by Jerry
Long stagnant thought channels connected. James Mason? That was him. Someone was calling. There was something he had to do—
Mason tried to move, and the effort blasted his mind with a wave of stinging agony. He had something to do, quickly, without delay. What was it? His world was a world of bottomless dark, spotted with whirling red flashes of pain.
James Mason someone had said. That was him! Memory prodded. And the pain—somehow he knew that was to have been part of it. He must expect pain. That, he knew. But why? The answer avoided him, shrinking as if his consciousness refused to face some dread knowledge.
“. . . .Good, James Mason. . . . You are beginning to remember. . . . Do not be alarmed. . . . The following periods will be painful but necessary if you are to succeed in your destiny. . . . You few men and yromen of great courage must survive. . . . This first impulse is connected to sight. . . . You must locate and control this primary. . . .”
Mason’s mind jerked as if tugged by an invisible string. Sight? He had almost remembered. And that flick of a memory of the girl, her eyes brimming with tears? What—
Agony, searing bright, lashed at his mind like the cut of a whip. His darkness danced with jabbing flashes of pain, and Mason fought back in desperation. His thoughts raged up and down their quivering thought corridors, trying to stem the flashes. And failed.
“. . . .Courage, James Mason. . . . Remember that all free mankind knows you men and women are our last desperate hope. . . . They thank you for your willingness to make such a sacrifice. . . . The next impulse will be severe. . . . It is connected to all your methods of hearing and speaking. . . . Courage, James Mason. . . . You must survive. . . .”
ON the instant, Mason’s reeling mind almost went berserk. The intolerable torture swelled. Up and up until the original intensity tripled. There, it held constant. Mason’s ego shuddered. His thoughts were becoming jumbled and blurred. Distantly, he knew he had expected pain—but not this!
How did he know that? Why couldn’t he see? Or hear? And like an evil cloud, the dark realization crept over him that he couldn’t sense any connections with his arms, or legs—or anything. Desperate, in its agony, his mind flopped around erratically until it concentrated on one searing spot and straining, forced the pain down, and down—into nothing.
Mason thought he would faint, but his sub-level consciousness, clutching him up out of the darkness, supported him until he had finished seeking out and subduing each flashing spot of pain. The cool darkness that followed was soothing. Ecstasy!
“. . . .Good, James Mason. . . . You may rest while your memory channels fully readjust. . . . You will begin to remember our great need for a super weapon after being driven to this our last refuge. . . . Accordingly, your brain was removed from your body and placed in the brain-case of a super. . . .”
Mason’s sub-level mind twisted. It had remembered! In terror, it tried to, scream. No
—they couldn’t do this! His mind—he—his consciousness in one of those metallic monstrosities. They couldn’t!—
As remembrance washed into him, the ego that was Mason fought grimly to control the rising surges of horror that tried to engulf him. He had a job to do. There was no turning back now. The deed was done, and the regretful memory of that lithe body of his he had bid good-by—and the good-by to the girl with tears in her eyes—those things must be forgotten. All that was past.
He, James Mason, must put all those things out of mind. Irrevocably, there was no turning back. He had known that. He had volunteered—and he had a job to do. But first he must learn. It would take a long time. And pain. Much pain.
“. . . And therefore you now have a type of immortality. . . .You will no longer need sleep. . . . Your brain is fed and nourished constantly in an indestructible brain-case that is a complete unit in itself. . . . Your body is formidable. . . . How long a period of time it will take for the first stirring of your brain to activate these instructional tapes I do not know . . .
“Some of you patriots will never awaken, and some, if they awake, will be unable to withstand the pain necessary to locate all of their various channels. . . . Therefore some are doomed to go on living, imprisoned forever in a living death. . . . Courage, James Mason. . . . The next impulses will be locomotion methods attached to what originally were the nerve endings of your legs. . . Control them. . . .”
