Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  Slipping and sliding on the rocky surface, the carhunter, wheels spinning, limbs struggling for purchase, came down on the hapless automobile. The Mercedes, sensing the attack at the last moment, put on a burst of speed. The carhunter was able to claw away a portion of its bumper before the Mercedes pulled free, and, with a snort from its double carbs, hurtled down the slope. The carhunter followed, caught up, and launched itself onto the back of the car. There was a wild bellowing from both machines. Then the carhunter had landed on the trunk of the Mercedes and was tearing and rending it, trying, with its long extensible arms, to reach under and break loose one of the vulnerable axles in order to hamstring the mechanical beast. But the Mercedes had armored side panels and a mesh of steel protected its vital organs. Its horn blared and from its modified supercharger ports came a blue-gray gas. The carhunter managed to pinch shut the main port out of which these fumes were rising. Extruding a metallic tentacle with a bludgeon-like steel fist at its end, it beat in the car’s side window and grabbed at the steering wheel. The car and the carhunter struggled for control as they careened across the steep hillside, coming perilously close to capsizing. This was prevented only by the carhunter’s superior sense of balance, for he managed somehow to keep both himself and the Mercedes upright on its wheels. The groans and snarls, screams and gruntings were impressive in the extreme. Hellman was battered back and forth as the two robots clashed, and thought for a moment he was going to be thrown free. And then, suddenly, it was over. The robothunter’s tentacle snaked through an entry port and found the creature’s central processing unit somewhere deep in its innards. The carhunter wrenched, once, twice, and on the third try a thick bunch of cables came loose and the Mercedes uttered a single sigh and slowed to a halt. The idiot lights on its dashboard flashed in crazy patterns, then went to black. The creature was dead.

  Hellman managed to slide to the ground. He stretched himself and rested while Wayne stripped out the points and munched them, then dismantled the machine and stored some of the choicer parts in its cargo section just beneath its own CPU. Watching him, Hellman became aware that he was getting hungry, too.

  “I don’t suppose you have anything that I can eat?” Hellman asked, as he watched Wayne slaver as it munched down one headlight.

  “Not here, no,” Wayne said. “But at the meeting we’ll be able to do something for you. “

  “I don’t eat metal, you know,” Hellman said. “Not even plastic. “

  “I am aware of humans’ special dietary requirements,” the carhunter replied. He spit out a couple of lug nuts. “Well, that was delicious. Too bad you humans don’t know about headlights. Come on, mount up, we’ll be late.”

  “Through no fault of mine,” Hellman muttered, climbing onto the carhunter again.

  In another hour they had left the desolate badlands and were traveling across grassy rolling country. There was a river to their right, and green rolling hills to the left. So far Hellman had not seen any signs of human, or even animal, life. There was plenty of vegetation around here, however. Most of it seemed to be in the form of trees and grass. Nothing there for him to eat. But perhaps something would turn up when they reached the meeting place.

  Far ahead, in a cleft between two hills, he caught sight of a glint of sunlight off metal. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “That’s the Roundhouse,” Wayne said. “That’s what we call the Great Meeting Hall. And look. Some of the others are there already. “

  The Roundhouse was a circular building, one story high, open to the weather and supported on pillars. It was nicely landscaped with big trees and shrubbery. There were perhaps twenty machines milling around outside. Hellman could hear their engines idling before he could make out the words they were saying to each other. Behind the Roundhouse was a fenced enclosure. Here there were several enormous mechanical creatures of a kind Hellman had not seen before. They towered above the carhunters, looking like mechanical renditions of brontosaurus. Close to their enclosure there were various other structures.

  As Wayne approached, the carhunters spotted Hellman on his back and fell silent. Wayne coasted to a stop near them.

  “Howdy, Jeff,” Wayne said. “Si, Bill, Skeeter, hello.”

  “Hello, Wayne,” they replied.

  “I reckon you can get down now,” Wayne said to Hellman.

  Hellman slid down the carhunter’s back. It felt good to have solid ground beneath him again, though he was a little intimidated by the size of the other carhunters.

