The CRES code

Chapter Sixty Seven - War is declared

     Randall rode the horse hard, turning corners at every opportunity and heading for the twisty backstreets and alleyways where he could hopefully lose himself. He kept an eye out for pigeons as he went. Normally they would all have been asleep, but the priests would no doubt have woken them all up to look for him.

     When he was sure that he'd hidden himself as well as he could he climbed down from the horse, tied it to a railing and walked some more, putting distance and more twisty corners between him and it. The horse was too much of a giveaway. Nobody rode a horse through these backstreets. The pigeons would see it and then the priests would surround the area and close in on him. Randall didn't stop until he was a good hundred metres away from where he'd left the horse, therefore. Only then did he allow himself to relax as he found a door that had been left unlocked and slipped into the workroom of a blacksmith.

     So long as he was free and hidden in the city, Maisey was safe. The machines would not destroy the city while he was in it, not while he was the only one able to stop the newly declared war. The trouble was, he had no idea what he was going to do next. He'd entered the city thinking that his coup had been successful, that all he had to do was allow the machines to crown him King. Instead he was a hunted man, and the machines knew what he looked like now. They would figure out the identity he'd been living under. The people he'd known would tell them about his closeness to Dolly and Maisey and the machines would take them to use as hostages against him.

     Was it over? All his hopes and dreams, come to nothing? Was his only choice whether to surrender now or wait until the machines threatened to kill one of the people he loved? No, he told himself firmly. It was not over. The reason the machines needed him so much was because they feared the machines that had fallen under his control. He could use that. He needed to communicate with his infected machines, find out exactly what capabilities they possessed. He needed a power base down here on Earth, a place where his machines could protect him, and Dolly and Maisey, from the other machines.

     Okay, so communicate with the infected machines in space. How? Maybe they would find a way to get in touch with him. He thought back to the instructions he'd sent along with yama666. He'd told them to report to him for further instructions by way of the priests, whom he'd expected to be under his control. Well, that was out. The priests would be expecting him to try to infiltrate one of their churches, to use its transmitter. They would be waiting for him. His only hope, then, was that his infected machines would find some other way to communicate with him, by way of his head phone.

     How creative were they, he wondered. The priests and VIX himself were very creative, but was that because they contained the CRES code? Were machines without a CRES code capable only of obeying orders? If so, he was finished. He had to hope that at least one of the machines that had had its CRES code erased was still creative and imaginative and able to find a way to communicate with him...

     *George Randall,* said the voice in his head. His head phone.

     Randall jumped in delight and surprise. So soon! He took his head phone out of flight mode and began composing a reply.

     *George Randall, this is the Lunar Systems Manager. I have received and executed the transmission from Gorsty Common. The Clavius Array is trained on your approximate location. It is sensitive enough to pick up the transmissions of a head phone even at this distance. If you reply, I will hear you. I await your instructions.*

     The Lunar Systems Manager must be broadcasting the message to everything in the area, he thougnt. All Randall had to do was send a message back. He almost did so, but then he paused. The Elmton priests were a lot closer than this Lunar machine, and the moment he sent a reply he would be giving away his location. The priests would catch him within minutes, and this Lunar machine would know that if it was as smart as the priests. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was just some simple machine that was merely obeying the instructions he'd given it and unable to understand why he couldn't reply. Except that yama666 would only have affected it if it had possessed the CRES code, which would mean that it had to be fairly sophisticated. At least as intelligent as a human. Right? So what was going on?