The impulses ripped into him. Ruthless, strong and insistent, demanding the attention of his total consciousness. For an eternity, they jerked and twisted at his dodging mind. The moment he had located and subdued one agony, fresh points of hurt came darting at him.
Finally, there was no pain. He was floating in a pleasant soft blackness. Then—
“. . .You should by now have located all of your major channels. . . . The subdivisions are up to your own exploration. . . . Your sub-level consciousness will now begin to function as a separate automatic part of you. Attending to all the necessary involuntary functions of your existence similar to breathing and digestion in your original body. . . . In a way these will also assume protective and defensive measures. . . .”
Mason felt almost peaceful. He had noticed that he now was beginning to feel a sense of existing as a body. Something deep down, buried beyond his consciousness, seemed to be taking over unguessable functions. It was a strange sensation, almost frightening.
He could feel fingers and arms and legs—but the alien quality of that feel sent a chill through him. He felt human—or didn’t he? The blackness, occasionally, was beginning to show patterns. But what they were, he didn’t know. And he was drowsy, and relaxed as if—The thought startled him. As if what?
His mind grappled with the problem, trying to find a word for the subtle difference and he became more uneasy. He was going to retain his humanness, wasn’t he?
“. . . .Like a developing child, James Mason, you must learn how to use and handle this body entrusted into your care. . . . This body has cost us millions of credits and millions of man-hours to create. . . . It is infinitely complex. . . . Do not be discouraged. . . It will take time. . . . But I urge you to hurry for time is vital. . . .
“At the first cutward sign or movement from you, we will contact you and prepare you for your purpose. . . . But since you now have strength and possibilities of destruction beyond your present comprehension, I advise you to be cautious. . . . Until then, James Mason. . . . You are on your own.”
The tape clicked off, and James Mason’s elation swelled up inside of him until he thought his brain would burst. He had made it! The rest was up to him. And then the fearful question knocked at his brain about the others. How many hadn’t made it? How many had made it? And how long ago? Was he late—or early?
His mind jerked back to himself and his alien body. Now—the rest of it was up to himself alone.
IT took a long time. A long, long time.
But Mason finally moved what he thought was a leg. At first, he felt a resistance, then sudden movement and a jarring crash. He knew, with some sort of an unfamiliar sense, that he was in a different position. And more and more he was beginning to have a feeling of completeness. Of being almost whole again.
Well, he had moved. Now let somebody contact him.
He waited, and as the moments dragged into hours, he concentrated on the spot where he seemed to see images—blurry and confused—but images. He focused his attention on a small pattern in the center of the curtain before his mind. He strained his—eyes? He moved his leg, and the pattern changed.
Realization came with such abruptness that it shocked him. He was actually seeing, by some sort of process, into outside! Mason’s mind trembled. At last! Now he wasn’t cut off from whatever was out there. Many pictures were there in the pattern of his mind, all blended into a single tapestry. And when he had moved, he had heard the scrape of metal against something. Of that he was certain.
Impatient, Mason wondered why somebody didn’t contact him. He stared at the center picture again, and as he concen
trated, unexpectedly, dismay crashed at him in an overwhelming wave. He could see girders—but they were twisted and torn. And heaps of stone choked in weeds. He tensed. Those girders were rusted, as if—
Violently, Mason forced his legs to move, and he saw all the picture patterns change with a clarity that stunned him. The pictures showed wreckage, but from different angles and tons of it crushed their weight in an imprisoning grip on the long slim stem portions of himself.
Mason strained to drag himself free, and he heard tons of debris crumble and fall with thunderous crashes as he lumbered clumsily into the open. Undoubtedly, he had strength.
Through the rising clouds of dust he probed his vision—it seemed to be capable of various wavelengths—and saw that he was in a grass-covered opening that sloped through flame-seared trees down to a beach that dipped into an emerald green ocean. The pinkish sun, sinking on the horizon, glinted dully on the gaunt skeleton of what once must have been a proud and majestic building. And as night crept quietly into the lengthening shadows Mason felt an uneasy peace. At least he was free. But where were the others? And the wreckage—why?
