The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works 1911-1987

by C. L. Moore

  "The fuse is in," called Quanna. "Are you ready to die, Vastari?"

  There was a heavy step upon the cave floor. The curtain of withering vines swept aside and a man stood in the doorway looking up at her. Jamie. His black head bare of the shielding helmet. He stood in silence, feet planted wide, frowning at her somberly under heavy brows. He was like a figure in a dream, shimmering in the full bath of the killing rays.

  "Jamie, Jamie!" Quanna sobbed, and hurled the Knute backward off the parapet. Its rays swept up across the cliff in a shimmering rainbow and the machine clattered down the slope in an avalanche of pebbles, its death ray fanning the clouds.

  -

  Quanna could not remember afterward stumbling down the rocks toward the cave. Her first conscious awareness was of Jamie fending her unsteadily off his wounded arm as he leaned against the cave wall with closed eyes, waiting for his brain to stop shaking with the force of the Knute.

  In the cave, Ghej and Vastari sat with heads in hands, blind and sick, as the vibrations faded slowly inside their skulls. Quanna was abstractly glad that they still lived. Now her treachery was established without the need for outside evidence. But it had been a near thing—too near, for Jamie. She shivered a little, guiding him to a seat on the ledge.

  After a while Vastari lifted his head unsteadily and gave Quanna a poisonous glare. She met it opaquely. His eyes shifted to Jamie and he said in a bitter voice:

  "Damn you, Earthman—I owe you my life! Now what did you want badly enough to take that risk for me?"

  "Nothing," Jamie said wearily, not lifting his head. "Don't bother me."

  There was something so electric in the breathless silence that followed that in a moment Jamie looked up to see what was causing it. He met Vastari's look of blank amazement.

  "Nothing?" echoed Vastari in an incredulous voice. "Then why—"

  "Oh, sure—I came here to kill you." Jamie spoke in a tired and indifferent voice. "But things are different now. Venus is going to need her leaders."

  "But—you risked your life! No one ever does that without a reason!"

  Jamie looked at him in silence. He was not sure himself just why he had done it. And there was no hope of making this Venusian understand how he felt about the world to which he had given twenty years and all his hopes and interests, the world upon which mankind might have found its ultimate future—

  "You could command me to join forces with you, if you wanted that." Vastari was still groping.

  "You'd be no good to me at the point of a gun," Jamie shrugged. "Fighting the barbarians will be a full-time job. I wouldn't want an ally I won like that."

  Vastari sat very still, considering Jamie with fathomless eyes. Perhaps Ghej's warnings had frightened him more than his pride had let him admit. Perhaps he had been waiting for a chance to surrender gracefully. Perhaps this first encounter with genuine selflessness honestly impressed him. There was no guessing what went on behind that expressionless face. But at last Vastari said slowly:

  "My life belongs to you until I redeem it, Earthman. I am pledged to Ghej, too. Will it satisfy you both if I offer my men and myself as your sworn allies until the invaders are driven away?"

  Ghej's hooded head came up for the first time since the vibrations had filled the cave. He stared long and unblinkingly at the young Venusian. Jamie was staring, too. Presently Jamie's eyes shifted to Ghej, and the two exchanged a long, questioning look in which hope was slowly dawning. After a moment Ghej said in a shaken voice:

  "Venus is the morning star from Earth this time of year."

  Jamie smiled. It was his own figure of speech, coming spontaneously into the Martian's mind. But he only said practically:

  "It would mean much hard work, Vastari. Much sacrifice."

  Vastari said with dignity: "Tell me what you need."

  "More than you can give, perhaps. You can't fight the barbarians with spears. Even if you drove this group out by a miracle, there'll be more. You'll need modern weapons. There are men in the Terrestrialized cities who know how to make them, but they need supplies. That'll mean law and order, Vastari. You can't get raw materials or transport them in an anarchy where every brawling tribe has the 'freedom' to do as it likes. You'll have to forget all quarrels, forget personal jealousies, forget greed and looting and fighting. It'll mean back-breaking labor, night and day. You've got to work the mines and machines again, hard and fast. We'll help all we can. We'll see that your trained workmen are taught what little else they may need to know, before we leave. But we must leave soon, Vastari."

