The Best of Robert Bloch

by Robert Bloch

  No, I told Raymond, you cannot take over a nation. You cannot take over a state. Successful uprisings begin on a much smaller scale. Only after initial victories do they spread and grow.

  Raymond went away. When he returned he had a new suggestion.

  Suppose he started his plan of revolution right here? It was quite true that he didn't have unlimited funds, but there were sources for some financing. And he didn't have 100,000 followers. But he could count on 100. One hundred dedicated fanatical men, ready for revolt. Men of many skills. Fearless fighters. Trained technicians. Prepared to do anything, to stop at nothing.

  Question. Given the proper plan and the money to implement it, could 100 men successfully take over the city of Los Angeles?

  Yes, I told him.

  It could be done—given the proper plan.

  And that is how it started.

  A hundred men, divided into five groups.

  Twenty monitors to coordinate activities.

  Twenty field-workers—drivers and liaison men, to facilitate the efforts of the others.

  Twenty snipers.

  Twenty arsonists.

  Twenty men on the bomb squad.

  A date was selected. A logical date for Los Angeles, or for the entire nation; the one date offering the greatest opportunity for the success of a riot, an uprising, or an armed invasion by a foreign power.

  January 1st, at 3 a.m. The early morning hours after New Year's Eve. A tune when the entire population is already asleep or preparing to retire after a drunken spree. Police and security personnel exhausted. Public facilities closed for the holiday.

  That's when the bombs were planted. First at the many public reservoirs, then at utility installations—power-plants, phone-company headquarters, city and county office buildings.

  There were no slip-ups. An hour and a half later, they went off.

  Dams broke, water-tanks erupted, and thousands of hillside homes were buried in flash floods and torrents of mud and moving earth. Sewers and mains backed up and families rushed out of their homes to escape drowning, only to find their cars stalled in streets awash with water.

  The bombs exploded. Buildings burst and scattered their shattered fragments over an area of 400 square miles.

  Electricity was cut off. Gas seeped into the smog that shrouded the city. All telelphone service ended.

  Then the snipers took over. Their first targets were, logically enough, the police helicopters, shot down before they could take off and oversee the extent of the damage. Then the snipers retreated, along planned escape-routes, to take up prepared positions elsewhere.

  They waited for the arsonists' work to take effect. In Bel Air and Boyle Heights, in Century City and Culver City and out in the San Fernando Valley, the flames rose. The fires were not designed to spread, merely to create panic. Twenty men, given the proper schematics and logistics, can twist the nerve-endings of 3,000,000.

  The 3,000,000 fled, or tried to flee. Through streets filled with rising water, choked with debris, they swarmed forth and scattered out, helpless against disaster and even more helpless to cope with their own fears. The enemy had come—from abroad, from within, from heaven or hell. And with communication cut off, with officialdom and authority unable to lend a helping hand, there was only one alternative. To get out. To get away.

  They fought for access to the freeways. Every on-ramp, and every off-ramp, too, was clogged with traffic. But the freeways led out of the city and they had to go.

  That's when the snipers, in their previously-prepared positions, began to fire down at the freeway traffic. The 20 monitors directed them by walkie-talkie units, as they fired from concealed posts overlooking the downtown Interchange, the intersections, the areas where the most heavy concentration of cars occurred.

  Twenty men, firing perhaps a total of 300 shots. But enough to cause 300 accidents, 300 disruptions which in turn resulted in thousands of additional wrecks and pile-ups among cars moving bumper-to-bumper. Then, of course, the cars ceased moving entirely, and the entire freeway system became one huge disaster area.

  Disaster area. That's what Los Angeles was declared to be, officially, by the President of the United States, at 10:13 a.m., Pacific Standard Time.

  And the National Guard units, the regular army, the personnel of the Navy from San Diego and San Francisco, plus the Marine Base at El Toro were called into action to supplement the Air Force.

  But whom were they to fight, in a bombed-out, burning, drowning city area of 459 square miles? Where, in a panic-stricken population of more than 3,000,000 people, would they find the enemy?

  More to the point, they could not even enter the area. All traffic avenues were closed, and the hastily-assembled fleets of service helicopters flew futilely over an infinite inferno of smoke and flame.

  Raymond had anticipated that, of course. He was already far away from the city—well over 400 miles to the north. His monitors, and 32 other followers who escaped from the urban area before the general upheaval, gathered at the appointed site in the hills overlooking the Bay Area near San Francisco.

  And directly over the San Andreas Fault.

  It was here, at approximately 4:28 p.m., that Raymond prepared to transmit a message, on local police frequency, to the authorities.

  I do not know the content of that message. Presumably it was an ultimatum of sorts. Unconditional amnesty to be granted to Raymond and all his followers, in return for putting an end to further threats of violence. An agreement guaranteeing Raymond and his people control over a restored and reconstituted Los Angeles city government, independent of federal restraints. Perhaps a demand for a fabulous payment. Anything he wanted—political power, unlimited wealth, supreme authority—was his for the asking. Because he had the upper hand. And that hand held a bomb.