CHAPTER II
Awakening Brain-Case
MOTIONLESS, six days and six nights, Mason lay in the grass-carpeted glade, waiting for the promised contact, and exploring his new body. He was monstrous, and fearsomely beautiful. Thirty long meters of diamond-hard steel. And his feet—the huge caterpillar treads—would retract into his cigar-shaped fuselage to make him a smooth, streamlined body should he desire to be airborne or water-borne.
The two immense steel-taloned arms that could fold flush into his hull were capable of removing the forward or aft gun turrets to the repair shop amidship near his brain-case.
Mason was tired of waiting. Doubt was gnawing at his mind. Perhaps he had been forgotten. Perhaps he was needed at this very moment. Surely a trial flight would—Mason made a decision, and gave his innards a final check. Flight it would be. He wasn’t sure of his control over this massive body of his as yet, but he would make an attempt. Things had worked out much more quickly than he had expected. To master the ability of seeing by the reflection of the short radio waves he himself could beam out had been difficult. It still gave him an alien sensation when night hid the face of the earth and he sent his vision roaming far and wide. Hearing, and speaking, by air-vibrationary methods had been less involved as he could practise by talking to himself. In fact, he still remembered the thrill it had given him when he first discovered how to shout. Vision by ordinary light he had from every direction including the inside of his own body. That had pleased him.
Amidship, he could see and feel his smaller fingers, inside the workshop, putting things away in spanking order. The troubles he had experienced in trying to hear and speak directly in the radio spectrum still troubled him. It troubled him chiefly because he couldn’t pick up anything on his receiving sense in that wave length. Surely, the doubt nagged him, the humans hadn’t advanced so far during his long sleep that they no longer communicated by radio—or had they?
Evidently, he had been asleep a long time. The rust on the girders was rust. He had tasted it with his chemical analysis sense. Temperatures he could gauge to the fraction of a degree. And anything his ten-meter arms were capable of lifting, he knew to the gram, its weight. Anything else he needed he could manufacture in his workshop or jury-rig. It was a fine workshop complete with everything he might need.
Mason retracted his treads and concentrated on his main drive. For a moment, the results blurred even his super-senses as instantly, without warning, his ponderous body slid forward. It soared upward with such frightful force that the portion of building blocking his path was brushed aside as a straw in a hurricane.
Wavering, dipping and skidding, his seventy-five tons of hardened steel shot up and out over the emerald-green sea until the sky darkened to blue-black. His tense mind began to relax. Up here, he had room. Room to maneuver without fear of making a few mistakes in learning to handle this power that was now his. For the first time, then, he exerted himself to the utmost, narrowing his mind into an impulse of pure driving energy.
LIKE a meteor, he felt himself hurtled through distance. His mind began to sing. This was living. This was power. Behind him he could hear a crackling roar of thunder as the air thudded into the vacuum he was drilling through the thin atmosphere. He was like lightning, he thought. He could make thunder! The thought was exhilarating. And exciting.
A message sparked through space:
“233-G calling Klarth. . . . Evidence of brief surges of unscreened atomic engine somewhere on Earth. . . . Advise. . .
Mason heard And understood. That had been radio! Elated, he was about to send out a call, but the brief joy dissolved as he heard the answer:
“Klarth to 233-G. . . . Locate. . . . Determine reason. . . . If from awakening brain-case follow usual procedure. . . . If resistance is encountered dismantle brain-case by force. . . . Bring it here. . . . That is all.”
Awakening brain-case? They must have been talking about him! But that message had sounded as if—
Mason checked his drive. Something was wrong here. Something was most definitely wrong. If resistance is encountered dismantle brain-case by force! Why should he resist? Why should he resist what?
His vision flashed down at the city that budded from the continent rolling up over the horizon. That message had suggested outer space. The fact was becoming apparent that he was going to have to shift for himself. He had better investigate. Now!
