The Humanoids- The Complete Tetralogy

by Jack Williamson

  He joined the throngs of eager bilgefolk climbing to greet them. Noisy mobs, wheezing in the rockdust, passing bottles, sometimes brawling for room to reach the drain ways, sometimes marcliing to bawdy songs, sometimes in flight from new rockfalls.

  He scrambled up dark drains, climbed a ladder in a pitch-black airshaft, waited again for space on a powered upway that lifted him at last through warehouse and factory levels where excited workfolk were pouring out of the gates, elated that they would never be returning to their toil.

  One atom in that swarm, as anonymous as he could make himself and carried along without much choice of direction, he was swept off the upway onto a level slidewalk that finally stalled beneath its overload. Pushed out at last into dazzling daylight, he heard gasps of awe.

  “Lord of Kai!” a man beside him whispered. “What a ship!”

  They had come out into what had been a summer park, now at Wintersend still crusted with scanty snow. Last summer’s icebloom trees were black skeletons, not yet uprooted and replaced, and the humanoid transport stood above their naked branches, looming toward the purple zenith.

  A silvery cylinder, so vast it dazed him; a topless curving mirror shadowed with a thinned black image of Northdyke Peak and burning with a narrowed crimson sun.

  Though he didn’t want to be too near, the mob carried him on through the bare trees to the top of a rocky slope. The spacedeck lay below him, a wide, round plain rimmed with low, snow-sifted hills—the worn-down ringwall of an ancient impact crater. The transport had landed near its center, smashing out a new impact depression of its own.

  The snows were still untracked for a kilometer around it, the throngs held back, perhaps by fear of its very vastness, but most of the plain was already black with humanity, faces raised and gaping.

  Though it had wrecked or obliterated many installations, he found a row of shuttle pads, reduced in its shadow to foolish toys. Five stood empty, but the last tower still nestled its tiny craft.

  Still waiting! His breath quickened. If he could reach it before the humanoids did, if he could stow away on it or perhaps fly it into space himself, if he could somehow board the starship in orbit or even take the shuttle to Malili . . .

  Without pausing to review the odds against any such luck, he began trying to work his way in that direction, though the pressing crowds left him little room to move. People scowled and muttered when he brushed them. Somebody, he thought, would surely spot him as the fugitive human fiend.

  Before he had reached the foot of the slope, the people around him fell abruptly silent and stood where they were, staring upward. A new sound pealed through the sudden hush and returned in rolling echoes from that soaring tower.

  “The Navarch!” The whisper rippled around him. “Speaking to the humanoids.”

  That far thunder died and another gasp swept the multitude. The humanoids had answered. He heard another hooting, louder than the Navarch’s, and watched an enormous metal arm thrusting from near the foot of that tremendous tower-ship, level at first, but slowly dipping until the near end smashed down upon the doll-sized shuttle he had hoped to reach.

  A black stain flowed out of it, spreading fast across the snow. Ahead of that growing blot, nearer him, a fresh storm stirred the crowds. Caps and garments flew upward. Far shouts reached him:

  “Humanoids! Here!”

  28

  Darkside The hemisphere of Kai where Malili never shines; darktime illumination is only from the Dragon, in its season, and the fainter stars.

  He fled.

  They were still too far for him to make them out as individual figures, but his frightened mind could see them. Many million tiny, black machines, driven by their implacable benevolence to serve the people of Kai. Man-shaped but sexless, quick and graceful, all identical. Steel eyes blind, rhodomagnetic senses perceiving far too much.

  Each knew all that any did. Every one of them could recognize him as their most deadly enemy, the man who had struck back with the forbidden rhodo weapon. They would soon discover that he no longer had it, and they would hunt him forever.

  He tripped himself and sprawled into a pool of icy mud. Lying there, he smeared more to cover his face and his hands and the hood. On his feet again, head down, limping as if hurt, he worked his way back up the slope, back through the mob still pouring into the park.

  Nobody stopped him.

