The Humanoids- The Complete Tetralogy

by Jack Williamson

  “Without them, our future—without them, friends, we have no future. Our uranium and thorium will be exhausted. The promise of Malili has already faded, its tempting riches denied us by its hostile life and savage people, by its total deadliness. Our choice is simple—paradise or death.

  “Think well, friends!”

  Beaming with that unbelievable youth and charm, he bounded off the platform. A staggered silence hung behind him, unbroken until the Bridgemen surged to their feet, most of them applauding madly, but a few yelling questions he hadn’t stayed to answer. Order of a sort came slowly back, spreading around one lawmaker who said he had been aboard the Fortune.

  “Fellow shipfolk!” At last he claimed attention. “Please calm yourselves. We’ve no reason for alarm. The humanoids, I assure you, were never the devils of those unfortunate legends, but simply the best of all possible machines. The most efficient, the most versatile, the most powerful machines ever invented, They repair and replace themselves. The service they offer is totally free. They can’t harm any human being, because they’re all controlled by a higher law than ours, wisely designed to keep them faithful forever.”

  “Then why are we here?” some skeptic shouted. “Why didn’t our forefathers stay to adore them?”

  “The records are lost.” He shrugged. “If our ancestors ever had any actual complaint against them, you must recall that the humanoids they encountered were early models that may have been less perfect than these.

  “In the last thousand years, we’re informed, they have improved themselves enormously. Their powers of motion and perception have been multiplied. Their computer plexus has become a true galactic brain. The annihilation of matter gives them literally limitless energy, which they devote to human good.”

  Smiling benignly, he waited for a murmur to subside.

  “Though I understand your apprehensions, I have seen these new humanoids. I’ve seen their universe, where many trillion human beings live their lives in perfect happiness and ideal peace, supported in bounteous abundance by trillions of willing machines—”

  Keth was on his feet, seeking a way out of the jam in the gallery, but the ringing words caught him again:

  “—surprises waiting for us. Many of us were elderly when we boarded the Fortune. Some of us infirm or ill. You’ll observe that the humanoids have healed us. Understanding the human mechanism far better than we ever did, they tend it with skills never known to human medicine—”

  Overwhelmed, Keth escaped from the chamber.

  21

  Prime Directive “To serve and obey and guard men from harm.” This law of the humanoids, built into their central plexus and zealously defended from change, was meant to make them the unfailing servants and the ultimate saviors of mankind.

  Keth stumbled out into the corridor, feeling battered. The Navarch’s story was starkly incredible to him, but most of the Bridgemen had swallowed it whole. The old war against the humanoids had seemed a forlorn cause before. Now, clearly, it was lost.

  With no actual purpose left, he wandered through the mobs in the capital tunnels and rotundas, listening for what he could learn. Here and there he came upon others who had seen the humanoid universe, each set apart by that glow of joyous vigor.

  “—if you had heard what they promised me!”

  A lean, dynamic man with a Vorn Voyager’s badge and a Bridgeman’s cap was evangelizing a knot of gaping listeners.

  “As a young man, I’d wanted to become an artist. Without hope, really. Kai has never had much use for art, because the struggle for survival has never left us anything to spare. My own dreams denied, I did what I had to. I suppose people have envied the status I was able to gain in the ship and the fleet, but to me it was always dull drudgery. Now the humanoids have released me for the career I always longed for.”

  He glimpsed others, all radiant with that bewildering bliss, marching oat with groups of excited converts to carry the news to the media, to ship departments and fleet offices, to cities and villages all across Kai, and even to the Zone. At one crowded comer, Commodore Zoor was on a news holo, announcing the advent of the new humanoids. Despite the fat, even he looked fitter, his puffy features grown somehow commanding.

  —total happiness!” Still hesitant and high, his nasal voice had acquired a new fluency and power. “The humanoids ask for nothing. They bring us everything. Friends, you’ll learn to love them—”

  Keth pushed out of the crowd and drifted blankly on, lost in thoughts of Chelni Vorn. Had she, too, come back transformed into an evangelist for the humanoids? Her image aching in his memory, he wanted to call Vara Vorn to ask if she was there. Half angry at himself for the impulse, he shrugged it off. She was doubtless now part of Zelyk’s total happiness.