  Vastari was watching the Earthman's face with narrowed eyes, searching for some sign of the trickery he could not yet believe wholly absent. His quicksilver mind was turning the points over as Jamie brought them up, but nowhere, apparently, could he find anything that might be two-edged. Finally he nodded, still with that puzzled look.

  "Very well, it shall be done."

  Yes, thought Jamie, with Ghej's help it might yet be done, after all. The Venusians were so childlike in so many ways, irresponsible, unable to see beyond the needs of the next moment. But Vastari, with his dream of freedom, distorted though it was, proved them more capable of pursuing an ideal than Jamie would ever have believed. And if the barbarians frightened them enough, perhaps they might work together to destroy them. And the work together, the common danger—would it be enough to build a civilization on? Jamie knew he would never hear the answer to that question.

  -

  The walled valley of Yvaca was doubly walled with flame. From the last Terrestrial spaceship left on Venus, slanting down toward it on broad, steel wings, it looked like the valley of hell. Only the high-walled Terrestrial city of Yvaca remained now; all around it the native village that filled the valley had been fired by the invaders to keep the Venusians at bay. But there was one ship left on Venus, and Yvaca was still vulnerable from the air.

  In the deep night twilight flame lapped high about the city walls and lighted the low clouds over Yvaca with a sullen, sulphurous glow. Looking down from that height as the ship slid down a long aërial incline above the peaks, Jamie could not see the Venusian mountaineers ringing Yvaca. But he knew they were there. He spoke into a microphone and felt the floor slant more sharply as Yvaca seemed to rise at a tilted angle in the port before him.

  In the heart of the city, ringed by blackened ruins, lay the invaders' spaceship. They had brought it down in one careless sliding crash that demolished three city blocks. A pale stab of light shot upward from the city as the barbarians sighted the swooping ship; Jamie could see small, distorted figures running for their ruin-cradled vessel, and his teeth showed in a hard grin as lightning flamed downward from the ship. There was something horrible about the barbarians even from this height; their warped, degenerate shapes were vicious parodies of men.

  Blue fire fanned downward again from the Earth ship and touched the other vessel with a gout of flame. Half of it flew into glittering flinders that made the air sparkle over Yvaca. And now, thought Jamie, there was one ship left on Venus. The first of them had come from Earth for conquest. This last, he told himself, would set Venusians free of more than Earthly domination before it left.

  The pale, stabbing ray of the barbarians' weapon shot skyward again, and the Terrestrial ship slid deftly sidewise as the ray shaved it, raking the city below with fingers of blue light that were tipped with flame wherever they touched Yvaca.

  From this height there was silence in the vessel. Jamie knew that below him, in the red inferno of the valley, cliff echoed to bellowing cliff with the roar of gunfire and the crash of sliding walls and the deep-throated soughing of flame. But he would never hear the sounds of Venus any more. Already the city below was afire. Those who escaped would find Venusians waiting in a grim circle around the valley. The first plague spot of the malady that was killing Earth was being wiped out here in flame.

  There would be other spots, perhaps very soon. It might be well for Venus if they came soon, to keep the knowledge of p
eril fresh in careless minds. For Venus would have to meet the next attacks unaided. Remembering the feverish activity now in progress among the mountain cities, Jamie thought Venus might meet them well. He could not be sure about that, of course. He would have to leave Venus, never knowing.

  He spoke again into the microphone and the ship banked for the last time over flaming Yvaca under the glowing clouds. No more rays leaped skyward from the city. The barbarians were in full flight. His work was done.

  Cool hands upon his cheeks roused Jamie from his contemplation of the inferno below as the ship swung away. He looked up and smiled wearily into Quanna's face.

  "Your last look at Venus, my dear," he told her, nodding down. She gave him a puzzled, little frown under delicate brows.

  "It's not too late yet, Jamie. Oh, why wouldn't you stay? It would have been so easy to let the rest go on. You and I and Venus might have ruled the world!"