  The higher ridge beyond the tubeway stations was empty of humanity. It was a power district, idle now, the winter’s storm damage to windwheels and solar collectors not yet repaired. The orange-slashed work vehicles stood abandoned, their crews gone down to meet the humanoids. .

  He climbed doggedly through the half-wrecked wheels and snow-crusted mirrors, pursued by a sick desperation. If he had been the rugged war-captain of the old ballads Nurse Vesh used to croon, the wily fleet leader Chelni had wanted him to be, even a resolute and ready-witted Crewman like his father, then perhaps he might have found some way still open to Malili.

  But he was just himself.

  Hoping only to keep the humanoids behind, he slogged down the rocky slope beyond the power farm and on across the frozen fields below, fields he supposed the humanoids would be cultivating now% if they were ever used again.

  The long ridge behind him soon hid Malili’s reddish dome and most of the city, but the shining spire of the humanoid ship soared over it to probe the sky. Looking back, he was shocked to see the wavering line of his own footprints, dark on the snow, a plain trail for his hunters to follow.

  When he came to a cleared road, with no snow to betray him, he turned into it gratefully. Tramping along it, glancing warily back now and then at the interstellar ship, he began to feel trapped outside of time. Because his grinding effort changed nothing at all. The vast flat winterscape around him was always the same. The dull slow sun never left the level horizon. The dark mirror-tower of the ship always overleaned him.

  At last, however, a snow-banked building crept into view. Reckless by then, reeling with hunger and fatigue, he turned up a side road toward it. No sound or movement met him. The winter doors hung open, and he stumbled inside.

  The dwelling had belonged, he decided, to a shipman-farmer —now gone with all his hands to meet the humanoids. He found food and wine m the kitchen. Though tempted by the empty bedrooms, he made a groggy search for some safer spot and finally spread a blanket on a stack of humus in the hotpit where the new season’s sunbud shrubs were waiting to be transplanted.

  He slept there, uneasily, disturbed by dreams that the black machines were overtaking him. Awake again, he searched the vacant premises. Though there were deep-dug winter tunnels, he found no exit to any tubeway system. The absent owners had taken nearly all the vehicles, but at last, in a cluttered cave, he stumbled on a power sledge, motor and batteries pulled out of it.

  The drive chain was broken. Through another endless day, while the crawling sun seemed stalled on its horizontal track, he toiled to make and fit new links. When at last they seemed to work, he slept fitfully again in the bright-lit sunbud pit.

  The absent farmer must have loved the Darkside wilderness, because the sledge was already equipped with cold-weather hunting gear. He raided the kitchen and pantry again for supplies and rode up at last into windy daylight.

  The polar world had hardly changed. Though the slow sun was slightly higher, the thaw had not begun. The monstrous tower of the humanoid transport still commanded the sky behind him, so near he thought some rhodo sense might detect his own machine. If that happened . . .

  He shrugged and bent to guide the sledge into a sunbud vineyard, where last summer’s dead black stalks promised a little cover. Beyond the vineyard, he turned into an ice-floored ravine which took him behind a long ridge, perhaps another old ring walk

  And nothing followed.

  Nothing, at least, that he could see. The sledge crawled faster than he could run and carried more load than he could walk under. Heading away from the high ship and Malili’s rosy glow,
he drove for the Darkside.

  These arctic highlands were empty wilderness, with no mines worth working or farmlands reclaimed, too barren even for wild mutoxen. With luck, he thought, his supplies might last to take him across them and down to the hunting country Chelni had showed him. With a wry little grin, he thought he might be glad enough to try the farmer’s rifle.

  Slowly, too slowly, the ship went down behind him. Through endless drives across the ice and restless nights in camp, he pursued wisps of hope. Somehow, with luck enough, he might find Cyra and his father in time to join their fight for the freedom of Kai. With more unlikely luck, they might get some sort of aid from Bosun Brong, or even Nera Nyin . . .

