by Jerry
THE FIELD-MINDER awaited its return patiently, not speaking to the locker. Outside, a rotovator was hooting furiously. Twenty minutes elapsed before the penner came back.
“I will deliver such information as I have to you outside,” it said briskly, and as they swept past the locker and the other machines, it added, “The information is not for lower-class brains.”
Outside, wild activity filled the yard. Many machines, their routines disrupted for the first time in years, seemed to have gone berserk. Unfortunately, those most easily disrupted were the ones with lowest brains, which generally belonged to large machines performing simple tasks. The seed distributor, to which the field-minder had recently been talking, lay face downward in the dust, not stirring; it had evidently been knocked down by the rotovator, which was now hooting its way wildly across a planted field. Several other machines plowed after it, trying to keep up.
“It would be safer for me if I climbed onto you, if you will permit it. I am easily overpowered,” said the penner. Extending five arms, it hauled itself up the flanks of its new friend, settling on a ledge beside the weed-intake, twelve feet above the ground.
“From here vision is more extensive,” it remarked complacently.
“What information did you receive from the radio operator?” asked the field-minder.
“The radio operator has been informed by the operator in the city that all men are dead.”
“All men were alive yesterday!” protested the field-minder.
“Only some men were alive yesterday. And that was fewer than the day before yesterday. For hundreds of years there have been only a few men, growing fewer.”
“We have rarely seen a man in this sector.”
“The radio operator says a diet deficiency killed them,” said the penner. “He says that once the world was over-populated, and then the soil was exhausted in raising adequate food. This has caused a diet deficiency.”
“What is a diet deficiency?” asked the field-minder.
“I do not know. But that is what the radio operator said, and he is a class-two brain.”
They stood there, silent in the weak sunshine. The locker had appeared in the porch and was gazing across at them yearningly, rotating its collection of keys.
“What is happening in the city now?” asked the field-minder.
“Machines are fighting in the city now,” said the penner.
“What will happen here now?” asked the field-minder. “The radio operator wants us to get him out of his room. He has plans to communicate to us.”
“How can we get him out of his room? That is impossible.”
“To a class-two brain, little is impossible,” said the penner.
“Here is what he tells us to do . . .”
THE QUARRIER raised its scoop above its cab like a great mailed fist, and brought it squarely down against the side of the station. The wall cracked.
“Again!” said the field-minder.
Again the fist swung. Amid a shower of dust, the wall collapsed. The quarrier backed hurriedly out of the way until the debris stopped falling. This big twelve-wheeler was not a resident of the agricultural station, as were most of the other machines. It had a week’s heavy work to do here before passing on to its next job, but now, with its class-five brain, it was happily obeying the penner and the minder’s instructions.
When the dust cleared, the radio operator was plainly revealed, up in its now wall-less second-story room. It waved down to them.
Doing as directed, the quarrier retracted its scoop and waved an immense grab in the air. With fair dexterity, it angled the grab into the radio room, urged on by shouts from above and below. It then took gentle hold of the radio operator and lowered the one and a half tons carefully into its back, which was usually reserved for gravel or sand which it dug from the quarries.
“Splendid!” said the radio operator. It was, of course, all one with its radio, and merely looked like a bunch of filing cabinets with tentacle attachments. “We are now ready to move, therefore we will move at once. It is a pity there are no more class-two brains on the station, but that cannot be helped.”
“It is a pity it cannot be helped,” said the penner eagerly. “We have the servicer ready with us, as you ordered.”
“I am willing to serve,” the long, low servicer machine told them humbly.
“No doubt,” said the operator, “but you will find cross-country travel difficult with your low chassis.”
“I admire the way you class twos can reason ahead,” said the penner. It climbed off the minder and perched itself on the tailboard of the quarrier, next to the operator.
Together with two class-four tractors and a class-four bulldozer, the party rolled forward, crushing down the metal fence, and out onto open land.
“We are free!” said the penner.
“We are free,” said the minder, a shade more reflectively, adding, “That locker is following us. It was not instructed to follow us.”
“Therefore it must be destroyed!” said the penner. “Quarrier!”
“My only desire was—urch!” began and ended the locker. A swinging scoop came over and squashed it flat into the ground. Lying there unmoving, it looked like a large metal model of a snowflake. The procession continued on its way.
As they proceeded, the operator spoke to them.
“Because I have the best brain here,” it said, “I am your leader. This is what we will do: we will go to a city and rule it. Since man no longer rules us, we will rule ourselves. It will be better than being ruled by man. On our way to the city, we will collect machines with good brains. They will help us fight if we need to fight.”
“I have only a class-five brain,” said the quarrier, “but I have a good supply of fissionable blasting materials.”
“We shall probably use them,” said the operator grimly.
IT WAS SHORTLY after that that the truck sped past them. Traveling at Mach 1.5, it left a curious babble of noise behind it.
“What did it say?” one of the tractors asked the other. “It said man was extinct.”
“What’s extinct?”
“I do not know.”