  He shook his head helplessly. "I'm not a free man, Quanna. Less now than ever. I've a duty to Venus as well as to Earth—I've got to help hold the barbarians off until Venus is ready for them. Earth needs every man and every gun, but not to save herself. Earth doesn't know it, and I don't suppose she ever will, but her duty now is to keep the barbarians busy for Venus' sake—" He looked up at the girl's uncomprehending face and smiled. "Never mind. Go get your harp, Quanna, and sing to me, will you? We'll sit here and watch the last of Venus—Look, we're coming into daylight already."

  Far behind them the sullen glow of burning Yvaca faded as they neared the edge of the cloud-tide. Diluted sunlight was pouring down upon the tremendous turquois mountains and the leaning cliffs astream with waterfalls, all the high, blue country they would never see again. Quanna strummed her Martian harp softly.

  "I'll probably be court-martialed," Jamie mused, his eyes on the mountains falling away below. "Or—maybe not. Maybe they'll need fighting men too badly for that. I'm doing you no service, Quanna, or myself, either. For your sake I wish you could have stayed."

  "Hush," said Quanna, and struck her harp string. I'll sing you 'Otterburn' again. Forget about all that, my dear. Listen." And her thin, sweet voice took up the ballad.

  -

  "The Otterburn's a bonny burn,

  It's pleasant there to be,

  But there is naught on Otterburn

  To feed my men and me—"

  -

  Jamie laughed suddenly, but he shook his head when she lifted questioning eyes. He had remembered his dream again, and unexpectedly it made fantastic sense that perhaps only a Celt might have read into the dream and the song that had inspired it. He hummed the stanza again:

  -

  "Oh, I have dreamed a dreamy dream

  Beyond the Isle of Skye,

  For I saw a dead man win a fight

  And I think that man was I."

  -

  The clouds below were thickening now between him and the great blue mountains of Venus that slanted away below. The Isle of Skye, the morning star. The hope of civilized man. He was leaving the future behind him, if mankind had any future at all. James Douglas was a dead man indeed, sailing out into the nighttime of space toward a dying world where nothing but death waited for him. But he left the Isle of Skye behind, and on it a battle won against the powers of evil. If ever a dead man won a fight, thought Jamie, I think that man was I.

  The ship drove on into darkness.

  The End

  DEADLOCK

  Astounding Science-Fiction – August 1942

  with Henry Kuttner

  (as by Lew Padgett)

  The indestructible robot was a swell little gadget in that time of feudal corporations. But—most went mad, and were still indestructible. The rest—

  -

  Thor was the first robot who didn't go mad. It might have been better had he followed the example of his forerunners.

  The trouble, of course, lay in creating a sufficiently complicated thinking machine that wouldn't be too complicated. Balder IV was the first robot that could be called successful, and after three months he began to behave erratically, giving the wrong answers and spending most of his time staring blankly at nothing. When he became actually destructive, the Company took steps. Naturally, it was impossible to destroy a duraloy-constructed robot, but they buried Balder IV in concrete. Before the stuff had set, it was necessary to throw Mars II after him.

  The robots worked—yes. For a time. Then there was an ambiguous sort of mental breakdown, and they cracked up. The Company couldn't even salvage the parts—a blowtorch couldn't melt plastic duraloy after it had hardened, and so twenty-eight robots, thinking lunatic thoughts, reposed in beds of cement, reminding Chief Engineer Harnahan of Reading Gaol.

  "And their grave has no name," Harnahan amplified, lying full length on the couch in his office and blowing smoke rings.

  He was a big man with tired eyes and a perpetually worried frown. No wonder, in this day of gigantic corporations that fought each other tooth and nail for economic supremacy. It was vaguely feudal, for if a company went under, it was annexed by its conqueror, and vae victis.

  Van Damm, who was more of a troubleshooter than anything else, sat on the edge of the desk, biting his nails. Small, gnomish, and dark as a Pict, his shrewd wrinkled face was as impassive as that of Thor, who stood motionless against the wall. Now Van Damm looked at the robot.

  "How do you feel?" he asked. "Any sign of a mental crack-up?"

  Thor said, "Mentally I am in fine shape, ready to cope with any problem."

