The Day the Machines Stopped

by Christopher Anvil

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Even though,” said the Duke, opening the lid of the container and taking out some cheese crackers, “you’ve wasted a certain amount of time trying to find some chance to get away.”

  Brian started to protest.

  The Duke paused with the crackers and smiled. “People become leaders, not because they understand test tubes or bank balances, but because they understand people.”

  Brian looked at him a moment, then said, “How long have you known this?”

  “Since the night the others got away. I’d suspected it before that time. Of course, I knew Cardan and the others wanted to get away. What I didn’t appreciate was their ingenuity. You see, I lacked the technical knowledge to realize what they could do. It was the soap, wasn’t it?”

  “The soap?”

  “A by-product of soap manufacture,” said the Duke, “is glycerin.” He waved to a small shelf of books nearby. “I’ve been more careful since that experience. They made soap for us, and glycerin for themselves. From the glycerin, by the proper procedure, nitroglycerin can be prepared. And from nitroglycerin can be made dynamite. Just what the exact steps they followed were, I don’t know.” He was watching Brian alertly, with an expression of good humor. “I’m surprised to see that you’re interested rather than uneasy. Apparently, you didn’t make it for them, after all.”

  Brian shook his head. “I suspected the whole thing when I saw the soap carried out—that is, I suspected they were making explosive, and could use it to get away—but I was too busy working on steam engines to have helped them, even if I’d wanted to.”

  “Nevertheless, you’d planned to leave with them.” It wasn’t a question but a statement.

  “Anything I might say,” said Brian, forcing a smile, “would tend to incriminate me. But if you knew this then, why did you accept our story?”

  “Why not? I needed you. And it was obvious that you’d missed the opportunity to get away. The only question was, would the men believe- you? If not, I would have to devise a punishment that would satisfy their anger, while still enabling you to recover and be of use. I’ve never seen a worse liar, but with my help, luckily you convinced the men that you were innocent.”

  Brian speechlessly accepted the dish of crackers the Duke held out to him.

  The Duke peered into his box on wheels, extracted two mugs and a large Thermos bottle, and filled the mugs with steaming cocoa. “There’s nothing like a fire and a cup of good hot cocoa when it’s twenty below outside. Yes, the situation was very bad that night, and the best I could make of it didn’t correct it entirely.”

  “Certainly discipline was tightened up. You’ve gained a lot of territory since then.”

  “True, but against the petty opponents I’ve had to contend with, territory is easy to gain. It can be lost just as quickly to superior opponents. It’s necessary to look ahead and consider the caliber of the opposition. In that light, the loss of Cardan and his men was very possibly fatal. Our organization here is primitive, and we need everything we can get in the form of scientific and engineering skill to strengthen us against the opposition.”

  Brian was puzzled. “What is the opposition?”

  “The old habits and patterns of thought from before the disaster. New organizations, I can deal with. But to the northwest, the old pattern still holds. I thought for a time that it would die out, be extinguished in the disorder. But it has survived, and now it extends itself with lightning rapidity. When the old trumpet sounds with all its power, then the people rally to the old flag, and the banners of the new look cheap and shoddy. People obey me now because they judge me against a background of ruin and chaos. Let them see me for a time in comparison with things as they were before the disaster, and I will appear little. Let there be a choice between me and the old flag, and I will be lucky if my own men stick with me. That is why the loss of Cardan was a possible deathblow. He went to the northwest, and when he went, that block of scientific and engineering skill was transferred from me to them.”

  The Duke paused, the cocoa cup half raised, and his eyes gazing off as if he looked into a different world that Brian couldn’t see.

  “Before the escape of Cardan, the Federals were going under. Only one state and parts of two others still flew the old flag and held to the old ways. And the chaos was spiraling, threatening to submerge them even there. Then It was as If the old way, in its death struggle, sent out a call for whoever was still faithful. Cardan heard that call, and he went, he wasn’t the only one. For weeks around that time there was a flow of men, young and old, leaving here for the northwest. We stopped some, but we couldn’t stop all. And it wasn’t only hands and guns that went north. Brains went north, too. A few months later their crisis was broken. And that is the opposition I’ll be measured against someday.”

