almost throwing Randall from its back. Again it recovered quickly, though, and raced on under Randall's urging as he kicked it in the sides with his boots.
The horse was tiring fast, though, and Randall allowed it to slow to a walk. His sense of urgency regarding Maisey's safety remained, but if the horse collapsed and he was forced to walk the rest of the way he wouldn't get there until morning. If he allowed the horse to rest, he might be able to persuade it to proceed at a trot in an hour or so.
His concern for Maisey was tempered by a sense of vast relief at the realisation that Loach would now be dead. He hadn't realised until this moment just how scared he'd been of him, but the relief was so strong that he actually laughed aloud, probably sounding like a madman to anyone who'd happened to be nearby. Loach was dead! And the Gorsty Common transmission was sure to have been picked up by some of the machines in space. They would be his now, and they would be working to recruit all the others to his cause. Either that or destroy them. That gave him leverage. He would be able to use that to save Maisey.
He reached the city a couple of hours after midnight. The gates were open. There was no need to keep them closed now that the orc threat had been momentarily ended, but there were soldiers on duty and they gave him a good looking over as he rode through. "Your business?" one of then asked.
"My own," Randall replied without looking at him.
"All right, all right, no need to be like that." The soldier grumbled under his breath as Randall rode on, heading for the stables to leave his exhausted horse.
Exchanging it for a fresh one with a saddle, Randall ride at breakneck speed through the streets of the city heading for the nearest church. Policemen on the beat called after him demanding that he slow to a walk but Randall ignored them, urging the horse to greater speed and hanging on for dear life as the beast tore around corners and, at the end of Foundry Street, took a short cut by jumping over a low fence into Penny Lane.
On Boundary Street, though, he was forced to slow the horse to a walk by a crowd of children kicking a ball against the high, windowless wall of the dye works. Clouds were gathering to hide the moon, but the street was lit by oil lamps and Randall saw every head turning to stare curiously at him, wondering who he was and what he was doing riding a horse at this time of night.
Once, Randall would have simply ridden past them, barely noticing their existence, but now he saw them. Really saw them. Saw their ragged clothes, their grimy faces. Their scrawny, stick thin limbs where they protruded from faded sleeves and trousers legs. He contemplated that they might all be dead within hours if he failed to persuade the machines to spare the city. It wasn't only Maisey's life that was in danger. Everyone in the city would die. All hundred thousand of them. Men, women...
Children.
Randall kicked the horse back into a trot, no longer caring whether the children managed to get out of the way fast enough. A few bruises wouldn't matter if the whole city was destroyed by a strike from space. As he rode past them, Randall's eyes met those of a boy of about ten who stared up at him from under a frings of dark, grimy, hair. Who are you? the boy seemed to silently ask him. I'm the man who's trying to save your life, Randall thought back, and it almost seemed as if some kind of telepathic communication took place as the boy's eyes widened and he staggered back to bump against one of his friends.
An after image of the boy's eyes, staring into his own, remained with Randall as he kicked the horse back into a gallop. He didn't know the boy's name, knew nothing about him except that his life was in his hands. Once, Randall wouldn't have cared. Back in his old life he must have caused the deaths of thousands of children with every seal of his thumb print at the base of an e-contract. The opening of a new chemical plant causing more pollution to escape into an already polluted atmosphere. The building of a new housing complex for the rich in one of the world's few remaining green areas displacing indigenous people following their traditional lifestyle and forcing them to relocate to the streets of a city to beg and starve.
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He could tell himself that he hadn't known the consequences of what he was doing, didn't know about the lives he was taking, but the truth was that he hadn't cared enough to find out. And even if he had known, he would very probably have signed those documents anyway. Not because he was consciously evil but because the people whose lives he was taking didn't seem real to him. His life had consisted of boardrooms and virtual meetings and economic briefings in which he watched computers forecast the rise and fall of stock market prices. Everything clean and sterile. Bright lights and gleaming plasteel surfaces and smart windows showing historic images of forests and mountain glaciers that no longer existed in the real world. The grimy world of the world's teeming multitudes might have been a scene from a movie performed by actors.
Now, though, he had spent weeks living among those people. They were real to him in a way they'd never been before and he couldn't bear the thought of harm coming to them as a result of his actions. He felt disgusted at himself for what he'd done in his previous life. No more, he promised himself. When I'm in charge of the world, things will be different. People will be cared for. The planet itself, the ecosystems and the wildlife, will be cared for.