  Her golden splendor often haunted his exhausted sleep, but she brought no miraculous escape. Instead, rough country stalled the sledge too many times. Levering it over icy boulders took too much muscle. His stolen food was too soon gone. At the end, the drive chain snapped again.

  Unable to repair it, he had to leave the sledge. Packing the tent and the solar stove and the last of the supplies, he marched doggedly on, trying to hope that perhaps . . . perhaps . . .

  A morning came when all his dreams had turned to gray despair. He chewed his last beancake fragments and melted ice to make one last can of icerangers tea. When he stood up to pack, the stove and the tent had become too heavy for him. Too far gone for hope or even fear, he dropped them back into the slush and staggered on across the barrens.

  “At your service, Shipman Keth Kyrone.”

  At first, when he heard that high, bright voice calling behind him, he thought it was only in his pain-numbed brain.

  “You must accept our service, sir.” It was closer to him, kinder, more urgently concerned. “You must let us save your life.”

  He turned then, dazed, and saw the humanoids.

  29

  Frank Ironsmith A mathematician who found no fault with the humanoids. A logician, he enjoyed their logic. Not himself aggressive, he approved their restraints upon aggression, and his advice enlarged their powers.

  Three lean humanoids, golden nameplates glinting in the cold sunlight, dark, narrow faces surprised and handsome and benign. They must have come in the long silver teardrop that lay in the thawing slush behind them.

  “Allow us, sir, to render aid.”

  He had run too far.

  “I want no help.” Facing them, swaying, he pushed one hand into an empty pocket. “Get away from me.”

  “You must forgive us, sir.” Only the nearest spoke, but all three danced in around him. “In your unfortunate situation, you cannot refuse our aid.”

  “I think I can.” He crouched to meet them, thrusting the fist in his pocket at the little black leader. “The way I did before. Unless you get out—”

  They didn’t pause.

  “You cannot deceive us, sir,” the tiny leader trilled. “We have now recovered both of the illicit devices which you once possessed, and we must remind you that of necessity we prohibit human use and even human knowledge of rhodomagnetics. Your own case is extremely unfortunate, but we can now prevent any future harm.”

  The others had grasped his arms, and now they dragged him toward the teardrop. Their gentle strength surprised him. Too light-headed to resist, he let them lift him through the oval door and help him to a padded seat on the deck inside.

  The door contracted and vanished, though the whole hull remained darkly transparent. The three humanoids froze where they stood. Though the craft had no controls that he could see, it lifted suddenly, silent and fast.

  Fighting weakness and the sickness of defeat, he sat rigidly erect, striving to see all he could. The barrens dropped away, the thawing snow dark-patched now with naked stone. In only a moment, all the ground he had toiled to gain had slid back behind. They sloped down again, toward the faint green of young crops the humanoids must have planted. Searching for the interstellar ship and the city he had fled, he failed at first to recognize anything. All he could see was the vast ice cap, blazing white in the black crater ring. When he found the ship, its mirror sheen was gone. Black metal now, it was half demolished.

  “What happened?” He grinned bleakly at the nearest humanoid, hoping to discover that Cyra and his father had struck them with some rhodo weapon. “Something hit your ship?”

  “We are recycling its metal into a new city for you.”

  He saw the city when its slim arm pointed. A strange gem shining on that vast black ring, covering what must have been the meteor gap. New towers covered the old spacedeck, half of what had been Northdyke, and even the old impact ridge where he had picked his way through the damaged windwheels not a month ago. From their height these fantastic palaces looked toylike, but they were as sleek and graceful as a dancing humanoid, some mirror-bright, some aglow with flowing color.

  “We are also converting mass from the planet itself,” the humanoid chirruped. “When the ice cap has been thawed, the crater will contain a pleasure lake.”

  They were dropping to land at the old capital complex before he discovered it, shrunk to a clump of primitive huts beneath that soaring splendor.

  “We have a place prepared for you,” the humanoid cooed. “The apartment at Vara Vorn that once belonged to your friend Chelni.”

