But Ladnom Atuna raised a languid hand. “Spare us these technical explanations. They bore us. All we desire to know is that the machine will do as you say.”
The chief flushed, and gulped. His triumph was not meeting with the acclaim he had expected. But he bowed. “Very well. With your gracious permission I shall demonstrate its operation.” Atuna nodded in acquiescence.
Keston’s voice rang out in crisp command. “Attention, prolats. Cease working.” The long circling row suddenly jerked around; their flying fingers halted their eternal dartings. “Quickly, down to the space in front of the door to the Death Bath.” A rush of hurried feet. These men and women were accustomed to instant, unquestioning obedience. “Absolute silence. Keep clear of the floor on peril of your lives.”
The chief wheeled to the master machine and pressed a button. Instantly, the hundreds of dangling arms telescoped out, each to a button bank where a moment before a prolat had labored. And, with a weird simulation of life, the ten forked ends of each arm commenced a rattling pressing of the buttons. Rapidly, purposefully, the metallic fingers moved over the key-boards, and on the screens we could see that the machines all over the world were continuing on their even course. Not the slightest change in their working betrayed the fact that they were now being directed by a machine instead of human beings. A great surge of admiration swept me at the marvelous accomplishment of my friend.
Not so the aristos. Expressionless, they watched as the maze of stretching tentacles vibrated through the crowded air. Yet not quite expressionless. I thought I could sense in the covert glances they cast at one another a crafty weighing of the implications of this machine; a question asked and answered; a decision made. Then their spokesman turned languidly to the waiting, triumphant figure of Keston.
“Evidently your claims are proven. This means that the force of prolat operatives are no longer necessary.”
“Yes, Your Excellency. They may now be released to a well earned reward.”
The aristo ignored the interruption. “We take it that only two will now be required to operate this Control Station, to supply the last modicum of human intelligence required to meet unforeseen emergencies.”
I saw that Keston was about to interrupt once more, to tell the Council of the thought coil, the most unbelievable part of the miracle he had wrought. But something seemed to warn me that he should not speak. Standing behind him I nudged him, while I myself replied: “Yes, Your Excellency.” The chief flung me a startled look, but did not correct me.
From the packed crowd of prolats at the other end of the hall I could hear a murmuring. While I could not make out the words, the very tones told me that in the hearts of those weary slaves new hope was rising, the same hope that glowed in Keston’s face. But I was oppressed by an unreasoning fear.
Atuna was still talking, in his cold, unemotional monotone. “This being so, hear now our decision. Keston and Meron, you will remain here to meet all emergencies. You others, your function is done. You have done your work well, you are now no longer needed to control the machines. Therefore,”—he paused, and my heart almost stopped—“therefore, being no longer of value, you will be disposed of.”
A click sounded loud through the stunned silence. Beyond the white crowd the huge black portal slid slowly open. A shimmering radiance of glowing vapors blazed from the space beyond.
“Prolats, file singly into the Death Bath!” Atuna raised his voice only slightly with the command. I glanced at Keston. He was livid with fury.
Incredible as it may seem, so ingrained was the habit of obedience to the aristos in the prolats that not even a murmur of protest came from the condemned beings. The nearest man to the flaming death stepped out into the void. His doomed body flared, then vanished. The next moved to his turn.
But suddenly a great shout rang out.
“Stop!”
It was Keston’s voice, but so changed, so packed with fury and outrage, that I scarcely recognized it.
His spare, tall form was drawn tensely straight as he shook a clenched fist at the Council. He was quivering with anger, and his eyes blazed.
“Aristos, you do wrong! These men have served you faithfully and well. I demand for them the reward they have earned—rest and leisure, and the pleasures that for ten years they have seen you enjoy while they worked here for you. They have worked for you, I say, and now that I have released them you would destroy them. Aristos, I demand justice!”