  “What you got there, Wayne?” one of them asked.

  “You can see for yourself,” Wayne said. “It’s a human.”

  “Well, so it is,” the machine called Jeff replied. “Haven’t seen one of them critters around for a long time.”

  “They’re getting pretty scarce,” Wayne agreed. “Anything to drink around here?”

  One of the carhunters pointed one of his extensors at a forty-gallon barrel which had been put aside under one of the trees. “Try some of that. Some of Lester’s home brew he sent along. “

  “Isn’t Lester going to make it?”

  “Afraid not. He’s got that rot of the control cables; it’s got him crippled up pretty good.”

  Wayne went over to the barrel. He extruded a tube and inserted it into the barrel. The others watched silently as the level of the barrel went down.

  “Hey, Wayne! Save some for somebody else!”

  Wayne finally withdrew his drinking tube. “Yahoo!” he said. “Got a kick, that stuff.”

  “Three hundred proof and flavored with cinnamon. Human, you want to try some?”

  “I guess I’ll pass on it,” Hellman said. The carhunters guffawed rudely.

  “Where in the hell did you find him, Wayne?”

  “Out on the prairie,” Wayne said . . . His owner is still out there in the spaceship. “

  “Why didn’t he come along?”

  “Don’t rightly know. Might not be mobile.”

  “What’re you going to do with him?”

  “That’s for the Executive Council to decide,” Wayne said.

  “Does he talk?” the one called Skeeter asked. “Sure, I talk,” Hellman said.

  Hellman was about to put this smart-alecky robot straight. But then there was a movement within the Roundhouse and two robots came out. Their open framework struts and girders were painted blue; their upper part was red. They had black symbols painted here and there. They seemed to be officials of some sort.

  “The Chief sent us,” one of them said to Wayne. “He heard you came into camp with a human.”

  “News gets around fast, don’t it?” Wayne said.

  “Wayne, you know that’s against the rules.”

  Wayne shook his big head. “It’s not customary, but I never heard it was against the rules.”

  “Well, it is. We’ll have to take him inside for interrogation.”

  “Figured as much,” Wayne said.

  “Come with us, human,” one of the officials said.

  There didn’t seem to be anything for Hellman to do but follow orders. He knew he was no match for the robots in speed or strength. He’d have to keep his wits about him. It might not be too easy to come out of this one okay.

  What really perplexed him, however, was, what did these robots have against human beings? How had they developed in this way? Were there any humans at all on this planet? Or had the robots killed them all?

  One of the buildings seemed to serve the carhunters as a prison. Its sides were closed. It had a door, which had a padlock. One of the red and blue officials or guards or whatever they were unlocked the door and held it open for Hellman.

  “How long you going to lock me up for?” Hellman asked.

  “You will be informed of the council’s decisions.” They closed the door behind him.

  It was a large room made of galvanized iron. There were windows set high up. There was no glass in them. The room was devoid of furniture. Evidently robots didn’t use chairs or beds.
There were a few low metal tables. Hellman looked around, and, as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he made out a wink of lights from one corner. He went there to investigate.

  There was a robot in the corner. It was somewhat smaller than a man, perhaps five feet high. And it was slender. It had a well-defined head sculpted from some bright metal, and the usual arms and legs. The creature watched him silently, and that was a little unnerving.

  “Hi,” Hellman said. “I’m Tom Hellman. Who are you?”

  The robot didn’t reply.

  “Can’t you talk?” Hellman asked. “Don’t you speak English?”

  Still no reply from the robot, who continued to watch him with one red and one green eye.

  “Great,” Hellman said. “They put me in with a dummy. “

  As he spoke, he noticed that the robot was scratching in the dirt of the packed earth floor with a long toe. Hellman read it: “The walls have ears.”

  He looked at the robot. It gave him a meaningful look.