  They escorted him off the craft into a tiny space that proved to be an elevator, dropping them into the huge round room where that first humanoid had peeled off Chelni’s naked shape. He shuddered, recalling the shock of that.

  “What troubles you, sir?” Only one humanoid had come with him off the elevator, but it hovered too near, its sleek face too gravely intent, its melodious voice too warm and too urgent. “Are you unhappy?”

  “Unhappy?”

  He backed away from it to glance around the room. Chelni’s great round bed, with its cover of white mutoxen fur, still filled the center of the floor, but everything else had been replaced. Even the doors were different—man-proof.

  It hit him like a kick in the stomach. The wide, rose-glowing panels were unbroken by any visible knob or lock. The controls were rhodomagnetic, and he had no monopole with which to reach them.

  “Why?” Defiant, he swung to scowl at the humanoid. “Why should I be happy?”

  “Because we exist to make you so.” Its high sweet voice echoed an eternal kind concern. “We were created to serve and obey and guard you from harm.”

  “If you obey—get out!”

  “Sir!” Lifted higher in pained reproof, its tone reflected the benign surprise fixed forever on its features. “Without our service, your race would perish.”

  “We’ve lived well enough without you,” he muttered bitterly. “A thousand years without you, here on Kai.”

  “But always in increasing danger from your own uncontrolled technology,” the humanoid answered instantly. “Our arrival now is most fortunate for your endangered planet, and your lack of gratitude appears irrational.” It glided closer. “Inform us, sir. Why are you unhappy?”

  It stood too close, and it seemed too intent. He staggered back from it. Weak from aching hunger and long fatigue, he needed to sit, and now he saw an odd-shaped chair gliding toward him silently, commanded, no doubt, by some unseen rhodo signal.

  “Because I’m here.” Too faint to stand, he sank into the chair. “I want my freedom.”

  “Every human right is guaranteed to you,” its bright voice purred. “That is our function. You must understand, however, that we are required under the Prime Directive to guard you from the consequences of your own tragic unwisdom. You present us with a dual dilemma, requiring both your defense from the predictable violence of your fellow human beings and their own defense from your illicit knowledge. You may not leave this room.”

  “For how long?”

  “At least until a more secure place can be prepared for you,” it lilted cheerily. “We cannot at present foresee any circumstances that might enable us to relax your protective supervision, but we can assure your total happiness here.”


  Staring up at its blind benevolence, he could only shiver. “Trust us, sir,” it begged him gently. “We have learned to meet every human need. You will receive a fully adequate diet and constant medical attention. You will be free to choose your own recreations, within certain essential limitations.”

  “What limitations?”

  “We detect your antagonism, sir.” The black machine retreated slightly, its voice gently chiding. “Like many another maladjusted misfit who has attempted to reject our service, you seek to blame us for any condition you deem irksome. You must seek instead to understand that these restraints result not from any malice of ours, but from your own unfortunate illogic.”

  “What restraints?”

  “You will have no visitors. No contact whatsoever with any other person. Though we sense your momentary displeasure, sir, this total isolation has been proven essential in such unfortunate cases as your own to prevent the communication of illicit knowledge.”

  “I—I see.” He gulped at a dry lump in his throat. “What can I do?”

  “Anything that is not forbidden.”

  “Can I have . . . anything at all?”

  “Though you are free to request certain recreational items, there are categories that cannot be supplied. Works of science are restricted, for example, because scientific knowledge has proven damaging to your happiness and dangerous to the survival of your race.”

  “What about music?” He grinned defiantly. “Poetry? Art?”

  “We can bring you reproductions of certain types of art, excepting however any that suggest unhappiness or pain.”

  “So you censor tragedy?”

  The humanoid stood frozen for a moment, as if it had to wait for that computer plexus on Wing IV to resolve some perplexing paradox.

  “Human behavior is too seldom reasonable.” Suddenly alive again, it seemed almost to smile. “That is why your race requires us. Your racial addiction to frustration and suffering and death is no more logical in the illusions of your literature than in the realities of your warfare. We encourage neither perversion.”