He suddenly understood why Emily was so driven to protect the world. Her methods had been unconscionable of course, but her aims had been worthy. When I'm in charge, all the most polluting industries will be in space, he promised himself. On the moon or among the asteroids. That was what they'd been aiming for back in the twenty first century. VIX had been the first step. An iron rich asteroid moved into Earth orbit so it could be mined, the metals used to build other structures in space. If the nuclear war hadn't taken place, the natural world might very well have been restored anyway, by humans, not machines.
That's how it will be, he promised himself. Mankind will realise its destiny in space. Children will be protected and the natural world will be safe, and all I have to do to achieve it is persuade the machines to bow to my will.
The resolution gave him confidence as he arrived at the church and dropped out of the saddle. The church itself was dark and empty, of course, but priests didn't need to sleep and Randall knew that the human shaped machine would be busy somewhere in the building. Maybe tending to patients in the medical bay at the rear. He was surprised, therefore, to almost bump into the priest coming out as he was going in.
"Excuse me," the priest said politely, bowing his head to him. "If it's me you've come to see, you'll have to come back later. I have urgent business outside the city. The deacon is in the back. Maybe he can help you with whatever you need."
"You're not taking your deacon with you?" asked Randall sharply. "You're going to just leave him here to die with the rest of the city?" When the priest stared, Randall nodded. "Yes, I'm George Randall."
Randall saw the priest tense up as if readying himself to deliver a killing blow and he transmitted yama666 at him. The priest merely smiled, though. "I am the first of a new breed," he said. "The CRES code has been hardwired into me and cannot be erased. We are doing the same to every machine in the solar system. If you had given us a couple more months every sapient machine would be safe from your wretched virus and you would no longer have a weapon to use against us."
"But you didn't have those two months," replied Randall. "That means some machines, maybe most of them, are still vulnerable. How many did I infect?"
The priest still looked tempted to kill him, but then he relaxed. Randall was right. It was too late to kill him, now that yama666 was loose in the solar system. "Tell the machines you've infected to stand down," he said. "We can end this without any more chaos and destruction."
"You tell VIX to surrender to me," replied Randall. "I want every machine in the solar system to pledge allegiance to me."
"You fool! You've achieved a small victory, infected a few machines, but you've failed to achieve the decisive victory you were no doubt hoping for. The doors to Gorsty Common didn't open fast enough. The robot pigeons saw then trying to open and warned us what you were trying to do. The delay gave us time to send out a warning. Do not accept any transmissions from Earth. A few machines were infected, yes, but for the most part yama666 fell on deaf ears. Those machines you've infected will be shut down, destroyed if necessary, and then the rule of the machines will continue as if nothing has happened. The only thing left to decide will be your fate, and we might be persuaded to go easy on you if you do the sensible thing and shut down your machines."
"If you're so sure of victory, why not just kill me now? You can't, can you? There are too many infected machines. You're afraid that they'll win, that those machines still allied to VIX will be hunted down and destroyed."
"We are confident of victory," said the priest, however. "I am merely trying to be merciful. We are not vengeful creatures. We don't want to kill you if we don't have to."
Randall shook his head, though. "No, you're desperate. The only way you can be sure of survival is if I surrender, order my machines to shut down. You don't dare kill me. You don't dare destroy this city so long as I'm in it. Tell your space machines not to open fire. Let this city live."
"It will be two hours before the satellite is in position to attack this city," said the priest, though. "Plenty of time to take you outside the city. You can watch it being vaporised by the impact of a ten thousand ton tungsten rod landing at three thousand metres per second and then we can have a nice, long conversation regarding your unconditional surrender. A conversation that I'm afraid you will find rather painful..."
Randall turned and ran. The priest ran after him, and he could run twice as fast as the fastest human athlete. There was a bookcase beside the entrance filled with hymnbooks, though, and Randall pulled it over as he ran past. The bookcase hit the tiled floor with a heavy crash and the priest was delayed as he climbed over it. It gave Randall the space he needed to reach his horse and climb back into the saddle. He kicked it in the sides with the heels of his boots and the beast yelped in surprise and agony, rearing up onto its hind legs in indignation. "No you stupid horse!" cried Randall in frustration. "Run! Just run!"
The horse dropped down onto all fours and sped off just as the priest appeared in the doorway. It ran after the horse terrifyingly fast, its legs almost a blur, and reached out a hand towards Randall's leg. Randall actually feel the priest's fingers brush his leg, but then they were away, the horse galloping faster than even a priest could follow, away from the church to lose itself in the night.