  Brian listened in astonished silence, noting a strange shine in the Duke’s eyes as he spoke of the old flag.

  “Why,” said Brian, “if you feel that way—?”

  The Duke raised his hand. “I came into the world from a direction that gave me a poor perspective on the old ways. Let’s not talk of that. Let’s talk of what we have here. Everyone in my organization is looked after. There is no graft, no crookedness. Karbists are destroyed on sight, not left to burden and poison the rest. Child-killers and dope-runners lead a short life here. Every man is honest, because he knows that in his honesty he has the full power of the organization behind him. You’ve seen order brought out of chaos, and the countryside made safe for honest men who are willing to work.”

  The Duke talked on, and what he said seemed true. Brian felt his personal power, and, somewhere in the background of his mind, he was always aware that the man could snap his fingers, say, “Kill this man,” and Brian would be killed.

  “What I’ve done,” the Duke went on, “I’ve been able to do because I understand people. But I need someone who understands things. I need a right-hand man who can run the mines and factories, who can knit the broken bits into a smooth-running, system. I need someone like that, and so does the whole country. I offer you this job, and with it, authority and power second only to my own.”

  For an instant, Brian wavered. Then abruptly he saw the fallacy in the Duke’s position. As in other dictatorships, the power was concentrated in one man. But even if one man survived the power without delusions of grandeur, what happened if he was shot, died of heart failure, or fell down a staircase? Immediately, everything would be thrown into chaos. In this case, Brian would be second in command, but he would have been put there by the Duke, and his power would rest on the Duke, who would be gone. Inevitably, there would be a power struggle. Granted that the Duke had shown skill and restraint in the use of his power, what assurance was there that the next man would do the same?

  The Duke, seeing Brian’s hesitation, smiled. “I can understand your hesitation. But I wouldn’t offer you this if I weren’t sure that you could do the job, and that you wouldn’t misuse the power. But there’s no need to decide right now. Think it over.”

  That discussion was the first of many that Brian had as the subzero cold held military operations to a standstill, and the Duke craved companionship and conversation in the long winter evenings. One night, he raised the question of the disaster that had caused the trouble.

  “A clever device,” said the Duke. “It has us hamstrung, tied in knots. I wonder how fast the Russians are progressing while we are still trying to get back on our feet?”

  Brian, convinced that the Russians had been hurt as much as anyone, argued that the disaster had resulted from an accident. The Duke nodded. “Maybe. But it so nearly collapsed our whole structure that it’s hard to think it could have been entirely accidental.”

  “I don’t know,” said Brian. “We’d gotten so that any delay anywhere tended to paralyze the system. A short circuit could knock out power in a whole district. A shipping strike could stop whole industries. Everything was so knit together and interdependent th
at a failure in any part reacted on the whole.”

  Another night, toward spring, Brian excused himself on the grounds that he was worn out. The Duke smiled. “You’re doing the work. You should have the rank and reward.” The next night, the Duke sent for Smitty, who came back close to midnight and said, “I wish I was back with Cardan. This bird is out of his mind. He asked me how I’d like to be a marquis and have everybody bang his head on the floor for me. I think that’s what he was talking about. How is a man supposed to do his work when he has to be up half the night talking nonsense?”

  It occurred to Brian that the Duke was sending a gentle hint that he was growing impatient. Brian would have to decide soon, one way or the other. This little push decided Brian. He sat up and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. Smitty was by the stove, warming his hands after the icy trip back from the Duke’s palace. The room was barely warm, but the floorboards were icy under Brian’s bare feet.

  “Listen,” he said, “are those guards outside again tonight?”