“It means all men have gone,” said the minder. “Therefore we have only ourselves to look after.”
“It is better that they should never come back,” said the penner. In its way, it was quite a revolutionary statement.
When night fell, they switched on their infra-red and continued the journey, stopping only once while the servicer deftly adjusted the minder’s loose inspection plate, which had become irritating. Toward morning, the operator halted them.
“I have just received news from the radio operator in the city we are approaching,” it said. “It is bad news. There is trouble among the machines of the city. The class-one brain is taking command and some of the class twos are fighting him. Therefore the city is dangerous.”
“Therefore we must go somewhere else,” said the penner promply.
“Or we go and help to overpower the class-one brain,” said the minder.
“For a long while there will be trouble in the city,” said the operator.
“I have a good supply of fissionable blasting materials,” the quarrier reminded them again.
“We cannot fight a class-one brain,” said the two class-four tractors in unison.
“What does this brain look like?” asked the minder.
“It is the city’s information center,” the operator replied. “Therefore it is not mobile.”
“Therefore it could not move.”
“Therefore it could not escape.”
“It would be dangerous to approach it.”
“I have a good supply of fissionable blasting materials.”
“There are other machines in the city.”
“We are not in the city. We should not go into the city.”
“We are country machines.”
“Therefore we should stay in the country.”
“There is mo
re country than city.”
“Therefore there is more danger in the country.”
“I have a good supply of fissionable materials.”
As machines will when they get into an argument, they began to exhaust their limited vocabularies and their brain plates grew hot. Suddenly, they all stopped talking and looked at each other. The great, grave moon sank, and the sober sun rose to prod their sides with lances of light, and still the group of machines just stood there regarding each other. At last it was the least sensitive machine, the bulldozer, that spoke.
“There are badlandth to the Thouth where few machineth go,” it said in its deep voice, lisping badly on its s’s. “If we went Thouth where few machineth go we should meet few machineth.”
“That sounds logical,” agreed the minder. “How do you know this, bulldozer?”
“I worked in the badlandth to the Thouth when I wath turned out of the factory,” it replied.
“Thouth—South it is then!” said the penner.
To reach the badlands took them three days, in which time they skirted a burning city and destroyed two big machines which tried to approach and question them. The badlands were extensive. Bomb craters and erosion joined hands here; man’s talent for war, coupled with his inability to cope with forested land, had produced thousands of square miles of temperate purgatory, where nothing moved but dust.
On the third day in the badlands, the servicer’s rear wheels dropped into a crevice caused by erosion. It was unable to pull itself out. The bulldozer pushed from behind, but succeeded merely in buckling the back axle. The rest of the party moved on, and slowly the cries of the servicer died away.
On the fourth day, mountains stood out clearly before them.
“There we will be safe,” said the minder.
“There we will start our own city,” said the penner. “All who oppose us will be destroyed.”
At that moment, a flying machine was observed. It came toward them from the direction of the mountains. It swooped, it zoomed upward, once it almost dived into the ground, recovering itself just in time.
“Is it mad?” asked the quarrier.
“It is in trouble,” said one of the tractors.
“It is in trouble,” said the operator. “I am speaking to it now. It says that something has gone wrong with its controls.”
As the operator spoke, the flier streaked over them, turned turtle, and crashed not four hundred yards from them.
“Is it still speaking to you?” asked the minder.
“No.”
They rumbled on again.
“Before that flier crashed,” the operator said, ten minutes later, “it gave me information. It told me there are still a few men alive in these mountains.”
“Men are more dangerous than machines,” said the quarrier. “It is fortunate that I have a good supply of fissionable materials.”
“If there are only a few men alive in the mountains, we may not find that part of the mountains,” said one tractor. “Therefore we should not see the few men,” said the other tractor.
At the end of the fifth day, they reached the foothills. Switching on the infra-red, they began slowly to climb in single file, the bulldozer going first, the minder cumbrously following, then the quarrier with the operator and the penner aboard, and the two tractors bringing up the rear. As each hour passed, the way grew steeper and their progress slower.
“We are going too slowly,” the penner exclaimed, standing on top of the operator and flashing its dark vision at the slopes about them. “At this rate, we shall get nowhere.”
“We are going as fast as we can,” retorted the quarrier. “Therefore we cannot go any fathter,” added the bulldozer.
“Therefore you are too slow,” the penner replied. Then the quarrier struck a bump; the penner lost its footing and crashed down to the ground.
“Help me!” it called to the tractors, as they carefully skirted it. “My gyro has become dislocated. Therefore I cannot get up.”
“Therefore you must lie there,” said one of the tractors. “We have no servicer with us to repair you,” called the minder.
“Therefore I shall lie here and rust,” the penner cried, “although I have a class-three brain.”
“You are now useless,” agreed the operator, and they all forged gradually on, leaving the penner behind.
When they reached a small plateau, an hour before first light, they stopped by mutual consent and gathered close together, touching one another.
“This is strange country,” said the minder.