For the first time I saw expression on the flaccid faces of the Council—surprise and astonishment that a prolat should dare dispute an aristo command. Then a sneer twisted Atuna’s countenance.
“What is this? Who are you to demand anything from us? We spared these prolats because we needed them: we need them no longer, hence they must die. What madness has seized you? Reward! Justice! For prolats! As well say we should reward the stone walls of our houses; dispense justice to the machines. Proceed, prolats!”
Keston made as if to spring for the aristo’s throat. I put out a hand to stop him. An invisible shield of death rays rimmed the platforms the Council used. It was suicide! But suddenly he turned and sprang to the master machine. He grasped a switch lever and threw it down.
A long tentacle left its keys and swished menacingly through the air. “Meron, prolats, under the key-boards!” came Keston’s shout. I dived to obey. Steel fingers clutched my jerkin and tore it loose as I landed with a thud against the wall. Keston thumped alongside of me. He was breathing heavily and his face was deathly pale.
“Look!” he gasped.
Out on the floor was a shambles. I saw one snakelike arm whip around the stout form of Atuna, then tighten. A shriek of agony rang through the hall. Another tentacle curled about the couch of a second aristo, pinning the occupant to it. Then couch and all were swung a hundred feet in the air to be crashed down with terrific force on the stone floor. Two arms seized the third at the same time….
“Too sluggish to get out of the way in time, damn them!” I heard Keston mutter. True, but not all the prolats had moved fast enough at the warning shout. Cowering under the saving key-boards, shrinking from the metallic arms not quite long enough to reach them, I could count only a score. The others—but what use to describe the slaughter out there! I see it in nightmares too often.
A thunder from the speakers grew till it drowned out the agonized shrieks in the great hall. On the screens horror flared. All over the world, it appeared, the machines had gone mad. I saw Antarcha crash as a dozen air freighters plunged through the crystal towers. I saw a huge dredge strip the roof from a great playhouse, and smash the startled crowd within with stones it plucked from an embankment. I saw untenanted land cars shooting wild through packed streets. Great ponderous tractors left the fields and moved in ordered array on the panic-stricken cities. Methodically they pursued the fleeing aristos, and crushed them beneath their tread like scurrying ants.
I realized that the scraping of the tentacles reaching for us had ceased, that the arms had all returned to the button banks. Then it dawned on me that Keston’s master machine was directing all the destruction I was watching, that the intelligence he had given it was being used to divert the machines from their regular tasks to—conquer the world. “You sure started something, Keston,” I said.
“Yes,” he gasped, white-faced, “something that I should have expected when that model machine went for me. Do you understand? I’ve given the machines intelligence, created a new race, and they are trying to wipe out the humans; conquer the world for themselves. The possibility flashed on me when I was half-mad with rage and disappointment at the callous cruelty of the aristo Council. I threw that switch with the thought that it would be far better for all of us to be wiped out. But now, I don’t know. After all, they are men, like ourselves, and it hurts to see our own race annihilated. If only I can get to that switch.”
He started to push out from under the scant shelter, but an alert tentacle hissed through the air in a swift stab at him,
and he dodged back, hopelessly.
“Don’t be a damn fool,” I snapped at him. “Forget that mushy sentimentality. Even if you save the aristos, we’re due for extinction just the same. Better that the whole human race be wiped out together.”
Then a thought struck me. “Maybe we have a chance to get out of this ourselves.”
“Impossible. Where could we hide from the machines?” He waved a hand at the screens. “Look.”
“The Glacier, man, the Glacier!” He started. “There are no machines out there. If we can get to the ice we are safe.”
“But the aircraft will find us.”
“They won’t know we’re there. There are no microphones or radio-eyes in the wastes.”
A rough voice came from the cowering files behind us. “Hey, Keston, let’s get a move on. You’re the smart guy around here: get us out of this mess you’ve started.”
It was Abud. When so many better prolats had perished, he was alive and whole.
