The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works 1911-1987

by C. L. Moore

  "Where's the robot?" he asked. He had to shout to make himself heard, because to the normal noise of the room with its complex of relayed voices was now added a crashing uproar Conway failed to identify for a moment.

  The communications officer nodded toward a bluish television screen at his left, part of a long row. Small and bright upon it a doll-sized robot could be seen, raging through a doll-sized storeroom. But the noise it made was life-size. It seemed to be hunting for something, and its method was frantic. It didn't open drawers—it ripped the whole side off cabinets and swept the contents out with great, rhythmic, scything motions, sending them spinning through the air. Now and then the bright cone of its glance would swerve to follow the fall of some object briefly, and twice the robot paused to snatch up items and turn them tentatively over. But clearly, whatever it wanted was not here. And as clearly, it operated on true egoism—whatever it found useless it destroyed furiously. It had no referent but its own immediate need.

  "And maybe he's right," Conway thought. "Maybe if we can't get him whatever he needs nothing down here is worth keeping."

  Behind him he heard Broome and the communications officer conferring in strained voices above the tumult.

  "I don't know," the officer was shouting. "It tore up the library so fast we couldn't tell what it had read and what it hadn't. You see how it's going now. It moves so fast—"

  Broome leaned over the communications officer's shoulder and punched the two-way button on the intercom for Sub-Seventeen where the robot was raging.

  "Ego," he said into the mike. "Do you hear me?"

  The robot ripped down the side of the last cabinet, swept its contents out in a rhythmic shower. Amplified over the screen they heard Broome's voice echo back to them from the tiny greenish storeroom on the wall. The robot paused very briefly. Then it stood up straight, turned around once in a very rapid circuit that swept its cone of light across the walls.

  "Want—" its hollow voice howled, and instantly shut itself off into silence again. It crashed its hands together like something in the last extremity of desperation, and then walked straight for the wall at the corner of the room.

  The wall bent, cracked and opened. The robot stalked through and out of sight.

  It seemed to Conway that every face in the room swung around toward his, pale ovals glistening with drops of gold and red and greenish sweat in the darkness. It was up to him now. They waited for instructions.

  He wanted to lash out as the robot had lashed, tear these floating luminous screens down and smash the glowing panels with them, silence the yammering voices from the walls. Responsibilities he could not handle buzzed like hot bees around his head. It was too much, too much. A deep wave of exhaustion washed over him, followed by a wave of hysteric exhilaration, both so ghostly and so far away they hardly seemed to touch Conway at all. He was somebody else entirely, infinite distances off, with ghostly problems that had no relation to the vacuum of the here and now ...

  "General?" Broome's voice said. "General?"

  Conway coughed. "The robot," he said briskly. "We've got to stop him. You plotting his course so far, Sergeant?"

  "Yes, sir. Screen Twelve."

  Twelve was one of the hanging panels, transparent in the dark, a net of luminous gold lines on it marking the corridors, with the sectors showing in dim blue numerals. "The red dots are the robot, sir," the sergeant told him.

  They watched a disembodied hand float forward from behind the screen and add fluorescent grease-dots to the lengthening red line which had started in Broome's lab, crossed the library and storeroom and gone out by the solid wall. They stalked now across the next three sectors, wading through the walls, as they went in an elongating luminous chain of red.

  Their goal was obvious to everyone. About seven inches ahead in the heart of the map lay a round room with bright green squares glowing around its walls. They all knew what the green squares were. They all knew how intimately their own survival hinged upon the blizzard of electronic impulses storming through those incredibly complex calculations in the computers. Every mind in the room clicked over like the computers themselves, considering what would happen when the robot reached that room.

  "The supersonic team," Conway said crisply. "The heavy-duty robots. Where are they?"

  "The supersonics are coming up from level six, sir. About five minutes for them. The HD robots should intersect in about three minutes. You can see them in—what is it? purple?—on the plot panel."