  “They’re huddled in the anteroom, feeding chunks to the fire. Nobody’s outside. Out there, you can feel your nostrils congeal and your nose turn blue every time you take a breath.”

  “I wonder about the guards at the gate.”

  “They’re there, no doubt, and just as cold as everyone else.” Smitty turned to thaw himself on another side. “What are you thinking?”

  “I noticed on the work sheets that a fast steam car got repaired today. It’s ready to go out tomorrow.”

  Smitty was silent an instant, then he gave a low whistle. “Ye gods, Brian! Tonight is no night for that. No one in his right mind would go out tonight!”

  “That’s the point.”

  “You mean, they wouldn’t be expecting it?”

  “Of course they wouldn’t. You just said so yourself.” Smitty looked out the window, where the icicles dangled five feet long. “I wish I’d kept my mouth shut.”

  Brian got up and looked out.

  A full moon shone on the snow-covered roof and icy ground. Everywhere he could see, the windows were dark and the walks and roadways empty.

  Excitedly, he said, “This is our chance. We’ve been working all this time for the Duke because we had no chance to get away. Now is the chance!”

  “Brian, listen —”

  Brian was already taking the blankets from the bed.

  Smitty said anxiously, “What are you going to do with them?”

  “We’re going to rip one into strips and knot them to make a rope. When I’m down there, you throw the other blankets down to me, because we’re going to need them in the steam car. But first I’m going to see if I can’t write the Duke’s signature.”

  The next forty minutes saw them make their way, fingers stiff with cold, down the improvised rope to the ground, then slip and teeter over the uneven ice to the entrance door of the repair garage.

  From the guardroom inside, a voice said, “Come on, Ed, throw in another piece. What ails you?”

  “Hit this chunk a crack with your rifle butt, will you? It’s froze to the ground.”

  Smitty, shivering, murmured, “We can break a window in back.”

  “No,” whispered Brian. “They’d hear when we opened the big door.”

  He knocked on the door. “Open up! Duke’s orders!”

  The door came open and two rough figures looked out. “My God! What could bring anyone out on a night like this?”

  “Fire in the oil field,” said Brian. “It came in on the flasher an hour ago. Duke wants it out, and no one there knows how.” Brian spread his hands at the stove. “We can blast it out, I hope. First we’ve got to figure out some way to get near the thing.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  Brian grimaced. “Too hot.”

  This brought a round of laughter, and if there had been any trace of suspicion, it was gone now.

  The guards helped them check the steam car. Oil, water, and gas gauges showed full, the chains were on the wheels, and the fabric top and side-curtains were as tight as they could be made. When steam pressure was built up, the guards folded back the buildings’ heavy doors, Brian advanced the speed lever, and the car rolled out smoothly, skidded, crabbed along sidewise on the ice, then straightened out again.

  At the gate, Brian thrust out an oblong of paper bearing the date and the printed words, Give these men every possible assistance, with a fair imitation of the Duke’s scrawl beneath it.

  The men in the gatehouse turned up the oil lamp and, in the glow from the smoked-up lamp chimney, huddled over the little piece of paper, then asked, “What’s broke loose that he sends you out on a night like this?”

  Brian told the same story he’d told the other guards. It brought the same laugh, then the paper was handed back.

  Brian eased the car forward as a powerful crank raised the gate, to the sound of a heavy snap as the base of the gate broke loose from the ice. Then they were outside.

  Already, as they pulled their blankets around them, they could feel their feet growing numb.

  But behind them, the Duke’s base was fading into a dim shadow in the moonlight.

  And ahead of them, the frozen road was wide-open, stretching out unguarded into the far distance.

  It was daylight when they reached the first of the rare fuel and water stations that dotted the roads at long intervals. To Brian’s astonishment, the place was a smoking shambles.

  “Chimney caught-fire,” said one of the men who turned as Brian came over. “The damned fool didn’t have the sense to clean the soot out.” He looked at Brian’s car. “What brings you out in this weather? You after those escapees?”