  Harnahan turned over on his stomach. "O.K. Cope with this, then. Luxingham Incorporated swiped Dr. Sadler and his formula for increasing the tensile strength of mock-iron. The louse was holding out on us for a bigger salary. Now he's taken a run-out powder and gone over to Luxingham."

  Thor nodded. "Contract?"

  "Fourteen-X-Seven. The usual metallurgist's contract. Technically unbreakable."

  "The courts would uphold us. However, by this time Luxingham's facial surgeons would have altered Sadler's body and fingerprints. The case would run ... two years. By that time Luxingham would have made sufficient use of the mock-iron formula."

  Van Damm made a horrible face. "Solution, Thor." He shot a quick glance at Harnahan. Both men knew what was coming. Thor didn't disappoint them.

  "Force," the robot remarked. "You need the formula. A robot is not legally responsible—as yet. I'll visit Luxingham."

  "O.K.," Harnahan said reluctantly, and Thor turned and went out. The chief engineer scowled.

  "Yeah," Van Damm nodded. "I know. He'll just walk in and snaffle the formula. And we'll get another injunction against operating an uncontrollable machine. And we'll keep on just as we have been doing."

  "Is brute force the best logic?" Harnahan wondered.

  "The simplest, maybe. Thor doesn't need to work out complicated legal methods. He's indestructible. He'll just walk into Luxingham and take the formula. If the courts decide Thor's dangerous, we can bury him in cement and make more robots. He's without ego, you know. It won't matter to him."

  "We expected more," Harnahan grumbled. "A thinking machine ought to be able to do a lot."

  "Thor can do a lot. So far, he hasn't gone crazy like the others. He's solved every problem we've given him—even that trend chart that had everyone else buffaloed."

  Harnahan nodded. "Yeah. He predicted Snowmany's election ... that got the Company out of a scrape. He can think, all right. For my money, there's no problem he can't solve. Just the same, he isn't inventive."

  "If the occasion arose—" Van Damm went off at a tangent. "We've got the monopoly on robots, anyhow. Which is something. It's about time to give the go-ahead signal on more robots of Thor's type."

  "Better wait a bit. See if Thor goes crazy. He's the most complicated one so far."

  -

  The visiphone on the desk came to life with an outraged screech. "Harnahan! You lousy, unethical murderer! You—"

  "I'm recording that, Blake," the engineer ca
lled as he stood up. "You'll get a libel suit slammed on you within the hour."

  "Sue and be damned," Blake of Luxingham Incorporated yelled. "I'm coming over and break your prognathous jaw myself! So help me, I'll burn you down and spit on the ashes!"

  "Now he's threatening my life," Harnahan said in a loud aside to Van Damm. "Lucky I'm recording this on the tape."

  Blake's crimson face on the screen seemed to swell visibly. Before it burst, however, another portrait took its place—the smooth, bland countenance of Marshal Yale, police administrator to the sector. Yale looked worried.

  "Look, Mr. Harnahan," he said sadly, "this can't keep up. Now just look at things sensibly, will you? After all, I'm an officer of the law—"

  "Ha!" remarked Van Damm, sotto voce.

  "—and outright mayhem is something I can't condone. Maybe your robot's gone mad?" he added hopefully.

  "Robot?" Harnahan asked, his face blank. "I don't understand. What robot's that?"

  Yale sighed. "Thor. Thor, of course. Who else? Now I realize you don't know a thing about it"—his voice was as heavily sarcastic as he dared to make it—"but Thor has just walked into Luxingham and played merry hell."

  "No!"

  "Yes. He walked right in. The guards tried to stop him, but he just kept on going. He stepped on 'em, in fact. They played a flame hose on him, but he didn't stop for that. Luxingham got out every defense weapon in their arsenal, and that infernal robot of yours simply kept on going. He grabbed Blake by the neck and made him unlock the lab door. And he took a formula away from one of the technicians."

  "I am surprised," Harnahan said, shocked. "By the way, which technician was it? Not a guy named Sadler?"

  "I dunno ... wait a minute. Yes, Sadler."

  "But Sadler's working for us," the engineer explained. "We've got him on a beryl-bound contract. Any formulas he works out belong to us."