  A slow line of purple dots was moving inward down a gold-lined corridor from the periphery of the chart.

  "Too slow," Conway said, watching the red dots which marked the footsteps of the thinking robot. Or was it thinking, now? "Anybody know if those walls between are plaster or stone?" There was a silence. Nobody did. But as they watched, the red dots paused at a gold line, rebounded twice, reversed themselves and made for a break in the line that indicated a door.

  "Stone," Conway said. "That one, anyhow. I hope he didn't jar anything loose trying."

  "Maybe we'd better hope he did," Broome said.

  Conway looked at the old man. "I'm going to stop him," he said. "Understand? We're not going to junk Ego. We need him too badly. I'm sorry we weren't better prepared to handle him, but I'd do it again if I had to. We can't wait."

  "He's moving fast, sir," the communications officer said.

  Conway looked at the screen. He bit his lip painfully and then said, "Volunteers. I want somebody to jump in there and delay him. I don't care how. Trip him. Wave a red rag in his face. Anything to gain time. Every second counts. All right, Corporal. Lieutenant, that's two."

  "We can't spare any more from here," the communications officer said.

  "All right, on your way," Conway snapped. "Get him on the screens, sergeant."

  Three round television screens clicked into bluish life, showing a trail of wrecked desks and smashed equipment. In the third screen Ego, looking very small and remote and innocent, was smashing himself head-on against a too-narrow door. On the last smash the door-frame gave way and Ego surged through and stalked off down the tiny, diminishing corridor beyond. On the plot board the red dots showed him only about five inches away from the calculator room.

  "But what do you want with the calculators?" Broome was murmuring as he stared after the vanishing figure on the screen. He tapped irritatingly with his nails on the metal table. "Maybe," he said, and paused. He looked up at Conway. "I'm no good here, General. I'm going to the calculator room. I have some ideas, but the analogue computer thinks a lot faster than I do. Ego moves too fast. It may take machines to figure out machines. Anyhow, I'll try."

  "Go on, go on then," Conway said. "You've got between five and ten minutes. After that—" He didn't finish, but in his mind he said, "—I can rest. One way or the other, I can rest."

  The communications officer had been clicking television screens on and off, hunting. Now he said, "Look, sir! The volunteer team—God, he's tall!" The observation was spontaneous; until now the communications room hadn't seen Ego alongside human figures.

  Ego was a stalking giant in a dimly lit corridor on the screen. The volunteers had just burst out of a corridor door ten paces ahead of him, and he towered mightily over them. You could see their tiny, scared faces no bigger than peas turned up toward the oblivious, striding giant as he followed the searchlight splash of his single eye down the hall.

  The two men must have moved at a dead run from here to there. They hadn't had time to pick and choose, and their instructions had been ambiguous, but somewhere on the way they had snatched up a stout steel beam which now showed like a bright thread across the corridor. One man darted across the hall just ahead of the robot, and the two of them braced the beam shoulder high from opposite doorways, making a barrier across the path.

  The robot didn't even glance at the obstacle. He struck the beam squarely, the clang echoing through the corridor and reverberating from the screen into the communications room. Ego bounced a litt
le, recovered his balance, measured the situation and then stooped to pass under the bar. Hastily the two men lowered their burden. Again a clang and a recoil, and this time the bar bent into a deep v at the point of impact. Over the screen they heard one of the men yell as the end of the bar caught him. Ego heaved upward with both hands, stepped under the bar and stalked off down the hall.

  "Thirty seconds saved," Conway said bitterly. "And one man down. Where are the HDs now?"

  "About a minute and a half away, sir. Coming along corridor eight. They ought to intersect just outside the calculator room door. See, on the board?"

  Slowly and heavily, it seemed to Conway, the purple dots moved against the darkness, ploddingly. A floating hand materialized and added two more red dots to the chain of Ego's footsteps moving toward the heart of the citadel. The red dots were ahead. They were going to outstrip the purple.