  It struck him that he must report to Cyra and his father. He found a holo booth and dialed their borrowed villa. For a long time there was no answer. Cyra came on at last, looking ravaged and deathly.

  “Keth, don’t!” Her hushed voice was desperate. “You’ll give us away.”

  “I’m at a public booth—”

  “They’re smarter than you are.”

  “What have they done to the Navarch and—”

  “Euphoride, maybe.”

  “What can we—”

  “Try to hide. Wait for a chance.”

  “Can I—”

  “Get rid of your compass, where they won’t find it.”

  “I want to help—”

  “What can you do?” Her whisper rasped with savage scorn. “They’ll be everywhere. They know everything. They can do anything.”

  “Tell my father—”

  “Get off the line—now! Don’t call again. We won’t be here.”

  Her haggard image winked out.

  Stumbling away from the booth, he tried to understand. They must be as utterly stunned as he was. When the humanoids came swarming down from space, Bridgeman Greel’s reluctant aid would surely end; he might even turn them in. There was nothing left for them to do, certainly nothing he could do for them.

  Yet he felt a bitter need for his father’s sternly silent courage and her own warm wisdom. He had lost them, just when he was coming to know them. To prove his love, he could do no more than avoid them. The unfairness of it rankled.

  With no goal left, he plodded on, more and more bewildered by the hysterical elation of the crowds in the tunnels. Excited shipmen stood clotted around the news holos, shouting down occasional skeptics about the ultimate goodness of the humanoids. Mobs were sacking a market, tossing quota cards and tokens into the gutters. At one riotous bar drinks were on the house, because everything would soon be free. At a shipyard gate, however, a fleet executive was begging workers to stay long enough to ready spacedecks for the tachyonic transports.

  Bleakly, he wished he were back on Malili, still with Bosun Brong, planning a plunge into the jungle to search for a braintree—and for Nera Nyin. He lost himself in a longing dream of her. In that last sleepy sentence, when he bent to kiss her goodbye, she had begged him to come back to her.

  If only he could . . .

  It was late when he got back to his own shabby tunnel, now nearly deserted. Cyra’s terse warning had left him afraid of a trap, but he had to do something about the tachyon compass. Breathless, gripping the tiny weapon she had made him, he pushed inside. The dingy room was empty, the holo flashing. He punched for the message.

  “Keth, darling!” It was Chelni. Her hair looked darker and sleeker and longer, her eager eyes brighter. Aglow with that radiant joy the humanoids somehow ignited, she had never seemed so lovely. “I must see you, dear. Come to me at Vara Vorn. Hurry, won’t you?”

  He replayed it twice, uncertain what to make of such an unreserved invitation. In all their lifetime of friendship, she had never quite forgotten that he was not a Vorn, had never seemed so freely unrestrained, never so eager to see him.

  His heart was suddenly thumping. Though he had already heard far too much about the mechanical enchantm
ents of the humanoid universe, her burnished beauty had seized his emotions. The weariness of the long day forgotten, he pried a ventilator grill off the wall and pushed the compass up the duct and out of sight. The grill replaced, he changed his shirt and rode the tube to Meteor Gap.

  The great winter gates of Vara Vorn stood open wide, as if to welcome him. Outside the medallioned summer gates, he paused again. A breath of apprehension brushed him, but he drew his shoulders straight and touched the bell.

  “Barling!”

  Chelni herself came darting out through the tall silver doors, looking taller than he recalled her, her firm chin not quite so stubborn, her eager face more vivid. In a sheer scarlet lounging robe, more daring than she had ever worn, her figure seemed finer, her ripe breasts higher.

  He stood breathless, caught by her new allure.

  “Keth! Darling!” She caught both his hands with hers. “Come on in!”