  “What happens now?” Hellman said, dropping his voice to a whisper. The robot scratched, “We’ll know soon.” The robot didn’t want to communicate any further. Hellman went to the far side of the room and stretched out on the floor. He was very hungry now. Were they going to feed him? And more important, were they going to feed him something he could eat? Outside, it was growing late. After a while, Hellman started to doze off. He fell into a light sleep, and soon he was dreaming of vague, threatening things that came at him out of a dark sky. He was trying to explain to them that he was not to, blame, but he couldn’t remember what for.

  Hellman awoke when the door to the prison was opened. At first he thought they had come to tell him what they had decided. But they had brought him food instead. It consisted entirely of fruit and nuts. None of them was familiar to him, but none were strange, either. They also brought him water. It was carried in quart oil cans which had been scrupulously cleansed and bore not even a trace of oil. Hellman learned later that these cans had never held oil, even though “oil” was stamped into the metal of their sides. He had no idea then that the carhunters had a ceremonial side to their nature, and were able to use certain utilitarian objects for their symbolic value alone.

  The two carhunters who brought the food and water would answer no questions. They waited silently while Hellman ate. He thought they watched him with curiosity. He couldn’t figure that out, but he was hungry enough so that he ate anyway. They took away the hammered tin plates on which they had brought the food, but they left him two water cans.

  Time passed. Hellman had no watch, and was unable to reach the ship’s computer to get a time check. But he figured that hours must have passed. He grew irritated with the robot who was locked in with him, who sat in a corner of the room and seemed to be in a cataleptic fit.

  At last Hellman had had enough. Boredom can drive a man to outrageous deeds. He walked over to the robot and said, “Say something.”

  The robot opened its red and green eyes and looked at him. It slowly shook its head, left to right, meaning no.

  “Because they can hear us, right?”

  The robot nodded, affirmative.

  “What does it matter if they can hear us or not?”

  The robot made a complex and intricate gesture with its hands, which Hellman took to mean, ‘You just don’t understand.’

  “I just don’t understand, is that it?” Hellman asked.

  The robot nodded, affirmative.

  “But I can’t understand unless you tell me.”

  The robot shrugged. Universal gesture meaning, what can I do about it?

  “I’ll tell you what you can do,” Hellman said, his voice low but resonant with suppressed anger. “You listening?”

  The robot nodded.

  “If you don’t start talking at once, I’m going to put out one of your eyes. The green one. Then ask you again. If you refuse again, I’ll put out the red one. Got it?”

  The robot stared at him. Only now did Hellman see what a mobile face it had. It was not made up of a single piece of metal. Instead there were many little planes sculptured into the face, and each plane was about an inch square and seemed capable of movement. This was a face designed to reveal its thoughts, feelings, and moods through its face. And sure enough, the robot’s face registered horror, disbelief, outrage,, as Hellman screwed up his own face into a ferocious frown and advanced.

  “There’s no need for violence,” the robot said.

  “Fine. There’s no reason for silence either, is there?”

  “I suppose not,” the robot said. “I just thought it best that we didn’t talk together so that the carhunters wouldn’t get the idea we were plotting against them.”

  “Why would they think that?”

  “You must know as well as I do that it’s every sentient being for itself here on this planet of Newstart. And the carhunters are a very suspicious group of people.”

  “They’re not people,” Hellman said. “They’re robots.”

  “Since intelligent robots have the same faculties as humans, we no longer differentiate between them in terms of ’robot’ and ‘human.’ It’s superfluous and racist to talk that way. “

  “All right,” Hellman said. “I stand corrected. You say they are suspicious people?”

  “Stands to reason, doesn’t it? They have separated themselves from the mainstream of Newstart life and development. Isolated groups tend toward xenophobia.”

  “You know a lot of big words,” Hellman said. “I ought to. I’m a librarian.”

  “These carhunters don’t look like they have much use for reading.”

  “I’m not a librarian here,” the robot said with a low laugh. “I don’t belong to this tribe! I work at the Central Lending Library in downtown Robotsville. “

  “Robotsville? Is that a city?”

  “The largest city on Newstart. Surely you’ve heard of it?”

  “I’m not from here,” Hellman said. “I’m from the planet Earth. “

  “You ‘re from another planet?” The robot sat up and looked at Hellman more attentively. “How did you get here?”