  "I'm going to fail," Conway said to himself. He thought of all the human lives here underground, wholly dependent upon him, and all the lives outside, confident that the Pacific Front was in good hands. He wondered what the commanding general on the other side was doing now, and what he would do if he knew ...

  "Look, sir," the communications officer said.

  There was still one man of the volunteer team left on his feet. He hadn't given up yet. Ego's last heave had apparently snapped the steel bar off short at the v, leaving one end like a bent club. It must have been very heavy, but the man in the corridor was operating on a drive too intense to notice the weight. Club on shoulder, he was sprinting after Ego down the hall.

  They saw him lessen the distance between them. They saw him at the robot's heels. Distantly they heard him shout.

  "Ego!" he called, as he had heard Broome call the name. And in answer, as the robot had answered before, Ego paused, turned, bathed the man in the cold one-eyed beam of its searchlight.

  "Want—" the strangled; metallic voice said hollowly, and stopped.

  The man with the club jumped high and smashed for the single bright eye in the robot's forehead.

  "Is it safe?" Conway asked. "Will he hurt him, Broome?" But he got no answer. Broome had disappeared.

  On the screen the robot struck upward furiously with both hands, parrying the club just in time. The crash of impact made the screen shiver. The man had time and strength for one more swing, and this time at the height of its arc Ego seized the club and plucked it almost casually out of the man's hands. Over his enormous steel shoulder he sent it clanging down the corridor behind him.

  Conway glanced quickly at the chart. The purple dots were gaining. The red dot at the end of Ego's chain wavered left and right as Ego dodged the two blows of the club. Conway looked back at the screen.

  The disarmed man hesitated only briefly. Then he gathered himself and sprang straight up toward the blank steel face with its single eye. By some miracle he passed between the closing arms and locked his own arms around the steel neck. His body blinded the torch-lens of the robot's eye, and he clung desperately, legs and arms clenched around the lurching steel tower of Ego's body.

  From the darkness beyond their struggling figures a heavy, rhythmic thudding began to be heard, making the television screen vibrate a little.

  "The heavy-duties," Conway breathed. He glanced again at the chart, not needing it to see the line of purple dots almost at the corridor intersection now, and the red dot of Ego wavering erratically.

  The robot didn't depend on vision alone. You could tell that by his motion. But the clinging man disturbed him. The heaving weight pulled him off balance. Ego plucked futilely at the man for an instant, staggering thirty degrees off course toward the left-hand wall. Then the steel hands got a grip on the clinging man, and the robot ripped him away easily and smoothly, with a gesture like tearing a shirt off his chest, and flung him with casual force against the wall.

  Beyond Ego, at the far end of the corridor, you could see the tall double doors of the calculator room. Ego stood for a moment as if he were collecting himself. The screen seemed to be wavering, and Conway made a futile, steadying motion toward it. The vibration was so strong now that vision blurred upon it.

  "What's the matter?" Conway asked irritably. "Is it out of focus, or—"

  "Look, sir," the communications officer said. "Here they come."

  Like a walking wall the heavy robots wheeled out of the darkness at the edge of the screen, their ponderous tread making the whole scene shudder. Heavily they ground to a halt facing Ego, and stood there shoulder to shoulder across the corridor, their backs to the calculator doors.

  Ego stood for a moment quite still, but shivering all over, his single eye sweeping from left to right and back again over them, infinitely fast. Something about these units of his own kind seemed to kindle a new and compelling drive, and Ego gathered himself together and lowered his shoulders and head a little, and surged forward as if eager for battle. The HDs, locked together in an unswerving row, braced themselves and stood firm.

  The crash made every screen in the communications room flicker in distant sympathy. Sparks sprang out and steel plates groaned. Ego hung for an instant motionless upon the steel wall that opposed him, then fell back, staggered, braced himself to crash again.

  But he did not charge. He stood there sweeping his bright scanner over the line, and the clicking in his chest rose and fell so loudly the listeners in the communications room could hear it plainly. A storm of alternate choices seemed to be pouring through the electronic mind of the thinker.