  She pulled him against her, opening lips lifted to his. Sheer astonishment held him rigid until she turned, laughing lightly at his hesitation, to pull him inside.

  “If I seem different, dear, it’s because I’ve seen the humanoids.” The voice was still her own, yet stronger than he recalled it, more musical, more intimate. “I want you to meet them as soon as we can arrange it. When you know them, you’ll never be the same.”

  Certainly, she was not the same. He had stopped in the vaulted entry hall, staring at her in spite of himself, but she gave him no time for wonder.

  “Let’s have your jacket.”

  Her bare arms were suddenly around him, helping slip it off. Her scent drenched him, a penetrating musk, too sweet and too strong.

  “Darling, don’t you like the difference?” Her slow tones caressed him with a husky warmth he had never heard. “You know I’ve always loved you, Keth, ever since I first saw you in the swabber class at Greenpeak. I used to grieve because I couldn’t be more free with you—because of all I owed the family and the fleet. We can both be grateful that the humanoids never demand such painful choices between duty and desire.

  “So let me see you, darling!”

  Tossing his jacket to a chair, she caught his shoulders to hold him facing her. Her wide eyes swept him, black pupils dilating.

  “If you feel overwhelmed, I can understand.” She pulled him impulsively against her to brush his mouth with hers. “I remember how I felt when I first saw them trooping aboard the Fortune. Lovely, really, but so new they frightened me.”

  She released his shoulders but clung to his hand.

  “Darling, you look worn out. Hungry, too. This must have been a dazing day. Let’s find something to restore you.”

  She led him out of the entry, down into the magnificent winter hall where tall holos of Vorn admirals and bridgemen frowned across glass-cased models of Vorn tunnel-cutters and Vorn reactors and Vorn spacecraft. He grinned faintly at its gloomy splendor, recalling his miserable discomfort at her birthday party, so long ago in the summer hall. She pulled him quickly closer, and her quizzical smile made her look fourteen again, at least for an instant.

  “All ours tonight,” she whispered. “My aunt’s away at the Navarch’s all-night celebration, and the staff has a holiday.”

  In the largest kitchen he had ever seen, she piled a tiny table with meats and fruits and sweets his quota card had never allowed, and opened a bottle of sparkling wine she said had been a gift from the Navarch himself.

  Though the juices were flowing in his mouth, after the first few bites he forgot to eat. She sat too close. Her perfume was too powerful, her scarlet wrapper too sheer, her whole allure too overwhelming. Overcome by everything, he couldn’t stop staring.

  “What’s wrong, dear?” She leaned disturbingly nearer. “You aren’t afraid of me?”

  “Of the humanoids, I am.” In spite of himself, he shrank a little from her. “Nurse Vesh used them to frighten me when I was very small, and I’ve been training all my life to fight them.

  I simply can’t believe they’re so wonderful and good as the Navarch says. Everybody on the Fortune”—he was trying to smile, but dread crept into his voice—“you seem—brainwashed.”

  “The wrong word, dear.” Her wry frown was both reproving and entrancing. “An ugly term, unfair to them, and even to us.” Gravely, she filled their glasses. “I was afraid you wouldn’t understand i. That’s why I sent for you. Let’s drink to the Prime Directive.

  “Darling, it has set us free!”

  22

  Eclipse Phenomenon caused by the shadow of one celestial body cast upon another. Malili, far larger, causes regular monthly eclipses, usually total over all Kai. Eclipses on Malili, due to the smaller shadow of Kai, are rare, brief, and only partial.

  He had seldom tasted wine, because students got no quota points for alcohol. He sipped uncertainly. Not so sweet as he expected, it burned his tongue and stung his nostrils. A bright, exciting aftertaste lingered in his mouth.

  “I’m terribly sorry we had to quarrel, back at Crater Lake.” Her voice sank, huskily, gently penitent. “It hurt me to leave you, Keth, but I had to think of duty to my people and my place. A cruel choice, but one we can undo now. Because we Vorns no longer have to lead the fleets. Isn’t that a splendid change?”