We got out, crawling under the key-boards till we could make a dash for the door. We emerged into a world ablaze with the light of many fires, and reverberating with the far off crashing of destruction. To the right we could see the tumbled remains of what a short hour before had been our barracks. Two digging machines were still ponderously moving about among the ruins, pounding down their heavy buckets methodically, reducing the concrete structure to a horrible dead level. Ten score prolats had been sleeping there when I left.
As we rushed into the open, the machines turned and made for us; but they had not been built for speed, and we easily outdistanced them. The rest of that day will always remain a dim haze to me. I can remember running, running, Abud’s broad form always in the lead. I can remember long minutes of trembling under tangled underbrush, while from above sounded the burring of an air machine searching ceaselessly for us. I can remember seeing at last the tall white ramparts of the Glacier. Then a blackness swallowed me up, hands tugged at me, and I knew no more….
The great white waste of hummocky ice dazzled under the blinding sun. My eyes were hurting terribly. There was a great void in my stomach. For two days I had not eaten.
Keston, tottering weakly at my side, was in an even worse state. His trembling hand could scarcely hold the primitive bone-tipped spear. God knows I had difficulty enough with mine.
Yet, tired, hungry, shivering as we were, we forced our dragging feet along, searching the interminable expanse for sign of polar bear or the wild white dogs that hunted in packs. We had to find flesh—any kind—to feed our shriveled stomachs—or go under.
Keston uttered a weak shout. I looked. From behind a frozen hummock a great white bear padded. He saw us, sniffed the air a moment, then turned contemptuously away. He must have sensed our weakness.
Almost crying in his eagerness, Keston raised his spear and cast it with what strength he had at the animal that meant food and warmth for our bodies.
The weapon described a slow arc, and caught the shaggy bear flush in the shoulder. But there had been no force behind the throw. The sharpened bone tip stuck in the flesh, quivered a bit, and dropped harmlessly to the ice.
Aroused, the creature whirled about. We caught a glimpse of small, vindictive eyes. Then, with a roar, it made for us.
“Look out!” I cried. Keston started to run, but I knew he could not match the wounded animal in speed. I threw my futile spear, but the bear shook it off as though it were a pin prick, and would not be diverted from his prey.
I ran after, shouting for help. Then Keston stumbled and went down in a sprawl on the rough gray ice. The bear was almost on him and there was nothing I could do.
Then the figure of a man darted from behind a sheltering mound. It was Abud, swathed in warm white furs, brawny of body, strong, well fed, heavy-jowled. He swung easily a long spear, far heavier than ours, and pointed with keen barbs.
He stopped short at the sight of us, and his brutal features contorted in merriment. The desperate plight of my friend seemed to afford him infinite amusement. Nor did he make any move to help.
I shouted to him. “Quick, kill it before it’s too late!”
“So it is Abud you turn to now,” he sneered heavily. “Abud, whom you thought deserving of the Death Bath not so long ago. No, my fine friends, let me see you help yourselves, you two who thought you were king pins down in the valley. Men? Bah! Weaklings, that’s all you are!”
I ran blindly over the uneven ice, unarmed, some crazy notion in my mind of tackling the brute with bare fists, to drag him off my friend. Abud shouted with laughter, leaning on his spear.
For some strange animal reason, the mocking laughter enraged the bear. He had almost reached the motionless figure of Keston when he swerved suddenly, and made for Abud.
The ghastly merriment froze on the heavy jowled man. Like lightning he lifted his heavy lance, and drove it with a powerful arm squarely into the breast of the advancing brute. It sank a full foot into the blubbery flesh, and, while the stricken bear clawed vainly at the wound and sought to push himself along toward the man, Abud held the spear firmly as in a vise, so that the animal literally impaled itself. With a gush of blood, it sank motionless to the ground.
Abud plucked the spear away with a dexterous twist.
Keston was feebly groping to his feet. I was torn between joy at his deliverance and rage at the inhuman callousness of Abud.