  While Ego hesitated, the steel wall he confronted moved, curving outward at both ends toward the solitary figure. It was clear what the intention of the operators was. If these ponderous shapes could be made to close Ego in they could immobilize him by sheer massiveness, like tame elephants immobilizing a wild one.

  But Ego saw the trap in the instant before the line began to move. His backward step and quick spin showed it. Conway thought his eye flashed brighter, and his whirl was incongruously light-footed. In contrast to the heavy-duty machines he looked like a steel dancer in his light, keen balance. He made a quick feint toward one end of the line, and the robots massed sluggishly together to receive him. They opened a gap in their line when they moved, and Ego darted for the gap. But instead of passing through it he put out both arms and pushed delicately and fiercely at the two sides of the opening, in exactly the right spots. The two robots leaned ponderously outward, tipped just barely off their balance. They leaned, leaned, inexorably leaned and fell. Each carried its next companion down with it. The corridor thundered with the crash.

  Trampling on the fallen machines, the line closed up and moved ponderously forward. Ego ran at it with a clear illusion of joyous motion, stooped, struck two robots at once with the same delicate, exact precision, knowing before he struck at just what hidden fulcrum point their balance rested. The corridor thundered again with the tumult of their collapse. As the line tried to close once more over the fallen warriors Ego's hands shot out and helped them heavily together, smashing two more into one another with unexpected momentum. This time as he touched them his touches were sharp blows, and the steel plating buckled in like tin.

  In less than two minutes the walking wall was a mass of staggering leviathans, half of them out of commission, the rest stumbling ponderously over their fallen comrades trying to reform a line already too short to work.

  So much for that try, Conway thought. Then the supersonics were their last hope. There wouldn't be time for more. Maybe there wasn't even time for that.

  "Where's the supersonic squad?" he asked, impressed at the false briskness of his own voice. The communications officer looked up at the luminous chart.

  "Almost there, General. Half a minute away."

  Conway glanced once at the television screen, which now showed Ego standing over the prostrate metal giants and swaying rather oddly as he looked down. It wasn't like his behavior pattern to hesitate like this. There seemed to be something on his mind. Whatever it was, it might mean a f
ew moments' leeway.

  "I'm going out there myself, sergeant," Conway said. "I—I want to be on the spot when—" He paused, realizing that he was saying aloud what was really a private soliloquy, Conway to Conway, with no eavesdroppers. What he meant was that he wanted to be there when the end came—one way or the other. He had envied the robot, he had hoped infinite things for it. He had begun to identify with the powerful and tireless steel. Win or lose, he wanted to be on the spot at the payoff.

  Running down the corridor was like running in a dream, floating, almost, his legs numb and the sound of his footfalls echoing from feathery distances. Each time his weight jolted down he wondered if that knee could take it, whether it wouldn't fold and let him fall, let him lie there and rest ... But no, he wanted to stand beside Ego and see the steel face and hear the mindless voice when they destroyed the robot, or the robot destroyed them all. The third chance—success—seemed too remote to consider.

  When he got there he hardly knew it. He was dimly aware that he had stopped running, so there must be a reason. He was standing with his hand on a doorknob, his back leaning against the panels, gasping for breath. To the left stretched the narrow corridor down which he had run. Before him the broad hall loomed where men had fought Ego and failed, and machines had fought him and now lay almost still, or staggered futilely, out of control.

  No matter how clearly you see a scene on television screens, you never really experience it until you get there. Conway had forgotten, in this brief while, how tall Ego really was. There was a smell of machine oil and hot metal in the air, and dust motes danced in the cone of Ego's searchlight as he stooped over the fallen robots. He was about to do something. Conway couldn't guess what.

  Running footsteps and the clank of equipment sounded down the corridor to the left. Conway turned his head a little and saw the supersonic squad pounding toward him. He thought, maybe there's still a chance. If Ego delays another two minutes ...