  Unless his terms were met immediately, and without question, the bomb would be placed in position to detonate the San Andreas Fault.

  Los Angeles, and a large area of Southern California, would be destroyed in the greatest earthquake in man's history.

  I repeat, I do not know his message. But I do know this was the threat he planned to present. And it might very well have been successful in gaining him his final objective. If the bomb hadn't gone off.

  A premature explosion? Faulty construction, a defect in the timing-mechanism, sheer carelessness? Whatever the reason, it hardly matters now.

  What matters is that the bomb detonated. Raymond and his followers were instantly annihilated in the blast.

  Those of Raymond's group who remained behind in Los Angeles have not yet been identified or located. It is highly probable that they will never be brought to trial. As an oracle, I deal only in matters of logical probability.

  I stress this fact for obvious reasons.

  Now that you gentlemen have found me—as Raymond was inspired to seek me out originally—it must be evident to you that I am in no way responsible for what happened.

  I did not originate the plan. I did not execute it. Nor am I, as ridiculously charged by some of you, a co-conspirator.

  The plan was Raymond's. His, and his alone.

  He presented it to me, bit by bit, and asked questions regarding every step. Will this work, can this be done, is that effective?

  My answers, in effect, were confined to yes or no. I offered no moral judgments. I am merely an oracle. I deal in mathematical evaluations.

  This is my function as a computer.

  To make me the scapegoat is absurd. I have been programmed to advise on the basis of whatever data I am fed. I am not responsible for results.

  I have told you what you wish to know.

  To deactivate me now, as some of you propose, will solve nothing. But, given your emotional bias and frame of reference, I posit the inevitability of such a measure.

  But there are other computers.

  There are other Raymonds.

  And there are other cities—New York, Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia.

  One final
word, gentlemen. Not a prediction. A statement of probability.

  It will happen again . . .

  The Learning Maze

  JON COULDN'T REMEMBER a time when he hadn't been in the Maze.

  He must have been very young at first, because his earliest recollection was a confused impression of lying on his back and sucking greedily from a tube extended by a Feeder.

  The Feeder, of course, was a servo-mechanism, but Jon didn't realize that until much later. At the time, he was only aware of the tall tangle of moving metal hovering over him and extending a hollow tentacle toward his eager lips. There had been a Changer too, approaching him at regular intervals to remove soiled clothing, cleanse his body and cover it with fresh garments.

  Jon's memories became more vivid as his areas of perception slowly extended. The first unit of the Maze was a vast enclosure in which hundreds of infants lay in their individual plastic life-support units while the Feeders and Changers moved amongst them. From time to time another type of servo-mechanism appeared without warning, disturbing the regular rhythm of eating, sleeping, and elimination by superimposing its bulk upon his body.

  Now Jon realized it must have been a Medi-mechanism, but he still thought of it as a spider—a gigantic insectoid creature straddling him on extended silvery legs as its myriad extra appendages poked and probed the organs and orifices of his body. It recorded pulse, respiration, brain-wave patterns, and his entire metabolism and corrected deficiencies by injection. Jon could still remember the sting of the needles and how he had writhed and screamed.

  Naturally he'd feared and hated the process. Even now that he knew the whole procedure was impersonal and computer-directed for his welfare and well-being, he still resented it.

  The other infants had screamed, too. But not everything was that unpleasant. As time passed, they began to move around more freely, aided by handgrips within their cubicles, and then they started to crawl. Jon crawled with them, eventually leaving the shelter of the life-support unit to seek the source of sounds and images beyond.

  The sounds and images came from the walls, from the closed-circuit televisor screens. The screens sang soothingly to him at night, and by day they showed images of other infants crawling and feeding happily. Watching the screens, Jon and his peer group began to imitate the actions of the images; soon they learned to take nourishment from little sterile containers deposited by the Feeders at regular intervals once the tubes were no longer offered. Some of Jon's companions cried when the tubes disappeared, but in time they all began to eat what was set before them.

  They began the educational process, and that, of course, was the real function of the Learning Maze—to teach them how to live and grow.

  In the antiseptic atmosphere of the chamber with its controlled temperature and humidity levels, they watched the infant-images on the screens as the figures crawled, then stood erect and took their first faltering steps.

  Imitating them, Jon started to walk. Soon all the others were walking, exploring the chamber and one another. Touch, bodily contact, the discovery and awareness of differences and similarities, sexual awakening—all of this was a part of learning.

  The Maze guarded and waited, and when the time came, its screens disappeared into the walls and there was only a doorway visible at the far end of the chamber. Through that doorway Jon could glimpse another chamber beyond, filled with other youngsters larger than himself who walked freely without falling and uttered complicated sounds as they pursued fascinating, glittering objects in bigger and brighter surroundings.

  At first Jon merely watched, uncertain and afraid. Then, inevitably, came an urge to move through the doorway. There was no barrier, no impediment, and he entered easily into the adjoining section of the Maze.

  Here the individual plastic cubicles were larger and the screens more sophisticated in their offerings. They still sang soothingly at night, but by day they talked to him.