  Uncomfortably, he nodded

  “Darling!” Her luminous eyes shone brighter with tears. “Can t you forgive me?”

  “Have I been wrong?” He leaned toward her, till that old dread checked him. “If I dared believe the humanoids are what the Navarch says—”

  “I’ll convince you.”

  “If you can . . .” He sat straighter, grasping at a thread of unexpected hope. “There’s so much I want to know. Can you tell me if the humanoids have probes or stations on Mulili?”

  “Pure fable!” In scorn of the notion, she tossed her sleek hair back. “The sort of silly myth we must expose. Along with the paranoid suspicions of people like your father that harmless people are humanoid agents. The native girl you fell for at the Academy—whatever her name was. Or the funny little man who uses that quaint old title—Bosun, is it?”

  He wondered how much she knew of Bosun Brong.

  “There are facts beneath the myth.” Frowning against her mockery, he spoke too quickly. “The humanoids are rhodomagnetic, and rhodo sources have been located on Malili—”

  “Where on Malili?” Her head bent abruptly toward him, wide eyes peering, pupils shrunk to hard black points. “Who detected them?”

  A shock of fear had frozen him. Was she already the sort of secret agent she had been scoffing at, somehow trained to serve the humanoids and now returned to infiltrate and undermine the defenses of Kai? Had he already betrayed Cyra and his father?

  “My mother—” Desperately, he fumbled for words that might repair his indiscretion. “She thought the braintrees were rhodo—”

  “Braintrees?” Her tight voice sharpened. “What are they?”

  “The natives call them”—he checked himself, in fear of another betrayal—“call them something else. I forget the word.”

  “Why did she believe they are rhodomagnetic?”

  “I couldn’t guess.” He tried to make his shrug seem casual. “Maybe something in the old Crew files. I never knew.”

  “Did she have equipment? Actual rhodomagnetic equipment?”

  “I doubt it. No point in wondering now. Whatever she had was lost with her in the jungle.”

  For another breathless moment she leaned to watch him, silent and intent. Trying to smile, he felt his stiff limbs tremble, tasted cold terror in his throat. He couldn’t speak or move or even think.

  “If that’s all . . .!” She drew slowly back, speaking more softly. “You had me alarmed for a moment. You see, the humanoids have been attacked by misguided scientists trying to change their wise Prime Directive, or even to stop them altogether. Something too dreadful even to think about!”

  Shuddering, she tossed her dark head.

  “Let’s relax. Forget about the h
umanoids.”

  She refilled their glasses.

  “Trust me, Keth,” she begged him softly. “It’s so really grand to be back with you. In love again—the way love should be, with no need to worry about anything or anybody else.”

  “What about the Commodore?”

  “My Cousin Zelyk?” Her tone turned hard with contempt. “A stupid lout all his life. Reeking with scent to cover up his body stink and slobbering with his disgusting lust. Some things the humanoids can’t change. He’s still a stupid lout.”

  She slid his glass toward him.

  “So let’s forget the Commodore.” Her voice sank. “Let’s talk about you. I guess you’re a graduate now. Tell me what you’ve been doing.”

  He sipped cautiously, searching for something that would not endanger the Lifecrew. Again that hot sharpness lingered in his mouth.

  “I left the Academy,” he said. “Went out to the Zone. Hoping to find some clue to the fate of the Fortune ”

  “Hoping to rescue me?” Her warm hand covered his. “Thank you, darling!” In a moment she was graver, her face speculative. “I imagine the humanoids will want to bring everybody home from the Zone. They won’t need anything from Malili. The news will be a jolt to my dear uncle. I can imagine his face when he meets his first humanoid.”

  Chuckling softly, she bent closer.

  “But we were talking about you.” Her smile grew tender. “I need to know you better, Keth. You and your family. I barely met your father and Cyra. Where are they now?”

  The question disturbed him a little, because she seemed too eager, leaning too close, her eyes too intent. He reached for his glass to make time to think, but suddenly he wanted no more of its hot tartness. Could the wine be drugged?

  His hand shook, and a few drops spilled.