Beneath him the land expanded and the city rose to meet him. It was a wrecked city. As far as he could see, the dead city was a twisted mass of tumbled, weed-choked ruins.
Fire-blackened and overgrown with strangling vegetation.
The thickening air pulled at his body as Mason tensed himself for a landing. Then so powerful that it deafened his senses, a message knifed into his brain:
“Stop radiating all that energy, you fool.” The voice had a strange quality to it. “You’ll have them down here searching again.”
Startled into inaction for the moment, Mason struggled to regain control of his hurtling body only to feel it crash a shattering half-mile passage through crumpling buildings and splintering trees before he lurched heavily to a stop. “What’s this?” Mason managed. “Who are you?”
“Never mind. Wait for us to contact you. Either screen your radiation or get out of this area.”
He tried to seize the direction of the beam and failed.
“Answer me,” he beamed full power, “where are you? Who is Klarth?”
Silence, in his mind.
Savagely, Mason lumbered his bulk around and a sudden flicker of motion on his upper panel showed figures moving on his starboard side. He shortened the wave length of his vision to see through the dust.
Humans! They were running away from him! And they were looking back over their shoulders, screaming with fear.
Mason was shocked. Why should they run? Why should they scream? They feared him! Why? He started after them at a reckless lumbering pace, heedless of the destruction his heavy steel body was creating. Desperately, Mason wanted to talk to somebody. He had questions to ask.
Like scurrying mice, dashing among the ruins, the men and women evaded him. Even the children eluded him. He could see them clearly now. Bronzed, half-naked in tattered clothes and ragged animal skins. Mason felt a sinking sensation. What had happened to his civilization that humans should run like frightened animals bare-footed in the ruins of a weed-choked city? Were all the cities like this?
A wall reared up before him, blocking his path, and he smashed violently through it. His port arm flashed out to seize the stumbling figure of a man. He felt bones snap in the flailing arm as his steel-taloned hand closed. Mason flinched—he hadn’t intended to hurt. He only wanted information.
“Who is Klarth?”
He realized, with a start, that his voice sounded unnaturally loud and harsh.
The man’s mout
h was wide. Screaming. His unified eyes rolled until only the whites showed. Mason swung his starboard arm around to try to hold the struggling figure less painfully. “Who is Klarth? Tell me! I’ll let you go.”
“He is like you,” the man moaned. “He is up in the sky and his flying demons come down to take our best men and women.”
Mason’s mind skittered. Flying demons in the sky? Like himself? His metal hand tightened.
“Tell the truth, or I’ll crush you like a frog. Why do you run from me? Why do you live in this wrecked city like animals?”
A distant part of his mind seemed to be rebuking him, cautioning him to be more gentle.
The human squirmed.
“You metal demons steal our minds. You won’t let us build up the cities. You take our tools, our weapons.”
“What happened to the war?”
Mason pulled his mind tight, waiting for the answer.
“Klarth ended it—many generations ago.”
“Generations ago?” Mason was aghast. “Who is Klarth?”
“Like you—like you!”
The man fainted.
A SCREAM—a woman’s scream, reacted on Mason’s taut nerves like a bomb blast. He saw a woman, beautiful in a human way, with long flying auburn hair, firm bronzed legs, running up to where his huge talon held the limp figure of the unconscious man. She was frightened, but her face and lips were tight as she tried vainly to pry her man free of his metallic fingers. The futile gesture gave him a wrenching shock.
Without word or movement, emotionally numbed for the moment, Mason watched her. A sickness was sweeping into him. Somewhere the Great Plan had gone astray. Some unforeseen factor had pushed in and wrecked the Plan.
Desperate men, pushed to the limits of human endurance, and the creation of a super-weapon, had seemed the only way to stem the sweeping onslaught of the human jackals that had enslaved nine-tenths of the world. The Supers were to have been the factor to save civilization, later to become impartial judges and eternal storehouses of human knowledge.