  Brian kept his face straight, nodding. “No chance you’d have noticed them?”

  “An army could have gone past and we wouldn’t have seen it. We had our hands full with this thing.”

  “When did you get the word?”

  “Came over the flasher two hours ago. I wouldn’t break my neck if I were you. With the stations closed to all traffic, they’ll run out of steam soon enough, or get nailed when they come in for fuel.”

  Brian went back to the car and told Smitty the bad news. Then they drove in silence till Smitty said, “Look, this country is familiar. This is where we were earlier, before the Duke showed up.”

  Brian looked around in surprise. “I think you’re right.”

  Twenty minutes later they were in the yard of the Barnaby farm.

  “Yes,” said the elder Barnaby, “you don’t have to say a thing. We know all about it. They had messengers going from house to house on horseback not an hour ago. Now you take the four horses we’re raising for the Duke’s service, my eldest boy and Ed Schmidt’s son, and knock me over the head before you go so I can tell the Cols you took the horses by force and the two boys for hostages.”

  “ ‘Cols’ ?” said Brian.

  “Citizen’s Obedience League. I don’t know if the Duke planned that or it just grew up naturally, like toadstools where the ground is rotten. If you make it to America, tell them to come as soon as they can. The teaching in the schools here is changed; all the children swear allegiance to the Duke, and the secret police plant spies in every town and every house. My own daughter is in it, and she’d turn me in as soon as she’d spit, except that this morning she’s away at a group meeting.”

  Brian stared at him. “That bad? But what do you mean, ‘If you make it to America’? This is America.”

  Barnaby shook his head. “No, it isn’t. I mean, where they still fly the flag. Where they still vote. Tell them the Duke’s neat system. First, he ends karb. Everybody’s happy, and everybody goes along with his rules. But his rules never end. By the time the karb is wiped out, his representatives have moved in, and everything is split up into compartments. Nobody can move off his place without permission. If you do, you’re hanged for a karbist. All it takes is a piece of paper, and your property is redistributed— Duke’s orders.”

  “But you can complain to th
e Duke!”

  “When first you have to go to the local representative for a travel permit?”

  Brian shook his head. He looked around and saw two strong boys leading horses that were saddled and ready.

  “Smitty,” said Brian, “would you see if there are guns in the back of that car? The work sheet said it was a patrol, not a courier car.”

  Smitty climbed inside and came out carrying two rifles by the slings.. Brian saw that they were Springfields. The Duke’s choice of weapons coincided with that of Cardan, especially in cold weather, when a complicated action might make trouble. Smitty handed one gun to Brian and one to one of the boys. A moment later he was out with two more rifles, and with bandoliers of ammunition.

  “We may have to fight,” Brian said. “You can say I told the boys that once I got them out of here they could never turn back. They’d be hanged for violating the no-travel law. That will explain why they fight, if we have to fight.”

  Barnaby agreed.

  The woman came out with water and sandwiches, and put small bags in the pockets of the men’s coats. Then Barnaby said, “Now, don’t waste any more time. And leave a bump I can use for proof, and a bruise to show where I hit the ground.”

  Ed Schmidt finally stepped forward. There was a quiet thud, and Barnaby crumpled to the ground.

  “On your way,” said Schmidt. He glanced at his son. “And mind you, boy, when you shoot, don’t waste bullets firing over their heads! Aim for the chest, and leave it to Providence to save the vermin if it’s God’s Will.”

  The boy nodded, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  The women reached up to kiss their sons good-by, and Schmidt said, “Hurry. We’ve got to report this.”

  And then Brian and the others were on their way.

  The sun was up now, and with it as they rode came a day as unbelievably hot as the night had been cold. To their astonishment, the pleasant warmth of early morning turned into summerlike heat hy noon. The glare of the sun on the snow all but blinded them, and ground, heaved up be frost, gave way under the horses’ hoofs. Their progress was maddeningly slow.