“Man,” said Bartok, “is on the way out.”
“Weight out the consequences,” snapped the creature promptly, “and you’ll find your remark substantially correct. Man too is correct—or, to put it differently, wrecked at the core.”
“Where did you learn English?” asked Bartok feebly. He still didn’t know. And on the answer to that question hung, he felt, a great deal.
But before the robot could make some horrible pun about “Where” and “wear out,” one of the larger metal men entered, with a grave salutation to Bartok.
“I,” it said, “am math-minder 817. Come with me, please. Subtend angularly this surd improperly vectorial.” Piercing through the mathematical metaphors, Bartok realized that he was to say good-bye to the conversationalist, because he was going on a long journey.
“It’s been nice meeting you,” he said helplessly.
“Thanks,” said the conversationalist. “And it’s been nice metalling you.” Another pun, worked in double reverse—surely a fitting note upon which to terminate the strange intellectual companionship of the cheerfully intent killer Bartok and the grimly humorous time-passer, chat-minder 32.
In the corridor the math-minder volunteered: “Bartok, you unfortunate particle, you’re going to investigate some teleology.”
“That being the science of first causes,” brooked the Commander. “Do you mean that at last I’m getting to see your chief?”
“Not chief. First cause, I think you said. Accelerate through this aperture.” The robot’s paw gently shoved him through a very heavy metal door. Bartok found himself face-to-face with a very young man.
“Hello, kid,” he said. “What brings you here? Captured?”
“Sort of,” admitted the boy. “You’re Mr. Bartok, aren’t you?”
“Only in jest. Everybody calls me Barty.” He was trying to put this young man at his ease; presumably he was destined for the same ordeal as he. Prestige of the genus homo demanded that he keep a stiff upper lip.
“Okay—Barty. I suppose you know why you’re here?” The Commander stared in amazement. The boy had mounted a flight of steps to a throne-like affair that took up most of one wall. “I suppose you know why you’re here?”
“Wha-a-at? Son, who the hell are you?”
The boy sagged down into the seat. “Unwilling master,” he said, “of the most powerful army in the universe.”
“BARTY!” screamed someone.
“Babe!” Bartok screamed right back, catching the girl in mid-air as she hurled herself into his arms. After a few preliminaries he demanded, “Now what goes on here?”
“I’ll introduce you,” said Babe MacNeice, “Barry, this is Peter Allistair, from Capella. He’s a bit young—twenty—but he’s all right. It’s not his fault, any of it.”
“How can that be?” demanded the Commander. “If you’re their boss? Do you know what your ships are doing?”
The boy sagged deeper into the chair, a haunted look on his face. “I sure do,” he said. “And I’d give my right arm to stop it. But they won’t believe me. I made the things, but they won’t believe me when I say I want them to stop their colonization.”
“You and who else?” asked Bartok. “You and who else made these billion or so robots?”
“I did,” said the boy defiantly. “At least I did indirectly. You know there’s a law against robot-experimentation—or was. Well, I couldn’t let well enough alone. I had an idea about robots, so I came to Arided, which was the least populated section that I could find, and I built the damned thing.”
“Built what?”
“A robot whose function was to manufacture robots. And that was the fatal error. You know how resolute those things are in carrying out their jobs.” Bartok, thinking of three days of solid punning, nodded absently. “Well, this thing would have killed me if I’d tried to stop it. It said it had a divine mission to perform. So it built another flock of robot-manufacturing robots, which did the same.
“Then they began to branch out and make ordinary fetchers, mathematical workers and a few fighters. I got interested and designed a ship from the math workers’ figures. And a stray remark I dropped to one of the proteans—those are the robot-makers—about fanaticism gave them the idea of turning out fighters with souls bonded over to me. I swear I didn’t mean it that way! But look at the result.
“Every week or so one of the foreman robots brings me a list of the suns that are now under my imperial domination. And I can’t explain to them because they aren’t trouble-shooters specialized to straighten out a mess like this. And the proteans can’t make a trouble-shooter because they aren’t the originals, who simply manufactured for its own sake. The originals are all worn out and scrapped, and the ones that are turning out robots now are also fanatics with the idea of conquest for my greater glory.
“It’s a chain of events that’s been twisted around and tied to its tail. If you can find a way to stop it, let me know.”
Entered a grim-faced fetching-foreman robot. “Worshipful master,” it intoned, “your dominion is extended this week over twenty new suns. Accept this list, your children beseech.” He handed to Allistair a sheet of names.
The boy let it fall to the floor. “Listen,” he said passionately to the robot. “I don’t want any more sheets like this. I don’t want to conquer any suns or planets. I want the proteans to stop making robots. And above all I want you damned hunks of tin to stop calling me worshipful master! I’m not worshipful and I’m not anybody’s master.”
The foreman said methodically: “Worshipful master, despite your folly we are loyal and shall make you lord of all things that are. It is for your own good that we act. Do not forget the day when you said to the great protean 27: ‘Fanaticism may be a good thing. If you machines had more of it, things’d be a lot easier for me. If I wanted I could be master of the universe with you machines, given that touch of lunatic bravery.’ ” The foreman stumped out of the room.