  “In the usual way. By spaceship.”

  “Uhuu,” the robot said.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “ ‘Uhuu’ is an expression peculiar to Robotsville. It means ‘that really opens up a lot of possibilities.’ ”

  “Can you explain that?” Hellman asked.

  “It’s just that quite a lot is happening on Newstart right now. Your arrival could have incalculable consequences.”

  “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

  Just then there was the sound of a key in the lock.

  “I’m afraid I’m not going to have time to tell you,” the robot said. “God knows what these barbarians have in store for us. My name is Jorge.” He gave it the Spanish pronunciation, Hor-hay.

  “Jorge? As in Jorge Luis Borges?” asked Hellman, a literate man when it came to very short stories.

  “Yes. He is the saint of librarians.”

  The door opened. Two carhunters lumbered in. Around buildings they seemed clumsy and ill at ease. The fluid grace that a carhunter possessed in the countryside seemed to have deserted them in these restricting surroundings.

  “Come with us,” one of them said. “The council has discussed you and now will speak with you.”

  “What about my buddy Jorge here?”

  “He will be dealt with in due time.”

  “Be careful what you say to them,” the librarian said. “The carhunters do not like . . . prevarication.”

  The librarian’s pause was long enough to convince Hellman that there was something he was being advised not to say to the carhunters. He wished he knew what it was. But now the carhunters were moving, and Hellman had to move quickly to prevent being run over.

  They led him to the meeting area. It was a flat circular rock face that had been roughly smoothed. It stood about three feet above the ground, and there
were ramps of packed earth leading up to it. The carhunters had already assembled. They were moving around the rock, which greatly resembled a large parking lot. In the center was a raised cube. On it there were five or so carhunters. These looked more like a bunch of politicians than anything else.

  Hellman was led to a large pedestal with a spiral roadway leading up to it. It put him on eye level with the five top carhunters.

  Even if they had not been apart from the others, Hellman would have had no difficulty telling that these were the important ones. They were somewhat larger than the others, and their bodies had more ornamentation, mostly of the chromium variety. Several of them wore necklaces of shiny objects which Hellman recognized as hood designs from automobiles of Earth ‘s past.

  The leading carhunter was easy to spot, too. He sat in the center of the others on the raised rectangle. He was almost a third larger than his fellow judges, and he was painted a midnight blue with silver accents.

  The blue and silver judge said, “I am Car Eater, Chief Elder of the Carhunters tribe. These are my fellow judges. Why have you come here, Tom Hellman? We already know that you came in a spaceship. Why did you come to Newstart?”

  “It was a mistake,” Hellman said. “I had a malfunction.”

  “That is not an acceptable answer. Where humans are concerned, there are no mistakes.”

  “Maybe you don’t know people very well,” Hellman said. “This was definitely a mistake. If you don’t believe me, ask my ship’s computer.”

  “One of our scouts tried to talk to him,” Car Eater said. “He told us we did not have the proper access code. He would not explain what he meant by that.”

  “The access code is a nine-number combination. It is used to prevent unauthorized spying on the computer’s memory banks.”

  “But couldn’t the computer make up his own mind about that?” Car Eater asked.

  “Perhaps he could,” Hellman said. “But it is not the way we do things on Earth.”

  The robots held a whispered conference. Then Car Eater said, “It has been many years since a human visited these parts. This part of the planet belongs to us, the carhunters. We stay out of other people’s territory and expect people to stay out of ours. This is how it has been for a very long time, ever since the Great Fabricator divided the species of intelligence and told each to be fruitful and multiply according to his basic plan. Some of the carhunters wanted to kill you, and that other stray too, the librarian who calls himself Jorge. Sounds like a sissy name to me. That’s the sort of name they give themselves in Robotsville, where they think they’re better than anyone else. But we Elders decided against taking violent action. The Compact which rules this planet abhors destruction except in lawful ways. Hellman, you may go. You and Jorge, too. I advise you to be out of our territory by sundown. Otherwise a hyenoid might get you. “