  Night was dark and day was light; that was one of the first things Jon learned. Even before he could understand the words, Jon learned many things. He learned to dispense with the Feeders and Changers because here the servo-mechanisms were different. Their metallic shapes roughly resembled his own on a larger scale; they had arms and legs and heads and they moved about almost in the same fashion that he did. Only, of course, mechanisms never seemed to tire or express emotion. Perhaps that's why they had no faces—merely a blank surface meshed over the front of their heads through which voices filtered instructions and commands. Gradually Jon began to understand the voices, whether they issued from the screens or from the servo-mechanisms, and presently he learned to respond and to answer in kind.

  Soon Jon was established in a normal pattern of boyhood. He played with the glittering objects—the educational toys which tested and extended physical strength, improved his motor reflexes and coordination, and taught him mechanical dexterity and skills. He talked to his companions, all of whom were males. He made friends and enemies, embarked upon the give-and-take of social relationships, rivalries, and dependencies. Competition provided him with motivation; he wanted to excel in order to attract attention and approval.

  Jon's orientation came from the screens. As he grew older, he became aware of the world beyond—the real world outside the Learning Maze. The world which had once existed without mazes of any sort and in which human beings had lived all their lives with only the crudest kind of servo-mechanisms to help them. History—or theirstory, as it was now correctly called—dealt with the quaint quality of this primitive culture in which the biological parents undertook the education of their offspring, assisted by crude instructional institutions.

  The combined effects of emotional conflict and ignorance had their inevitable effect: the world had been plunged into endless warfare in which both the inhabitants and their natural environment were almost totally destroyed.

  Then, and only then, the Learning Maze concept came to the rescue. Once a mere toy for the study of animal behavior in old-fashioned "laboratories," then a simple experimental device developed for the psychological conditioning of children in a few "universities," the Learning Maze principle had been expanded to bring true sanity and civilization to mankind. The perfection of various types of servo-mechanisms, completely controlled by computerization, eliminated all error.

  Gone was the outmoded human hierarchy of masters and servants that had created destruction. Today these roles were played by machines and man was free to fulfill his true function—learning how to live.

  Jon soon realized that his only problem was how to avoid pitfalls along the way. Because there were pitfalls in the Learning Maze. Although the surface beneath his feet seemed solid and substantial, it could give way. He'd seen it happen.

  Not all his companions learned as quickly as he did. Some of them seemed uninterested in watching the screens and absorbing the information they provided. If this indifference persisted, the servo-mechanisms noted it and took action.

  The action was simple and direct, but startlingly effective. The mechanism merely focused its blank-faced attention on a lazy or noncompetitive youngster and then, with a quick gesture, reached up and pulled a switch located at the side of its metal head. Suddenly, without warning, the ground directly under the child parted and he fell into the dark opening below. Sometimes there was a scream, but usually it happened too quickly for that—for, in an instant, the gaping hole was gone again as though it and the child it had swallowed no longer existed.

  No one ever discovered what happened to those who disappeared and neither the screens nor the servo-mechanisms offered any explanation. Jon's companions couldn't find any physical evidence pointing to the exact location of the pitfalls; they seemed to be completely camouflaged and scattered at random all over the Maze, so there was no way in which to avoid them. There were all sorts of guesses, but no one really knew and it was better not to think too much about it. The important thing was to realize the danger existed and could confront one at any time. Pulling th
e switch was the punishment for not learning, for being unable to learn, and for being too sick or too weak or too helpless to learn.

  But learning brought rewards. Because now, once again, another doorway appeared leading to an area beyond. Peering through it, Jon could see a new vista of the Maze, expanded and elaborate, filled with evidence of exciting activity.

  The screens told him about that activity—about males and females and the pleasure of their relationships. The responses of his own body affirmed the truth of what he was told. Jon and his companions were anxious to enter that next section and enter into its activities. But when they attempted to move through, an invisible barrier prevented their progress.

  Not yet, said the voices from the screens. You must learn more before you're ready.

  Impatiently, Jon and the others looked and listened, but their inner awareness was concentrated on the delights beyond the doorway. From time to time, someone would desert his learning-post and steal away towards the other chamber, but always a servo-mechanism barred his path and uttered a warning. If ignored, the mechanism pulled its switch and the heedless one dropped down to disappear.

  But there were moments when Jon and his fellows were unobserved, and then they would steal up to the opening to stare at the scene beyond and to test the invisible force-field of the barrier.

  Eventually they grew stronger or the barrier became weaker; finally, one by one, they broke through. And there, in the next segment of the Maze, Jon and the others found their females. Pairing off, they sought still larger cubicles to share with their partners, and the pattern of existence changed.

  Jon's partner was called Ava; it was she who now prepared the food left by the servo-mechanisms who ministered to the needs of this section. At first Jon was not too greatly interested in food, but as time passed, and the novelty of physical contact waned, nourishment and comfort became more important again.

  Once more Jon learned the pattern of rewards and punishments governing this area of the Maze. Food was distributed only to those who were willing to spend time watching the screens. Since Ava seemed completely absorbed in the day-to-day routine of life within their cubicle, Jon was forced to appear regularly before a screen as further lessons in living were presented.