“Where they get those ideas I don’t know!” shrilled Allistair. “I haven’t the faintest idea of what their machinery’s like. My God, what I set in motion when I built protean 1!”
“The trouble is,” said Bartok broodingly, “that you have all the fire-power you need and no control whatsoever over it. And because of this lack of control you are now waging the most successful invasion of all time. I don’t blame you—I know the spot you’re in. You say you don’t know a thing about these late-model robots?”
“Not a thing,” almost sobbed the young man. “Not a thing. About twenty robot generations have gone by since I built protean 1, and they’ve been evolving like wildfire. A math robot thinks up a new law of electromagnetics, takes it to a physics robot, who applies it and takes it to a protean, who incorporates it into the next series of machines. That’s the way it perpetuates itself. They invented death-rays, tractor rays—I don’t know what-all!”
“You shouldn’t have said fanaticism, son,” worried Bartok. “That was the one concept that couldn’t have been cancelled out by another suggestion. Because a full-fledged fanatic brooks no obstruction whatsoever to achieve his aim. Not even such a trifling detail as the fact that policy, orders and authority are opposed to that aim.”
“And,” said Babe, “these robots are the most full-fledged anythings you could hope to see. Did you meet one of their full-fledged humorists, Barty?” She shuddered. “Back on Earth we’d lynch a comedian who never let you catch a breath between gags.”
“What’m I going to do?” asked the young man simply. “I can’t have this on my conscience. I’ll blow my brains out.”
“Babe,” said Bartok. “That package I gave you—still got it?”
“Yes, you old home-spun philosopher.” She produced the package. “How many more to go in this Chinese ring trick?”
“Only one. Open it up.” Curiously she tore off the seals and read from the neatly-printed card that was in the last of the boxes: “If you’ve given up hope be ready to die. If you haven�
�t, try misdirection.” She stared at the Commander. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“The purpose of the little boxes was simply to jog your imagination in tight spots. There isn’t any cure-all formula except the thing you carry in your skull. The human brain is a marvelous mechanism . . .” He turned abruptly on Allistair. “Take me to see one of your proteans, son.”
CHAPTER IV.
“MAKE tracks, Babe!” the Commander yelled, sprinting for the little cruiser in which he had arrived at Arided. He flung himself into the cabin a second after the girl and a split-second before the craft roared into the air.
“We are now,” said Bartok, sprawled comfortably along the floor, “going to see the first and, I hope, the last real space-battle of its kind, fought with rays, disintegrators, ray-screens, inertialess drive and all the lunatic creations that crack-brained authors have been devising for the past few centuries. It is fitting and proper that this war should be fought, because no real lives are going to be lost and it will inevitably end in a stasis, both sides having wiped each other out.”
“But can he put up a real fight?” asked the girl worriedly.
“Remember what I said about the human brain, Babe? It’s bigger and better than any thinking-machinery, however elaborate. It’s Nature’s way, which is often best. Nature’s way was to smash the protean and perform a simple operation that substituted Allistair’s brain for its impulse-mechanism.”
“What happens then?” she asked. “Not that I question that he ought to die in a good cause. He was a nice kid, but it was a flagrant piece of criminal negligence, monkeying with robots.”
“Agreed. So he makes retribution in the best way he can. Those damned protean machines control about half a billion robots apiece after they manufacture them.” He shuddered briefly as he remembered what the protean had looked like. Bartok has expected a neat, man-sized robot; instead it had been a million cubic feet of solid machinery.
The Commander yawned. “So, having taken over this protean’s control factors with his own brain, he is in a position at last to direct the creatures he made. Of course he’ll use his robots to fight the other robots. Here comes the first contact.”
Far to the rear of the speedy craft there was a titanic flaring of lights and colors as two fighting ships met. Unimaginable forces roared from the searchlight-shaped projectors, impinged spectacularly on thinly glowing ray-screens. The ray screens went down after about three minutes of brilliant resistance and the ship vanished in a puff of vapor.
“Ugh! Disintegrators!” said the girl. “So they really had them!”
“Why not? To the mechanical mind everything is possible except commonsense. Instead of negotiating with Allistair they’ll be confident of their superiority. And, fire for fire, they are stronger. Also their tactics are perfect. But young Allistair’s tactics are bound to be faulty, which means that his ships will show up where they couldn’t possibly be and blow whole protean units to hell and gone. His fire-control has the edge on them in that it’s unpredictable.”
Babe’s eyes were astern, on the colossal battles going on; on the forces being released that made a Fleet flagship’s biggest big guns seem feeble. “This part of space,” she said, “will never be the same. It’ll be like trying to plot a course inside the orbit of Mercury. I suggest that you proclaim that fact to the world.”
Bartok grinned. “More speed,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to be caught in one of their fireballs. See that?” He pointed excitedly at a moving fleck of light that had separated itself from a monster flying fort just off the ground. “That thing’s as big as Ceres—and it’s explosive. More speed, Babe, if you value my hide.”