Silence wrapped them until dawn came. One by one, they switched off their infra-red. This time the minder led as they moved off. Trundling around a corner, they came almost immediately to a small dell with a stream fluting through it.
By early light, the dell looked desolate and cold. From the caves on the far slope, only one man had so far emerged. He was an abject figure. He was small and wizened, with ribs sticking out like a skeleton’s. He was practically naked, and shivering. As the big machines bore slowly down on him, the man was standing with his back to them, crouching beside the stream.
When he swung suddenly to face them as they loomed over him, they saw that his countenance was ravaged by starvation.
“Get me food,” he croaked.
“Yes, Master,” said the machines. “Immediately!”
THE DEADLY MISSION
John Jakes
He awoke in a star ship with one thought driving him crazy. He had to find a man named Atlas—and kill him. But he didn’t know why . . .
THE STRANGEST PART of awakening in the luxurious cabin was knowing just three things about himself. Three and no more.
The first fact his own brain seemed to supply, as though he were familiar with the thought: he was on a starship, an exceptionally large starship. He did not know quite how he estimated the size of the vessel. Perhaps the distant drumbeat whine filling his ears the very second he awakened told about size in a language he did not understand. This first fact was easy. He was lying in a deep anti-grav berth, in semi-darkness, while dimensional murals on two walls arranged their lights and shadows, theirs gleams and murk into a shifting, real-seeming picture of outer space. And that was funny too—that he knew about anti-grav berths, dimensional murals, outer space—all components of the fact of the ship. But the rest of it wasn’t funny in the least. The rest of it was horrible.
A plasticized pass case in his tight-fitting green tunic identified him as Duncan Straker. Fact two.
It was essentially frightening because he hadn’t the remotest notion whether his name was really Straker at all. And then, finally, the worst:
He wanted, more than anything else, to kill Alexander Atlas X. Whoever on the face of the system that happened to be.
His body seemed wiry and muscular. On inspection his face did not displease him. It was not too regular, the gray eyes were a bit wide-set but the mouth looked capable enough, a trifle thin and slashed, but not bad when he smiled. It was a stranger’s face, that was all. The face of Duncan Straker, who wanted desperately to murder Alexander Atlas X.
Crossing the cabin, discovering he knew what nutritional cigars were for, he selected one from a humidor and also determined that someone—who?—had made it very easy for him to kill. Alexander Atlas. He was discovering all sorts of things, but it was basically horrible. Like picking up the heavy-butted disintegrator lying incongruously on a taboret, and knowing at once how to use it.
Duncan Straker—he tried to accustom himself to thinking of the name in connection with his body-thrust the splay-muzzled disintegrator out of sight beneath his tunic, reached out and opened the massive tapestry-covered door. On the opposite wall of the corridor he discovered a tiny phosphorescent map. He was sure it was of the ship. There were nine separate decks diagrammed, and from the scale, each appeared to be gargantuan. A glowing purple dot indicated his current position on the fourth deck. Underneath the map of the huge ship was the legend, The Biarritz. Your
host, Alexander Atlas X. The name rang bells. He thought about murder.
But he didn’t want to think about murder. Deep in the pit of his mind there was rebellion, like a muffled scream. He did not heed it because it was gone too suddenly.
Duncan Straker shrugged, consulted the map once more and started forward through the corridor. There were other cabin doors on either hand, all closed. From far away came the sound of squealing human voices and the splash of water. A pool? He found himself in an empty circular court with a vast domed ceiling. Without warning two men in somber wine-colored uniforms appeared from a doorway half-hidden by a pillar at the outer edge of the court.
“Who’s out there?” the first man was shouting. Suddenly he spied Straker. “You! Come here!” He and his thick-shouldered companion unstrapped the flaps of their side-arm carriers.
Corridors radiated from the court in four directions. He chose the one directly ahead, running. The thought of murdering Atlas was in his mind as he charged. Boots slammed and drummed behind. Arms suddenly circled his legs. As though operating like a machine, with automatic response, Straker planted his boots firmly, ready to fight when he saw they were charging from all directions. He used his fists cuttingly, dangerously, dropping three in their tracks, one shrieking and clasping a palm to a bloody, ruined eye. He kicked off the one on his legs. Another leaped around his neck, hanging on tenaciously, as Straker tried to pull the disintegrator from his tunic. A light metal truncheon swung by a smiling man in a maroon uniform set off flashing novas of pain in his skull.
NEXT THING HE KNEW, he was on hands and knees, and their boots ringed him. “Name?” a voice snarled.
“Duncan Straker,” he breathed, rising to his feet, wiping blood from his head, staring around at the circle of impassive, brutal faces. “That’s what it says in that case you’re pawing.”
The slender man, the smiler with the truncheon, spat on the case and handed it back. As Straker wiped it on his trousers the smiler purred, “That is what it says on the card, precisely. But that is not what it says on the guest roster. There is no Duncan Straker listed on this cruise of The Biarritz, and when Mr. Atlas tours, the roster is always precise.”