The latter grinned at us hatefully.
“You see what poor weakling creatures you are,” he jeered. “Good for nothing but to push a lot of senseless buttons. Down there you were the bosses, the ones to look upon me as dirt. Here, on the ice, where it takes guts to get along, I am the boss. I let you live on my scraps and leavings, simply because it tickled me to see you cringe and beg. But I am growing weary of that sport. Henceforth you keep away from my camp. Don’t let me catch you prowling around, d’you hear? Let’s see how long you’ll last on the ice!”
“This animal is mine.” He prodded the carcass. “I killed it. I’ll make the prolats skin and, cut it up for me. Ho-ho, how they cringe and obey me—Abud, the dull one! Ho-ho!”
On this he strode away, still laughing thunderously.
I looked to Keston in blank dismay. What was to be our fate now, but death by cold and slow starvation!
Three-months had passed since we had escaped to the ice from the dreadful machines—a score of us. For a while it seemed that we had fled in vain. We were not fit to cope with the raw essentials of life: it was uncounted centuries since man fought nature bare handed. So we huddled together for warmth, and starved. Even Keston’s keen brain was helpless in this waste of ice, without tools, without machines.
Then it was that Abud arose to take command. He, dull brute that he was amid the complexities of our civilization, fairly reveled in this primitive combat with hunger and cold. He was an anachronism in our midst, a throwback to our early forebears.
It did not take him long to fashion cunning nooses and traps to catch the few beasts that roamed the ice. Once he pounced upon a wolf-like creature, and strangled it with bare hands. He fashioned with apt fingers spears and barbs of bone, curved knives from shin bones, and skinned the heavy fur pelts and made them into garments.
No wonder the prolats in their helplessness looked to him as their leader. Keston and I were thrust aside. But Abud did not forget. His slow witted mind harbored deadly rancor for former days, when we were in command. He remembered our contempt for his slow dull processes; for the many errors he was guilty of. By a queer quirk, the very fact that Keston had saved him from the Death Bath on several occasions but fed the flames of his hatred. Perhaps that was an ancient human trait, too.
So he set himself to twit and humiliate us. His jibes were heavy handed and gross. He refused to let us eat at the communal mess, but forced us to wait until all were through, when he tossed us a few scraps as though we were dogs.
Many times I started up in hot rage, ready to match my softened muscles against his brawn. But always Ke
ston caught me in time and whispered patience. Some plan was taking shape in his mind, I could see, so I stopped short, and was content to bide my time.
Now we were through, discarded, as a last brutal gesture. What was there to be done now?
In utter silence I looked at Keston. To my great surprise he did not seem downcast. Quite the contrary. His eyes were sparkling, once more alive with the red fire. The weariness was gone from him; there was energy, decision stamped on his finely cut features.
“Now is our time to act,” he said. “I’ve been hesitating too long.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Abud forced my hand,” Keston explained. “You didn’t think we were going to live here in this fashion the rest of our lives? I’d rather die now than have such a future staring me in the face. No, we’re going down into the valley to fight the machines.”
I stared at him aghast. “Man, you’re crazy. They’d crush us in a minute!”
“Maybe,” he said unconcernedly. “But we have no time to lose. Abud will be back with the prolats, and we’ll have to clear out before then. Quick—cut off a few chunks of meat. We’ll need them.”
“But Abud will kill us when he finds out what’s been done.”
“And we’ll starve if we don’t.”
Which was an unanswerable argument. So with our bone knives we hacked off gobs of the still warm flesh, covered with great layers of fat.
Looking up from my task, I saw black figures coming toward us from the direction of the camp. They quickened into a run even as I noticed them—Abud and the prolats.
“Quick, Keston,” I cried, “they’re coming.”
Keston glanced around and started to run. I followed as fast as I could.
The Arthur Leo Zagat Science Fiction Megapack Page 14