“I do,” she said shortly. “The colonial system, or what’s left of it, is going to need a firm hand to tide over the stresses and strains of this robots’ war.”
“It shouldn’t last for more than a few years,” said Bartok. “When a force like that gets split, they haven’t got time for anything else. And don’t fret about the colonial system. There’s a lot left of it yet, and it’s right in the palm of my hand.”
Babe MacNeice looked hard at the Commander. “If any other man,” she said, “told me that, I’d make it a point to blow up this ship before we touched Earth. But I think you can be trusted.”
“Algol ahead,” said Bartok, pointing to a star-disk off the bow. “The outposts of empire, where they’re chewing their nails about the strange noises and flashes to be seen and heard over the communications systems. We’ll have to evacuate them nearer Alpha Centauri or thereabouts. Can’t chance one of those fireballs hitting a planet of the system!”
He reached for a recorder and began barking orders into the mouthpiece. Before the cylinder was half grooved he had—verbally—evacuated three galactic sectors, reorganized the Intelligence Wing, scrapped the now-obsolete graving-docks where no battlewagon would ever dock again, converted the lighters and tenders of the Fleet into freight ships for emergency use, and begun to draft a new constitution for the All Earth and Colonies Federation.
“That,” said Babe happily, “is the way I like to hear you talk.”
Algol loomed ahead.
The Golden Road
While mysterious voices thunder from the skies and a Name is etched in lightning, Colt fights the battle of Good and Evil high up among the mapless mountains at the roof of the world.
OUT OF THE myth of night and language there come strange tales told over wine. There is a man known as The Three-Cornered Scar who frequents a village spot famed for its wine and raconteurs, both of which are above the average.
The Three-Cornered Scar favored us by a visit to my table and ordering, during the course of his story, five half-bottles of house red to my account. The wine is drunk up and the story told.
CHAPTER I.
COLT WAS tired. He was so bone-broke weary that he came near to wishing he was dead. It would have been easy to die in the snow; heaps in the way seemed to beg for the print of his body. He skirted crevasses that were like wide and hungry mouths.
This was Central Asia, High Pamir, a good thousand miles from any permanent habitation of the human race. The nomadic Kirghiz population had been drained away to the Eastern front, civil and military authorities likewise. Colt himself was the tragic, far-strayed end of the First Kuen-Lung Oil Prospecting Expedition, undertaken by a handful of American volunteers on behalf of the Chungking government.
Estimating generously, his assets were five more days of scanty eating. And an eternity of sleep under the glaring stars of the plateau? . . .
He had struck, somehow, an easier way across the snow-covered, rocky wastes. There was a route to follow, a winding, mazy route that skirted the Alai Range’s jagged foothills and slipped through Tengis-Bai Pass. Old memories of maps and trails swirled through Colt’s tired head; he bore north for no better reason than that he could guide himself by Polaris, low on the horizon. Colt was headed, with a laugh and a curse, for Bokhara.
Colt marched through the first watch of the night, before the smiting cold of space descended on this roof of the world; then he would sleep, twitching with frost. He would wake eight hours later, a stone, a block of wood, to unkink his wretched muscles, shoulder his pack, and march under the naked, brassy sun.
The Parsees said that this High Pamir was the cradle of human life, that from here had sprung the primals who proliferated into white, yellow, black and brown. To the southwest, at the same thirteen-thousand elevation, was the Valley of the Oxus, a green ribbon in the steel gray and bone white of the plateau. To the northeast were the great peaks—Everest, Kinchinjunga, K-4—that started where other mountains ended, shooting from seventeen thousand up to unthinkable heights, sky-piercing.
Night and day scarcely interrupted the flow of his thoughts. His waking fantasies and his dreams alike were brutish, longing for warmth and comfort, bespelled remembrance of palmier days. He woke to find an ear frostbitten, dead, marble white, without sensation, killed by cold.
THERE were animal droppings before him now and then, once a fragment of broken crockery. He doubled his pace, from a slow plod to a loping, long-strided walk that took much of his husbanded wind. Finally he saw the print in a snowbank that spelled man. It was a shod foot’s mark, light and side-stepping. As he watched, a puff of wind drifted it over with dry, gleaming snow.
Colt found a splash of milk against a rock, then the smell of camel clinging about a wiry shrub.
He saw them at last, the tail of a great caravan, and fell fainting into the arms of tall, curious Kirghiz camel drivers. They carried him in a litter until he awoke and could eat, for nothing was so important or unexpected that it could be allowed to break the schedule of the march. Colt opened his eyes to grunts of satisfaction from his bearers. He accepted the hunks of dried meat and bottle of warm tea they gave him, trying to catch enough of the language to offer thanks.
Coming down the line of the caravan was a large Hindu on one of the small Mongolian ponies. He reined beside Colt and asked in French, “How are you? They passed me word. Can you march with us?”
“But yes! It’s like life out of death to find you people here. What can I do to help?”
Collected Short Fiction Page 67
